In anticipation of receiving the Copley medal from Britain’s Royal Society, revered cosmologist Stephen Hawking granted a rare interview this week. He told BBC that “humans must colonize other planets.” That statement generated headlines around the planet. His arguments are sound and you can read them on http://www.cnn.com/ in a story CNN picked up from Reuters.
Before anyone runs out and suggests that Hawking’s position in anyway supports the current NASA / administration view that one nation-state, the US of A, is wise to spend the resources necessary to put humans back on the Moon and then on Mars, let us get four things straight:
1. Hawking correctly points out that eventually an asteroid, nuclear war or some other event (and in the long term the natural life cycle of our Sun) will make Earth uninhabitable. With this position, no scientist disagrees. Every major religion has an escape clause for those who believe in that particular faith, the rest just burn up.
2. Hawking also notes that to get to the nearest potentially habitable planet it would take 50,000 years with current technology. See Fundamental Thesis Nine (No Exit) in Chapter 1 Box 1 and Chapter 23 on sustainability including Chapter 23 Box 1 No Exit in “The Shape of the Future.”
3. Before humans go back to the Moon, we need technology that will get us there in 30 minutes. If humans can develop that technology it will be done here on Earth, not on the Moon or on Mars. This is especially true when the rationale given by the administration to go there is to exploit material resources on these nearby bodies.
4. There is an even bigger issue:
Before US of A taxpayers, or everyone on the planet, expend vast resources to insure survival of the humans species, citizens need to prove they can efficiently and sustainablely manage our activity on Earth. The Earth is the only known planet where human survival is possible under current conditions. Without a sustainable trajectory for civilization, going to Mars and beyond would just be exporting chaos.
Evolving functional and sustainable human settlement patterns here on Earth is a first step. It is still possible if governments, institutions and enterprises would stop distorting the market and the environment for short-term profit.
EMR