‘Colonize planets to save the human race’ – Professor Stephen Hawking

we will meet extraterrestrials on our way to there. But they may prefer to hide from those of us who can't accept that yet. There might be man-made transports instead, and empty planets with all vegetation and harmless animals. The ET could do that for us, if we want it, even if they remain in the shadow for the multitudes and appear only to selected individuals who can handle it. But I think they will appear to the multitudes from the beginning and say who they are and what they offer to humanity.

And here is the question how many people will actually want it when it is presented as the surviving option to humanity.

My guesses range between 100,000 and several million people who would like to choose it, if all the other questions are settled beneficially (no charges for the transport or whatsoever, assured meals 3 -5 times a day, not to mention drinks, a free large housing, pleasant atmosphere, trees, beaches and sunsets, (what more do most of people on earth long for during their entire lives ?!) Opportunity to learn the other planets' culture, and perhaps completely new kinds of jobs with new environmentally friendly technology. I don't worry for those 100,000 persons, they will be available overnight. I worry for the rest of millions who will have hard time to struggle with prejudices and who might finally choose Yes for the sake of their children.

I wonder how many politicians already know that. Medvedev tops the list as current PM, followed by Paul Hellyer (former), and pope Francis (the top religious leader, like it or not). Perhaps most of heads of state know it. Most religious figures know it. Then it remains to be implemented. For 1 month or for 10 months depending on the events' schedule. Or for 10 years. Let they start for God's sake before WW3. They may do their WW3 once the population is saved abroad.

Today RT posted a standing UFO light in Donetsk for quite some time, captured on time lapse camera as slow moving, over Donetsk. Seems nothing goes out of their view, and they will come the moment they are needed most. May be hours before WW3 starts and thus postponing it for time duration known to them.

www.youtube.com...

We have to do it. A base or bases on the moon and a colony on Mars to start with.

People will die but in doing so they will forge the way. Explorers have always died.

So many naysayers on these boards and everywhere. I read countless articles on why it won't work and why we shouldn't do it and how there isn't any money or funding or planning. But as in all things like this, we just need to do it. We're humans, we always find a way. No room for negativity or we'll never get off the ground.

originally posted by: amazing
We have to do it. [...] No room for negativity or we'll never get off the ground.

Well, maybe for that reason alone we should stop dreaming of some kind of salvation in the heavens and start working on controlling our breeding and resources here on Earth.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: amazing
We have to do it. [...] No room for negativity or we'll never get off the ground.

Well, maybe for that reason alone we should stop dreaming of some kind of salvation in the heavens and start working on controlling our breeding and resources here on Earth.

That sounds absolutely draconian.

Stephen Hawking - true legend. i need to go see the film about him.

It's time for the birds to leave the nest. And as for controlling resources and populations here, upgrades were given and the board of directors stole the schools upgrades and are working to murder the students. Time to grow up and leave the nest, but without those guys in power at all.

Was joking with my family that you should be able to nominate and vote on people sent out to colonize space. Imagine sending the boss that everyone hates up to mars hahaha

a reply to: 2012newstart

speaking of colonization that would take enormous time by the current mainstream science engines, one should ask Hawking and all, what drives will be used for that. Perhaps the experimental Alcubiere warp drive that ONE scientist of NASA develops officially, could be in a much more advanced level than we were told.

Most of the interest on this thread seems to be in interstellar colonization. I don't think that's what the good professor meant. I think he meant that we should develop self-sustaining habitats elsewhere in the Solar System, at least to start with. They could be planetary colonies (on Mars and the Moon, perhaps), hollowed-out and converted asteroids or gas-giant moons, or even just plain space stations, though that seems like the most unpleasant option of all. Still, any basket will do to spread the eggs.

Spare a thought for those who may one day call these places home. Their lives will be regimented and circumscribed by danger and necessity to a degree that will make most Earthly totalitarian states seem like paragons of liberty. It will be like being in the army — from birth to death. The colonists will live out their lives enclosed within airtight compartments and spacesuits, and simply getting enough to eat and drink will be a difficult, complicated, highly technical process. With resources so precious, everything will cost — ahem — the Earth. Privacy will be impossible. Surveillance will be constant; safety and life-support integrity will demand it. And opportunities to 'get away from it all' will be nil.

If these brave pioneers retain their lives and their sanity under these conditions, they will evolve societies radically different from anything Earth possesses. We need not assume that democracy and the rule of law will prevail. Nor need we expect the inhabitants of this far-flung gulag to love one another. There may be interplanetary wars between cultures involving colonies whose interests and lifestyles clash. Earth may make war on her children, or they on her.

You might think, given these hideous difficulties, that the interstellar option is the one to go for after all. The problem, as you say, is time. Unless some of those magical technologies you mention actually materialize (I'm not holding my breath), we'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, using rockets and tacking among gravity fields. A voyage will take many years, and since some kind of suspended animation is not yet an option (nor showing any promise of being one), people in substantial numbers (we won't want inbreeding) will have to live with each other in close proximity aboard our interstellar arks under exactly the same conditions that habitat dwellers will suffer. So the same problems (except for interplanetary wars, obviously) will still have to be faced and dealt with.

Two consequences may be foreseen from this:

• The planting and settlement of Solar System colonies must and will precede any interstellar endeavour. For one thing, it is easier to do. For another, the social models and techniques as well as the life-support technology that must be developed as part of that endeavour can only be developed in such colonies and habitats. These 'states in space' will be vital participants in a project that will undoubtedly affect, if not actually engage, the entire human race.
  
  
• They will also drive it. Much of the political will and pressure to colonize the stars will come from the residents of these colonies and habitats because of their eagerness to stand under open skies and look upon distant horizons again, to have room to stretch and explore and be alone (or alone together). It is our basic human instincts that will drive us to the stars, as they have driven us up to now.

And we will take them with us. Never forget this.