Stephen Hawking: Off Earth by 2110? - Aug 2010
Physicist Stephen Hawking delivers a lecture in South Africa in 2008.
For years, Hawking has been urging continued progress in human spaceflight as a long-term survival measure.
We may have just 100 to 200 years to figure out how to get off this rock and give our species a cosmic insurance policy, physicist Stephen Hawking says in a fresh interview with BigThink. This time, Hawking's views are given a stark spin: "Abandon Earth - or Face Extinction." But Hawking isn't really suggesting we should just give up on our planet. It's just that right now we have all our eggs in one planetary basket. Here's the key passage:
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"If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and continue. But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years, but if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space. That is why I'm in favor of manned, or should I say, 'personed' spaceflight."
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Hawking said that "if we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe as we spread into space."
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That's all we need. Spread this clusterfuck into space.