Stephen Hawking: Space Is the Place?
by Treehugger Interns 
on 06.25.06
By now, nearly everyone has heard the news that physicist Stephen Hawking is raising the alarm about global disaster from manmade environmental or nuclear causes. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," says Hawking, in the related Associated Press article. His message seems to be more one of not putting all our eggs in one basket in the face of near-inevitable catastrophe, rather than the more hopeful one of conservation and cleanup promoted by most environmentalists, but Hawking's interest in developing the technologies we'd need to colonize space stresses the same lessons that environmentalists learned from Biosphere II – that artificial environments are much more difficult to get right than we thought, and beyond our current capabilities. Perhaps the most obvious sign of how far our dreams of living space lie from the realities comes this week from New Zealand, where it is reported that the International Space Station, considered our best hope for colonizing Mars, has just dumped a capsule full of its trash into the Pacific Ocean to make room for new supplies. Perhaps a little down-to-earth conservation is more important to Hawking's future than it sounds. [Written by: Eva Jacobus]
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Jamais Cascio has an interesting post about this.
The discussion in the post mentioned above where people have come out against Hawking's suggestion as an abandonment of Earth is probably due to it being a common human pattern. Throughout history, man has moved from place to place, typically abandoning a region if the ecosystem could no longer support the number of humans living in it.
Thanks for the Cascio link - that's a good discussion of the interpretation, and for the most part I agree with him on what Hawking was trying to say.
Apparently, the "disposable earth" idea was once a more widely-touted, if somewhat far-off, approach to the problem, which might explain some of the reaction. The same pattern of using up and moving on occured to me, too, and I thought it was rather striking, in light of the story reporting how our current spacefarers are repeating the garbage disposal problems, and solutions, we see all too often - we can move on, but it looks like we're just taking our problems with us.
Famous people often get attention for public fantasies. Meanwhile, millions of non-famous people have been overlooked for their designs or theories. Can someone tell us of a business, product, publication, or patent from S.H. that has significantly contributed to the material benefit of the earth's environment or to human health?
Pragmatism is more important than speculation.
I agree with Mr. Hawking, although not for all the same reasons. He's obviously concerned about humanity doing something stupid (or continuing to do what we are doing...)
Still, going to space does not have to mean that we do it because we're leaving behind an environment in ruins.
Yes, going into space does require a lot of resources, however the realtively obtainable resources in space are quite bountiful.
Initially, going into space means bringing your resources with you (until you develop resources in space). Thus we'd have to be very efficient with the resources we bring with us.
The technology driving this efficiency has Earth-bound uses (solar cells, fuel cells, etc. etc.)
I'd like to echo the sentiment of ali. If you go somewhere without fossil fuels or a large industrial base, you have to make every joule count.
Just like the labor shortage in the Colonies caused a great deal of innovation, so would the material and energy shortage on the frontier of space. This would have a large number of benefits for the terrestrial population, and act as a relief valve for population pressures.
And the amount of resources in near space is astounding. There is enough material in the asteroid belt alone to support 100 billion people. And without the need to destroy ecosystems on earth to get to it.
I told my 9 year old son about what Dr. Hawking had to say about global warming and moving on to a new planet within 100 years and he said maybe instead we could make a new air conditioner that could repair the ozone layer with sediments that would rise up with the use of nitrogen. I just wonder if this could be done. Anyone have any suggestions?
President Reagan in 1988 made a similar call “to colonize the galaxy.” But rather than a warning of possible extinction, it was an optimistic call to fulfill our “manifest destiny.” Reagan said, “It is only in a universe without limits that we will find a canvas large enough for the vastness of the human imagination.”