I agree with Hawking in every sense. I disagree on the timeline, however. I’d say if humanity is not making a concerted effort to get off this rock in a permanent way in the next 200 years, we’re done for overall.
It’s sorta like a nuclear family living under one roof. Sure it’s possible, and yeah it’s going to save everyone quite a bit of money; but you’ll NEVER have consensus on everything, and at some point, tempers will boil over.
We need to use the moon as an outpost, begin testing new technologies for space faring and learning how to biologically beat space. We need to reach out to Mars for long term civilization and colonization and use that as our launch point to the asteroid belt and the moons of the gas giants.
Io at Jupiter and Enceladus and Titan by Saturn make enticing targets for future exploration.
Agree 100%.