Stephen Hawking calls for Moon and Mars colonies

New Scientist ^ | 4/21/08 | David Shiga

[LibLieSlayer]

I'll volunteer if they will only allow Conservatives to go.

LLS

[airborne]

So what have we done lately?

We've got what's left of a shuttle fleet that can't launch in rain and can be destroyed by falling insulation.

Some progress.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Sorry, but it’s a dumb idea. Humans are not adapted to space flight or to life on a world with different gravity and other conditions. Will cost far too much money. A better plan is to put demented scientists out to pasture and to fix up this planet.

[Hacklehead]

“The renowned University of Cambridge physicist has previously spoken in favour of colonising space as an insurance policy against the possibility of humanity being wiped out by catastrophes like nuclear war and climate change.”

Unless the moon or mars can be made self sufficient, it will need to be supplied from earth. Food, water, air, etc. If Earth dies, people on the moon die also.
Hawking may be a genius but he is also a crackpot who has stated that global warming threatens to make the earth as hot as venus.

[snoringbear]

“Let's get this frigging show on the road allready so my great grandchildren will have a shot at doing the things I had dreamed of doing as a boy, and which we could have done by now.”

Agree. When I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969 I profoundly believed that I would see a permanent colony on the moon and a manned landing on Mars in my life-time. Alas, now it's almost 40 years later and I no longer believe I am going to see either happen in my lifetime.

[Hot Tabasco]

now it's almost 40 years later and I no longer believe I am going to see either happen in my lifetime.

I know the disappointment you must feel. I'm still waiting for the flying cars........

[Thermalseeker]

... turns out lunar morphology ain't what was suspected.

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you! /scarcasmoff

[Lee'sGhost]

Oh, I think the moon is totally safe from “climate” change, considering it doesn’t have one. Asteroids, however, are a point well made.

[Melas]

While your condemnation of his personal life is simply fascinating, we’d all love to hear just what bearing the status of his marriage(s) has to do with his credibility in the scientific arena.

[beachdweller]

Oh I completely agree, but I don’t think we actually will. We have the technology to do lots we won’t.

[The Great RJ]

Earth to Hawking ...global warming is happening on Mars.

[snoringbear]

“I know the disappointment you must feel. I’m still waiting for the flying cars........”

Here you go Hot Tabasco,

Check out this website; http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/AC/aircraft/Aerocar/info/info.htm

Per the article, the first AeroCar was sold to a Portland, Oregon radio station in 1961 to use for traffic reporting...

[Shryke]

Humans are also not adopted to underwater conditions or flying, either. Yet there are literally tens of thousand of humans in those arenas this very second.

I am curious of your "can't do" attitude. And, more importantly, I hope you are the exception and not the rule. Had the founding fathers been of like mind, we'd still be a British colony. And if our current batch of politicians remain that way, you can be dead certain, DEAD certain, that China and/or Russia will be there as soon as they can. "Space" is the last frontier. It has *infinite* resources. And it is the ultimate in military strength.

[Mr. Jeeves]

It will get done.

The United States will not be the country who does it.

[taxesareforever]

But that wouldn’t happen. They would send an ACLU lawyer and an EPA analysis up there first.

[LibLieSlayer]

True.

LLS

[freedomcrusader]

“The renowned University of Cambridge physicist has previously spoken in favour of colonising space as an insurance policy against the possibility of humanity being wiped out by catastrophes like nuclear war and climate change.”

I never understood why atheists (and Hawking is arguably one) see any value, let alone so much value, in the perpetuation of the human race.

If the creation of the human race was a random, meaningless, cosmic accident, then the extinction of the human race would be an equally random, meaningless, cosmic accident. No?

[LibWhacker]

It’s because they have faith, not in an all powerful God, but in the rational mind. A super-advanced intelligence will behave rationally and intelligently, they believe, probably in almost every situation — and that’s good.

Personally, I’m less certain that it’s good. A super-advanced civilization that wanted the Earth, for instance, might sterilize it first before moving in and not lose a minute’s sleep over it. In other words, imo, there seems to be a disconnect between intelligence and morality without the presence of God in one’s life.

That said, I want to see us expand into space and establish colonies on every planet we can get to.