HUMAN RACE MUST COLONIZE SPACE OR FACE EXTINCTION SAYS STEPHEN HAWKING.

Stephen Hawking has warned that unless the human race colonises space within two centuries it will disappear forever.
The astrophysicist says that our only chance for long-term survival is to move away from Earth and begin to inhabit far-flung planets.
In an interview with the website Big Think, Professor Hawking said he was an optimist but the next few hundred years had to be negotiated carefully if humans were to survive.

Stephen Hawking has warned that humans will only survive if we leave Earth and venture into space
‘I see great danger for the human race,’ he said. ‘There have been a number of times in the past when survival has been a question of touch and go.
‘The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 is one of these. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully.

‘But I am an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries our species should be safe as we spread into space.’
Earlier this year, Professor Hawking warned humans should be wary about trying to make contact with other alien life forms as we could not be sure that they would be friendly.
‘If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy we should make sure we survive and continue.’
But he warned that mankind was entering an increasingly dangerous period.
‘Our population and use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially along with our technical ability to change the environment for good and ill,’ said the author of the bestseller, A Brief History of Time.
‘But our genetic code carries selfish and aggressive instincts that were a survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next 100 years let alone the next thousand or a million.
'Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain on planet Earth but to spread into space.
‘We have made remarkable progress in the last 100 years but if we want to continue beyond the next 100 years our future is in space.’
Earlier this year, Hawking he said that a spaceship capable of travelling through time - but only forwards - would breach Albert Einstein's theories of relativity.
This means that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.
Having taken six years to reach its full speed of 98 per cent of the speed of light (650million miles per hour), a day on board the ship would be equivalent to a year on Earth, he said, allowing those on board to reach the edge of the galaxy in just 80 years.

Without getting into the physics or engineering required, I do believe that we should begin investigating the rest of the solar system as a prelude to the rest of the universe. We should start with populating earth orbit, then the moon and then working on expanding to other planets (Mars anyone). The problem is that the R&D necessary will cost money that governments are not will to spend right now. Unless there is a fundamental paradigm shift, this will be just a pipe dream. Long gone are the days of Kennedy and the space race.

I think at this point this project is not affordable.

Not exploring space is not affordable.

Rattler

Let's wait until the economy doesn't suck so much.

The crux of this matter is not when we act, but the fact of Stephen Hawking's warning ; what are we to make of that?

First we would need to find a suitable planet.

1. The planet would have to be solid environmental conditions that humans can survive on. Too Close and we would burn up. Too far and we would freeze to death.

2. The planet would have to be solid as trying to colonize a gas giant might be a tad difficult.

3. We would need a planet with some sort of sustainable gravity field otherwise we will simply bounce off of it or we would be crushed into goo if the force of gravity were too strong (like the planet Murcury).

4. A Oxygen based Breathable atmosphere that can actually sustain life would be nice.

5. To do 1-4 we would actually need a sensor system capable of detecting this sort of planet and we would have to invent a faster than light engine, otherwise it might take us 200 years just to get to this planet, wherever it is.


Good luck!

we would actually need a sensor system capable of detecting this sort of planet and we would have to invent a faster than light engine, otherwise it might take us 200 years just to get to this planet, wherever it is.

not necessarily: Constructing large habitats in Earths orbit, or terraforming Mars or Venus, e.g., has been discussed in the past and not excluded as unviable options.

Rattler

Along the lines of advertising ourselves and location to any life forms there maybe out there, I think that is an incredibly dumb design. Human history proves quite viably that we cannot even get along with ourselves, why invite some possible higher power to our only home to piss them off?

OR flip side that, and say we do colonize space, then the human race let's survival instinct get the better of us, and the humans race rapes and burns lesser intelligent species throughout the galaxy, thus the movie industry would be sustained forever

Besides, whatever we see through sensors is information that is already millions of years old.