Credit: NASA
Why should we go into space? What is that justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of Moon rock? Aren't there better causes here on Earth?
In a way, the situation was like that in Europe before 1492. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase over an almost unimaginable distance. Yet, the discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old one.
Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect; it will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all.
It won't solve many of our immediate problems on Earth, but it will give us a new perspective on them and cause us to look both outwards and inwards. With luck it could unite us to face a common challenge.
This would be a long-term strategy – and by long term, I mean hundreds or even thousands of years. We could have a base on the Moon within 30 years, reach Mars within 50 years even the moons of the outer planets within 200 years.
By 'reach', I mean with manned space flight. We've already driven rover and landed a probe on Titan, a moon of Saturn, but if one is considering the future of the human race, we have to go there ourselves.
Going into space won't be cheap, certainly, but it will take only a small proportion of world resources. NASA's budget has remained roughly constant in real terms since the time of the Apollo landings, but it has decreased from 0.3 per cent of U.S. GDP in 1970 to 0.12 per cent today.
Even if we were to increase the amount spent on space endeavours internationally by 20 times, to make a serious effort to send people into space, it would only be a small fraction of world GDP.
There will be those who argue that it would be better to spend our money solving the problems of this planet, like climate change and pollution, rather than wasting it on a possibly fruitless search for a new planet. I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, but we can do that and still spare a quarter of a per cent of world GDP for space. Isn't our future worth a quarter of percent?
We thought space was worth a big effort in the '60s. In 1962, President Kennedy committed the U.S. to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. This was achieved just in time by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.
The space race helped to create a fascination with science and led to great advances in technology, including the first large-scale integrated circuits which are the basis of all modern computers.
However, after the last Moon landing in 1972, with no future plans for further manned space flight, public interest in space waned. This went along with a fall in enthusiasm for science in the West because, although it had brought great benefits, it had not solved the social problems that increasingly occupied public attention.
A new manned spaceflight program would do a lot to restore public enthusiasm for space and for science generally.
Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I argue should be our long-term strategy.
A goal of a base on the Moon by 2020 and of a man landing on Mars by 2025 would reignite a space program and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy's Moon target did in the 1960s.
A new interest in space would also increase the public standing of science generally. The low esteem in which science and scientists are held is having serious consequences. We live in a society that is increasingly governed by science and technology, yet fewer and fewer young people long to go into science.
what a nut!
this nutjob lives off the state,he will never speak truth to power because his kind live on the state teat.all this space travel will be paid for by the state in the form of taxes stolen from you by the barrel of a gun.these nutty professors need to get real jobs and quit wasting our time and money on this shite.
Your a nut!
Steven Hawking is a genius. He is thinking in the long term.. I don't think taxes are fair but whats 1/4 percent of our GDP. I'm sure we could take it from our defense budget and do just fine. How about bring all the troops home for every country in the world. That would equal the money we need plus some. Also what he's trying to tell you is that this "new space race" could help mankind. This is how new technology is created. Its a goal. In the long term it could benefit mankind. Just look at the computer you are using and the internet. This is what science has provided for you! You need to wake up and realize that science and research is something we should be spending our money on. Not wars and bailouts. Want to debate more? AIM steve196982
Don't think taxes are fair?
Hahah. So how are you planning on paying for your roads? Airports? Regulatory bodies? Power? Water? Defense?
We need government.
Don't feed this troll
Hmmm...this poster is probably a tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy-theorist offended by Prof Hawking's denigration of ufo believers as "cranks" and "weirdos"....just a thought.
I am no fan of big
I am no fan of big governments and repression and all, but I do say these lunatics whining about taxes being taken at the barrel of a gun will be the death of us all. What do they propose? Every large number of people will need government and policing and collective infrastructure. If you don't have collective governmental programs and investments and tax you live in a country like Somalia - where there's is nothing except warlords.
Nut job?
Perhaps...but then most of those 'what brought us to this dance' were or are. Hawking is simply stating what most of us that lived through the shut down of the NASA moon ventures said at the time.
Now, here we are, 35 years later, more than 6 trillion poured into the failed 'great society' with the same percentage of poor now that we had then, and believing that had we not changed direction in this country we would have a well established moon colony today and probably reaching out with manned missions to Mars.
Shalom Freedman
Its encouraging that Stephen Hawking is concerned about the future of the human race, and is not of the party of the 'trans-humanists' or those who believe the 'Singularity' is going to lead to our replacement by a more advanced kind of Intelligence. I also suspect that should we not bring disaster upon ourselves in the coming years mankind will move into space. It seems to me that humanity by its very nature seeks challenge and adventure, new worlds of exploration and creation. And the vast universe lies out there if not like a dream, than at last like a rough and rugged frontier which may give in time new worlds.
Looking in, then out
If you really want humans to go to other star systems, you may need to re-engineer humans either so they can survive on minimal provisions and oxygen (and won't get bored) or develop clones that "hatch" when the ship approaches the target, receive training and then head out. Perhaps space travel starts with the human genome.
SETI's findings
The astronomers who are engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) certainly don't believe that the project has failed as this article implies. The truth is that SETI has been impeded for a number of reasons--cost, limited telescope time, and the vastness of the universe.
In the past, most SETI searches have relied on existing radio telescopes. While this allows searches to be conducted on large instruments such as the mammoth 305 m Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico, the amount of telescope time available is necessarily restricted.
Now SETI has a brand new tool--the Allen Telescope Array. This instrument will allow a targeted SETI search to proceed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I hope that everyone reading this article (and Dr. Hawking) will not prematurely designate SETI a failure. The search for ET is really just beginning.
Ellen Jackson, author
THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE
LOOKING FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
Columbus/Space analogy
I don't dispute the argument that we should push into space. I do take issue with the analogy between Columbus and Space exploration. Columbus and and his backers had the objective of finding a route to India. They knew it existed. The risk was technological, not existential. Space exploration carries the additional existential risk that there is no other place that will sustain human life without cost far in excess of any surplus that could be gained. This is a problem. Thanks.