Space Colonization -Our Future or Fantasy?

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June 20, 2007

Space Colonization -Our Future or Fantasy?

Space_colonies_2_2Humans have always been fascinated by the idea of space travel. Some even believe that colonizing new planets is man’s best hope for the future. The popular idea is that we’ll eventually need some fresh, unexploited new worlds to inhabit.

In a recent Galaxy post we wrote that Stephen Hawking, world-celebrated expert on the cosmological theories of gravity and black holes who holds Issac Newton's Lucasian Chair at Cambridge University, believes that traveling into space is the only way humans will be able to survive in the long-term.

"Life on Earth," Hawking has said, "is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers ... I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space."

Another of his famous quotes reiterates his position that we need to get off the planet relatively soon. "I don't think the human race will survive the next 1,000 years unless we spread into space."




Renowned science-fiction writer, Charlie Stross, argued last week in his High Frontier Redux blog that space colonization is not in our future, not because it's impossible, but because to do so effectively you need either outrageous amounts of cheap energy, highly efficient robot probes, or "a magic wand."

"I'm going to take it as read that the idea of space colonization isn't unfamiliar," Stross opens his post, "domed cities on Mars, orbiting cylindrical space habitats a la J. D. Bernal or Gerard K. O'Neill, that sort of thing. Generation ships that take hundreds of years to ferry colonists out to other star systems where — as we are now discovering — there are profusions of planets to explore."

"The obstacles facing us are immense distance and time -the scale factor involved in space travel is strongly counter-intuitive."

Stross adds that "Planets that are already habitable insofar as they orbit inside the habitable zone of their star, possess free oxygen in their atmosphere, and have a mass, surface gravity and escape velocity that are not too forbidding, are likely to be somewhat rarer. (And if there is free oxygen in the atmosphere on a planet, that implies something else — the presence of pre-existing photosynthetic life, a carbon cycle, and a bunch of other stuff that could well unleash a big can of whoop-ass on an unprimed human immune system."

Stross sums up by saying that while "I won't rule out the possibility of such seemingly-magical technology appearing at some time in the future in the absence of technology indistinguishable from magic that, interstellar travel for human beings even in the comfort of our own Solar System is near-as-dammit a non-starter."

Stross's blog  received over 450 comments as of this writing. The most prescient follows:

"First, Stross's analysis fails to take into account future civilization types; I get the sense that he takes a normative view of today's technological and economic realities and projects them into the future. This is surprising, not only because he's an outstanding science fiction visionary, but also because he's a transhumanist who has a very good grasp on what awaits humanity in the future. Specifically, he should be taking into account the possibility of post-Singularity, Drexlerian, Kardashev Type II civilizations. Essentially, we're talking about post-scarcity civilizations with access to molecular assembling nanotechnology, radically advanced materials, artificial superintelligence, and access to most of the energy available in the solar system.



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I hope this comes to fruition, or take your consequences for mankind, I've hear a similar from Richard C. Hoagland.
I am tired of hearing about earth based flight delays and weather and so on, in other words KEEP MOVING ON and don't look back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sometimes i think we do not need NASA to help us going to space, just private enterprises do a better job than "over bearing government agency"

If space colonization becomes open to the private sector, I'd be afraid that it would make space travel & colonization available only to those with money to travel off of earth. What would happen to Joe Average or John Q. Public who very likely wouldn't have the means to leave earth temporarily or permanently unless he joined a private space corporation as a member of a space - going crew
( think in terms of the " Jupiter Mining Corporation " on " Red Dwarf " ) ?

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