evolution

Cambridge physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking told an audience in Hong Kong that humankind ought to build a permanent settlement on the Moon within twenty years and a Mars colony in forty.

“We won’t find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system,” added Hawking, who came to Hong Kong to a rock star’s welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture Thursday were sold out.

Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said. “Life on Earth 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 we have not yet thought of.”

Well, Hawking is a Cambridge professor and I work in what is basically an entry-level tech support position, so you can adjust your incredulity meter accordingly as regards to what follows.

I don’t think either of those things are going to happen within two generations, much less forty years. When considered against the realities of space and the needs of humans for light, heat, water, air, and shelter, it seems implausible that humans will invent the technology to adapt environments that have essentially none of these but light.

Consider the following scenario: Suppose one were to start a Moon colony project. This would require several trips to the Moon — something that, at least in this country, there isn’t the will to do — to investigate sites. What would a potential colonial site require? A source of power and a way to deliver it must come first. All of the above needs — air, heat, water, and shelter — will depend utterly on this power source. Therefor, the power source must always be operational, with no down time. and minimal maintenance requirements. Can you think of such a source?

This power source must also be able to power construction equipment, obviously. But what to construct? Construction science for the Moon — and here I’m talking about that used to design and build our living and working spaces here on Earth– will basically have to be cut from whole cloth.

None of that addresses such things as food and water production or delivery, waste management, and emergency procedures.

The problem, as I see it, is for humankind to basically invent a totally new way of life and a way of transporting it a quarter of a million miles from Earth to conditions which lack the basic requirements of human survival in less than twenty years. This isn’t at all like what President Theodore Roosevelt called “Manifest Destiny” — the Great Plains may not have been comfortable living, but it had the basics: air, means of food production, water; and amenities humans have become accustomed to, like gravity. This is also nothing like the current situation at the International Space Station, where three people take months-long shifts orbiting the Earth, performing observations and experiments. What Hawking is suggesting is essentially a city of people on the Moon, and I don’t think twenty years is nearly enough time.

ALSO: See the picture of Hawking’s eminently do-able nurse that accompanied this story. Was anyone else reminded of that scene in Dr. Strangelove when Strangelove (Peter Sellers) is briefing the President on breeding strategies?

UPDATE:

“Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for ze future of ze human race. I hasten to add zat since each man vill be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women vill have to be selected for their sexual characteristics vhich vill have to be of a highly stimulating nature.” *

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 18:55 and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.