before the ruling class destroys it. So says that wacky Hawking guy. Stephen Hawking Warns Humanity: Leave Earth Before the Ruling Class Destroys It
George Carlin reminded us that we humans can't kill the Earth. We can only destroy ourselves; the planet will be fine in the long run. We injure the planet and then kill ourselves. It will go on. I thought I wouldn't live to see this disaster first-hand. I think I was wrong. But I am not a person. I am no one. I am one with everything. And everything will be what it will be.
Stephan Hawking has narrowed down his timeline for getting off the planet. Don't worry, you can still catch that movie this weekend. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/05/05/stephen-hawking-just-moved-up-humanitys-deadline-for-escaping-earth/?utm_term=.98d7731d37c8
The revival of this thread raises a question that is even more profound: When will Rich Douglas get his valuable ass back here? He still monitors the forum on a regular basis, usually every other day, and as recently as yesterday. Hard as it might be for him to believe, I actually miss the runt.
I don't know if "the ruling class" has anything to do with it, but I do think that it might be a good idea for humanity to have a plan B. The problem is that I don't foresee self-sustaining colonies on other planets being possible for a long time. What we will have for many years to come (assuming that manned space-travel ever revives) is a thin network of tiny outposts on the Moon, Mars and maybe the Jovian moons. These will still be very dependent on resupply of manufactured goods from Earth. So if the Earth is struck by an asteroid or faces a zombie-apocalypse, the space outposts will go down too. I strongly support manned space-travel. But not so much in order to create a safety net for humanity (which is long way off) as to feed our innate human need for continued exploration.
I've read most of A Brief History of Time (the last 1/4 of the book was so much deeper than the first 3/4 that I just found myself stuck reading the same one sentence over and over until I had to admit to myself that it wasn't going to just suddenly start making any more sense to me, so I put the book down for another time and have yet to pick it back up). Through it, I came to learn that Stephen Hawking is not just a brilliant physicist, but also a rather charming and funny guy. It's really a treat to read his words and to sub-vocalize a human voice rather than that outdated, robotic synthetic voice. Anyway, just about anything non-physics related he says needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes I wonder if he's even being serious, or if he's the scientific community's version of Andy Kaufman.
At the same time, even if self-sustaining offworld colonies would take a few centuries to develop, better to start now than later, right?
Hawking has been approved to go into space on one of the Virgin Galactic trips -- next year, I think. Maybe he'll just make a right turn, out of orbit, and not come back.
