Stephen Hawking Tells Explorers to 'Boldly Go' Beyond Earth

[n2doc]

NEW YORK — Ambitious plans to carry humans far beyond Earth were at the forefront of the Explorers Club Annual Dinner here Saturday night, as astronauts, entrepreneurs and physicist Stephen Hawking celebrated the wonder — and necessity — of space exploration.

"Not to leave planet Earth would be like castaways on a desert island not trying to escape," Stephen Hawking said in his keynote address via telecast.

"Sending humans to other planets … will shape the future of the human race in ways we don't yet understand, and may determine whether we have any future at all," Hawking told the audience at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

"We have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said. He hailed the current era of spaceflight as the most exciting since the Apollo era — and fittingly, the gala honored today's pioneers in the field.

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http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/stephen-hawking-tells-explorers-boldly-go-beyond-earth-n56021

[dipsydoodle]

1. I very much doubt Stephen Hawking would use a split infinitive.

Boldly go indeed

[woodsprite]

2. Well, it is a line that he could have quoted from the opening of Star Trek. n/t

[MisterP]

3. hmm, wouldn't it be like a mainlander escaping TO a desert island?

one can't base a post-Mariner exploration program on pre-Mariner assumptions, now can one?

[defacto7]

5. It depends on

if he meant it literally or poetically. Physicists make great poets.. or saladists.

[cpwm17]

4. Star Trek is science fiction

and it will likely always be science fiction. Our Universe is a very inhospitable place for us humans. We face instant death once we leave the earth's atmosphere and on any planet outside our own, at least any planet we could ever visit.

Life wouldn't be worth living outside our own planet, nor would life from earth be sustainable.

[defacto7]

6. "Life wouldn't be worth living outside our own planet"

Says you!

Someone buy me a ticket!

[cpwm17]

7. For our life to exist on any other planet, outside of using extreme measures in a short visit,

numerous natural conditions must be met on that planet. The odds of finding such planet anywhere we could possibly ever visit is nil.

Mars is a nasty place for long term human habitation. There are numerous people that would love to visit, and I'm sure some of them would enjoy it tremendously. But a visit would be extremely expensive for just a few people to visit for only a short time.

Don't plan on having any kids away from earth, because if someone ever were to pull that off, it would be extreme child abuse.

In our vast Universe, which is likely one of innumerable universes in the vast multiverse, which could very well be one of numerous multiverses, etc, our planet is likely a rare place. But with a huge or infinite existence beyond our planet, the odds that there are numerous or infinite planets similar to our own are large. The universes play a lot of lottery tickets to produce planets with intelligent life.

Inevitably we are on such a planet. But the odds for an individual planet (or some other unknown type of existence) to win the lottery and produce intelligent life are likely extremely small. Our future is likely only on this planet.

Also, with that many lottery tickets, it is inevitable that the processes that produce each of our individual conscious selves will be produced again after we die. So, in a way, we all have and we all will get to visit planets outside our own, but we will never have any memory of it.

[defacto7]

8. Thanks you for your insightful input...

I was being a bit jovial in my remark. On a serious note I agree with most of your points though the probability of life increases almost every day with new data being processed and that probability also increases the likelihood of non-terrestrial sentience. Although still unlikely we will detect the signature of sentient life, we just can't know for sure. The probabilities fluctuate too widely for any reasonable conclusions but the search is tantalizing and the imagination is all too wonderfully human.