Planetary Chauvinism vs the High Frontier

--- Monart Pon wrote:
> From: Monart Pon
> To Starship Forum
> Date: Thu Oct 18, 2001 10:53 pm
> Subject: Re: [Starship_Forum] Planetary Chauvinism vs the High Frontier
>
> In the article, Hawking was quoted as saying, "I don't think the human race
> will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are
> too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet."
>
> The human species has survived many "accidents" and catastrophes in the past,
> from the World Wars of the last century, to the Plague in medieval Europe, to
> the planetary collisions of Mars and Venus in 1500 BC, described by Immanuel
> Velikovsky. It seems arbitrary to suppose that humankind will be
> destroyed by such catastrophes, rather than to suppose that humankind can
> survive or avert them.

Believing that just because we haven't been wiped out yet is naive and
basically just asking to be wiped out. For all we know an asteriod could come
along tomorrow and hit the earth wiping us all out. We probably wouldn't even
know its coming until its too late to do anything about it. Just because it
hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it will never happen.

Remember the dinosaurs next time you want to go on about how we will survive
anything because if we stay on earth then sooner or later something really will
happen.

> Besides, is the danger of something wiping out the human race on Earth the
> main reason for going into space? I, as an individual, if I find that the
> future of humanity in a thousand years to be irrelevant to my own life now,
> why should I be motivated by that hypothetical danger to go into space?
> There are far better reasons for moving into space.

I find survival to be the best reason as it wont be too long before a rock will
hit us. If we're in space then we will probably be able to divert the rock and
even if we can't at least there will be humans alive and able to send aid to
those on earth who survive the impact.

Those that prefer the short term over the long term often lose out in the long
term. For all we know we could be the only intelligent life in the galaxy so
lets not waste it.

> Why colonize another planet when we could construct our own artificial
> planets? The gigantic, country-sized vessels envisioned and designed by
> physicist Gerald O'Neill (author of _The High Frontier_) are not only
> earth-like in environmental suitability -- but are more in human control as
> to gravity, solar radiation, climate, location, and locomotion, than being
> confined to the surface of a planet, even one as hospital as Earth. There are
> some who promote the colonization of Mars because it's the planet nearest to
> Earth's conditions, but the Martian conditions are far severe than any area
> on Earth, worse than a combination of Sahara desert and Antarctica.

Very good idea to forget mars and just go to space.

> It's understandable why people today easily think of space settlement in
> terms of planetary locations, since they were born on and accustomed to
> living on Earth. But why struggle to escape the gravity-well of a conducive
> planet like Earth, only to sink down another gravity-well of a nearly
> airless, waterless, arctic desert like Mars? If we had to live on a planet,
> we'd be better off staying on Earth. But staying on Earth or eking out a
> living on Mars, or crammed into space submarines, are not the only types of
> alternatives. Living in the high frontier of free space within environmental
> conditions superior to that of Earth -- that's a far more appealing
> alternative.

Yes and it's something we have to educate people about.