{"id":18908,"date":"2017-06-23T00:23:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T16:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/stephen-hawking-lays-out-plan-for-settling-space-from-moon-and-mars-to-the-stars\/"},"modified":"2017-06-23T00:23:37","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T16:23:37","slug":"stephen-hawking-lays-out-plan-for-settling-space-from-moon-and-mars-to-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/stephen-hawking-lays-out-plan-for-settling-space-from-moon-and-mars-to-the-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Hawking lays out plan for settling space, from moon and Mars to the stars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Stephen
Physicist Stephen Hawking addresses an audience at the Starmus Festival via video. (Starmus via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

British physicist Stephen Hawking has repeatedly warned us that we have just a century or two to move off Earth, and he just shared his vision for how to do it.<\/p>\n

Hawking laid out a timetable this week during a lecture titled \u201cThe Future of Humanity,\u201d presented to an audience of 3,000 attending the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway.<\/p>\n

He said a base could be established on the moon within 30 years to serve as a gateway to the rest of the solar system. Settlers could follow up with a Mars base within 50 years. But Hawking went on to call for setting an even speedier schedule for space exploration.<\/p>\n

The 75-year-old, wheelchair-riding physicist recalled President John F. Kennedy\u2019s vision of putting Americans on the moon by the end of the 1960s \u2013 a deadline that was met with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.<\/p>\n

\u201cA goal of a base on the moon by 2020, and a manned landing on Mars by 2025 would reignite the space program and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy\u2019s target did in the \u201960s,\u201d he said, using his computer-generated voice. \u201cThe spin-off to this would be an increase in the public recognition of science generally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, humans could take one-way trips to potentially habitable exoplanets as close as Proxima Centauri b.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is long-term thinking,\u201d Hawking said. \u201cAnd by \u2018long-term,\u2019 I mean hundreds or thousands of years. It won\u2019t be easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lpG5P6ugeeI<\/p>\n

Space settlers would have to carry along \u201ca whole new ecosystem that will survive in an environment we know very little about, and we will of course need to consider transporting several thousands of people, animals, plants, fungi, bacterla and insects,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Why do it? Hawking and some other deep-thinkers, including SpaceX founder Elon Musk, say it\u2019s only a matter of time before our home planet experiences a potentially civilization-ending crisis \u2013 whether it\u2019s nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, a global pandemic or an asteroid strike.<\/p>\n

Establishing settlements beyond Earth would serve as an insurance policy, but it would also mark a giant leap in what Hawking regards as a 21st-century brand of manifest destiny. During the Starmus talk, he said the cosmos is \u201cwhere I believe our ultimate destiny lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon as well as the Blue Origin space venture, are of a similar mind. Musk has said his life\u2019s passion is to turn humanity into a multi-planet species, while Bezos has said his success with Amazon is fueling a personal vision to have millions of people living and working in space.<\/p>\n

Last year, Musk laid out his own decades-long plan for sending millions of settlers to Mars, starting in the 2020s. Last week, he said he\u2019s getting ready to update the plan with further details.<\/p>\n

But when it comes to thinking long-term, Hawking\u2019s talk in Norway outdid Musk\u2019s talk in Mexico. Although interstellar travel isn\u2019t practical today, Hawking said it should be possible to come up with the required technologies over the next 200 to 500 years.<\/p>\n

Among the options could be the beam-driven propulsion system that scientists and engineers are trying to develop for Breakthrough Starshot, a project that\u2019s supported by Hawking as well as deep-pocketed funders such as Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.<\/p>\n