News: Some thoughts about Hawking...IN SPAAACE!

This is a great picture of Dr. Hawking taking a plunge on a Vomit Comet. It is also, in some respects, a picture of resignation. Dr. Hawking, a world-renowned theoretical physicist, had this to say about life on Earth:

"Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."

Let me, as a relatively uneducated layperson, say the obvious - where? Where would we go if we had to abandon the Earth? The human body is uniquely adapted to life on this planet. Every ounce of our instinct compels us to breathe in deeply on a nice sunny day - we even derive health benefits from being exposed to sunlight.

The engineering challenge of building a sustainable, long-term habitat on Mars, for example, is daunting to say the least. A comparable analogy might be building an 80-story skyscraper in the Jamestown Settlement - perhaps theoretically possible with the technology at the time, but incredibly difficult.

We've had nuclear weapons for about 50 years now, and nobody's been wiped out. In fact, most people have more to fear from the oldest enemies of human life - famine and drought - than we do from some fancy supervirus or nuclear war. If there is such a position as "cautiously optimistic," then that's what I'd like to adopt, I'd suppose.