The Great Beyond

Your comments indicate that you are making decisions based on your own personal thinking system. Space exploration, including the resulting research data could make or break our planet. Also, what we are going thru on Earth is probably just part of cyclical norms throughout the long history of glacial and interglacial periods.
(There have been about 20 complete glacial cycles in the last 3 million years, alone.)
There is simply too much perception that what is bad for man, must be bad for the planet. if the warming floods some seacoasts, is it bad for the Earth?
No, just for some of man's property.

It's fun to look at the "big picture", and "someday over the rainbow", but talk of going into space as a savior to humanity is so silly to me - it's like an 8 year old running away from home to the local park. He'll be back home for supper to be sure. Humanity is clever, but every attempt to pretend we can escape our problems by "running away" from them, just tells me once again, we're not ready yet.

The remotest habited place on Earth is the tiny island of Rapa Nui also known as Easter Island. When the Polynesians first settled it around 500 AD it was a lush island filled with gigantic trees. At its heyday there were about 10,000 inhabitants on the island. This was unsustainable and wars and ecological desecration decimated the population. When the Europeans (Dutch) visited them in 1722 there just a few hundred and not a tree grew there.

In 1200 years of isolation the Islanders forgot that they came from somewhere else and thought they were the only people on Earth.

Rapa Nui is a microcosm of the Earth.

We have similarly forgotten that our Earth, though it may seem vast, is finite and has finite resources. That we are in fact a tiny island floating in the great ocean of space. If man has to survive we have to colonise our solar system, nearby solar systems, the milky way.

"Hawking .. what does he really know about space exploration? .. more than many of those.. working at Nasa and ESA? I doubt it."

You are missing the point. Some in NASA may know more than him about technicalities of spaceships, but few may share his vision and none could his match his clarity of thought and reasoning.

He is a visionary like Asimov and others. It was George Bernard Shaw who said:

You see things; and you say, "Why?"

But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

Not to be picky, but it's "NASA", not "Nasa".

OK, so that .25% is $165 billion. But it's still only .25%, and leaves $65,655 trillion available.

I heard a talk the other day, given by a UCLA physics and astronomy prof, during which he complained bitterly that so much money was being spent over the Iraq war, and so little going to his pet project - which, by the way, was manned space exploration.

Each group has its own pet projects, and all are upset that their project isn't getting enough money.

Allen and Richard get it. We will leave Earth (as we will someday) not to escape problems, but to leave the nest. As people like Magellan and Columbus and Marco Polo and others did.

We pay attention to Hawking for the same reason we paid attention to Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and a handful of others to had the ability to look beyond the horizon (of both space and time), and ask "What next?".

Hawking is a great example of what the human spirit is capable of. He's trapped in a useless body, but with a mind that knows no limits.

Mr. Cressey, you are more than welcome to stay on the planet once everyone else goes off to explore. We'll send you a postcard and let you know what you're missing - not that you'll care of course, right?

165 billion dollars is nothing at all. For what could be acheived? It's kind of like saying 'the (moral) price of the nuclear bomb is too high. Well then you can be the only nation without the nuclear bomb, and end up just a memory. Meanwhile we will stay and continue to have an impact on what happens. It will happen. We will explore space. And earth will not be inhabitable forever.

Do parking lots and police revenues give humanity anything to live for, anything to dream about? If 1/4 of a percent is too much for this, then perhaps you believe that art and music have contributed nothing to humanity as well. 165 billion won't make anything on earth better. 165 trillion won't make anything on earth better. You can't achieve anything by throwing money at the problem.

Because money was never the problem to begin with.

Hawking's right. His thoughts on this aren't new. But his saying it
lends his intellectual weight to what's been obvious for awhile now.

While it's true that the planet is finite and our numbers and
appetites for baubles and bangles is growing, that is not
necessarily the only point to the necessity for inhabiting space
to preserve our species. Eventually, warring for resources will get
us all 'warred' out. :)

Seriously, it wasn't that long ago, July '94, we witnessed
Shoemaker-Levy 9 slam into Jupiter. If that wasn't a wakeup call for
a sentient species, then maybe those who fail to see Hawking's point
are right and sentience really isn't all it's cracked up to be,
hence, not worth the dollars to save.

We either do it or man's only stand will be his last. The story of
our journey from primordial slime to our moon is something I think
deserves the retelling throughout the galaxies.

Our species has been puddle jumping since time immemorial, as big as
the gulf (space) looks, it 'really is' just another puddle. Ask C.
Columbus. :)

Hawking and I share the same dream and in which ALL, yes I said ALL people should share in on this planet.
If you desire to protect the Human race than you need to get off this planet.

I think we need to just look past NASA and have our OWN World Space Exploration Project.
So that all humanity on the planet earth can donate and contribute to research and sending ships up into outer space to build stations so we can further research.
Why would we study a Rain forest and all of its glory from home, we would go to the rain forest and make home in it to fully understand it better.
Ask yourself this, Why do you have a Fire Alarm in your house?
It is to alert you and give you some kind of warning that an event is about to happen or happening so you can safely get away or out of your home.
Well, Earth is our home and we might have Alarms, but the doors are all locked and the windows barred; There is no time to wait.
The reality is, the overall percentage of the human race is just too human itself. Too wrapped up in material things and do not care about anything else or the future unless it directly effects thier lives right then and there.
Good luck to you humans!
We better start making underground homes now, because that is the only place we can go.

Well, the comment of why the "media" post's this kind of article, is to not discriminate. And to target specific audiences. As far as how much money we spend on space exploration, this equates to the oil companies spending a "drop of oil" towards "greener" energies, compared to adapting to the earth, not changing it. Therefore, the $165 billion is as compared to the trillions of tax dollars being spent on how to bribe a country such as the one were in now "trying" to find one man/terrorist? what a waste. Humans will over populate and use all the resources to not to go to space, just in breeding stock. So that in mind, humans will overpopulate the earth and wipe ourselves out, even without the benifit of Nuclear war/or man made disease.

Among other things, Albert Einstein is reported to have said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

That is why Steven Hawking's opinions should be listened to.