Steven Hawking has called for a new focus on space exploration to ensure a future for humanity.

At a speech marking 50 years of NASA he compared the current situation to Europe before America was discovered (press notice). “Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all,” AFP quotes him saying.

“If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will probably have to go where nobody has gone before,” he added, according to ABC.

The speech also covered Hawking’s well documented belief in extra-terrestrial life (see his previous lecture for more on this).

Hawking brushed aside worries over the cost of space exploration, saying, “There will be those who will argue that it would be better to spend our money solving the problems of this planet, like climate change and pollution, rather than possibly wasting it on a fruitless search for a new planet. But we can do that and still spare a quarter of a percent of world GDP for space. Isn’t our future worth a quarter of a percent?” (ABC.)

This is the same theme Hawking explores with his daughter Lucy in their recent children’s book, George’s Secret Key to the Universe, in which a little boy comes to the conclusion that the best way to address climate change is to both try to make a difference on our own planet, and to also go off in search of a new home for humanity.

This bring us to a touchy subject – why do we in the media pay attention to speeches such as this?

Hawking is undoubtedly an inspiring man and a brilliant scientist. But what does he really know about space exploration? More than me almost certainly. But more than many of those those working at Nasa and ESA? I doubt it.

This is another example of misplaced attention. When Hawking has something to say about cosmology I’m all ears, but I’d rather have experts stick to their topics of knowledge.

Equally can we really afford to give up a quarter of a percent of our GDP to explore space? The CIA world fact book puts world GDP at $65,820,000,000,000.

So that’s $165,000,000,000 for space exploration? The opportunity cost there would seem far too high to me, given all the problems we have on Earth at the moment.