It sounds like the plot from "Firefly", but this is Stephen Hawking saying this...
The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday...
...Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."
As you all may know & as some of the other scientists in the linked article state, we don't exactly have a ship with "Warp Drive" available (unless "Stargate" is right & we have a fleet of warships hidden in the budget), so its a horrendous task to get people somewhere, and then you have the horrendous task of creating an environment where a colony of humans could survive. And are we willing divert major resources to do that? I mean NASA is having problems with foam on the Space Shuttle. However, think of what may have been accomplished if the money that was spent in Iraq had been used for science & exploration purposes? What does NASA have in the pipeline?
Part of the plan for the Space Shuttle's replacement is the two crafts pictured above, as part of the $104 Billion Crew Exploration Vehicle in an Apollo-like architecture that will take us back to the Moon, and eventually go to Mars.
Unlike the Apollo Program's Saturn V, this plan envisions the Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle using 2 rockets & 2 launches to get to the Moon. Put simply, the small rocket puts the crew into space & the big one puts the lunar lander & payload up there. Both vehicles have been designed from parts of the Shuttle's systems. The external fuel tank (the orange parts), the solid rocket boosters, and the Shuttle's main engines. Using this setup, it will propel what looks like an advanced version of the Apollo Capsule, that will be three times larger and allow four astronauts to travel to the moon at a time. The capsule can be reused up to 10 times, and will land on dryland instead of water. The new lunar lander can take 4 astronauts & up to 21 metric tons to the Moon's surface.
However, all of this is dependent on NASA's budget and the priorities of the Congress & their Earmarks...
NASA must slash science, engineering and education programs to pay for billions of dollars in congressional pet projects, most of which have little to do with the agency's mission to explore space.
The price tag for politicians' "pork" has grown so large that NASA may have to delay the new spaceships and rockets needed to replace the space shuttles, to be retired in 2010.
Instead, NASA will pay for:
Construction or renovation of dozens of museums, planetariums and science labs for colleges.
Computers, classrooms and lab space for colleges and schools across the U.S.
A website and laboratory for the Gulf of Maine Aquarium.
A sprawling headquarters building for a non-profit research group in West Virginia created by U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan...
P = NP.... Sometimes
Lets say that we do go to "strange new worlds" and give humanity a colony off Earth, how do we survive? The Moon & Mars are the 2 leading candidates for Human colonies. Both present challenges: The lack of certain needed elements, atmosphere, and low gravity. However, there are some ideas.
Particularly for Mars, there are ideas about how to make it "blue". One of the more interesting is the use of our Nuclear Weapons stockpile to terraform the planet. A proposed "quick & dirty" method would be to Nuke the crust & polar ice caps in order to melt quantities of water & outgas carbon dioxide, which "in theory" could create a greenhouse effect that would thicken the atmosphere. The drawback would be the radiation kicked out by the bombs. So lets just hope the Martians don't get pissed off...
One the biggest problems people have with the Space Program (especially the manned part) is what they see as a waste of money. Spending billions to send 2 guys to the Moon to collect rocks & play golf pisses some people off. But what if there was a purpose? A proposed idea for a Moon colony actually has benefits for Earth. One idea is to use the Moon as a solar power collector that would beam microwave energy back to Earth as an alternative energy to fossil fuels...
If beaming solar power to Earth by way of the moon sounds like lunacy, consider this: It could provide a clean, emission-free, and unlimited source of energy. And, according to David Criswell, a physicist and Space Age veteran, it could supply all needs of an energy-hungry world in the 21st century and beyond.
"We think of beaming power from the moon as exotic, but it has been done for at least 15 years," says Criswell, director of the Institute for Space Systems Operations at the University of Houston. "Power beaming is like using a big radar."
Criswell proposes a Lunar Solar Power System (LSP), using lunar materials to build bases on the moon to collect solar energy and convert it to microwaves, which would be beamed to a several thousand receivers around Earth. The microwaves would then be converted into electricity to be fed into local power grids...
...The proposed LSP System would consist of between 20 and 40 power bases located on the eastern and western edge of the moon, as seen from Earth. Criswell estimates that in 2050, a population of about 10 billion would require about 20 terawatts of power.
The moon receives more than 13,000 terawatts of solar power, and harnessing just one percent could satisfy Earth's power needs, he says.
Something like this would give a legitimate reason to start a colony on the Moon, other than just having it there so we could look up in the night sky & say "humans are up there". In theory, the microwave array would have other possible uses. It's thought that it could be used as a defense against comets & asteroid collisions with Earth, and a propulsion system for a spaceship with a Solar Sail. Some of the drawbacks are that the microwaves would interfere with communication satellites, and many frequencies would have to be moved. Moreover, the startup costs for something like this would be in the neighberhood of $500-750 Billion, if not more...