This went along with a general disenchantment with science in the West because although it had brought great benefits it had not solved the social problems that increasingly occupied public attention.Ī new manned spaceflight program would do a lot to restore public enthusiasm for space and for science generally. However, after the last Moon landing in 1972, with no future plans for further manned space flight, public interest in space declined. The space race helped to create a fascination with science and led to great advances in technology, including the first large-scale integrated circuits which are the basis of all modern computers. This was achieved on time by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. In 1962 President Kennedy committed the U.S. We thought space was worth a big effort in the 60s. Isn’t our future worth a quarter of a percent? I am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming, but we can do that and still spare a quarter of a percent of world GDP for space. There will be those who argue that it would be better to spend our money solving the problems of this planet like climate change and pollution rather than wasting it on a possibly fruitless search for a new planet. Even if we were to increase the international budget 20 times to make a serious effort to go into space it would only be a small fraction of world GDP. NASA’s budget has remained roughly constant in real terms since the time of the Apollo landings, but it has decreased from 0.3% of US GDP in 1970 to 0.12% now. Going into space won’t be cheap, but it would take only a small proportion of world resources. We have already driven rovers on Mars and landed a probe on Titan, a moon of Saturn, but if one is considering the future of the human race we have to go there ourselves. By “reach” I mean with manned, or should I say “personed,” space flight. We could have a base on the Moon within 30 years, reach Mars in 50 years, and explore the moons of the outer planets in 200 years. This would be a long-term strategy, and by long-term I mean hundreds or thousands of years. Hopefully it would unite us to face a common challenge. It won’t solve any of our immediate problems on planet Earth, but it will give us a new perspective on them, and cause us to look outwards rather than inwards. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all. Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. If nothing else, we wouldn’t have had a Big Mac or KFC.
Yet the discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. In a way, the situation is like that in Europe before 1492. Why should we go into space? What is the justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of Moon rock? Aren’t there better causes here on Earth? Hawking advocates the colonization of the Moon and Mars. Hawking is disabled with ALS and speaks via a computer that is operated by eye and lip movement. Stephen Hawking, the renowned British astrophysicist, speaks on “Why We Should Go Into Space” for NASA’s 50th Anniversary lecture series at George Washington University, April 21, 2008.
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