Tag Archives: Stephen Hawking

Into the black

Posted on October 12, 2008 | Comments Off on Into the black

Some recent science fiction, particularly Saturn’s Children, by Charles Stross, offers a bleak assessment of humanity’s chances of colonizing the solar system. The choices, from the moon to Mars and possibly Jupiter’s moon Europa, are high-radiation, ugly places. So it’s not as inspiring as usual to hear of Stephen Hawking’s latest prediction that we have to move beyond the home planet to survive. Makes sense, of course, but where will we find the natural beauty and relative safety of the shielding atmosphere that we leave behind?

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Posted in Space

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Almost zero G

Posted on April 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Almost zero G

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking, advocate of humanity migrating into the solar system and beyond, will soon get his first experience with microgravity in a Boeing 727 on a parabolic flight:

"To be allowed to carry Prof. Hawking, Zero-G needed to obtain a unique certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)–no one has ever flown a disabled person in weightlessness before. Prof. Hawking will be accompanied by a team of three doctors and at least two of the Cambridge professor’s experienced caregivers."

I had the chance for a similar flight out of Houston a few years before I retired, but passed on it. I get rather seriously seasick, and sometimes airsick, and while I would jump at an opportunity to go into space, a minute or less in microgravity (bookended by a stomach-churning 1.8 Gs) hardly seems worth it. Though it does look like fun.

UPDATE  Post-flight, Hawking tells the BBC: "It was amazing.The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come!"

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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Conserve Earth, colonize space

Posted on December 4, 2006 | Comments Off on Conserve Earth, colonize space

British physicist Stephen Hawking recently said we must get off this rock or die here en masse.

"Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out."

The late President Ronald Reagan was more upbeat about it. He said only the Milky Way is big enough to encompass the human imagination.

"In a Sept. 22, 1988, speech at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, shortly before a launch of the space shuttle Discovery, Reagan said: ‘It is mankind’s manifest destiny to bring our humanity into space; to colonize this galaxy; and as a nation, we have the power to determine whether America will lead or will follow.’"

Via NewsMax for the Reagan quote, from their email alert, but I can’t find a link.

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