Go into space – well, there’s not much future here

Stephen Hawking has often been said to talk and “walk” like a Dalek. Now he even seems to think like one. The Dalek in question is not of the ex-ter-min-ate! variety, but the humanoid hybrid who, in Saturday’s episode, wanted Doctor Who to help the last Daleks to find a nice new planet where they could put their evil past behind them. The day before, Professor Hawking suggested doomed humankind should do the same.
Before floating weightlessly in an aircraft simulating zero gravity, Professor Hawking announced that this was his first step towards going into space – and that the whole of humanity needs to follow if we are to survive.
“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,” he said. “I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space.” So even if man-made global warming don’t get us, he expects man-made bombs and bugs will – if not those unknown “other dangers”, a sort of apocalyptic “etc, etc”.
Professor Hawking is not the only serious scientist with space-cadet views on the need to pack our bags for planets new. Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, argues in Our Last Century that humankind has at best a 50 per cent chance of surviving to AD2100, and suggests downsizing into outer space as our best move.
The cry “the end of the world is nigh” now comes not from religious nutters with sandwich boards, but from respected scientists with the media to carry their message. Worse, it seems they can support space travel only by depicting other planets as a cosmic Costa del Crime, where wicked humans can escape punishment for raping and pillaging the Earth.
What about the case for manned space exploration as a positive expression of the human spirit? Whatever happened to conquering “the final frontier” – for the imagination as much as science – by striving “to boldly go where no man has gone before”?
Speaking of Star Trek, shortly after Professor Hawking’s trip, the ashes of the actor who played Scotty, chief engineer on the USS Enterprise, were blasted into space from New Mexico. Sir Richard Branson plans space tourism flights from there, lightening punters’ wallets by $200,000 for six minutes of weightlessness.
The way we see space at any moment reflects how we think about life down here. That manned space exploration has fallen out of favour, other than as an outlet for fear, funerals or fun-flights, suggests a loss of faith in the future, a black hole where the belief in humanity should be. It is almost enough to make those Daleks seem like progressive-minded humanists.