Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist

    1.0   The evacuation of 10 billion earthlings

    In order to justify funding for their space projects, leading scientists argue that one day we will have to evacuate the Solar
    System anyway because the Sun has a limited lifespan. If the calculations are correct, our star is in its middle age and has
    about another 5 more billion years to go.

    However, evacuation, colonization, and exploration are wholly different motives for justifying the allocation of funds. For
    starters, money that would otherwise be unavailable for exploratory research could become unconditional in case of an
    emergency.

    But can we realistically visualize evacuating billions of people from the Earth in slower-than-light spaceships to sun-like
    stars Alpha Centauri A or Tau Ceti 12 light-years away? Will the Solar System ever generate the resources to construct the
    number of vehicles needed for such massive exodus? Can we imagine 10 or more billion people, most of them beyond
    middle age, travelling forever through space, with the purpose of seeking asylum from cousins, or vice versa, they from us?
    Or can we imagine established, overcrowded colonies sharing land and resources with invading remnants? Well, what do
    you think would happen today if the entire continent of Africa fell on hard times? Would the rest of the world partake 400
    million new immigrants?

    Interstellar evacuation is a ridiculous idea that starry-eyed dreamers entertain without giving it much thought. They should
    turn their TVs off for a few minutes so they can concentrate on the impossible scenario involved.

    Perhaps we will do it simply to ease overcrowding. We get rid of a few million volunteers.

    Unlikely! First, these small numbers would not make a dent on the total population, and then the Earth could just as well
    recover the losses in no time. If the population stagnates, there is no reason to make the trip in the first place. Regardless
    of the available habitable surface in the entire Centauri System, the colonists would spread like wild fire before a significant
    number of earthlings embark to alleviate overpopulation here. Certainly, the surface of Mars is significantly smaller than the
    Earth's. Mars can probably hold a fourth of what the Earth can hold. Therefore, Mars is not going to help us at all if the
    problem is overcrowding.

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    Last modified 02/27/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
Now that we have
claimed this land in the
Centauri System for
the U.N., should we
start collecting
coconuts, Captain Al?
Stop it! You're killing me!
I'm marooned with two
loonies in the middle of
nowhere, and they're
talking about commercial
ventures!


    2.0   Sons of the pioneers

    How about colonization?  Is this any better?

    Who would be the first to go? A poor, persecuted sect of suffering Bolivian pilgrims? Or maybe we should take the opportunity
    to evacuate the prisons and force inmates to board the craft at gunpoint?

    Interstellar colonization would be expensive and government run, nothing remotely like the conquest of the American continent.
    Under the best of circumstances it would be reserved for an elite destined to go one way. Would the whole of humanity pitch in
    for a select few to begin a colony at a far away place that would forget the motherland upon founding? In what manner would
    that help Earth? Would they claim the land for the U.N. Secretary General or for the Queen of Spain?

    Or perhaps the idea is to develop some brisk, mutually profitable commerce?

    What would traders bring in their 30 lb lightsails? Spices? Local commerce would clearly be more profitable, and colonists
    would naturally appropriate the regional resources for their own needs. Nevertheless, we are assuming that the Solar System
    is self sufficient, has a stable population, and has invented everything there is to invent under the Sun when our pollen spreads
    to the stars. What would we need Proxima’s produce for and at such exorbitant prices? The transportation costs alone would
    be prohibitive.

    Maybe we would colonize just because of our natural animal instinct to propagate the human race?

    This would really be quite a motive. 'Propagation' is rapidly dying in all advanced countries, where people procreate at much
    slower rates today and care even less for their offspring. How powerful a motive this will be in 100 years remains to be seen.
    I discuss it in more detail in the section dealing with fertility. For those who missed it, the age of colonization happened 500
    years ago when young, curious adventurers had yet much to discover here on Earth. There is no room for colonization in a
    world where an older, stable population, having discovered everything of relevance that there is to discover settles in for a
    quiet life of remembrance and prepares for extinction. Colonization would amount to an expensive giveaway that gains
    nothing for Earth. At best a very small percentage of the human population would ever make such a trip. For what? To send
    an elite one way at the price of emptying the world's coffers? One thing is to go to the Moon or to an orbiting space colony
    for a couple of weeks. Another is to risk suicide by travelling, in the best of cases, for a boring, perilous five years to a planet
    terraformed in advance by robots when you can be safe back in the comfort of your home watching it on TV. Why would
    anyone risk such a trip? To lose 5 years of his life in space, luckily reach Centauri, and see the same thing we saw on Earth?
    The discovery and colonization of America is not even remotely an analogy for the conquest of Centauri.

    Maybe our destiny is in intergenerational travel: to preserve the human race against the wishes of Mother Nature.  We could
    begin, for example, by fabricating torus-like habitats designed to orbit planets or satellites of the Solar System. Materials for
    these habitats could be cannibalized from asteroids and the Moon, for example. Once an entire generation of space-children
    is born, living at the torus will be second nature.

    So far so good. Now, tired of orbiting the same dumb old satellite, a revolution occurs. A new generation of teenage
    entrepreneurs rebels and decides to risk it all. They pool their resources, build their own torus-space-ship, retrofit it with
    powerful antimatter rockets, fuel which they skimmed in secret from their parents, and begin their suicide attempt to reach
    Alpha. I say suicide because if they ever make it, they’ll be older than Rip Van Winkle. Obviously, the trip is a gift to their
    grandchildren, a sentiment hard to believe will be second nature in the incoming alienated young generation of Earth. But
    assuming best case scenario, these teenagers will fly throughout their lifetimes without seeing anything but space. Their
    rebellious nature has led them to live the most boring life anyone can imagine just so their grandchildren can orbit a far
    away stone just like their wiser parents did in the old days.  Sounds reasonable?
Finally, we leave that stinking hell hole. It was just too
overcrowded and polluted!
A great Eden awaits us in Mars! There, in that gigantic land,
we will be able to multiply like the sands of the desert.
Yes, my faithful Stevie. Our
mission is to bring back
enough food to feed Earth.
We should begin our
enterprise immediately!
News flash:

The politicians unanimously vote to allocate
trillions for a tour to the nearest star

    3.0   Go where no man has gone before, but go!

    There is also the possibility of sending an exploratory probe to Alpha simply for scientific purposes.

    For what? To see a sun we already know much about and dead Mars-like rocks floating around it? At a cost of trillions?
    Why would we go through such trouble when we’ve already settled that we’re not going to colonize or evacuate. The
    likelihood of finding a planet teaming with life is next to nil, and terraforming would take more years than anyone will live.

    What these arguments really show is that idealistic proponents have had enough with the politicians and want to get out
    of the planet rather than stay and fix its problems. Maybe this is why governments pay back in kind by treating space
    science as a hobby. The entire Universe is like what we see. There is one planet teaming with life like ours, surrounded
    perhaps by millions of scattered rocks with bacteria-level life, surrounded in turn by a sea of billions of dead planets,
    double stars, white dwarfs, red giants and other lifeless places. Since Earth-like planets don’t generate life all at once,
    we are staggered in time and have little chance of even communicating with the nearest civilization. What do we want to
    expand into the galaxy for if eventually we’re going to die anyway? What difference does it make whether it is one million
    years or 100 years. We know pretty much all there is to know and discovered pretty much all we will ever discover. All that
    lies ahead of us is tedium, mechanical motion, endless repetition of the same old thing. We are destined to become
    dinosaurs, doing the same thing day after day, living beyond justification, facing extinction because we have nothing
    more to live for. Indeed, we never had. Speed technology and resources are the limiting factors for all of the above
    scenarios anyway.
Okay amigos! Let's do it! Let's
explore this planet in Alpha Centauri
and see what exotic specimens we
can take back to recover some of the
costs of the expedition.