Not just science fiction but science fraud

THERE IS NO EXIT STRATEGY FOR PLANET EARTH
I don't want to go on some long diatribe here, but lately there has been a lot of news bouncing about concerning matters that I take a lot of issue with. That something would be the prospect of galaxy-spanning space travel and space colonization. Every few years it seems some moron passing himself off as a reasonable man of science or public figure decides it would be a great idea to invest a helluva lot of money towards some pointless goal like moon settlement (no really, there's water there, we just can't see it!) or manned Mars exploration (thank you President Bush for adding another seemingly unattainable task to America's policy queue). My response is to immediately ignore these folks and go about my day.

Now as a kid, I grew up living and thriving on science fiction. I read Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, and the eternally great Isaac Asimov. When I was very small (one of my first memories, in fact) I traveled to Houston, Texas to meet my grandmother's cousin, who was a legendary Apollo astronaut. He had been into space for one mission and had served in mission control for many of our country's most prestigious moon missions, including that ill-fated and immortal Apollo 13 mission. As I have come to understand it, he was a big reason our boys got home safely. He was also scheduled to go up again in the 90's and be the oldest man to go in space. Unfortunately, he had a burning desire to climb Mount Everest. He died and is buried there and Sen. John Glenn took his place. I went to Space Camp as a kid, both in Huntsville and at Cape Canaveral. I was a kid who wanted to be an astronaut, who wanted to discover vast and far away galaxies and set my boots on new planets, claiming them for America and the human race. All I'm trying to say is that more than a lot of people, I have a stake in this space travel fantasy and desire.

So imagine my disappointment as I grew up and learned about astronomy and physics and all those other scientific fields that demand a high understanding of complex mathematics. I found out that any sort of meaningful long-range manned space travel was essentially impossible. You can't travel the speed of light, there is no hyperspace, no magical warp space or wormholes prepared to deliver you to the other side of the universe or even the Milky Way at a whim. It was all just a pipe dream, something you might write about in a story or daydream about, but nothing real or tangible that I could hope for in my lifetime or even in a thousand generations of lifetimes. I got over it, I moved on.

So it's a bit comical now seeing NASA calling for a moonbase and planning to visit Mars to finally determine once and for all that there is nothing there except red dust and a toxic atmosphere. It's also sad that the American public is going to spend good money on this project when it could be used for a better purpose.

But imagine my surprise when I read that Stephen Hawking himself thinks it necessary that human beings expand beyond our solar system and colonize new planets in order to survive. Usually this kind of scientific speculation is left to nutjobs and the fatally idealistic. Granted, Hawking is a genius and arguably the most respected physicist on the planet, but this just smacks of irresponsibility to me. Perhaps these complex theories and propulsion systems are remotely possible, but we are certainly millenia, if not hundreds of thousands of years, away from any sort of real breakthrough on this front. And just the fact that he referenced 'Star Trek' makes the whole notion seem that much more in the realm of romantic hope and fantasy. Uneducated and delusional people around the globe are going to continue to latch onto these far-fetched ideas and hope to run away from Earth's problems, rather than use those resources and that knowledge to tackle them.