It is a pretty good read though and not abad idea.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/08/09/4850998-stephen-hawking-off-earth-by-2110

nah if earth explodes right know wed be in a big bowl of happy.

All I know is that I need to live to see Mars Colonization occur!

I want to live to the day when we forget about countries and  call ourselves proud citizens of PLANET EARTH!

Extremely interesting read, but imo it will be a long time before people even think about this. Hawking mentions that the point of us colonising a new world would be because we "may be" the only sentient beings in the galaxy. yet i see this as an almost impossibility, we are less than a fraction of what exists in the milky way galaxy, theres no telling how many other solar systems exist similar to ours.

and my personal feeling on the matter is summed up when Hawing says: "... our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past."

my point is that theres no way we in the western/ developed world have the right to another planet, when we cant look after our own. what do other ppl thinK??

interesting read and for the most part I agree

Yup, looking forward into the future, spreading out to other planets will be essential to the future survival of our species.

I'd love to witness first contact with aliens, or as darth mentioned the colinisation of mars within our lifetime. Sadly, I doubt we have enough time.

We have plenty of time. Loads of it.

Well it's good to be optimistic.

I probably have another 50-60 years left in me if all goes well. I don't see the things I mentioned happening within that timeframe. But who knows.

I kinda agree there, we have REALLY messed up Earth in a BIG way. 

BUt for technologies sake I am ok with making some sacrifices.

Doom and gloom. Even the smartest man on earth can sometimes be quite dumb.

We already learned our lesson. We haven't dropped a nuke in over 60 years.  So why would we in the future?

Oil will run out soon so that will take care of the so call man made global warming threat.

Plenty of safe and environment friendly energy can be gotten from nuclear plants. Just build more. In 30 years we're all be driving in electric cars.

Humans are already close to getting only 2 kids per couple, so overpopulation ain't that big of a threat in the long run. And if we really are getting extremely old (like hundreds of years) we could sterilize people so population doesn't get bigger.

Genetic engineering on plants and animals will provide us with plenty of very awesome and great tasting food for everybody. And gene manipulation in humans can fix lots of negative traits such as agression and hostile behaviour in nasty individuals. Soon medication will be produced that makes us happy and content with only little materials. Medication will be invented to kill all nasty germs.

Comps will be wired to our brains and give us artificial leasure which will stop our cravings for resource hungry entertainment such as sex, sports and travels. Comps don't need much materials. And besides, materials could be recycled and reused in the future.

We won't need to go into space. If we fly far out there the risk of getting discovered and eaten by aliens is probably even higher than the risk of the earth getting hit and destroyed by a gigantic meteor.