Move into Space -- Now -- Another Vegan Cat Issue

Stephen Hawking, noting humanity's focus on the meaningless while our biosphere collapses, or before aliens come and devour us, calls for humanity to start moving out into space asap.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57328198-71/stephen-hawking-colonize-s...

This is not a crazy proposition. At the limit, the sun has about 4 billion years to go before turning into a white dwarf. Long before, on a galactic time scale, its expansion and cooling will burn up the earth. So there is some urgency to the situation. It's of course far likelier that we'll destroy ourselves first -- forget nuclear problems -- think lack of water, food, ozone layer, garbage and pollution, temperatures exceeding our very limited survivable zone.

But who's going to start? The Russians just finished an experiment with humans in an enclosed environment for 520 days -- simulating a Mars trip. Biosphere I an II didn't do too well. We have a long way to go and much more to learn before envisioning long-term travel into space. And, we've not found planets that suit our needs either.

The "planning" part of Planning, Governance and Assessment considers long term issues. While probably farther into the future than I need to worry, we do have to find comparators in our immediate space and work towards preventing avoidable circumstances.