Some problems I see with moving our entire species (or even a sizable portion of it) off planet:
1. Where to go: The only fit piece of real estate for human beings in this vicinity happens to be the one we're standing on (forget terraforming, it isn't going to happen) and extra-solar planets are impossibly far away.
2. How to get there: Leaving aside for now the problem of getting all the way to an Earth-like planet, it would take about 40 billion gigajoules of energy just to get us out of Earth's gravity well (that's just for the people). This is, very roughly, the equivalent of the world's remaining oil reserves (and no, I'm not proposing oil-fired rocket ships). Source: The kid across the street who's taking his physics degree.
3. How to pay for it: Even if only half the people on Earth wanted to leave, that's going to be around 5 billion (the population has a nasty habit of growing). Let's be generous and assume you could cram 10 000 people into a single ship. You're going to need a half million space ships. Figuring the one of the US space shuttles (Endeavour) cost $1.7 billion US dollars to build, we can extrapolate - not adjusting for inflation - that one of our planet evacuating ships could easily cost around two and a half trillion. And you'd need to build and fuel a half million of them.
Nope. Everyone's staying, like it or not.
Boru
1. Where to go: The only fit piece of real estate for human beings in this vicinity happens to be the one we're standing on (forget terraforming, it isn't going to happen) and extra-solar planets are impossibly far away.
2. How to get there: Leaving aside for now the problem of getting all the way to an Earth-like planet, it would take about 40 billion gigajoules of energy just to get us out of Earth's gravity well (that's just for the people). This is, very roughly, the equivalent of the world's remaining oil reserves (and no, I'm not proposing oil-fired rocket ships). Source: The kid across the street who's taking his physics degree.
3. How to pay for it: Even if only half the people on Earth wanted to leave, that's going to be around 5 billion (the population has a nasty habit of growing). Let's be generous and assume you could cram 10 000 people into a single ship. You're going to need a half million space ships. Figuring the one of the US space shuttles (Endeavour) cost $1.7 billion US dollars to build, we can extrapolate - not adjusting for inflation - that one of our planet evacuating ships could easily cost around two and a half trillion. And you'd need to build and fuel a half million of them.
Nope. Everyone's staying, like it or not.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
