Humanity is obsessed with far off civilizations. Michio Kaku hopes that one day humans may survive this universe by becoming a Supercivilization able to take control of the energy of galaxies, and even the energy of the fabric of spacetime.

But they all also note that we must first survive this stage of development. It appears to me that there has not been enough attention to what we would need to make those first steps towards the colonisation of even Mars.

Well, I think that our major problems will be resources and energy. We have only 280 years of economically recoverable aluminium for example, 88 years of Lead, some forecasts say less. Everything is going to be much harder once oil reserves peak (maybe in 2100 or 2150 if you believe more recent studies, though most studies say it could be as early as 2025 – nobody knows for sure).

Population growth combined with dwindling resources, over used land, and bad management of what we have must force humanity into making decisions about our future.

Soon humans will have to make some decisions on how to feed the ever growing mouths. Will we be able to conquer space, like the Europeans conquered America? I don’t think so. It’s going to take much longer than expected.

This leaves us in a dangerous position: the UN wants to keep everyone alive; the US wants ALL of humanity to SURVIVE and live to enjoy ‘happiness’, yet we all know that this may be a policy likely to diminish the prospect of long-term survival for ALL humanity.

We face, not the FINAL FRONTIER, but perhaps the FINAL CURTAIN.

And in the distant future, suppposing we survive: does a supernova await to sterilize life in our part of the galaxy – wherever we end up in 5 billion years?

A game for thinkers….or stinkers…. or winkers?