The famous British physicist Stephen Hawking, during a lecture at the Sydney Opera House, warned people that for the sake of survival, humanity must move into space.
“We must continue to move into space for the future of humanity,” Hawking said. “I don’t think we will live another 1000 years without escaping from our fragile planet.”
He spoke to the audience using holographic technology. At that time he himself was in his office in Cambridge. At the end of the lecture, Hawking urged his listeners to "look at the stars, not down under their feet." “Try to understand what you see and wonder why the universe exists. Be curious,”he said.
A member of the Russian transhumanist movement, futurist Alexei Samykin commented on his words.
“This is necessary, of course, because our planet will not last forever. Someday the Sun will disappear, become a supernova, and life in the form in which it existed will become impossible in the solar system. And in order to exist much longer, it is necessary to develop appropriate technologies and colonize people on other planets, to move beyond the solar system.
Another thing is that a person is not very adapted for a long stay in space in zero gravity, especially for interplanetary flights. There are many factors, in addition to the mentioned weightlessness, which have a bad effect on health over time, such as radiation, and possible overload during takeoff and landing. Therefore, the colonization of planets is possible only with the use of transhumanism,”said Alexei Samykin.
The expert explained that for this purpose it is necessary to improve the person.
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“We need to change it, create artificial bodies, possibly completely autonomous systems with artificial intelligence. It is also necessary to develop suspended animation. Because traveling to other planets will take many months and years before a crew of humans can arrive at their destination. And so that people grow old less during this time and can in a normal state upon arrival be awakened and start some work, anabiosis is needed.
This requires advances in medicine. Cooling of people after serious trauma associated with blood loss has recently entered clinical practice. If the body is cooled not to zero, but still a little more, surgeons have additional hours to perform the operation, and the patient has a better chance of survival. It remains only to realize this for space travel."
Alexey Samykin emphasized that such programs existed in the USSR. However, for a number of technical and economic reasons, many of them were frozen.
“Now satellites are regularly launched, crews are sent to the ISS. But for some more powerful jerks, for the resumption of manned flights to the Moon, large resources are needed. And here a different approach will be needed both in business and international cooperation.
Now, alas, in many countries the crisis has already affected Russia, the United States is already abandoning many of our defense programs, which they could have accepted earlier in the Cold War. Therefore, very serious investments, both economic and technological, will be required."
The expert noted in an interview with a reporter that the Moon will not accept all earthlings, noting that a more promising option is orbital stations that can serve as a base for colonizing the planet.
“There is also an option with the use of asteroids, of which there are a large number in the solar system, the asteroid itself can be used as a source of resources. If you attach some kind of resource base to it, you can extract metals from there, some kind of construction tools, crush rocks, use it to produce building materials for blocks from which something can be built.
And the main problem is again the acquisition of the necessary technologies, the possibility of using them. That is, a new paradigm is needed to carry out the continuation of the exploration of the Cosmos. And it is necessary to overcome those physical limitations that a person has. At the moment, it is very problematic to send people even on a Martian expedition. It is not known what health problems this may lead to."
Alexei Samykin said that since the 60s of the last century, there has already been a practice of freezing people doomed to death, who can no longer be helped by doctors, in order to restore them in the future.
“There are only two countries where there is a cryostorage, the USA and Russia, the leaders of the space sector. I also cryopreserved one of my relatives, who is terminally ill. And I myself have a cryocontract. The only thing we can do, using the very wide experience of medicine and cryobiology, is to use the refrigeration as efficiently as possible, replace the code with a cryoprotectant and place the patients in liquid nitrogen at 6 degrees."