Ugh. So they tell us there's a possibly maybe potentially kinda habitable-ish (zone) planet in Alpha Centauri. Aside from resurfacing my long buried SMAC addiction, do you know what this means? We'll be seeing sooooo many damn cheesy half-assed SciFi plots about aliens from Proxi B over the next few years. This has all the potential to become the next Martian canal craze.
Oh well.
My story's gonna have gophers or something, I think. Yeah... the Mutant Space-Gophers of Proxi B. It's a winner. Hollywood, here I come!
Ah, well, joking aside I do loves me the big dreams. Look, I've repeatedly stated my skepticism as to the viability of space colonization, and not for any technical reasons. It's just that no matter the technical possibilities, our stupid species would screw it up royally. Like, say, by re-instituting royalty. Still, for that same reason, our idiocy as a species, we desperately need the ability to get out of each others' reach. When the nukes and plagues start flying down here on Earth, either some small remnant of the species is beyond the reach of whichever megalomaniacal cretin's slamming his fist on the big red button, or the galaxy can say goodbye to sentience.
We need to spread out fast before we become just one more confirmation of the Fermi paradox, the "self-destruct" quotient in the Drake equation. The main problem with Proxima Centauri's that it's just not far enough from this seething, virulent cauldron of simian stupidity called Earth. We need a helluva lot of hard vacuum to quarantine ourselves from ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment