Five College Forum; Raw Footage of a Lecture by Isaac Asimov on the Future

When I'm here however is to predict the future. Is very likely that you will want to know what gives me the right to predict the future right. I mean what are my qualifications. So I'll tell you what my qualifications to predict the future are. My chief qualification took place in 1952 when I found myself in Chicago. I found myself in Chicago because I had to address the American Chemical Society which was a thankless task. I discussed some experiments of mine and got very few laughs. So I. So I decided. To visit the offices of a small science fiction magazine called universe science fiction. At any rate I had to think of something fast because I was ashamed to say that I didn't have the slightest idea of what to write. And Thinking quickly I wrote a story called Everest because the Everest was much in the news then. And I thought that since seven

expeditions had failed. That I might as well write a little story about why expeditions failed and I explained that by saying that the Abominable Snowman were Martians. And they kept. At it kept human travelers off the top. She wrote the story bordered on the spot for 30 dollars. I spent half of the dinner for her and me in those days you could buy very good dinner for two of the $15 and got nowhere. Went home. A sadder and wiser man and forgot about it until the next May 30th 1953 when somebody to whom I hadn't done a darn thing named Hillary and his Sherpa sidekick Tensing are gay. I climbed Mount Everest another 11 30. I stood at the very tippy tip top. They said. Well who is there to check up you know.

And that is simply place universe size fiction and a very very very strange ethical dilemma. If they publish the story that would make me look like a fool. And if they didn't publish story the story they would lose 30 dollars. It took them a second than a quarter to the site to publish. And they did they published in the December 1953 issue so that there was my record as a predictor of the future. I'm the only man living whoever predicted that Mt. Everest would never be climbed five months after. I will now talk about the future and the first thing we have to remember that your only safe if you predict the obvious. The fact of the Abominable Snowmen were Martians were not. It was not obvious. Probable perhaps but not obvious.

So to predict something that's obvious Let's predict that the population of the earth will go up. After all it's been going up. Ever since the beginning of human history as far as we know. Fact the only century that we know of from which the human population dropped all over the world was in the fourteenth century as a result of the depredations of the Black Death during which one third of the entire human race was killed off in the space of maybe twenty five years and it took the human species a full century to make up that loss. And you might wonder because these days we could do that maybe 20 years and say wow you see what I mean. The old. And you may wonder why it took them that long in the old days. I think the perhaps I didn't know the secret. While. I have every reason to believe they knew the

secret. And worked away at it as a said you were slate as honest people do today. What happened was that although many children were born many children died. The death rate was high in those days. The rate of increase was low. Since then we have managed to improve matters. And it reminds me of how difficult it is to know a dangerous scientific discovery when you hear one. I mean everybody. Is against all kinds of technological advances that seem dangerous. Large automobiles gas guzzling monsters nuclear fission plants. The aluminum beer cans all sorts of things people scorn scorn. Is there anything they like. Yes cancer research they like. Research into all kinds of diseases that's good. They say why are we busy going off into space. Why don't we spend our time

trying to cure cancer. That's because most people don't expect to go into space but most people expect to run the risk of cancer. But if you stop and ask yourself what is the most dangerous discovery that was ever made. The answer was the germ theory of disease which came out in the 1860s because as the result of actually learning what caused infectious disease we gradually learned how to take measures that minimized infectious disease helped cure it if it was caught and eventually through the conquest of infectious disease we doubled the life span of the human being from an average of perhaps 35 to an average. And the more quote advanced unquote nations of perhaps 70 so that every one of us lives twice as long as he would have lived if he had lived one hundred and twenty years ago. Which is nice. Most people don't object to that. But it does leave us with a population explosion. Because as a matter

of fact what governs the earth's population. Is the birth rate and the death rate of the birth rate is higher than the death rate the population goes up. Or if you want to look at it another way if the death rate is lower than the birth rate the population goes up and vice versa if the birth rate is lower than the Dutch. That's right ot a death rate is higher than the birth rate of I got it all straight. Doesn't matter it's a college audience. I say. I say what I please and you sort it out because you know what I mean. Now. Right now the birth rate is going in the Right now the population is going up faster and faster and faster and at the present moment. I think it stands at something like 1.6 percent. Per year. About five years ago it was almost 2 percent per year it's been going down slightly because they say the birth rate in China has fallen. We have the Chinese word for that.

I don't know how they've managed it I think by moral suasion they send around the cadres from house to house and they spend time talking to the young wives and they spend so much time talking she doesn't have time to raise the birth rate. But even so 1.6 percent that's 72 million people. Each year. Additional and seventy two million is about the population of Bangladesh almost so that it's as though we've got a new Bangladesh on earth every year and we haven't yet arranged to take care of the original Bangladesh. The question is What are we going to do about it. And we've got to go back to that birth rate death rate business. There are only two ways of handling an expanding population if you think that it's dangerous. And if you want to establish population stability or even reduce the population to a reasonable level only two ways to do it. You can either raise the death rate until it's higher than the birth

rate. Or you can lower the birth rate until it's lower than the death rate. Fortunately those are the only two ways. If there were 50 ways every way would have it's adherence will be a very big mess as it is. We just count how many people favor raising the death rate. Many people favor lowering the birth rate. Of course there might be some people who say. I don't want to do anything just let things go. And the beauty of it is that that will raise the death rate. Which is the advantage of raising the death rate you don't have to do anything. No hard decisions no political difficulties no sacrifices. Just go on and do exactly what you've been doing. Population will go up. The death rate will also go up eventually and bring the population down. Only trouble is that's what we call catastrophe because the methods for raising the death rate are also limited. You can do it by violence such as war or terrorism or civil

strife doesn't matter. Kill off people. In anger or by disease or by famine. There's your choice. All through history all through the history of life. Whenever a species has increased its numbers to the point where it outstripped its food supply. That has always we dressed its numbers by an increase in death rate. It's nature's way. If you like things that are natural. You'll be crazy about famine. However human beings are the only species that ever existed on Earth who are capable of foreseeing the future if perhaps not in detail. Then in broad brushstrokes show a human being a situation in which the population is going up and the food supply is

going down. And by dint of considerable hard thought it will eventually occur to him. That this will end in famine. It may be that he doesn't like famine because he suspects. That it may not strike other people only. In which case he may decide to do something about it which is to increase the food supply or decrease the population. Now of course everyone says right away well let's increase the food supply for goodness sakes. It can be done we can support four billion people. What's needed is not more food we have plenty of food. Just distribute it more decently. Fix it so that everyone gets his fair share. Fix it so that governments are sane and don't do things that are stupid fixes that people are honest and unselfish and share with each other. Fix that the economic system is honest and trade is a fish

and and everybody works decently. And if pigs had wings they would fly. But even if that happened. In about 40 years they'll be 8 billion people on earth. And if you've managed to keep up with that and 40 years more they'll be 16 billion people on earth and in a little while two hundred fifty years to be exact the total number of population on earth will be such that the average density will be 100000 per square mile. Now 100000 to square mile is something that's easily described for those of you who have ever been in Manhattan at lunch hour. That's it I'm there every lunch hour. I know exactly what it looks like. People all over the streets wall to wall with lots more hidden in the skyscrapers and two hundred fifty. Beg your pardon some two hundred fifty years dollars four hundred and fifty I wouldn't lie to you and four hundred fifty years at the present rate the

population density the world over will be a hundred thousand to square inch not only in nice places like the Berkshires. But in Greenland Antarctica the Himalayan Mountains the Sahara Desert and the field throw planks across the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean on them top. And you have the feeling that you'll going to have one world girdling skyscraper Partially partially apartment houses partially factories Partially partially all kinds of things schools colleges and the entire ocean taken out of its bed and placed on the roof. Of the globe girdling and growing and growing algae or something like that. Because all those people will have to be fed and the only way they can be fed is to allow no waste whatever. I don't want no competition. So if you can't feed other creatures as well as human beings that means not

only no more but Cimatron tigers no more Berniece why not sarees is no more. California condor bees no more pussy cats no more puppy dogs no more gold fishes. No morgue Caterpillar's no more nothing except human beings and of course they can't live on something which has waste can't waste the thing we've got to grow something which is 100 percent that a ball like one celled creatures. And for goodness sakes you have this ocean on the apartment house roof boiling away in the sun just frothing over with algae and every want to have thick conduits leading down the ocean water from which you take out the algae and all the other plankton or whatever the heck it is and you'll pound it is separated in a flavor of crookedness. Finally you have your pseudo steak and your mock veal and your healthful sub vegetables and someone. And then you send the water its left over

up there but you have to grow some more algae in addition to the algae that exist you're going to have to fertilize them given nutrients. Where do you get your nutrients from for good god sakes only from chopped up corpses and human wastes. So you've got other. Conduits leading upward. This is not exactly such a good world but maybe if we manage to make it we'll be used to it. And will say this is great. Except that in 40 years more the population density of the earth will be 200000 per square mile. Obviously and I relatively short time. Like for instance three thousand years the total weight of flesh and blood will be equal to the total weight of the earth. And the 9000 years it will be equal in total weight of the known universe. So let's face it. Sooner or later we'll have to stop we can't not do anything either the population either the death rate will go up or the birth rate will go down and I personally prefer that the birth

rate go down. Question is how's it going to happen. Because the disadvantage of using the birth rate going down is a method of controlling populations that it's never been tried really and we don't know for the work. So certainly we're going to have to use some method that's never been used and I've got a method believe it or not. I have noticed that throughout history whenever the birthrate has been high the social status of women has been low. And this makes sense this is not a pure coincidence. This is reasonable because if a woman has a lot of babies and if each one takes 9 months and so far this is one thing the industrial revolution is. Not been able to change nor does it help to get more men on the job. And besides I don't know if any of you people have noticed it but after the baby is born it hangs around the mother an awful lot for a while.

Before the baby stops hanging around the mother there's another one on the way and then another one and then another one and the woman has all she can do to bear the babies and suckle her babies and take care of the babies and clean the house and cook and pull the plow on the horses and feeling good and things like that. And under circumstances like that you're going to waste time educating a woman for what. You gunna waste time expecting your to do things that are human like helping to run the world of course not poor thing us enough work to do. So she just stays there ignorant and without shoes and working away until she dies but then she CC to replace it. On the other hand. And those periods in world history not too long and those areas not too extended in which women have had reasonable treatment treated as kind of subhuman men.

The birth rate has dropped automatically. Fact people right away start worrying about race suicide as soon as the birth rate drops. Never worry about race suicides the population goes up. This is a peculiarity of the human species. And you say why on earth should the birth rate drop since the highest since absolutely the highest calling any woman can possibly aspire to is that of being a wife and mother. What else can she possibly want to do. You hear all over the place about how great it is motherhood you know and I mistrust that because I always figure that anything that has to be pushed that hard. Can't be that good. I figure nobody goes around saying eat. You know it'll keep your strength up. Nobody goes

around with a billboard saying don't be a fool breathe. So that when you're forever being told how great it is still have lots of children. I figure someone is getting something out of it. Besides I figure having children is that great men and figured out a way to do it. Mind you I'm not against children I have two of my own. Of course when I said to my own they didn't do much. No no man ever does. But still. I wouldn't want people not to have any children because of children stop altogether than the human race comes to an end in less than a century no matter how many of us there are. But. To say you don't want no children doesn't mean you want all women to be baby machines there's such a thing as moderation. One or two children is plenty. How can a woman be satisfied with one or two children. Sure she can why not.

It isn't so great having a lot of children if you have nothing else to do certainly. And the population will automatically drop and then addition the brain power of the human species will automatically be doubled. As far as honest use of it was concerned without adding a single person to the actual population. Might be more than doubled. We've never given women a chance they may be smarter than us. Of course some men are afraid of this. They feel that they'll be sharing some of their precious privileges. Don't look at it that way. You're sharing some of your responsibilities. My own feeling is it's about time that women did half the work on the world. And took half the risks and half the blame and all the rest of it. Frank who knows. The last act of male chauvinism on earth

may be that of forcing women to take their share much against their will. Too darn many women are so happy at having had steak enough in their presence and being helped across the street that they don't mind being slaves in exchange. And I say we don't need this kind of women. So there is my solution you know give women equal rights in every possible respect the birth rate will go down the population will be stabilized. Humanity will survive. So that women's lib is vital not only for women but for men too because people. People say to me how are you going to persuade all the different places on the earth to grant equal rights to women even Machel communities like south of the border and old. And old traditional places where women have for thousands of years been considered a don't mess think

animal. Some are higher than the ox perhaps but definitely lower than the horse. And I feel. I feel what's going to happen is that as population goes up it's going to be clear to governments all over the world that things are just going very bad and they'll have to do something and I'm convinced that there will be no way of handling the problem humanely except by giving women equality forcing women to accept reality equality. Of course you know what human beings are like that may prefer our inhumane methods like forcible sterilisation like massacres like all sorts of fun things like that there. And to people who are against birth control. I suppose this is preferable. At least I can't imagine why else they should be opposed to birth control. Well then if. We manage

to control the population what next. The difficulty is of course that there is supposed to be 60 billion barrels of oil in the go 600 billion barrels of oil in the ground and we're consuming 30 billion barrels a year. 20 billion barrels a year if you divide 600 billion by 20 billion and you keep the zeros straight the answer is 30 which means that at the present rate of use We've got enough oil to last us 30 years and after that we're in trouble is plenty more energy but we're geared the earth is geared to the use of oil which is by all odds of the cheapest the most convenient energy source we've ever had to develop other energy sources is going to mean a capital investment. And it's going to mean a lot of maintenance and a lot of research and a lot of trouble. I. Saw what we ought to do is start going through all this

trouble and all this expense and all the suffering and all this emotional turmoil. Right now and conserve our fossil fuels as much as we can so as to give us as much lead time as possible. And this is going to be difficult. And the only thing it is in its favor is that it may save civilization for those of you. Who think it's worth saving. For those of you who don't you might recall that if you don't save it we lose several billion lives the world over of which your own may be won. And if you still don't think that's important then you're fortunate nothing can happen to you oh that's important. Now where are we going to get energy from this plenty of energy in the universe. There's plenty of available energy in the universe. It just means learning how to use it and what we want there are all kinds of energy I won't bother listing them all because this is

you can pick up a newspaper or a magazine without their discussing different energy sources. We'll take it as read there are all kinds of energy sources and we can use them all because in some places on earth that at some times and for some purposes one particular energy source may be particularly convenient. Heck there many times when human muscle is the most convenient energy source. Although this gets hard to believe but try reproduction without the use of human muscles and you'll see what I mean. It doesn't work with windmills. Well. What we need though backing up all this is some form of energy which is copious safe and eternal. By copious I mean there's enough of the energy to supply Earth's entire needs. Even if all other sources of energy were discounted. By safe obviously I mean that there are no side effects resulting from the use of energy which can cause

harm. And eternal means. Wow that sounds like it means lasting forever. But supposing we limit it and say it lasts as long as as humanity does. Is it alright if it runs out when we run out as a species. Ok then. Let's take these one that a cut one the time. What's copious there are only two forms of energy that are really copious in the sense of always being copious. One is nuclear fusion. This is not to be confused with nuclear fission which we have now. Nuclear fission is very useful. It works we know it works it keeps New England warm during the cold winters when Ohio freezes to death because one year it's natural gas the next year it's coal. Meanwhile New England has no problems it has nuclear plants which produce the electricity and it can ship electricity to other

parts of the country. You don't like nuclear plants I don't blame you but you use the electricity it produces. It's one of those things you demonstrate against nuclear nuclear plants but you don't turn off the electric switches so that I. I beg leave to sniff a little hypocrisy here but. Well if you prefer to sniff that you may. Nuclear fusion on the other hand has an easier source. It's heavy hydrogen not uranium heavy hydrogen can be gotten out of the oceans. Not only that it delivers seven times as much energy weight for weight as nuclear fission does. It doesn't form nuclear wastes it does form Trudi it doesn't involve tritium and neutrons which we hope will produce a far lesser problem than the radioactive ash that

the fission plants do. And. It is available everywhere. Since water is practically a universal commodity except in some deserts where very few people live anyway there is only one catch with nuclear fusion which by the way will last for billions of years. There's only one catch now that we haven't got it yet. And we don't know when we'll have it. I feel we'll have it before long but we haven't got it yet. And when we do get it it'll take. Perhaps 30 years before we can build. A large nuclear fusion power plant and get all the bugs out of it and there are some people who suspect that the bugs will be sufficiently complex so that we may not be able to make use of it after all I hope that these pessimists are confounded. But we can only wait and see. Meanwhile we can't afford to attempt nuclear fusion

alone or entirely. We must go to the other. Source of energy which is copious can support a salt safe produces relatively little in the way of injurious side effects and the eternal will last as long as humanity well and that of course is the sun. And since this is Sunday I say that with the proper reverence if we can use. Sun Power. I don't mean just in low intensity situations as in warming houses I mean by conversion into electricity which is high intensity energy sort of thing that can be done with present techniques we have photo electric cells we have solar batteries we can expose wafers of silicon to the sunlight and build up an electromotive force and create an electric current. We have to it's a low efficiency thing so far and quite expensive so far. And sunlight is very dilute. There's a lot of sunlight but

it's spread out so that we would have to code thousands of square miles of desert area so as to get maximum sun. And even then it wouldn't be working 12 hours out of every 24 in the average because you don't pick up much in the way of sunlight at night. And there is so far no we fish and way of storing electricity so that we can we can pick up a lot of an electricity during the day and then use the stored Elektra city at night. You would have to have stations at opposite ends of the earth different places that always be some in daylight and of course also. Even the air does stop and absorb a certain amount of solar energy no matter how clear it is. And any time it gets misty and foggy cloudy. It loses a lot more. And you can't help but think how much more efficient it would be if we could build these solar power collecting

stations in space. Put them up over the equatorial plane at a height of twenty two thousand plus miles and have it revolve around the earth in 24 hours. Synchronous revolution about the earth so that are always stayed more or less over one spot on earth. It would absorb sunlight the full range of solar energy never in any way stopped depleted absorbed. By anything at all. Hardly ever be. And the Earth's night shadow under ordinary conditions would miss the thin the shadow the tapering night beam at a height of twenty two thousand plus miles and would only pass through a certain period of time before and after the equinoxes and over the space of a year it would spend only 2 percent of its time in the shadow. And of course you would have a number of them all around the earth and they could supply the whole earth with energy beaming them down in the form of microwaves to be absorbed on earth with much greater

efficiency than an diluted sunlight is. Of course we know that microwaves can be dangerous. We're not going to beam them down in the middle of Amhurst. Even though some of you may think it's a good idea. And. There is every reason to think that we can arrange it so if anything goes wrong the beam is instantly dispersed becomes only minimally dangerous and is stopped. Naturally you wouldn't want to move through the beam but presumably airplanes will know how to avoid it. And even if they do go through it they will remain through it so small or so so short of time that the danger is minimal. Birds flying through it if they decide to pause on the wean while let them fly round and round and round may eventually come out broiled. But I have every reason to think that birds won't do it even if you begged them

to. It may work. There is the danger of thermal pollution that is. That is heat is added to the earth which it wouldn't otherwise get so that the average temperature of the Earth would go up and you would lap would limit the amount of energy you could receive from such solar stations. Because if you raise the temperature of the earth sufficiently why you will melt the icecaps and raise the water level of the oceans 200 feet and drown all the coastal plains of the world. Which are precisely the most populated regions. Well beef we wouldn't with this one. This doesn't mean we can't use any amount of heat just not too much. That still leaves us a liberal supply until such time as we learn how to help the earth radiate the excess heat. Well now what else is good about

this thing which is generally considered a kind of feat a fantasy hard headed people are against such solar power stations for a variety of reasons. They say you realize how expensive it is. Sure. Sure I realize how expensive it is it's likely to take a hundred billion dollars a year say over a space of twenty one hundred billion dollars over the space of 20 20 years which is say five billion dollars a year. Who's going to spend five billion dollars a year it's a lot of money. It's more than two issues. Right now. But the people who are worried about 5 billion a year don't realize that we spend ALL lot more than that on booze and a lot more going than on smokes. A known Service said that the space program does any more harm than waste money. There are rumors that tobacco and alcohol do

actual harm beyond the waste of money. Actual physical harm. Of course they also bring pleasure. And people say this is cheap of you as a mom since you don't smoke and don't drink to cast aspersions upon other people's pleasures and imply that they should easily sacrifice them for something you were interested in. And I recognize the justice of this. I sniff a certain amount of hypocrisy in myself. When I talk this way. But then. Supposing we consider war and preparations for war. Now who gets personal pleasure out of war. Who really considers it a fun activity these days. Nobody is going to admit in public he wants war he enjoys it because the excitement makes his blood race through his veins and just does not get all tingly feeling.

Everyone gets up and says I hate war but we have to be prepared as a deterrent right so that the world now spends four hundred billion dollars every year to support its various war machines its various competing war machines 400 billion every year. I used to say 300 billion now it's gone to 400 billion by the year 2000 the present rate of increase will be 1 trillion a year. If we get there which I doubt. Well for goodness sakes what is the 400 billion dollars a year buying US. What good in a war machines we can't use them. We can't have a thermonuclear war at all. Because of universal destruction. As a matter of fact it doesn't supply a thermonuclear war doesn't supply us with the minimum. Virtue of a war which is one of the reasons I don't think it will be fought. You seem to think that a thermonuclear war is we have every reason to think it will last maybe a day and a half and then a day and a half there is no time for promotions to come through for the generals.

It's worse than that. You can't even have regular warse. You can even have the kind of wars we once had in the good old days. The fun wars like World War 2. I mean you can imagine the Soviet Union the United States getting together and deciding the generals are rusty and they need a war. But c'mon fellas on upright we won't use nuclear weapons we won't use jet planes. We're going to build us a lot of World War 2 artillery and planes and tanks and we'll fight it like a gentleman so. So they'll draw a line down the middle of a neutral nation and the line up on. You guys is so naive That's what neutral nations are for for goodness. And you're lined up on either side for four or five years maybe six if it's too exciting to

stop. Yeah frontal penetration some flank attacks an artillery bombardments and bombing attacks. And maybe if you want some sort of old fashioned excitement poison gas. Things like that. At the end of the time at the end of the time you should you see who's where who is accomplish what how many people been killed and you assign indemnities and on checks changes of territory and all that losing side shoots his generals. That's that's the great problem I've always maintained that if the losing side in any war automatically Shabbes generals and of the generals who told us in advance that never be any wars because the generals will always say they weren't ready. But you don't do it that's considered not sporting. Why can't we fight a war like that easy we don't have the gasoline for it anymore. You know how much gasoline it takes to run even a world war to war nowadays more than we can afford to spend considering we've only got a 30 year supply left. And don't tell me we're going to find

more gasoline supplies petroleum supplies no matter how much we find. It may extend that another 10 years no more. Heck you can't even fight little wars anymore. I mean supposing you have a war between two small nations that don't have nuclear weapons they're forced to fight it with non-nuclear weapons. National neither one is going to fight it unless they can get the weapons from one of the great powers so that they can have really sophisticated non nuclear weapons. Otherwise there's no fun in fighting the war. Well that means one side calls in the Soviet Union the other side calls the United States. Now they fight the war can only last six days. After six days one side may be winning whereupon the other side has to be helped by its nation even more because they don't want to lose face which means the other nation has to help its side before you know it you've got a thermonuclear war. So if there's any danger of one side winning

and usually that's that's pretty determinable after six days. Does that mean that they they stop it. Happens all the time. The other kind of war is when you have a small war where the great powers aren't interested. This hardly happens anymore. In which case they fight with slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And it takes them 17 years to kill a hundred people. And nobody kiss. Or you can have terrorism. You can always have terrorism because all it takes is five men or women. You call yourself the cosmic international army of human righteousness. And when no one is looking you shoot people in the back. And you proudly proclaim it. In secret messages when no one is looking and say how brave you are. Well you get the headlines you get pictures in the paper. If you happen

to be caught and imprisoned your comrades kill somebody else to get them to release you. And it's more fun than you can shake a barrel of monkeys. The only thing is it never accomplishes anything it just never does in the whole history of mankind. Terrorism has never accomplished anything except when it's backed by an official army. And these days we can't have an official army backing it because the whole thing is we can't fight a war so it's just terrorism all by itself you get nothing out of it except newspaper headlines television coverage. A little pain and discomfort to individual people. And if you're not there directly involved you can endure it philosophically. And therefore what the heck is the whole use of this entire military machine. You say it's a deterrent. Just to make sure there is no war. Fine except that just keeping a military machine in being is extremely expensive and war and wastes a huge amount of energy

and accomplishes nothing but the struction we're going to be destroyed by military machines even if we don't use them. And yet we spend 400 billion dollars a year as a quick road to suicide and we don't feel we're wasting the money for one thing we're going to get our money's worth. We want suicide to get suicide no question of being cheated but if someone were to suggest spend 5 billion dollars a year. For a sure source of energy which will be serviceable for the entire world. You hollar expense expense. It's four hundred million dollars a year for destruction. Not one penny for salvation. This is the new cry of all the hard headed critics and the only reason they're hard headed is cause solid bone from ear to ear. Now let's suppose we have these solar power stations we're building them we found the money. Well

heck we were going to get the material from you know Earth is running low on all sorts of resources. How are we going to build 100 power stations up there along with all the space ships it takes and all the fuel it takes and so on. Well for one thing as far as material is concerned we've got a beautiful piece of real estate up there in the moon. The moon is one of the first the mass of the entire earth and it's only there two hundred thirty seven thousand miles away. You say listen that's a long distance notice and it's three days away. It's three days away we have sent so far. Let's see now 15 people to the moon 12 made it three didn't but every single one of them got back. You can't get safety records like that almost anywhere and that even though they wrote and wrote on ships which were the best you could build with the lowest bidders. And. Now Columbus did something that was difficult. I don't want to run down the

astronauts believe me you couldn't get me out of it. You can even get me on an airplane. But nevertheless the fact remains if I had my choice I'd rather go with Neil Armstrong than with Christopher Columbus. Columbus had three ships that was salvaged. That was salvaged on the point of sinking any strong would have sunk him and he stone back coming back a stone did sink the Santa Maria. But going there we hit the ONLY 7 week stretch in the history of the North Atlantic without a storm. What's more he didn't know where he was going. He thought he was going to Asia. He didn't make it frankly. And as for the crew they didn't know any with anything about where they were going there was nothing with headache. You go to the moon you've got an easy A drive to the top of the atmosphere look around there's the moon. You aim at it. And furthermore if you're going to the moon you knew for sure that they weren't going to be any hostile natives there.

So on the whole Going To The Moon is easy in terms of our technology today it's much easier than Columbus district America. So we go there and we set it up as a mining station we can get everything from the moon that we need except carbon hydrogen and nitrogen and that Earth will supply for a while. Of course lots of people are horrified. We've been we've been mucking up the earth now we're going to go there and muck up the moon too. My answer is Why not the moon doesn't belong to anybody. There is no wife on the moon of any kind there aren't even any germs to give you concern over you know bacterial rights. Now there are two things that concern us on Earth One is that the moon looks pretty. And you don't want it sort of you don't want to think.

Fortunately. Fortunately Providence in its infinite wisdom has decreed that the moon presented one face only to the earth at all times. You know that I have a feeling I've been neglecting you people. And this means that we can work on the other side where no one standing on earth will ever see the moth eaten this. The other fact is that the moon thanks to its mass does create the tides and if we reduce the mass we reduce the tides and we might not like this but I assure you that all are fooling around on the surface of the moon and digging up or etc. is going to take thousands of years before we make the slightest perceptible diminution of its mass. So I think we can use the moon. And of course

it's not going to be useful to commute to outer space and to the moon in order to build the space power stations. Very expensive to send people up at 8am and bring them down at 5 pm. What you really need are space colonies space settlements. You'll have people living in space settlements and they'll be doing the work. Of course it will be interesting that as they do the work. Of. Other space settlements other power stations they'll be quickly returning profits on the initial investment. Not only will the expense be far less than that which is produced by the by the competing military establishments but whereas the competing with military establishments never return a profit. These space activities will in the form of energy eventually and in the space of a few decades will be getting far

more back in the way of energy than we ever spent building them. In fact we can build all kinds of things in space. One thing one advantage space has is lots of room there. We can transfer observatories into space we can transfer laboratories into space we can transfer industries into space where they can take advantage of hard vacuum of high and low temperatures of hard radiation of gravity free conditions all sorts of things will make it possible and possible for them to produce all kinds of industrial cybernetic etc. etc. Jim cracks tools devices that either can't be performed can't be formed on Earth at all or only with the greatest difficulty. Fact space may be the Japan of the 21st century. Furthermore if we get if we get as many as much of our industrial establishment into space as possible why we'll get rid

of the side effects of industry lots of people who don't like what the Industrial Revolution has done to man they make use of all its advantages but they don't like its this advantages and they would like to see get rid of industrial society provided they can think of some way of doing it without losing their firm grip on the advantages. You know it's these people who denounce the automobile and strum away on their electric guitars anti automobile songs. I say if you get industry into space you are in a sense getting rid of at least some of the disadvantages of our industrial civilization and saving. Its advantages. They're not far away only a few thousand miles but all their waste matter all their pollution all their not all their or whatever you don't want is up there.

You don't even have to send many people up there because undoubtedly if civilization continues they'll be automated and computerized to a fare thee well. And with everything up in space none of it actually belongs to any particular spot on earth. It would pay everybody on earth to contribute all they can. Even if a small nation can only contribute paperclips let him contribute all they can to the establishment of the space economy. And it would encourage international cooperation. To the point where it would be the equivalent of a world government world government has a bad press nobody wants a world government. But I say we need a world government and I admit that might be a good idea not not to call it a world government. I figure I can call it anything you want you can call an anarchist if you want. You can call it freedom and liberty if you want. You can call it a genuine co-operative spirit amongst earth's population if you want. Just so long as it's really a world government

it's necessary you can't help it as long as the world is divided up into 150 separate regions each one of which thinks each one of which thinks it's God and that its national security comes first and everything else second. We're all going to die. So we've got to get away with it. I don't like having a world government I don't like any government they all charge me taxes I hate it. But there's no way out you got are you. Look I get letters from people saying yours for less government what they really mean is yours for a less centralized government. If Washington abdicates and there's less government at the center it means that the local bully boy on the block is the government. And I would rather have it in Washington the local bully boy knows where to find me. So there's the future I foresee as a possible one. Energy from space. Space fully exploited. A nice

computerized automated civilization. Women's lib. Also which I haven't discussed in this particular speech but for very good reasons. Revolutions in education and automatic end to racism because the earth cannot can and cannot continue under an appropriate civilization as long as some people feel rightly. That they are discriminated against. And this is going to be a sort of peaceful world a sort of world as I see it which has accomplished its aims and they're liable to be bored to death. I mean having saved them from all the different kinds of deaths or overpopulation through energy starvation through pollution through internal violence and terrorism through all this you end up with everyone just your ning themselves to death. Because after all for all of history through all of history men have been used as human beings have been used to living with risk and danger etc. etc.

still exist there. And in the end find a new place where for a period of time population can expand where you can be a pioneer where you can take your risks. It may be that the space settlers will be the cutting edge of human exploration that it is they who will explore the outer solar system it is they who will build and take part in this great starships that may someday leave the solar system forever on their slow way towards distant stars. It is through them that we may fall heir to the universe. It is through them. That we will finally outgrow the infancy of the human race. Stuck as it is to the cradle of the earth and through them we will finally become adults and expand and spread out into our proper home which is nothing less then than the entire universe. And if out there we find other creatures intelligent enough to be

expanding on their own. Then I suggest we will by that time discover that there is such a thing as a sibling herd of intelligence. Any intelligent species that has reached the point where it can expand beyond its own planetary system must have defeated those or maybe never had them. Those vile instincts which led them to fight with each other because if we can't defeat them we'll never get out into space we'll all die right here on Earth. If we get out into space it's because we have learned. How to do something better than to destroy our brother and sister. And if we do they do too. And when we meet it'll be an entirely new basis of humanity in a general sense not referring to the human species alone. After all the vast evolution of the universe from the very beginning of its existence as a cosmic egg

or as a thin scattering of dust and gas has been to increase the complexity of its parts until some of it has grown sufficiently complex to have a brain sufficiently elevated to be able to look at the universe and wonder what it is and what it's like and how best to cooperate with it to expand. It is different parts of the universe. Becoming aware of itself and it doesn't matter what the outward shape of the self-awareness is only its function. That of self-awareness. And when we can join the Brotherhood of intelligence at last we will know that the human species is finally adult. Thank you very much particularly.