There are some days in which it is hard for people to envision a positive future, let alone a sustainable one at all and we stop moving forward or caring. That's why it's important to read books that remind us of the continuing value of what humanity could be and how we could possibly get there from our present moment. Michio Kaku's 2018 book The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth to me is one of those books that inspires in that very important way. In The Future of Humanity, the professor of theoretical physics lays out for the general reader his optimism for humanity's interstellar future in logical steps, describing how humanity could use continuously improving technologies to leapfrog first to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
While it seems like in the present moment that a multiplanetary, even galactic civilization is impossible science fiction fantasy, Kaku makes a good case for why it can and could be otherwise. Like any good author, he early on gives us context on our present moment and how we arrived at that point, in order to build a case for how we could progress even further forward. In the introductory chapters, he shows how humanity got to where it is today by progressing through various "waves" of scientific and technological development, starting in the 19th century with the development of theories surrounding mechanics and thermodynamics that enabled the Industrial Revolution (Kaku, 2018, p.12). Moving through the 20th century, scientists discovered the laws of electricity and magnetism, allowing electrical devices to become the norm and allowing us to develop the first space programs. Currently, Kaku sees us in the third wave of the Internet, supercomputer and highly developed forms of telecommunications underwritten by advances involving the transistor and laser. What is next for humanity?
Kaku here intertwines popular culture and science fiction and utilizes it to better envision our possible futures. In the first part of The Future of Humanity, Kaku sees humanity as first colonizing our solar system before moving even further out into the stars and galaxy by utilizing technologies of the fourth wave, or the infant technologies of the present moment seen in artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnologies. Assuming technological progress continues at the rapid pace it has to the present, Kaku believes these technologies should be ready for us by the next century and will able to help us to build a moon base and terraform Mars through self-replicating, autonomous robots and specially engineered crops and building materials to create our first settlements and waystations to the stars (such as on Jupiter and the asteroids as well). Even farther into the future, Kaku sees fifth wave technologies (akin to those in most science fiction novels and movies, like Star Trek) like antimatter engines, nanoships, laser sails, and ramjet fusion machines further aiding our expansion into the galaxy at large for our descendants, who may have at this point have built starships that are equipped to travel swiftly and protect their perhaps genetically-engineered travelers.
While most of these latter projects and technologies have barely emerged from the enterprising minds of science fiction writers, scientists, and even entrepreneurs onto drawing boards and into laboratories at NASA or private companies like SpaceX, Kaku shows readers how present trends bode well for our continued development: the declining cost of sending materials into space (partially due to private companies incentivized to profit from potential moon bases, asteroid mining and space tourism by developing cheaper and easier modes of travel that involve less fuel and travel time without compromising safety too much), the potential of ultra-strong carbon nanotubes as building materials for a space elevator and bases and for robotic assembly of machines in orbit, and an emerging space race among nations that has begun to renew interest in space programs. (For example, Kaku cites President Trump's announcement that he has asked NASA to accelerate the current time-table for putting American astronauts on Mars and China is looking past launching satellites to its own landing on the moon or Mars, with national pride at stake as much as scientific advancement.)
But...there are of course obstacles to humanity's progression from a uniplanetary to a multiplanetary and galactic species: the pesky laws of physics. The two most handy classifications/scales of civilization are Kardashev's three-rung typology of civilizations based on energy consumption and A-Z scale based on informational consumption conceived by the late astronomer Carl Sagan. Kardashev sees a Type I society as one that uses energy that reaches the planet from its home star, a Type II as directly utilizing all the energy its sun produces, and a Type III as having outstripped these energy needs and instead uses the entire galaxy as an energy source. Sagan's classification also sees considerable energy needs to sustain a civilization's consumption of information undergirding its continued scientific, cultural, social, political and economic development, but allows for progression up the scale without using more energy via the continued development of more efficient, sophisticated and miniaturized computers and similar devices. However, the magnitudes are staggering for moving up on each scale, anywhere from a factor of ten billion and one hundred billion. (Yikes!) At the present moment, we are a 0.7 civilization on the Kardashev scale, as we have not deployed technologies like space-based solar or fusion to produce and consume the energy of a Type I civilization, for other physics-and-biologically based of continued issues like nuclear proliferation, climate change, and bioterrorism. Yet Kaku is optimistic that we will find ways to continuously meet our changing energy needs and even rise to the level in the far future where we can draw energy from our universe and other universes, such as machines like a Dyson sphere (which harvest star energy) to even technologies that transmit our consciousnesses rather than our physical bodies across vast distances.
The latter reasons of energy and informational consumption barriers are ones where I became admittedly skeptical that we'd reach the Type I level any time soon that would allow us to sustainably invest in a spacefaring civilization. Our current society is hard-pressed to be sustainable and one that requires increasingly vast spaces and energy needs (from one planet and star to solar systems, galaxies and even universes) seems similarly problematic. There's also the omnipresent issues surrounding the energy needs and physics behind ships that are sub-light or faster-than-light traveling and if they are possible to develop at all (like the Star Trek warp drive). That's not even considering the various ways in which humanity can self-destruct before we settle other planets and moons, like climate change, bioterrorism, nuclear holocaust, or even the continued rise of dangerous political attitudes and movements. The seeds for all of the technologies that Kaku speculates as guiding our space-faring future are all there, it's ultimately a matter of continuing to survive through the latter obstacles so that we have a chance to develop them.
Notwithstanding the various obstacles to humanity's future in space that Kaku very elegantly lays out for the general reader, nonetheless one has to commend his grand, big-picture thinking and guarded optimism in The Future of Humanity. Without digging too deep into cliches, Kaku's enthusiasm and vision reminds us all that despite many harrowing obstacles, there is probably a way forward if we care to look for it.
Works Cited:
Kaku, Michio. (2018). The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth. Doubleday Publishing Group.
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