Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth
The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku explores the possibilities and challenges of human civilization becoming a space-faring species, ranging from colonizing Mars to traveling to other star systems. It presents an optimistic view of humanity's potential to achieve a Type I civilization status and beyond.
There’s a lot of attention on space travel these days, with privately owned ventures like SpaceX making headlines in their mission to take customers into the great beyond.
Sending rockets into space has been a human endeavor for quite some time, going back further than the 1950s, which saw the so-called space race between the US and Russia.
The first major scientific breakthrough in space travel came from the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In 1903, he published work that included the Tsiolkovsky equation, which provided a solid mathematical relationship between a rocket’s fuel and the rate of speed it could achieve. With this equation, Tsiolkovsky revealed that it was indeed possible for a rocket to escape the Earth’s atmosphere, and scientists could now calculate how much fuel was needed to travel to the moon or Mars.
Tsiolkovsky’s work laid the foundation for other trailblazers like the American scientist Robert Goddard. It was Goddard who first made the switch from powdered to liquid fuel, as well as introducing efficient multi-staged rockets made up of multiple fuel tanks jettisoned as dead weight after use.
More advancements came in the 1940s. Wernher Von Braun was a graduate student of physics when Germany began its militarization under the Nazi regime. He found work as a rocket scientist with the nation’s massive push to develop cutting-edge weapons. Being strictly a rocket nerd, he wasn’t interested in politics when he accepted generous amounts of government funding and was made the head of the V-2 project, or Vengeance Weapon 2.
With a wealth of funding and the best scientists at his disposal, von Braun’s V-2 rocket was three times faster than the speed of sound and invulnerable to defenses. While it set new records in rocketry, it would also prove devastating when used as a missile against the cities of London and Antwerp during 1944.
Von Braun was later arrested by the Gestapo after witnessing the slave labor camps that helped build his rockets and he expressed regret about contributing to the Nazi war machine. Nevertheless, von Braun would be integral to the space race that followed.
The Future of Humanity (2018) explores the challenges we face finding new homes on other, potentially hostile, planets. As physicist Michio Kaku shows us, this scenario is no longer science fiction, but rather a very pressing concern for scientists and future-minded entrepreneurs. Kaku presents the options currently being explored as well as the many problems that are on the verge of being solved.
Ich bin begeistert. Ich liebe Bücher aber durch zwei kleine Kinder komme ich einfach nicht zum Lesen. Und ja, viele Bücher haben viel bla bla und die Quintessenz ist eigentlich ein Bruchteil.
Genau dafür ist Blinkist total genial! Es wird auf das Wesentliche reduziert, die Blinks sind gut verständlich, gut zusammengefasst und auch hörbar! Das ist super. 80 Euro für ein ganzes Jahr klingt viel, aber dafür unbegrenzt Zugriff auf 3000 Bücher. Und dieses Wissen und die Zeitersparnis ist unbezahlbar.
Extrem empfehlenswert. Statt sinnlos im Facebook zu scrollen höre ich jetzt täglich zwischen 3-4 "Bücher". Bei manchen wird schnelle klar, dass der Kauf unnötig ist, da schon das wichtigste zusammen gefasst wurde..bei anderen macht es Lust doch das Buch selbständig zu lesen. Wirklich toll
Einer der besten, bequemsten und sinnvollsten Apps die auf ein Handy gehören. Jeden morgen 15-20 Minuten für die eigene Weiterbildung/Entwicklung oder Wissen.
Viele tolle Bücher, auf deren Kernaussagen reduziert- präzise und ansprechend zusammengefasst. Endlich habe ich das Gefühl, Zeit für Bücher zu finden, für die ich sonst keine Zeit habe.
Hol dir mit Blinkist die besten Erkenntnisse aus mehr als 7.000 Sachbüchern und Podcasts. In 15 Minuten lesen oder anhören!
Jetzt kostenlos testen
Blink 3 von 12 - Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit
von Yuval Noah Harari
