Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth (with the single exception of the catastrophic destruction of space itself). Will this happen before our technical civilisation disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it for ever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth.

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Martin Rees was a contemporary British cosmologist and astrophysicist. Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He was the fifteenth Astronomer Royal from 1995 to 2025, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2004 to 2012, and President of the Royal Society from 2005 to 2010. Read more on Wikipedia →

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