The future of colonizing space - Neil deGrasse Tyson

A presentation to the World Governments Summit in 2018.

He pointed out that the word ‘colonising’ has a lot of bad historical baggage, and he suggests the word ‘settlement’ instead.

He does not mainly talk about technology, but political or societal motivation. He describes 3 reasons for huge societal investments in the past:

1. threat, or existential reasons - if we don’t do this we will be conquered or die,
2. religious reasons - for the glory of god, and
3. economic reasons - to become more prosperous.

Losing the space race to the Soviet Union was felt to be an example of the first type, and motivated the Apollo project. Losing the second world war motivated the Manhattan project.

Many temples, and the pyramids, are examples of the second.

The recent birth of private space companies may be the beginning of the 3rd motivation.

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