Tomorrow's Future, for a Better Today

Mankind will not remain on Earth forever, but in its quest for light and space will at first timidly penetrate beyond the confines of the atmosphere, and later will conquer for itself all the space near the Sun.
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky

The Sun appears to have been active for 4.6 billion years and has enough fuel to go on for another five billion years or so. At the end of its life, the Sun will start to fuse helium into heavier elements and begin to swell up, ultimately growing so large that it will swallow the Earth. After a billion years as a red giant, it will suddenly collapse into a white dwarf -- the final end product of a star like ours. It may take a trillion years to cool off completely.
- Some Web Site


Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
- William Butler Yeats

World Domination Enterprises is no joke. There is a plan.

Phase 1
The oil's in the desert... where the sun is. So we should use what's left of our oil to produce better solar technology, then set our bio-engineered plague of oil-bootstrapped self-replicating energy-gathering insectoids loose upon the deserts. Imagine a hoard of solar powered nanobots that consume sand & light and produce vast fields of self repairing solar-electric-hydrogen collection panels. It will be cheaper to pipe out the hydrogen than to wire the power lines. So build a hydrogen economy capable of terra-forming Mars.

Phase 2
As our sun approaches red giant stage, we can migrate outward to one of Jupiter's moons. By then a lot of folks will be thinking "New Orleans". We can stick it out during the burning times, only to be rewarded with a cold white dwarf. No, maybe it's better to take the Martian terra-forming knowledge on the road. The big road.

Phase 3
Sustainability is a myth. Things do fall apart. Thermodynamics has a direction. The manufacture of environments to spec is the new black. No sense saving the earth when it's only going to be engulfed in the inevitable flame-out of a hot yellow star. Better to learn how to start with a destroyed planet, and build the oxygenated environment we need. It will be good practice for later, when this local star system is transformed beyond our scale of control.

So to recap:

1. Consume Earth's remaining resources in a quest for terra-forming technologies.
2. Set same technologies loose on Moon, then Mars, and later Europa.
3. Farm Jupiter's hydrogen, and use these power resources to engineer interstellar planet-finding passenger vessels.

For now:
1. Keep showing them remakes of Space 1999 reruns.
2. Tell them it's "sci-fi".

I'm sure you all feel better knowing that there is a plan. In these uncertain times, it's good to have a common goal for focus and unity. Stick with me, baby. I'm gonna make you a star.