Isaac Asimov and Space Exploration: "'Our Future in the Cosmos - Space'

Throughout the history of humanity, we have been extending our range until it is now planet-wide, covering all parts of Earth's surface and reaching to the bottom of the Ocean, to the top of the atmosphere, and beyond it to the Moon. We will fiourish only as long as we continue to ectend that range, and although the potential range is not infinite, it is incredibly vast even by present standards. We will eventually etend our range to cover the whole of the solar system, and then we will head outward to the stars"
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I want to discuss our future in the cosmos. One of the things I think will mean the most to us and will make the future different from the past is the coming of a "space-centered society." We are going to expand into space, and I think it is fitting and right that we should do so. All through the 50000 years of Homo sapiens, to say nothing of their hominoid precursors, humanity has been expanding its range of habitation. We don't know exactly where the first Homo sapiens made their appearance, but they have been expanding until they now inhabit the entire face of the Earth. For the first time in human history, we are faced with a situation in which we literally have no place on Earth to expand. We have crossed all the mountains; we have penetrated all the oceans. We have plumbed the atmosphere to its height and the oceans to their depths. Unless we are willing to settle down into a world that is our prison, we must be ready to move beyond Earth, and I think we are ready. We have the technological capacity to do so; all that we need is the will. I think it is quite possible, starting now, to build settlements in space, to build worlds miniature in comparison to the Earth but large in comparison to anything we have done so far. These worlds, in orbit
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WHERE DO WE WANT TO GO? - LRK -