In a 1979 interview conducted by NASA veteran and journalist Phil Konstantin for Southwest Airlines magazine, Isaac Asimov held forth on the odds of humans surviving on Earth and flourishing in space. An excerpt:
Southwest Airlines:
How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?
Isaac Asimov:
Well, now you’ve put your finger right on it. In order to have all of these wonderful things in space, we don’t have to wait for technology – we’ve got the technology, and we don’t have to wait for the know-how – we’ve got that too. All we need is the political go-ahead and the economic willingness to spend the money that is necessary. It is a little frustrating to think that if people concentrate on how much it is going to cost they will realize the great amount of profit they will get for their investment. Although they are reluctant to spend a few billions of dollars to get back an infinite quantity of money, the world doesn’t mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.
Southwest Airlines:
Do you think that we will avoid a self-inflicted global catastrophe?
Isaac Asimov:
The chances don’t look so good, but they don’t look so black, either. The birth rate is going down over most of the world, and if it continues to go down, then perhaps we can bring a halt to the population explosion before it completely overwhelms us. There is always the danger of nuclear war, but we’ve kept away from it now for thirty-five years. And maybe we can keep on keeping away from it. We’ve been polluting and using up our energy, but I think more and more we are aware of the dangers of this. And perhaps, we will do something about it. To my way of thinking, the biggest obstacle to solving the problems we have, and we have some of the solutions, is that the world is dividing up into separate nations, all of which are more concerned over their own short-term interests than over the long-term survival of the human species. And as long as that is so, then I don’t think we will have a chance, because we will all go down the tube quarreling, so to speak.
Southwest Airlines:
Do you see this as the foreseeable future, or will we have enough sense to avoid this?
Isaac Asimov:
Well, I do see this tendency to draw back from the brink. In other words, we to tend to realize that we can’t afford to quarrel, the earth is too small for that, and the United States and the USSR do keep talking and now it looks as though the US and China are going to keep talking. I would like to see the Soviet Union and China have a detente, too. I would like to see initiative toward peace between Israel and Eygpt expanded to include the rest of the Middle East. All of these things are hopeful beginnings. The various detentes are hopeful beginnings, but they are only beginnings, and at the rate they are moving, we will never make it. So, we will have to go faster.•