My grandfather moved with all his kids and my mom never went to South Africa because he wanted to use it as a base（基础） of exploration（探险）. So he had this little plane that he liked to fly all over the place and he flew it all through Africa and Asia. And he was the first person to fly from South Africa to Australia. And he did this in a plane with no electronic instruments. And in some places they had diesel（柴油机） and some places they had gasoline（汽油） and he had to rebuild（重建） the engine according to whatever fuel they had. So it's lucky he survived（幸免于） on that one.
But he was sort（种类） of an amateur（爱好者） archaeologist（考古学家）. He liked to explore（探险） things. I think that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization（文明） and out there among the stars, this is very exciting. This makes me look forward to the future. This makes me want that future. You know, there are things, there need to be things that make you look forward to waking up in the morning.
You wake up in the morning, you look forward to the day, look forward to the future. A future where we are a spacefaring civilization and out there among the stars, I think that's very exciting. That is the thing we want. Whereas（然而） if you knew we would not be a spacefaring civilization（文明） but forever（永远） confined to Earth, this would not be a good future. That would be very sad, I think. I did build rockets（火箭） when I was a kid but I didn't think I'd be involved in this.
It was really more from the standpoint（立场） of what are the things that need to happen in order for the future to be an exciting and inspiring（鼓舞人心的） one. And I really think there's a fundamental（基本的） difference if you sort（种类） of look into the future between a humanity（人性） that is a spacefaring civilization（文明） that's out there exploring（探险） the stars on multiple planets. And I think that's really exciting and compared with one where we are forever confined（限制） to Earth until at some eventual（最终的） extinction（消失） event. If there are two futurists and one futurist, we're out there among the stars and the things we read about and see in science fiction movies, the good ones are true. We have these starships and we're going to see what other planets are like. We're a multi-planet species and the scope（范围） and scale（刻度） of consciousness（意识） has expanded across many civilizations（文明） and many planets and many star systems.
This is a great future. This is a wonderful thing to me and that's what we should strive（努力） for. I think the value（价值） of viewing（看待） inspiration（灵感） is very much underrated. No question. But I want to be clear. I'm not trying to be anyone's savior.
I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad. I think there's, I think I look at the future from a standpoint of the probabilities（可能性）. It's like a branching stream（溪流） of probabilities（可能性）. And there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate（加速） one thing or slow（ 放慢速度） down another thing. Introduce something new to the probability stream. Sustainable（可以忍受的） energy will happen no matter what.
If there was no Tesla, Tesla never existed, it would have to happen out of necessity（需要）. It's total（全部的） logical（合逻辑的）. If you don't have sustainable energy, it means you have unsustainable energy. Eventually（终于） you'll run out and the laws of economics（ 经济学） will drive civilization（文明） towards sustainable（可以忍受的） energy inevitably. Then there's becoming a multi-panel（面板） species and space Frank（免费邮寄特权） civilization（文明）. This is not inevitable（必然的）.
It's very important to appreciate（欣赏） this is not inevitable（必然的）. The sustainable energy future I think is largely（主要地） inevitable（必然的）. But being space Frank civilization is definitely not inevitable. If you look at the progress in space, in 1969 we were able to send 72 moon. In 1969, then we had the space shuttle. The space shuttle could only take people to low earth orbit.
Then the space shuttle retired（退下） and the United States could take no one to orbit. So that's the trend（倾向）. The trend is down to nothing. This is not a mistake when they think that technology just automatically（自动地） improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better.
And actually, it will, I think, by itself degrade（ 降低…的身份）. You look at great civilizations like ancient Egypt and they were able to make the permits（ 许可证） and they forgot how to do that. And the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts（沟渠）. They forgot how to do it. I just think that there have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Like（喜欢）, why do you want to live?
What's the point? What inspires（激发） you? What do you love about the future? And if we're not out there, if the future is not included being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that it's incredibly（非常） depressing（压抑的） if that's not the future that we're going to have.