Yuri Milner is a scientist, business owner, philanthropist, and author of the book Eureka Manifesto. The book explores how humanity fits into the universe and what the future of both might be. He explores space colonization, the mission for our civilization, and the need to look beyond Earth to find common goals.
Along with his wife Julia, Yuri Milner is one of several people who holds a deep and compelling interest in space exploration. The names Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are familiar to most people. However, they may not know each person’s motivation and full story.
Elon Musk and His Plan to Establish Permanent Colonization on Mars
SpaceX boss Elon Musk is currently developing a series of Starship rockets. The rockets will transport people and their cargo around the solar system. Eventually, Musk hopes to develop a self-sustaining colony on Mars. He feels the colony is essential to the long-term survival of humankind as a species.
Although he has had to delay the colony’s development several times, Musk’s new goal is to get it underway between 2024 and 2026 and fully self-sustainable by 2050. Musk also points out that Earth is interstellar and has existed for approximately 4.5 billion years. He feels that sending rockets and colonizing Mars is essential to our long-term survival as a planet and a species, since no one can determine how much time the planet has left.
Jeff Bezos on the Founding of Blue Origin
The founder and retired CEO of Amazon founded Blue Origin as part of his mission to preserve the Earth. He feels that it is necessary to find new material resources and energy and expand beyond Earth’s present limitations to extend life on this planet. To accomplish this goal, Bezos has developed reusable launch vehicles on behalf of Blue Origin that is economical, safe, and serve people in the civil, defense, and commercial sectors.
Over 50 years have passed since John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin first stepped foot on the moon. Bezos desires to colonize the moon permanently and make it possible for people to live there. Blue Origin has sent 20 test flights since 2012 and had three successful escape tests in that same time.
Yuri Milner Explores Life in Unknown Places
As Yuri Milner explains in his short book Eureka Manifesto, his mission for our civilization is to search for life beyond Earth and make it sustainable. Unlike more obvious targets like the moon and Mars itself, Milner has set his sights on our neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, and closer to home a small, ice-filled moon of the planet Saturn.
Yuri Milner announced in late 2018 that he did not plan to wait for NASA to explore the tiny planet known as Enceladus. He plans to establish a plan for flight, exploration, and analysis of the moon Enceladus via his Breakthrough Initiatives projects. Once accomplished, this will be the first-ever private mission to explore deep space.
Milner credits the idea for writing Eureka Manifesto and exploring Enceladus back to reading Intelligent Life in the Universe by Carl Sagan when he was a child. He felt fascinated by the idea of intelligent beings beyond Earth. He also understood that civilization is fragile and desired to do what he could to safeguard it by encouraging fundamental knowledge and space exploration.
Yuri Milner has always been willing to explore possibilities that others do not see. Covered in ice and only 313 miles wide, many have concluded that Enceladus is not useful to humanity. However, Milner sees its potential for cellular life forms in the warm ocean 30 miles underneath it, and plans to explore the plumes shooting out from the moon to see if they contain evidence of organic life.
