Towards the ambitious goal, Asgardia is seeking volunteers, engineers and scientists who can collectively overcome the challenges of life in space.
Mr Öpik said: “If we don’t bother going to space and living there, then we might as well not bother pretending that we want to continue to evolve and survive.
“The late Professor Stephen Hawking, whom I was honoured to know, said that we have to be able to live off Earth otherwise extinction is an inevitability.
“That makes sense, my grandfather was a professional astronomer and he talked about the threat of asteroid impacts.
“There’s as 100 percent chance an object large enough to wipe out most or all of the human race will hit the Earth, we just don’t know when it’s going to happen.”
