Do you expect that we will eventually colonize other planets?

Question

Travel to other solar systems? If so, any time frame where this could be plausible?

Answer 1

Probably not until the end of this century at the least and we will not travel to other solar systems for a very long time.

Going to the Moon is easy. We travel at 25,000 miles an hour in space and the moon is only 300,000 miles away so it's a one or two day trip maximum.

Mars, the nearest planet, has an average CLOSE distance of 45 million miles so at 25,000 MPH that's like a 3-4 month trip just to GET there and Mars and the Earth only stay close for 6-8 months so that means you have to turn around and come back almost immediately or stay there for up to 18 months before you can start a return trip.

It takes about 15 pounds of food, water and air per person per day to live. That's about 2 tons of food, water and air for a round trip per person to Mars just to do a 9 month round trip and stay a few weeks in orbit.

It's about 11,000 pounds of food, air and water for a 2 year stay on Mars PER PERSON and you'd travel there in, currently, something the size of a Lear Jet, 12 feet across and 30 feet long and you're stuck in that for 4 months with several other people.

To colonize Mars takes building materials, heavy "Earth" moving equipment outfitted with air to mix with fuel or electric powered, a power plant made of "fuel cells" or a nuclear generator which would be huge and need a large building to house..

It took 6 people a month to build a prefabricated house near me in the open air. On Mars you do it in a space suit and you only have like 2-3 hours of air before you have to refill your tanks.

To Colonize Mars would require sending at least 20 - 50 people there minimum to stay 24-48 months. That's hundreds of tons of supplies, plus building materials, plus heavy equipment and in that time about all you could build might be a nuclear reactor plant and a building the size of a small office complex designed to house 100 or so people and equipment.

After that it's get easier, except for the 3-4 mont trip to and from Mars.

You'd probably need a huge space station like ship that is hundreds of feet around to house that many people and take that much in supplies.

We don't have the resources or technology to do this even in the next 50 years. Our current space station was supposed to be that size, but the funding wasn't there and neither was the technology to build something that big, so we scaled it down to 50 feet or so to house 6-10 people instead of 100.

The current station needs new supplies eveyr 4-6 months for those 6-10 people.

A Mars outpost would only get new supplies every 24 months and those supplies would have to last more than 24 months.

Ultimately you'd have to learn how to "make" water and air from chemcials or what is Found on Mars or be trucking it up from Earth forever.

Also you food situation is not great. Canned goods, frozen foods, dried back packing food is about all you could take.

You can't take animals to Mars, so we'd have to clone them or take up frozen embroys and "breed" them on Mars in a separate building with separate air supply incase they get sick with something like Mad Cow, otherwise you'd contaiminate the humans.

You'd have to see if Mars soil could grow plants, if not you'd have to bring up tons of "Earth" dirt to grow even tomatoes and lettuce, which would be unavailable until they could be grown there. Sorry, no salads the first 48-64 months!

See the problems.

If we can like all of these millions of people could eventually live on Mars, but it's be like living in the Chicago Towers. You never get to go "outside" without a space suit. There is no fresh air and none can be made with current techology. So you'd live and work inside an air tight building for your stay on Mars.

Answer 2

Yes, I expect that we will eventually colonize other planets.

Travel to other solar systems will be a little further away in the future, though, as there is the wee little problem of the limiting velocity of the speed of light. The closest star, proxima centauri, is a little over four light years away, over 400 years of travel at about 1% the speed of light, which is pretty fast.

Right now, the moon and mars seem like the most likely candidates for future colonies, with a permanent base planned for the moon sometime within the next 20 years. I would guess (this is a rough guess) that we will see people step on Mars in our lifetime, as technology gets better and space travel safer. This could be fifty years from now, though, which certainly would be on the other end of our lifetimes! I firmly believe that there will be an outpost of some kind on Mars within the first 100 years of this century.

Moving into space may seem foolhardy and a waste of energy and resources to some, and may even seem technologically impossible. However, I urge those who say it can't be done to look into our history and remember what people used to say about crossing the ocean. Not that the world was flat, but that it was not feasible, a waste of time and resources, etc.

We will go though. It is the next logical step in human exploration and technology.

Edit:::

NASA gets peanut compared to the rest of the US budget. Saying the money could be better spent elsewhere just means that you have no clue about the budget in this country. NASA gets less than just about all the other programs out there! Look it up!

Further EDIT:::

Earl D, good points all around, but technology isn't stagnate, and in fact is accelerating as we speak. The only reason we don't have better space traveling technology is because developing it has been on the backburner for a while. Your arguments are based on our current abilities.

Further, the plan for a trip to Mars calls for robots to build habitats before people ever get there! There would be plenty of fuel, (Hydrogen peroxide) and air already made. AND the ship doesn't have to be that small, that's the whole point of putting a base on the moon is so that we can build a bigger and more capable Mars craft that can be launched from the lower gravity of the moon. You don't have to carry all that food per person if you recycle and grow plants in an on board hydroponics facility.

Remember, just because nobody had ever seen a horseless carriage didn't mean one couldn't be built!

Answer 3

I think it's an inevitable phase in the evolution of technological civilisations like ours, assuming of course that we don't destroy our planet first.
Missions to Mars are likely in the next 20 years, with colonisation perhaps taking place in the 22nd century onwards.

Interstellar travel is clearly a much greater challenge technologically. We don't yet have a viable means of propelling a spacecraft close to the speed of light. The fuel demands are astronomical so we would need something with vast energy potential. Ideas that I have heard include anti-matter and zero-point energy.

I believe at some point hundreds or thousands of years from now, we will find a way of getting between stars very quickly using wormholes or warp drive. Einstein-Rosen bridges have already been predicted and warp drives COULD be possible.

I've read Arthur C Clarke's 3001 and in that man has still not escaped the solar system. I'm not going to argue with Mr Clarke so (unless something unexpected happens) interstellar travel is probably not likely during this millenium.

Answer 4

Not permanently, no...or it would be so far off into the future as to ber unable to imagine what kind of society might evolve which could accomplish such an incredible task.

As for our current civilization and the next millennium or two...no way, we're stuck in this solar system and terraforming Mars or large numbers of people living in permanent artificial environments across the solar system, I think, is a flight of fantasy. Some people seem to flippantly think such things are a natural progression without pragmatic consideration of the effort and resources involved.

That said, we could, within 200 years or so, have small numbers of people (a few dozen to a few hundred), living much of their lives on Moon or Mars bases or perhaps on asteroids. I would hesitate to call them "colonies," more like mining camps and scientific outposts (something akin to Antarctica today).

Answer 5

Mars is the only other planet with even a remote chance of supporting humans. Other solar systems - too far away. After 49 years of space exploration, we only developed rockets that can carry enough fuel to get up to about 17,000 mph, and still don't have a glue good enough to keep insulating foam attached to the rocket's fuel tank. Colonizing the moon or mars is just a joke for a long time to come. To many problems here on Earth that need the money.

Answer 6

Do those religions coincide with Bible coaching? Nopes...as properly you may anticipate a concern all ya want..the likelyhood of the human race ever colonizing something formerly we've come to our very own destruction in the international is particularly inconceivable. The Bible says that too. we gained't even make it to the Moon and back over 0.5 the time or land a return and forth on a wet smash day the cape. So pass parent...Love in Christ, ~J~ <><

Answer 7

Unfortunately I don't think we can. How can we do when we haven't have enough resources to explore the other far-flung regions of this world? or more sarcastically realistic, we do not even have time to solve the famine in Africa! The most probable thing that we can do is send war weapons into space and gear it up into the direction of the other nations that we think are spying on us. Now that is more likely!

Answer 8

Not in the foreseeable future. maybe in a millennium or so.

Answer 9

nope

Answer 10

NO.