http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/ (Pardon the Language)
This is an article about an interview with a very interesting man: Elon Musk. The article is mostly about space travel and how governments, as well as civilians, are writing it off as impossible, unnecessary, or at best a thing of the distant future, but not for us to worry about. Elon contends that space travel and space colonization is as noble a humanitarian goal as ending world hunger or disease. By colonizing other planets or solar systems, we would make humanity immortal and potentially becoming the first civilization to colonize other planets. The fact that there is absolutely no evidence of any other civilizations colonizing other planets is quite troubling. Earth is relatively new. It would take an advanced species only .01% of the universe's lifespan to spread throughout the galaxy and beyond. Statistically it should have happened at some point. Perhaps all the advanced civilizations didn't look to the stars until it was too late. We shouldn't let that happen to us.
I think it is interesting that we have lost the desire to go out into space. I wasn't around for the first space race but it sounded like it was a very big deal back then. Humanity has always been about expanding, exploring, and finding new land but now that we have explored a lot of the land on earth we seem content with limiting our endeavors to intellectual exploration. Physical exploration still has its merits though, if we were able to colonize other planets and find a way to be self-sustainable, the population burden on earth would be less. In essence space colonization could be a solution to ending world hunger.
ReplyDeleteI think that even if it's not possible, some cool discoveries might come out of researching it. I'm with Elon
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