What If We’re Stuck Down Here?

No clue as to the veracity of this.

What If We’re Stuck Down Here?​

If I'm to be honest, I believe in a future of space colonization because I want to believe in it. It's romantic. It's adventurous. It's cool! It's also, in a worst-case scenario, the way to preserve the species in the event we ruin the Earth—a deus ex humana to bail ourselves out even if under those circumstances we wouldn't, perhaps, deserve it. I root hard for the Artemis missions and the Gateway project, which could begin construction on a lunar-orbit space station by the end of the decade, and a crewed mission to Mars in my lifetime. I dream of what's beyond that, because it's good and healthy to dream. In the way are innumerable technological hurdles, which are worth tackling for their own sake: We progress scientifically by determining which challenges can be overcome.

But what if certain challenges are not hurdles but roadblocks, and not technological but biological? If the problem is not what we can build, but what we are? It would be a huge blow to future hopes of a cosmic diaspora if the obstructions were not about time and distance, but about the fundamental weaknesses of the human body. We've long known of the deleterious effects spaceflight can have on the human body: bone loss, anemia, weakened immune systems, higher cancer risks, the list goes on. Some issues are caused by microgravity; others by the background radiation of space—NASA estimates that astronauts are exposed to the equivalent of up to 6,000 chest X-rays. Astronauts in low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station hangs out, are partially shielded from this radiation by Earth's magnetosphere, but even they suffer the effects.

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In a nutshell, we're done for as a species if we don't leave the crib...

(assuming our predecessors weren't dumped here tens of thousands of years ago akin to the Poms sending their convicts to Australia).

Until we establish moon base Armstrong/Gagarin, I'm not holding my breath. No pun intended.


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Here's an interesting take on things.

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars​

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let's imagine that Mars's lack of a magnetic field somehow is not an issue. Would you like to try to simulate what life on Mars would be like? Step one is to clear out your freezer. Step two is to lock yourself inside of it. (You can bring your phone, if you like!) When you get desperately hungry, your loved ones on the outside may deliver some food to you no sooner than nine months after you ask for it. This nine-month wait will also apply when you start banging on the inside of the freezer, begging to be let out.

Congratulations: You have now simulated—you have now died, horribly, within a day or two, while simulating—what life on Mars might be like, once you solve the problem of it not having even one gasp worth of breathable air, anywhere on the entire planet. We will never live on Mars.

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