SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to have one A city of a million people On Mars by 2050. This may seem ambitious in astronomical terms because humans have never set foot on Mars. But is it possible? How long will it take people to colonize another planet? And is it ever possible for humans to colonize extrasolar worlds?
The answers to these questions largely depend on which planet you are talking about. For Mars, decades are not an unrealistic time frame. Serkan Saidam (opens in new tab)According to the deputy director of the Australian Center for Space Engineering Research and a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, human colonization of Mars is possible within a few decades.
“I believe we will have a human colony on Mars by 2050,” Saidam told Live Science.
Saydam is a mining engineer specializing in future mining research. Water would be the first major step in establishing a successful Mars colony, and it could be extracted from ice and/or hydrated minerals, according to Saydam. He felt that water would then facilitate agriculture and empowerment Grow food on MarsLike the 2015 movie “The Martian,” when Hydrogen from ice (opens in new tab) And minerals can also be used as energy sources for rocket propellants.
But there is no scientific consensus on colonizing Mars by 2050, and other scientists are less optimistic. Louis Friedman (opens in new tab)An aerospace engineer and co-founder of the nonprofit The Planetary Society, suggests Gizmodo (opens in new tab) Colonizing Mars in 2019 was unlikely for the foreseeable future, though Rachel Seidler (opens in new tab)A University of Florida neuroscientist who has worked with NASA astronauts told Gizmodo that people like to be optimistic about colonizing Mars, but it sounds “a bit pie-in-the-sky.”
Mankind, however, will reach Mars within a few decades. China plans to start shipping Human crew on Mars in 2033 (opens in new tab)when NASA’s mission is to send astronauts (opens in new tab) There in the late 2030s or early 2040s. Once humans get there, the next step might be to build a colony.
Related: How many people can the moon support?
Colonialism implied some degree of self-sufficiency but not necessarily complete independence from the world. Saydam compares Mars to a remote island where you still have to import things occasionally. “Most of the tools and equipment will be shipped from Earth,” Saydam said. “I don’t think you can build a truck on Mars.”
Mars needs to produce something to be financially viable for long-term colonization. Space tourism is an option, but Saydam points to mineral extraction as key to colonization success. For example, space mining (opens in new tab) A search for valuable materials such as platinum could create new space economies in nearby asteroids, leading to further investment and exploration.
Although Mars Our most realistic option for extraterrestrial colonization, our red neighbor is not the most suitable planet for humans. The atmosphere of Mars (opens in new tab) More than 95% carbon dioxide; It’s really cold, with average temperatures around minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius); It takes about 8.5 months for spacecraft to reach Earth; And it’s bombarded with harmful radiation.
More hospitable new homes will almost certainly be found on planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets. The problem with exoplanets is that they are very, very far away. We haven’t even sent a spacecraft to an exoplanet, and the only probes to leave our solar system were Voyager 1 and 2, which took 35 years (opens in new tab) And 41 years (opens in new tab), respectively, to go interstellar. Exoplanets are far away.
“The closest exoplanet would take thousands of years to reach with our current technology,” Frederick Marin (opens in new tab)black hole astrophysicist at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Strasbourg in France told Live Science.
These travel times may make exoplanet colonization impossible. But Marin, who runs Computer simulations for interstellar travel (opens in new tab) As a scientific curiosity, thanks to faster spacecraft, expect them to diminish in the near future.
“We know in science that every hundred years, every century, the speed of your propulsion increases by a factor of 10,” Marin said. In other words, as humans learn to travel faster and faster through space with each century, the possible travel times of exoplanets can range from a few thousand years to thousands of years and then hundreds of years.
Marin created a hypothetical scenario of reaching an exoplanet hospitable to humans at least within 500 years. A centuries-long journey would still require a spacecraft manned by multiple generations of humans, most of whom would never see the eventually colonized exoplanet.
Marine simulations suggest that about 500 people is a suitable starting population for a multigenerational colony ship. But how humans will spend the rest of their lives in spaceships and how their children will be born into interstellar travel raises ethical questions and uncertainties. and threats to climate change and other Earth-based challenges Drives humans to extinction Before we crack interstellar travel, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever colonize exoplanets.
