Why We Must Colonize Space
Yesterday a lot of people watched Elon Musk revealing some of his plans on colonization of Mars at the International Astronautical Congress. And while there were a lot of exciting technical details, some major issues I anticipated were not covered. I’m sure he has his motives. Space colonization is a controversial topic for some people, though definitely not for me, and for a number of reasons.
Some people believe we should not spend our money, time and resources on this enterprise, because there are problems on Earth we still haven’t fixed. Other people believe that by colonizing other planets, we will only bring chaos to those worlds, much like we did here, on Earth. Still, another group of people believes that yeah, colonizing another planet would be cool, but is not feasible, so why even bother trying? Well, my dear pessimists, give it a deeper thought and you will see, how critical it is for us to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Arguing about space expansion, people typically assume that even if we successfully colonize a planet, everything else remains at the same level. Yes, there are some difficulties we still struggle to fix here, such as poverty, starvation, diseases, poor economic growth, wars, climate change. Yes, most of those problems are man-made or at least indirectly affected by people, so to some extent it’s reasonable to fear that people will seed this destruction on other worlds if we ever get there. And yes, space colonization is a very tricky task that requires us to gather all of our intellectual and material resources to even start getting things done the way we want them.
But let’s have a quick look at the history.
Humans evolved on one continent, but now we have almost every relatively big island populated with people. Early migration secured our development as species and that’s also how we gained diversity, not to mention the incredible cultural variety. When europeans realized there’s the New World out there, they didn’t stop because traveling by sea was dangerous, or their homes were more familiar and predictable. Their thinking was nothing like this:
“You know, let’s fix things here first. Let’s try and persuade others that we are free to practice which ever religion we want, and maybe we’ll stay here”.
Nope. They saw that opportunity and they seized it. Colonization is our natural trait. We are explorers, much like cheetahs are predators and water bears are survivors. So why resisting that one trait that makes us what we are and that got us so far?
For those fearing the negligence of the troubles we have here, I would like to remind that technological progress of the twentieth century owes a lot to the space race of the 60s. A curious mind of a scientist occupied with a challenging problem produces striking results much sooner than if there were no such pressure. Technological progress requires an outside stimulus, because it is always done for the sake of practicality. Just for a moment think of the immense difficulties of survivng, let alone flourishing in the formidable reality of another world. If we are talking about a base on Mars, there’s the issues of food, water, energy, radiation protection, medicine, communication, organization of shelter, the use of sustainable and ergonomic materials, and so much more. Sounds familiar? Now, if we take a step forward and imagine that the goal of the first Martian missions would be actual terraforming of the least hostile planet in our Solar system, there are many more challenges, such as potential construction of megastructures for sustaining humans, possibilities of changing chemical makeup of Martian air, kick starting the planet’s magnetic field, defying low gravity and pressure. The outcome of inventions that could let us make Mars a little bit more habitable may actually lead to solving a lot of difficulties on our home planet.
For instance, to provide a Martian colony with food, we need to think of new methods of food production. Mars does not have its own flora or fauna. Farming, as we know it, requires a hell of a lot resources and energy, so it is highly likely that the first Martians will have to consider plant based diet. Thus, one of our primary goals for securing a colony of people is working out new methods of gardening, processing and storing food that would also be cheap enough to implement them on another planet. The benefits of using these solutions on Earth are obvious.
Same can be said about medicine. People evolved to feel pretty good on Earth, but even here we are prone to diseases and age-related conditions. In a rather isolated place just one person with an infectious disease could threaten the whole mission. In the face of low gravity and high radiation people will have to deal with health issues on the level never experienced here, on Earth, and they probably will have to deal with them fast. Perhaps preventive medicine, early detection of diseases and the use of medical AI will become a reality both for spacefarers and Terrans.
There are certainly many more possible benefitial outcomes for us with the advent of new space technology. Just think of all the jobs it can create, and not the low profile ones. This is close to another branch of discussion, namely, AI and autonomous jobs replacing people in some sectors of economy. But I will not digress now; I’ll just say that colonization of space opens up a lot of new prospects. I’m talking about engeneering, design, mineral extraction (let’s not forget about those asteroids with all that Martian fuss), chemistry, botany, agriculture, medicine and care-taking, psychology, pedagogy, and one day, I’m sure, interplanetary trade. And that’s just a few very broad ideas of how space colony can direct our development as a civilization. There will certainly be more narrow, niche occupations.
There’s not much been said about any potential hazards we might ever bring to other worlds, and the main reason for that is that we just don’t know any worlds with their own biosystems yet. We tried to find traces of extant life on Mars, but still have nothing. So can we actually say that we will disturb the natural flow of things on a planet where no biological forms exist? Can we assume the role of the conquerors of Mars, declare it another human planet and change it for our purpose? Maybe that’s a question for ethicists. I don’t really want to go into the depths of John Wheeler’s participatory universe principle discussion and twist his concept that the universe would not exist without an observer in favor of space colonization. But the idea that Elon Musk put forward — make a back up for humanity — and the idea of spreading consciousness across the universe is very appealing to me. We don’t know if we are the only sentient life form in the universe. We don’t even know if there are worlds with nascent life forms anywhere, but taking into account the Fermi paradox, I would not gamble, but rather take some precautions.
