Colonise Mars: The ONLY option

Stephen Hawking stated that humanity faces two options: either we colonize space within the next two hundred years and build residential units on other planets, or we face the prospect of long-term extinction.

If you take a look at evolution on Earth, 99.9 percent of all life forms have become extinct. When things change, either you adapt or die. That’s the law of Mother Nature. We NEED to adapt, we HAVE to adapt, we simply MUST if we are to survive as a species.

As a human species, we face various hazards. First of all, we have self-inflicted problems like global warming, nuclear proliferation and bio-engineered germ warfare. Plus, Mother Nature has hurled at the Earth a number of extinction cycles. The threat of extinction as a result of asteroids cannot be ignored. Just last month, the European Space Agency identified an asteroid that is likely to collide with earth in 2084. The asteroid 2019 SU3, could plunge the earth into an Ice Age. The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program to help them escape and that’s why the dinosaurs are not here today. But, we do.

We’ve had three waves of scientific innovation. The first wave, the Industrial Revolution, gave us the steam engine, the locomotive, and factories. The second wave was electricity and magnetism, whereby we had TV, internal combustion cars, a beginning of the space program. The third revolution was high tech: computers, lasers, the Internet.

Now we have the fourth wave of innovation: artificial intelligence, biotech, and nanotech. That’s going to change the way we view other planets, space, the universe.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said of humanity that ‘In the long run a single-planet species will not survive’. He stated categorically that we must find other planets to populate. I know that Ruby will argue against a programme to colonise other planets but, wake up and smell the coffee; it is already happening. Currently, scientists agree that the best option is Mars, which can be reached in about eight months. Elon Musk’s SpaceX goal is to land humans on Mars by 2024. That’s just five years’ time. The ultimate aim of course is to colonize Mars.

The idea is frightening to those who dislike change, to those who find it hard to adapt. There are lots of imaginary obstacles. Many people say Mars is cold and desolate, and there’s nothing to grow there. But, we can genetically modify plants and algae to thrive in the Martian atmosphere. You may ask who’s going to do the heavy lifting? And that would be a good question. I think we’d all like to imagine the amazing futuristic cities that we could build on Mars but how is that even possible? Well, robots are going to become much more adapted to working in these harsh environments by the end of this century, so we expect to see robotic construction workers building the fantastic domed cities you see in science fiction novels.

The flood gates have opened and there is no stopping it. The colonization of Mars is only the tip of the Ice Age Iceberg. Silicon Valley billionaires are opening up their cheque books to the tune of $100 million to build the first star ship to go to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. We’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood to think that you have to have a gigantic star ship, like The Enterprise, with heroic captains, like Captain Kirk. But the first star ship that goes to Proxima Centauri could be the size of a postage stamp—a computer chock full of sensors and cameras, with a parachute on it. You inflate the parachute by shooting a laser beam at it from Earth, maybe 800 megawatts of energy, which would shoot these tiny parachutes up to 20 percent the speed of light. That is doable, believe it or not. So in just 20 years some of them may reach the nearest star, using off-the-shelf technology.

Looking further into the future, physicists are already dreaming about the post-chemical rocket era when we might use antimatter, fusion power, or ramjet reactors in order to travel at 50 percent the speed of light, which could take us to the stars.

As you can see, our space exploration is continuing at a rapid rate, and shows no signs of stopping soon. It is only a matter of time until planet earth becomes uninhabitable, due to the suns luminosity increasing or an asteroid hitting the other. If the Human race wants to survive, we MUST colonise multiple planets. There is no other way to avoid extinction. It is the only option.