you don't actuallty need a habitable planet to colonize, with modern tachnology you could land on any planet and create your own atmosphere.
You played too much Spore :P what is theoretically possible isn't necessarily realistic. Also you do need enough ressources, unless you can turn stone into water I doubt that a planet like Mars could sustain a huge human colony. Importing everything from earth isn't really an option.
In my opinion, space colonization is very negative solution to whatever problem. whilst space exploration could be a blessing to us. It's a very short term solution to move a problem to another location, if we are overcrowding earth we must control ourselves, if we are running short on resources we must spend what we have more efficiently (use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels....). whereas exploring the universe, discovering things we haven't yet, brings us closer to the truth of how we came to be.
No....space exploration IS the long term and inevitable solution when you consider that no matter how efficient we are, we're going to run out of resources or the Earth will become uninhabitable due to the Sun moving along the natural life of a star.
I also don't see how discovering the "truth" is a negative outcome.
First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space.
have to agree with Hawkings on this one. out there is where we will finally be tested in everything from sheer will, to intellect, to physical strength. if we cannot explore this galaxy, then why even live in it.
I think it's a viable option, albeit far in the future.
Plus it depends on where we're going and what we plan to do.
The immediate thought is Mars, but unless we want to live in domes, we need to terraform which potentially could take years and years.
A moon base seems more like a military option than a solution to population overcrowding.
My thought is we first need a way to invent faster-than-light travel so we can go to systems that are potentially sufficient hosts such as the commonly used Beta Centauri.
You played too much Spore :P what is theoretically possible isn't necessarily realistic. Also you do need enough ressources, unless you can turn stone into water I doubt that a planet like Mars could sustain a huge human colony. Importing everything from earth isn't really an option.
You're probably right, its been estimated that it would take a thousand years to get Mar's atmosphere even to the point where you could venture outside wearing an air filter mask. As for water, there is ice on the poles of Mars that might contain water, but it would not be enough to sustain a large population. Plus we're pretty short on water on earth anyways, so importing would probably not be an option. That being said, scientists think that the nearest planet that might be able to sustain life is thousands of light years away, which means even if people did invent faster than light space travel, it would still take thousands of years to get there. Large scale space colonization isn't really an option, at least no now or the next hundred years, but you could probably have a small colony on mars or another similar planet.
