Will humans ever leave earth?

Threetrees

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@plutonium
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Seems to be no reason to assume we ever will besides general tech optimism. Despite Elons promises feels like we are a generation off from the tech that’s needed, I don’t understand why there would be an actual market for it anyway and more than that the universe seems mostly inhospitable to man kind

kinda a bummer to think about
 
Humans have left Earth a bunch of times, as far as moving if that is what you mean, Yes one day we will have to… I’d say within 250 years.
 
one day, its in our nature.
we will need to as well for the survival of the human race
 
There could very well be a Gundam style colony in space for all we know.
 
I genuinely think that a Lunar base is quite do-able and it's only about 3 days to get there. SpaceX and NASA have the budget and intent to do it (more or less), South lunar pole is good destination for reasons of water ice there and also .... FAR less extreme periods of daylight and darkness (hope everyone realizes that in many places on the moon it is 14days of searing sunlight and then 14 days of utter blackness... = very difficult to manage temperature extremes, sufficient solar power, etc etc).

Mars is probably visitable (in 10 to 15yrs) but in my opinion (sorry Elon) there won't be a colony of more than 20 or 30 people. It's simply too hard to LEAVE Mars and return to earth due to fuel issues. So unless people sign up for a one-way trip (and they might well do that) , colonizing Mars is incredibly f'ing hard. Sabbatier process takes massive 300 to 400C temperatures, so that's v v difficult in itself.
Plus ....opportunity to travel to Mars is just once every 2yrs-ish (when the planets are close enough)

Europa (moon of Jupiter) is simply very far away and massive radiation given off from Jupiter but quite promising for existing ocean aquatic life.
Titan is interesting, moon of Saturn. Europa Clipper mission is launching soon on a Falcon Heavy ( year or two I think) and that's a planetary probe heading to Europa.

As for interstellar travel....forget chemical rocket propulsion for that --- gonna need nuclear thermal drive or an ion drive or something we haven't yet thought of. Even at 10% the speed of light (which is incredibly f'ing fast (67million mph) and probably not do-able even with some amazing propulsion system), it'd take decades to reach close stars (40yrs+ to Alpha Centauri even if we ignore accel and decel times) and so..... nope in my view interstellar travel just never happening. Mankind will end itself via killing hte planet in a few hundred years.
 
I want to hear a (good) theory on how people will terraform planets/moons to have 1g gravity.
A few years ago, Discovery had an interesting article about our obsession about trying to colonize Mars.

Their conclusion was that it's a pipedream and shouldn't be considered. After all, we have evolved for Earth's gravity. We have no idea if sperm will fertilize an egg naturally on Mars. Likewise, if it fertilizes, will it be able to plant itself within the uterus wall?

Within the article, it discussed that mice (or was it rats) were placed in the international space station to see if they would copulate. Alas, they couldn't get pregnant. Apparently, mice are fertile mammals and the biologists were shocked that none for pregnant during those ten days.
 
Yes, as long as we don't destroy ourselves first. If nothing else there's resources elsewhere.
 
I genuinely think that a Lunar base is quite do-able and it's only about 3 days to get there. SpaceX and NASA have the budget and intent to do it (more or less), South lunar pole is good destination for reasons of water ice there and also .... FAR less extreme periods of daylight and darkness (hope everyone realizes that in many places on the moon it is 14days of searing sunlight and then 14 days of utter blackness... = very difficult to manage temperature extremes, sufficient solar power, etc etc).

Mars is probably visitable (in 10 to 15yrs) but in my opinion (sorry Elon) there won't be a colony of more than 20 or 30 people. It's simply too hard to LEAVE Mars and return to earth due to fuel issues. So unless people sign up for a one-way trip (and they might well do that) , colonizing Mars is incredibly f'ing hard. Sabbatier process takes massive 300 to 400C temperatures, so that's v v difficult in itself.
Plus ....opportunity to travel to Mars is just once every 2yrs-ish (when the planets are close enough)

Europa (moon of Jupiter) is simply very far away and massive radiation given off from Jupiter but quite promising for existing ocean aquatic life.
Titan is interesting, moon of Saturn. Europa Clipper mission is launching soon on a Falcon Heavy ( year or two I think) and that's a planetary probe heading to Europa.

As for interstellar travel....forget chemical rocket propulsion for that --- gonna need nuclear thermal drive or an ion drive or something we haven't yet thought of. Even at 10% the speed of light (which is incredibly f'ing fast (67million mph) and probably not do-able even with some amazing propulsion system), it'd take decades to reach close stars (40yrs+ to Alpha Centauri even if we ignore accel and decel times) and so..... nope in my view interstellar travel just never happening. Mankind will end itself via killing hte planet in a few hundred years.

hopefully due to exhausting resources trying to travel elsewhere, that’s an irony worth reaching for I think
 
As long as we don't kill each other or set ourselves back to the stone age with some cataclysmic event.
 
Before us peasants can leave Earth for maybe Mars, we first need to wait for the US, Russia and China to fight over who owns Mars. By the time the war has ended, Mars will likely be a nuclear wasteland anyway. So no, we're probably never going anywhere.
 
Should the human race survive? Do we have the right to infest another planet with humans?
funny-comic-earth-moon-mars.jpg
 
Seems to be no reason to assume we ever will besides general tech optimism. Despite Elons promises feels like we are a generation off from the tech that’s needed, I don’t understand why there would be an actual market for it anyway and more than that the universe seems mostly inhospitable to man kind

kinda a bummer to think about

dumbmoon.gif
 
I fully believe the ultra rich will have self sustainable mansions on other planets within 60 years
 
I fully believe the ultra rich will have self sustainable mansions on other planets within 60 years

I think the practicalities are going to set you up for disappointment. Imagine the predictions people were making 60 years ago when we landed on the moon.
 
we are a generation off from the tech that’s needed,
We’ve been a generation off forever. The fact is that without a total paradigm shift in propulsion, no amount of rocket fuel is going to get us anywhere efficiently enough.

The absolute best we could ever do using chemical propulsion is Mars. And that’s only if they find a way to shield the passengers from radiation.

Musk isn’t going to do it. Even if he builds a shop that can reach Mars, whoever lands on Mars will likely die there soon after.
 
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