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It goes without saying that very few people would volunteer to live in the International Space Station if they only had a 1 percent likelihood of survival. Instead, once you get there, the Space Station is probably one of the safest places humans have ever lived. Instead of Spaceship Earth with all of its variable and surprising hazards, the Space Station is precisely designed to support human life with no untoward surprises.
An
interesting element of humanity's space exploration is that we now
track thousands of what are called "near earth objects." Many of
them are satellites we launched, including Elon Musk's cherry red
Tesla roadster which SpaceX tossed into a solar orbit on February 6,
with a dummy in a space suit at the wheel and David Bowie's "Space
Oddity" on a CD in the dashboard. But much more serious are the
natural objects zooming around and through our orbital path.
Objects
up to the size of football fields hit our planet many times each
year. They disintegrate and might be seen as shooting stars. But
large objects, mountain size, hit earth on average every 100 million
years. That was the size of the asteroid that terminated the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It will happen again and "average"
is just that. Another could show up any time. Fortunately we now have
the technology to at least theoretically divert the next mountain
headed our way. In science fiction that usually means blowing up the
offending object, but as a practical matter we could use a rocket to
nudge an asteroid just a little bit at the right time, to steer it
around earth. Or, maybe not. We might not be able to do that. We
might try and fail. It might be an object so large that we don't have
the power to change its course. Still, our odds are now better than
those for the dinosaurs.
However, asteroids are only one possible problem and we don't have a clue what might emerge as the biggest threat to our survival.
So
that's why I suggest that Mousetrap
Earth is a better metaphor than Spaceship Earth. There are lots of
good things here, but getting the cheese
on a regular basis is fraught with peril. We've gotten pretty good at
dealing with an environment that is anything but friendly t o
higher forms of life, but the challenges keep right on coming.
Spaceship Earth offered the illusion that the third rock from the sun
is like the Good Ship Lollypop, but the reality is that it has never
been good to its inhabitants. This place, it seems, is what we make
it, not what we were given.
There's an old saying that the second mouse gets the cheese, but sometimes it's the smarter one. Hopefully we are the smart mice.
The high likelihood that humanity will not survive on earth long term, given the experience of most other life forms and the certainty of an eventual asteroid strike, is the reason Elon Musk intends to colonize Mars, starting in 2026. He has an entirely rational plan to establish a Martian colony of more than 1 million people by 2070. That's the essential goal of SpaceX. That's the reason he launched the Falcon Heavy carrying his cherry red roadster this month. That's the reason he intends to begin construction of his BFR this year, designed to carry humans from Earth to Mars and back, and as a sidelight, to perhaps carry humans from New York to Singapore in half an hour and at lower cost than today's airlines.
At it's heart, Musk's plan is rooted in the idea that a single-planet civilization is not likely to succeed over time. Mother Earth kills off 99 percent of her children.
If he is successful, the bacteria in our bellies will be successful on Mars as well. And if food shipment in rockets is anything like food shipment on earth, the settlers on Mars will need mousetraps as well.
"For here am I floating in a tin can
Far beyond the world
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do ..."
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