This blog site has on numerous occasions speculated on the ultimate fate of humanity. From a 2010 posting that we are but a step to Artificial Intelligence eventually prevailing, or a more recent one from four years ago. Sure there was Star Trek, but biological life is just too fragile to someday escape from Planet Earth. Then imagine how much energy will be required.
There have been a number of postings on deep space travel. Here is one from 2022 on THE ULTIMATE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.
Astronauts and cosmonauts have been traveling in space since Yuri Gargarin in 1961. Only 536 people have been out there, with 12 walking on the Moon. No one yet on Mars, although Elon Musk has said that Yusaku Maezawa will join him on a planned 2023-4 launch.
Now, 721 individuals have traveled to space (altitude of at least 50 miles ).
- From 47 countries
- Half from the USA, 319 men and 60 women.
- Soviet Union / Russia: 128, 122 men and 6 women.
- China: 24, 21 men and 3 women.
- Total: 1110 days by cosmonaut Oleg Konenko. The first eight are Russians.
- Single spaceflight: 437 days by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov and 371 days by astronaut Frank Rubio.
- Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams "only" spent 286 days in space.
Sunita Williams now has a total of 608 days, #12. She also holds the record for most time spent spacewalking by a women, 62 hours. Cosmonaut Anatoly Yakovlevich Solovyev has the record of 82 hours.
Not sure how he feels these days, but before his feud with Elon Musk, President Donald Trump announced that he would like astronauts to land on Mars within the next four years, or in 2029.
- Musk then concurred, with 1 million people on Mars by 2050 to prevent civilization on Earth from dying.
But the last American to walk on the Moon was Mission Commander Eugene Cernan in 1972. This was Apollo 17 on a 12-day mission, featuring the longest space walk, the longest lunar landing and the largest samples brought back to Earth. No other human has since done this. That was more than half a century ago!
The effects of spaceflight have been harmful, with symptoms like muscle atrophy and deterioration of the skeleton.
- Like sea sickness, there is space sickness. Almost half of those who have flown in space suffered from this condition.
- Other significant adverse effects include slowing of the cardiovascular system functions, decreased production of red blood cells, balance disorders, eyesight disorders, hightened cancer risk, mental issues and changes to the immune system.
- Eyesight problems from intracranial pressure would be a major concern for future deep flight missions.
- Weighlessness can change the sense of taste.
- Tears cannot be shed.
- Back and abdominal pain are common.
- There is also fluid retention, loss of body mass, nasal congestion, sleep disturbance and excess flatulence.
- Astronauts lose fluid, including up to 22% of their blood volume.
- There are also signs of premature aging.
- Cellular mutation and destruction shows from high energy photons and sub-atomic particles.
- The surface of planet Mars had a doubled radiation level associated with an aurora 25-times brighter.
- Cosmic rays and energetic particle radiation can cause cataracts and a range of other problems.
Said Cosmonaut Valery Ryumin, twice Hero of the Soviet Union: If you want to instigate the art of manslaugher, just shut two men up in an 18'x20' cabin for a month.- I can go on and on, but I'll end with a statement that many of these type of physical and psychological effects are also experienced by Arctic/Antarctic researchers and in submarines.
Eight years ago I on reported deep space travel, featuring a Scientific American article by Charles Limoli entitled Deep Space Breaker. You can read the details, but this is just one of several studies leading to a conclusion that Homo sapiens, or even an android, will just not be able to withstand very long space travel.
Here is a video titled, We Will Never be Able to Leave the Solar System, and I'll Explain Why. Want more? A 4-hour video on How Far in Space Could Humans REALLY Travel? I only found it, and watched a couple of minutes.
Forget for now our ability to survive long space travel. What about the energy required to go to a "close" place like Alpha Centauri, which is only 25 trillion miles, or 4367 lights years, away? Google AI Overview says:
The British Interplanetary Society has designed a hypothetical fusion starship for a roundtrip to Alpha Centauri to consume 7.5 years of all the energy currently used by humanity/year.- What are the odds of the region close to Alpha Centauri being habitable?
- If we had to go to another galaxy, say the Andromeda, and travel at half the speed of light, you would need to travel 572,00 times further, which would take half a million years.
- Keep in mind that light would take at least 100,000 years to just go from one end of our Milky Way Galaxy to the other. Actually, as simple as you think this should be, some more recent studies show that this diameter could well be 200,000 miles. Astrophysicists just don't know for sure.
If our kind of intelligence or better can be preserved, life on Planet Earth will be limited. If we can avoid a war to end us all, or a monstrously cataclysmic giant asteroid, or all the other potential terminal thoughts that have so far been advanced, we do have time to escape. Whether it be the expansion of our Sun in a few billion years, to a concept just advanced two days ago of an end of our universe in 10 billion years, the Big Crunch in 33 billion years, the Big Freeze in a hundred trillion years or Stephen Hawking's black holes idea of a googol years (1 followed by 100 zeroes), there is time to arrive at a solution.
I should have titled this posting: Humanity will never colonize the Universe.
- For one, here is a recent article indicating there is no planet B.
- A plus is that there is a potential Earth in at least one in ten stars.
- NASA's Kepler mission searched for over four years and found 900 Earth-sized planets with a radius up to 1.25 times Earth.
- 23 were in the habitable zone.
- There are 300 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, or roughly 90 billion about our size.
- Unfortunately, the timing of when life can occur on each planet is low.
- Good further analysis you should read.
- But the conclusion is no Planet B.
But this does not mean we are doomed to extinction.- When you think about how it might be possible to continue intelligent life, one logical conclusion is the role that Artificial Intelligence can play.
- Homo sapiens might well be a key link to someday having intelligent life continued in some form, like robots, or just information in a cloud.
- This next form of "life" should be able to find a way to survive long enough to colonize the universe.
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