Well, mine is not an absolute "shouldn't". But I think we probably won't want to once all the information is in, at least not in the near future. I think settlements as in the Antarctic habitats for sure. But colonies - just don't 'see it.
First, for the same reason we don't colonize Anatarctica, or the sea bed, or build cloud colonies in the upper Earth atmosphere. It's technically possible, but there doesn't seem to be any point. Not for colonization.
WHAT'S IT FOR?
Buckminster cloud colonies
These are surely easier to build than the Venus cloud colonies
Will We Build Colonies That Float Over Venus Like Buckminster Fuller's "Cloud Nine"?
At cloud levels you can see the sun, air pressure is normal, temperature is fine, you can build lightweight low tech constructions with pressure equalized inside and out. You need to protect from sulfuric acid but that is something we can do. You don't have to protect from the vacuum of space.
And those are easier to build than lunar colonies, and Mars is harder than any of those, I believe. The Venus upper atmosphere is surprisingly habitable - click through to that article to find out why.
So we need a reason to be there.
But it's hard to think of any reason to live on Mars or in the Venus atmosphere, not one that could make it worthwhile as a place to build a place to live, given how hugely more expensive it will be to live there.
NOT A BACKUP
I don't buy the "backup" argument. First, you can't sustain a hundreds of billions of dollars program for a thousand years or more on the basis that some day humans will need it as a backup. It would take thousands of years to make Mars sufficiently habitable to be worth even considering as a backup to Earth. Who is going to pay? All the solutions to make it more habitable involve massive mega-engineering - planet sized thin film mirrors, or 200 nuclear power stations operating full time 24/7. Surely Earth would be the priority, not Mars?
I can see this only working for very wealthy people, who buy a house in space much as they might by a luxury yacht or a private jet. And then want to be funded by everyone else to support their expensive lifestyle. I'm not saying they would see it that way themselves. They probably genuinely think they are the forefront of a movement that will save the Earth. But in effect they would be asking us all to fund this dream they have, and to buy into it and believe in it along with them - because there is no way it could pay for itself. Just getting there is only a tiny part of the story.
And -it's no good as a backup anyway. Even if something happened to Earth - and disasters causing extinctions are not common, despite the movie genre - about once every hundred million years for asteroid caused ones - they would never make Earth even remotely as uninhabitable even as a terraformed Mars. And would not make humans extinct on Earth. I haven't heard of any natural disaster that would do that likely to happen on a planet like ours circling a quiet sun, far from the galactic core, and with a modest level of meteorite impacts -with no really big impacts for over three billion years.
Yes, half a billion years from now Earth will become uninhabitable. But that is long enough for humans to evolve a second time from the simplest of multicellular creatures.
Why We Can't "Backup Earth" On Mars, The Moon, Or Anywhere Else In Our Solar System also End Of All Life On Earth - A Billion Years From Now - Can It Be Avoided - And Who Will Be Here Then?
Then there are more reasons than that.
PLANETARY PROTECTION
A planet that is viable as a place for humans to live is likely to have habitats where life can exist already. There's only one candidate indeed, Mars. Not very habitable but it may have present day life. Some suggest Europa's ocean, living some hundred kilometers below the surface. Doesn't seem viable to me, but in any case same problem, it may have its own indigenous life.
So that's a reason, to protect those creatures, those lifeforms, so we can learn from them. Will We Meet ET Microbes On Mars? Why We Should Care Deeply About Them - Like Tigers
RESPONSIBILITIES.
If you start off introducing life to a planet you start a process that irreversibly changes that planet. How can we possibly know enough to do this? There are many things to go wrong, see my
Imagined Colours Of Future Mars - What Happens If We Treat A Planet As A Giant Petri Dish?
How do we direct it into the right scenario, the nice green one third from right? How do we know that that is even possible, given no previous experience of terraforming?
See also my Our Ethical Responsibilities To Baby Terraformed Worlds - Like Parents and Trouble With Terraforming Mars
Not that we never should do this. But surely this is something that ETs do at a later stage, in a millions of years old civilization, when they can take on projects that last for millions of years, can pay for vastly expensive projects like this, and know they will be able to see them out? It's not that I think we should never do it, but that we are too young to do it. A bit like a young girl of seven playing with her dolls and saying she wants to be a mummy. She has no idea what the responsibilities are involved, and nor do we, yet. When she grows up, maybe she will be a mother. But it isn't yet the right time for her to make that decision. In th e same way it isnot yet the righth time for us to decide to have a baby terraformed planet, seems to me.
And - if we are going to be a responsible parent for a terraformed planet - well we have to have a stable civilization. Terraforming won't make your civilization stable. Indeed could easily go the other way, especially if you neglect your home planet and spend hundreds of billions a year on trying to make a dead place like Mars into a new world with hundreds of nuclear power plants or giant mirrors.
I think we need to go step by step and at each stage start with Earth as a focus.
Indeed I think it is far better to go into space to explore - of course - but also to protect Earth. We could start by mapping out all the asteroids that are on a possible collision course with Earth, however small. That's a space project well within our capabilities.And to search for life around other planets- which involves keeping humans well away from any possible habitats.
That's where I think we should start.
Finally I'm not sure that colonizing our galaxy is a desirable end goal. If you look at it the other way, suppose there was an ET say a billion years ago - that looked at our galaxy and asked "I wonder if I should colonize it?" Do you think they should have said Yes? We wouldn't be here if they did, as it would take only a few million years to totally fill a galaxy with your kind. They'd have mined the planets, settled on Earth, introduced their lifeforms and made ours extinct if incompatible (as they probably would be) and we wouldn't 'be here.
But what's more it would be potentially disastrous for themselves. Because, worse than self replicating robots - their kind would fill the galaxy - but out of reach from their home planet, they would diversify and take all sorts of different forms. Even evolve into different creatures. Develop technologies that none of their distant siblings have. Invade worlds, engage in wars. And the ones that spread the most rapidly and are most aggressive would fill the galaxy. Hard to see that ending anywhere except endless suffering.
You can do a calculation involving exponentially growing populations to find how soon an expanding population can continue to grow exponentially without crashing. It's only a few thousand years, even with an entire galaxy to expand into - you can't expand fast enough to keep up with the population growth, even of a very slow exponential.
And siince the most rapidly expanding would be favoured, this is a scenario I think any ET would view with trepidation.
Luckily, or perhaps I think, maybe even inevitably - if there were any ETs in our galaxy before us, they decided not to do this. I think we will too when the time comes that it is possible. Because I think we are reasonably far seeing, and can understand things like this.
If so, I think that we may well have settlements, even fill the hsolar system. Even perhaps explorers on longer distance voyages. Perhaps robots around every star - no problem with self replicating robot explorers if carefully designed and programmed. And I think we will learn to be content with that. Until our sun gets too hot for Earth to be habitable, then we can move elsewhere or rather whatever we have evolved into or been replaced by by then.
So, anyway I think there is no hurry at all to colonize. But we do need to look after our Earth. And there are many exciting and valuable things we can do in space. Which may include large settlements, even thousands of people.
And - if we did want to colonize in a big way for its own sake - well planets are not the best place to go. We could have trillions of people living in habitats made from materials in the asteroid belt. We could only have billions if we stay on planetary surfaces.
Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand Earths
About the Author
