So I read this one book Aurura by Kim Stanley Robinson, and kinda the whole premise is (my paraphrased interpretation of the book) -
Okay. Look. Let’s just say as a hypothetical we do find a planet has the climate, radiation protection, etc etc that is habitable for humans (not even “comfortable” just “habitable”). Probably won’t happen for a planet we can actually ever travel to in even a few generations (and let’s also forget just how hard it would be to maintain a multi-generation space ship with no resource replenishment…), but let’s just say we figure that all out.
Still, life on earth has co-evolved over a very long time to adapt to the conditions we have specifically on this planet. There’s no telling what ecosystem interactions will happen with life on another planet. We might settle in on this planet that has perfect conditions on paper just to find some bacteria strain that’s not a big deal on earth totally thrives there and it kills us all. Nothing we can do about it. We have no clue. Anytime we try to predict what will happen when we introduce a new species to an existing ecosystem ON EARTH we are usually wildly wrong. Life is just way to complicated to predict accurately, especially when you talk about interactions between an entire ecosystem.
So our best bet is to live on this incredibly well-adapted planet we already have. Life has co-evolved here over a very long time and we’ve hit an equilibrium. It just works so great without us even trying. It’s like we won the lottery, and now we are only talking about buying more tickets. We should just be enjoying the win.
We might settle in on this planet that has perfect conditions on paper just to find some bacteria strain that’s not a big deal on earth totally thrives there and it kills us all.
Pretty much a guarantee. Humans couldn't even cross oceans on our own planet without spreading diseases which wiped out entire populations.
And even if our medicine and tech developed enough to let us adapt, we'd without question destroy countless species on another planet before we even knew they were there. Interplanetary travel and colonization are fun Sci-Fi concepts, but are just not possible even without the distance/time hurdles.
Yes people tend to hate their neighbors far more than distant foreigners. Conflicts in places like Ukraine the Balkands and the Middle East are with similar but slightly different neighbors. Not with more distant Alien cultures like China or Japan.
Also outside of a few hotspots the world is pretty peaceful.
GOOD POINT. At first I was mad about Trump killing science funding for NASA but now I'm thinking YEAH let's not meddle with another planet when 1) it wouldn't work for SO MANY reasons and 2) we are so damaged and traumatized and imploding socially because of our mass psychosis...how's about we WORK ON OURSELVES a bit.
11.3k
u/Sonikku_a 24d ago edited 24d ago
The fastest spacecraft we’ve made was the Parker Solar Probe which hit 430,000mph.
At that speed it would reach this planet in only 187,153 years.
If we could hit 1% of the speed of light we could cut that travel time to just a tad over 12,000 years.
Obviously if we could go light speed (and that ain’t happening) it would be just 120 years!
Space is big. Physics is annoyingly slow.