Space exploration as a means to save the environment

Environmentalists, scientists, engineers and all those people with a PhDs, they've all point out that the reduction of green house effect is the numero uno on the list of things to do to save the Earth. I agree with them.

We need to change the way we produce the energy which drives our economy and to a lesser degree, our lives. We need to stop (or at least) consume less carbon producing fossil fuel. To that extent, yes we need to develop renewable resources to combat rising global temperatures.

But there is also another dimension to save the planet Earth, which is explosion of the human population.

The world would be inhabited by at least 9 billion human souls sometime in the next ten, twenty years or so. This exponential rise in the human population would put a strain on an increasingly burdened resources we have on this planet. By resources, I mean, water, oil, gas, coal and even the oxygen we breathe. The leaves only one way to solve this mess we're in: go up. Seriously!

Space is the next step in saving planet Earth. At the moment the giants of space exploration, i.e. NASA, ESA, JAXA and Burt Rutan's main goal in reaching the stars are either scientific (the search for E.T.) or commercial (satellites, the first orbital hotel, etc.). These agencies and corporations pour in vast amount of resources to explore the realms beyond our space just to produce the latest fashion trend, the fastest commercial aircraft and the lot.

Yet none of them thought of repopulating the human species to the heavens above as a solution to global warming, and to an extent, saving planet Earth.

Why would I consider this option, you might ask. The reason is, we simply do not have the resources to support life on dear old planet Earth. At the rate we are going right now, it would be a matter of decades before we ran out of oil that runs our cars. What then? Yes, we'll have a renewable energy by then, such as fusion technology, battery powered vehicles and so on.

But what about a place to live? We can just keep on building skyscrapers for a place to live. For one thing, where are we going to get all those iron we need to make steels? The answer lies, again, in space. The thousands of asteroids strewn across an orbit between Mars and Jupiter holds the key to mining these and other exotic resources.

The aspect would be the consumption of clean water, which would tend to spark wars between countries vying for them. Already, people in Zimbabwe are suffering due to a lack of clean water. India and Pakistan could go to war over their claims to a river which provides clean water for millions living near their borders. This burden could be elevated if we had a colony on Mars, where the ice caps could one day be melted to form vast oceans, which would then provide much needed supply of a vital ingredient for mankind.

But we don't have to go far in searching for water.

There are signs that our own moon could support life there, as evidenced by the discovery of polar ice caps. So a simple step to relieve the Earth from the burden of providing man with resources would be to build a permanent settlement on the lunar surface. Now, I'm thinking that such a settlement would be able to sustain millions of human beings on the lunar surface.

Hang on! Your asking, what about the technology to live in space? Well there's the rub. We can't just send a human being to space without finding a solution on how to live in space, can we? The answer of course, would be gleaned out of numerous experiments conducted on board space stations such as SkyLab, Mir and the International Space Station (ISS).

Problem is, there's a tendency that the space agencies across the globe to ignore the Noah's Ark nature of living in space and concentrate more on finding your friendly neighbourhood alien amoeba, bacterias and other such microscopic organisms. While such findings could provide valuable information on effects these microscopic organisms have on the human immune system, it should be used to produce vaccinations or cures to whatever disease the micro-organisms would inflict on us.

It would also be prudent to develop a completely new method to travel across the vast space to find a new home where man could live. Think of it as buying 13 cars to travel to the seven, different houses you own, Senator McCain. We need to stop relying on traditional hydrogen/oxygen based rocket engines and start researching a 'Warp Engine' technology as envisioned by Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek. Why not? I mean we are approaching a point in time where reality meets science fiction. So why not get a head start? We have the best brains and we can develop the resources to built such experimental devices. The largest particle collider in world at the Swiss-France border could be modified to carry out experiments which would reveal the possibility of such technology - so why not give it a go? What have we got to lose? Nothing, except the future of mankind.

Alright, I'll admit it. Such fictional concepts would take time to develop, centuries, if not decades. Yet it is imperative that we do not lose sight of the fact that the exponential rise in human population would deplete the resources available to us - probably by the end of the century. On that basis alone, we owe it to our future descendants the option of a permanent human settlement away from this green Earth.

So how about it? A game of golf on the sand dunes of Mars?