by Giles on Thu Dec 08, 2016 3:00 am
Two basic possibilities. Either we, as the human race, screw ourselves up so much in the coming few decades or centuries - through environmental degradation or plain old nuclear war or similar - that society and its structures collapse and we fall back to a hugely reduced population at more or less stone-age level, scavenging a few resources from the ruins. At best a kind of “Riddley Walker” scenario and at worst “The Road”.
Under these circumstances, the space programme might be delayed for some time…
Or, we scrape through somehow and science and technology – although probably not moral intelligence and compassion, alas – continue to develop more or less on the present curve. In that case, humanity and its abilities will change so much in the coming few thousand years that we from our present perspective might not even recognise or understand what homo sapiens has become. Or homo sapiens splits and goes in different directions, some more similar to what we are now – for better or for worse – and some radically different.
Even ruling out the option of some way of getting around the faster-than-light travel problem, by that time interplanetary and probably interstellar travel and colonization will be a given. We probably won’t be doing much of it in human-standard or even organic bodies, or even in ‘bodies’ at all. The next ice age here on Earth might theoretically present some problems for the human race, but the interglacial will probably last at least a few thousand years more and by that time, as said, we’ll either be post-apocalyptic and eking out an existence in the warmer zones like we did 50,000 years ago or we’ll be so advanced that an ice age can either be prevented or mitigated, or we just don’t care because it can’t touch us.
As far the sun is concerned…. Come on guys, it will be hundreds of millions of years at least before the sun changes in any significant way for Planet Earth. And 5 billion years before it even starts to expand. By then, we’ll either have a galactic diaspora or we’ll be long extinct. In fact, more than enough time for both.
And no, I wouldn’t personally recommend a one-way ticket to Mars in the next decade or so. If they don’t die from the effects of cosmic radiation on the journey or after arriving on Mars, I think there are very large chances of such a small, no-return community on Mars going pear-shaped in technological and/or social terms and ending quite unpleasantly.
Do not make the mistake of giving up the near in order to seek the far.