Man In Space: Why and How It Would be

Done ?

Part 2: The Challenge

By: Tri L. Astraatmaja

If we want then to eventually colonize other worlds, how would it be done? In this article I will temporarily avoid discussion on the ethics of colonizing other worlds as well as the environmental ethics of terraforming, which I would talk about a bit. First thing , the scale of the problem we are facing is different than the problems faced by European colonizers to the New World or American pioneers who migrated to west. It is a different ball game altogether not only in scale of technology but also in distance. Even if we do manage to establish a colony on Mars, colonizing other planets in another solar system is a totally different matter and challenge.

Let's talk about distance first. The Moon is a mere 380 000 km away from the Earth, a very small distance compared to distances to other celestial bodies (at its nearest, Mars is 150 times as far as the distance to The Moon. The nearest star is much much further still, around one hundred thousand times farther), and yet in the 1970s it cost approximately US$ 1 billion to send a person to The Moon. This heavy cost is one of the reasons why NASA stopped sending astronauts to The Moon.

While going to The Moon and back take around two weeks, going is to Mars will take much longer time. Going to Mars might take, depending on the position of both planets, six months and a stay of at least two years is required to wait again for favourable position, and finally six months for the trip back. This voyage would be taken against dangers such as cosmic radiation, meteorites, harsh environment on Mars, low gravitation and living in cramped space for an extended period of time.

Because the cost of sending objects per tonnage is so expensive, thus sending luxurious amount of living space for the crews might not be impossible. Thus living and working in space can be equalled to working in a submarine: very little private space and very tight interaction with each other. Social problems might arise in these conditions, creating tension between crews, especially under so many environmental hazard. For a long journey to Mars or other objects in the Solar System these problems might actually be solved by putting all the crews in suspended animation (i.e. hibernation). By putting the crews on hibernation, spaces for living quarters can be cut down and the spaceship can travel to a much consideration distance. Although it might be possible to hibernate a human being for six months, if we want to go to another solar system in another star then considerable amount of research must be done if we want to hibernate a human for a much longer period of say, thousands of year?*** (to be continued)

Tri L. Astraatmaja, PhD candidate of Physics at Department of Physics, Leiden University, as well as The National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.