Why Space Colonization is Impossible and Wastes Our Time and Resources
Due to the needs of our world's poorest people, we must accept that many of the trips we plan to take to space should be considered financially unfeasible. It is estimated that 9 million people die every year of starvation. Many more live in poverty and never get anything close to a fair shot at an equal education. Yet, space exploration is also very risky besides burning up our resources.
Despite this, many famous influencers in the media, including the wealthiest man alive, Elon Musk, have insisted that space colonization and transportation are possible. Stephen Hawking also believed that we could survive extinction by colonizing other planets. I feel it's worth mentioning because people who think that space colonization is a feasible option for us actually look pretty foolish and seem to be in for an unpleasant wake-up call. People look up to these individuals like they are the pinnacle of human intellect. Yet, since it is quite unethical to go to space due to its many health and safety risks, many people fail to consider that better ethics and more responsible government expenditure could possess the keys to even greater intellectual power.
Now, that's not to say that space programs have not provided priceless benefits to humanity. The satellites we use have been seemingly needed around the world. They have provided GPS systems for citizens and the military to use in desperate situations. NASA is also responsible for technologies that have innovated things like water purification, home insulation, solar panels, and technologies such as camera phones and laptops. Yet the things astronauts are subjected to in space, such as microgravity radiation and isolation, cause changes comparable to health problems associated with aging.
The Health and Safety Risks of Space
Space actually poses quite a few health and safety risks that people wouldn't expect. And space is one of those places where all risks must be considered. Those ethical situational dilemmas where you would have to decide which person goes on a life raft and what goes on seem petty compared to these problems. There's just so much to account for.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems is radiation. Colonizers will be exposed to above-average amounts of radiation for the rest of their lives, which will skyrocket the chance of cancer. The most prolonged stay in space is under a year. The recommended maximum radiation exposure for the general public is 100 millisieverts per year. Yet, a Mars Rover calculated that the amount of radiation an astronaut on Mars will be subjected to is 0.7 millisieverts per day, and astronauts are exposed to approximately 50 to 2000 millisieverts while on six-month-long missions to the International Space Station. It should also be mentioned that the risk of cancer caused by ionizing radiation is well documented at radiation doses beginning at 100 millisieverts and above. Since Mars missions will take almost twice as long as anyone has been out of orbit, things could be much worse.
Low gravity also causes a condition called moon face, which causes the face to become puffy and swollen. Sleep apnea is common as well, even among people who don't typically suffer from it. Astronauts also allegedly suffer from bone loss due to zero gravity. Astronauts are susceptible to injuries as well, with eye injuries being the most common due to flying debris. Constant air filtration is needed because tiny particles constantly fly around. On top of all this, astronauts have had to be taken out on stretchers because of the problems they faced while landing.
Space debris is quite dangerous as well. Micro punctures from meteorites could easily destroy equipment and kill astronauts. There is already a lot of space junk orbiting around the planet. The International Space Station has been damaged in the past, and a small chip of paint allegedly once collided with the windshield of a rocket and put a huge crack in it.
Medical Concerns and Challenges
Aside from these risks, people must remember that astronauts can only bring essential things with them. Therefore, they must choose their medicines accordingly. Medical professionals need to determine how to treat these needs and use factors like the likelihood of a particular illness happening, the severity of the illness, and the effectiveness of the treatment. Yet all these calculations will be based on the knowledge we've developed from Earth, and it seems entirely possible that different health problems could arise on other planets.
They must also determine how many doctors they want to bring on a mission. There have been cases in Antarctica where people have had to perform surgery on themselves to remove an appendix and malignant breast lump because they couldn't escape.
Mental Health and Ethical Concerns
Many people fail to realize how depressing the isolation and conditions in space could be. It takes 14 to 18 minutes to send messages each way to Mars, so crucial information can't be sent right away. The food is quite unpleasant as well and would likely make people depressed if they had to eat it for several years. Astronauts also suffer from nutritional deficiencies; however, this has allegedly become less problematic as NASA has perfected freeze-dried food.
Several NASA employees are foolishly loyal to the organization and believe it is our only hope against asteroids that strike Earth. They're also allegedly dismissive of ethical concerns. A bioethicist named Paul Wolpe said that he gave NASA a paper on his ethical concerns in which he said the safety of astronauts should be a mission’s top priority. Yet they insisted that this was wrong because of the large amount of money that they invest into missions. In other words, it’s better to succeed at the expense of an astronaut’s life than fail.
Some astronauts have even tried to get into space even though their minimum radiation levels were exceeded because they had already been in space before and had radiation treatments for thyroid cancer. So, the experts told them that they weren't allowed to go due to cancer risk. However, the astronauts still haven't forgiven them and got into a big fight with them over it. I feel it's worth mentioning because meritocracy runs into these types of issues all the time. Despite the discipline and intellect of scientists and astronauts, they lacked the self-control and humility to listen to the recommendations of experts in fields they did not specialize in. And no matter the policies, astronauts will do what they want anyway because they're in the middle of space where no one can touch them.
Space also makes people susceptible to fits of insanity due to isolation. A Russian scientist allegedly went crazy in Antarctica and tried attacking crew members with an axe until they fended him off and tied him to a chair for three months. Some may suggest that Russian scientists don't count because they're of a much lesser mental calibre than astronauts. However, astronauts can have mental breakdowns too. Perhaps one of the best cases we have to prove this is the case of Former astronaut Lisa Nowak. She graduated at the top of her class with perfect marks in every class and was athlete of the year. Yet despite this and her astronaut career, she had a psychotic episode where she tried to kill her ex-lover’s new partner after driving across the country to sabotage her with bear mace and a BB gun at the airport. Lisa's ex-lover was an astronaut as well, and their relationship was a well-hidden affair in which they both cheated on their spouses.
This is worth mentioning because people often overlook how unethical and unmerited scientists and astronauts can be despite their elite educations. Many missions are likely only embarked on due to the bandwagon effect and choice supportive bias that causes them to only adequately consider facts that ease their denial about deciding to approve such unethical missions.
People need to think of all the false promises Musk has made and projects he's failed to pull the plug on despite how much they've cost. Just check out this website that keeps track of Musk's false promises. Despite being the wealthiest man alive, he nearly brought SpaceX and Tesla to bankruptcy at times, and something similar has been happening with Twitter since he bought it and changed its name to X.
It should also be mentioned that both of Musk’s starships, which were supposed to be the rockets capable of getting us to Mars, blew up before making it to space. He constantly looks like a kid who made the wrong decision of asking for a cheap rocket set for his birthday and lives in a state of dubious denial, thinking that it will work next time if people buy him a new one. However, this was no cheap rocket set. But, to be fair, this was the world’s hardest rocket to launch, and their second launch almost made it all the way into space. Nevertheless, we are at the point in our evolution that we should be capable of consistently succeeding with projects of this size due to our advanced understanding of mathematics. I think the scientists make mistakes because Musk (as well as space colonization) is so foolish that supporters cannot access and develop more advanced and profound parts of their minds.
Don’t Sattelite Services Justify Space Transporation
Some argue Space X is justified since their Starlink satellite service could provide internet for the entire planet. However, this system is more difficult and expensive to maintain than one might expect. This year, between July 18th and September 18th alone, SpaceX lost 212 satellites. So, it's not like we can just blast them up there and have them last a lifetime. Starlink’s max download speed also caps out around 220/Mbps, while 5G’s is about 1000/Mbps, and fibre optic is around 6000/Mbps. Although 5G towers only span about 5 km, they seem more feasible than satellite Internet. If NASA’s total inflation-adjusted costs from its creation until 2014 had been spent on 5G towers, we could have purchased enough towers to cover half the planet.
However, some still argue that Starlink is essential to our survival as it has been used to provide Ukrainians with internet during the Russian invasion. Some may say that Russians would destroy 5G towers, which is likely true; however, it seems likely that if our nation’s most gifted minds invested their time and resources into more essential things, war would be much less common. Many people fail to realize how smart properly raised citizens can become. And people keep living with the delusional belief that they can escape the mess they make on earth and create a new utopia somewhere else. This causes them to live destructive and unsustainable lives.
Why We Need to Invest in People and Planet Earth
Despite being so powerful, the world's top three space-exploring nations, America, Russia, and China, have struggled with many issues over the years. Russia is currently in the middle of a very foolish and destructive war in Ukraine. Americans are also guilty of being the most hypocritical in some ways. They are by far the world's largest importer of carbon emissions, and China is the largest net exporter by a huge margin. This is because America unethically outsources many products made in factories that produce high levels of carbon emission to save money by avoiding necessary pains. In the late 90s, the US was importing Nike tennis shoes from a Chinese factory that paid workers 16 cents an hour. Employees worked up to 84-hour work weeks while being subjected to humiliation, verbal abuse, and corporal punishment. They were also fined for talking at work and were arbitrarily fired if pregnant or over 25 years old.
Yet Chinese citizens have been capable of several spectacular feats of human strength and intellect over the years despite their restrictions. This year, a nine-year-old Chinese boy named Yihang Wang broke the world record for the fastest five solves of a Rubik's Cube. The fact that he was faster than anyone in the world despite needing to solve five different cubes is truly a testament to human potential. I feel it's worth noting because it shows how smart we could be if we invested more in humanity and human achievement.
The space economy is too expensive, and society has put mediocre investment into humanity as a whole for quite some time. According to a leading space nonprofit, the global space economy grew 8 percent to US$546 billion in 2022 and is projected to climb another 41 percent over the next five years. This is a change that we simply cannot afford.
Space Programs Are Extremely Destructive to Our Environment
Space exploration produces around 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) yearly. And since the industry is projected to increase by 40% over the next year, this amount will inevitably become much higher at a time when decreasing emissions is critical.
A 1.5-hour flight to space from private space company Virgin Galactic generates emissions equivalent to a ten-hour trans-Atlantic commercial air flight. However, the latter carries hundreds of passengers. With a passenger limit of six, a Virgin Galactic launch emits 4.5 tons of carbon per person. Yet, worldwide, the average person produces about four tons of carbon dioxide yearly.
And Musk’s giant rocket makes about 1000 tons of CO2 per minute. Musk has also got people's hopes up with the promise of rocket transport as a means of travelling more quickly. However, an 8-hour flight on an airplane emits 720 kilograms of CO2, whereas Musk’s giant rocket would emit 675,000 kilograms. And many see him as the environmentally friendly one. Most people go to jail when they make careless promises because they entice people to make huge investments investors without providing any return. We should be concerned when people make promises like these. He is the wealthiest guy on the planet, after all.
The fact that many of our brilliant scientists rally around Musk despite all this hypocrisy and delusion has a tremendously negative impact on our ability to develop self-control and move towards sustainable living. Climate scientists almost entirely unanimously agree that our carbon emissions are an urgent concern. Yet the world continues to value Musk’s rocket scientists more, even though he says he plans to have a million people on Mars by 2050. I can only begin to imagine how much carbon dioxide and soot would be released into the atmosphere.
People fail to realize that carbon dioxide isn't as easy to remove from the atmosphere as we think. Just think of all the trees we eliminated from our planet to build our enormous urban environments. It must be mentioned that trees emit most of the carbon dioxide they absorb back into the atmosphere when they die and decompose. We must take considerable steps to reduce our emissions to meet climate goals; space exploration can never allow us to achieve this. Wake up! Space colonization isn’t an unfeasible means of avoiding mass extinction; it’s a surefire way to guarantee we die sooner. We can't afford to entice people with fantasies of going to space any longer. It’s just not realistic.
A children’s book created to teach children that they will never go to space
But How Can We Live After Earth is Gone?
I believe the secret to preserving life as long as possible lies here on Earth rather than in space or on other planets. Surviving in an underground bunker is much safer and more affordable than blasting into space. The secret to everlasting life isn't about travelling to other worlds; it’s about evolving to the point where we can develop continuity and understanding with past lives. I believe reincarnation can be proven because the law of conservation of energy states that matter cannot be created or destroyed but can only change forms. If matter cannot be created or destroyed, then it seems rational to suggest that the soul or mind that houses all our experiences cannot either. People often look to space to determine what created the universe. However, nothing could create the universe, and reality only exists because the total sum of all the positive and negative forces in the universe balances out to 0.
Humanity must also accept that alien life forms will never travel to Earth. It’s just physically impossible and prevents us from growing as a species. However, we experience contact with higher life forms or future incarnations while dreaming. Given our planet's current state, it seems pretty unlikely that our current species can create these visions, which are packed full of symbolism and coded messages. And there seems to be no reason to believe that our brains develop dreams automatically. Dreams have all the signs of being architected and delivered by sentient beings, so all our minds can do is receive them, willingly or not. Therefore, it seems rational to suggest that our species evolves to a more advanced life form that can wield these powers.
Perhaps if our species dies, our mind will reincarnate to the life form with the next highest vibrational frequency on another type of planet in a different part of the Galaxy. This belief system is much more sustainable and ecocentric than the anthropocentric belief system of space colonization because it requires us to work together as a species to achieve a common end if we want to achieve our highest level of synthesis with this higher realm. I have proven this because as I have made changes in my life to become more ethical, I've increased the number of dreams I've had every night. If you choose a life of ethics and morality, I assure you that you increase your chances of having more dreams and bring yourself closer to becoming this higher power. Dreams are a nice break from life's dull, monotonous routines, so I encourage you to join us as we embark on a mission to infinity and beyond.
