Recently the private space race has been filling the news cycle, as it seems one gazillionaire after another gets the idea that finding new ways to send people into space is the key to fortune, fame and the glory of saving the human race. Popular science fiction would lead us to believe that mars is a paradise awaiting the application of our terra-forming technology, just a short space voyage away for those brave enough to make the voyage on one of the already-made space ships. We can, therefore, stop worrying about all these pesky problems like global warming, paying them no more mind than we should worry about the mess left behind in our hotel suite after checkout. Unfortunately, reality may be a little harder to bear.
On a global scale, rockets are inherently inefficient; the sheer amount of energy used in a single launch could be enough to absolve even the most frequent flyer of any guilty feelings that they might be feeling after so much frequent flying (at least by comparison). Once we get to space, leaving the Earth's magnetic field would expose any interstellar astronauts to various forms of radiation, including heavy ion, which we really just haven't spent that much time studying, but we're pretty sure that it's terrible for human health. We really don't have any feasible way of shielding it either, since it would be kinda tough to build a huge lead shield around a spaceship (or water shield, or whatever). Mars would be an interesting place to visit, but without having any water or life forms of any kind (yes, I'm afraid it's true) it would be like staring a colony in the middle of the Sahara desert, which makes one wonder, why go all the way to Mars when we have perfectly good deserts right here on Earth which would be much easier to get to and transform into habitable environments?
No comments:
Post a Comment