Out in space: Should we exhaust Earth’s resources, escaping to another world may be the only option.

Our Future Planet peers through the telescope.

Space colonisation may seem literally light years away. In recent decades, due in no small part to the lessening importance of the cold war, investment in space programmes has diminished and it seems as though global political interest has swept elsewhere.

But it’s worth remembering that war is, tragically, the best driver for investment in, science and development. So if sustainability measures fail, and the timescale for an end game of earth’s resources draws closer, you can bet governments will start thinking fast about how to win the war for a ruined planet, or how to escape to another one.

‘One of the major environmental concerns of our time is the increasing consumption of Earth’s resources to sustain our way of life,’ explains the NASA Headquarters Library.  

‘As more and more nations make the climb up from agricultural to industrial nations, their standard of life will improve, which will mean that more and more people will be competing for the same resources. While NASA spinoffs and other inventions can allow us to be more thrifty with Earth’s treasures, once all is said and done, its raw materials are limited.’

‘Space colonies could be the answer to the limitations of using the resources of just one world out of the many that orbit the Sun,’ continues NASA’s resource. ‘The colonists would mine the Moon and the minor planets and build beamed power satellites that would supplement or even replace power plants on the Earth.’

‘The colonists could also take advantage of the plentiful raw materials, unlimited solar power, vacuum, and microgravity in other ways, to create products that we cannot while inside the cocoon of Earth’s atmosphere and gravity. In addition to potentially replacing our current Earth polluting industries, these colonies may also help our environment in other ways.’

In many ways it sounds a beautiful dream, and it’s to be hoped if it’s achieved it can be done without the need to wreak similar havoc on other planets as we have on our own. But is any of this actually possible anyway?

Reach for the stars

Some organisations realise the importance of acting now. The National Space Society (NSS) wants to push more cash towards space development, but reckons the Obama administration’s gestures are insufficient.

“Investment in technology development needs to be focused on the requirements to enable real missions,” explained Gary Barnhard, Chairman of the NSS Executive Committee in February 2010.

“We need to make the best use of the International Space Station and other key resources both on the ground and in space to improve our ability to use space for the betterment of humanity, and to hasten the day that those new missions can be flown,”

NSS shares the belief that ‘NASA’s goal should be to make it possible to incorporate energy and resources from space into our economy and to extend human presence throughout the solar system.’

A logical place to start would be the moon. ‘NSS supports returning people to the Moon for the benefits it can bring to our home planet and as a starting point for people learning how to work and live elsewhere in the solar system,’ explains NSS.  ‘In keeping with the President’s original campaign suggestion to delay returning to the Moon by five years, NSS calls for a human return to the Moon by 2025.’

Maybe someone is listening. According to NSS, Obama’s speech on April 15, 2010, earmarked support for human Beyond Earth Orbit missions to asteroids within the next two decades, Mars orbit by the mid 2030s, and the Martian surface in his lifetime.

In order to make this all happen, there may be a logic to combining private and public funds. Virgin Galactic’s programme is already under way.

On 23 March 2010, after the VSS Enterprise completed her inaugural captive carry flight from Mojave Air and Spaceport. Virgin announced; ‘The VSS Enterprise test flight programme will continue though 2010 and 2011, progressing from captive carry to independent glide and then powered flight, prior to the start of commercial operations.’

Picture credit: Mark Greenburg

Of course this isn’t really about colonisation, it’s about recreational consumer flights into space. But anything which advances the science and develops new methodologies and ideas for extending these issues should be a good thing.

Another company which has been making similar investments, although in a different area, is 4Frontiers Corporation, founded in 2005, an emerging space commerce company focused on the settlement of Mars.

New frontiers

Back in 2009, 4Frontiers was carrying out simulated Mars missions in the Canadian Arctic. The crew planned to ‘conduct a sustained program of field exploration during the month of July, while operating under Mars mission constraints. The objective is to improve understanding of the technical and human factors which may be faced by the first human Mars explorers.’

The moves also planned to use ‘the Maveric UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle),’ “The Maveric will provide us with an eye in the sky, allowing us to quickly and easily survey a large amount of terrain from which we will pinpoint specific areas to deploy field geologists,” said Joseph Palaia. “I believe the TAGGS mission will prove just how critical this capability will be, making this standard equipment on any human Mars mission.”

There may be other things in space we might use to our advantage, if colonisation itself turns out to be a bridge too far. From April 21 2010, NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes.

‘Some of the images from the spacecraft show never before seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.’ explains NASA.

“These initial images show a dynamic sun that I had never seen in more than 40 years of solar research,” said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.”

This kind of data may become crucial in understanding our climate, potentially affecting climate change and other processes that may govern whether we actually need to develop colonisation technology.

‘SDO will determine how the sun’s magnetic field is generated, structured and converted into violent solar events such as turbulent solar wind, solar flares and coronal mass ejections. These immense clouds of material, when directed toward Earth, can cause large magnetic storms in our planet’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere,’ says NASA.

Much of the science surrounding space remains unclear, so if the need does arise to use space exploration to facilitate species survival, time is probably already short at hand. A bit of foresight now could really benefit future generations.

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