The planet is dying and humans may have to find some other place within the solar system in the not-so-far future – maybe Mars or Jupiter’s moon Europa or beneath the methane and ethane rivers of Titan – to survive as a species.
This Plan-B idea is common in sci-fi novels and movies.
However, an official NASA finds the pursuit “crazy and dangerous”.
“Plan-B for humanity is crazy and dangerous,” said National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) official Mark SubbaRao while speaking with Business Recorder at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC last month.
“We can’t go to Mars. It can’t support 8 billion (people).”
SubbaRao leads NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio, a group tasked with visualising NASA science results for public audiences.
“I love ideas of terraforming. We can terraform. The story of the climate crisis is that we are terraforming Earth right now. We are changing its climate. But it took a hundred years for humanity to change the climate by a degree. The amount of effort to change a place where a few thousands of people could inhabit is incredibly hard work.”
Terraforming is the process of modifying a planet, moon or other body to a more habitable atmosphere, temperature or ecology. In science fiction, terraforming is done so that a planet or a moon can support life.
“I love space exploration for science. But exploration for a Plan-B for humanity is crazy and dangerous.”
SubbaRao has also previously served as President of the International Planetarium Society (IPS), where he spearheaded the ‘Data to Dome’ initiative, an effort to prepare the planetarium community for the big data era.
He said Mars, which apparently qualifies as the most probable Plan-B for humans to inhabit in case something happens to Earth, does not have enough resources to support a fraction of humanity.
“I don’t see Mars ever supporting tens of thousands of people. There are no resources. The expense and energy involved is huge.”
‘There’s no Plan-B’
Sci-fi literature might give some solace to people that if Earth dies, humanity can migrate to some other fancy planet or moon within our solar system or might travel beyond Kuiper Belt – to some exoplanets present in the star systems of some nearest stars to us such as Alpha Centauri.
Huge corporations might also want you to believe this.
“There’s (actually) no Plan-B,” SubbaRao said. “It’s much more efficient to do what we need to reverse climate change, reduce emissions, and think about technological solutions compared to completely changing (remote places).
“Terraforming Mars or building giant space stations that can hold hundreds of thousands of people or finding an exoplanet – none of these are solutions to climate change. We need to get our house in order first.”
“It’s dangerous when people think it’s a solution. It’s not a solution to our problems. We need to solve our problems first and then we can go to Mars. We can go to Mars now but we can’t send lots of people ever.”
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