this is not an easy time to be optimistic or hopeful about anything, but i really, really do hope with all my heart that humanity manages to survive this century, get its shit sorted out, and finally one day find our way to the stars. the universe is just so vast and incredible and it would be a cosmic tragedy if we went extinct without ever setting foot outside our own tiny little corner of it
there's a million problems we need to fix here on earth before we go faffing around in outer space of course, we have no business even talking about it while we're letting innocent people starve to death on our homeworld, but i really hope we get there some day
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@velartrill really there's not. IF (and that's a big if) the planet is dying and going to be uninhabitable, our first priority is getting off the planet before it's too late.
@Wetrix preventing our homeworld from becoming uninhabitable is like infinity times easier than trying to move to another planet, i don't think you quite grasp the challenges involved. like, even if FTL were possible and we had workable hyperdrives available today AND we knew of a destination planet roughly the same size as ours in its star's habitable zone with functioning plate tectonics and everything, the enormity of the problem would still be hard to exaggerate
@Wetrix to be blunt, the "we wrecked this world but it's okay, we'll just find another" attitude is suicidally ignorant. we either find a way to preserve life on earth or we go extinct. there are no other options. there are no backup planets. there are no earth-compatible biospheres out there just waiting for us to plop down a colony ship and set up shop. we don't even know of any other worlds *anywhere* with nitrox atmospheres (which is itself only an infinitesimally small part of the puzzle -- look into what gravity differentials do to human physiology long-term, for one), and there certainly aren't any in the solar system where they might theoretically be reachable.
science fiction has really confused a lot of people about this subject. species (including us) are intimately tied to the biosphere they originate in; you can't just pick them up and drop them into another one and expect everything to go just fine. replicating an earthlike biosphere on another planet would be the kind of project you spend trillions of dollars and a dozen generations working on; it would be a civilization-scale triumph and it's certainly not possible with present technology. even if you accomplished it, the end result would likely be generations of sickness, disease, and mass death while the colonists evolved to handle their new environment, and it might very well turn them into a separate species in the long term
science fiction has really confused a lot of people about this subject. species (including us) are intimately tied to the biosphere they originate in; you can't just pick them up and drop them into another one and expect everything to go just fine. replicating an earthlike biosphere on another planet would be the kind of project you spend trillions of dollars and a dozen generations working on; it would be a civilization-scale triumph and it's certainly not possible with present technology. even if you accomplished it, the end result would likely be generations of sickness, disease, and mass death while the colonists evolved to handle their new environment, and it might very well turn them into a separate species in the long term
