Re:SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocke...
by ncallaway on Monday August 02, 2021 @05:28PM
(#28042909)
> A colony on mars, even of significant size and population, is 100% condemned to certain death if separated from Earth
It would be in the near future, true. In fact, the key milestone for humanity being truly multi-planetary is that each planet must be independently self-sufficient.
There's no laws of physics that would prevent human life on Mars or Venus from eventually becoming self-sufficient.
The time-frames to get to that point are large (mid-hundreds to low-thousands of years by my random guess). A thousand years isn't that long in terms of the evolution of the species, though, and are the time scales we should be thinking of multiplanetary life on.
It would be in the near future, true. In fact, the key milestone for humanity being truly multi-planetary is that each planet must be independently self-sufficient.
There's no laws of physics that would prevent human life on Mars or Venus from eventually becoming self-sufficient.
The time-frames to get to that point are large (mid-hundreds to low-thousands of years by my random guess). A thousand years isn't that long in terms of the evolution of the species, though, and are the time scales we should be thinking of multiplanetary life on.