Submitted by Russell Y. Rojas
Imagine you’re in a house where billions of people are living in it, one day the house burnt down, but the problem is that you’re the only house the people can live in. Wouldn’t it be nice to have another house you can move to? This is the same concept as our home planet ‘Earth’. It is the only planet known so far that houses the entire civilization.
As global-warming increases at a very high rate, we can pretty much see the civilization hanging by a thread. But climate change is somewhat unavoidable, we can’t just convince the entire earth to use less greenhouse gases based on the fact that nearly 30% of greenhouse gases comes from factories or industry, no, we need an alternative solution. And that is to just move to another planet. Ok, your right, it’s harder than it may seem, moving into another planet is no easy task. Yet, we went to the moon over 50 years ago, and the Apollo Guidance Computer had a RAM of 4kb, and a 32kb hard disk. That’s insane to think that they only had a computer with 4kb to land on the moon, frankly, that can’t even fit a single digitalized picture in our modern day. So, that basically means that we have much better technology nowadays and rest assured, if we landed on the moon 50+ years ago, we can definitely go to a planet 1000x further. There are space companies right now that are currently working everyday to make a better tomorrow and make us multiplanetary people.
One company you should take note of is, ‘Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’ or in short, ‘SpaceX’. It is a space manufacturing private company that makes one of the most technological advanced rockets to this date. Their work-in-progress rocket named ‘Starship’ is already set for an orbital test flight once they acquire the approval from the FAA.
Standing at 165ft or 50 meters tall. This one-of-a-kind rocket is bound to take us from Earth to Mars. SpaceX CEO and Founder, Elon Musk, mentions that he willingly supports the idea of Multiplanetary Civilization and plans to have a colony in Mars by 2050, while the first manned flight of Starship is set for 2024.
Well, isn’t it truly exciting that we have people like Elon Musk who values the importance of having a back-up planet. While we do try our best to save our planet with examples like ‘Earth-Day’, if we really want to save our planet, everyday should be Earth-Day. The climate-change situation has aected us for years and to this day very little is being done about it. It is time for less speaking and more movement. And it is also time to settle a new era and make a new path for multiplanetary civilization as it is truly important to have another house to move to just in case one burns down due to heat caused by global warming.
The Face of our new home
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and it is the second smallest planet in the Solar System. While not perfect for civilization, it’s the only viable option we have. Mercury is too close to the Sun, Venus is a very hot planet with lot’s of volcanoes, and the rest? Well, you can’t even stand on them since they are gas planets. Mars will be really tough to live on at first, you need a suit just to get outside, and if you’re the first crew on Mars, you’re most likely going to be living in yout rocket most of the time. The journey there is no joke either, You’re going to spend 6 months in a rocket away from the entire civilization just to create a civilization of your own on another planet. But don’t make this change your mind about going to Mars. While it can be tough at first, with years and years of development we can basically turn Mars just like Earth. You plant trees there to produce oxygen and suck up carbon. You will eventually have enough oxygen to have a thicker atmosphere and you will have rain clouds. Eventually, oceans will form, and now the new civilization makes buildings and residential areas. Starting to look and sound like the planet Earth right? This process is called ‘The Terraformation Of Mars’. In which, we make Mars a habitable planet for us humans just like the Earth. Yet, terraforming Mars will take decades and even centuries, but the future generations to come will thank us for having an alternate planet, just in case the current planet meets it’s devastating end. It won’t be too long ‘til we have an actual human who’s born on Mars, Even the first person on Mars is alive right now, and it could be a teenager playing video games, or a young adult, stepping into a new chapter of his or her life.
The pricing
Obviously, a worry for us local citizens is the pricing or simply, ‘How expensive will it be to go to Mars?’. Well simply judging by which rocket is most probable to take us to Mars in which case it’s most likely the ‘Starship’ of SpaceX, then it would cost quite expensive around $100,000 or ₱5,223,000. Musk did mention that the price of the ticket would lower over time as this would become a norm for us citizens. If you think of it, an actual ticket to Mars would likely cost $10,000,ooo, but SpaceX is making the Starship fully reusable. That would mean that it will lower the cost of production, and the un-needed parts won’t be thrown to waste and can be re-used with little to no refurbishment. “If aircraft were not reusable and you needed a new one for every flight, then each ticket would cost millions of dollars, at least. One way.”, stated by SpaceX CEO and Founder Elon Musk in a press conference about SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 Rocket.
While global warming is moving at a fast rate, we still have a lot of time to spend in our home planet, The world isn’t going to end tomorrow. And to be honest, environmental reasons aren’t the only reason why we should pursue multiplanetary-civilization. The only thing more dangerous than climate-change is humans. There is still tension between nuclear powers like the US, Russia, and North Korea. The world could reach doomsday at any point. So let’s continue our support on Multi-Planetary Civilization, because it is, without a doubt, important, to our life, to our well-being, and to our future. Remember to reach beyond what you can reach because this house is in risk of destruction, it won’t be long ‘til we get evicted. But at least, we have a home to move to with this new era of space exploration.
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About the author:
Russell Y. Rojas is a 13-year-old incoming grade 8 student. He made this opinion article about Multi-Planetary Civilization for his school’s summer journalism program. As a ‘space nerd,’ he wants to show people the importance of having a ‘backup’ planet just in case our home planet ‘Earth’ Reaches doomsday due to environmental problems, or abuse of nuclear power.
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