[책의 향기]“Humanity’s ambition to colonize Mars will remain science fiction”

2024-08-03 02:31:54

Terraforming Mars to Be Like Earth… Scientific Perspective Raising Questions About Its Feasibility
Thousands of nuclear warheads would be needed to melt polar ice… Nuclear dust from explosions could block out sunlight
Concerns over profit seeking that stimulated empty dreams… “Instead of colonizing Mars, let’s solve global warming first”
◇You Can’t Go to Mars/Written by Amedeo Balbi/Translated by Jang Yoon-ju/260 pages/17,500 won/Book In-eo Box

The author raises a fundamental question about whether humanity’s long-held dream of building a space colony is technically and biologically feasible. The author argues that raising the temperature of Mars by even a few degrees is difficult with the current level of science and technology. The idea of ​​making Mars like Earth and settling it is highly unlikely to be realized. Getty Images Korea

It’s a pity. The book’s main point is that humanity’s ambitious scenario of creating a second settlement outside of Earth is not realistic. No matter how much technology advances, we cannot avoid physical limitations. It’s disappointing that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Mars ticket is at best a ‘one-way’ ticket, but I think it’s time to take a look at this opinion. At least it will be an opportunity to look back at the cradle called Earth.

The author, an Italian astrophysicist and professor of physics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, examines the long-held dream of building a space colony and the realistic limitations it will face from a scientific perspective. He asks fundamental questions such as whether it is possible to migrate to other planets, whether there are technical, biological, and ethical problems, and whether it is worth it. Last year, the book was selected for the Galileo Award, the most prestigious Italian award for scientific publications.

Private space companies such as SpaceX have declared that they will be able to build a city on Mars within this century. Musk has expressed his ambition to build a self-sufficient city on Mars with a population of 1 million people whenever he has the chance. He is focusing his technological capabilities to reduce the cost of a trip to Mars to $200,000 (about 270 million won) per passenger. However, SpaceX’s Starship project only has a way to send people to Mars, and lacks practical safety measures to deal with radiation exposure and weightlessness during long-term spaceflight.

Even if we manage to get to Mars after overcoming numerous difficulties, the next problem is the next. In order to melt the polar ice of Mars, thousands of high-powered nuclear warheads must be detonated over several days, which would require more nuclear weapons than are currently stockpiled worldwide. The massive amount of nuclear dust released by the explosions could block out sunlight and cool Mars even further than it is now. Ultimately, “terraforming” Mars to make its climate like Earth’s is practically impossible. This is why I agree to some extent with the author’s point that “if we had the technology to terraform Mars, wouldn’t it be much easier to solve global warming first?”

However, the author does not view space exploration as a whole as a skeptic. He says that steady interest and investment should continue. However, he claims that some businessmen are obsessed with pursuing economic profits by exploiting people’s romantic dreams about space exploration. He says that packaging the impossible as possible is poisonous to space exploration in the long run. He then looks back on the history of how the entire world was obsessed with lunar exploration for political interests, but since 1972, no one has visited the moon and space development has also been suspended indefinitely.

Above all, the author’s argument is meaningful in that it makes us think again about the blue Earth on which we stand. The words of the Apollo 8 astronauts, who went into space in 1968 on a mission to photograph the surface of the moon and took the first photographs of the Earth from outside the Earth, resonate. “Soon, the moon became boring. It was like a dirty sand field. Then, all of a sudden, I saw the Earth. It was the only place in the universe that had color.”

Reporter Kim So-min [email protected]

• great

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2024-08-03 02:31:54