The Human Presence

12 April 1961, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history by becoming the first human to leave Earth’s atmosphere. Since then just over 560 of Earth’s intelligent race has left her rich-soil ground, to journey into space. Early missions of human space flight tested the abilities to travel and survive in Space, missions such as the Mercury and Gemini Programs. Those programs evolved in to the Apollo program, which sent mankind on a trajectory for the Moon. The Soviets Soyuz and Salyut missions, which mirrored the U.S. programs in a sense. Both nations programs eventually evolved in the Apollo-Soyuz missions which was the beginning of a partnership towards building the International Space Station. The ISS is a pinnacle in human space flight, its the vessel that allows us to have a permanent human presence in space. Which again in the early days of human space flight was end goals for the Soviets and U.S.

These days though the ISS is not enough and soon it will join in retirement with the Space Shuttle, because the new goals of today is not human presence in low-Earth orbit. No. The goals of today is how do we go further? How to we extend the human presence throughout the solar system?

When probing the planets and some of their moons, of course we’re looking for that fundamental question of…is there a possibility for life here? Now we’re adding to that question. Does this look like a good spot for us to slap some humans down and see what happens? You wouldn’t believe some of the places we’re looking at to slap humans down.

Mars is obviously the biggest story of today, with the potential to see humans on their way to the red planet around 2030. NASA is hard at work refining the Orion capsule and their new Space Launch System, which promises to be the most powerful rocket in the world. Traveling to another planet is insane. It could take roughly 300 days to get Mars, and being couped up that long in a flying tuna can is not even the top of my concerns. Mars doesn’t have an atmosphere, a magnetosphere, or anything that matter to protect it from rouge space debris (such as meteorites, asteroids, and whatever else space wants to throw at it) and my favorite radiation. When looking for habitable worlds, we look for of course H2O. There has been several discoveries of water on Mars in the form of ice, especially at its polar caps, or even hidden in a crater, but that’s not easily accessible, or anywhere close to the amount of water we have flowing here on our surface. Since, water is a do-or-die for us, I would say that Mars is a crazy place to send humans.

You thought a journey to Mars was long, here’s our next idea–pack your bags we’re headed to Saturn! Obviously, we would not live on Saturn, it’s a gas giant, it does not even have a real surface. Saturn is basically a ball of gas held together by its immense pressure or gravitational force. As a matter of fact headed into the atmosphere of Saturn, you would vaporize and forever be apart of its mass. Even though Saturn is a death trap, the ringed planet certainly is beautiful. However, our potential-future home is in orbit around the “jewel” of our solar system. Titan. This Saturian moon is the only moon–other than ours–to have been visited by a human-built machine. The Huygens Lander, which flew on the back of the Cassini Spacecraft, landed on Titan and revealed a world with geophysical features very similar to Earth. Titan is the first place we have found with liquid oceans, rivers, and lakes on its surface. Before you celebrate, it is not water, instead it is liquid methane. The idea is that maybe, the atmosphere and methane is not as toxic to humans as some other places, and sure we would have to wear a space suit outdoors all the time, but if our suit was cut or torn, it would not be an immediate life-threaten situation. Also, there is an idea that we could use the methane as fuel to return home. This plan to live on Titan, is as of now just an idea and no steps have been taken to begin the human journey there. NASA is looking at another mission to probe the atmosphere and surface of Titan further via a hot air balloon and possibly a submarine to dive into the methane ocean in search of organic life–for all we know Titan life may be methane dependent.

Titan is not the only hot spot moon over in the Saturian neighborhood, a tiny surprise called Enceladus has turned heads in the science world with its promise for life. Enceladus has these geysers spewing out subsurface materials out into space free for the taken, so the mission controllers of Cassini rerouted the craft to swing by and test these samples, which revealed salty water and organic materials. The building blocks for life found in one small moon, so it is only a matter of time before plans to head back there are underway. Enceladus is officially our most promising body to find life and maybe a new home.

Another moon, which has been turning heads for quite sometime now is the Jovian moon Europa. Jupiter’s four Galilean moons are all very interesting places to explore, the current mission there now–Juno–is solely focusing on Jupiter, but the ESA is planning a Galilean moon mission to get a better look at Ganymede, Io, Callisto, and Europa. It has not been confirmed, but scientist agree across the board that Europa has a subsurface ocean comprised of salty water. Europa also has an oxygen rich atmosphere. The most promising aspect of Europa is the belief that it has a rocky bed or seafloor similar to Earth, with hydro-thermal and volcanic activity which would supply nutrients to the potential life forms in the ocean. The idea of us living there is difficult to picture, the entire surface of the moon is ice estimated to be 15-25 kilometers thick, with the ocean being below the entirety of the surface.

My favorite idea, based on its shear ridiculousness and border-line science fiction quality is humans on their way to Venus. In theory this should be option one, Venus is said to be Earth’s twin. However, Venus is the evil twin, at least in terms of supporting organic life. Venus is the second closest planet to the Sun, and it is the hottest planet in the entire solar system. Venus reaches temperatures of almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit, it has the ability to melt lead, and its so crazy and volatile there it rains sulfuric acid. Of course the idea is not to send humans to the surface or attempt to enter the thick Venusian atmosphere at all–nope. The idea is to build “cloud cities” above the clouds of Venus arguably slightly in the atmosphere and slightly out. The pressure of the Venusian atmosphere is the equivalent to 93 Earth atmospheres. So, position these cloud cities, high enough in the atmosphere out of the sulfuric acid range, it could be similar to Earth’s atmosphere, where scientist will work and deploy blimp-like research vehicles to study Venus more in depth. This is idea is being called HAVOC or the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept. Sounds like an appropriate name to me for such a hellish world.

Either way there are some crazy ideas to extend the human presence past Earth, we might even see a Moon base in the near future. Some of the commercial entities are looking at some insane ideas as well, to include building a space hotel. One thing I have gathered from looking at the different colonization ideas, is that as humans we’re crazy. We dare to dream to colonize an alien world, we’ll figure how to do it, and once we figure it out, we’ll actually do it. I’m excited to see how far out in the solar system we get in my lifetime. Who knows maybe we’ll even figure out intergalactic travel as well.

Featured Image Courtesy of https://www.wired.com/2014/11/future-of-space-exploration/