Will humans ever colonize other solar systems?
My answer is a qualified Yes —- it’ll take us a few thousand years, assuming we continue our current rate of technological advancement and don’t encounter any nasty mass extinction events, whether natural or man-made. There are, as I see it, three major obstacles: (1) Devising a propulsion system that gets a starship up to a few percent of the speed of light; (2) Building a ship that will last at least 10,000 years, and (3) Maintaining life forms (human and otherwise) for that duration. While all three will have very difficult solutions, I don’t think they’re impossible, and I do think we’ll become increasingly motivated as the centuries pass to propagate our DNA beyond the solar system, primarily to ensure the survival of our species and secondarily because we’ll soon start running out of room, not only here, but on the Moon, Mars, and wherever else we can establish a colony (maybe Titan orbiting Saturn). And this assumes we don’t discover some revolutionary means of propulsion that the sci-fi set sees as “sure to happen” —- the laws of physics pretty much narrow the possibilities of what’s achievable and what’s fantasy, so I think getting to 10% of c would be an incredible accomplishment.
When will humans colonize out of the solar system?
We will if we develop the right technology; propulsion will never get anyone to the stars. Te basic requirements being:The only system capable of doing all this is the one illustrated at the bottom of this Ben Rich statements:An ESP-like system is the technology needed to reach the stars and then to find and colonize Earth-like planets. Anything else is just a waste of money and garbage!“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.” - ― Samuel Johnson
Will us Humans ever colonize the Universe?
Or at least the Milky Way? Yes, I am aware of the jaw dropping size of the universe. But humans have come so far since we were cavemen, who's to say we wont go further?
Will we ever colonize other planets?
As an aside, let me say first that few science fiction movies are made that don't underestimated the dates future events will occur. That's as much an intentional economic artifact as it is bad estimations. It's hard for most people to empathize with anything more than around one or two generations in the future, so even if the movie makers believe an event will happen 1000 years in the future, it's likely to be portrayed as closer to 100 years. Easy examples are 1984, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Likewise, should anything close to Avatar ever unfold, it is likelier thousands or tens of thousands of years in the future. Assigning a close date to human colonization is pretty much impossible because of the number of variables involved, technological, anthropological, economic. Many of us who watched the Saturn Vs lift off for the moon (when I was your age) believed and hoped at the time that we would have a self-sustaining lunar colony by now. Of course, only 12 men have walked on the moon even 40 years later, so those hopes were wildly optimistic. So, are lunar and/or Martian colonies in our future, and will they happen in your lifetime? I hope the answer to both questions is 'yes', but I'm very doubtful about the second. I'd like to imagine a real self-sustaining Martian colony (i.e. not a sparsely-manned scientific research station) in 2060, but if I had to wager I'd go for a century longer at 2160 at least. And if we manage to screw up our low earth orbits with debris so badly they become unusable (see Kessler syndrome), all bets are off until that gets cleaned up--possibly that will involved a centuries-long setback. Technological advances such as nanotechnology will serve to make things easier, but as gintable said, travel time is something we can't do a lot about. It will likely be many millenia before we can hope for extrasolar colonization. All this assuming, of course, that nothing truly bad happens: a major world war, global economic collapse or other infrastructure breakdown, intentionalsabotagee of LEO space, just to name a few. I am glad there are young adults like you thinking about thelong termm future of humankind.
When will we colonize our entire solar system?
When we decide it’s worth the effort and time, since such a project would require effort and time.No, seriously, that’s part of the problem.Setting up bases on the Moon, Mars, and even Venus is likely over the next few centuries (I say this to account for any “hiccups” that happen). That’s because those targets are not only close to home, but they also have resources that would make “colonizing” work. For example, the Moon has Helium-3, which might help with nuclear fusion (if we can actually make it work).As you start to reach the other planets in the Solar System, however, it becomes more and more hostile. I mean, Pluto has nothing of real value whatsoever.I suspect that humanity, at the rate it’s going, will likely have the Solar System under control in a couple thousand years. That’s because we’d need to figure out what engines would fit our rockets the best, travel to worlds, build bases, etc. That takes resources and time.
Will Mars ever be colonized?
Perhaps and no. ~ Perhaps: We have a space station where six astronauts can live and work. That could be described as a colony and we could have a temporary one on Mars. We don't have the technology at present to keep a crew alive for long periods in space or on Mars (mainly because of cosmic rays). With present technology, the cost of a station and crew on Mars would bankrupt the entire Earth in terms of both money and natural resources. ~ No: As far as ordinary people living their lives and raising families on Mars as they would in a village, it’s not possible (apologies to science fiction fans). The difficulties are immense. An extreme amount of support from Earth would be required for the colonists merely to stay alive. Every part of daily life would need high technology to accomplish on Mars. With a single malfunction, all or most would die. The surface of Mars and space in general is the most hostile environment humans have ever experienced. It would be far easier, cheaper and safer to build a village on the bottom of the ocean. (Colonizing Mars would be far more difficult than the Moon. It is 9 months away in travel time, compared to 3 days for the Moon. Far too much time for emergency help from Earth.) --------------- Some people think we could terraform Mars to make it habitable for humans. Mars would be the most promising candidate for terraforming but, unfortunately, it is not possible. The minimum amount of atmospheric pressure that people need to live is about 1/2 that of normal Earth sea-level pressure. The amount of air needed to be delivered to Mars in order to have that pressure is about 2,193,000,000,000,000 U.S. tons (a little over 1/3 of all the air on Earth. Because of the weak gravitational pull on the surface of Mars, a thicker layer of air is needed than on Earth to attain the same pressure.) ► The gravitational pull on Mars is so little that if enough air were to be put in place (perhaps from comets or debris from Saturn's rings), it would leak off into space within a short time. With the present Martian air pressure, water cannot remain in the liquid form needed for plants and animals. The Martian atmospheric pressure is only 0.006 times that of Earths. Of that tiny amount, only 0.0013 of it is oxygen. .
In what year do you think humanity will leave the Solar System?
It took us ~1 million years to leave Africa, and what separated Africa from the rest of the world was a little bit of water. The only reason we could leave when we did was because a freak of nature caused the Red Sea to be temporarily dry enough to cross. It took us ~60,000 years to invent technology that would enable that crossing a wet Red Sea. And, it might be that if we had never migrated out of Africa, we might have needed a lot longer to created the technology to be able to cross a wet Red SeaWhat separates us from the universe is vacuum. Cold vacuum that is many many more times uninhabitable than water. As of now, part of our research is dedicated to crossing/managing that vaccum barrier. Also, a lot of our efforts are being spent in finding habitable planets, and making uninhabitable planets into habitable. Since a lot of habitable planets are very very far away, we are also researching on how to get there fasterAlso, what binds us to Earth is gravity. Early humans didn't have to climb out a gravity well. A lot of research is going into overcoming gravity. We do have a solution for this, albeit a very expensive one.I'm pretty sure early humans didn't give a damn about what they found on the other side, or how they will get there. They just went. Many of them died before they reached the other side. We are too scared to leave the Earth. IMO, we should invest in creating lifeboats. Create self-sustaining ecosystem that can be hosted on a multi-generational starship, and let's just go! Allonz-y!. If some of us die, we die. IMO, if we wait for technological advancements to solve all the problems before we get out of here, we will all die here.