by -
Jeff Bezos dreams of a trillion people living throughout the solar system on giant space stations.
-
This is how humanity can thrive without robbing planet Earth of valuable resources in the process, according to Bezos.
-
Business Insider asked experts how realistic Bezos’ plan is. Here’s what they said.
When it comes to space exploration, Jeff Bezos dreams big.
“I would love to see a trillion people living in the solar system. If we had a trillion people, we would have 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins, at any given time,” he told podcaster Lex Fridman in a 2023 interview. .
To achieve this dream, Bezos envisions a future in his lifetime where humans live on giant space colonies floating through our solar system, not on planets like Mars. “The planetary surfaces are too small,” to fit everyone, Bezos told Fridman.
According to Bezos, leaving Earth would allow the human race to grow and thrive without destroying our home planet.
Business Insider asked four different experts – from architects to astrobiologists – for their take on Bezos’ plan. Here’s what they said.
Jeff Bezos’ space colonies would look like cylinders
In Bezos’ futuristic fantasy, we’re all kicking back in space stations that resemble a concept called O’Neill rollers, named for the physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, who first proposed them in the 1970s.
“Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision is exciting, but it’s really humongous,” said Anthony Longman, an independent architect who put together a concept for space habitats designed to house about 8,000 people.
That’s significantly more than the International Space Station, which normally has seven astronauts on board at any given time.
But a space habitat with 8,000 people is nothing compared to O’Neill’s colonies that could house several million people and would be about 500 square miles, or the size of San Antonio, TX, inside.
On the outside, these space colonies would measure 20 miles long, four miles wide, and rotate to generate artificial gravity for the humans on board.
O’Neill thought we could establish natural ecosystems, bodies of water, and even weather systems within. From there, we could build farms, transit systems and bustling cities.
“I’m not saying they won’t be built, but I think it will be hundreds of years before we can build anything on that scale,” Longman said of the O’Neill colonies.
Bezos is not saying that people will be living in O’Neill’s space colonies by the end of the century. However, that long-term vision is clearly shaping the goals of the Blue Foundation, and the commercial space race in general.
Blue Origin and its biggest competitor in the commercial space industry, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are developing technologies that Bezos and Musk hope will one day shepherd humans to new worlds beyond Earth.
“I won’t live long enough to see the results of this, but these results come from building a road to space, getting the infrastructure,” Bezos told Fridman.
Challenges of keeping people happy and healthy in space
There are many issues to be addressed before we can live on giant space stations and colonize the solar system. But to keep it simple, let’s start with the basics: food and reproduction.
Researchers have grown a few crops on the International Space Station, including tomatoes and lettuce. Although these vegetables are grown in different conditions, they appear to be just as nutritious as those grown on Earth, research shows.
However, to achieve the scale of agricultural production necessary for O’Neill’s colony, “we need to develop these very safe, closed-loop, self-sustaining agricultural systems,” said Rebeca Gonçalves, an astronomer at Formerly the European Space Agency. The research focuses on how we can grow crops outside the earth, such as on Mars.
In terms of human reproduction in space, Adam Watkins, associate professor of reproductive biology at the University of Nottingham, said we have a long way to go.
“Giving birth in space – you don’t even think about the logistics and the difficulties that could be involved, let alone if there are any complications,” he said.
As far as we know, no one has ever had sex in space. And we certainly didn’t send a pregnant person to space. The health risks are too high, Watkins said.
Those risks stand in the way of research that could reveal how space radiation affects a developing fetus. Therefore, scientists are not sure what impact it would have.
To eliminate those risks, space colonies would need healthcare systems as equipped to handle reproduction as Earth has, Watkins said.
“Getting people into space is one thing, we can do that. That’s pretty simple.” Watkins said, adding that the hard part is “building those whole infrastructure communities where those kinds of support structures are in place, fully functioning, tried and tested, I think is a very it’s far away.”
Escaping the problems of the World may be a ‘dangerous illusion’
Our industrial presence on the planet is driving climate change, resource scarcity and a biodiversity crisis. Leaving Earth is a way for humanity to continue on its current path and preserve the Earth in the process, according to Bezos.
“We want to use a lot of energy. We want to use a lot of energy per capita. We’ve got great things. We don’t want to go backwards,” he told Fridman.
But Martin Rees, the UK’s Astronomer Royal who advises the monarchy on astronomy, doesn’t think leaving Earth behind is the best option, he told Business Insider.
It is a “dangerous illusion” to use space as an “escape from the problems we could create with our own planet,” he said. “We should look after our own planet. It’s the best we have.”
Saving the Earth would be much easier than building Bezos’ space colonies, he told BI.
Even if we never end up in space colonies, the work of researchers studying extraterrestrial colonization could benefit us here on Earth. For example, Gonçalves’ research on Martian agriculture could help improve the resilience of crops in degraded, sandy soils on our planet, she said.
“I don’t think these O’Neill-type space colonies are going to be nearly as attractive to live on as it is to live on Earth with its amazing diversity,” Rees said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
