Space Not a Place for People

One episode of the show “One Strange Rock” dived into the details about what a harsh environment space is for life forms. Look, I love sci-fi as much as the next person; Star Wars, Star Trek, and the incredible adventure and endless curiosity space presents. I would love humanity to fling itself out into space at the flip of a switch. But when you really think about the facts, it is dire. It comes back to a simple fact we always like to forget, humans are much more dependent on this planet than we believe.

I’m going to skip over all the challenges of space like no oxygen, absolute zero, radiation, stupidly long distances, no food or water, etc etc. Those are hard enough. But the really nagging points are most subtle. There is no gravity which wreaks havoc on our bodies. We evolved on earth, our bodies function with gravity. Also, the new major finding of late, humanities dependence on bacteria. Our bodies are mostly bacterial cells (our intestines) and we have no idea how those cultures would fair over long distances, or successfully maintain themselves. Bacteria is all over and inside us, in our lungs too, all of it performing essential functions. Our foods are intimately linked to the soils and solar cycles of the earth too, and once again, the bacteria & micro-organisms that grow there.

Once again, a lot of the talk about space colonies and leaving earth goes back to man’s favorite myth of somehow being a separate entity, like best buddy to “god”, and not really connected to the earth. However we know more and more each year how everything on earth is connected and it is an integrated system still yet beyond our understanding. If you tear a plant away from soil, it will die. For people it’s not as obvious, but it’s likely as true.

Most stunningly of all, if people really needed to flee and abandon earth en masse, wherever they go change and evolve differently due to the conditions there. We will truly become aliens at that point, no longer made from the stuff of earth, but some kind of mutated space freak.

Of course our macho tendency is to think we can kind of just shake the dust off our shoulders from whatever runs us over and keep on keeping on… but it ain’t really like that. Mother nature don’t take to that macho bullshit.

Just another huge reason why we best preserve this paradise, this mother earth, the best we can with the time we have here.

Peace on the Steem Blockchain @clumsysilverdad