Experts pondered the greatest challenges in the quest to send a starship to another star.
Interstellar spaceflight for humanity isn't inevitable, she said — merely imperative.
"We could screw it up," Jemison told SPACE.com. "We could decide not to do it. But I can tell you what, if we don't figure out how to do it, then we probably aren’t going to be around to worry about whether the sun turns into a red gas giant. Unless we find some focal aspiration that pushes us further, that helps us see ourselves as a species that we should be cooperating with, we're going to be in trouble."
Plus, if human beings can solve the challenges of interstellar spaceflight, in the process they will have solved many of the problems plaguing Earth today, experts said. For example, building a starship will require figuring out how to conserve and recycle resources, how to structure societies for the common wellbeing, and how to harness and use energy sustainably.
"If we are going to evolve to our next level of being, we will need to solve all of the problems here on Earth that need to be solved in order to get off of this Earth and to another star system," Burton said. "Everything that we do in order to make that a successful reality will be applied to our life here on Earth. The solving of these problems along the way is the reason why we want to do this."
While SpaceX works on giant reusable rockets to reach Mars, other companies are working on technologies to keep colonists alive on the red planet. Relativity Space has made the world's largest metal 3D printer, called Stargate, to print rockets, tools, and other useful objects off-Earth.
When humans take the drug MDMA, versions of which are known as molly or ecstasy, they commonly feel very happy, extraverted, and particularly interested in physical touch. A group of scientists recently wondered whether this drug might have a similar effect on other species—specifically, octopuses, which are seemingly as different from humans as an animal can be. The results of their experiment, in which seven octopuses took MDMA, were “unbelievable.”
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