Earth Archives - HOMO NOBILIS

#5 The Resourceful Planet

Over the past few years, national space agencies, private aerospace corporations, and space scientists have shown active interest in exploring the possibility of human settlement on Mars. Unmanned rovers have successfully landed and begun exploring the planet. Human Mars missions are in the plans. There are many challenges though: subfreezing temperatures, radiation exposure, toxic soil, lack of water, lack of food, etc. To compensate for some of the obstacles, the plan is to take as many assets from Earth as possible and build up a mechanism to generate such resources on Mars continually. Unlike Earth, Mars is not a naturally resourceful planet for hosting life. It must import resources from Earth to enable humans to become self-sufficient on the red planet.

#4 The Habitable Planet

Every once in a while, scientists – cosmologists in particular – claim that they have found a potentially habitable planet in some distant part of our galaxy. What do they mean? Do they mean there is a good chance that life exists on that planet? What drives them to declare such a strong hypothesis? And what kind of life are they talking about? Is it the kind of life we see on Earth – plants, animals, humans? Or are they talking about the presence of any kind of life – even if it is just microbial life?