The Dawn of the Space Era

You cross pollinate Tony Stark and Thomas Edison, you get Elon Musk.

If you want to skip the facts and move on to the possible hypothesis the future holds for us, scroll down until you find Marvin the Martian. 

A civilization grows by colonizing places. As they say, the first modern evolved humans moved across Africa. And then they sailed to find new continents. And now, we've sent rockets to the moon and Mars. Soon, hopefully, sometime in the future, we might colonize the solar system. And maybe, just maybe, the galaxy. Scientists estimate the proposed time for a civilization to colonize a galaxy to be around 3.5 million years.

So, we've colonized Earth. The next viable choice is to either colonize the Moon or Mars. Humans haven't been to the moon since 1972, but now the US Govt. wants to send astronauts back to the moon after Chandrayaan-1 discovered water on the poles.

NASA was trying to build a moon base in the Apollo missions, so humans could stay for longer periods on the moon. The Vietnam war affected NASA and they had to shut down a few of the Apollo missions. Apollo 17 is the final one.

A generation later, NASA is planning on sending humans back on the moon by 2024. They also hope to make it a staging ground for the future Mars missions. Because the moon doesn't have an atmosphere, we can build also build a space elevator that takes humans into the rocket which is waiting for you. You can avoid the lift-off and thus save a ton of energy. They all have their own constraints, but the positives if such a structure is build will far outweigh the negatives, and help humans become a truly space faring civilization.

NASA also plans to send it's first man and woman to the moon by 2028 to start generating the first sustainable human presence over there. Think about that, by 2030 the first extraterrestrial human might be born.

And then there's Elon Musk. Someone's who's now a household name for space explorations and creating a sustainable future for humanity. Naturally, we're further away from colonizing Mars than the moon because of the distance. You only have a two-week window in a two-year time-space where humans can send a rocket to Mars. And if you miss that window, you need to wait another two years. That is if you're using the current rocket fuel. Scientists are working on something called a laser propulsion technology which will get us to Mars in 3 days as compared to 5 months using the chemical rocket fuel.

"Space exploration is what makes me glad to be alive. It's one of the best things". That's what Elon said while unveiling the Starship which would take people on private round trips to the Moon and Mars. Which, if we keep using rocket fuel would cost a person around a billion dollars to book a ticket.

If you scrolled down by skipping the facts, Hey, you found Marvin the Martian! 

So, with the climate changes going on, we're taking Earth to a point where we might not want to stay here much longer if we can help it. True, it's our "home", but then are we actually treating it like one? With nuclear tensions on the rise, people must be prepared to have another home, in case a third world war begins. Elon Musk points might be sparked by artificial intelligence, sometime soon. That goes on to say, if we do create a being smarter than the smartest human, which are capable of self-replicating themselves, there will be nothing stopping them from chasing us to our second home in case they do win the war, and we'll have to end up fleeing.

Tim Urban, the author of the blog https://waitbutwhy.com/ points out that the reason we might not have found alien life is probably due to a barrier which all life forms face. It could either be in our future, or we've overcome it. If the so-called "barrier" is in front of us, the probability that humanity is doomed in almost certain. He also points out that every civilization might get to a point where they become so technologically advanced that they end up killing themselves. Which might be the case if we do end up perfecting artificial intelligence. Climate change can do the trick too.

So Earth is part of the local cluster of galaxies which primarily include the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy. And this is less than 0.00000000001% of the observable universe, and it's over 10 million light-years across. The size of the universe is something we cannot even begin to comprehend. As they say, for every grain of sand in the beaches of our planet, there are over 10,000 stars out there.

There are over 15,000 galaxies in the picture on top.

Another argument goes on to say that humanity will never be able to colonize more than our own local group of galaxies if it ever comes to that because the universe is expanding at a rate that we will never be able to match. The local group consists of primarily the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, which will all collide in a few billion years, which will be pretty messy. If humanity does survive until that point, we'll be a type 3 civilization. Interstellar space travel will be the same as you walking out and catching a train.

So, yeah if we don't end up destroying ourselves and humanity goes on to survive for at least another 250 years, the possibilities are endless. We might get visited by a higher extraterrestrial being who is out there watching us and waiting for us to become more intellectually advanced. We might get wiped out by possibly another civilization who takes Earth over for the resources and leaves us dry. Or we might grow to become a type-3 civilization which is basically one which draws the entire energy of the galaxy. And the way we're going now, I believe the name of Elon Musk could possibly go down as one of the biggest in space exploration, and he could also be one of the biggest reasons our generation might live to see Mars colonized by humanity.

Just pointing out that Elon isn't the only one who's trying to get privatize space travel. There are Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic who are both trying to privatize space travel.

Virgin Galactic's Unity has already been to space. And they plan to begin selling tickets in the next two years. $250,000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8T9mVkGh3s The one video which gave me goosebumps about the possibilities of the human race. We're at that incredible time where we get to watch space exploration spread its wings with infinite possibilities. True, we probably won't be alive when humans set foot on Titan or Ganymede. But hey, we might at least be able to travel to Mars someday. I'm sure our parents envy us for that very reason.

We're all in this together, fellow travelers on the space ship Earth. - Richard Branson.