On the heels of Artemis II, our cultural obsession with space colonization continues, even as we face increasing global resource constraints and planetary health declines. Techno-optimists, including some of the wealthiest among us, dream of a future where we mine, travel to, and colonize other planets – all in the hopes of bypassing the problems we now face on Earth. But from the perspective of physics and ecology, how feasible is space colonization – and are these interplanetary ambitions blinding us to the miracle of the planetary spaceship we already inhabit?
The “largest rocket” also peaked in the 1970s and is now getting smaller. . Rocket fuel is basically made of kerosene.
Fun fact. Notice that on rockets designed to get farther out into space that the actual capsule is tiny and the rocket is essentially an enormous fuel tank needed to carry all the fuel you need to carry all the fuel you need?
So the fun fact is that if planet earth was 1.5 diameters larger, gravity would be stronger. If gravity was just that much stronger, humanity would still be unable to get to space. Right now, we discovered oil, which had just barely enough energy per mass to allow a launch to orbit. But if gravity was a little more, we would not have any technology that could do it. This tells a story about the limits of human ingenuity. We were just lucky to discover the resources ready to go, we did not invent the resources.