Earlier this year professor Stephen Hawking warned the human race that
unless we found a way to colonize another planet in the next hundred years
or so we would face the very real threat of extinction. He said that with climate
change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth our own
planet is becoming increasingly precarious. The idea of a brave band of
people leaving Earth to start a new life elsewhere in a galaxy isn't new rocket
pioneer Robert Goddard described an interstellar ark in 1918 and 10 years
later his Russian counterpart Konstantin Tsiolkovsky known as the father of
astronautic Theory wrote about and Noah's Ark that would fly in space for
thousands of years but there are a stack of seemingly insurmountable problems to
building a ship like that. With the exception of the Moon and Mars we still
don't know where it might go and it's likely that the construction process
would involve the kind of international teamwork that seems almost impossible in
today's political environment. But those issues aside what are the main problems
facing the crew of a space Ark the first is how to keep it moving where will its
engines get their energy from in the 1950s Project Orion not to be confused
with NASA's Orion space program explored the idea of powering a vehicle by
detonating atomic bombs at its rear the explosions would be so powerful that
they would take place outside of craft because they destroyed if it took place
inside. Model test flights began flown in 1959 and were relatively successful. The
Project Orion concept was taken further by the British interplanetary society
who started Project Daedalus in 1973 but it wasn't strictly a space Ark concept
instead the aim was to send an unmanned spacecraft to a nearby star within a
human lifetime. The target was Barnard's star 5.9 light-years away to be reached
during a 50-year flight. Since 1998 Pennsylvania State University has
continued the Orion based experiments. Dr. Robert Enzmann proposed the Enzmann
starship in 1964, it will be fueled by a frozen
sphere of deuterium a million tons in weight with a cylinder more than 500
metres long attached behind. It the deuterium would power a set of nuclear
fusion rockets with 390 metre living compartments capable of containing more
than 200 people. Whilst the propulsion is still in the research the next problem
is reliability. With no one in the emptiness of space able to help and
turning back not being an option an interstellar vehicle would have to be
incredibly reliable because the crew would have to make any repairs with what
they had on board or die in the attempt. Any vehicle carrying the future of
humanity to a new destiny would need to be almost infallible but there's an even
bigger problem keeping the crew healthy happy and focused. Anthropologist John
Moore suggested in 2002 a crew of around 160 would be enough to offer sufficient
biological diversity to secure the future of a human race beyond Earth but
Cameron M. Smith calculated in 2013 but if accidents and disease are taken into
consideration several thousand people might be needed aboard the one-way
flight. Regardless of how many there are they're all going to face issues no one
has ever faced before that's true of whether the space Ark is a sleeper ship
with everyone on board in suspended animation or a living ship with the crew
awake and working. They will know that going home is not an option and wherever
they end up will have to be come home. They'll experience a different type of
social development from what happens here on earth and no one can say how
that might turn out spare a thought for the crew of a generation ship. Those who
leave earth know they will die before the journey is over but the generations
born during the flight won't have a home planet and they will live with the
knowledge that they are only there make life better for people coming in
the future there is also over horrifying concept of advances in technology
meaning that a better faster ark is launched after the first one and reaches
its target planet sooner so that the first crew having spent 200 years in
flight arrived to find a human colony which has been there for a hundred years
or so. The question of how to keep the peace is also a difficult one the crew
would have to become a self policing community how could that be enforced.
Moore argued but family units have been more successful than military units in
colonization's of the past citing the example of the Polynesians who sent
young couples off in boats to find in new islands where their children would
be born effectively on a new world. There have been a number of human experiments
which have yielded various results in 2016 NASA completed a year-long
isolation experiment involving three men and three women who were locked in a 36
foot diameter dome. NASA said the results proved but a mission to Mars and was
achievable in human terms whilst the participants reported that boredom was
the biggest enemy and their advice to others was to bring lots of books. But
that was for just one year and on earth and with the participants knowing that
it was just a test that could be ended in an emergency. The real thing would
bring psychological issues which would have to be planned for well in advance
with people that can get along with each other the last thing you need is people
wanting to kill each other by the journey's end or before. There's also yet
another issue if all goes well there is no epidemic or some other form of
disease problem and the space Ark is completely reliable and the crew remain
focused on their mission there's the additional possibility of human
evolution continuing and taking an unexpected turn.
Perhaps a long time after leaving earth the people who arrived on the new earth
will be nothing like as at all, so if that's the case would the human race
really have survived. so thanks for watching I'd just like to
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