Problems We Might Face When Exploring Other Planets Experts have come out and said something we already knew and it was the fact Mars is unsafe for long term residence. They are talking about the amount of radiation the human body will absorb over time, that time being about 4 years. I think most of us who have looked at the idea of people living on Mars knew they had to be protected from radiation and if they are protected, the problem should go away. But how do you protect people from this problem? One way you might do this is if they lived either in underground areas or in specially built structures to protect them. I think most of us also know the people living on Mars will have to go outside for different reasons. This would mean wearing clothing which protects one from radiation. That is one of the problems with the space station. People there are subject to far more radiation than those on the earth. It is not enough to be dangerous for the time they are there, but it does exist. The problem of radiation is a big one for those who go off planet. If intelligent life existed on Mars at one time, the loss of atmosphere along with affecting the breathing, also let in more radiation. It might be the radiation killed life if it existed, before the lack of breathing would have. It could turn out there are many different things that could kill us on planets other than earth and some of them may yet be undiscovered. Think about this, those old science fiction movies might have been right in some instances. Take for example the ones which showed astronauts landing on what they thought was a tranquil planet, only to find dinosaurs were still alive on the planet they landed on, and many of them were deadly. Would this be so impossible? We have to remember they did exist here at one time and there are even a few people who think the human race is older than thought and may have also been around at the same time and somehow survived them. Even if these creatures were not dinosaurs an alien planet could have giant vicious animals. What if we landed on a planet which was full of deadly plants? Is this so farfetched? They might have deadly seeds or pollen carried on wind currents which could kill a human in a second. The plant life could even be more intelligent than it is on earth and stalk humans who arrived by passing signals from one plant to another as humans headed to them. We have found out plants on earth use chemical signals to warn other plants when danger is near. It could even turn out another planet is inhabited and the beings there just hate or are scared of us and want to kill us. There are plenty of other things which might be possible we haven’t thought of yet that would be dangerous like gravity that varies. Imagine we land on a planet which looks ideal and began to walk around. Gravity seems to be similar to earth, but then something happens. The gravity begins to increase making it harder to get back to the ship and at one point it pins us into place and then crushes us. Some might say this is not possible, but how could they say this without more facts? Another thing which could happen is we land on a beautiful uninhabited planet and everything seems perfect. Then it happens, severe weather. Tornadoes flash over the surface and are so destructive they threaten our spacecraft and we have to try and takeoff before we all die. So far, I have only talked about common stuff we understand, but there is another type of threat which might exist and some say we have proof of this on earth. Now for something more exotic. I am talking about vortexes. Many of us have heard the stories about people walking along and disappearing and some have done this in front of others. What if we went to a planet which was covered with invisible vortexes and didn’t know it and were in danger of walking through one without realizing it. While these might be invisible to us, other beings might have been able to see them. We shouldn’t think just because we can’t see something, an alien race couldn’t. We have to remember when we begin to travel through space, we have very limited vision possibly because this is all we needed to survive on earth, but it may not be good enough as we travel to other planets. It could turn out we might meet up with living beings which are invisible to us because we can’t detect the light frequency they put out. If we do, let’s hope they are peaceful, because they might be able to see us. Going to alien worlds is going to present all sorts of new challenges. There is the time challenge. I am talking about the time it takes to travel there. We have to travel fast enough to make it worthwhile to take the trip. Generation ships and suspended animation which make it into science fiction movies are not really the way to travel for many reasons. Generation ships are just impractical and fraught with eventual breakdown possibilities, not to mention the stress of being locked in a ship for one’s entire life with at least some people you probably do not get along with. Think about trying to supply enough oxygen, water, food and other essentials to people who might be on a ship for hundreds of years. It seems like an impossible task to me. What happens if they finally get to where they are going and for some reason need to return? As far as suspended animation is concerned, this is putting the life of everyone onboard in the hands of a computer. Anyone who has used a computer knows sometimes things go wrong. What happens if the passengers get woken up too soon? Even if a particular engineer is woken early to fix something, will he be able to get back into suspended animation? If not, will he have to spend the rest of his or her life alone and will there be enough supplies for this? I think in a situation like this there is a good chance of someone losing their mind. There is just so much to worry about I haven’t touched all of it. There could even be a problem with time being different. I guess we will just have to wait and see how things work out.
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