Where to go when the Earth’s lease is up
It’s obvious to me that we’ll never save the Earth from becoming some kind of apocalyptic hellhole. I certainly don’t want to end up in the situations portrayed in movies like “Soylent Green” or “Logan’s Run.”
Movies often portray volcanoes covering the planet in soot, or the ice caps melting and leaving only three acres of land above water. Another disaster scenario is greenhouse gas heats the planet to a point where Fargo becomes the only place cold enough to live.
I’m not an extremist. I don’t care for industrialists who intend to strip mine Earth into extinction and wipe their noses with spotted owls afterward. Nor do I like the tree-hugging hippies who think bacteria should have voting rights.
The entire planet is going to vaporize in another six billion years anyway, once the sun either blows up or burns out. There’s no use getting your long curly hair in a tangle about a planet that will be just a memory in a few hundred million generations.
That is, unless we find some way to get off the planet.
It’s vitally important the human race develops a way to leave Earth and find another planet before something truly cataclysmic happens. Scientists scoff at me.
I’ve heard the plans for the colonization of Mars. The process begins by launching a few mirror-covered satellites. Then, the satellites unfold and reflect the sun’s light onto Mars’ polar ice caps. Once the caps melt, the water will deluge the planet. With a few simple atmosphere-seeding techniques and a pinch of amino acid in the oceans, we’ll start the whole evolutionary process and eventually we’ll have another Earth.
Colonizing Mars is nice and all, but it would be simpler to build a spacecraft equipped for long-range travel, then send it off into space to find a planet that already has an atmosphere and oceans. As long as it doesn’t contain deadly aliens, carnivorous azaleas or Richard Simmons, it would work.
Titan, which is one of the moons surrounding Saturn, is an option. Titan has a remarkably thick and cloudy atmosphere. Granted, the sky would be green and we would have large pools of acid in our front yards. But the air is so thick that if you strapped large, aerodynamic pieces of Styrofoam to your arms and flapped them, you could fly. What’s cooler than that?
Any planet I would live on would need a few simple things to keep me interested. I’m not talking about breathable air, drinkable water or killable wildlife. Those things go without saying. I’m talking about a few idiosyncrasies I can’t live without.
The first is a nice beach house.
The second requirement would be hamburger trees. Logically speaking, given the fact that there are billions of solar systems and a nearly infinite number of planets, there must be a place where, somehow, hamburgers grow on trees. Onions aren’t required.
The third necessity is a nearby Barnes & Noble. This should be no problem: Big businesses are always quick to capitalize on foreign markets. Therefore, Barnes & Noble likely already has several thousand space stations around the galaxy.
Besides, if I have an insane amount of money that can cover the costs of traveling to a distant planet with hamburger trees and the construction of a beach house, I can darn well afford to buy a few books occasionally at Barnes & Noble.
No. 4: Neve Campbell.
The fifth and final requirement is privacy. I can’t have idiot neighbors playing loud dance music and attracting Richard Simmons. Besides, if I’m on a planet with hamburger trees, a Barnes & Noble, a beach house and Neve Campbell, I deserve a little time to myself.
Eventually, we’ll need to get off this planet. We have the technology — cost just holds us back. Some people don’t want to shell out big bucks to pay for a large joint-space expedition to colonize Mars, or some other likely spot. Peanuts to them, I say. It’s a whole new universe, people. Let’s conquer it.
Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of The Spectrum