Humans Thriving On Other Worlds Is Fantasy
Space opera will need re-categorisation long before a chunky 'arkonaut' warbles.
I’ve finished watching the fourth season of the brilliant TV show ‘For All Mankind’. It’s helped trivialise commuting on a whim between Earth and Mars or the Moon. Folks also walk with an Earth gait in lower gravity, or pop outside for some personal ‘quiet time’ despite – at best – a very chilly and non-breathable atmosphere. All this run-of-the-mill backdrop gives the fantastic characters and intelligent ‘what if’ plot plenty of space (ahem) to move and breathe. If there’s a fifth season, I’m predicting maternity units echoing with uncouth language and ‘Happy Valley’ being renamed ‘Nappy Valley’. It might be more mundane than phytolab-induced sex and wild space rides to make ‘n’ bake the babies, but, hey, that’s life.
But now I’ve gone and wrecked my childhood ‘Space 1999’ dreams and applied the cold logic of scientific reality to what is definitely still fiction - and quite possibly a forever fantasy. A son studying astrophysics is one part of my reality check. Whilst I vicariously spout covert jealousy, he gets to do cool stuff like dissertations on star formation equations; analysing JWST exoplanet data and detecting meteorites using ground-based lightning sensors. Not that you’d think it when he passes judgement on some SF shows: “Load of bollocks, Dad” is one erudite example. A chip off the old block, I’m prone to think (although that tends to trigger the same comment - how very meta of him).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from pedantic when it comes to speculative fiction. I’m all for crossing the ‘is it magic or an alien technology?’ line. The need to believe is paramount for such stories and ‘For All Mankind’ pulls you into its ‘not quite there yet’ world in a beautifully appealing way.
But this week’s newsletter over-informed outpouring concerns the unmovable weight of reality - yes, I know, a rare beast in
Is human space colonisation more of a fantasy than even science fiction?
My starting point for this train of thought is that humans are very far removed from the only animal we know that can withstand the rigors of space: the wee beasties known as tardigrades - or ‘water bears’. Even these remarkable creatures only achieve this feat via a complete metabolic shutdown to achieve prolonged hibernation.
But haven’t we built safe environments to protect people from whatever perils interplanetary space or an inhospitable planet hold?
We have. But only for use on a short-term basis. The longest a human has continuously lived outside of Earth’s atmosphere is 437 days. That’s less than 15 months. In other words, if you took a new-born baby upstairs it still wouldn’t be talking by the time it came back down. A 5-year-old child would have barely learnt to read a non-picture book or learn long division. And I wouldn’t have finished equipping my Cobra in Elite Dangerous. Life in space is still too short-term to be termed sustainable - even for individuals, let alone significant engineering project teams or ‘shake ‘n’ bake’ colonist families.
Biological Limitations
There are good reasons for this, all of which relate to our biology. Every lifeform we know of has evolved to live on just one planet: Earth. This is very likely the case for any other planet out there which hosts life. As a large-sized species we’re one of the most successful in terms of biomass and geographical coverage, despite not being particularly fast, strong or fecund. We’re highly adaptable to new or changing Earth-based environments, primarily through our use of brain-stored knowledge and its cultural transmission through words and music, our bipedalism and opposable thumbs, the tools we make, our complex social organisations and an omnivorous diet.
But it’s taken evolution millions of years to create and embed such flexible behaviours in response to our physiological limits. And we live in a planetary Goldilocks zone: if the partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen varies by more than 0.1 bar, or CO₂ triples from its current 0.04% ‘clean air’ level, or air temperature falls outside a narrow ±30℃ ‘wet bulb’ range then we cannot function, and in most cases will sicken and die. So it should come as no surprise we might struggle to live on another planet whose conditions aren’t a very close match to Earth.
But what about doing what we do best, adapting the environment to our own needs (even though we continue to monstrously fail Earth’s non-domesticated flora and fauna)? We could create a self sustaining society, making our own air, growing our own food, heating and cooling our living spaces anywhere we care to. There’s no meaningful external environmental limits, given enough time, technology and energy. This is the premise underlying the more optimistic projections of off-planet colonies within the next 30 to 100 years. Optimistically, ignore we haven’t returned to our own satellite for over 50 years and have oodles of good luck. Pessimistically, assume that the intelligence, innovativeness and preparation of those involved will be overcome by typical human short-term indulgences in home comforts, a pill for every ill, tribal hierarchies and weaponised fights for supremacy, plus a sprinkle of bad luck.
Here’s a rundown of the main biological issues which will plague today’s men, women and children attempting to reach a habsat’s orbit, the Moon, Mars, Europa or the stars:
(Further general reading is listed in the footnote1. )
Higher radiation levels causing long-term DNA damage and increased cancer risks. This will affect adults, children and unborn foetuses.
Low gravity leading to osteoporotic decreases in bone, as well as muscle and tendon mass. Leads to weight loss.
Brain damage - including ‘neural shuffling’.
Disruption to diurnal sleep and hormonal cycles.
Zero gravity distortion of eyeballs and changes in eye pressure, requiring eyeglass changes.
Long-term diet imbalances due to micronutrient deficiencies.
Labour complications from atrophied uterine muscles. No one has been pregnant in space. There has been very little research on the impact of space on the human reproductive system. Low gravity impacts animal foetal bone development.
Long-term genetic viability. An estimated minimum of 1500 to 8000 ‘arkonauts’ is required to ensure a viable genetic complement for any extrasolar colony.
The irony is that millions of people die every year from highly preventable causes - mostly from what they put in their mouths, but also from the projectile wielding antics of fellow humans.
Risk Prevention
Apart from our Earth-derived physiology, the other major problem we have in going upstairs or out there in any substantial numbers is how we think, particularly those who affect a narrow Western mindset. For this group, one person’s death is a “tragedy” and even a pet’s demise can confer the label of grief-laden “trauma”, despite the very real, very far away horrors being ingested via constant news feeds, which impact millions of their fellow human beings. The Challenger explosion was therefore a “disaster” - putting it on the scale of a tidal wave. “Crisis” is the term used for any systemic issue or large-scale problem affecting an organisation or nation - it might imply death, but rarely any notable punishment or even responsibility. Despite this, enquiries into the cause and prevention of even a handful deaths can last years and often change nothing. The irony is that millions of people die every year from highly preventable causes - mostly from what they put in their mouths, but also from the projectile wielding antics of fellow humans.
But to attempt to eliminate these risks through regulation or negotiation has proven again and again to be either an impossibility or a political death wish. Voters wish to maintain the right to kill themselves via slow increments or at high velocity, with both reserved for those who pose a distant threat to their prosperity. They also don’t wish to see anyone die in space. This must be avoided at all costs. At any cost. To act otherwise shows a callous disregard for the sanctity of human life; for a lifetime of patriotic service; for a system which puts profit and progress above else.
An Historical Analogy
Please consider this historical gem: Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, heavily sponsored by a private corporation with an eye on a large RoI, suffered an ~85% mortality rate within its first four years of existence. Although the colonists lived in an environment with similar temperatures, atmosphere and natural resources to their native England, four in ten died from disease, violence and starvation in the first year alone. No-one in charge gave a damn. They just sent more people, supplies and middle managers to keep the cart wheels turning, the guns firing and the babies crying.
I think the root cause here was an inability to learn and adapt, a natural tendency to think an imported civilisation could conquer a territory, and an over-reliance on one imported god triumphing through ‘natural justice’ over the resident ‘savage’ ones. It reminds me of some Silicon Valley VC manifestos. Too little thinking and planning and too many prayers were of course a combined recipe for disaster. Ask any indigenous Powhatan, whose forbears had, if not thrived, at least survived in the same landscape for generations. They even tried to help these hapless, highly infectious intruders.
Of course, even though it took almost a century’s more conflict with man and nature, Jamestown’s citizens eventually established Williamsburg, and the rest is recounted, as always, in the victor’s history books. As a sidenote, it still took an importation of women to become wives and servants and the use of indentured local labour to farm, of all things, tobacco - the only real return on the initial capital investment. One of the grimmest of our self-created reapers had only just begun to sharpen his blade - and I don’t mean the consequent growth and spread of unfettered trans-Atlantic capitalism.
This inability to adapt to common reason, to see the wood for the trees, is a common human trait. Billions of people are addicted to licensed and taxed drugs which create immense burdens of death and disease, either directly or indirectly. Billions more ingest food and adopt lifestyles which result in a shortened lifespan from heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Homicide and suicide are the biggest causes of death for Americans under forty-five years old. Why would the thousands of people we need to shoot into space to create colonies behave any differently? Given prior history, it’s unlikely the ‘right to keep and bear arms’ will be infringed on by legal fripperies over space vehicle jurisdiction or claiming another planet’s poorly defended territory.
Currently, the biggest killers of the population most likely to have the wealth and lack of sense to ascend upstairs in WALL-E like droves are cars, drugs, and guns. Aided by heavily misguided doses of hubristic free will, future space colonists will likely demand, smuggle or manufacture weapons, vehicles and drugs (legal and illegal) to ensure continuity of their prior home comforts. But they might not have fast internet access or decent coffee.
So what could possibly go wrong? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as those perfidious disdainers of fake French fries might say.
Conclusion
If modern humans can’t figure out how to adapt to, or arrest, changing conditions on Earth, with many claiming the lack of decent coffee the biggest struggle of their entitled day – then it might conceivably be a struggle for them to adapt to a totally alien environment - one which is dangerous, dull and devoid of any real opportunity or purpose, beyond making a quick buck or serving ignorant tourists.
Taking all of the above into account, I envision four broad options for spreading the meme of humanity, with all it faults and frailties, beyond our suffering Earth:
We learn to radically adapt human biology to improve our chances of expanding our species’ footprint to other planets and moons. This will eventually have to encompass adult and germ-line experiments. We currently consider such human experimentation as unethical. But oddly, the best (and most willing?) volunteers to send into space might be paraplegics. They have, after all, been forced to adapt to pesky gravity in so many ways. Might its absence bring them untold freedom or more fraught effort? Food for thought…
We engineer (‘terraform’) the extra-terrestrial bodies we wish to inhabit to fit our biological needs - air, water, food, breeding. We have zero knowledge or experience of this - in fact, quite the opposite. Modern civilisation excels at screwing up every habitat we touch - which is now the entire Earth.
We use mechanical and artificial means. Robots, AI, blah, blah. This has obvious and already partly-realised potential. The long-term problems of this approach include: a) them not wanting us to later join them (why spoil a good time?) and (b), them wanting to return (hint: this could very much spoil a good time). One thought: What if we grant them sentient rights - doesn’t this put us back to square one?
We use non-human biological means. I will say no more on this last option as it will be the subject of next week’s fictional output.
The Five Hazards of Human Spaceflight: https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/hazards/
The Human Body in Space: https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/the-human-body-in-space/
What does spending more than a year in space do to the human body? : https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230927-what-a-long-term-mission-in-space-does-to-the-human-body
Challenges to Human Spaceflight: https://askanearthspacescientist.asu.edu/human-spaceflight-challenges