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Asked by 457hemb33 to Jonathan, Kellie, Kevin, Melissa, Stephanie on 28 Apr 2016.
Question: Are humans considering sending people to another planet and abandoning them to create a settlement?
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Jonathan Jackson answered on 28 Apr 2016:
I know that there are plans to create small human colonies on Mars. But as Stephanie mentioned in another thread (https://heliuma16.imascientist.us/2016/04/28/can-humans-actaully-be-able-to-create-a-colony-on-mars-can-we-travel-to-mars-a-bit-sooner-than-predicted/), even getting to Mars is going to be hard for humans. There is a lot of radiation in space, and without a good plan to shield humans from it while they’re traveling in space, we won’t be able to send humans even to Mars, let alone any other planets!
Beyond that, I don’t think anyone has plans to abandon people on another planet. Even if we made a human settlement on another planet, I think we would want to keep in very close touch with them for as long as possible.
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Stephanie Moon answered on 28 Apr 2016:
Hmm I don’t think we would ever abandon a colony, even if we had one. It would be pretty cool if we could travel between earth and mars, or even the moon! I would really miss earth though, it’s so green and full of life! I don’t think I would like being a colonist on another planet. Would you? What do you think?
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Kevin Baker answered on 28 Apr 2016:
I do not think we would abandon them, Mars does not have a lot of things required for people to survive (Food is one). So they would need to be in close contact with Earth all the time. This would allow use to keep the colony thriving.
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Melissa Wilson Sayres answered on 29 Apr 2016:
Abandoning people sounds terrible! Also, colonization has a pretty miserable history here on the Earth; it isn’t clear that it would be a good idea to propagate that idea to other planets.
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Kellie Jaremko answered on 3 May 2016:
I agree with all the other scientists. I don’t think we would ever plan to abandon a colony. I think that you do bring up a good point though- if it takes a long time to travel to a place then there will be many times when that colony is potentially out of contact. I agree that due to these current limitations a settlement elsewhere may be in the future but not the immediate future.
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