• Question: how far off are we from being able to travel to and live on other planets?

    Asked by anon-245952 to Sam, Samantha, Nicol, Lori-Ann, Liam, David on 16 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Samantha Faircloth

      Samantha Faircloth answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Hello Quiz396, we still have quite a lot to do but some of the scientists I work with are planning to build a ‘Moon Village’ on the Moon for astronauts to live in. It would be in a sheltered old lava tube. Lava tubes were formed by ancient volcanoes when hot rock flowed under the top layers of the Moon! They are now empty so astronauts could use them! : -)

    • Photo: Lori-Ann Foley

      Lori-Ann Foley answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      We hope to be able to travel back to the moon in a few years. And there is talk about getting to Mars, too. It would be hard, though, to travel there and to live there. There is no air to breath on the moon or Mars so people would have to wear space suits when they were outside and the houses would have to be sealed to keep the air and heat inside. And food would have to be grown inside too. At the moment, there are lots of plans of how to build shelters on the moon using moon rocks and how to use the water ice that is there, to drink and to break up to make oxygen to breath. So lots of plans and maybe one day in the not too distant future there will be people living on the moon looking up at the earth in the sky.

    • Photo: David Sobral

      David Sobral answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Just depends on how much we want it. In principle we could be doing it, but it is still very dangerous and expensive.

    • Photo: Sam Frampton

      Sam Frampton answered on 19 Mar 2020:

      When we talk about living on other planets, Mars is really the only one that we could send humans to soon, but even that comes with a lot of challenges. We’re not sure how to protect people from the radiation that they would get if they travelled to Mars, and things like food and water aren’t available on Mars, so you’d have to take it all with you to begin with!

      If 2-3 astronauts were to go first, there is also the question of how you keep them comfortable and entertained when they live thousands and thousands of miles from the nearest other humans. If people stay interested and enough money is invested, I think people could be on mars in about 20-30 years 🙂

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