Capsules
It would be a bummer if humans went extinct because of a pandemic, since we know about space and rockets and everything.
When we look at everything that’s gone extinct, for whatever reason, deep down we think, Those poor dumb things.
I imagine that when archeologists dig up the remnants of our civilization, they will say something like, “Well, we can tell by science that they all died from (pandemic, or nuclear weapons, or climate change, or a meteor), none of which could kill all of them instantly without warning.”
Then the grad student says, “But wait a minute, Dr. Jones, what’s this that I’m unearthing with a dainty brush? A nice looking space rocket. Just not quite a big enough one to get enough people and stuff far enough away for the species to survive anywhere.”
In unison, they will say, “Those poor dumb things.”
We’ve all been training for it now. We could even call COVID-19 a drill. If we have another one that’s a little more deadly and a little more contagious, I hope that some of us will be quarantined on Mars.
I aim to train more extensively, by living on a 32-foot fishing boat for two months with three other people. I will do this every year for the rest of my life, or until I get a chance to go to Mars.
This fishing season will even be a sort of simulation of traveling to a planet that’s already inhabited, except it will just be an isolated village in Southwest Alaska. We will fly in wearing masks. We will do our work with the absolute minimum interaction with the locals, because they may be more vulnerable to our contagions, and because they were there first. We will gather enough resources and knowledge to fly home, recuperate, and equip for future missions.
Mars will be similar, but on a time scale of closer to two years than two months.
A lot of people argue that there are much more pressing problems on Earth, and they are correct. But, I believe the root of most of those problems is our inability to act like a single species.
Maybe branching out onto other planets will put our differences on Earth in perspective.
Earthlings can unite in making fun of scrawny Martian humans who grew up with a third of the gravity compared to Earth.
Humans all across our solar system will unite in fear of the aliens we encounter in other solar systems.
There will still be plenty of opportunities for people to be afraid and angry about foreigners, and government overreach, and rich people skirting taxes, and poor people getting handouts, and colonialism, and privilege, but it would be so much cooler if we did it on a bigger scale than Earth.