How the carelessness of homo sapiens might restrict them from building spaceships
We, the human race, are constricted to this tiny planet, located in a huge galaxy within an even more inconceivably big universe. The science fictional notion of trying to discover planets still seems like a thing of the far far away future, but will it actually ever happen? The rapid progress of the last hundred years might come to a full stop sooner than we think, because we have exploited our planet to it’s limits. In November 2010 it was officially announced that we’ve reached “peak oil”, meaning that the time where the maximum amount of global petroleum extraction is in the past.
Without oil, how will we ever be able to build real spaceships? So many things are made from plastic these days that it’s unthinkable a suitable replacement will be found soon. Traveling to other planets it definitely something I will never be able to do in my life time. Instead, I wonder if I will ever be able to travel around the world. Visiting the places and countries on our planet is something I love to do, and I hope I will get to see a lot of them in my life. But again, it is doubtful whether this will be an option in the near future – once our oil reserves are gone, so is the air traffic. There are no alternatives to oil in the flight industry, meaning that it could get very, very expensive to book a flight soon. Of course this could negatively affect a lot of industries and might even lead to another global recession.
Carelessness is a big problem in our world – in every aspect of life. In first world countries, oil is wasted, but so is energy, food or water. But all of these things have boundaries, and some day some of these things will run out or make our lives a lot more expensive.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it: Interstellar travel is, as you rightly said, nothing that would happen in our lifetimes. Even if the major physical problems were solved (we’re nowhere near that), it would take a much greater society than any that exists today, to travel the stars. We can help humanity evolve in the right direction, slowly, but we’d also need to solve some minor issues like hunger or greed.
Society will change, however, once mineral oil becomes scarce. We will undoubtedly find a way to ditch the oil habit, but that’ll be an interesting time—and that, now, that might happen in the next couple of decades.
Exiting? Yes. Scary? Definitely. With things as they are now, no oil means going nucular. Means that the price for finding a truly clean and reliable energy source that can sustain our still-growing numbers might be to produce a couple more Fukushimas if we’re unlucky.
Whatever happens, I am actually confident that in the end, everything will turn out fine. Our species has lived through crisis after crisis and this one looks to be rather small in comparison. Whatever we lose (and I’m not so sure it’ll be affordable travel), we’ll gain something more valuable in return. Life just works like that.