There will be apple blossoms on Mars

We are leaving our Earth, and we promised
That there will be apple blossoms on Mars…[1]

There will be apple blossoms on Mars, Vladimir Troshin

“Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of helping humanity reach the stars.” So started many of my motivation letters when applying to universities. When I first applied to study aerospace engineering, my wish was to see starships pushing for the heavens, taking humanity beyond our pale blue dot.

Moving away from my youthful sentimentality, there are plenty of good reasons to go to space. It could help us answer big questions such as the origin of life, spur multilateral technological innovation (automation, propulsion, structural design, robotics …), and create a compelling vision for the times to come, inspiring future generations to look towards an ever-widening horizon of possibilities. Times like the space race, though on the back of terrifying military competition, allowed people around the world to unite in wonder and admiration of humanity’s intrepid exploration of the cosmos.

But are these reasons worth dedicating resources that may be sorely needed to solve some of the crises we currently face?

We have long been awaited by distant planets, cold planets, quiet fields,
But not one of those planets waits for us like this precious planet called Earth.

I Believe, My Friends, Vladimir Voinovich

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicts that current measures proposed by governments to tackle global warming are insufficient to avoid the worst impacts of anthropogenic climate change. This means that we need to devote more resources to decarbonising our economies and mitigating the impacts of climate change, so that we can avoid our current crises being exacerbated by freak storms, droughts, climate migration and the like. Now is not the time to go all-in on escape plans.

To be clear, I don’t think that space exploration is a useless proposition. It can help us learn more about our own planet, and potentially act as a backup in case everything goes sideways on Earth. But any kind of space exploration that involves lengthy human stays will take decades, and self-sustaining (autarkic) colonies will require enormous investments in time and money. When it comes to stabilising the Earth system, we simply don’t have that much time on our hands.

For this reason, I am more inclined towards dedicating resources towards this great stabilisation: renewable energy, dematerialisation, conservation, and adaptation policies. Intuitively, I believe that getting to Mars (and beyond …) has higher chances of happening if we start out by solving the most pressing problems of today and bringing about an era of energy abundance. There’s plenty of time for our children, or their children, to leave Earth and explore the great beyond. But only if we manage to save our home, the little planet they’re starting from.

And dream we not of the thundering spaceport,
Nor do we dream of this icy azure,
We dream of the grass, the grass outside our homes,
The green, green grass …

Grass by the home, Zemlyane

[1] The Soviet government commissioned many songs about space travel. Some were cheerful, optimistically extolling the imminent conquest of space, while others were more melancholic, expressing wishes for a better future. Interestingly, the latter typically referred longingly to Earth (and were accused by the government of deromanticising the image of space). I included a few excerpts from my favourite songs that describe the different perspectives on space exploration covered in the article.