A while back, my husband and I rode in a custom-built submarine, 400m below the surface of the ocean. The experience was both awe-inspir-ing and humbling. To know that a bubble of thick acrylic and some metal was all that kept us alive, I imagine this is what astronauts feel like. The bottom of the ocean is as strange, beautiful and inhospitable as outer space, but that does not keep us from wanting to visit it.
That same drive to risk our lives by exploring the unknown is what carries us beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Science fiction loves the idea of humanity settled beyond our planet—to boldly go to new frontiers, to sail the solar winds as we once did across the seas, and to establish families and cultures in a new land. Reality, unfortunately, has shown that the analogy fails in many ways. Space is far more hostile than the ocean or an uninhabited island. For humanity to successfully expand off our home planet, we will need to solve some fundamental issues of biology and physics, and those solutions will determine when and how we settle in other parts of the solar system.
Cosmic and solar radiation will be the greatest challenges for our bodies. Exposure to these leads to all kinds of physiological problems, which we are still in the process of discovering as astronauts spend more time on the International Space Station. On the other hand, biotechnology is booming and a combination of genetic engineering and nano-scale devices may be able to counteract the detrimental effects of radiation in the future.
Bu hikaye THE WEEK dergisinin September 22, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye THE WEEK dergisinin September 22, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
William Dalrymple goes further back
Indian readers have long known William Dalrymple as the chronicler nonpareil of India in the early years of the British raj. His latest book, The Golden Road, is a striking departure, since it takes him to a period from about the third century BC to the 12th-13th centuries CE.
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