Space exploration: a childish idea

There is a proper process to travel to other planets, but is is not using rockets and space probes. Compared to it, the idea of traveling using space probes is childish.

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Since the 1950s, science fiction has been selling the idea of space exploration. Generations grew up believing that humanity would soon be able to colonize space. Many books were written on the subject. When I was small, for example, Isaac Asimov used to be popular. He wrote many stories about how the advancement of technology would allow humanity to explore and colonize space in just a few decades. The decades passed, but nothing really happened. Apart from a few manned missions to our closest satellite and the construction of a small space station in lower orbit, it doesn’t seem people are much closer to exploring space than in the 1960s.

The idea of space exploration started as a playground for governments. Both the US and the USSR spent huge quantities of money on the idea, and more recently, private companies started amassing the necessary resources to make a few steps. SpaceX has been promoting the idea of building a self-sustainable colony on Mars with a million inhabitants in the next few decades. The idea may sound attractive to some, but it will never work. Why?

The first problem with colonizing space is that we don’t have access to the higher dimensions where more evolved beings live. According to the Vedas, there are living beings living comfortably on most planets of the Universe, but they have bodies adapted to the conditions there.

We have bodies adapted to the environment we find on our own planet, and it’s very difficult for us to live anywhere else. Not only is it very difficult to leave our planet, due to the influence of gravity, but even when we finally get into space, we see only inhospitable environments, extremes of temperature, and other hazards.

Space travel is perfectly possible, but one has to follow the proper process, elevating one’s consciousness and attaining an appropriate body on the desirable planet at the time of death. As a soul, or even as a combination of soul and subtle body, one can travel everywhere in the universe, but for that, one has to leave behind this material body composed of gross material elements.

An interesting story in this connection is the saga of Trissanku, who, with the help of Visvamrta, tried to perform a sacrifice capable of elevating him to the celestial planets in the same body. As he started ascending, the demigods became alarmed at having such contamination in their abodes and sent him back down. However, because of the power of the sacrifice, he couldn’t return to earth, and thus remained in space, floating around, head down.

Traveling using a spaceship is a similar attempt, where one moves geographically around the cosmos, but is not able to properly move in the subtle vertical dimension, nor assume an appropriate body. One may thus eventually reach the Moon or Mars, but remain still entrapped in the gross dimension, without experiencing the celestial reality of the inhabitants of these abodes. As a result, instead of apsaras, one will find only dangers and privations outside our planet.

Even without mentioning all the philosophical aspects of the celestial status of the different planets of our universe and the existence of a vertical dimension we can’t move through without changing our consciousness and material bodies, there is another very simple, logical, and down-to-earth question: Economics. Why don’t we build colonies at the bottom of the ocean? It’s not because it’s not technically possible, but it’s just because it is too expensive.

Science fiction novels are always based on leaps of faith. Some new revolutionary technology, like an inexhaustible source of fuel, or a cheap way to lift up materials to space, or some easy way to build giant space stations with materials produced from thin air. However, when one examines the real challenges of sending materials to space and creating livable conditions for humans in space or on other planets, one sees that although it is not an unsolvable problem, it is just too problematic and too expensive.

The International Space Station, which started being built in 1993, cost about 160 billion dollars, and this is just for a very small station, built in low orbit, very close to our planet. The same station built in an orbit around Mars, for example, would cost several times more. If it were built on the surface of the red planet, it would cost even more.

Some speculate that the cost of spaceships and space stations can drop dramatically with economies of scale. According to these sources, if we start producing it in mass they may cost as little as a commercial jet. This is yet another leap of faith. Maybe one could build a space probe at the cost of a small plane, but the real problem is the enormous amount of fuel necessary to put it into space and transport it to distant planets. The cost of the probe may go down if one mass-produces it, but the fuel to put it in orbit, as well as the rockets and other disposable materials, will not become less expensive.

The Mars Curiosity Rover, for example, weighs about 889 kilos. It cost 2.47 billion dollars to send it to Mars, which equals 2.78 million dollars per kilogram. Thus, after solving the initial problem of sending a few humans to Mars, together with some small habitat and supplies, another problem would be how to maintain them there. Imagine the amount of food, water, clothes, and other products you use during your life. An average human eats about 35 tons of food during his or her life. He also needs water, clothes, and other supplies. To live in an inhospitable environment like Mars, one would also need space suits, radiation shields, sources of energy, vehicles, and many specialized tools, apart from the habitat in which one lives. There is no Walmart or Amazon on Mars; therefore, all of this would need to be sent from Earth, at a cost of 2.78 million dollars per kg! Most of us don’t make so much money in our entire lifetimes. How many people on the planet would be rich enough to live on Mars at such a cost? I don’t think any. The cost of maintaining a small colony on Mars would be on the scale of trillions of dollars.

Worse than that: Colonies in space will always have to be supplied from the Earth at an exorbitant cost. One may be able to recycle water and produce some food on Mars by bringing some soil and tools from Earth. It may also be possible to produce some water from gases in the atmosphere or mine it from underground sources, but what about everything else? How to produce a computer or a hover on Mars? These things will always have to be brought from Earth at an exorbitant cost. The colony would never be self-sufficient, and as soon as the interest in it started to wane, people would not want to continue spending so much money on it, and the project would have to be abandoned. What would happen to the people struggling to live there at this point would be a good question.

Apart from that, there is another problem: Life in space will always be miserable. Just like in the ISS, people living in space or in space colonies will always be forced to live in cramped and uncomfortable conditions, drinking their own urine in the form of recycled water, cultivating vegetables in their own stool, suffering the harmful effects of solar radiation and other hazards, and living in constant alert in inhospitable conditions. This, presuming they would be at all allowed to live there, since the place is already inhabited by beings much more powerful than us. The only place where we can comfortably leave is on our blue planet, the place we were assigned to.

The record of permanence in space was set in 2016 by Valery Polyakov, who spent a total of 437 days in the ISS. However, the environment is so harsh that most astronauts are not capable of staying nearly as long in space, and these are people who are rigorously selected and trained for this kind of mission. To think that ordinary people would be able to live in such harsh conditions for their entire lives is a great leap of faith. Even if it were possible, only a crazy fellow would voluntarily choose so.

Human bodies are just not made to survive in outer space. We have bodies that are capable of living in the environment we were made to live in, on our own planet. A human being who would try to live on Mars or any other planet would just condemn himself to a very short and miserable life.

As mentioned, it’s possible to travel in outer space and to visit other planets, but the process to do so is to elevate one’s consciousness and use the appropriate process to acquire a suitable type of body to live there. One who does so will attain a body capable of not only living in a different atmosphere but to experience the environments and interacting with the inhabitants there. This is what it really means to travel to other planets. Compared to that, the harsh conditions in cramped, unsafe space probes constructed at an exorbitant cost look childish.

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