The Future of the Astronaut and Its Impact on Our Psychology |
Four astronauts have been evacuated from the International Space Station (ISS) after their planned six-and-a-half-month visit to space was cut short by a month due to a “serious” medical issue.
It’s the first time astronauts have been evacuated due to a health issue since the station was put into Earth’s orbit in 1998.
But could this incident portend serious, longer-term implications for any future attempts to journey off the planet, visit other worlds, or survive elsewhere should our home planet eventually become uninhabitable?
Space travel is also in the news because the first crewed mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 landed there in December 1972, Artemis II, is expected to launch in the coming weeks. Artemis II is not scheduled to descend onto the Moon’s surface, but is instead intended to help prepare for future lunar landings by astronauts, starting with the Artemis III mission.
Whether it’s the Moon or maybe Mars, space exploration surely must include the intention, at some point in the future, to attempt to cover vast distances between stars. One key question remains: Is this actually technically possible?
If it is, a provocative question might be: Why has no one from another world, who surely would be more advanced than us in technology, been able to make the trip to visit us?
If our own galaxy is, statistically speaking, likely teeming with alien civilizations, since it has 500 billion stars—as many scientists believe must be the case, given its sheer size—a puzzle remains as to why we have never detected the existence of anyone else. Nor has anyone, apparently, come visiting.
Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester and co-author of a recent paper calculating probabilities that life exists elsewhere in the universe, points out, for example, that thanks to recent advances in search technology, we now know that roughly one-fifth of stars have planets in “habitable zones,” where temperatures could support life.
Before their new result calculating the chances that an intelligent civilization exists elsewhere, Professor Adam Frank points out that you’d be considered a pessimist if you imagined the probability of evolving a civilization on a habitable planet were, for the sake of argument, one in a........