4 ms·
K2-18b is a possibility, but it's 111 light years away, and the fastest we can go right now is 692 thousand KPH (the Parker probe), or 0.06% of the speed of lig
by Communitivity 7y ago
K2-18b is a possibility, but it's 111 light years away, and the fastest we can go right now is 692 thousand KPH (the Parker probe), or 0.06% of the speed of light, and that is not sustainable over a long journey. Even if we could get to 12% speed of light [2], it would still take close to a millennium to get there (925 years). Theoretically possible in a generation ship, but even more could go wrong with a ship then with a dome colony, and there would be no raw planetary resources to use for repairs.
K2-18b was recently found to have water and be the most likely habitable planet we've discovered so far[1].
The problem with dome solutions (Mars and Moon) is that there is a lot that can go wrong with a dome. Eventually it likely will suffer a catastrophic failure, at which point you hope there have been sufficient redundancies built in and they work. Mars might be terraformed, but there's also the question of should we do that if we've found indicators for the potential of life?
Mars is our best bet though, for migration in the next 200 years, which may be needed at the rate global warming is occurring. Best of course would be to mitigate climate change as much as we can.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/11/world/water-atmosphere-exoplanet-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/11/world/water-atmosphere-exopla...
[2] https://www.livescience.com/55981-futuristic-spacecraft-for-interstellar-space-travel.html https://www.livescience.com/55981-futuristic-spacecraft-for-...