Habitats In Space

Our ancestors explored unknown territories and created new civilisations. For us, the next frontier is space.

- Prithwis Mukerjee

IF NOT ON Earth, where else can humans beings be? Not as a traveller in a spacecraft or as a one-off tourist on the moon but as an immigrant, or a coloniser who sets up a permanent residency for multiple generations. Given our current knowledge of physics and the state of propulsion technology, we really do not have the ability to travel to other stars in a reasonable amount of time, so our search for that second home for humanity is restricted to our own solar system. Where do we start?

There are two divergent points of view on where to locate such an extraterrestrial colony. Some believe that the colony should be located on a natural body like a planet, satellite or an asteroid, while others think that the best bet would be an artificial structure in orbit around a planet or in space. There are pros and cons for both. What is common to both approaches is the realisation that any environment outside the terrestrial biosphere that we currently inhabit is inhospitable if not actually hostile to all kinds of known life forms, including humans. The availability of a magnetosphere that shields us from cosmic radiation, of liquid water that is fundamental to our biology and of an atmosphere that has oxygen for our metabolism is essential, but unfortunately there is no place where all of this is readily available. So wherever we go, we would need to create this environment artificially. Question is, where is it that this can be done with the least effort or at lowest cost.