Not To Visit, But To Inhabit

The human civilisation is going to relocate for the first time, a part of it at least

- Rakesh Sharma

WE ARE EXPLORERS by nature. Civilizations started out of Africa and spread all over. We built ships and discovered more lands. Having seen all that there is to see on Earth, it’s natural that we started looking outwards. Over the years as we exhaust the limited resources available on Earth, the compulsion will be to look at an alternate habitation. Also, the human genome doesn’t have a backup. If there is a cataclysmic event, like an asteroid-hit, the entire civilization gets wiped out. These are the factors that are going to drive future space exploration.

When we went to the moon it was part of an ideological race between the Soviets and the Americans. All that proved to the world was that both sides were capable of returning with fists full of lunar soil, nothing more, because the technology was not quite there. This is why nobody went back to the moon. But now that we have advanced technologically, and these are the drivers I mentioned earlier, new opportunities are opening up.

THE PRIVATE SECTOR is also getting interested in it, starting from tourism. That’s the trajectory being taken and, I think, we are at the crossroads of very exciting times. The role of the private sector could be good as well as bad. Good in the sense that for this activity to scale up, you will need the inputs from the private sector. I suspect that going forward, exploration will still remain in the domain of governments but exploitation of space will probably pass on to the private sector. Nobody ever explores just for the sake of tourism. You want all you can get out of that place. What are the assets which are hidden, maybe in the subsoil? What are the advantages of the planet’s environment and how can you derive benefit from it?