Abstract
With the perspective of an increasing population, with the limits faced on the most crucial resources required for sustaining life, with the deterioration and the warming of the climate, plus the possibilities offered by space techniques, the option of leaving a planet that may become inhabitable if not properly managed is an alternative to our future that many have envisioned. Finding hospitable outposts outside the Earth through the Solar System has in fact very often been addressed. Even without any pressing needs, humans have for a long time dreamt of escaping the Earth and exploring the Universe around it. At the turn of the 17th century, in his Somnium seu Astronomia Lunari — A Dream or Astronomy of the Moon, with a lot of fantasy but also accuracy, Kepler described how the Sun and its planets would appear to an inhabitant of the Moon. He imagined the living creatures of that new world where the length of the day was different, the temperatures were different and the seasons were different, but where the laws of celestial mechanics would be the same as on Earth.
We can do anything we want. We can say anything we want to ourselves, because it is easy to fool ourselves. But, we cannot fool Nature. And if we try to fool Nature, we only court disaster. Richard P. Feynman
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9.6 Notes and references
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(2008). Leaving Earth: From Dreams to Reality?. In: Surviving 1,000 Centuries. Springer Praxis Books. Praxis. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74635-7_9
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