Friday, 3rd of August marked the commencement of the weekly CEV group discussion for the academic year 2018-19 with the topic:
“Should we be interplanetary or rather focus on making Earth a better place?”
The purpose was to look at it from an engineering point of view. And to discuss the problems we would face in becoming an interplanetary species. The following points are the minutes of the group discussion that we CEVians had conducted :
- Viruses may infect humans due to interplanetary travels and may lead to untreatable diseases.
- Time span required to completely settle on another planet and studying the chemical composition there would be challenging.
- The uneducated audience is a basic problem.
- Increasing population may decrease resource per person.
- Problems: transferring masses, resources, data collection.
- Classifications of civilization can be done according to needs.
- Calculations are just hypothesis can be proved wrong.
- May lead to the war situation, for example, ELYSIUM.
- Competition among the countries to conquer another planet may help in developing new ways and may give better results.
- Interplanetary travel would be for limited citizens, therefore Earth has to be made liveable for the majority of mass.
- Problem: new inventions may lead to decreased use of renewable resources
- Outer space should be explored to find new renewable resources.
- Other option like underwater cities may help.
- Unexplored oceans may be explored well.
- Government expenditure on researches should be made up marked.
- Materials required to build houses deep water are a great challenge and hence should be given more research time.
Conclusion:
Civilization and education are the foremost before actually shifting our population. At the same time, the organization must compete among themselves to bring the best solutions, as earth’s life should also be unmarked. Space exploration may also help in making earth a better place, still keeping the civilization transfer on another planet our secondary goal. Making the place where we already live is better than doing some probabilistic research. But even technical advancement in creating artificial environment may not help in biological conditions. Proper calculation of resources is also needed. It is the need of the hour that each citizen takes individual responsibility in making Earth a better place and asking others to do the same.
Minutes by:
2nd Year, Civil Engineering, SVNIT.