Where Do We Go Next?

Every day, when I wake up, I follow a certain schedule. I eat my breakfast. I drink a cup of coffee. I play a game of chess. I brush my teeth. One could say, I am a creature of habit. It is where I feel most comfortable. It is familiar to me. So, what would happen if my schedule were interrupted? How would I adapt? How would anyone?

In March, 2022, Russia decided to invade the Ukraine. While the world balked at this seemingly unprovoked aggression of one sovereign nation on another, I couldn't help thinking how this was playing out in the mind of the average Ukraine citizen. What would it be like to find your country under siege when all you were expecting was to follow your daily routine?

Another milestone we reached last year was that we crossed the 8 billion mark in terms of our worldwide population. Personally, I would like to shake the hand of the individual that counted all of us. That person would epitomise the term "dedication to your job". But, I digress. We, as a specie, have been competing for scarce resources since we crawled out of the primordial ooze. Whether it was for food, land, shelter, whatever… We have been actively busy trying to find ways to stay out of one another's way while satisfying our needs as laid out by Maslow's hierarchy. Urbanisation has led us to believe that our planet is overcrowded and this has started a discussion of where our next home will be.

Current thinking would send us to Mars, but has anybody thought further than to put a bunch of people in a spaceship and send them there? What would Mars need to accommodate all of us? Who would be the first to go? How would it affect us as a multi-planetary Society? And, is it even necessary?

Well, let's deal with the nuts and bolts first. Mars has a surface temperature of -63°C, or -81.4°F for all of you in the United States. It is pretty cold. So, how would we