Our Future Is NOT In Space

Many progressives seem to cling to this belief that we will certainly - beyond a shadow of a doubt - colonize other planets in the future. And by "colonize," I specifically mean establishing self-sustaining colonies of *people* on other planets (or moons, for that matter). But personally, I have a hard time believing it. Here's why I'm so skeptical... 1.) Building a life-sustaining base on Mars is practically impossible. Forget flying to the moon. That was a piece of cake! Try building a *base* on the moon. As far as engineering projects go, this project is several magnitudes greater in difficulty than merely flying to the moon.Why am I so confident that we'll fail? Because every time we've tried doing it on Earth, we've failed miserably. See for yourself. Watch it and weep for the future of humanity: http://www.ted.com... But wait, haven't we made progress since Biosphere 2? Isn't SpaceX working on a new Martian base for their Mars One mission that's going to enable colonists to live there? Haha! Think again. Experts from MIT say that the SpaceX base would kill all the colonists in less than 68 days: http://time.com... 2.) Some really, really weird stuff happens in space.We don't understand outer space very well. We didn't evolve in outer space (as far as we know), and we certainly aren't adapted for outer space. Rules that we take for granted down here on the Earth don't apply in space. For example, everything that goes up into space with the astronauts needs to be specially designed to accommodate the fact that there is no gravity, and contrary to the layman's intuition, there is no sound in space. Additionally, due to the absence of gravity, astronauts need to constantly exercise in order to maintain their musculature.Despite constantly training their muscles, however, it appears that astronauts' hearts are still prone to shrinking and withering into spherical little balls: http://io9.com...Even as of just this past year, we're still discovering new ways that extended periods of time in space mess with the human body in unexpected ways. Now, apparently, we're learning that it might be ruining astronauts' immune systems: http://www.space.com...;And I can't seem to find it, but I thought it might be worth mentioning anyhow that, a few years ago, I remember reading in the news that it was recently discovered that male astronauts' brains - but not female astronauts' brains - show shrinkage in a particular area. I thought that was pretty strange. Sorry I can't find it though.Importantly, notice that we're now trying to send ordinary citizens to colonize other planets. Perhaps a hyperhealthy astronaut is able to train and prepare for these physiological conditions aboard a space shuttle, but what about the average person? Would they even survive the flight to Mars?3.) Climate change or a nuclear event will kill us all before we get there.We may be tempted to fantasize that space colonization is our Plan B that's going to ensure humanity survives any sort of catastrophic event on Earth. But really, it's the other way around: We're working against the clock.I'm not particularly well educated on the subject of climate change and would prefer not to go too far down that tangent, but all I know is that the climate scientists have never seemed to be particularly optimistic to me. But even if you aren't willing to grant the threat of climate change, then just consider how easy it is to sneak a nuclear warhead into the United States: You would just need to hide it in a bale of marijuana.Oh wait a minute, you wouldn't need to sneak one in after all. You could easily just steal one of our own... assuming we don't accidentally detonate it ourselves: http://youtu.be...And in case you're still skeptical of the forecoming nuclear apocalypse, here's a nuclear terrorism expert who has had access to classified information and who has dedicated an ungodly amount of time to thinking about this problem. And yet his only message for the lay public is get ready for it:http://www.ted.com...Yeah, we're basically all going to die. And Earth is destined to be our burial ground.