The Next Giant Leap? We Can And Must Send People To The Moons Of Jupiter And Saturn By 2080 Say NASA Scientists – Forbes

Explorer astronaut finding and walking on water on Saturn's moon Titan. An astronaut walking in the ... [+] ammoniac sea of Enceladus. A surreal dream scene..

We choose to go to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard.

This paraphrase of JFKs famous Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort from 1962 may seem slightly ridiculous given that we havent even been back to the Moon since 1972, but crewed missions to gas giant moons like Titan, Enceladus, Europa and Callisto will be within our capabilities by the end of the 21st century.

Thats according to new research that lays out exactly what humans can achieve over the next few centuries in the realm of space exploration.

The highlights include the first human-crewed missions to land on Mars, selected Asteroid Belt objects, and selected moons of Jupiter and Saturn before the end of the 21st century. The 23rd century could see launches of human-crewed interstellar missions to exoplanets within about 40 light-years while missions to other galaxies will have to wait until the end of the 24th century.

Saturns largest moon, Titan, is an obvious target but Enceladus (pictured) is at least as ... [+] intriguing for human colonization due to a suspected subsurface ocean.

This rough timeframe for humanity to become a multi-world species via off-world colonization makes for fascinating reading, but it also comes with a dire warning.

Produced by a research team led by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the paper is entitled Avoiding the Great Filter: A Projected Timeframe for Human Expansion Off-World. It constructs a model based upon empirical data of space exploration and computing power through the first six decades or so of the space age. Thats reckoned to have begun in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik-1.

The paper projects the earliest possible launch dates for human-crewed missions from cis-lunar space (not beyond the Moon) to selected Solar System and interstellar destinations.

So as well as looking at what weve achieved so far it uses Moores Law, for long an indicator of developments in the tech industry. Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a microchipdoubles about every two years and the cost of computers is halved. It also says that the growth of microprocessors is exponential.

Take that to its logical conclusion and what do you get? A space-faring civilization!

With that in mind, and having crunched the numbers, the authors think that these are the first possible launch dates from Earth:

However, all of that can only occur ifand its probably a big ifhumanity can avoid what astronomers call the great filter.

Earth. Beginning with the development and deployment of the first nuclear weapons near the end of ... [+]f World War II, humanity entered a Window of Peril, which will not be safely closed until robust off-world colonies become a reality.

Jargon from those involved in SETIthe search for extra-terrestrial intelligencethe great filter thesis, coined in 1996, states that life in the Universe may be doomed to go extinct due to pandemics, climate change, nuclear war, solar flares ... there are many dangers.

Its an attempt to explain why weve found no intelligent life anywhere else in the Universe despite it being statistically probable.

The authors suggest that humans entered a Window of Peril with the development and deployment of the first nuclear weapons near the end of World War II.

The solution, of course, is for humans to become an interplanetary species, thereby guaranteeing its long-term survival. An aggressive and sustained space exploration program, which includes colonization, is thus seen as critical to the long-term survival of the human race, reads the paper.

An artist's concept allows us to imagine what it would be like to stand on the surface of the ... [+] exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f, located in the TRAPPIST-1 system in the constellation Aquarius. Because this planet is thought to be tidally locked to its star, meaning the same face of the planet is always pointed at the star, there would be a region called the terminator that perpetually divides day and night. If the night side is icy, the day side might give way to liquid water in the area where sufficient starlight hits the surface. One of the unusual features of TRAPPIST-1 planets is how close they are to each other so close that other planets could be visible in the sky from the surface of each one. In this view, the planets in the sky correspond to TRAPPIST1e (top left crescent), d (middle crescent) and c (bright dot to the lower right of the crescents). TRAPPIST-1e would appear about the same size as the moon and TRAPPIST1-c is on the far side of the star. The star itself, an ultra-cool dwarf, would appear about three times larger than our own sun does in Earth's skies. The system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope as well as other ground-based observatories, and the ground-based TRAPPIST telescope for which it was named after. (Photo digital Illustration by NASA/NASA via Getty Images)

Now we have a to-do list that matches our likely technological development ... though that would need to include propulsion systems that can go at (or close to) the speed of light.

Without revolutionary breakthroughs in propulsive engineering, human voyagesand any colonization that would followto interstellar destinations is highly unlikely to be undertaken, write the authors. Fortunately, the Solar System presents a target rich interplanetary environment for astronauts to further explore and adventuring colonists to conquer starting here in the 21st century.

Achieve all this and humans will have assured its own survival and become a true spacefaring civilization. Avoiding the great filter, it seems, is within humanitys reach.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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The Next Giant Leap? We Can And Must Send People To The Moons Of Jupiter And Saturn By 2080 Say NASA Scientists - Forbes