Plenty of old-style science fiction depicted scenerios in which something like the European settlement of the Americas and Australia/New Zealand was reenacted on an interstellar scale: ships bring settlers to a new habitable world, and for a time a frontier society exists. Settlements spread out from the landing site and as pioneers learn enough about the ecology they’re in, they revert for a time to woodsmen and farmers. Heinlein in Time Enough For Love even has Lazarus Long relate the time he established a homestead in the hinterlands after making a long and difficult journey in a covered wagon (albeit drawn by sentient mules!).
But even supposing that humanly habitable planets are reasonably common, by the time we could ever cross interstellar space, would we need or want to? Before we could ever have the technology to make such a journey, it would seem that the human species (or what descends from it!) will have long since developed a society and civilization based on totally artificial environments. The whole paradigm that the Stanford Group proposed in the 1970s amounted to “who needs planets?”. In bases and colonies on the moons and asteroids of our solar system we will have learned how to create our own air, water and food in closed cycle systems. If we even still eat organic matter for sustainance, it will presumably be some sort of genetically engineered food stock. Instead of being space cowboys riding six-legged paralizards and carrying ray gun rifles, we might be more like the Borg: regarding organic life other than our own as a nuisance to be eliminated.
The main - and very serious - problem is time. If we don’t get at least very close to c travel, the only substantial reason to go anywhere distant would be the end of a habitable earth.
On the other hand, if we could cross, say, a 1000 light years within a subjective human life time and get somewhere livable, I, personally, would volunteer.
It’s not that the human race will have given up exploring or expanding; it’s that we will have moved so far away from being dependent on a natural environment that when we do find one it will be irrelevent.
Even if we could live indefinitely in space-based habitats I see no reason why that would mean people wouldn’t want to be on a planet if they could.
A planet offers all sorts of things you would not have in space. Oceans, lakes, beaches, mountains, forests, etc. to go have fun in. Can people on a space station afford to keep pets? Horses?
Add to that a helluva lot more space on a planet to spread out versus a space station. Can people on the space station have a 4 bedroom house with a playroom in the basement and a living room and dining room?
Given the chance I am pretty sure humans would prefer planet-based life to space station life and would colonize a planet were they able (I suppose you could conceive that after several hundred years on a generation ship humans become so adapted to that environment that a planet holds no interest to them).
If we could go, we certainly will go. The rub is…can we? Will we ever be able to? But assuming we had the technology to viably send a large enough group of humans to a habitable planet in another solar system? Yeah…we’d do it for all the reasons listed above. Mostly because it would be there, partly because collectively we want the species to continue and having all our genetic eggs in a single basket isn’t wise, if we have an alternative. Mainly because we are a curious and expansive species who will continue both of those trends until the last of us dies off.
Right, but the point is, if we can build a generation ship capable of traveling to Alpha Centauri, we can build a much safer and more pleasant habitat that just sits there.
If we can’t solve the problem of living indefinitely in artificial habitats in space, we won’t be able to colonize other planets because we won’t be able to survive the trip. And if we can live indefinitely in artificial space habitats, why do we need the planet?
Space. As in room. The artificial habitat may be quite comfy, but it is unlikely to be as roomy as a planet.
Resources. Even with our awesome future technology, a habitable planet would be a great source of food or minerals.
Survival. Although mobile habitats are better for dealing with meteor strikes, a full size planet might be more able to survive a plague, either in the population or in the crops and livestock.
Sure, these might not be necessary, but our future selves would be fools not to take advantage of them.
If you want the feeling of “going somewhere” then space travel is not for you. Because what space travel is like is being locked in prison for the duration of the trip. You can’t get out and stretch your legs.
And as I always mention in threads like these, if you can build a space habitat, or a Mars habitat, you can build the same habitat on Baffin Island for a lot cheaper.
So if someday in the future millions of people are living on Mars, then we should expect to see millions of people living on Baffin Island. In other words, a terrestrial semi-closed ecology is going to be a heck of a lot easier than a closed ecology in space.
That just means that we’ll colonize Baffin Island first and use what we’ve learned to colonize Mars. I think that if we ever actually reach the point where we build these habitats, then we’ll eventually try to build them everywhere we can. Economics will dictate which places get them first, but we’ll be cramming the excess population wherever possible.
But there isn’t anything new or interesting to learn on Baffin Island, nor are there vast resources we could use there in the future. With the sort of attitude you and other like minded individuals have then the Europeans wouldn’t have ever bothered leaving the continent to look for other things…heck, our species would still be tooling around Africa scrounging for snacks.
Sort of like saying that Africa would need to be filled up before that unrealistic colonization of the New World fantasy can really get rolling…right?
“Hey, screw you, the wagon is too heavy, there’s a nice stream over there and this grass is really tasty. We go no further.”
The entire reason we don’t have colonies on the moon right now, and will never have the fanciful colonies spread through the solar system is really basic: Economics. There’s no money in it. A colony on the Moon isn’t going to pay for itself, let alone bothering with the economics of something in orbit somewhere else.
But even so, we will want to go. If for nothing else than the prospect of exploration, of moving Humans beyond this one system, the prospect of The New.
