Earth is the perfect planet for life. But there are some famous figures who have predicted the bleak future of this planet so that humans have to move to other planets or to outer space. Here are some of them:
1. Stephen Hawking
The late Stephen Hawking, a well-known British scientist, used to be keen to warn that the Earth was becoming increasingly unstable. He once said humans would have to leave planet Earth within the next 100 years in order to survive, to another possible habitable planet.
"I firmly believe that we should start looking for alternative planets for possible habitats. We have already lost a lot of space on earth and must make technological breakthroughs that prevent us from living anywhere in the universe," he said.
The figure whose story was made into a film called The Theory of Everything argues that Earth has run out of time.
"All humans must leave this planet to survive the brunt of climate change, epidemic diseases, population booms, to the fall of asteroids," he said.
The statement refers to global warming which has the potential to increase Earth's temperature to the point that it can melt ice islands such as Greenland. Then, Earth's population has crossed 7.3 billion, with diseases that can threaten the entire population.
Researchers think they should start a plan to find the next home for humans given the damage humans have done to Earth.
"I believe that we have reached a stage where we can't go back anymore. The Earth is too small for all humanity. The ever-increasing global population is an alarm that we are headed for our own destruction," he said.
Stephen Hawking said that NASA, Elon Musk's SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origins were the front three in initiating a new era of space exploration from Earth.
Elon Musk
Moving to the planet Mars is not a distant dream. At least that's the view of Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the spaceship company SpaceX. He firmly believes that the colonization of Mars can be done in the not too distant future.
"I want to make Mars feel possible (inhabitable-ed), something we can do in our lifetime. There really is a way people can go there if they want to," said Elon in his publication in the journal New Space some time ago .
According to Elon, humans will eventually face an event that leads to extinction. So the alternative is to inhabit the planets in the solar system where possible.
"I really can't predict the apocalypse but based on history, there will be such an event," wrote one of the world's richest people.
And so far only Mars seems likely to be habitable because of its many natural resources and there are some similarities to planet Earth. But there are indeed many obstacles, for example, no spacecraft with human passengers has yet arrived there.
Even if there is, the cost is predicted to be very expensive. But it's not Elon if you're not optimistic. He believes that all these challenges have solutions so that humans can build cities on the red planet.
"If everything goes very smoothly, it may be 10 years from now, but I'm not saying it will actually happen then. There is such a big risk and high cost," he explained.
After SpaceX successfully launched NASA astronauts using the Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, owner Elon Musk turned his focus to the ambitious project of preparing the Starship spacecraft to go to Mars. "Please assume SpaceX's top priority is Starship," Musk wrote.
3. Jeff Bezos
The world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, is very ambitious to build a human settlement in outer space. Even the founder of the Amazon wanted 1 trillion humans to become residents of the space colony, some of them geniuses.
"The solar system can support 1 trillion humans and then we will have 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins. Think how amazing and dynamic this civilization is," said Bezos in New York some time ago.
"But if we want to have that, we have to get out into the solar system. You have to capture more sunlight and we're going to use up all the resources that exist in space in terms of minerals and not just energy. Very doable, but we have to start. ," he said.
Bezos owns the space company Blue Origin, which wants to take tourists into space. But it's not impossible that Blue Origin will do more about space exploration.
"One of the first steps is that we need to create a low-cost, easy-to-repair and reuse flight vehicle. It's an expensive step. That's why Blue Origin is focused on it. I really want civilization and dynamic life for our children and grandchildren," he added.
This bald-headed man admitted that he became interested in space since the human landing on the Moon 50 years ago. Furthermore, developing space technology is important for humans to have a long future.
"We humans have to go into space if we want to continue to have a thriving civilization. We've grown as a population, as a species and the planet is relatively small. We see things like climate change, pollution and heavy industry. We're in the process of destroying the planet. this," he said.
So he has ambitions in the future, many production processes are carried out in space and just sent to Earth. "It would be much cheaper and simpler to make complex things like microprocessors in space and send them back to Earth, so we don't have big factories and industries that produce pollution," he explained.