As we all know, we are not the only guest that has ever lived on earth. Dinosaurs were here long before us, and the environment eradicated them. Earth is not a planet that will keep us on it forever. When people say “save the planet,” they have themselves mistaken; we need to save ourselves, because The Earth will be standing here long after we are gone. It is not a good idea to stay on this planet if it is eventually going to kill us. It is as if we are in a burning building, and the last people you would listen to would be the ones saying, “Let’s stay in the burning building.” We cannot procrastinate the safety of the human race, so we must act soon. People seem to be short-sighted and only see the problems directly in front of them. Since space travel and our knowledge of space is currently primitive, these people cannot see very far if they wanted to. That is why people do not think about the feasibility of space travel, because we have not had any human leave the space around our planet. We know things about our neighbors, but we cannot even visit them yet. There is so much more to learn, and so much more to do in our universe. The biggest answers to our lives and our religions can be found through space travel. Humans, animals, and organisms go through life without knowing why or how. The Universe is something much bigger than us; currently we are finding exoplanets, planets outside of our solar system, and we have found many with the opportunity host life. These will be the solutions to our species’ problem. We need to prioritize space travel, we are nowhere near prepared for anything The Universe might throw us, and once we get the ball rolling we will have no need to fear for our own safety as a species.

As humans, we seem to think that we are unique. We believe that we might not find life because we cannot see it in our miniscule view of The Universe. However, the composition of a human body is far from unique; ninety-six percent of our body is made up of just four elements, and these elements are the all a part of the top five of the most common elements in The Universe (Best Explanation). These elements are found in stars, and once these stars inevitably explode and spread these elements, the matter from the stars can create planets, moons, more stars, and even life. There is an estimated 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 number of stars in The Universe (Howell); this number will not only get bigger, but it will never stop getting bigger. We could not possibly be one out of that many stars in The Universe that have life on it. The notion that we are alone in The Universe is, therefore, egotistical and ignorant. Though we have not found extraterrestrial life directly, we have found over a thousand exoplanets. Many of these are capable of hosting life, specifically capable of hosting us. 

When we look around our solar system, we see desolate planets that cannot support life. They don’t have the correct atmosphere, they are too hot, or they are too cold. However, there are theories that Venus was once habitable (Mathewson). Venus is nicknamed “Earth’s Twin,” because it has the same size, mass, density, gravity, and composition (Cain). Though if you stepped foot on Venus, you would burn and suffocate. Venus has a surface of 864º F, has clouds of sulfuric acid, and now an atmosphere of almost entirely carbon dioxide. NASA claimed that Venus may have been habitable for the first two billion years of its life. If there was in fact life on Venus, there is no doubt that it is not gone now. Now, Venus travels with an atmosphere 90 times thicker than Earth’s, and Venus’ atmosphere suffered from the greenhouse effect. Though Venus’ demise was due to the sun’s increase of heat, this is the same greenhouse effect that threatens Earth with the pollution of humans. The death of Venus was due to the universe, Venus had no control over what its fate was.  Earth can easily have this same fate as Venus, and be desolate as well. The universe has no reason for the way it acts, it only does what it wants when it wants without warning. Neil DeGrasse Tyson stated in his most recent book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you” (Tyson). The Universe is not something you can control, or know what it is doing. Venus had no way of controlling it is fate, and now it is a desolate planet. The universe can be a cold and ruthless shrew; it takes, gives, and never tells when, why or how. We cannot sit around and wait for the universe to eventually end us. Us meaning humans, not Earth. We are killing ourselves not The Earth; Earth will end up like Venus, lifeless. The Earth can end in many more ways than one; Stephen Hawkings says, “I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster.” We need to leave, before a disaster happens that we are not ready for. As we speak planets are dying everywhere, and we need to leave Earth before our planet takes us down with it. 

With Earth being a finite home for us as a species, we need to find a new one; there are other promising planets for us for us to live on. TRAPPIST-1 is 39 light-years away from Earth, or about 229 trillion miles. It would take 39 years to get there traveling at the speed of light. But no spacecraft ever built can travel anywhere near that fast. New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft ever launched, flew past Pluto in 2015 and is currently traveling out of the solar system at about 32,000 mph. NASA's Juno spacecraft actually flew faster than New Horizons while arriving at the gas giant Jupiter in 2016, with the help of Jupiter’s gravitational. With our fastest space craft, it would take 159,000 years to reach TRAPPIST-1(NASA’s Spitzer). TRAPPIST-1 is one of the many solar systems with exoplanets we have found to be potentially habitable. The more we prioritize space travel means the more likely we will be able to have no fear of extinction. If we were to, we could possibly have humans colonized on different planets. TRAPPIST-1 is now the most promising destination for a second home for humans. Stephen Hawking stated, “I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space” (Samuelson). This is true, the way life works is by ending with death. We can survive as a species, but we cannot do it by staying on Earth forever. If we are to cheat death as a species, it is to have our species on several different planets.

Space travel and the advancement of space technology is not only beneficial for our survival as a species; throughout the years, NASA’s research has provided scientific discoveries and technology that we use on earth. Even right now, NASA is studying The Earth looking for climate change, sea level rise, freshwater resources and extreme weather events (Wilson). This information is ever expanding with the research and development of NASA. “Technology drives exploration,” says NASA Official, Brian Dunbar. Information is not the single benefit of NASA; NASA creates technology in their drive for exploration that we use on earth. Artificial limbs, Chemical Detection, Harnessing Solar Energy, Water Purification, and much more are all derived from NASA research (Lockney). NASA’s funding is six tenths of a percent of the current federal budget (Heller). They are doing amazing work with a miniscule amount of money compared to any other government funded projects.  Not only is government funding for NASA lacking, but NASA still has to fight for that small percentage of funding. With the progress NASA makes with such a small budget, increasing the funding would be astronomically bigger. One of the world’s greatest astrophysicists, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, says, “Give NASA the money it needs and the agency will stimulate the economy and inspire students to pursue innovative, ambitious projects” (Heller). This statement is true in many ways; if we were to increase the funding for NASA, it would help much more than just NASA. Discoveries and technology will not only inspire younger generations to come, but build upon the field and make students able to be ambitious in their studies.

The reason people love astronomy and the idea of space travel is for the knowledge. People are curious, I am curious to find the answers of why we are here and how we are here. Space travel is the only way to find out. There are so many unknowns of the universe, such as black holes, worm holes, dark matter, dimensions, and so many more. Searching through The Universe can answer life’s most powerful and significant questions. Currently the minds of Stephen hawking, and other scientists are thinking of theoretical ways to travel faster than the likes of which humans have ever seen. Stephen Hawking has launched a program named “Starshot,” and he has the funding of Yuri Milner, Russian Entrepreneur worth billions, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. This project is meant to finally see the stars. Milner says, that one of these probes “could be accelerated up to 20 percent the speed of light,” this is fast enough to make it to the Alpha Centauri system just two decades after launch. Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light-years away from earth, it would take our current fastest spacecraft 30,000 years to make it there (Malik). With wealthy entrepreneurs teaming up with the smartest people in the world, it is great to see the human race advancing and starting to prioritize the space travel. Starshot could be just what we need to get the ball rolling for space travel. It is truly going to be revolutionary; with this amount of backing behind the world’s most intelligent astrophysicist, we could be able to find these answers to our most significant questions. 

People claim that we have problems here on Earth, so we should focus on them instead of space. We already focus almost all our efforts on Earth, but something that people do not understand is that if we spend time and money on Earth, we should protect ourselves first. Our species should not gamble on the length of life on Earth; though the odds currently are slim of anything happening to humans on earth, the odds get greater and greater each day we wait. People seem to forget the giant vast universe they are in and think that it is silly to think about space with any motive. The problem is that we are in a primitive state in terms of space travel; people have no notion to believe that human’s life on another planet is even possible. That is why we must start this long journey to space travel now and get the ball rolling. The closer we get to space travel being a viable option, means the more enthusiasm and support of protecting our species. 

The human story began on Earth, but it was not meant to end on it either.  We’re meant to leave The Earth, not to save it. Whether we run out of resources, become overpopulated, or pollute the atmosphere, our planet was not meant to be inhabited forever. In due time, we will have to leave it, and we must do it before it is too late. We were nurtured to this intelligent species, like a baby is nurtured by its mother. Once the baby grows into a mature, intelligent being it leaves its home. Though. we differ in that we must leave our home, because our home will not always be there to take care of us. However, this view is not one sided; to The Earth, we are a parasite, eating up its resources and making it sicker and sicker the bigger the population. At the rate of growth human population, pollution, and use of resources, The Earth will not be able to sustain us forever, nor will we be able to predict when The Earth starts to turn on us, Therefore, we must prepare for life on another planet before it is too late.  

There is no reason to think that we mean anything to the universe, and that the universe will not discard us whenever it chooses. Species evolve because of competition, natural selection, and adaption. The universe is cold, deadly, and scary, so we cannot face it head on in the state we are currently in. As a species, we need to adapt to our surroundings; evolve from earth and turn into a multi-planet species. If we do not do so and keep procrastinating, we will no longer be a species. Though the universe is precarious, it is also filled with opportunity. This opportunity is infinitely expanding and does not know any bounds. For us humans, knowledge and life do not plateau. Life on earth is finite; it is bound to crumble and is going to do it without us knowing. So we need a failsafe, something for us to fall back on. We need to expand, save ourselves from the universe by going deeper in it. This is the only way human life will last.
