September 2023, Florence, Italy
We are engaged in an ever more successful effort to populate other planets besides our own. Accomplished pundits warn that our continued existence on Earth faces an uncertain future. Climate change, nuclear warfare, collision with other celestial elements, and the infecting agents for which we have no defense are all possible scenarios that make it imperative to explore alternative worlds on which we can survive. We have achieved enough progress in engineering and in our understanding of human physiology to predict that we will have permanent human settlements on Mars by 2036.
This seminar examined what we have achieved and equally important, what unsolved challenges we face. Not only are we addressing the threats of space to men’s and women’s survival, but we are also considering the complex issues of the governance of harvesting and distribution of resources of new worlds by nations with vastly different cultures and objectives. We are also considering the imperative of preserving the integrity of the environment of the planets we choose to visit, explore and on which to establish permanent civilizations.
Advances in protecting career astronauts from space hazards led to the conclusion that strategies to mitigate the adverse health effects of microgravity and space radiation on this unique population could be readily used to protect the population of average civilians.