{"id":212996,"date":"2025-10-20T11:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T11:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/212996\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T11:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T11:19:09","slug":"should-humans-colonise-space-we-asked-5-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/212996\/","title":{"rendered":"Should humans colonise space? We asked 5 experts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For roughly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nsf.gov\/news\/moon-40m-years-older-previously-thought\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">4.5 billion years<\/a>, the Moon has kept Earth company. In the much shorter span of time that humans have been around, we\u2019ve admired the great silver beacon in the night sky. <\/p>\n<p>The Moon may soon also serve as our launchpad to celestial bodies farther afield in the Solar System. Major space players including the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2025-08-07\/nasa-to-fast-track-efforts-to-put-nuclear-reactor-on-the-moon\/105616682\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">United States<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/energy\/china-led-lunar-base-include-nuclear-power-plant-moons-surface-space-official-2025-04-23\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Russia and China<\/a> all have plans to establish bases on the Moon\u2019s dusty surface within the next ten years. And one of the goals of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/humans-in-space\/artemis\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NASA\u2019s Artemis Moon mission<\/a> is to enable humans to one day travel to Mars.<\/p>\n<p>Tech billionaire and SpaceX head Elon Musk is even more bullish. \u201cSpaceX will colonise Mars\u201d, he <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1810088536340562154\" rel=\"nofollow\">said<\/a> last year. Musk <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/private-spaceflight\/humanity-could-settle-mars-by-2055-elon-musk-says\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">believes<\/a> this could happen by 2055 \u2013 and would be <a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">just the beginning<\/a> of humans becoming a multi-planetary species in order to save ourselves from future annihilation.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone agrees this is possible. But it raises a more fundamental question: should humans colonise space? <\/p>\n<p>We asked five experts \u2013 four of whom said no. It\u2019s not just a question of whether humans try to live in space, but also about how we do it. Here are their detailed answers.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For roughly 4.5 billion years, the Moon has kept Earth company. In the much shorter span of time&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-212996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}