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Top Ten Reasons to Inhabit Outer Space
By Yasha Husain
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 01:51 pm ET
21 July 2000
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reason_09_000723 9. Environmental Benefits When astronaut Steve Smith is in space looking back at Earth he thinks about how important it is that humans be good to the environment. One way in which to help clean up our environment and help create peace at the same time, is to use energy produced from solar-power satellites (SPS) to stabilize Earth. Maryniak believes, "if you make people rich with SPSs, not using fossil fuels, you have a way out of the pollution problem." Maryniak pointed out a study that illustrates how energy problems cause poverty, and that women in parts of sub-Saharan Africa spend 80 percent of their time collecting wood and other materials for energy. The goal with SPSs is not only to make the air cleaner, but also to create a wealthier, better-educated populous. Dr. Michael Carr is a staff scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. He had been a team member for many of NASAs exploratory missions. He recently worked on the Mars Surveyor Mission. Hes not an enthusiast of human spaceflight especially to Mars. Hes cautious and skeptical about sending humans there. He feels theres no way to have people settle on Mars without contaminating the planet. He wants to keep space pristine. Peter Kokh, on the other hand, said that nowhere in our solar system, other than on Earth, are there preexisting biospheres that can cradle and nurture human life. We will have to create and maintain mini-biospheres of our own wherever we go -- and in order to do that we still have a lot to learn, said Kokh. Kokh added that within these biospheres, we will be living ''immediately downwind and downstream of ourselves. If humans pollute these artificial environments the consequences will be detrimental to life almost immediately." Kokh thinks that there will be no choice but to learn how to live in sustainable environments in space. Many of the experts agreed this might be the biggest return of investment to Mother Earth if humans can then also live in sustainable environments on Earth. As James George, of the Space Frontier Foundation put it, "we can make our world green and beautiful with the resources of space. We can have abundant energy and material resources."-
To Secure a Future for HumanityTo Build a New FrontierTo Find New Energy SourcesTo Build an Industrial Settlement On the MoonBetter Quality Images of the Universe -- and More of ThemThe SETI EffortMiningLearning the History of Our Universe On the MoonEnvironmental BenefitsMeeting the Challenge
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