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The possibility of humans colonizing outer space may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but British astronomer Chris Impey says that if the U.S. were pumping more money into the space program, the sci-fi fantasy would be well on its way to reality.
"I think we might actually be living on the moon and Mars," Impey tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Maybe not many of us, but we might have our first bases there. We'd have robust commercial space activity or people routinely in orbit. America wouldn't have had a hiatus of four years and counting when we couldn't get astronauts into space. It would be probably quite different."
Impey says the possibility of humans living in space is very real. And if — or when — it happens, the space settlers will face conditions that may cause them to become an entirely new species.
"They'll evolve physiologically quite quickly, because if the gravity is less — as it would be on Mars or the moon — then they will change," Impey says. "Their physical bodies will change even while they're alive. And then if they have children and grandchildren — then they'll change even more."
I like the idea that we're not it. I like the idea that the universe — the boundless possibility of 20 billion habitable worlds — has led to things that we can barely imagine. I think it's fun because it means your science is not self-contained and finite; it means that you have to really go way out of the box, even to imagine what astrobiology elsewhere might be like.
I think the interesting and exciting thing will be when we get a community that's living off Earth for the first time, to see how they evolve. If they can get beyond the - just the sheer hardship of it, the - just the difficulty of being so far from the Earth, of being in close quarters, then at some point, after maybe only a couple of generations, these people will become an offshoot of the human tree. They will probably evolve into something else. They'll evolve physiologically quite quickly 'cause if the gravity is less, as it would be on Mars or the moon, they will change. Their physical bodies will change, even while they're alive. And if they have children and then grandchildren, they will change even more. And then psychologically, they will start to feel like a new - a new colony, a new people, as we moved around the planet and did so for reasons of just sheer exploration or freedom or wanting open spaces. You know, people diversified. They became quite different. And so the first off-Earth humans that live there and die there and then have children and grandchildren, they're going to quite quickly turn into maybe even a new species.
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