Gyeongin Ilbo: [참성단]Thunberg’s Criticism of Mars Exploration

Humans migrating to colonial planets or satellites are a staple of science fiction movies. The desolate earth where mankind can no longer live is the beginning of the narrative. However, even with a science fiction idea, it seems difficult to find a way to escape the entire human race. In’Passengers’, which was released in 2016, the spacecraft Avalon heads for the colonial planet Homestead 2. There are only 5,000 passengers traveling 120 years in frozen water. In Korea’s first space science fiction movie,’Seungri,’ an artificial city built in satellite orbit by space development company UTS appears. About 5% of Earth’s residents can live here.

Humanity’s exploration of Mars has reached its peak in recent years. The Mars probe’Personality’ (Patience) launched by the United States safely landed on Mars on the 19th and entered the mission. Prior to this, the UAE and China also settled the Mars probes’Amal’ and’Tianyuan-1′ in succession on Mars orbit. The purpose of the exploration is the possibility of humans living on Mars. The story of humanity competing for Mars exploration to ask space (sky) for its potential with patience and hope is not science fiction, but reality.

But in reality, if Earth becomes an inhabitable dead star and migration to Mars becomes a reality, humanity will face unprecedented inequality. Of the 7.7 billion people, very few humans can escape the Earth. Who decides who will be left and who will be on the ship. There are only a few private space travel product reservations worth hundreds of millions of dollars for a 90-minute space experience and tens of billions for a three-day space station stay. Elon Musk vows to send 1 million to Mars by 2050. Although skeptical, even if it is real, it is only 0.00013% of humanity.

Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg released a promotional video on Mars titled ‘1%’ aimed at the landing on Mars. The video promotes Mars as the future of mankind, but there is a twist. Only 1% of humans can migrate to Mars. ‘1%’ would mean’very few’, not an actual number. In other words, it is a message to spend money on preventing the climate crisis for the whole of humanity, rather than spending money on it.

Thunberg, a girl who told the world’s leaders to “act now” to resolve the climate crisis, is said to have turned 18 this year. The reason why Thunberg is more interested in the activities of Thunberg than the personal exploration of Mars is because he doesn’t have the confidence to be the target of Mars migration.

/ Insoo Yoon, Editorial Director

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