Will humans ever live on another planet?

The population of Earth during the early years of the 1800s was around 1 billion people, and now in 2024, we have just passed the 8 billion mark. In the next hundred years, the population of our planet is expected to pass 11 billion people, which will put enormous pressure on everything from food production to power systems, and since it doesn’t look like we are going to slow down our population growth anytime soon, we need to find more room for everyone. The only place for more room is somewhere outside out atmosphere, but is this realistic and will humans ever live on another planet in the long-term?

There is only one answer. Since we don’t have room on the planet we are currently on, we need to find another.

In the year 1607, a group of 104 people traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and founded Jamestown, the first English settlement on the North American continent. Over 400 years have passed since then and we now inhabit almost every area of earth. One day we will have another Jamestown expedition, but this time it will represent us as an entire species and be a journey to another planet to establish a new civilization amongst the stars, but how realistic is this idea of building a colony and how long will it take us to get to that stage?

Are there other planets that humans could survive on?

There are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, each of which has its own set of orbiting planets. This means there are potentially trillions of planets out there that range greatly in size, density, volume, and a whole range of other factors, but most of them are made of solid matter like Earth and Mars. In order for life on Earth to survive, our planet has to be the correct distance from the sun to maintain liquid water, which is the basis for all life on our planet. This distance from the sun is known as the Goldilocks zone and means that an orbiting planet is far enough away to not be a frozen rock, but close enough to have above-freezing temperatures without being too hot.

If the planet is far away enough to maintain liquid water and has an atmosphere, then it can potentially be terraformed and turned into another version of Earth. There is also the potential for other planets to be just like Earth, in terms of size, atmosphere, and temperature, and with the enormous amount of planets in our galaxy alone, it’s almost impossible that there wouldn’t be a copy of Earth out there amongst the stars.

There are 2 main problems with humans ever living on another planet, technology and distance.

The problem with our technology is we are still a long way off from making ships capable of flying to and landing on another planet, and we lack all the colony-building and terraforming technologies we’ll need. When I say a long way off, I mean several hundred years in the best-case scenario. It may seem like we are making huge strides in space exploration with the constant launches of space-x rockets and advancements in the field being made on a regular basis, but there’s a big difference when it comes to permanently living on another planet.

The other problem is getting there, even if we had the colony-building equipment and a ship capable of making the journey, it would still be almost impossible to reach somewhere. The nearest planet to us that could possibly be habitable and have liquid water is called Proxima Centauri B and is about 4 light years away. The fastest vessel humans have ever made is the Horizons space probe which travels at 58,000 kph, which means it would take close to 80,000 years to get there.

In the event we somehow develop the ability to travel at light speed, it would still take 4 years to get there, which is still a long time but not impossible. The process of terraforming a hostile planet could take hundreds of years, and as a species growing so rapidly in population, we don’t have the time to do that. Finding somewhere that is already inhabitable, or close enough at least seems to be our only option to avoid an over-population disaster.

If we don’t invent the technology to move a ship at the speed of light, then it would be impossible for us to reach anywhere that’s already inhabitable. Even if we do create light-speed travel, then there would still be a maximum of only a few years we could travel for, and the Milky Way is supposed to be 105,700 light-years across, making it too big to travel across without some impossible sci-fi-level technology.