When looked at as a whole, space colonization sounds like a pretty cool and intriguing idea. But, if you delve into the specific pros and cons of it, it ultimately could end up doing more harm than good.
One of the issues with space colonization is it’s extremely expensive. It would cost around $640 per pound to take things to space. A strong reason many people argue for space colonization is it would save the human race from becoming extinct. In turn, spending so much money on it would be worth it because you can’t put a price tag on life. Normally I would agree with this statement, but the human race wouldn’t be completely saved. Unfortunately, it is inevitable that one day the human race will become extinct and considering their is also a limited duration to our solar system. It simply doesn’t make sense to spend so much money on a project that isn’t very promising.
Considering the US has a huge amount of debt, being able to contribute to a big project like space colonization just doesn’t seem reasonable. Hopefully, in the future it could be explored when we are more economically stable and have more wiggle room for errors.
E110 FA19 Class Blog 