It’s no secret that uncurbed climate change and population growth are going to (and already have) put stress on the planet. But the situation is getting so bad that one prominent NASA scientist says we have to start thinking about terraforming Mars and that, in order for the human race to survive at current levels, we will eventually “need at least three planets.”
“The entire ecosystem is crashing,” Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist of NASA’s Langley Research Center said Thursday. “Essentially, there’s too many of us. We’ve been far too successful as the human animal. People allege we’re short 40-50 percent of a planet now. As the Asians and their billions come up to our living systems, we’re going to need three more planets.”
Bushnell was discussing the release of The Millennium Project’s “State of the Future,” an annual report that looks at global challenges and how they might be solved. He said that Mars is a good start, but we’d soon need even more space to live.
“If NASA terraforms Mars, that’ll take about 120 years, and that’s only one planet,” he said. “We’d need more shortly.”