Which Planet or Moon Would You Colonize?

A look at opportunities and challenges of colonizing different moons and planets in our solar system.

Imagine, just like in the movie Don’t Look Up, that a massive asteroid will hit Earth and obliterate all life. But let us mix up the premise a little. Instead of six months, we get 30 years before it is all game over. In that time period, we need to colonize one or more planets or moons in the solar system to preserve humanity.

Which one would you pick? Let us review the contestants. The most realistic candidates would be the Moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn’s moon Titan, and Mercury.

If you look at the challenges of settling each of these planets and moons, you quickly realize what an awesome planet Earth is. Each of these planets/moons suck big time in many ways. Yet each one has unique challenges but also unique advantages.

In this comparison, I will cover the following challenges:

• Travel time — Affects how many people and stuff we can get to the planet/moon, as well as need for radiation shielding and artificial gravity.
• Environment — Temperature, pressure and gravity. How hard is it for humans to live in the environment presented by the planet?