Humans could walk on Mars in seven years. – Elon Musk.
It sounds farfetched every time a conversation on what civilization will be like on another planet comes up, the frontiers we will reach are somewhat incomprehensible. A few years ago, I could understand how comic such a conversation would sound, but we can only ignore it for so long. It’s 2017, the entire world is aware, and they seem to be ready for what this world will be. But Africa? I can’t rate us.
Why is it so important Africans care about Mars?
As a community, Africa is a place of advancement, it might be dumbed down because our history has been whitewashed, our traditions limit our aspirations, near non-existent structures impede the people from seeing beyond the present day, but a lot of growth has happened in the world from the renaissance all the way to our current information age, and Africa has somehow been shut out from all of it, our lack of awareness of humanity’s moves in advance leave us gobbling up the leftovers at the eleventh hour. This mostly happened because we weren’t connected to the world, information always got relayed late and we as people never pushed and understood the ones who knew what this progress meant.
We are at the forefront of a branch of evolution that began on Earth ~3.5 billion years ago. Over countless millennia, life has diversified and complexified, giving rise to millions upon millions of distinct species — unique expressions of life and complexity, as well as unique apparatuses through which the universe experiences itself in novel ways. – High Existence
Our generation is more connected than any other, we are connected to everything through the internet, we feed on the world’s information in real time. Social media keeps the world revolving around you, minds exposed through twitter, representations on instagram, conversations via WhatsApp. Theres a need to be aware, no longer are we being left behind in the conversation of humanity’s development –we’re not there yet but we’re getting close. There’s a heavy presence of Africa’s new age voice in the Internet Age, an epoch of humanity finally moving with us not watching from the bleachers.
Why aren’t we then talking more about space travel and life on Mars ?
here has been a long fascination of all things intelligence and interstellar. Films, the media and humanity itself has been obsessed with the idea of creating robots that are life-like and living on anywhere except earth. This sounds goofy till you realise its 2017 and we already have a humanoid living amongst us. By humanoid, I mean the AI created by Hanson Robotics known as ‘Sophia‘.
‘Sophia defies conventional thinking of what a robot should look like. Designed to look like Audrey Hepburn, Sophia embodies Hepburn’s classic beauty: porcelain skin, a slender nose, high cheekbones, an intriguing smile, and deeply expressive eyes that seem to change color with the light. If ever there were a robot with a simple elegance people can’t help but appreciate, it would be Sophia.’ – Hanson.
AI isn’t a such a big deal in 2017, but its moving really fast and this is just one spot among the massive leaps we’ve made from just Sci-Fi movies to AI products like e.g ‘Sophia‘, or other ideas like Tesla’s self-driving cars;
Model X Tesla.
VISION 2025.
In a world which already places Africans as a lower class, and perpetually undermines the contributions black people have made in past and present times to our civilization on this planet, It would only get worse if humanity finds a way to exist on a new planet and we lack the capability to follow suit and continue the cycle of begging for aid.
[Nigeria’s space program is no joke, and it is making steady progress. The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) has launched five satellites since 2003, with three still in orbit delivering vital services. The most recent – NigeriaSat-X – was the first to be designed and constructed by NASRDA engineers, and more advanced models are in development.] – Via CNN.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk, inventor, and founder of space company Space X announced his plans to get humanity on Mars by 2022, with a colony by 2024.
The idea of Elon Musk is to show us how plausible the idea of humanity existing on a new planet is. It’s not beyond us and should be a topic of interest.
WHO CARES, AFRICA HAS MORE PRESSING ISSUES.
This is really true, but we can’t ignore how important the future is too, finding out global shifts late in our timeline is one of the reasons we haven’t advanced on the same wave as the world. We are now, covering our tracks, if and when humanity does migrate, it should be accompanied with the shine of Africans to carry on the essence of who we are. It’s exciting to exist in a world with so many things being done by curious minds, it’s even grander to have more Africans participate in these global shifts.
The space program is very important, said Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, Minister of Science and Technology [Nigeria], during a speech in the capital city, Abuja. “Space is a major asset that Nigeria must be involved in for the purpose of protecting national interests.” – Via CNN.
Closing Date.
There’s nothing to fear in the world consumed by its constant need to feed its ever-growing curiosity, one that’s created almost everything around us, and also destroyed a lot. It’s not the most pressing issue in the world and you don’t need to care about what all I’ve said means, but for those who have tuned into this overwhelmingly bright light feeding our need to seek and understand more about our existence, Africa needs to catch up with the rest of the world; a race we’re already losing, starting is only a tiny part of it, we have to reach for the stars [Literally].
So much truths here. We have to reach for the stars and also make sure our feet is planted on solid ground.