I imagine our ancestors’ conversations went something like this:
Scientist 1: “We should explore the universe.”
Engineer 1: “How? It’s so large it would like multiple hundreds of lifetimes.”
Engineer 2: “We’d need a space ship. That could hold a lot of water. I mean like 71% water.”
Scientist 1: “Ok. What about food?”
Engineer 1: “The space ship needs to hold lots of food. Generations of food. Means that we cannot package it. Has to be renewable. That means soil, fertilizer, a lot that water. Oh, and animals. The animals are a food source as well as fertilizer generators.”
Engineer 1: “Damn this is going to require a lot of energy.”
Engineer 2: “That’s easy. Fusion!”
Engineer 1: “That would have the side affect of killing all the people, animals, and plants and contaminating or evaporating all the water.”
Engineer 2: “Not if the Fusion happens off of the space ship.”
Engineer 1: “Off the space ship? That would have to be like 92.96 million miles OFF the space ship!”
Scientist 2: “This sounds great but wouldn’t astroids pose a treat to our space ship?”
Engineer 1 and 2 in unison: “We’d build shielding of course.”
Engineer 1: “Is the Jupiter project still being researched?”
Engineer 2: “It’s ready for production.”
Scientist 1: “Jupiter project?”
Engineer 2: “Basically you take hydrogen gas and package it in an oblong sphere that is approximately 88,846 miles in diameter and gravity will pull all the nearby astroids into the gas cloud obliterating the treat to our space ship.”
Scientist 1: “How do we move the space ship?”
Engineer 1: “We predetermine a course. You will get one relatively straight line so chose wisely. This ship is going to have so much mass that changing direction will be implausible. We will use the fusion energy source as the engine to move the spaceship along.”
Scientist 2: “The energy source that is 92 million miles from the space ship?”
Engineer 2: “92.96 million miles. Yes. That energy source is so massive that its gravity will pull the space ship and the shielding along with it. All we have to do is start with a large explosion, a big bang, to move the energy source along our predetermined path.”
Scientist 1: “Can we have two space ships?”
Engineer 1: “Sure! Tell you what. We can configure them slightly different. And call one Earth.”
Engineer 2: “And the other Mars! That way if one fails, our species continues to explore.”
Scientist 2: “Will the supplies last?
Engineer 1: “Just in case, let’s throw in 11 more supply ships. Each one can be responsible for a raw material that the primary two space ships may need for subsistence. Let’s call them Mercury. Venus. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune. Pluto, Hercules, Apollo, Zelus, and Priapus.”
Scientist 2: “Make it so number one.”
