Space 1999 revisited

Many many moons ago back in the mid 70′s there was a Sc-Fi series called ‘Space 1999‘, in it a nuclear accident send the moon wandering through space endlessly looking for a new home and finding strange alien life and adventures.   Having grown up a bit and thinking through the science made my transition from believing Sci-Fi to seeing it as entertainment.

So when I read this article about moving the Earth to save it from burning up in the later stages of our sun’s life I was a bit surprised that this was actually a serious scientific article.   It had facts and everything which involved moving the Earth a little bit to keep the sun’s output on the Earth constant so we didn’t burn up.   It looks feasible but very dangerous and there is much that is uncertain but if we put our minds to it we could reduce the risks and clear up the uncertainties.   Although for what purpose I am unclear.   It seems that gaining another 200,000 years is the end point.    Too little too late.

Realistically though when it comes down to it there is only one real option available for moving the Earth and that is to stick a very big engine on it with some sort of stasis field to hold it together.  As you can tell I don’t see this happening for a while and luckily the sun isn’t due to heat up so much for another few billion years.    Long enough to develop such technology.

We could then move the Earth from this solar system and place it in the sweet spot around a younger star.    Much more than 200,000 years available there although I suspect that when we get to that time, if we are still alive, we will have outgrown this planet and have left it a long time ago.

Maybe we will preserve it as a zoo and museum piece for sentimental reasons.   Our home planet Earth.