Exodus Earth: A journey beyond home

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A few days ago, I was watching discovery science on Cable and a new program caught my eye. The intro itself was so enthralling that it excited me. I am talking about the show “Exodus Earth”- a show based on the science, technology and vision required by our race to leave Earth along with a journey of “pioneers” exploring planets across our solar system and the distances far beyond. I really praise the efforts put into the narration and creative direction for this show, moreover what it conveys at its core is a dream that is connected to the reality of exploration.


Here is a glimpse of what I am talking about.




You can watch the episodes online on YouTube as well and a quick Google search revealed something that surprised me. The show aired on Discovery in August 2009 (THAT’S ALMOST A DECADE AGO), a time when ISRO’s Mangalyaan wasn’t on paper and SpaceX launched Falcon 1 for testing. It felt like I was sitting in the future realising that 10 years have gone by (could be a tenth of my life on Earth) and a lot of the technologies discussed in the show are still under works, while some are on the brink of becoming a reality thanks to all the research going on, efforts by organizations like NASA, ISRO and hard work by visionaries like Elon Musk. 

    In this post, I want to focus on these technologies, their development and some promising work that will make our dreams a reality. Let’s discuss some of the technologies I saw on the episode for Mercury’s exploration. First things first, we need to reach Mercury to explore it and the conventional rockets would require a lot of fuel and its solution is ionic engines. Based on Newton’s third law the engine keeps pushing ions into the frictionless space and the ship moves ahead. NASA first tested the system in 1964, Space Electric Rocket Test I (SERT I) and at present some interesting developments have taken place as mentioned in the article here.

    The Pioneers will have to land on one of the most hostile surfaces of our solar system having extreme temperatures of 420 °C in the mornings to a -120 °C in the nights. So how do they plan to explore you say? And if a moving house roaming through the region where night and day meet wasn’t your answer then follow along. An average day on Mercury is 57 days which means it rotates slowly, super slowly, exploring along the temperate region becomes easy and once you have set up a base camp you can be back after 57 days of the expedition on the planet. All essential aspects like food, water and oxygen would be there on their cruising house but to reduce the weights of oxygen cylinders another awesome technology comes to their rescue. Who needs stored oxygen when one can create it? We all have been associated with chemistry in one form or the other and a lot of sediments are oxidised in nature. A lot of the development in this realm has resulted in machines ready to be sent to Mars for oxygen and hydrogen extraction from the soil as compiled here. Think about it, we can create jet fuel once we land and hence have our own refiling stations across the solar system. Science fiction isn’t far now, I dream to visit a restaurant on an asteroid nearby while my ride home refills.

    Finally, I want to talk about a potential technology that I believe must become a reality by the end of next decade and it is Space Elevator. I clearly remember the moment when I saw about this technology on Discovery in grade 7th back in 2009 and awestruck by the simplicity of this idea when compared to the marvellous use cases it fulfilled. While these elevators are super hi-tech with carbon nanotubes and lasers at work, in principle it is an elevator extending to outer space, lifting people, supplies and possibly attached to rocket-ships that are built in space itself. In my opinion, it would be a giant leap that will be a catalyst in our potential for space exploration. So, if you too are interested in learning about this one or better yet want to contribute to its development do have a look at these contests:

Also, find out about the “International Space Elevator Consortium” ( https://isec.org/)

Thanks a lot for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

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