>Last exit: outer space / Letzte Ausfahrt: Weltall<
(arte.tv, unfortunately not accessible from Switzerland, 2020, in German, by Rudolph Herzog)
Billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are pushing ahead with plans to colonize outer space. With our planet facing an uncertain future, they are on a quest for a "second Earth." But is it really the right decision to abandon our planet and move on to another?
The colonization of space is getting closer thanks to constant advances in research - but is humanity really destined to move from planet to planet like an interstellar locust?
Even the journey to our neighboring planet Mars is high-risk. "The worst day on Earth is a million times better than the best day on Mars," says star astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz. Suitable planets for humans exist, if at all, only outside our solar system, she said. One of them, Proxima Centauri b, is "only" 4.2 light-years away from us - relatively a stone's throw in the scale of the galaxy, but today's rockets would need at least 5,000 years to get there.
In fact, there are already scientists working on sending spacecraft to exoplanets in the future. Space sexologist Simon Dubé is racking his brains on how to avoid inbreeding during the generation-long flights. At the same time, NASA geneticist Christopher Mason is working on methods to implant humans with the genomes of radiation-resistant organisms. But to what extent can science and new technologies really realize our dream of space colonization?
However, the entertaining and whimsical journey that director Rudolph Herzog undertakes with his father Werner Herzog as narrator in this film may dim science fiction fans' hopes for an interstellar future.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)