Can we live elsewhere in the universe?
Humans have long dreamed of leaving Earth behind and living in outer space. But turning the dream into reality is not as easy as “Star Trek” would make it seem. The main problem, of course, is that humans have a fair number of requirements to survive. We need breathable air. We need water. We need food. And, ideally, we need a certain amount of gravity to keep our minds and bodies happy. To live elsewhere in the universe, we need to carry these elements, manufacture them or find a place that looks, behaves and feels like Earth. For decades, astronauts have lived very successfully in orbiting space stations. In the mid-1970s, three Skylab crews lived in low-Earth orbit 28 days, 59 days and 84 days respectively, each breaking the previous mission’s endurance record. Soviet cosmonauts shattered all of these records aboard the Mir space stati
