Space had been one of my favorite places to explore and I have even wasted a lot of months learning the technicalities. But sadly, I have missed this topic but anyways just skimmed through some of the notable posters over in this topic. I play KSP a lot nowadays and roam around Space through Space Engine looking for a few brightly lit
quasars in some far corners of our universe (just found 1 in my 2 year search).
I can confidently say that what ever we dream of or see in the sci-fi space movies like
Interstellar is practically possible but all we need is that we need to be focused on the outer space all the time and must invest huge amount of money and resources to make that happen. So, if we are really in need to evacuate this planet as soon as possible probably in 2-3 centuries we wouldn't have a second thought other than sending humans to Mars within the next decade.
It was indeed possible for us to prove the
"Newton's cannonball Experiment" mentioned in his
"Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" within 250 years of publishing. Similarly it would have taken only a 2-3 decades (from 1969) for us to land on Mars but the money wasn't totally spent on the space programs and we didn't hire as much engineers to make impossible things as possible within our reach. After wasting nearly 2 years in exploring outer space through Space Engine, I firmly believe there should be life somewhere in
far off galaxies or in nearby superclusters. But what prevents us from contacting them is the technology which we have today or the life present there can either be a single celled organism or something like the Aliens which are shown in E.T or Independence Day movies.
I don't personally believe there will be a singular effort in the space race, and sending the first people on mars. It will likely be a joint effort among the major companies.
Pretty much this TBH. Sometime by the end of next decade, we will be having
Lunar Gateway (designed by
Canada, Europe and Japan) rotating on top of Moon along with Rocket Fuel which will play a very huge role in Post Lunar Missions. Before landing on Mars, we would also be setting up a Moon Base. So, many of us would be watching the first step on Mars before our life ends if all goes exactly as planned and there is no removal of planned targets.
P.S Practically speaking based on the available facts, our Oort Cloud will be disturbed again in 240,000 and when this happens we will be having a large influx of comets targeting our inner Solar System. If this tends to pose a bigger danger for the humankind in future, we should be looking out for a new home.