How close are we to colonizing another celestial body?

We are VERY far from that.
The closest planet that we could turn into a second Earth, would probably be Mars, and to get to Mars, we'd have to have astronauts in suits far from our ability to make, and it'd take a little less than a year for a spaceship beyond our skills to even imagine, to reach the surface of Mars.
Then, we'd have to rid the planet of all the toxic gasses in the air, and plant thousands of trees to make the atmosphere breathable, which is impossible, because trees need oxygen to grow, which there is very little of on Mars.

So yeah, it's next to impossible to colonize other planets. At least as we are now.

I actually disagree with Luke who has only commented on the physical barriers. We the technological know-how. The one thing holding us back is ourselves. We cant get along on our own planet let alone another one. If we were able to cooperate efficiently and spend the money we all spend on "defense" we would be ALOT closer to acheiving many, many wonders. Give it another hundred years...

I think it would be unethical for us to try to colonize another planet or communicate with other civilizations before we learn how to live with one another and stop destroying our environment. I think we're a long way away from that.

	Iscariot -  1043 pts -  (3 years ago)
	Nicely put.

	LiteStyle0o -  635 pts -  (2 years ago)
	Yes very nicely put. Unless we're willing to change our ways of living & consuming & lean more towards finding ways to become a fair trade civilization, then we need to stay put.

Colonizing is actually kind illegal due to it being another planet, a team would have to set up a world govt. on MARS as far as I know.. also, if someone devoted enough money to it, we could do it now.

True, there is no will to do this. As for the technology, we have lost a lot of ground since the 1960s. We are close enough to maybe colonize Mars in a few hundred, and other star systems in a few thousand. Maybe.

With the technology we have to today mars could be made habitable in approximately 100 years. It would involve thickening the atmosphere using machines that mix martian soil and martian "air", doing this would make the atmosphere and temperature more stable. After that stage it would be necessary to melt the polar ice caps using either explosives, mirrors to redirect the sun at the caps, or a mixture of the two. Once these two things were accomplished the rest would be fairly easy. Introducing lichens and other small hardy plants and working up to progressively larger flora. (it is likely that it would take less than 100 years due to the fact that new technologies will develop during the process.)

let me first explain a light year: If we travel at speeds of miles per hour, which means at 70 or 700 miles per hour we could travel 70 or 700 miles in one hour. Light has quite a different story... Light travels roughly at 186,000 MILES PER SECOND!!! Every second that passes it's jumped 186,000 miles. That's FAST! Imagine how far you could go, at that speed, traveling for a whole year... It's more that 3.5 trillion miles, in only a year.

Now the closest star system to Earth, Alpha Centauri, is more that 4 light years away & that is in our own galaxy!

So unless we plan on cultivating a rock within our own solar system we're not even on the right path.