In 20 years, you could be holidaying on Mars.
That’s according to Elon Musk, who thinks one million Earthlings, some born from his own seed, will be living in dome habitats on the red planet.
But could a self-sustaining civilisation on our red neighbour even be possible?
Metro spoke with an author, a scientist and an astronaut-to-be to find out.
What are the challenges of colonising Mars?
Six times smaller than the blue marble, Mars is cold, barren and has air that would boil the saliva off your tongue before it chokes you.
And that’s not even including the wafer-thin atmosphere, high surface radiation and toxic dust storms.
This, and the fact that it would take about 10 months to get to, is why no human has ever set foot on Mars.
So, could we ever live on Mars? ‘Ever is a long time,’ Zach Weinersmith, co-author of the book A City on Mars, said.
‘On a broad enough timescale, what we can say is that there’s no physical or even chemical law barring humans from living on Mars.’
Zach suggested that Mars settlers will need to live inside heavily engineered habitats, such as pressurised underground tunnels or caves.
They would need to spend most of their time in these crowded bunkers, given how inhospitable the rust-coloured desert above is.
A greenhouse-style facility would be essential to create drinking water and grow crops with LED lights.
‘They will also have a place for rockets to land, because they will be extremely dependent on Earth, for everything from backup food supplies to microchips,’ Zach added.
In other words, you can’t leave Earth behind.
If humanity’s Martian outpost ran out of apples, it would take three minutes for their grocery order to reach Earth.
They’d then need to wait for the cosmic equivalent of Evri to complete a round-trip, which could only happen every two years when Earth and Mars’ orbits line up.
And if you think your food bill is expensive, launching something that weighs even 1kg into space could cost thousands of pounds.
Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at London’s University of Birkbeck, tells Metro that while construction costs are something we can figure out, how Martian life would look is trickier.
Martians-to-be would need to endure months of microgravity when flying to Mars, which would weaken their muscles and bones.
Would you consider living on Mars if it became possible in the future?
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Maybe, depending on the circumstances
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No, I would never want to live there
‘They’d arrive in a pretty fragile state,’ Crawford said. ‘But nobody knows whether the same thing happens in low gravity.’
Scientists don’t know whether humans can reproduce successfully in low gravity. Some hard-line Mars enthusiasts have even suggested we ‘genetically engineer’ future Martians, able to breathe its atmosphere.
First the Moon, then Mars
These unknowns are why Crawford said building a lunar base could act like a trial run for Martian life.
‘There’s so much to learn about keeping people alive in a hostile environment, and the Moon is the place to learn it,’ Crawford said.
‘In 50 years, we could have something like a scientific outpost, akin to an Antarctic research base, with a dozen people on it on Mars.’
One perk of the Moon is that if the base had to be evacuated (or a grocery run was needed), this would take a few days.
Crawford stressed that efforts to build bases should be international. A ‘China’ base and ‘US’ base would bring Earthly borders to the cosmos.
‘It sets up the possibility for conflicts – and we’ve got enough of those on the Earth,’ Crawford said.
If we can’t live on Mars, could we make it more Earth-like instead?
Mars wasn’t always a wasteland – rivers likely once flowed through it.
Some scientists have suggested we turn back the clock on Mars by terraforming it – using technologies to make it more habitable.
Many ways to turn the red planet green have been proposed, from melting the ice caps with mirrors to blasting it with glitter.
The latter would recreate the greenhouse effect to raise temperatures by 7ºC.
Primitive plants could survive and the sunlight that hits them, while weaker than on Earth, is enough for photosynthesis.
However, Mars’ weaker gravity might struggle to hold its new atmosphere.
Zach cautioned against humans getting their grubby fingers all over an alien world.
Humans love to dump their rubbish in the ocean and burn fossil fuels so much that climate change is threatening life.
‘The good news is you can’t make Mars too much worse,’ Zach said. ‘There is probably no action humanity could undertake that would make Earth as inhospitable to life as Mars.’
Mars isn’t a ‘backup’ Earth
Neither Zach nor Crawford could blame officials or ‘rocket-owning billionaires’ for dreaming of Mars.
But both worry the red planet is being seen as a ‘backup Earth’.
Reserve astronaut Dr Meganne Christian said she struggles to picture humans on Mars this century if the intention isn’t scientific.
When Mars was spotted with telescopes hundreds of years ago, stargazers thought they could see rivers flowing on it.
New Yorkers even flooded the streets in 1924 to see the little green men, when Mars was closer to Earth than at any other point in a century.
‘It’s so much like Earth and it’s within reach,’ Dr Christian said. ‘If something’s within reach, we’ll reach out there and get it.
‘That’s just human nature.’
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