“NASA Planning ‘Earth Independent’ Mars Colony by 2030s.”
– Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph
TRUE FACTS:
This has been a dream since about forever, or at least since humans came to understand that there are other worlds besides Earth. The Greek rhetorician Lucian of Samosata wrote a parody called True Story about a group of Greek adventurers whose ship gets blown off course and ends up on the moon, which is inhabited by “men carried upon vultures, which they ride as we do horses.” George Méliès’ 1902 Le Voyage dans la Lune (“The Voyage to the Moon”) was the first-ever science fiction film, and the first to exploit special effects, crude though they were back in the era of black-and-white silent movies.
Now that we have been to the Moon and back, and learned nothing from the experience, NASA and some non-governmental agencies are again thinking about expanding the human presence beyond Earth. The mercurial entrepreneur Elon Musk has declared that his company SpaceX will be sending cargo ships to Mars by 2022. These will be followed by human colonies. So what will life on Mars be like? Some quick facts:
Arable land
On Earth: 31,000,000 km²
On Mars: None
Fresh water
On Earth: 10,530,000 km3
On Mars: None
Average temperature
On Earth: 14.6 ° C (springtime in Sacramento)
On Mars: -60 ° C (springtime in Antarctica)
Average atmospheric density
On Earth: 1.217 kg/m3
On Earth, at the summit of Mount Everest: 0.46 kg/m3
On Mars: 0.020 kg/m3
Average oxygen concentration in atmosphere
On Earth: 21%
On Mars: 0.13%
Altitude changes that will result in 20° C temperature changes
On Earth: Denver to Pike’s Peak (1609 m to 4301 m)
On Mars: Your feet to your head (185 cm)
The Martian atmosphere is about 1% the thickness of Earth’s. It is also notoriously turbulent. Dust storms sometimes cover the entire planet and last for weeks. Mars is sometimes relatively close to Earth, and other times very far. Once every 26 months, Mars and Earth end up in solar conjunction; that is, on opposite sides of the Sun. Earthlings have a narrow launch window once every two years or so, when Mars starts to catch up to us. Under ideal conditions, it still takes a spacecraft about nine months to get to Mars. A round trip would likely take at least a year and a half to two years.
A Dutch non-profit organization called Mars One began accepting applications for a one-way trip to Mars that would be privately funded with revenues from a reality television show about the mission. The Mars One project has the prestigious support of Gerard’t Hooft, a Dutch physicist and Nobel Laureate who claims that the organization has received more than 40,000 inquiries in less than a year. Mars One declares, in the vaguest of terms, that there will be “a great deal of research conducted on Mars.” For instance, the organization says the colonists will investigate “how their bodies respond and change when living in a 38% gravitational field,” a study that would have no relevance at all if no one went to Mars in the first place.
They will research “how food crops and other plants grow in hydroponic plant production units;” something that can be done much more efficiently here on Earth. Mars One also insists that the colonists will be required to file “routine reports.” Or else what? Are their Earth-managers going to fire them if they don’t? They will also “answer intriguing questions like: What is it like to walk on Mars? How do you feel about your fellow astronauts after a year? What is it like living in the reduced Mars’ gravity? What is your favorite food? Do you enjoy the sunsets on Mars?”
No one has yet figured out a way to establish a viable human colony on Mars. Why anyone would want to try in the first place is beyond me. This quote from the BBC is often cited:
With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious.
Let’s see. First, we are not “overdue” for an asteroid strike any more than I am overdue for a lotto win, having played and lost so many times in the past. Second, all things equal, Mars is neither more nor less likely to get hit by an asteroid than is Earth. For all we know, we could send a dozen or so colonists to Mars, at huge expense, only to see them vaporized by an unpredictable cosmic event we thought was coming our way. Third, epidemics on Earth are declining, not increasing. Fourth, if Earth’s population is going to increase by three billion this century, it’s hard to see how shipping a few earthlings off to a certain death on the Red Planet changes our trajectory.
And finally: If a bad climate or dwindling resources is what ails us, Mars is probably the last place we should go.
