Every human being is on Earth or, in a small number of cases, in an orbit just above it. That may not be true in the future. In the coming years, people could return to the Moon and continue exploring new frontiers like Mars. NASA sees Mars as a goal for the 2030s, but SpaceX wants to send rockets straight to the red planet, and Elon Musk has frequently mused about the possibility of forming a colony. Visiting Mars is one thing, but can we colonize it? Some technological and biological questions remain, but this piece of science fiction could be realized within our lifetimes. Let's explore the current state of science and find out if we can colonize Mars.
Get to Mars
If you want to colonize Mars, you need to get there, which means you need a big rocket. Space agencies have been sending small probes and landers to Mars for decades. Even though Mars is the planet next door, getting there requires a lot of energy. For example, the Perseverance rover has a total mass of about 2,200 pounds (1,025 kilograms) and required a 1.3 million pound Atlas V rocket to launch. This was followed by months of travel with a much smaller cruise leg. Robots don't need food, water, or environmental protection, so any effort to get humans to Mars would require launching a lot more mass, which means we need big honks. rockets.
Few rockets, even in the testing stage, could support manned missions to Mars. NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) is capable of reaching the outer solar system; It was initially planned to be in charge of the Europa Clipper mission, but that was delivered to SpaceX due to delays. In fact, the development of SLS has been extremely slow. Upgraded versions that could be used for Mars launches are still years away, and the SLS is expendable. That means a long delivery time, since NASA has to build a rocket with a specific mission in mind. NASA has said it hopes to launch a crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s, but no one will stay long term. Supplying a Martian colony with disposable SLS-type rockets would be expensive.
The launch of the SLS begins the Artemis I mission.
Credit: NASA
SpaceX has two vehicles that are theoretically capable of reaching Mars. There's the Falcon Heavy, which is currently flying and has shown it can launch a 13,000-pound car. beyond the orbit of Mars. This rocket will also launch the aforementioned Europa mission. However, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has presented Starship as he Rocket to Mars from the first advances. However, this rocket is not yet fully operational.
Starship It is the largest and most powerful rocket in the world and is being designed to be completely reusable like the Falcon 9. We are currently awaiting Starship's fourth orbital launch attempt. The first two finished in catastrophic failuresand the third was mostly successful until it attempted to re-enter Earth's atmosphere. Musk has made a lot of big promises, but the Falcon 9's power suggests SpaceX could pull it off.
Starship taking off for a test flight.
Credit: SpaceX
For all his machinations and over-promising, Musk is the richest person on Earth. His actual net worth varies with the ebb and flow of the markets, but even if Tesla went under tomorrow, he would still be obscenely rich with a fleet of privately owned rocket ships at his disposal. When a guy like Elon Musk says he'll go to Mars multiple times over a period of years, you accept that he actually could do it. However, he will most likely send other people to Mars first to see how he fares. We've surpassed Musk's first predictions for a mission to Mars, but he now suggests we could be just years away from a crewed landing.
Within a decade, there is a strong chance that we will have multiple vehicles capable of transporting people and materials to Mars. So we can mark this one.
Living on Mars
So, we have arrived at Mars. Perhaps Starship exceeded expectations and regularly sends colonists to the red planet, or perhaps NASA or CSA moved with unusual speed to establish the first outpost on Mars. Regardless of how we get there, we must contend with the environment of an inhospitable surface. Mars has a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, endless expanses of dusty landscape, and about a third the gravity of Earth. Can humans even live on Mars?
In a perfect universe, we would change Mars to be more like Earth. However, the technology needed to terraform another planet is even more science fiction than building a city on Mars. Elon Musk, again making outlandish proposals, once suggested that bombard the polar regions of Mars thicken the atmosphere, but it is not just the atmosphere. Mars has no magnetic field, which means the atmosphere will be continually stripped by the solar wind.
SpaceX's optimistic vision for a base on Mars.
Credit: SpaceX
The lack of a magnetic field also means that colonists would be exposed to intense radiation, up to 700 times more than they would encounter on Earth. Any human being living on Mars must take extreme precautions to avoid exposure to radiation. Habitats could be built underground or shielded to reduce exposure, but any excursion above ground would be like getting a chest X-ray. As the years go by, the probability of suffering from radiation illnesses and cancer becomes quite high.
Building a settlement that can protect residents from radiation will require a lot of work, and even SpaceX with a functioning Starship fleet could be hard-pressed to ship all the materials needed for construction. That's why NASA and others have been investigating in situ resource utilization (ISRU) for the Moon and beyond. The agency has engaged with companies to build prototype habitats of simulated Martian and lunar regolith. NASA has made plans to send a 3D printer to the Moon to test these construction techniques, but this will not happen for another 5 to 10 years, depending on the pace of Artemis releases.
Credit: NASA
Even with a properly protected house, possibly made from Mars itself, there are still physics to deal with. Living on a planet with one-third the gravity of Earth may seem fun, but there could be adverse side effects, and this is just a function of the planet's mass; there is no way to solve it. we spoke with JPL's Adam Steltzner before Perseverance landed, and noted how little data we have about human physiology in low gravity. His eyes can change shape, your muscles will atrophy, your spinal and lymph fluids may not flow properly, and there may be new pregnancy risks not seen on Earth. We don't even know if bones will grow and heal properly without a normal Earth gravity. If humans can't be happy, healthy and fruitful on Mars, what's the point of going?
While we may soon have rockets capable of sending large groups of people and heavy loads to Mars, the technology that would allow those people to live safely on Mars is much further away. We may not even be aware of some of the physiological problems we need to solve.
The Martian maybe
Let's go back to Elon Musk, who, despite his tendency to exaggerate, might have the means to build a home for humans on Mars. Musk has presented ambitious timelines, stating that SpaceX could plant a colony on Mars in the 2020s. Starship may be a battleship rocket by the end of this decade, but sending anyone to Mars at that point would be reckless. Transportation is only the first step.
For all the talk about the fantastic adventure of colonizing another planet, few people would want to spend the rest of their lives in a glorified tent in an arid, radioactive desert. The construction, manufacturing, and medical technology necessary for Mars colonization simply do not exist yet and may never exist. We might discover that humans could never live safely or comfortably on a planet like Mars. Maybe.
We can't say anything more than “maybe” until our exploration of the Red Planet reaches a new milestone: manned missions. Once we've seen how humans fare on short excursions to Mars, we can start planning for long-term habitation. If we're lucky, crewed landings could happen in 10 to 15 years, but NASA's plans for the Moon are already slipping, and the Moon is a stepping stone to Mars. Still, we can't rule out the possibility that the world's richest man will throw some adventurers into a rocket a little early.
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