• Question: do you think there is ever a chance for u to start living on mars?

    Asked by anon-253064 on 12 May 2020.
    • Photo: Richard Fielder

      Richard Fielder answered on 12 May 2020:

      No. There are efforts going towards landing humans on Mars, but it’s unlikely that will happen within this decade. Even if things go well, the first trips to Mars will be similar to the Moon landings – short visits to study things and see what is actually possible. By the time things have advanced enough to have a possibility of people actually living on Mars, I will be far too old to be joining them. It’s just about possible that people in school now might have the chance to be among the first humans to stay on Mars for a longer time.

      For humanity in general, it’s trickier to say. The problem is that at the moment a lot of the resources needed to survive just aren’t there. Possibly air and fuel could be produced on Mars, but not with our current technology, while food simply doesn’t seem to be possible because there isn’t any soil. That means any colony would be dependent on supplies being sent from Earth. It’s possible, but it would be very expensive and risky if things went wrong. More likely than permanent colonies would be research stations like we have in Antarctica or the ISS, where people could live for a few years before coming home again. Again, if you’re in school now it’s possible you could have the chance to be involved with something like that.

    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 12 May 2020: last edited 12 May 2020 12:22 pm

      For me personally – no. Establishing a permanent base on Mars is not going to happen in the next decade, and after that I’ll be 70 and nobody’s choice as a potential colonist.

      If that was a typo for “a chance for us (i.e. humans) to start living on Mars”, then the outlook is a bit more positive, but it would take an enormous investment of money and effort. The problem is that Mars is just not very hospitable: it is too cold and the atmosphere is much too thin. It is fair to say that Mars is the least inhospitable of the planets in the solar system (excluding Earth of course) but that is not saying very much when you consider the other options!

      The problem is that Mars is a long way away. One could envisage a permanently staffed base on the Moon which could receive regular supplies of food etc. from Earth – it’s only a few days’ travel. But it takes months to get to Mars, so it would not really be logistically feasible to carry on resupplying your Mars base from Earth indefinitely: it would have to become self-sufficient. And that is a serious problem. On Earth, we are supported by a very complex ecosystem: the oxygen we breathe comes from plants, the plants are supported by bacteria that fix nitrogen from the air, and so on. It is a complicated balancing act involving many different species – bacteria to fix nitrogen, plants to supply oxygen, insects to pollinate plants, birds to stop the insects getting out of hand, a whole community of species to convert dead plant matter into soil nutrients, earthworms to transport those nutrients deeper into the soil, and lots of other things. Trying to create a self-sustaining ecosystem on Mars would be really hard (“The Martian” notwithstanding). The only serious attempt to create a sealed, self-sufficient ecosystem on Earth, a project called Biosphere 2, did not succeed – the air got out of balance and if they’d really kept it sealed everyine inside would have died. So there is no evidence we can do this even on Earth, and of course on Mars you have the added problem that it is very cold and gets less than half as much sunlight per square metre. So I think it would be very difficult indeed to establish a permanent, self-sufficient Mars colony – we’d need to know a lot more about ecology than we do now.

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 12 May 2020:

      Sadly no! I hope somebody does one day.

    • Photo: Lori-Ann Foley

      Lori-Ann Foley answered on 12 May 2020:

      I think we are getting closer. I study the weather on Mars and it will be a tough planet to live on. It is very cold most of the time – the hottest time of day in the hottest place on Mars is only sometimes about 20C, as warm as an average day on Earth. And there is not much atmosphere, so we need to be careful of radiation there, as there isn’t a thick atmosphere to protect things at the ground.

      We do know now that there is a lot more water on Mars than we thought. It looks like a desert planet but as well as ice caps at the poles (the way we have ice caps on Earth), there are glaciers all over the place, but usually covered in sand. Though I don’t know if you saw this amazing picture of an ice filled crater on Mars: http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Mars_Express_gets_festive_A_winter_wonderland_on_Mars
      Totally amazing!!! IMHO :-).

      So people living on Mars would need habitats to protect them from the cold, to keep in enough air to breathe and to protect people from the radiation from space. Food would need to be grown inside too, for the same reasons. Plus the dirt on Mars isn’t like soil on Earth, with bacteria and things to help it grow.

      So a tough trip and then a hard life when you got there. But I personally would love to go because to be on a different planet would be amazing. And we would learn so much by having people there.

      Would you go? 🙂

    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 12 May 2020:

      If you mean me personally, then maybe not, but if you mean us as human beings, then absolutely yes! Elon Musk is a genius billionnaire you might have heard of in the news or twitter. He’s spending all his money making fantastic rockets for the sole purpose of going to Mars. He reckons he’ll beat NASA getting to Mars in just a few years! It’s my dream to go there too 🙂

    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 12 May 2020:

      I certainly won’t, it’s going to be a one way trip for anyone that goes in my lifetime! I do think there’s a good chance we’ll have some kind of terraforming in the future, but getting people to live there requires a whole new level of technology. Plus the argument is, we need to get better at living on Earth first! Once we are in a position to make clean energy and water, and able to feed people without needing to use miles of farmland on Earth, then it will make more sense to try living on Mars.
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      However, the point can be made that living on Mars can be the incentive to invest in this research!
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      Brilliant question,
      Ry

    • Photo: Krishna Mooroogen

      Krishna Mooroogen answered on 13 May 2020:

      I would have to agree with my colleagues here, I think it is unlikely in our lifetime, however I think there is significant research and ideas that might allow us to have a semi permanent station in the relative near future (still several decades). However, I think this would take place as part of a strategy to exploit resources or establish bases for research, perhaps on the moon first.

    • Photo: Gabriel Gallardo

      Gabriel Gallardo answered on 20 May 2020:

      It might be possible! One of the ultimate goals of a company called SpaceX is to set up a colony on Mars. It might be doable within the next century, or it might not. There are a lot of variables at play! Personally I think I’m quite attached to Earth so I probably won’t be one of the first colonizers 😛

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