Colonisation is an essential part of humanity’s history.
Humans have been colonising for hundreds, if not, thousands of years; it is quite literally
in our DNA, which is why it should come as no surprise that colonising Mars in the near
future is humanity’s next target.
The colonisation of Mars and in fact interplanetary travel in general all boils down to the same
desire.
It is the desire to survive.
Becoming a multiplanetary species is absolutely essential for the survival of our species—whether
it be preserving mankind from a Third World War, climate change, a pandemic whatever it
may be, because if something on Earth goes haywire then humanity’s extinction is prevented
by having colonists situated on Mars.
Mars would serve as humanity’s supreme backup.
The greatest motivation is the fear of death—this innate desire of not wanting to die is exactly
what will push humanity to become a spacefaring species.
I mean look how influential that urge is in modern society.
It is the sole reason religion was invented, as a means of a universal coping mechanism
for death—to be able to accept death with open arms in the belief that you will be immediately
welcomed by lost loved ones and the rest of humanity that has been immortalised in an
afterlife.
This echoes the many traditions and beliefs of not only the modern world but also of past
civilisations.
Take for instance, the Mediterranean’s preeminent civilisation for thousands of years, ancient
Egypt, and their practices of mummies and paying homage to gods, that predates most
modern religions by hundreds of years.
My point is, our brains are wired to do everything in their ability to simply survive and, as
I said, this is the key driving force that is taking us as far as establishing a colony
on Mars.
As well as many other reasons of course, we also want to go just for the sake of exploration
and scientific research but also simply because we can.
With that being said, Mars isn’t exactly the ideal candidate for colonisation; it is
just the better of a bad bunch.
Mars is a cold, desert-filled wasteland with a very unforgiving atmosphere and magnetosphere,
allowing for a significantly high percentage of radiation to reach the surface.
The lack of a magnetosphere as well as the Martian atmosphere being one hundred times
smaller than the one we’re used to does not provide sufficient protection from the
radiation for our astronauts on the surface, and so this is a major concern for our astronauts
not only while living on Mars but also during the journey to Mars.
We’ll address these concerns as well as many others later on in the episode.
Mars isn’t all deserts though, it is filled with canyons, dry lake beds, volcanoes that
dwarf Mount Everest and craters so vast that you wouldn’t even notice you were in one.
All in all, Mars isn’t exactly a place you’d want to end up in; it is remote, hard to access
and seemingly offers little to no profitability.
Well then, why Mars you ask?
Well let’s make a case for our other options.
I think it’s fair to say that Mercury is immediately out of the question.
Venus, on the other hand, is far more promising than you might first expect.
Despite the hellish, inhospitable environment below the concealing atmosphere, it holds
potential in terms of habitability up in the air.
At ground level the surface pressure exceeds 90 times that of Earth and it’s just a little
toasty with temperatures of 467 C (or 873 F)—hot enough to melt lead.
But if we go up about 50-55 kilometres in the atmosphere, there exists a habitable pocket
that conveniently is normal Earth pressure and temperature.
The atmosphere is comprised of primarily carbon dioxide, meaning that many common and abundant
gases, such as hydrogen and helium, are far lighter than Venus’ air.
We are therefore technologically capable of colonising Venus by constructing floating
cities full of these airships in the Venusian clouds.
In fact, even our air is light enough to serve as the gas, but you’d probably opt for a
lighter one as that would give you more legroom to work with for the weight you can carry
on your vessels or just mean you’re carrying a smaller volume of gas.
Venus’ aptitude for colonisation almost seems too good to be true; it essentially
has the same gravity as the one we’re used to (only about a 10% decrease, which is nothing
compared to the 60-70% loss of gravity you’d experience on Mars), it has an abundance of
harnessable energy, particularly in the form of solar but also wind energy, its super dense
atmosphere offers great protection from radiation and even its clouds of sulphuric acid prove
to be useful as hydrogen, oxygen and water can be obtained from them through electrolysis
without having to leave the comfort of your home.
Even the travel time is far less—reaching it in as little time as three months.
The facts almost make you lose hope in Mars and jump ship to Venus.
I think the case for Mars and this fixation on the red planet comes from the desire of
actually being able to land on a surface and plant a flag; it wouldn’t really feel like
you had colonised another planet if you were just drifting through clouds.
Past Mars, the gas giants offer some potential, not on the planets themselves, but on their
moons.
I think I’ll leave them out of the equation for now as, for how I see it, a colony can’t
form very easily when they are a literal 5-12 year journey away with our current technology
as well as the fact that we haven’t studied them nearly as much as we have done on Mars,
which can also be said for Venus.
I don’t think a crew could even survive a journey more than five years with current
technology.
In the beginning, a colony is entirely dependent on Earth’s assistance until they become
self-sustaining and it just isn’t possible to assist a colony that is that far away.
All in all, the most habitable and most Earth-like place that we have available to us in the
solar system is Mars, exempting the habitable pocket in Venus’ atmosphere.
Now, there is a lot of debate about whether or not it is worth while to first colonise
the Moon before attempting to do the same with Mars.
In a perfect world with unlimited resources and time, this is exactly what you would do.
Not only is the Moon a perfect sandbox to ensure colonisation is feasible but the Moon
could function as a waypoint between Earth and the rest of the solar system on space
exploration missions—including Mars.
Escaping Earth’s gravitational pull is expensive.
In fact, the vast majority of a rocket at launch is just the fuel needed to get to space
and after that you are quite limited in where you can go next.
By harvesting the lunar water available on the Moon, a colony can split it into its component
parts hydrogen and oxygen—the two primary propellants of a rocket.
It would be as simple as a stop at a petrol station and then you’re off to explore the
solar system in no time.
It is only natural to form an outpost on the Moon for this very reason; you don’t drive
from London to Madrid on one tank of fuel in your car.
Rocket propellant could be extracted on the surface in mining colonies and transported
to either a storage facility on the Moon near a rocket launch site or it could be sent up
to a space station in orbit around the Moon or even in low Earth orbit.
The Moon is an ideal candidate for this manoeuvre due to its gravity being one sixth of Earth’s,
meaning that little fuel is needed to escape the surface to space.
The Moon won’t be immediately profitable though; it’ll take at least five years to
a decade from first establishing the initial colony for that to happen.
The Moon has one thing that nothing else in the solar system has though: its closeness
to Earth, which is what makes it such a valuable and unique location.
It’s closeness allows for a great rate of expansion of the colony since spacecraft can
be sent to the Moon regularly and whenever we please, which is something we can’t do
with a Martian colony.
Leading up to the first colony, you’d probably want to introduce a Lunar space station in
orbit to assist with the safe transport of astronauts to the surface and also to just
assist them in general.
In this way, if something goes haywire on the surface in the colony, help is only a
few hours away instead of the three day waiting time from Earth.
It may also be a good idea to build yourself an orbital ring on the Moon; a gigantic artificial
ring that would provide us with enormous help for space exploration and basically just the
transport of people and cargo between the surface and space.
Now, when you’re actually on the surface of Mars, it’s a completely different story.
There are many ways in which one could go about delivering a payload—several payloads
in fact—to the surface of Mars and setting up the habitats.
The whole process of colonising Mars is littered with obstacles and hindrances and the difficulty
of landing on Mars is no different.
Mars has a surface gravity 38% that of Earth, and as I’ve mentioned its atmosphere is
100 times thinner than Earth’s.
The relatively strong gravity combined with the minor presence of aerodynamic effects
prevent us from landing heavy payloads and manned spacecraft using only thrusters to
combat its fall, as was done with the Apollo Moon landings.
On top of that, and annoyingly, the atmosphere is just too thin to be useful in slowing the
descent of a spacecraft, meaning that the landing mechanisms used on Mars to land crewed
spacecraft or just payloads will have to be entirely different to anything we’ve ever
done before.
When the colonisation of Mars is ever discussed, people immediately think that the crew lands
on the surface and then begins to build their habitats by themselves.
Rather, it’s a much better idea to send robots two years—perhaps even four years—prior
to the crew leaving Earth to set up the living spaces.
In this way, several unmanned payloads can be delivered to Mars in advance of the crew
landing there, delivering such things as their habitats, life-support systems and any rovers
or vehicles.
This way the astronauts can inhabit the living spaces as soon as they land and not have to
deal with any unnecessary risk of constructing them.
It needs to be two or four years prior as there is only a narrow launch window for Mars
that exists every two years when Mars comes closest to Earth in its orbit; you wouldn’t
want your astronauts chasing Mars down for five years half way around the Sun.
This allows for the duration of the trip to be minimised as well as the rocket fuel used
during it, with it only taking the crew anywhere from four to eight months to get there, depending
on how much fuel you’re willing to expend on your way there.
However, the long travel time raises problems for the crew on the surface; if something
goes haywire in the colony, help may be several years away, depending on when the next launch
window is, and so the crew really can’t afford to make any major mistakes.
For the habitat itself, there are so many intricacies and difficulties to overcome—so
many, in fact, that I don’t think anyone has truly thought out every possible detail.
Initially, it appears to be pretty simple: all the engineers need to figure out is how
to provide their astronauts with the necessities.
So that essentially includes their nourishment, water, air, energy for electricity and heating
and such, and waste disposal.
The water situation is fairly straightforward.
It wouldn’t be ideal to bring a very large supply of water as that would take up far
too much space in the payload.
Rather, water can be extracted from the Martian soil which contains anywhere from 1-60% water,
as well as there being polar ice-caps, underground water and glaciers.
The location will be largely dependent on being in the vicinity of decent water supplies,
which is fairly easy as NASA has found Mars to be pretty wet in general.
Water is essential—not merely for the astronaut’s needs but also for agriculture, radiation
shielding as well as having the ability to produce rocket fuel, like we may do on our
Lunar outpost.
As for the location itself, I don’t think there’s any real need to be overly specific.
However there are some no-go areas, including the polar regions, the top of volcanoes and,
as a general rule, any region which is particularly dusty.
Why?
Well if you were to colonise Earth for the first time—or at least an Earth-like exoplanet—you
wouldn’t choose the equivalent of Antarctica to settle down on.
The tops of volcanoes offer minimal protection to the harmful radiation that Mars even lacks
on the surface.
And any particularly dusty areas are to be avoided as Mars—similar to the Moon—is
covered in its trademark red sand and fine dust which, since it’s electro-statically
charged, sticks to everything and is just waiting to tamper with anything it can get
its hands on.
The Martian regolith also contains perchlorate salts which are very toxic and harmful for
humans to breathe in, which is a serious and likely possibility if the Martian dust is
constantly being brought in to their living spaces, after astronauts have carried out
routine missions on the surface.
This can all be prevented of course by an airlock which attempts to remove all of the
dust before entry or, even better, by the astronauts never venturing out of their homes
and just using rovers and drones to do all the dirty work on the outside.
As for what the crew will be eating, it will likely have to come from farming techniques
such as hydroponics, which is just a method whereby food can be produced by growing it
in water where nutrients can be provided in solutions without the need of any soil.
There are concepts where agriculture could be carried out on the Martian soil but this
includes very energy-intensive decontamination of the soil beforehand which is necessary
due to the fact that it’s alkaline and lacks nitrogen compounds essential to a plant’s
growth.
In any case, a substantial supply of food and water will be brought for the astronauts
over the course of the first year, but it is in the astronaut’s best interest to setup
a self-sustaining means of production of their own.
A lot of what the crew will be doing depends upon a steady source of energy and unlike
Venus’ aptitude for quite a few different energies, Mars is lacking in that respect.
Wind and geothermal aren’t feasible as the Martian atmosphere is far too thin and its
core far too cold.
Geothermal is probably harnessable in some areas of the planet but for the most part,
it’s not a energy source that I would rely on.
Solar power is probably one of the best bets for our colony however even that can often
prove to be unreliable while dust storms cover the entire planet for days on end and it being
not as effective as it is here on Earth as the solar power there is only 40% as effective
due to its distance from the Sun.
In the beginning, nuclear technology may be the only energy supply that we can truly have
faith in, which will need to be brought from Earth in one of the payloads.
Within the habitats, an artificial, pressurised atmosphere will obviously need to be maintained
which will likely consist of a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen; just of what we’re
used to here on Earth.
A steady temperature and pressure must be maintained.
Thus, the interior of the habitat must be circular and rounded so that the pressure
is constant throughout and to deal with the substantial differences in pressure between
the interior and exterior of the structures as I’m sure you don’t want your habitat
exploding on you while you’re sleeping.
Now, all of this wouldn’t be possible without sufficient funding.
While a Martian colony may be able to eventually pay for itself, there isn’t actually much
room for profitability on Mars since there’s not much on Mars that we don’t have already
here on Earth.
Even if there were, it most likely wouldn’t be economical to do so as the cost of transportation
would far outweigh the potential profit.
I think mining will be a large part of Mars’ society but whatever is mined will rather
be used on Martian bases rather than being transferred back to Earth.
However there is the opportunity of mining deuterium.
Whatever is mined could be mined robotically while humans either stay in the safety of
their bases or even remain in orbit around Mars, maybe even situated on one of Mars’
moons.
With that being said, the only thing that we can say actually has any worth to people
back on Earth is mainly the ideas and science produced on Mars.
Now you may be sitting there, asking yourself why on Earth anyone would want to do all this?
And you’re right, colonising Mars will be one of the most challenging and excruciating
accomplishments of mankind but also one of the greatest.
The crew will go through hardship that no other person has experienced in all of history.
They will be faced with problems that have never been conceived, never mind encountered
by anyone else before.
But in the end, it will all be worth it.
Imagine bright mega-cities, illuminating the once dark night on Mars as early as the 2030s
and 2040s; terraforming our way into becoming a true multi-planetary civilisation.
This is the eventual goal of forming a colony; a new, thriving, self-sustaining hub of people
with their own innovative ideas and forming their own culture and raising a generation
to be better and go further than their own.
And this is exactly what we can do by colonising Mars; we are not simply allowing all our eggs
to be in the one basket and risk the lives of the next generation.
Comment down below your thoughts on the colonisation of Mars.
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