Mars has always been a hypothetical second home for humans,
but with plans to actually start sending people and colonising the red planet as soon as the next decade,
would you have what it takes to get to and live on Mars?
Your first challenge is getting through the launch.
High levels of g-force can damage the body
and at around 9gs most humans black out from lack of blood to the brain.
As a result, human missions are limited to around 3gs,
or 3 times the force of gravity on earth,
which astronauts are trained to withstand.
So if you can survive the first few minutes without rocket system failures or depressurisation issues,
then your other concern is protecting yourself from the Sun's radiation.
Leaving Earth's atmosphere and its protection,
you have an increased risk of cancer and damage to your Central Nervous System.
You'd wanna go when Earth and Mars are most closely aligned,
which only happens every 2 years,
and you'll spend almost 150 days on your one way trip.
You might also want to consider removing your gallbladder and appendix for your extended flight,
as it could protect those organs from bursting due to pressure changes.
Now that your body is transitioning to micro gravity,
you'll start to feel the negative effects of weightlessness.
Your bodily fluids will shift upwards throughout your body,
causing headaches and temporary blindness,
and you can also expect your digestive system to slow down as your body adjusts.
Because of limited space, you'd be wearing the same clothes for a long duration.
Even astronauts on the ISS wear their underwear for up to a week,
which is why female astronauts are more prone to getting UTIs in space.
NASA's research shows that astronauts can lose
upto 1% of bone mineral and density per month.
If you're willing to work out about 2 hours a day,
like the astronauts aboard the ISS do, you'll have a better chance of counteracting this.
Sex could help too, but it might be a bit difficult
due to Newton's 3rd law, a couple's every movement would counteract the other.
Que the 2SUIT: A space suit made for two that zips like a sleeping bag,
preventing pushing away from one another.
Once you've landed on Mars, you'll instantly start to notice the differences between
your new home and Earth.
Mars is further from the Sun, so the temperature ranges between -140° Celsius to 30° Celsius,
but that doesn't mean you can just walk outside on warmer days.
Earth's atmosphere is about 100 times more dense than Mars',
so you won't be protected from the Sun's radiation.
This means you might have to get used to living in an underground habitat.
Leaving your habitat, you'd likely wear a sweaty, 50 lb spacesuit
to protect your blood from boiling,
or your organs rupturing from the lack of atmospheric pressure.
The food would be freeze-dried food packed with nutritional requirements that tastes okay but
has a mushy texture, until your botanist can grow fresh fruit, vegetables and greens.
You'd have to get used to seeing no vegetation growing outside naturally,
or any people or animals moving about.
Using NASA's Mars Simulation research, you'd likely be living in a habitat
the size of a small, 900 square ft apartment with a handful of other martians.
You'd need to get along with people, or it may be difficult to find people to mate with
and grow a colony.
Genetic diversity is an important part of keeping large groups healthy.
Not having enough people to mate with often leads to inbreeding,
which research shows can lead to the loss of more than 80% of the diversity within a gene,
causing your small community to be vulnerable to extinction through disease.
Old research suggests that a new colony would need about 150 people
to preserve genetic variation, but newer studies suggest the the number is
between 10,000 and 40,000 people needed.
If that's true, you may have to wait a few months for more Martians to arrive
before you get jiggy.
Even knowing theses risks, you'd also have to pass
a space agency's astronaut test before going,
which are physically and mentally rigorous. But if you were accepted,
would you wanna go?
If you wanna know more about what life would actually be like living on Mars,
should you decide to go, check out our second video by clicking the screen,
or using the link in the description.
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