SpaceX is getting closer to going to Mars as it tests out prototypes of its gigantic
Starship nearly every month.
The aim is to fly an uncrewed mission to the red planet as early as 2024.
CEO Elon Musk has said he’s fairly confident people will land on Mars in 2026.
That’s just two years after NASA’s goal of sending astronauts back to the moon which
is itself a very ambitious timeline.
If and when Starship takes off with travelers aboard, it won’t just be a trip for those
with money but those with guts.
It's dangerous, it's uncomfortable.
Going to Mars reads like that ad for Shackleton going to the Antarctic.
That’s a reference to the famed Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton, who is said to
have put out this ad in a newspaper to recruit brave souls to brave the bitter Antarctic
cold.
Just as the conditions of Antarctica are difficult and dangerous, the Martian environment won’t
exactly be hospitable.
Honestly, a bunch of people probably will die in the beginning.
It’s tough sledding over there.
He believes the tough sledding is worth trying to colonize Mars in case he says anything
were to happen to planet Earth.
Before we talk about the challenges of living on Mars, it will be tough enough just to get there.
25 out of the 49 robotic missions to Mars have failed to get to the fourth planet from
the Sun.
The journey will take six months or longer.
The optimal time to go is when the distance between the Earth and Mars is shortest.
That’s once every two years or so.
Even then, it’s still going to be a 34-mile or 55 million km trek.
The traveling distance will actually be even greater because it can’t be done in a straight line.
So the trajectory will be similar
to a quarterback throwing a football.
They don’t throw the ball to where the receiver is at any given moment but where the teammate
will be in the future as they continue to run down the field.
Course corrections will be necessary.
If it isn’t done with precision, the spacecraft could get lost in space or crash when it reaches
its destination.
It has happened already.
In 1998, a software issue sent NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter too close to the red planet
and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere or got lost orbiting the sun.
Live communication won’t be possible either because it takes as long as 24 minutes for
radio signals to travel back to Earth.
So the spacecraft is on its own, dependent on an onboard computer to automate the entire
procedure.
Those minutes will feel like hours.
And once it prepares to land, the vehicle - this one simulating Starship - will perform
a complex landing maneuver.
If getting safely to Mars is going to be difficult, living there will be an even greater challenge.
NASA’s Perseverance rover that touched down in February has been studying the habitability
of Mars and looking for signs of past microbial life.
Its cameras captured NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter flying in the dusty, desert world.
Gigantic dust storms, resembling tornadoes, can cover the entire planet and the dust is
toxic.
Many people often assume Mars is hot but because it’s farther from the sun and has an atmosphere
100 times thinner than Earth’s, there are huge temperature swings.
A daytime high of 22° Celsius or 71° Fahrenheit on the surface could drop to -99° Celsius
or minus 146° Fahrenheit at night.
That thin atmosphere would also expose aspiring Martians to radiation.
And Mars has no magnetic field to deflect these deadly rays and particles unlike the
magnetic bubble that protects Earth.
Building homes underground would offer protection - or possibly building them above ground with
a protective layer of regolith - loose deposits of dust and broken rocks.
There’s no shortage of that on the red planet.
And if you step outside without a spacesuit, the low atmospheric pressure would cause
your blood to boil.
A NASA scientist has compared it to popping a can of soda.
You’d fizz to death.
The atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide so the failure of a spacesuit is a potential
death sentence.
To get around this problem, NASA is experimenting with trying to convert CO2 into oxygen with
a toaster-sized instrument aboard the Perseverance rover called MOXIE.
That could one day provide breathable air and could also help lift rockets off the planet’s
surface since propellant depends on oxygen.
And of course, the big challenge of living on Mars is figuring out how to get safe drinking
water.
There are small quantities of water in the soil and as vapor in the atmosphere, but most
of it exists as ice.
Perhaps the most viable option for the first humans on Mars is to live on their spaceship
at first, using it as a habitable base for the building of a city.
There’s been talk of terraforming Mars - engineering it to make it more Earth-like
by creating enough oxygen so that humans can breathe.
However, that’s a long way off from the near-term goal of first-time travelers which
is simply to survive the night.
It's dangerous, it's uncomfortable, it's a long journey.
You might not come back alive.
But it's a glorious adventure, and it'll be an amazing experience. And your name will go in history.
Yes. You might die.
If you’re considering whether to book that ticket to Mars and can’t decide, you can
learn more about the red planet by watching space documentaries.
But for explorers and dreamers, the red planet is warm and inviting.
I’ve been enjoying this episode of A Curious World available on CuriosityStream which sponsored
this video.
CuriosityStream is brought to you by the founder of the Discovery Channel.
I have a whole list of documentaries to get through on space, science, tech, and history.
To sign up, head to curiositystream.com/newsthink. The link is in my description.
The price of a membership is only $15 for the entire year.
Not month, but year.
For Newsthink, I’m Cindy Pom.