Mars? No, it’s better to colonize the Moon first!
No matter how advanced our civilization is,
sooner or later it will have to deal with a problem that is not easy to solve.
Which is? That of our planet's finite resources.
And I am not referring to resources such as minerals, clean water, and breathable air,
but to something even more fundamental and restrictive: the amount of space available.
There is in fact only a finite amount of land to inhabit on our planet.
Yes, sure, maybe someday we will build floating cities on the oceans,
or even manage to live in the deep sea... but it's only a matter of time... sooner or later
some part of us will have to leave the planet... Okay, but to go where? Useless for the moment
to think about the romantic idea of searching for an extrasolar planet, perfect and already
nice and ready to live on. The distances are prohibitive, and our technological resources
are pathetically insufficient for such a mission. Thus, if we want a world suitable for our life,
it seems that our only option will be to transform a currently uninhabitable planet
into one on which humans can survive. And this has a name, and it is called "terraforming."
A word that in the collective imagination evokes only one thing: Mars.
But despite the belief of many that Mars is the right world to terraform within our solar system,
there may be an even better option closer to home: the Moon. And I'll explain why
Everyone wants to go to Mars. At first glance,
it might seem that Mars is much more suitable for terraforming and colonization than the Moon.
After all, there are already large amounts of water on Mars: both in the solid and gas phase.
Or so it is said, although I personally fear that the predictions in this regard are too optimistic
Mars is also larger and more massive than the Moon; it has twice the gravitational force of
the Moon; and its atmosphere, though rarefied, is rich in carbon dioxide. All of which are judged
favorably compared to what the Moon can offer. But Mars not only has merits-it also has a
great many flaws... Here are a few.
For one thing, it is farther from the Sun than Earth is, which means that its surface receives,
on average, only 40 percent of what we receive here. And that's without considering dust storms,
which on the red planet can block solar radiation for very long periods, sometimes up to several
weeks or even months! And less solar power means that when we are there we will have to
provide for supplementing it with artificial sources of light and heat. And that will mean
heavy technology, machinery and installations to be moved hundreds of millions of miles away.
Mars does not have a protective magnetic field like Earth and is therefore subject to bombardment
by solar wind particles. Living on the surface would mean receiving a lethal dose of radiation
on time scales far, far smaller than human life. Resulting in the need to have to move underground,
perhaps to one of those large lava tubes that apparently run through the red planet's
subsurface in large numbers. In fairness, this is a problem that affects the Moon as well.
Another major problem is that of the soil. The Martian soil is in fact very different
from Earth's, with silicon dioxide combined with highly oxidized metals,
such as iron oxide, aluminum oxide, calcium oxide,
and sulfur oxide: an extremely hostile soil, with a particular chemistry that is actually
very unfavorable to the presence of organic compounds and the cultivation of plants.
Mars is so far from Earth that, at the speed of light,
one-way communications can take 7 to 22 minutes to reach their destination.
A very long time if you have to direct any operation from Earth, in real-time.
Then there are also the risks to human life to consider. A one-way trip to the Moon takes only a
few days, as in the Apollo era. A spacecraft takes only three days to make a journey of about 400,000
kilometers, so if an emergency were to occur, astronauts could easily return to Earth. Mars,
on the other hand, is hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth, a thousand times
the distance from the Moon, which means it would take six to eight months for a manned
mission to reach the Red Planet. If there were an emergency on Mars, the team might simply not
return home. Not to mention the enormously higher costs of transferring materials.
Of course, none of these problems is an insurmountable obstacle.
With a sufficiently high investment of resources, virtually anything is possible,
even going to put bases on Pluto... But the more resources you have to bring with you,
both to survive and thrive in the new environment and to protect yourself
from the damaging effects of everything around you, the more difficult your mission becomes.
"Hey, guys, just a moment before we continue... BE sure to join the Insane Curiosity Channel...
Click on the bell, you will help us to make products of ever-higher quality!"
OK, but what about the Moon? Well...in terms of infrastructure and accessibility,
there really is no competition.
The telecommunications delay is 1.2 seconds and does not prevent normal voice and video
conversations. This could be crucial in the early stages of founding the colony,
where emergencies and critical situations could use assistance from Earth in near real-time.
On the near face of the Moon, Earth appears large and always visible,
while on Mars when it is visible it appears as a star.
The crew of a lunar colony would feel psychologically less distant from Earth.
A lunar base would be an excellent site for an astronomical observatory. Given the Moon's slow
rotation, observations in visible light could last for entire days. It would also be possible to keep
a target under constant observation through a series of observatories distributed around
the lunar circumference. A radio telescope on the Moon could be much larger than the
one at Arecibo because of the low gravity. In addition, the Moon is geologically dead,
this - combined with the absence of widespread human activity - makes mechanical vibration
disturbances almost absent and therefore interferometry telescopes more efficient.
Finally, it should be borne in mind that rich deposits of minerals rare on Earth (such as
titanium, gold, palladium, iridium, and uranium) but also common minerals (such as iron, nickel,
and aluminum) could be discovered on the Moon, since on its surface many meteorites (asteroid
clusters or comets), known to be abundant in these minerals, arrive almost intact due to the absence
of atmosphere on the lunar expanse. Considering also that helium-3 has been found on the Moon,
which could be used by nuclear fusion power plants, it would extend the capabilities of
supplying both Earth and the Moon with energy for lunar cities and/or bases.
On the Moon, there is no atmosphere, no clouds or sandstorms that can filter or block solar
radiation. You can install a solar panel on the surface and receive the same amount of incident
radiation as you would from an orbiter and would only need to clean the panels every few decades.
A lunar base will need efficient means to transport people and goods between Earth
and the Moon and later between the Moon and other destinations in interplanetary space.
One advantage of our satellite is its relatively weak gravitational field,
which makes it easy to launch objects to Earth and other destinations. Sending
materials from Earth directly to Mars, on the other hand, would have exorbitant costs.
But by far the Moon's best resource is something that takes us back to the past,
rather than to the future. As we have already seen,
the Martian soil, which is full of oxides, is not suitable for growing the plants needed for
the food supply of the early colonies. In terms of the elements of which both
worlds are composed, chemical compositions of the compounds we find, and isotopic
ratios of the materials present, however, the Moon and Earth have a common history.
Except for the biological components found in Earth's soil, the composition of lunar regolith
is identical to the composition of Earth's crust. And if the material present on the Moon is not
only similar but identical to the material we have on Earth, this makes the prospect of
terraforming the Moon a much easier task than we might otherwise have considered.
Simply crushing lunar rocks to produce soil will be enough to begin the process of lunar
agriculture. And this was demonstrated rather recently by an experiment done by sowing seeds
of Arabidopsis thaliana - a plant of no particular agronomic importance. but which, precisely because
of its simplicity, is often used as a model organism in many scientific experiments - in
regolith from the Apollo 11, 12, and 17 missions. The small amount of lunar soil available,
not to mention its incalculable historical and scientific significance, meant that the planned
experiment had to be conducted on a small scale and constantly filmed and monitored.
The regolith was placed in small containers the size of a plastic thimble normally used
for cell culture. Each well-served as a jar, and contained about one gram of regolith.
Just as they do when they want to grow something on Earth, the scientists moistened the soil with
a nutrient solution and added some Arabidopsis seeds. As a comparison, some seeds were also
planted in Earth-derived soil but mimicking real lunar soil, in simulated Martian and
terrestrial soil from extreme environments. The result? Well, almost all of the samples
produced seedlings, thereby demonstrating the possibility of nurturing a lunar colony
just by growing large quantities of plant products in a greenhouse.
In short, if our goal is to colonize and then terraform the most suitable planets in the solar
system, we absolutely cannot do without first definitely setting foot on the Moon. And that
is what we would probably do even if we were to, out of sheer display of our capabilities,
first attempt to land on Mars. I am sure that a trip to the red
planet would remain unique for quite some time because we would immediately return
to the wiser course, which is that of a quiet and comfortable colonization of our satellite.
After all, we would only need to proceed by sequential and modular steps, with a repetitive
pattern that over time would become a proven routine: pressurizing domes or even lava tubes,
implanting large greenhouses, calmly building the necessary infrastructure
to connect the first small communities, securing the production of an increasing amount of energy,
solar or nuclear... One tile after another, without haste, but methodically.
And then, one day, when we feel strong and now adapted to extreme environments,
we can finally use the Moon as a springboard toward colonizing the
solar system. Always very slowly. Moon first, take it from me!