We’ve talked a lot about what it would take to get humans to Mars, and even what a colony
on Venus might look like.
But soon we might give a few people one-way tickets to the Red Planet.
So how are they gonna survive?
Turns out, scientists and engineers have been thinking about colonizing space for a while.
After we sent people to the Moon, it seemed like a Mars colony couldn’t be too far off.
But the 1970s came and went … and the ’80s … and the ‘90s … and the 2000s.
Still, no people on Mars -- and it’s looking like it isn’t going to happen in the 2010s,
either.
Well, you know what they say: The sixth decade’s the charm…
right?
Because now it’s 2016, and the crew of Mars One, a mission being planned by a nonprofit
organization of the same name, could be the humans to colonize Mars.
Right now, the mission is set to launch in 2026 -- though it’s already been delayed
twice.
But what’s so hard about setting up shop on Mars, anyway?
Well, pretty much everything -- especially when it comes to the three basic human needs
that we’ll need to sort out before astronauts land: sleeping, eating, and breathing.
There aren’t any five-star Martian hotels, so when it comes to sleeping accommodations,
it’s one of those “bring-your-own-room” situations.
Before they send people, Mars One is planning to send missions with rovers and supplies,
including living units and life support units that the robots will set up for the first
group of astronauts.
Then, after the first crew lands, they’ll receive more supplies and set up the living
space for the second crew...
… and that pattern will continue for all of the missions afterwards.
Each astronaut will probably have around ten square meters of personal living area.
But there are also going to be some common spaces like kitchens and hallways, so things
shouldn’t get too cramped.
They’re not luxury apartments, but they’re not half bad for Martian real estate.
Now that we’ve got our astronauts settled in their Martian condos, what are they gonna
eat?
The idea is to grow lots of edible crops in special greenhouse sections of the habitats
-- kind of like what Mark Watney tried to do in The Martian -- so there’s always food
to harvest.
The settlers need to ensure their plants have artificial light, carbon dioxide, nutrients,
and water to grow.
And Mars’s atmosphere might be very thin, but it is almost entirely carbon dioxide,
so that’s an encouraging sign that we’ll be able to use some of the Martian air in
the greenhouses.
Scientists also think that Martian soil might have the right nutrients for plants to grow,
especially if astronauts supplement it with fertilizers and wash out some of the stuff
that would be toxic to humans.
But finding water on a desert planet like Mars is a little trickier.
Fortunately, a lot of scientists think that there’s plenty of water locked away in the
surface soil and rocks.
It’ll be up to those habitat-building robots to prove them right, extract some water, and
get the initial crops growing.
By the time the astronauts arrive, they’ll have some food to harvest and will need to
start planting their own.
But, with food comes poop.
So scientists are still trying to figure out how to deal with all of the waste that people
and plants produce, especially as the colony grows.
But who really cares about sleeping and eating if you can’t survive outside of a spacesuit:
Where will breathable air come from?
Mars’s atmosphere is incredibly thin and has almost no oxygen.
In fact, only about 0.13% of Mars’s atmosphere is oxygen, compared to 21% here on Earth.
And humans … don’t tend to live very long without oxygen.
So an Earth-like atmosphere inside of the habitats has to come from somewhere, and we
have to make a lot of it to fill up all that living space.
The plants will produce oxygen as they photosynthesize, but it would take a long time for that oxygen
to build up to life-sustaining levels.
The hope is that some oxygen gas can be extracted from the Martian air, by basically splitting
up the carbon and oxygen in the carbon dioxide, or it can come from the soil with the help
of microbes.
It’s going to take a little bit of juggling to get all of the right gases in the right
proportions in the air, but scientists are pretty sure it can work with the right technologies.
So will these plans work?
Are we finally gonna send people to colonize Mars?
Well, maybe.
In a paper published earlier this year, a group of scientists at MIT described a detailed
simulation of the Mars One mission.
In the paper, they write, and I quote, “our analysis finds that the Mars One mission plan,
as publicly described, is not feasible.”
But there are also a bunch of scientists who think that Mars One is progressing right on
track, and that it’s going to work.
So it’s hard to say if we’re really going watch human beings colonize the Red Planet
in 2027.
But we do know that either way, NASA has plans to send astronauts to Mars sometime in the
2030s.
So even if we don’t have a colony set up by then, hopefully the astronauts will come
back with data that helps us plan for one.
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