OT - Another "can't be done" - Humans Will Never Colonize Mars

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Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)

George Dvorsky
Today 10:05amFiled to: MARS

The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting
colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this
lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not
intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live
on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh
Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to
humans.

Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system,
and that’s not saying much.

The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times
thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars
is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to
protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is
very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You
might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe
form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and
body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that
heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars
is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures
dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the
coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in
Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once
temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t
properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in
within about five to seven minutes.

The notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense.
Mars also has less mass than is typically appreciated. Gravity on the
Red Planet is 0.375 that of Earth’s, which means a 180-pound person on
Earth would weigh a scant 68 pounds on Mars. While that might sound
appealing, this low-gravity environment would likely wreak havoc to
human health in the long term, and possibly have negative impacts on
human fertility.

Yet despite these and a plethora of other issues, there’s this popular
idea floating around that we’ll soon be able to set up colonies on Mars
with ease. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is projecting colonies on Mars as early
as the 2050s, while astrobiologist Lewis Darnell, a professor at the
University of Westminster, has offered a more modest estimate, saying
it’ll be about 50 to 100 years before “substantial numbers of people
have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns.� The United Arab
Emirates is aiming to build a Martian city of 600,000 occupants by 2117,
in one of the more ambitious visions of the future.

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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Soviet artist Andrei Sokolov (mid-1960s)
Sadly, this is literally science fiction. While there’s no doubt in my
mind that humans will eventually visit Mars and even build a base or
two, the notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense, and an unmitigated denial of the
tremendous challenges posed by such a prospect.

Pioneering astronautics engineer Louis Friedman, co-founder of the
Planetary Society and author of Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the
Stars, likens this unfounded enthusiasm to the unfulfilled visions
proposed during the 1940s and 1950s.

“Back then, cover stories of magazines like Popular Mechanics and
Popular Science showed colonies under the oceans and in the Antarctic,�
Friedman told Gizmodo. The feeling was that humans would find a way to
occupy every nook and cranny of the planet, no matter how challenging or
inhospitable, he said. “But this just hasn’t happened. We make
occasional visits to Antarctica and we even have some bases there, but
that’s about it. Under the oceans it’s even worse, with some limited
human operations, but in reality it’s really very, very little.� As for
human colonies in either of these environments, not so much. In fact,
not at all, despite the relative ease at which we could achieve this.

After the Moon landings, Friedman said he and his colleagues were hugely
optimistic about the future, believing “we would do more and more
things, such as place colonies on Mars and the Moon,� but the “fact is,
no human spaceflight program, whether Apollo, the Space Shuttle Program,
or the International Space Station,� has established the necessary
groundwork for setting up colonies on Mars, such as building the
required infrastructure, finding safe and viable ways of sourcing food
and water, mitigating the deleterious effects of radiation and low
gravity, among other issues. Unlike other fields, development into human
spaceflight, he said, “has become static.� Friedman agreed that we’ll
likely build bases on Mars, but the “evidence of history� suggests
colonization is unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Neuroscientist Rachael Seidler from the University of Florida says many
people today fail to appreciate how difficult it’ll be to sustain
colonies on the Red Planet.

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“That’s thousands of years in the making at least.�
“People like to be optimistic about the idea of colonizing Mars,�
Seidler, a specialist in motor learning and the effects of microgravity
on astronauts, told Gizmodo. “But it also sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky,�
she said. “A lot of people approach it as thinking we shouldn’t limit
ourselves based on practicalities, but I agree, there are a lot of
potential negative physiological consequences.�

Seidler said NASA and other space agencies are currently working very
hard to create and test countermeasures for the various negative impacts
of living on Mars. For example, astronauts on the ISS, who are subject
to tremendous muscle and bone loss, try to counteract the effects by
doing strength and aerobic training while up in space. As for treating
the resulting negative health impacts, whether caused by long-duration
stays on the ISS or from long-term living in the low-gravity environment
of Mars, “we’re not there yet,� said Seidler.

In his latest book, On the Futu Prospects for Humanity, cosmologist
and astrophysicist Martin Rees addressed the issue of colonizing Mars
rather succinctly:

By 2100 thrill seekers... may have established ‘bases’ independent from
the Earth—on Mars, or maybe on asteroids. Elon Musk (born in 1971) of
SpaceX says he wants to die on Mars—but not on impact. But don’t ever
expect mass emigration from Earth. And here I disagree strongly with
Musk and with my late Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, who enthuse
about rapid build-up of large-scale Martian communities. It’s a
dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s
problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate
change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming
Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement
as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no ‘Planet B’ for
ordinary risk-averse people.

Indeed, there’s the whole terraforming issue to consider. By
terraforming, scientists are referring to the hypothetical prospect of
geoengineering a planet to make it habitable for humans and other life.
For Mars, that would mean the injection of oxygen and other gases into
the atmosphere to raise surface temperature and air pressure, among
other interventions. A common argument in favor of colonizing Mars is
that it’ll allow us to begin the process of transforming the planet to a
habitable state. This scenario has been tackled by a number of science
fiction authors, including Kim Stanley Robinson in his acclaimed Mars
Trilogy. But as Friedman told Gizmodo, “that’s thousands of years in the
making at least.�

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Briony Horgan, assistant professor of planetary science at Purdue
University, said Martian terraforming is a pipedream, a prospect that’s
“way beyond any kind of technology we’re going to have any time soon,�
she told Gizmodo.

Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Screenshot: Still from Total Recall (1990)
When it comes to terraforming Mars, there’s also the logistics to
consider, and the materials available to the geoengineers who would dare
to embark upon such a multi-generational project. In their 2018 Nature
paper, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards from the University of
Colorado, Boulder sought to understand how much carbon dioxide would be
needed to increase the air pressure on Mars to the point where humans
could work on the surface without having to wear pressure suits, and to
increase temperature such that liquid water could exist and persist on
the surface. Jakosky and Edwards concluded that there’s not nearly
enough CO2 on Mars required for terraforming, and that future
geoengineers would have to somehow import the required gases to do so.

To be clear, terraforming is not necessarily an impossibility, but the
timeframes and technologies required preclude the possibility of
sustaining large, vibrant colonies on Mars for the foreseeable future.

Until such time, an un-terraformed Mars will present a hostile setting
for venturing pioneers. First and foremost there’s the intense radiation
to deal with, which will confront the colonists with a constant health
burden.

Horgan said there are many big challenges to colonizing Mars, with
radiation exposure being one of them. This is an “issue that a lot of
folks, including those at SpaceX, aren’t thinking about too clearly,�
she told Gizmodo. Living underground or in shielded bases may be an
option, she said, but we have to expect that cancer rates will still be
“an order of magnitude greater� given the added exposure over time.

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“You can only do so much with radiation protection,� Horgan said. “We
could quantify the risks for about a year, but not over the super long
term. The problem is that you can’t stay in there [i.e. underground or
in bases] forever. As soon as you go outside to do anything, you’re in
trouble,� she said.

Horgan pointed to a recent Nature study showing that radiation on Mars
is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term
solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.� Depending
on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns,
radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Friedman agrees that, in principle, we could create artificial
environments on Mars, whether by building domes or underground
dwellings. The radiation problem may be solvable, he said, “but the
problems are still huge, and in a sense anti-human.�

Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live
in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly protected surface
stations with severely minimized access to the outdoors. Life in this
closed environment, with limited access to the surface, could result in
other health issues related to exclusive indoor living, such as
depression, boredom from lack of stimulus, an inability to concentrate,
poor eyesight, and high blood pressure—not to mention a complete
disconnect from nature. And like the International Space Station,
Martian habitats will likely be a microbial desert, hosting only a tiny
sample of the bacteria needed to maintain a healthy human microbiome.

Another issue has to do with motivation. As Friedman pointed out
earlier, we don’t see colonists living in Antarctica or under the sea,
so why should we expect troves of people to want to live in a place
that’s considerably more unpleasant? It seems a poor alternative to
living on Earth, and certainly a major step down in terms of quality of
life. A strong case could even be made that, for prospective families
hoping to spawn future generations of Martian colonists, it’s borderline
cruelty.

And that’s assuming humans could even reproduce on Mars, which is an
open question. Casting aside the deleterious effects of radiation on the
developing fetus, there’s the issue of conception to consider in the
context of living in a minimal gravity environment. We don’t know how
sperm and egg will act on Mars, or how the first critical stages of
conception will occur. And most of all, we don’t know how low gravity
will affect the mother and fetus.

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Seidler, an expert in human physiology and kinesiology, said the issue
of human gestation on Mars is a troublesome unknown. The developing
fetus, she said, is likely to sit higher up in the womb owing to the
lower gravity, which will press upon the mother’s diaphragm, making it
hard for the mother to breathe. The low gravity may also “confuse� the
gestational process, delaying or interfering with critical phases of the
fetus’ development, such as the fetus dropping by week 39. On Earth,
bones, muscles, the circulatory system, and other aspects of human
physiology develop by working against gravity. It’s possible that the
human body might adapt to the low-gravity situation on Mars, but we
simply don’t know. An artificial womb might be a possible solution, but
again, that’s not something we’ll have access to anytime soon, nor does
it solve the low-gravity issue as it pertains to fetal development
(unless the artificial womb is placed in a centrifuge to simulate gravity).

A strong case can be made that any attempt to procreate on Mars should
be forbidden until more is known. Enforcing such a policy on a planet
that’s 34 million miles away at its closest is another question
entirely, though one would hope that Martian societies won’t regress to
lawlessness and a complete disregard of public safety and established
ethical standards.

For other colonists, the minimal gravity on Mars could result in serious
health problems over the long term. Studies of astronauts who have
participated in long-duration missions lasting about a year exhibit
troubling symptoms, including bone and muscle loss, cardiovascular
problems, immune and metabolic disorders, visual disorders, balance and
sensorimotor problems, among many other health issues. These problems
may not be as acute as those experienced on Mars, but again, we simply
don’t know. Perhaps after five or 10 or 20 years of constant exposure to
low gravity, similar gravity-related disorders will set in.

Seidler’s research into the effects of microgravity suggests it’s a
distinct possibility.

“Yes, there would be physiological and neural changes that would occur
on Mars due to its partial-gravity environment,� she told Gizmodo.. “It’s
not clear whether these changes would plateau at some point. My work has
shown an upward shift of the brain within the skull in microgravity,
some regions of gray matter increases and others that decrease,
structural changes within the brain’s white matter, and fluid shifts
towards the top of the head.�

Seidler said some of these changes scale with the duration of
microgravity exposure, from two weeks up to six months, but she hasn’t
looked beyond that.

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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Cover of Martian Time Slip by Philip K. Dick. (1964,
Ballantine Books)
“Some of these effects would have to eventually plateau—there is a
structural limit on the fluid volume that the skull can contain, for
example,� she said. “And, the nervous system is very adaptable. It can
‘learn’ how to control movements in microgravity despite the altered
sensory inputs. But again, it’s unclear what the upper limits are..�

The effects of living in partial gravity compared to microgravity may
not be as severe, she said, but in either case, different sensory inputs
are going into the brain, as they’re not loaded by weight in the way
they’re used to. This can result in a poor sense of balance and
compromised motor functions, but research suggests astronauts in
microgravity eventually adapt.

“There are a lot of questions still unanswered about how microgravity
and partial gravity will affect human physiology,� Seidler told Gizmodo.
“We don’t yet understand the safety or health implications. More needs
to be done.�

Astronauts who return from long-duration missions have a rough go for
the first few days back on Earth, experiencing nausea, dizziness, and
weakness. Some astronauts, like NASA’s Scott Kelly, never feel like
their old selves again, including declines in cognitive test scores and
altered gene function. Work by NASA’s Scott Wood has shown that recovery
time for astronauts is proportionate to the length of the mission—the
longer the mission, the longer the recovery. Disturbingly, we have no
data for microgravity exposure beyond a year or so, and it’s an open
question as to the effects of low gravity on the human body after years,
or even decades, of exposure.

With this in mind, it’s an open question as to how Martian colonists
might fare upon a return visit to Earth. It might actually be a brutal
experience, especially after having experienced years in a partial
gravity environment. Children born on Mars (if that’s even a
possibility) might never be able to visit the planet where their species
originated.

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And these are the health issues we think might be a problem. A host of
other problems are likely to exist, giving rise to Martian-specific
diseases affecting our brains, bodies, and emotional well-being. The
human lifespan on Mars is likely to be significantly less than it is on
Earth, though again, we simply don’t know.

Finally, there’s the day-to-day survival to consider. Limited access to
fundamental resources, like food and water, could place further
constraints on a colony’s ability to grow and thrive.

“Establishing stable resources to live off for a long period of time is
possible, but it’ll be tough,� said Horgan. “We’ll want to be close to
water and water ice, but for that we’ll have to go pretty far north. But
the further north you go, the rougher the conditions get on the surface.
The winters are cold, and there’s less sunlight.�


Illustration: NASA
Colonists will also need stable food sources, and figure out a way to
keep plants away from radiation. The regolith, or soil, on Mars is
toxic, containing dangerous perchlorate chemicals, so that also needs to
be avoided. To grow crops, colonists will likely build subterranean
hydroponic greenhouses. This will require specialized lighting,
genetically modified plants designed specifically for Mars, and plenty
of water, the latter of which will be difficult to source on Mars.

“People don’t realize how complicated this is,� said Horgan. “Trying to
think about establishing colonies to point of what we would consider
safe will be a big challenge.�

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Technological solutions to these problems may exist, as are medical
interventions to treat Martian-specific diseases. But again, nothing
that we could possibly develop soon. And even if we do develop therapies
to treat humans living on Mars, these interventions are likely to be
limited in scope, with patients requiring constant care and attention.

As Martin Rees pointed out, Mars and other space environments are
“inherently hostile for humans,� but as he wrote in his book,

[We] (and our progeny here on Earth) should cheer on the brave space
adventurers, because they will have a pivotal role in spearheading the
post-human future and determining what happens in the twenty-second
century and beyond.

By post-human future, Rees is referring to a hypothetical future era in
which humans have undergone extensive biological and cybernetic
modifications such that they can no longer be classified as human. So
while Mars will remain inaccessible to ordinary, run-of-the-mill Homo
sapiens, the Red Planet could become available to those who dare to
modify themselves and their progeny.

A possible solution is to radically modify human biology to make Martian
colonists specially adapted to live, work, and procreate on the Red
Planet. As Rees wrote in On the Futu

So, because they will be ill-adapted to their new habitat, the pioneer
explorers will have a more compelling incentive than those of us on
Earth to redesign themselves. They’ll harness the super-powerful genetic
and cyborg technologies that will be developed in coming decades. These
techniques will be, one hopes, heavily regulated on Earth, on prudential
and ethical grounds, but ‘settlers’ on Mars will be far beyond the
clutches of the regulators. We should wish them good luck in modifying
their progeny to adapt to alien environments. This might be the first
step towards divergence into a new species. Genetic modification would
be supplemented by cyborg technology—indeed there may be a transition to
fully inorganic intelligences. So, it’s these space-faring adventurers,
not those of us comfortably adapted to life on Earth, who will spearhead
the posthuman era.

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Indeed, modifying humans to make them adaptable to living on Mars will
require dramatic changes.

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Your Children Won't Be Able To Live In Space, Without A Major Upgrade
We all dream of journeying (or living) among the stars. But space is a
spectacularly awful place…

Read on io9.​gizmodo.​com
Our DNA would have to be tailored specifically to enable a long, healthy
life on Mars, including genetic tweaks for good muscle, bone, and brain
health. These traits could be made heritable, such that Martian
colonists could pass down the characteristics to their offspring. In
cases where biology is not up for the task, scientists could use
cybernetic enhancements, including artificial neurons or synthetic skin
capable of fending off dangerous UV rays. Nanotechnology in the form of
molecular machines could deliver medicines, perform repair work, and
eliminate the need for breathing and eating. Collectively, these changes
would result in an entirely new species of human—one built specifically
for Mars.

Synthetic biologist and geneticist Craig Venter believes this is a
distinct possibility—and a tantalizing prospect. While delivering a
keynote address at a NASA event in 2010, Venter said, “Not too many
things excite my imagination as trying to design organisms—even
people—for long-term space flight, and perhaps colonization of other
worlds.�

Like some of the other solutions proposed, this won’t happen any time
soon, nor will it be easy. And it may not even happen. Which brings a
rather discouraging prospect to mind: We may be stuck on Earth.

“Not too many things excite my imagination as trying to design
organisms—even people—for long term space flight, and perhaps
colonization of other worlds.�
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As Friedman pointed out, this carries some rather heavy existential and
philosophical implications. If humans can’t make it to Mars, it means
we’re destined to be “a single-planet species,� he said. What’s more, it
suggests extraterrestrial civilizations might be in the same boat, and
that the potential for “intelligent life to spread throughout the
universe is very, very gloomy,� he told Gizmodo.

“If we can’t make it to a nearby planet with an atmosphere, water, and a
stable surface—which in principle suggests we could do it—then certainly
we’re not going to make it much beyond that,� said Friedman. “But if
we’re doomed to be a single-planet species, then we need to recognize
both psychologically and technologically that we’re going to have live
within the limits of Earth.�

Which is a good point. That we may eventually become an interplanetary
or interstellar species remains an open question. We must work to make
this futuristic prospect a reality, but until then, we have to make sure
that Earth—the only habitable planet we know of—remains that way.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George Dvorsky
George is a senior staff reporter at Gizmodo.

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George Dvorsky
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 11:46am
One thing I didn’t mention in this piece is how, after Mars, the list of
other viable places to set up colonies falls off sharply. Realistically,
we only have the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to consider, which present
their own challenges, including the tremendous amount of radiation
pouring out from the gas giants.

69
Reply17 replies

Nimo
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 12:32pm
Why not the skies of Venus? Sure, there’s zero land so everything would
have to be built, but above 65 km from the surface, the pressure and
temperature is almost the same as Earth. On top of that, because of how
thick the atmosphere CO2 is, you could literally just fill balloons with
oxygen and float!

27
Reply7 replies

arnastu
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:20pm
I think you could also have looked more at the microbiology of
sequestration. We wouldn’t be going to Mars alone - we would also be
taking along our gut, oral, and skin flora, and whatever viruses
happened to be present in the astronauts. That flora is necessary to our
survival. We tend to kind of take the regulation of our digestive tracts
for granted, but our gut tube isn’t a simple machine that absorbs
nutrients. It works properly only with an elaborately interdependent
population of bacteria. We are obligate symbiotes. Our best treatment so
far for gut microbiota dysregulation is a fecal transplant. Give you
someone else’s healthy bacterial zoo, cause we don’t know how to achieve
that by less 14th-century methods. If any one type of bacteria gets out
of order, we rely on the rest of them to condition and out-compete the
miscreants. We don’t want to kill them - that wouldn’t be good either -
we just want them to exist in overall harmony, achieved by means we
don’t even understand. Here on earth that flora is informed by
interaction with the whole rest of the world, and it in turn educates
our immune systems. On Mars, with no niches occupied by anything else
and everything subject to radiation and various other unnatural
influences, you’d have perfectly ordinary bacteria turning pathogenic,
immune systems going wack, viruses that hadn’t even been characterized
taking on new roles.

The idea of human bodies as stand-alone machines that you can fuel up
with water, air, fats, carbs, essential amino acids and expect them to
tick along, amputed from the rest of life, is a profound
misunderstanding of what life is.

28
Reply2 replies

Citizen-Snips
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:25pm
Great piece George, as usual. The other thing you don’t mention about
the viability of Mars colonies is that there is no economic incentive to
go there. While of course economic incentives don’t motivate everything
we do, the complete lack of economic incentives of living on Mars makes
the prospect of long term habitation extremely unlikely, even if it were
possible.

As you pointed out, Antarctica is much much more hospitable to human
habitation than Mars, yet outside of a few isolated science stations no
one lives there. Why? Because there is no money to be made. People may
climb Mt. Everest or go to the Moon “because it is there,� but they
don’t stay unless there is an economic reason to do so.

26
Reply8 replies

John McPolymath
George Dvorsky
7/30/19 1:42pm
With all due respect, George, I don’t believe you have taken human
ingenuity into account. Mars could be transformed into a planet with a
livable surface within a century—possibly much sooner.

It seems to me that you are being excessively and unreasonably negative,
playing Devil’s advocate, when many potential and actual solutions exist
to address the issues which you have presented. I can offer you a
solution to many of those myself.

The truly important question is whether humanity will ever develop
enough interest in leaving Earth in order to spread and to protect the
only known lifeforms in the Universe from the disaster which will
inevitably destroy all life on Earth.

...Also for abundant and unlimited resources, an impossibly huge amount
of living space, the sheer joy of exploration and discovery, and
entertainment.

But the life thing—that’s pretty important too.



SPACE
Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)

George Dvorsky
Today 10:05amFiled to: MARS
146.0K
737
8
The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting
colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this
lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not
intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live
on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh
Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to
humans.

Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system,
and that’s not saying much.

The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times
thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars
is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to
protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is
very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You
might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe
form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and
body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that
heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars
is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures
dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the
coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in
Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once
temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t
properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in
within about five to seven minutes.

The notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense.
Mars also has less mass than is typically appreciated. Gravity on the
Red Planet is 0.375 that of Earth’s, which means a 180-pound person on
Earth would weigh a scant 68 pounds on Mars. While that might sound
appealing, this low-gravity environment would likely wreak havoc to
human health in the long term, and possibly have negative impacts on
human fertility.

Yet despite these and a plethora of other issues, there’s this popular
idea floating around that we’ll soon be able to set up colonies on Mars
with ease. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is projecting colonies on Mars as early
as the 2050s, while astrobiologist Lewis Darnell, a professor at the
University of Westminster, has offered a more modest estimate, saying
it’ll be about 50 to 100 years before “substantial numbers of people
have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns.� The United Arab
Emirates is aiming to build a Martian city of 600,000 occupants by 2117,
in one of the more ambitious visions of the future.

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Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Illustration: Soviet artist Andrei Sokolov (mid-1960s)
Sadly, this is literally science fiction. While there’s no doubt in my
mind that humans will eventually visit Mars and even build a base or
two, the notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or
thousands of people is pure nonsense, and an unmitigated denial of the
tremendous challenges posed by such a prospect.

Pioneering astronautics engineer Louis Friedman, co-founder of the
Planetary Society and author of Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the
Stars, likens this unfounded enthusiasm to the unfulfilled visions
proposed during the 1940s and 1950s.

“Back then, cover stories of magazines like Popular Mechanics and
Popular Science showed colonies under the oceans and in the Antarctic,�
Friedman told Gizmodo. The feeling was that humans would find a way to
occupy every nook and cranny of the planet, no matter how challenging or
inhospitable, he said. “But this just hasn’t happened. We make
occasional visits to Antarctica and we even have some bases there, but
that’s about it. Under the oceans it’s even worse, with some limited
human operations, but in reality it’s really very, very little.� As for
human colonies in either of these environments, not so much. In fact,
not at all, despite the relative ease at which we could achieve this.

After the Moon landings, Friedman said he and his colleagues were hugely
optimistic about the future, believing “we would do more and more
things, such as place colonies on Mars and the Moon,� but the “fact is,
no human spaceflight program, whether Apollo, the Space Shuttle Program,
or the International Space Station,� has established the necessary
groundwork for setting up colonies on Mars, such as building the
required infrastructure, finding safe and viable ways of sourcing food
and water, mitigating the deleterious effects of radiation and low
gravity, among other issues. Unlike other fields, development into human
spaceflight, he said, “has become static.� Friedman agreed that we’ll
likely build bases on Mars, but the “evidence of history� suggests
colonization is unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Neuroscientist Rachael Seidler from the University of Florida says many
people today fail to appreciate how difficult it’ll be to sustain
colonies on the Red Planet.

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“That’s thousands of years in the making at least.�
“People like to be optimistic about the idea of colonizing Mars,�
Seidler, a specialist in motor learning and the effects of microgravity
on astronauts, told Gizmodo. “But it also sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky,�
she said. “A lot of people approach it as thinking we shouldn’t limit
ourselves based on practicalities, but I agree, there are a lot of
potential negative physiological consequences.�

Seidler said NASA and other space agencies are currently working very
hard to create and test countermeasures for the various negative impacts
of living on Mars. For example, astronauts on the ISS, who are subject
to tremendous muscle and bone loss, try to counteract the effects by
doing strength and aerobic training while up in space. As for treating
the resulting negative health impacts, whether caused by long-duration
stays on the ISS or from long-term living in the low-gravity environment
of Mars, “we’re not there yet,� said Seidler.

In his latest book, On the Futu Prospects for Humanity, cosmologist
and astrophysicist Martin Rees addressed the issue of colonizing Mars
rather succinctly:

By 2100 thrill seekers... may have established ‘bases’ independent from
the Earth—on Mars, or maybe on asteroids. Elon Musk (born in 1971) of
SpaceX says he wants to die on Mars—but not on impact. But don’t ever
expect mass emigration from Earth. And here I disagree strongly with
Musk and with my late Cambridge colleague Stephen Hawking, who enthuse
about rapid build-up of large-scale Martian communities. It’s a
dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s
problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate
change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming
Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement
as the Antarctic or the top of Everest. There’s no ‘Planet B’ for
ordinary risk-averse people.

Indeed, there’s the whole terraforming issue to consider. By
terraforming, scientists are referring to the hypothetical prospect of
geoengineering a planet to make it habitable for humans and other life.
For Mars, that would mean the injection of oxygen and other gases into
the atmosphere to raise surface temperature and air pressure, among
other interventions. A common argument in favor of colonizing Mars is
that it’ll allow us to begin the process of transforming the planet to a
habitable state. This scenario has been tackled by a number of science
fiction authors, including Kim Stanley Robinson in his acclaimed Mars
Trilogy. But as Friedman told Gizmodo, “that’s thousands of years in the
making at least.�

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Briony Horgan, assistant professor of planetary science at Purdue
University, said Martian terraforming is a pipedream, a prospect that’s
“way beyond any kind of technology we’re going to have any time soon,�
she told Gizmodo.

Illustration for article titled Humans Will Never Colonize Mars
Screenshot: Still from Total Recall (1990)
When it comes to terraforming Mars, there’s also the logistics to
consider, and the materials available to the geoengineers who would dare
to embark upon such a multi-generational project. In their 2018 Nature
paper, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards from the University of
Colorado, Boulder sought to understand how much carbon dioxide would be
needed to increase the air pressure on Mars to the point where humans
could work on the surface without having to wear pressure suits, and to
increase temperature such that liquid water could exist and persist on
the surface. Jakosky and Edwards concluded that there’s not nearly
enough CO2 on Mars required for terraforming, and that future
geoengineers would have to somehow import the required gases to do so.

To be clear, terraforming is not necessarily an impossibility, but the
timeframes and technologies required preclude the possibility of
sustaining large, vibrant colonies on Mars for the foreseeable future.

Until such time, an un-terraformed Mars will present a hostile setting
for venturing pioneers. First and foremost there’s the intense radiation
to deal with, which will confront the colonists with a constant health
burden.

Horgan said there are many big challenges to colonizing Mars, with
radiation exposure being one of them. This is an “issue that a lot of
folks, including those at SpaceX, aren’t thinking about too clearly,�
she told Gizmodo. Living underground or in shielded bases may be an
option, she said, but we have to expect that cancer rates will still be
“an order of magnitude greater� given the added exposure over time.

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“You can only do so much with radiation protection,� Horgan said. “We
could quantify the risks for about a year, but not over the super long
term. The problem is that you can’t stay in there [i.e. underground or
in bases] forever. As soon as you go outside to do anything, you’re in
trouble,� she said.

Horgan pointed to a recent Nature study showing that radiation on Mars
is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term
solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.� Depending
on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns,
radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Friedman agrees that, in principle, we could create artificial
environments on Mars, whether by building domes or underground
dwellings. The radiation problem may be solvable, he said, “but the
problems are still huge, and in a sense anti-human.�

Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live
in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly...

Humans that live in caves will hopefully be alive the next day after58 H-bombs turn earth into glass.We have a cave in Arizona for Trump and the Godfather.Bert