Could Our Future Lie on Mars?

During all of the coverage of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some of you may have missed an announcement from the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A September 8 press release from the laboratory revealed that a rock abrasion tool for the Mars rover Spirit, launched in 2004, was made from aluminum recovered from the World Trade Center. Intended as an interplanetary memorial, the tool is emblazoned with an American Flag. Last Sunday, the Mars rover Opportunity snapped a photo of Spirit still intact on the surface of the Red Planet. No matter what happens here on Earth, that rover will remain on Mars.

I think that this is utterly inspiring: a symbol that we have the potential as a species to overcome any tragedy and strive for great things. It also got me thinking about our future on Mars. Will we ever have a colony there? Could Mars eventually be mankind’s second home? Perhaps.

One of the first things that we would have to decide as a species is what kind of standard of living we’d consider satisfactory. What would be the scope of our ambition? Would we be happy living in underground communities or shelters of some kind or would we want to change the entire planet to be supportive of human life?

Terraforming is one possibility, but it would be a clumsy, difficult – maybe even impossible – project with our current technological capacities. There would be several obstacles for us to overcome before transforming Mars into a second Earth, among them the planet’s lack of a magnetic field (necessary to keep the atmosphere in place), its apparent lack of water (at least water that isn’t frozen solid), an atmosphere that’s over 95 percent carbon dioxide, and brutal surface temperatures that average around -81 F.

We’d need to warm the planet up, adjust the chemical mix of the atmosphere and then figure out a way to thicken it to keep it from leeching into outer space. There are a number of options that we might want to pursue to do all of this.

Placing giant mirrors into orbit around Mars could project sunlight onto the planet’s polar regions, melting the ice caps to release greenhouse gases that in turn would accumulate and heat the planet. After that we could introduce algae and plankton that would convert all of the carbon dioxide into oxygen. Sounds spiffy, but there are a few obstacles. For one thing, the mirrors would have to be enormous. We’d have to construct them in space. For another, it would take thousands of years for our imported plant life to convert that much carbon dioxide into oxygen.

We could also bombard Mars with missiles full of compressed greenhouse gases. If we kept it up over a decade or two the atmosphere would begin to warm up and change. The elements we’d need to produce these gases are probably present on Mars, too, so we could also just set up some kind of automated factory on the surface to extract and process them.

Another option would be to introduce all of these elements by sending ice and ammonia heavy meteors on a course to collide with Mars. Of course, we’d have to probably use nuclear weapons to do this, and even then, there’s no guarantee that it would work the way we’d want it to.

Let’s put terraforming on the back burner for a minute and talk about getting men and women to Mars in its natural state. Landing people on Mars and then setting up some kind of base of operations for them would be an incredibly costly and difficult proposition – so much so that some experts in the field that our best bet for Mars colonization would be to send our settlers there on a one way trip. These first Martians would arrive and set up their habitat using tools that had been delivered prior to their arrival, all with the understanding that they would never return to Earth. Each successive wave of settlers would work together to expand and strengthen their habitat, and over time, the colony would grow organically.

Among those advocating for the Mars Direct strategy is Buzz Aldrin. The former astronaut said that to do otherwise would be an enormous waste of time and resources. While many of us might not relish the idea of a one-way ticket to Mars, there have always been those among us who would be willing to risk it all to advance human knowledge.

In a 2010 interview with Vanity Fair, Aldrin likened these would-be Martians to the early pilgrims who left the world they knew to start fresh in the New World:

“Did the Pilgrims on the Mayflower sit around Plymouth Rock waiting for a return trip? They came here to settle. And that’s what we should be doing on Mars. When you go to Mars, you need to have made the decision that you’re there permanently. The more people we have there, the more it can become a sustaining environment. Except for very rare exceptions, the people who go to Mars shouldn’t be coming back. Once you get on the surface, you’re there.”

While settling Mars may be a long way off in fact, the topic has inspired a lot of great science fiction, including Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). Robinson’s books begin with humanity’s effort to terraform and settle the planet and follow the results over two hundred years of danger, revolution and discovery.

Will we ever settle Mars? Who knows? I’d like to think so, and I think that many of you might as well. However, would you be willing to sacrifice your life on Earth to do so?