Life on Mars

Life On Mars - Our Future

Strap yourself in, we are going to Mars. Not just a few astronauts thousands of people are going to colonize Mars. I am telling you that they are going to do this soon. Some of you will end up working on projects on Mars, and I guarantee that some of your children will end up living on mars.

That probably sounds preposterous, so I am going to share with you how and when that will happen.

  

Why we would go to the Mars?

We are incredibly vulnerable to the whims of our own galaxy. A single large asteroid could take us out forever. To survive we have to reach beyond the home planet. Think what a tragedy it would be if all the humans have accomplished were suddenly obliterated.

There's another reason we would go is exploration is in our D.N.A. Two million years ago humans evolved in Africa and slowly but surely spread out across the entire planet by reaching into the wilderness that was beyond their horizons. This stuff is inside us.

Some of the greatest advances in civilization and technology came because we explored. Yes we could a lot good with the money it will take to establish a thriving colony on Mars. Yes, we should be all taking far better care of our own home planet. I worry we could screw up mars the way we have screwed up earth.

How we would go to Mars?

Mars is not our sister planet. It's far less than half the size of the earth. The atmosphere of mars is very thin, 100 times thinner than on earth and it's not breathable, its 96% carbon dioxide. It's really cold there. The average temperature is -81 degrees, although there is quite a range of temperature. 

A day on Mars is about as long as day on Earth, plus about 39 minutes. Seasons and years on mars are twice as long as they are on earth. Mars has a lot less gravity than on earth about 38% of that of earth, where you can jump your car instead of walk around it. 

Now you can see Mars isn't exactly earth like, but it's by far the other most livable planet in our entire solar system. Here's the problem. Mars is long way away, a thousand times away from us than our moon. The moon is 250,000 miles away and it took Apollo astronauts three days to go there. Mars is 250 million miles away and it will take 8 months to get there, 240 days.

That's only when we launch on a very specific day, at a very specific time, once every two years, when mars and earth are aligned just so, so the distance that the rocket would have to travel will be the shortest. So getting to Mars is not going to be easy and that brings up a very interesting question.

How soon will the humans actually land on Mars?

Now some pundits think if we go there by 2050, they'd be a pretty good achievement. These days NASA seems to be saying that it can get humans to mars by 2040. I believe that they can get human beings into Mars orbit by 2035. 

But frankly, I don't think they are going to bother in 2035 to send a  rocket to mars, because we will already be there. We are going to land mars in 2027. The reason is this man.

This man is determined to make that happen. His name is Elon musk, he's the CEO of Tesla motors and SpaceX. You should ask yourself that this guy can really do this by 2025 or 2027? Well, let's put a decade with Elon musk into a little perspective. Where was this 10 years ago? The person who revolutionizing the automobile industry in less than 10 years and the person who created an entire rocket in less than 10 years will get us to the Mars by 2027?

Government and robots no longer control this games. Private companies are leaping into space and they will be happy to take you to Mars. That raises a really big question.

Can we actually live on Mars?

Now NASA may not be able to get us there until 2040, or we may get there a long time before NASA, but NASA has taken a huge responsibility in figuring out how we can live on mars. Let's look at the problem this way. Here's what you need to live on earth: food, water, shelter, and clothing. And here's what you need to live on mars: all of the above plus oxygen.

So let's look at the most important thing on this list first. Water is the basis of all life as we know it, and it's far too heavy for us to carry water from the earth to mars to live, So we have to find water if our life is going to succeed on mars. If you look at mars it looks really dry, it looks like the entire planet is a desert.

But it turns out that it's not. The soil alone on mars contains up to 60% percent water. A number of orbiters flying around mars that will have flying around mars have shown us that lots of craters on mars have a sheet of water ice on them. It's not a bad place to start a colony. Orbiters also tell us that their is lot of underground water as well as glaciers. In fact, if only the water ice at the poles on mars melted, Most of the planet would be 30 feet of water.

Next we have to worry about what we will breathe. Frankly, I was really shocked to find out that NASA has this problem worked out. A scientist named Michael Hecht had developed a machine named Moxie. The machine has reverse fuel cell, essentially, that sucks in the Martian atmosphere and pumps out oxygen. You have to remember that carbon dioxide is 78% oxygen.

Next, what will we eat? Well, we will use hydroponic to grow food, but we are not able to grow more than 15 to 20% of our food there, at least not until water is running on the surface of mars, and we actually have the probability and the capability of planting crops. In the mean time, most our food will arrive from earth, and it will be dried.

Then we need some shelter. At first we can use inflatable, pressurized buildings as well as the landers themselves. But this really only works during the day time. There are too much solar radiation and too much radiation from cosmic rays. So we really have to go underground.

 Now, it turns out that the soil on mars, by and large, is perfect for making bricks. NASA has figured this one out, too. They are going to throw some polymer plastic into the bricks, shove them in a microwave oven, and then you would be able to build buildings with really thick walls. Or we may choose to live underground in caves or in lava tubes, of which they are plenty.

Finally there is clothing. On earth we have miles of atmosphere piled up on us, which creates 15 pounds of pressure on our body at all times, and we are constantly pushing out. On mars there is hardly any atmospheric pressure. So Dava Newman, a scientist at MIT has  created a sleek space suit. It will keep us together, black radiation and keep us warm.   

So let's think about this for a minute. Food, shelter, clothing, water, oxygen we can do this. But it's still a little complicated and a little difficult. so that lead to the next big step in living the good life on mars.

Re-engineering  an entire planet

That sounds like lot of hubris, but the truth is that the technology to do everything I'm about to tell you already exists. First we have got to warm it up. Mars is incredibly cold because it has a very thin atmosphere.

 The answer lies here, at the south pole and the north pole of mars, both of which are covered with an incredible amount of carbon dioxide.If we heat it up, it sublimes directly into the atmosphere and thickens the atmosphere the same way it does on earth. As we know CO2 is an incredibly potent green house gas. 

At the perfect day on the middle of mars at the equator, temperatures can actually reach 70 degrees, but they go down to minus 100 at night. What we are shooting for is a runaway greenhouse effect: enough temperature rise to see lot of that ice on mars melt.

Then we get some real magic. As the atmosphere gets thicker, everything gets better. We get more protection from radiation, more atmosphere makes the planet warmer, so we get running water and that makes crops possible. Then more water vapor goes into the air, forming yet another potent greenhouse gas. It will rain and it will snow on mars.

Thicker atmosphere will create enough pressure, so that we can throw away those space suits. We only need about 5 pounds of pressure to survive. We will face a another problem of making atmosphere breathable and frankly that could take 1000 years to accomplish.

But humans are amazingly smart and incredibly adaptable. There is no telling what our future technology will be able to accomplish and no telling that what we can do with our own bodies. In biology right now, we are on the very verge of being able to control our own genetics, what the genes in our own bodies are doing, and certainly, eventually our own evolution.