Colonising Mars

 

James Stephens a famous poet is credited with saying "Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will". This is something we have proved time and time again, our scientific curiosity has oftentimes overcome rationality and has led people to take risks, to do things they wouldn't or well shouldn't, take Jonas Salk who tested the polio vaccine not only on himself but on his children as well, this behavior is shown in another Matt Damon movie as well, Contagion. Nevertheless, the point is our scientific curiosity, our need for discovery is primal we NEED to know, it's like a compulsion we can not ignore, we built ships so that we explore the oceans, at the time we didn't even know if there was anything but water around us and the sea is a scary place to explore, thundering waves that could tear these ships apart if that wasn't enough, there were rumored deep sea "monsters" and not to mention since the belief was the earth was flat it was also believed these sailors could simply fall off the edge of the world into the dark abyss, we risked all that just to explore what could be out there on this planet, so can you imagine what we would do, to explore this entire Universe?

SO WHY DO WE EXPLORE?

We have talked about how it's a compulsion and we feel the need to know and yadda yadda but that's clearly not enough of a reason to take the potential risks, not to mention spend the ridiculous amounts of money it takes for these "explorations" without getting something in return, well I mentioned how people set out on sea voyages, well there was also another agenda, Trade and Colonisation. As soon as we discovered, there were other places and people on the planet our parasitic tendencies took over and we started taking over these places so that we could mine resources from these places, at the time this was mainly slavery and spices, now we've stopped the imperialistic system and use trade for a better resource allocation, and essentially this is how we justify space travel, not only will it allow us to answer questions regarding the universe but we can mine resources from the places we visit, just setting up a moon base, for example, will allow us to save quadrillions on fuel cost since the basic ingredients needed for making rocket fuel is available on the moon.

WHY MARS

Well, we already discussed how economically useful colonization can be, Mars not only possesses rare minerals like hydrogen-deuterium-oxygen, of which just a millimeter of it produces energy equivalent to 20 tons of coal! and rare metals like platinum, gold, silver, etc. it is also situated close to an asteroid belt which we could further mine for more metals. All in all the economic potential is colossal, we would also have access to priceless knowledge, we could study the surface of mars to learn for example how planets develop since mars is billions of years older than the earth, not only that it also has some of the biggest craters, volcanos, and canyons in the entire solar system. There is also a bigger reason to colonize mars, deeper than a simple desire for money is the desire to survive and that's what colonizing mars could offer, The survival of our entire species, 99.9% of all species that have ever lived on this planet have gone extinct, as much as we like to think of ourselves as special the truth is we aren't, it wouldn't take much for an extinction level event, it could be an asteroid a couple kilometers in length,( read this if you want a more precise understanding of the destruction of asteroids), or it could be volcanic eruptions or a nuclear armageddon or pandemics, anything can happen, colonizing mars could be a very good backup, diversifying is the smart thing to do, to add to that mars is also similar to earth, at least compared to the rest of the planets, it has more or less the same day length, temperature, land area, gravity and has seasons as well (read more here)

CAN WE EVEN COLONISE MARS

Now that we have talked about why we would, let's discuss whether we even can and how difficult it would be, and what are the challenges, If you've seen the movie The Martian, you will already have some idea, terrible storms, inhospitable environment, to make matters worse, terrible soil for agriculture, despite what the movie shows you need a balance of chemicals and bacteria to grow plants and as far as we are aware there is no life on mars that includes bacteria.

other challenges include the fact that breathing is pretty much impossible and radiation exposure is around 50 times that of the earth there is little to no atmosphere, and it is absolutely freezing over there ( find more challenges here), but the thing is there are solutions to most of these problems, it would not be easy but definitely possible, spacesuits allow us to walk on the planet and survive, we could build settlements which would protect us from both radiation and the external problems like storms, etc ( for more in-depth analysis watch this), so while it is possible, even doable the real question is different 

IS IT WORTH IT

Now, this is up to debate as it is a far more subjective question, there are good arguments on both sides, some argue that it is perhaps the only solution we have left given how climate change is making our planet less and less inhospitable, while others argue it is a waste of money and resources that could be spent on fixing this planet, there are also ethical dilemmas to consider since mars had water it is entirely possible it could have some form of life, not necessarily intelligent but life nonetheless and our being there could cause them to go extinct, but that's just a silly concern completely unfounded, not like humans have ever disturbed any life form ever. At the end of the day, everyone has an answer to this question of whether or not it is worth it, in my opinion like cooper said in Interstellar:

REFERENCES

13, Dicembre, et al. “Discover the Five Reasons to Colonize Mars.” Universe, 27 Apr. 2021, https://universe.wiki/2021/04/19/discover-the-five-reasons-to-colonize-mars/. 

Staedter, Tracy. “The Intersection of Technology, Innovation & Creativity.” Now. Powered by Northrop Grumman, 2 Dec. 2022, https://now.northropgrumman.com/mars-exploration-3-problems-science-needs-to-solve-first/.

“14 Horrible Things That Could Happen If We Colonize Mars.” Business Insider, 26 July 2021, https://www.businessinsider.in/science/14-horrible-things-that-could-happen-if-we-colonize-mars/slidelist/49208011.cms.

Dirks, Nicholas. “The Ethics of Sending Humans to Mars.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 10 Aug. 2021, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ethics-of-sending-humans-to-mars/.

“The Case for Colonizing Mars, by Robert Zubrin - National Space Society.” National Space Society - Working to Create a Spacefaring Civilization, 18 Jan. 2018, https://space.nss.org/the-case-for-colonizing-mars-by-robert-zubrin/.

Serle, Jack. “Could We Colonise Mars Using Current Technology?” BBC Science Focus Magazine, BBC Science Focus Magazine, 27 July 2020, https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/could-we-colonise-mars-using-current-technology/.