Some Dutch researchershave already tried this - seems to work!
Personally, I think these efforts are by far the most inspiring, optimistic thing happening on Earth today. So much exciting science and engineering is already coming out of SpaceX and Blue Origin! Fortunately, these plans don’t require universal consensus, and Musk’s funding plans don’t require a lot of taxpayer contribution. SpaceX is already building the components for the Interplanetary Transport System, the rocket that could take humans to Mars, using private investment and profits from their other work.
Western culture has a deep vein of enthusiasm for exploration - for going new places and trying new things - and tremendous respect for people who overcome long odds in the course of their explorations. (I say Western culture, because that’s what I know best, but maybe it’s universal to the human condition.) Think of all the explorers’ names you learned in elementary school! We are pretty much out of new places to tackle on Earth, so what greater achievement is there than to explore and settle an entirely new planet?
The cost of making Mars habitable for a significant number of people is extraordinarily immense compared to fixing “simple” problems like climate change, pollution, etc. here on Earth. I despair when I see people making arguments like this.
The asteroid slamming situation is indeed worrisome. Except there’s a solution to that problem: More satellite sensors and diversion methods. (And anything that can’t be diverted is so huge we’ll have decades, centuries to work on it.)
Guess how the cost of that compares to making Mars habitable to a lot of people?
Thirdly (?), the really big issue is why Mars? Start with the Moon, various asteroids, plain old fashioned space habitats, etc. Mars is way down on the list compared to the other alternatives.
Sure it’s cool and sexy and all that. But there are much more practical ways to develop humans in space for the foreseeable future.
Oh, and those people growing stuff in Marian “soil”. They leave out all sorts of highly toxic salts and stuff that appears in problematic concentration in the soil. Matt Damon couldn’t grow squat in that soil without an incredible amount of soil pre-processing. (And lots and lots of water.)
(Of course the worst justification some people make is to “solve” the population problem. You can’t launch enough people fast enough to make a dent. And if you don’t curb the population growth on Mars/whatever, things will soon be a problem there.)
If we can’t all survive I’d prefer that some survive rather than none.
Attempting to terraform Mars would actually teach us a crapload about Earth-based ecosystems and what is really required to keep one in balance and running long-term.
But, looking at the problem rationally, it might make more sense to send robots first to collect resources (there are ideas for extracting and concentrating useful gasses from the Martian atmosphere, as an example) and do some preliminary work so when people do finally show up they have something to work with.
I’m cool with the robots sending back pictures, too, but I’d like to see them do a bit more than that if they can.
*kids reason - because it’s got chocolate and caramel and creamy, dreamy nougat
*Republican reason - because it’s the red planet and we need the votes
*Democrat reason - because it’s the red planet and we need to change that
*Kravitz reason - because it’s our neighbor and we need to keep a very close eye on it
*Marvin reason - because the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator is still there
*Sino-Soviet reason - because it is red and we are red and red needs red
I’m sure there are other, though less compelling, reasons.
Obviously setting up colonies on Mars would be super cool and fucking awesome. That’s a pretty good reason to do it. Just don’t pretend that we’re going to do it because it will make a profit, or save the species from extinction. If we have the extra resources lying around to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars, we could set up 100 underground biospheres on Earth for the same price. If what you’re worried about is a dinosaur killer or nuclear war.
Of course it would be great to send some missions to Mars, and when we’ve got a few trillion spare dollars lying around maybe we should do that. I mean, it certainly is true that our economy has a ton of spare capacity, we could easily make more stuff the problem is that nobody wants to buy that stuff. So put people to work on the Mars project, and suddenly we kick the production/consumption curve over into a new equilibrium. Only problem is that means higher taxes. And people are spitting mad at how high taxes are nowadays, how will they like it when they pay more to fund the Mars Colony?
Before the evolution of life forms in general and humans in particular, the universe was Bad. Now it is Good. But it is only Good in places where intelligent life has made it Good. The rest of the universe is still Bad, and we need to make it Good.
The idea that we need to spend some ungodly amount of wealth to colonize a new planet, instead of spending a tiny fraction of that wealth to fix the problems here on earth, is conclusive proof that science fiction makes people think silly things.
Given sufficient time, I’d bet the amount of money needed to maintain a permanent colony of a rather small population on Mars would be sufficient to solve these problems on Earth: eliminate global warming, universal health care for everyone on the planet, and scientifically proving that pie is better than cake.
…is a misunderstanding of the imperatives. There is no “instead.” Both of these are profoundly worth doing, and neither can replace the other.
I think it’s also a reversal of the likely costs involved to Earth. Past a certain point, off-world colonies can be left to their own devices, but the present biosphere will probably need perpetual maintenance.
Because it’s a step onwards and outwards. It has a useful gravity. It has a useful atmosphere - enough to absorb micrometeorites. Mars is a rocky planet with minerals and resources we can mine and use.
The process of developing the technologies and techniques required to colonize Mars will be vastly beneficial to Earth. Much as the space race to land on the Moon drove technological innovation, having a big, easily-definable-but-challenging-to-achieve goal like colonizing Mars helps keep us moving forward.
Mars is already uninhabitable by humans. You cannot breathe the air there. You can’t grow food. The gravity isn’t right for human physiology and will not retain an atmosphere suitable for humans no matter how many Total Recall oxygen machines we build.
It would be vastly, vastly easier and cheaper to design and build asteroid-impact-safe habitats here on Earth than it would to put a substantial population on Mars.
Here on Earth we have an entire continent we don’t use. It’s cold, but at least you can breathe.
The only surface water that is hypothesized to exist is in recurring slope lineae; this is basically a briny sludge saturated with enough salts to keep water from evaporating in the all-but-vacuum atmosphere conditions on Mars. We have no practical way of extracting this water in any quantity, so unless we find less contaminated underground sources of liquid water or water ice (and have a feasible way of extracting it) we’re going to need to bring water along with every other resource for the foreseeable future.
That marks an essential point; we live on a planet that appears purposefully designed to support us (although in reality we’re evolved to fit that environment), and even the harshest environments above water require only a modest amount of environmental control and support. In contrast, the surface of Mars or anywhere else in the solar system would be almost immediately lethal to an unprotected human being, and it takes enormous resources and technology to keep a person alive, notwithstanding the longer term hazards of solar and cosmic radiation, low or no gravity, et cetera. The bulk of the staggering cost and engineering effort on the International Space Station isn’t in keeping the station in orbit or running experiments, but in keeping the handful of people alive. And that is orbiting in what is essentially the most benign and protected place outside the atmosphere. Pretty much everything we have learned from the going-on-fifteen years of ISS operation is just how many unexpected hazards astronauts are exposed to in both the short and long term; from free floating biological hazards and nearly drowning on a cupful of liquid leaking from a suit cooling system, to macular degeneration, increased incidence of cardiovascular disease, and degradation of the central nervous system and impacts on cognition.
Even assuming that we need off-Earth self-sustaining, it would be vastly cheaper–even if orders of magnitude more expensive–to build solar orbiting habitats using space-based resources than to attempt to turn Mars into a habitable environment. From a practical standpoint, it makes the most sense to mitigate hazards to our planet as best possible while developing the technology to explore the solar system and extract resources remotely until we have the logistical capability to build and support habitable structures using in situ space resources.