Donald Trump’s recent address to the joint session of Congress (emphasis on “joint” and “con”), while entertaining at times, offered no real updates on anything of substance. He’s a showman, and it was a show, which the Democrats unwittingly participated in. However, like no-alcohol beer, it was all bubbles and no buzz.
Trump made one quick reference to his administration’s ambitions in space that got the old brain juice flowing. His exact statement was, "We are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars, and even far beyond."
Now where have we heard this before? Oh, that’s right, every administration since Nixon. Apparently Trump also forgot that the American flag has been emblazoned on every landing craft since Viking in 1976. Space nerds are forgivably a bit jaded when it comes to grandiose claims of “this time it’s gonna be different”.
Colonizing a planet is not like voyages to the New World. In the latter case, there were already humans living there, food and water were widely available, and the atmosphere was the same as back home, not to mention gravity.
There’s just a few major technological hurdles to clear to make Mars colonization feasible, not the least of which is the truth about what’s waiting up there. Some very plausible arguments have been made by some very credible people concerning evidence of a previous civilization up there. But even short of the highly speculative musings, there’s some very practical issues to address. Here’s just some of them:
Spacecraft Reliability & Transport
Radiation Protection
Life Support Systems
Habitat Construction
Energy Generation & Storage
Communications Delay
Autonomous Operations
Resource Utilization
Medical Capabilities
Extreme Cold
Thin Atmosphere
Low Gravity
Toxic Soil & Dust
Global Dust Storms
Lack of Liquid Water
Planetary Protection
Terraforming Mars is not exactly as easy as digging the Panama Canal. Without terraforming, inhabitants would be doomed to lives in sealed environments. Colonists could never go outside for a breath of fresh air, or lie in the grass and stare at the clouds, or swim in the pond and fish in the creek. In fact, water would likely become a medium of exchange, like gold, but even more precious.
Folks would have to megadose Vitamin D3 daily, since even direct exposure to the Sun would be many times less intense than a winter day on Earth. They would never enjoy the sound of rain on thee dome, but they would be sealed inside for months during the planetary dust storms.
It would take a very specific set of psychological tools for someone born on Earth to live on Mars. It would be akin to someone growing up in the tropics and moving to the Gobi desert or Death Valley, without a cell phone or life line of any kind. The colonists would be more isolated than any human has ever been in all of history, except maybe Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
Speaking of where one is born, the United States has been around for about 10 generations. What would humans be like after the same amount of time on Mars? Us Earthers probably wouldn’t even recognize the Gingers as human. Here’s just some of the changes they would undergo:
Lower Bone Density & Muscle Mass
Taller, Leaner Bodies
Altered Cardiovascular System
Radiation Resistance
Oxygen Adaptations
Increased Isolation Resilience
Cognitive Divergence from Earth
Different Circadian Rhythms
Martian Identity & Independence
New Social Structures
Technology-Driven Lifestyle
New Ethical & Legal Systems
Speciation Possibility
Reduced Immune Function
Vision Changes
What’s interesting is that NASA isolation studies, where people have been sealed in caves for months, have shown changes in their circadian rhythm that roughly match a Martian day (24 hours, 40 minutes). We might already be Gingers. In fact, with our weak bones, muscles and eyes, we might do very well on Mars, returning to our pre-Earth forms. Chew on that for a minute.
The worst part of living on Mars is the synodic cycle of roughly 2 years, during which Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun for about half the cycle. During the two-year cycle, there’s also a two-week blackout period, when the planets are at full opposition (opposite sides of the Sun). Round-trip communications can be as fast as 6 minutes at conjunction (closest point), and up to 44 minutes at the furthest point. Kind of kills Netflix streaming and texting folks Earthside.
So what all this comes down to is, we either send a bunch of folks off to Mars with a one-way ticket and a couple of ships full of luggage and wish them luck, or we create a massive interplanetary infrastructure that would, in any case, only have a short window every two years to exchange care packages between planets. In either case, it all seems rather implausible using chemical rockets. We need a significant upgrade in propulsion technology.
Metal tubes belching hot gasses is no way to run an interplanetary empire.
No matter how all this plays out, a human staying on Mars for a full synodic cycle (2 years) would likely never be able to come back to Earth. If they did, they would need more survival gear than a deep-sea diver. Anyone born and raised on Mars would certainly never be able to come to Earth without an environmental suit and bionic aids to move around. Mars’ gravity is just 38% that of Earth, so their bones would probably shatter just climbing out of the vehicle.
If Mars is truly lifeless, which it isn’t, would humans completely lose their immune systems after a couple of generations? Given that Mars does at least have some kind of microbial life (see Dr. Gil Levin’s work), would humans die almost instantly from infections? Will we send animals first, like The Andromeda Strain?
And none of this even begins to address the issues of food and water. Would food grown in Mars soil have the same nutritional value? Would the water there have the same characteristics as water on Earth? No one I’ve ever heard of has tried living on just exowater.
There are literally thousands of variables in the proposition of human colonization of Mars, or any other celestial body. Any wrong answer to any question could be fatal.
So, it’s fun to see Trump and Musk blithely wave their hands in the general direction of the sky and talk about planting flags and building cities, but there are so many assumptions contained in those pronouncements that entire novels and feature films have been made on the subject since the 1800s, and still the issues have not been fully explored.
The US and Japan are now bringing back samples of asteroids without, so far as anyone knows, doing any kind of due diligence on stray lifeforms. Gil Levin’s experiments found strong evidence for microbes in Martian soil, but no follow-up tests have ever been performed, for some strange reason. We know bacteria and mold grow all over the exterior of the International Space Station.
If Trump and Musk wanted to do something truly valuable for humanity’s future in space, it would be to hold a global symposium to expose all that we currently know, and all that could become known in the near future.
When you look at the diseases introduced to the New World, or brought back to the Old World, some serious problems start to emerge. While I personally advocate for human colonization of space, I also acknowledge that one-way trips are the only reasonable options for the time being.
It’s vital to dream. It’s even better to make them come true. But it’s prudent not to let the dreams become nightmares.
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There’s only one way to go with this cinematically, and that’s with the BBC/Grenada TV (when those brands meant something) mini series The Martian Chronicles (1980), starring Rock Hudson and other faces you’ll recognize. The series captures both the wonder and warning of Ray Bradbury’s seminal novel of the same name.
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Great article and very well researched. Kudos! I've always thought the lack of gravity on the long voyage to Mars would doom the mission. Sure, you can have counter-rotating discs for centrifugal gravity, but to simulate Earth's gravity all the way, all the time, for all the crew? And what about if you land on Mars? You are stuck there at less than 1/2 Earth's gravity. This would fuck up human cardiovascular systems big time. Astronauts who spend a year on the ISS say it takes them 2 years back on Earth to recover. It's like a diver going deep into the ocean. You can't stay down there too long or come up too fast.
The big reason is, "Why go to Mars?" The planet has nothing to offer humanity.
I already live on the Martian Day of 24 hours and 40 minutes. I always have. I hate alarm clocks. Left to my own devices, I stay up an hour "later" every night and then day. I've tried it. We do have weak eyes. Do monkeys wear sunglasses?
Being from Mars also explains Rufus' red hair (and my own and my son's.)
Thanks for finding the Rock Hudson TV series of the Martian Chronicles. I've been looking for it for years. Ray Bradbury's book is fantastic. I reread it three years ago.
"We are the Martians now."
You have convinced me to stay firmly put.
😂🤙🤙