Life on Mars

by Michael Magee

It seems that all too regularly we are confronted with a news story that tells us how our planet is suffering. We have record amounts of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and there is plenty of evidence to show us that ice caps are melting and permafrost is receding in the arctic. All these weather changes are having a heavy impact on ecosystems all over the world as a staggering number of species continue to be under the threat of extinction. Then there are the political tensions; World War 3 seems to be around the corner, the far right is rising and new conflicts are continuously popping up here and there, not to mention the ever present possibility of nuclear war which will undoubtedly put the nail in the coffin of Mother Earth. People have been thinking about a plan B: an extreme last resort to save our species should something happen to our planet; maybe it’s time to colonise another one.

So which planet should we choose? Mercury has no atmosphere and the temperature drops hundreds of degrees between day and night. If you decide to continue in that direction, you’ll find yourself on Venus; if you bought a frozen pizza here and left it on your windowsill, it would cook in 9 seconds. Other planets don’t even have a surface for us to stand on. You don’t need to be Stephen Hawking to know that these conditions wouldn’t be the best for human beings.

Talk about life on the 4th rock from the sun known as Mars goes back as far as 1698, when Christiaan Huygens made speculations on its physical state and its orbit, writing one of the first publications about extraterrestrial life. He had been studying the planet for decades, and was the first to notice that it had polar ice caps just like the ones we have on earth, and also figured out that it had a 24 hour day. The idea of martian exploration has become more widespread since science fiction came into the limelight especially in cinema, since Thomas Edison’s A Trip To Mars in 1910. It wasn’t until as recently as 1976 that we actually managed to explore the surface of Mars using a rover, and now Elon Musk’s SpaceX have made it their goal to get human boots over there too. There are plenty of reasons to believe that it could theoretically work, but there are significant obstacles.

Are we there yet?

First of all, we need to think about how we are planning to actually get to Mars, and SpaceX’s Starship is the main candidate. The cost of refurbishing previous models of space shuttle can be about the same as producing new ones; this is because the external tank, a huge fuel container attached to the shuttle containing a little over 2 million litres of fuel (that’s 6,666 full bathtubs),

SpaceX’s 120 metre tall Starship

© cNET - https://www.cnet. com/news/spacex-willstream-potentially-fireworksfilled-starship-test-flight/

burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere when it detaches from a shuttle. Starship is completely reusable; when its fuel tank detaches, it lands on its feet back on earth. The Starship shuttle itself is then refuelled in Earth’s orbit by another Starship stationed, for example, on the moon, before it makes the long journey to Mars. When it reaches Mars’ orbit after 5 to 7 months, it will be travelling at 25 times the speed of sound and so it needs to execute a very specific manoeuvre in order to land. It will also be burning up, and therefore needs to be made of a strong heat resistant material like steel, which is conveniently cheaper than carbon fiber which is more typically used on spacecrafts. Perhaps the most interesting fact about Starship is the costs being significantly lower than previous launches. A SpaceX launch could cost over 400 million dollars less than the current average cost of launching. The fact that it is reusable and uses cheaper materials contributes to this fact; it is predicted that a launch could cost as little as 2 million dollars. SpaceX has plans to produce hundreds of Starships in the coming years, so the degree of human presence in space has the potential to grow exponentially, with each Starship carrying 100 people and 150 metric tonnes of cargo.

We’ve landed, now what?

Well, actually, before humans set foot on Mars there needs to be some equipment waiting for them at the surface. That’s why in 2024 SpaceX aims to send un-crewed Starships to deliver essentials such as solar panels and equipment for a mining system, the latter of which will be used to process water and CO2, with the long

A rendition of a Martian city containing domes with a controlled atmosphere

© https://www.humanmars.net/2019/04/1-million-human-colony-city-on-mars-by.html

term goal in mind of converting them into fuel through the Sabatier Process, which produces oxygen and methane. On top of all of this, at least a year’s supply of water and dehydrated food will be needed for the crew members to sustain themselves. When the first crewed missions arrive, there will unfortunately be a long way to go before a settlement can be established because of one huge and unavoidable obstacle: money. Estimates for building a city on Mars range from 100 billion to ten trillion dollars because of the amount of equipment and resources that are needed to set up the miniature Truman Show type biodomes (probably at least 1 million tons of cargo). There will need to be at least a year’s worth of food and water supplies on board the Starships, since starting cultivation on Mars, at least on the first mission, is something of a long shot. There is talk, however, of testing the efficacy of a greenhouse on Mars during these first expeditions; in fact, placing a greenhouse on Mars was Elon Musk’s initial plan for putting life on the red planet. How all of this will be funded is a mystery; most likely, a significant fraction of it will come from SpaceX’s Starlink, a satellite internet project which is currently in its beta testing phase, but more private investment will inevitably be needed. If, however, we decide to change the atmosphere of the planet itself, we need to bring water back to the surface. This will allow flora and fauna to thrive on the dead planet, which will begin to look more like earth as a result. This is called terraforming, and sounds like science fiction but is in fact theoretically possible albeit undoubtedly costly too. Due to permafrost, most water has gone underground or is frozen in ice caps, so Mars needs to be heated up as the average temperature is minus 60 degrees celsius, colder than anywhere on Earth. This is because it doesn’t have a “thermal blanket”, i.e. greenhouse gases. Luckily, carbon dioxide can be found on Mars, but it’s 1% as thick as our own, and much more of it is locked away in ice caps. There have been suggestions about using giant mirrors to catch sunlight which will then be directed towards this ice, increasing not just CO2 but also water vapour which is another powerful greenhouse gas. Essentially, terraforming Mars entails deliberately triggering global warming.

A rendition of Martian land and ocean based on topographical relief.

© Steamcommunity, Spacemutant14

We’ve settled, now what?

Something that must be considered before we set up a society on Mars is how it will be governed. One of the main arguments for attempting this mission in the first place is the idea that society is failing; not only is Earth’s natural state declining, but the threat of man-made armageddon is something that people are frightfully aware of and want to escape.

“no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.”

— SpaceX terms of service

There are no existing international laws about settling anywhere other than Earth however, and SpaceX’s terms of service even claim explicitly that “no Earthbased government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” so the practicalities of governing Mars is a topic worthy of discussion. The people who want to flee Earth might be thinking that it would be wise to start completely fresh, but would this be a wise choice? ‘Starting fresh’ has, in the past, not worked so well. While it can be argued that this is a trivial example, the Rajneesh anarchist commune in America seemed to work well to begin with; life was peaceful, open and free. Eventually however, lawlessness took over the little utopia, which eventually started to militarize itself as relations with the outside world became increasingly tense. Eventually the commune completely dissolved. If we take this idea of starting fresh to the other extreme of scale and severity we can argue that this is what the Soviets tried to do; this regime produced oppressive dictatorships and resulted in the deaths of millions of people. Even the Nazis wanted, in essence, to reset the world with a clean slate. Colonizing Mars will be a long, gruelling, and extremely difficult process. The cost of it is almost inconceivable, with the 100 billion dollar estimate mentioned earlier being a relatively unrealistic estimate for just one city. If we can raise this amount of money and find the technology to accomplish such an awesome task, maybe we should ask ourselves: can’t we put the same effort into saving our own planet?