Elon Musk wants to get people to Mars. Professor Stephen Hawking is eager to see when we find a new planet to call our new home. NASA is developing an engine that can do this. But is the construction of a permanent base on the Red Planet really worth and will be even more worth all the efforts and hopes that everyone is so pinning?
“Building a colony on Mars is incredibly difficult technically and incredibly expensive from a financial point of view,” Aaron Ridley of the University of Michigan commented to Futurism.
The scientist is sure that despite the fact that Mars has a huge scientific interest, the construction of a permanent station there will require colossal efforts, and this despite the fact that the colony on the Red Planet alone will not solve such problems of the Earth as overpopulation.
“We don't want to go to the Moon and Mars because of population problems. We want to go there because we are driven by the desire for research,”adds Ridley.
Amanda Hendrix, a senior fellow at the US Planet Institute, shares Ridley's views on permanent settlement on Mars.
“I think it's really worth sending people to Mars to test technologies and scientific experiments, but only as part of one-time visits. I'm not sure that making a permanent settlement on Mars is a great idea. It would be extremely dangerous if we consider the issue at least from the point of view of the long-term effects of space radiation on the human body."
Insane costs
One of the main obstacles standing in the way of establishing a human colony on Mars, of course, is the money issue. A flight to Mars will be a very expensive "pleasure", while there are no promising methods and technologies that would reduce the costs of this project on the horizon.
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“I believe that the next logical step for us in human space exploration will be a return to the Moon or one-time flights to Mars. But the desire to stay there for a long time will require colossal financial costs,”commented Hendrix, adding that space tourism is unlikely to serve in solving this problem.
Chris McKay, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, believes that the only economically acceptable motivation for founding a Martian colony will be the desire to establish a permanent state base there, which certainly underestimates the potential for its use as a tourist base or as a mining enterprises for the extraction of minerals.
“The Antarctic bases, founded from 1955 to 1990, serve as an analogy here. At this time, all bases located in Antarctica, according to the Antarctic Treaty, were, in fact, considered as closed research facilities. But after about 1990, tourism began to appear here. There are now several non-research tourist nongovernmental bases in Antarctica.”
Establishing a base on Mars will not make anyone richer, but will only significantly complicate the issue of allocating funds aimed at supporting such expensive projects. And yet, despite the fact that a full-fledged colony may not seem like the most reasonable solution for the further development of the space program, Mars still contains many secrets, the solution to which will certainly have a positive development on our science.
Mars is more interesting, but the moon is closer
It is possible that the first permanent space base will be set up on the Moon rather than Mars. However, despite the real possible benefits for humanity from such a project, most still agree that the Red Planet looks like a more interesting goal, even if this goal is much more difficult to achieve.
“I agree that scientifically, Mars looks more attractive,” says Ridley, adding that he realizes that all this fuss around Mars now looks more like an attempt to jump over his head.
“I believe in a gradual problem solving approach. Therefore, it would be more logical to start with the Moon, and then move to Mars."
“Of course, Mars is more interesting than the Moon from a scientific standpoint,” McKay agrees.
Explaining his choice, McKay identifies three main features that the Red Planet possesses and the Moon does not possess: first, in terms of planetary geological processes and history, Mars is more like Earth; secondly, there is a possibility that life is still preserved on it; and third, the planet has terraforming potential.
Probably, if we were ready for this, then many, most likely, would agree that the Martian colony could become a priority target of the current space research program. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in reality. There are always tasks that have a higher priority than others. And often, without solving these problems, it is impossible to move further towards the cherished goal. And right now, it doesn't seem at all that a Martian settlement will be the best choice to spend your resources on.
Nikolay Khizhnyak