Originally Answered: Why do people want to colonize Mars?
If it wasn't for the Rice Burroughs novels, the films about Mars, and so on, what then? If you forget all that, imagine a new planet came into our solar system, not called Mars, and with a near vacuum for an atmosphere, radiation levels like Mars, etc.
Would you want to colonize it?
If a new planet came into our solar system, like this, but with a little more gravity, a very thin atmosphere that would still count as a vacuum, and a bit more ice, would you want to colonize it? Would the general public want to?
Some space enthusiasts would answer Yes of course.
But amongst the general public, I don't think many would, for a new planet like this, but with no history of past science fiction or movies about it.
So, I think the main motivation is that they have that idea in their imagination - of Mars as we used to think it was about a century ago.
Even the terraforming ideas - I think are indirectly inspired by the science fiction and the Rice Burrough's novels.
I don't myself think many would want to colonize or terraform Mars if they thought of it the other way around, not as like Earth, but as like the Moon but with a bit more ice, gravity, a thin wisp of an "atmosphere" that counts as a vacuum on Earth, and evidence that it had seas in the early solar system but long since gone.
The images of Mars - almost all processed to look like a sunny illuminated landscape in an Earth desert, I think add to that illusion that Mars is almost like our home world - although not done with an intent to deceive, it's just so that the geologists can identify rocks more easily.
Most Mars colonists probably are inspired more by this
and this
Rather than this which is roughly what Mars would look like to human eyes
Imagine that someone suggests you colonize a place on the Earth like that. Add that you will have to live in a vacuum conditions, need to wear a spacesuit whenever you leave your house, that you have to live in a building built to withstand tons per square meter of outwards pressure, that there is no soil at all, you have to grow all your plants inside greenhouses, get your oxygen from water etc etc. Add that you have to cover your house with some meters of material for radiation shielding.
Add that you have no access to hospitals or schools or shops or the rest of civilization, and that if you want to order something, it will take six months minimum to get to you, and will cost about a thousand times more than it would on Earth (or whatever the extra cost is, for the foreseeable future it will be far more expensive to ship something to Mars than to anywhere on the Earth). And if you tear your spacesuit, and can't repair it, you can no longer leave your shelter until help arrives with a new spacesuit.
If that was a place on the Earth, who would want to live there, or think it is a viable place for a colony?
It is just the allure of "this place is on Mars" that makes it so attractive to many people. Once it becomes accepted as an ordinary place like any other, as the Moon has already to some people, I can't see a colony there lasting long. If it did last long enough to have children (if it is possible indeed for children to be born and grow to adulthood in the low gravity), they'd surely look back at Earth and see it as a kind of paradise where everything is so much easier and want to return.
Indeed there are large parts of Earth that are uninhabited. Numerous islands like this:
Horse island in the Summer Isles, Scotland. Once inhabited, it now is just home to a herd of wild goats. There are many islands here like this. Nobody wants to live on them because they are so inaccessible. And in other places on Earth - because they are too cold, or too hot, or too dry, or in other ways are not quite perfect for human habitation. Much of the Earth is totally uninhabited.
But of course, this island, like the entire surface of the Earth indeed, even the coldest, driest deserts, is an absolute paradise compared to Mars. We hardly need extra living space on Mars.
And - yes exactly - there is no disaster that can happen to the Earth that can make it anywhere like as inhospitable as Mars. Also, we don't have the technology to do that to the Earth, either.
There may well be major hardships and problems to deal with, but our home planet - it will still have oxygen, breathable air, water etc. You have plants, trees, soil. To make it like Mars would need some unimaginable disaster that strips Earth of its atmosphere and its water, all in one go.
On Mars if you lose technology you die. On Earth you can survive and build again. If we lose technology then a Mars colony would be first to go.
I'm not at all arguing against living in space. Just saying, you have to be there for some other reason, rather than just to colonize. Mining the asteroids perhaps. Solar power for the Earth. And whatever you are doing, chances are you are helping Earth to survive and to avoid disasters.
To try and start up a new colony - can't see that helping at all with human long term survival, as you are so dependent on the Earth - no way it will ever be as easy living there as it is here on the Earth. But to work in space in ways that help and support the Earth - that could genuinely help.
See
- Trouble With Terraforming Mars
- Why Elon Musk's Colony on Mars in 2020s is Unfeasible - What Could We Do - Really?
etc
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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