I think that's exactly what we should do - terraform Earth. Stabilize, and then reverse what we've done. Use space technology to protect it from asteroid impacts, and possibly there might be resources we need from space - maybe solar energy too using thin film mirrors to collect light (which don't work on Earth, are too fragile) - and possibly most of all - by learning things from our amazing solar system, that may also bring the knowledge we need to solve problems at home.
After all there are great tracts of the Earth's surface that nobody bothers to colonize or has any interest in colonizing in the future. So, it's not at all true that humans naturally colonize every place they could possibly colonize, or that we have to do this to survive.
See this List of deserts by area
Millions of square kilometer of desert, far far more habitable than Mars.
True, Mars has 144 million square kilometers. But it's all vacuum, well as good as - so little air you need fully pressurized spacesuits. The moisture lining your lungs would boil without them. What "air" there is is CO2 (a gas that is poisonous to humans at 1% or higher and a problematical waste gas in spaceships and spacesuits) no nitrogen (which we need as a buffer gas because the CO2 is poisonous), no oxygen even, you have to make your own oxygen to breath.
What's the use of 144 million square kilometers of a desert in a vacuum as a place to live, when you aren't even interested in colonizing the 14 million square kilometers of Antarctica, or the nine million square kilometers of the Sahara, or 2.33 million for Arabian, 1 million for Gobi desert or 0.9 million for the Kalahari?
In all those places at least you can breath the air. And don't need to wear spacesuits. And won't die if you run out of oxygen or your spacesuit springs a leak. And don't need to worry about solar storms or cosmic radiation. And don't need to build your houses with thick strong walls like a submarine, able to hold in several tons per square meter of outward pressure just to be able to breathe when inside your home.
Obviously in terms of habitability, Mars is so low down the list that no desert on Earth is anything like as inhospitable.
And there's almost no interest at all in colonizing the sea either - or the continental shelves, or building floating cloud colonies in the upper atmosphere of the Earth. Yet these are all far more hospitable places to live than Mars.
And will be for the foreseeable future. Any technology that could make Mars a little bit more habitable for humans, if used on Earth, could make Earth far more habitable than Mars. If some day we can build Stanford Torus type colonies in space and domed cities on the moon or Mars - still - will be far far easier to build domed cities on Earth, if there is any advantage (such as to retain moisture in a desert).
If in some future technology advanced to the point where it became almost as easy to colonize and set up home in Mars as it is on Earth say in Antarctica - well - we can meet that future when it comes. We might well find we don't need or want to colonize Mars any more.
And things we might do now to try to make it more habitable for humans, without understanding the consequences clearly over centuries long future timescales, might well backfire and make it worse.
Imagined Colours Of Future Mars - What Happens If We Treat A Planet As A Giant Petri Dish?
And we don't need it as a backup - it's never going to work. Because if anything did go wrong, Earth remains the most hospitable place in the solar system for humans, so here is where you need the backup.
Which could be physical backups - people staying in colonies isolated from the rest of the world to keep going in case things go wrong everywhere else. But it is best as all of us, keeping our decency and humanity, and working to solve the problems here.
That's the best "backup" to have depths of resources in ourselves that we can draw on to save ourselves.
What's the point in a "backup" on Mars? They wouldn't even be able to get back to Earth if they didn't have spaceships. ~And if technology turns out to be the main problem - well a Mars colony - or attempt - would be the most technological settlement there has ever been in the whole of human civilization, totally dependent on very advanced technology to survive. So if technology itself is the problem, we'd see this first almost certainly in the Mars settlement itself, which might export its technological issues back to Earth.
I don't think we need to run away from our technology like that, I think that, especially if it isn't too fast, we'll find the solutions at the same time we develop the technology. But at any rate if you are scared of our future technology - it seems a very bizarre response to me, to run away to another planet carrying the very most advanced technology you can with you - to a planet that probably needs mega-engineering throughout the next thousands or millions of years if it is possible for humans to survive there at all.
Why We Can't "Backup Earth" On Mars, The Moon, Or Anywhere Else In Our Solar System
But a great place to explore. Especially, to explore from orbit, since to send humans to the surface risks introducing Earth life to the planet. Since we are searching for Mars life, then the very last thing we'd want to do is to introduce Earth life and find that instead.
Trouble With Terraforming Mars
Ten Reasons NOT To Live On Mars - Great Place To Explore
None of this is saying we should stop sending humans in space and stay on Earth. We have humans in settlements in Antarctica, and crisscrossing the ocean in boats and flying through the high atmosphere in planes, crawling through caves and digging deep into the surface of the planet in mines, and powering through the ocean depths in submarines, or sinking to the lowest depths of the sphere in metal and plastic enclosed spheres of air. Then we have robots exploring in other places we can't go ourselves - but don't have any intention of colonizing any of those places.
So of course we can send robots and humans to space also, for many different reasons. I just think that if we say we are doing it to colonize, we are kidding ourselves, because that is never by itself going to make sense as a motive.
If you look at this and still want to go into space, we must be there for some other reason - so we need to look closely at what that reason is, or what those reasons are as we may have many, and then decide on what to do and how and where accordingly. Things that may make sense for an attempt at colonization may not make sense at all if we realize we have other motivations.
And we have to do it in a way compatible with other people who may have other reasons to explore space. If we don't take care, one person's freedom to attempt to colonize may sometimes impinge on someone else's freedom to explore space and find out things that may be of great value to future humanity.
After all there are great tracts of the Earth's surface that nobody bothers to colonize or has any interest in colonizing in the future. So, it's not at all true that humans naturally colonize every place they could possibly colonize, or that we have to do this to survive.
See this List of deserts by area
True, Mars has 144 million square kilometers. But it's all vacuum, well as good as - so little air you need fully pressurized spacesuits. The moisture lining your lungs would boil without them. What "air" there is is CO2 (a gas that is poisonous to humans at 1% or higher and a problematical waste gas in spaceships and spacesuits) no nitrogen (which we need as a buffer gas because the CO2 is poisonous), no oxygen even, you have to make your own oxygen to breath.
What's the use of 144 million square kilometers of a desert in a vacuum as a place to live, when you aren't even interested in colonizing the 14 million square kilometers of Antarctica, or the nine million square kilometers of the Sahara, or 2.33 million for Arabian, 1 million for Gobi desert or 0.9 million for the Kalahari?
In all those places at least you can breath the air. And don't need to wear spacesuits. And won't die if you run out of oxygen or your spacesuit springs a leak. And don't need to worry about solar storms or cosmic radiation. And don't need to build your houses with thick strong walls like a submarine, able to hold in several tons per square meter of outward pressure just to be able to breathe when inside your home.
Obviously in terms of habitability, Mars is so low down the list that no desert on Earth is anything like as inhospitable.
And there's almost no interest at all in colonizing the sea either - or the continental shelves, or building floating cloud colonies in the upper atmosphere of the Earth. Yet these are all far more hospitable places to live than Mars.
And will be for the foreseeable future. Any technology that could make Mars a little bit more habitable for humans, if used on Earth, could make Earth far more habitable than Mars. If some day we can build Stanford Torus type colonies in space and domed cities on the moon or Mars - still - will be far far easier to build domed cities on Earth, if there is any advantage (such as to retain moisture in a desert).
If in some future technology advanced to the point where it became almost as easy to colonize and set up home in Mars as it is on Earth say in Antarctica - well - we can meet that future when it comes. We might well find we don't need or want to colonize Mars any more.
And things we might do now to try to make it more habitable for humans, without understanding the consequences clearly over centuries long future timescales, might well backfire and make it worse.
Imagined Colours Of Future Mars - What Happens If We Treat A Planet As A Giant Petri Dish?
And we don't need it as a backup - it's never going to work. Because if anything did go wrong, Earth remains the most hospitable place in the solar system for humans, so here is where you need the backup.
Which could be physical backups - people staying in colonies isolated from the rest of the world to keep going in case things go wrong everywhere else. But it is best as all of us, keeping our decency and humanity, and working to solve the problems here.
That's the best "backup" to have depths of resources in ourselves that we can draw on to save ourselves.
What's the point in a "backup" on Mars? They wouldn't even be able to get back to Earth if they didn't have spaceships. ~And if technology turns out to be the main problem - well a Mars colony - or attempt - would be the most technological settlement there has ever been in the whole of human civilization, totally dependent on very advanced technology to survive. So if technology itself is the problem, we'd see this first almost certainly in the Mars settlement itself, which might export its technological issues back to Earth.
I don't think we need to run away from our technology like that, I think that, especially if it isn't too fast, we'll find the solutions at the same time we develop the technology. But at any rate if you are scared of our future technology - it seems a very bizarre response to me, to run away to another planet carrying the very most advanced technology you can with you - to a planet that probably needs mega-engineering throughout the next thousands or millions of years if it is possible for humans to survive there at all.
Why We Can't "Backup Earth" On Mars, The Moon, Or Anywhere Else In Our Solar System
But a great place to explore. Especially, to explore from orbit, since to send humans to the surface risks introducing Earth life to the planet. Since we are searching for Mars life, then the very last thing we'd want to do is to introduce Earth life and find that instead.
Trouble With Terraforming Mars
Ten Reasons NOT To Live On Mars - Great Place To Explore
None of this is saying we should stop sending humans in space and stay on Earth. We have humans in settlements in Antarctica, and crisscrossing the ocean in boats and flying through the high atmosphere in planes, crawling through caves and digging deep into the surface of the planet in mines, and powering through the ocean depths in submarines, or sinking to the lowest depths of the sphere in metal and plastic enclosed spheres of air. Then we have robots exploring in other places we can't go ourselves - but don't have any intention of colonizing any of those places.
So of course we can send robots and humans to space also, for many different reasons. I just think that if we say we are doing it to colonize, we are kidding ourselves, because that is never by itself going to make sense as a motive.
If you look at this and still want to go into space, we must be there for some other reason - so we need to look closely at what that reason is, or what those reasons are as we may have many, and then decide on what to do and how and where accordingly. Things that may make sense for an attempt at colonization may not make sense at all if we realize we have other motivations.
And we have to do it in a way compatible with other people who may have other reasons to explore space. If we don't take care, one person's freedom to attempt to colonize may sometimes impinge on someone else's freedom to explore space and find out things that may be of great value to future humanity.
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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