First the idea that it is easier to explore Mars with humans on the surface - that doesn't take proper account of the alternatives now available.
Humans would be in spacesuits. These are vulnerable and dangerous, a small leak e.g. result of a stumble or fall, cracking your visor say, or damaging your air supply connections, will kill you in seconds. Your hands are in pressurized gloves and motions are extremely clumsy. It takes a long time to put on your spacesuit and safety checks are imperative. Etc etc.
And the two alternatives are
First better communications as we now receive data from our rovers every 24 hours, so they might as well be at Pluto as far as driving them on Mars is concerned. So a priority if you want better robotic exploration, just as for human exploration, is better telecommunications to Mars, i.e. some telecommunications satellites in orbit around Mars devoted to communication with Earth.
Then use more and more autonomous robots driven from Earth, and using "delayed real time" as used in on line gaming so that you can drive the rover on Earth in a continually updated exact virtual simulation of the environment on Mars.
Lunockhod traveled as far on the Moon in a few months as Opportunity did in a decade, which gives an idea of what a difference it is to have better communications - and that was with 1970s technology. We could easily have robots on Mars controlled from Earth and traveling many kilometers every day with a bit more dedicated infrastructure to make this possible.
This is with humans in orbit around Mars controlling robots on the surface. This may not only be as good as humans on the surface, it is likely to be better. Because they don't have to put on spacesuits, can control robots in several locations anywhere on the surface, are never in any danger from a fall or other surface hazard, and have enhanced real time digitally enhanced vision, and better ability to manipulate objects on the surface with haptic feedback and humanoid hands controlled by telepresence. That's likely to be easier than use of gloves in spacesuits.
If humans search for life on the surface, they are sure to find it, because they bring life with them. We have a hundred trillion microbes in ten thousand species just in and on our bodies.
You will be sure to find at least some dead microbes and amino acids around your habitat just from leakage from humans, if you search carefully enough. And Mars life is likely to be hard to find, both past and present life. And may well be habitats that can sustain Earth life on the surface of Mars.
It is different from Earth but even on Earth there are a few places that are considered so sensitive you wouldn't send humans there because the humans would contaminate them with Earth life. An example - nobody would send humans in a sub to explore the subsurface Antarctic lakes such as Lake Vostock etc, because we want to study them in their native conditions without contaminating them with Earth life.
Since that is necessary on Earth, it is even more so necessary on Mars. It used to be thought that the surface of Mars is so sterile no Earth life could survive there. If that was the case, if the surface was as sterile as the Moon, it would be different. We could use similar methods to those used on the Moon.
But it is now thought, by many respected Mars experts, that there may be habitats for microbes on the surface. Just small droplets and occasional seeps of liquid, but that is enough for a microbe to live in.
Best Places For Droplets, Films And Shallow Flows Of Liquid Water On Mars - Where Microbial Life May Flourish
This is much over stated. First - the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs would not make humans extinct. It caused a global firestorm possibly, but some humans would survive that, and many if we knew about it many months in advance. We know how to build and construct to survive a firestorm. Either underground or under the sea or shelters that protect from fire, plus sources of oxygen to last out the firestorm. Dinosaurs of course couldn't do that.
And our seed banks would survive plus whatever animals and other creatures we were able to save.
So there would be survivors on the Earth. No need for humans to be on Mars for humans to survive.
Same is true for all the disasters that are possible, would be some human survivors at least on Earth.
And we need to have this in proportion also. Chance of this is less than 0.0001% before 2100, and we are already working on the problem, mapping nearly all the potential impactors.
Yes there are larger bodies in our solar system that could make the entire Earth's surface molten, as happened when the Moon formed. But looking at hte cratering record on the Moon and other planets, it is clear that the solar system is relatively stable now. Not totally, for instance there is a possibility that Mercury will be deflected from its orbit a few hundred million years from now by resonances with Jupiter. But the chance that a big object large enough to make the Earth's entire surface molten hits Earth in the next century or thousand years is too tiny to be worth thinking about. And we would spot something like that many years in advance.
Some day yes we will need to escape from Earth - or rather -whatever beings we evolve into perhaps 500 million years or a billion years from now. But that is long enough in the future for humans to evolve again a second time from the very first multi cellular creatures.
It doesn't have quite the immense urgency some think. We can afford to spend a few decades exploring Mars properly :).
That is simply not true. Our planet has many deserts that are not colonized, also ice sheets, and mountain tops, and Antarctica. Also the sea floor and the surface of the sea (there are ideas for "sea cities" but none has ever been built". Also the upper atmosphere, the idea of Buckminster Fuller to build floating "cloud nines" which is technologically feasible using geodesic domes, multi-kilometer diameter floating cities floating because of the internally generated hot air - but we don't do it because so far we don't need to.
Some of those ideas may seem impractical. But none of them is nearly as impractical as colonizing Mars. All those places, even the upper atmosphere are easy by comparison with Mars.
It is far easier to colonize those places from Earth than Mars. Apart from anything else, they all have oxygen, breathable atmosphere at Earth normal pressures, cosmic radiation shielding, and no need to build your habitats to specifications able to hold in ten tons per square meter outwards pressure like the ISS.
I think we may well have settlements around Mars, as we do in Antarctica, for scientific reasons, maybe for explorers also. As for the surface, I think we won't do that until we have at least had a chance to study what Mars is like now, as it is mainly of interest for science value to humans, like Antarctica. It's of zero value as a place to colonize in my view, if you compare it with comparable places on Earth.
Of course Mars colonization enthusiasts disagree here. That would be fine if they just want to colonize, the Moon say, somewhere that can't be harmed by human presence. Let them make their mistakes. Well exercising due diligence of course, so they do it safely. But in case of Mars their freedom to colonize conflicts with scientists' freedom to study Mars in its pristine state.
And the problem there is that if you introduce life to a planet, and it reproduces, there is no way you are ever going to be able to roll back from that. So it is an irreversible decision, which is why I think the scientists' case here will surely be favoured over the colonists once it is properly reviewed.
That is of course, unless a way can be found for humans to explore Mars without contaminating it with Earth life. But all the ideas so far suggested do at least greatly increase the risk of contaminating it with Earth life, probably by some orders of magnitude, especially in event of a hard landing of a human occupied ship. I find it hard to see how that can be considered compatible with the Outer Space Treaty, and think therefore that an impartial COSPAR committee will be unable to give this a green light at present level of understanding. As with all past workshops on this topic I expect they will say more research is needed.
Will We Meet ET Microbes On Mars? Why We Should Care Deeply About Them - Like Tigers
Humans would be in spacesuits. These are vulnerable and dangerous, a small leak e.g. result of a stumble or fall, cracking your visor say, or damaging your air supply connections, will kill you in seconds. Your hands are in pressurized gloves and motions are extremely clumsy. It takes a long time to put on your spacesuit and safety checks are imperative. Etc etc.
And the two alternatives are
IMPROVING ROBOTIC EXPLORATION METHODS
First better communications as we now receive data from our rovers every 24 hours, so they might as well be at Pluto as far as driving them on Mars is concerned. So a priority if you want better robotic exploration, just as for human exploration, is better telecommunications to Mars, i.e. some telecommunications satellites in orbit around Mars devoted to communication with Earth.
Then use more and more autonomous robots driven from Earth, and using "delayed real time" as used in on line gaming so that you can drive the rover on Earth in a continually updated exact virtual simulation of the environment on Mars.
Lunockhod traveled as far on the Moon in a few months as Opportunity did in a decade, which gives an idea of what a difference it is to have better communications - and that was with 1970s technology. We could easily have robots on Mars controlled from Earth and traveling many kilometers every day with a bit more dedicated infrastructure to make this possible.
TELEROBOTIC EXPLORATION
This is with humans in orbit around Mars controlling robots on the surface. This may not only be as good as humans on the surface, it is likely to be better. Because they don't have to put on spacesuits, can control robots in several locations anywhere on the surface, are never in any danger from a fall or other surface hazard, and have enhanced real time digitally enhanced vision, and better ability to manipulate objects on the surface with haptic feedback and humanoid hands controlled by telepresence. That's likely to be easier than use of gloves in spacesuits.
PROBLEM WITH HUMANS SEARCHING FOR LIFE
If humans search for life on the surface, they are sure to find it, because they bring life with them. We have a hundred trillion microbes in ten thousand species just in and on our bodies.
You will be sure to find at least some dead microbes and amino acids around your habitat just from leakage from humans, if you search carefully enough. And Mars life is likely to be hard to find, both past and present life. And may well be habitats that can sustain Earth life on the surface of Mars.
It is different from Earth but even on Earth there are a few places that are considered so sensitive you wouldn't send humans there because the humans would contaminate them with Earth life. An example - nobody would send humans in a sub to explore the subsurface Antarctic lakes such as Lake Vostock etc, because we want to study them in their native conditions without contaminating them with Earth life.
Since that is necessary on Earth, it is even more so necessary on Mars. It used to be thought that the surface of Mars is so sterile no Earth life could survive there. If that was the case, if the surface was as sterile as the Moon, it would be different. We could use similar methods to those used on the Moon.
But it is now thought, by many respected Mars experts, that there may be habitats for microbes on the surface. Just small droplets and occasional seeps of liquid, but that is enough for a microbe to live in.
Best Places For Droplets, Films And Shallow Flows Of Liquid Water On Mars - Where Microbial Life May Flourish
DANGERS TO EARTH FROM ASTEROIDS
This is much over stated. First - the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs would not make humans extinct. It caused a global firestorm possibly, but some humans would survive that, and many if we knew about it many months in advance. We know how to build and construct to survive a firestorm. Either underground or under the sea or shelters that protect from fire, plus sources of oxygen to last out the firestorm. Dinosaurs of course couldn't do that.
And our seed banks would survive plus whatever animals and other creatures we were able to save.
So there would be survivors on the Earth. No need for humans to be on Mars for humans to survive.
Same is true for all the disasters that are possible, would be some human survivors at least on Earth.
And we need to have this in proportion also. Chance of this is less than 0.0001% before 2100, and we are already working on the problem, mapping nearly all the potential impactors.
Yes there are larger bodies in our solar system that could make the entire Earth's surface molten, as happened when the Moon formed. But looking at hte cratering record on the Moon and other planets, it is clear that the solar system is relatively stable now. Not totally, for instance there is a possibility that Mercury will be deflected from its orbit a few hundred million years from now by resonances with Jupiter. But the chance that a big object large enough to make the Earth's entire surface molten hits Earth in the next century or thousand years is too tiny to be worth thinking about. And we would spot something like that many years in advance.
Some day yes we will need to escape from Earth - or rather -whatever beings we evolve into perhaps 500 million years or a billion years from now. But that is long enough in the future for humans to evolve again a second time from the very first multi cellular creatures.
It doesn't have quite the immense urgency some think. We can afford to spend a few decades exploring Mars properly :).
IDEA THAT HUMANS ALWAYS COLONIZE ANY PLACE THAT CAN BE COLONIZED
That is simply not true. Our planet has many deserts that are not colonized, also ice sheets, and mountain tops, and Antarctica. Also the sea floor and the surface of the sea (there are ideas for "sea cities" but none has ever been built". Also the upper atmosphere, the idea of Buckminster Fuller to build floating "cloud nines" which is technologically feasible using geodesic domes, multi-kilometer diameter floating cities floating because of the internally generated hot air - but we don't do it because so far we don't need to.
Some of those ideas may seem impractical. But none of them is nearly as impractical as colonizing Mars. All those places, even the upper atmosphere are easy by comparison with Mars.
It is far easier to colonize those places from Earth than Mars. Apart from anything else, they all have oxygen, breathable atmosphere at Earth normal pressures, cosmic radiation shielding, and no need to build your habitats to specifications able to hold in ten tons per square meter outwards pressure like the ISS.
I think we may well have settlements around Mars, as we do in Antarctica, for scientific reasons, maybe for explorers also. As for the surface, I think we won't do that until we have at least had a chance to study what Mars is like now, as it is mainly of interest for science value to humans, like Antarctica. It's of zero value as a place to colonize in my view, if you compare it with comparable places on Earth.
Of course Mars colonization enthusiasts disagree here. That would be fine if they just want to colonize, the Moon say, somewhere that can't be harmed by human presence. Let them make their mistakes. Well exercising due diligence of course, so they do it safely. But in case of Mars their freedom to colonize conflicts with scientists' freedom to study Mars in its pristine state.
And the problem there is that if you introduce life to a planet, and it reproduces, there is no way you are ever going to be able to roll back from that. So it is an irreversible decision, which is why I think the scientists' case here will surely be favoured over the colonists once it is properly reviewed.
That is of course, unless a way can be found for humans to explore Mars without contaminating it with Earth life. But all the ideas so far suggested do at least greatly increase the risk of contaminating it with Earth life, probably by some orders of magnitude, especially in event of a hard landing of a human occupied ship. I find it hard to see how that can be considered compatible with the Outer Space Treaty, and think therefore that an impartial COSPAR committee will be unable to give this a green light at present level of understanding. As with all past workshops on this topic I expect they will say more research is needed.
Will We Meet ET Microbes On Mars? Why We Should Care Deeply About Them - Like Tigers
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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