Going to Mars would be fun and all, but how would you feel leaving your whole entire life behind, and everyone you love. We are trying to populate Mars with humans by the year 2023 and a lot of people seem excited about it. But there’s a lot more to it. We’re talking a whole different planet in which we don't even 100% understand yet. Yes, in the future it might be the only key to human survival, but would it be ideal to populate a completely different planet with our kind? Especially with this little time?
Doing something this grand shouldn’t just be done for fun. It requires lots of thinking and planning. In other words. We need a really good reason to put humans on Mars. I was reading about how MarsOne wanted to take part in the human settlement and they seemed really eager and excited. They had a section in which you can donate up to $200 a month going towards research meaning they’re not even that advanced, so why should we trust a company so small with something so big? We’ll, a good reason, but... Their main reason was because it’s “the realization of a dream” and how it will be a moment to remember. They are missing the point of how dangerous and extreme this is, and to me this looks like a whole inexperienced group of people we cannot trust.
The thing most important that nobody is talking about is how different Earth is from Mars. We have these big plans and everyone is getting hyped up, but there are so many ways for us to die on Mars within seconds. The air we breathe is an essential to living. Earth’s atmosphere is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. Mars on the other hand, has an atmosphere made up of 95% carbon dioxide. But, that’s no surprise, as there are no trees on Mars. If we breathe the air on Mars, we would die of hypoxia in minutes (lack of oxygen reaching our tissues) and from the toxic red dust which makes up the whole planet. Because it is very dry and fine, we would be inhaling it, causing it to get into our lungs. But, that’s just two reasons to why we can’t live there. Another would be it’s deadly temperature. A regular summer day on Mars is about 21 degrees. But by night, it goes all the way down to -60 degrees. People here are dying because of how cold it is in winter. Imagine a winter 54.6 million more kilometers farther. First the atmosphere, then the dust, and now the temperature. All things we cannot control/change.
Let’s say everything goes right and Mars is habitable. Humans land, astronomers are cheering, the world is celebrating, but… now what? There is now money to make or to buy things, there’s no technology yet, no structures/buildings, nowhere to go to work, nothing to entertain you, all you probably have is hundreds of people living in this metal block building with canned beans and bottled water. People would go crazy out of their minds from how bored they are. Plus, you can’t rebuild a whole entire planet. It took 200 000 years for planet earth to become what it is today. From houses, to stores, to landmarks, to amusement parks, no matter how advanced we are, it is going to take us much, much longer than four years to start from scratch again.
Gathering people to go to the red planet might be harder than we think. Children would be most excited, but it is the adults who are making the decision as to the fact that it is too much of a big decision for them to make. To many people, they don't want to leave because their whole life is here. Their family, their friends, their job, basically everything they been working towards since the day they were born. To go to Mars, you need to be 100% certain that it is what you want to do, because it’s a one way trip, meaning there is not enough fuel to take you back to earth if you wanted too.
When thinking of human settlement on Mars, most people see the future, but what I see, and hopefully you now do too, is our planets neighbour which we are better off sending rovers too. It’s now obvious that the planet isn’t anywhere near habitable for humans so we need to accept our destiny that once times up, times up and we should make use of the 1.7 billion years we have left because for now, Earth is our only home.