Mars has always been a huge fascination to those who study space exploration. It is the most plausible place that humans could actually go to and potentially sustain themselves within our solar system. Humans can't go to the surface of Venus because the atmospheric pressure is far too great. Humans and other robotic equipment would be crushed. The only hope for Venus is deploying inflatable craft in the atmosphere where a person would be at the same level as 1 atmosphere of Earth pressure.

This is possible but you really wouldn't be able to harvest any minerals or anything from the surface so the "colony" would never be self sufficient. It would be kind of like the International Space Station and always have to be resupplied from Earth.

Transporting water to Mars would be unbelievably expensive but water will likely be needed on the ship not only for drinking but also to protect the travelers from solar flares. The way to do it would be to have a tank of water that the people get behind when the solar flare is coming.

How much that water could be reused is questionable. Obviously here on Earth we are technically reusing our water as well. Here in Arizona after the water is treated they put the water back into an underground aquifer. That more naturally helps filter it naturally.

So finding this lake could certainly be helpful for future explorers. Just to be clear though it isn't like a lake on the surface. The atmospheric pressure is too low on Mars to have a lake currently. It is under the southern ice cap on Mars.

Could Their Be Life?

Yeah it is certainly a possibility. Water is life here on Earth and over the last 20 years we have detected life in very inhospitable environments including a lake under the ice in Antarctica which is somewhat similar to this one they have found on Mars.

Could Human Explorers Use That Water?

Maybe but something tells me it would take a lot of work to get to it and extract it in a way that wouldn't cause it to evaporate into the atmosphere. I'm not sure if it really matters if a colony is set up around the equator of Mars or if it was at the poles. It is warmer at the Equator but explorers will have to be in suits and controlled climate environments anyways when they are there. It would likely take a lot less energy to heat and cool the environment at the equator compared to the poles.

The good think about being at the poles would be that you could create energy from the water as well potentially.

The Strange Thing To Me

Personally I would have thought we would have been to Mars by now. Elon Musk gives me hope with his plans to actually get there. This year would have been a great window to go since Mars will be relatively close to us in it's orbit.

I'm just really perplexed how Mars is essentially dead or appears that way and I just think about what it would be like if it would have never lost it's magnetic field and a lot of its atmosphere. If it visibly still was more like Earth today I think we would have already been there but since it just looks like a dead planet there isn't as big of a push to get there. Getting there to me is more of a milestone. The reason I say that is because it would have to get super bad on Earth to ever really need to live on Mars. It would be easier to live under ground in bunkers here on Earth than be trying to live on Mars.

Ultimately I think the first people to go to Mars are going to have a very rough time. If we can ever sustain a colony I think the people will look like this because of the low gravity.

You would almost have to wear weighed vests and wrist and ankle weights and be pumping iron hard all day to not turn into a skin bag of bones.

Conclusion

I think it is great that researchers continue to learn more about Mars and keep making discoveries. It is certainly important but personally I'm more excited about the James Webb Space Telescope and also a potential missions to Europa and Enceladus.

We do have the Mars 2020 rover to look forward to as well.

Despite being a huge fan of the manned space flight missions I'm not entirely sure it will every really make sense to go to Mars at this point. Mainly because robotics are getting so good and AI is advancing so much that by the time we get the funding together and come up with all the equipment to sustain humans it might just be easier to send a team of advanced robots to explore.

Just send a team of these guys.

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