This week I will mention a planet that is popular with space colonization, Mars. This is the most likely candidate with companies wanting to send people there in the 2020’s. Let’s look at the struggles they’d face making this historical break through.

Mars is much colder than Earth, its average temperature is -64°C (-83°F). The temperature can range from 20°C (68°F) to -100°C (-148°F). Mars has little atmosphere, landing on Mars would expose the astronauts to 100 times thinner air, which can’t retain heat. To add to this the lack of a magnetic field has led to solar winds, stripping away at its atmosphere. Mars’ lack of magnetic field causes several problems and the people there would need protection against, high energy cosmic rays, solar wind and micrometeorites.

The solutions

Ideas have been suggested of using Mars’ underground lava tubes. Another idea is 3D printing could easily build a habitat with Mars resources. It need to would have a thick enough roof to protect from all of these things. Nasa even held a 3D printing competition to design a habitat. The winner design by Team Space Exploration Architecture and Clouds Architecture Office was a 3D printed dome of ice with the material sourced from the planet.

Water as ice is only visible on the Martian surface, at the north polar ice cap. Growing plants needs water which we know Mars has but it also needs light. These farms would need to be built in a glass greenhouse or a hydronic farm, which has shown to wield better results as they require less water. In turn these plants could produce oxygen which is much needed with the Martians air being 95% carbon dioxide.

Now there’s a place to live and eat, Mars gravity could cause problems. If you ever seen the astronauts on the International Space Centre then you'll know, they do a lot of exercise. This would be the case on Mars too. On earth we rarely notice the work; our muscles do naturally against the forces of gravity. Without this constant pressure our muscle mass would start to deteriorate. An idea has been mentioned to use a force to mimic Earth’s gravity, this is called artificial gravity.

Elon Musk’s spacex has outline a plan, to create a ‘Mars city’ that would be covered in a glass dome. We don’t know much about their full ideas. What we do know is, the glass dome would have an underground tunnel network. Those tunnels would send up water and would be vaporized to create oxygen and supply the hydroponic farms. The water would also be used to fill the cells on the outside of the dome. This would create a layer to protect the people from solar radiation.

Again just like Venus, tera transforming is another idea. The 4 main issues they’d need to solve is increasing the temperature, raising the atmospheric pressure, clear out the carbon dioxide and protect the planet from radiation.

Source
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110004142.pdf