Why Can't We Live On Another Planet? Or Maybe We Can

INTRODUCTION

In the year 1961, humankind successfully sent the first manned space shuttle to space, which saw Yuri Gagarin (of the then USSR) becoming the first man on space. After this feat; the doors of space travels were opened to mankind, and shortly after; Neil Armstrong with two other crew members (Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin) landed on the near side of moon. We have also seen the establishments of space stations, like the ISS (International Space station) and the Chinese Tiangog (Heavenly palace). But in all these advances, has mankind been able to adapt to extraterrestrial survival? Because this is the first step to the colonization of another planet.

A few months ago, we saw the launch of Elon Musk's Heavy Falcon, also, in another news, man landed a space shuttle on the far side of moon. But if you have taken note of any of these space explorations (particularly the manned missions) you would discovered that one thing is common to them - which is human's quest to colonize the space. No wonder NASA has been putting up a major plan for the Mission-To-Mars speculated to take place in few years from now (mid 2030s) _[ref]. Of course, if you were to take stats of the known planets in our solar system, the major contender that has the propensity to host life form is the Mars. Let's take an overview of how true this is.

MARTIAN COLONY - A POSSIBILITY?

There is no disproving to the fact that; everyday we live on Earth (being our only home); we face untold vulnerability. Think about this; one cataclysm could wipe off the face of humankind, or even a giant ET body could collide with Earth and wreck havoc. But the truth is; if we must ensure our survival and sustainability as human race, then we should start to think outside-the-Earth. Apart from survival, humans have been known to be curious beings, and as such, "exploration" is part of us. And for those thinking it would be impossible to colonize another planet, well; people also thought the same thing when the first idea of landing man on the moon came up - it would definitely remain impossible until it is achieved.

_{size of Mars in comparison to Earth. From Wikimedia Commons by Jcpag2012. Public Domain}

Like any other journey, the first thing is to have a knowledge of your destination before embarking on the journey. So on that note, I would bring us some facts to get handy about mars as you plan your journey. First of all; in size comparison - Mars is much smaller than Earth (6790KM in diameter as against 12750KM of Earth _ref), but notwithstanding this size ratio, the land mass is almost comparable to that of the Earth, because majority of Earth is the hydrosphere (water mass). That's a comfy right? Okay hold on! Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere which is comprised mainly of CO₂ - which has made it almost non-breathable by humans (well, except you; yes you; have evolved to be able to breathe in C0₂ and breathe out 0₂ - oops! this would be "breathing in reverse", lol).

Okay let's talk about temperature of Mars. I ask you; what is the coolest temperature we have experienced on Earth? Or rather; can you survive a temperature fall of -87^oF? - Well, you should expect this kind of cold temperature in Mars. Reasons being that it is farther away from the sun's energy source, and it has less atmosphere to trap in the heat - so temperature falls extremely at night. But there is a similarity here; a Martian day is almost the same as the day on Earth with just some few minutes longer on Mars. But the gravity is about 38% less than what we have here on Earth - well, for people planning to jump around in Mars, you now have reasons to do so.

THE MISSION-TO-MARS ITSELF

Have you ever stopped for a second to ask how long it would take to arrive in Mars? Okay just so you would know; in one of NASA's fastest space shuttles (the Juno), it would take between 6-8months at the average speed of 165,000miles/hr _[ref] - can you endure such a brutal journey? To survive on Earth, basically you would need food, water, sex, shelter right? The same thing applies to survival on Mars, but much more than that, you would need oxygen. The sad truth is; to haul anything from Earth to space is extremely very expensive - about $10,000 per pound of stuff _[ref] - are you still thinking what I'm thinking? You would need millions of tons of stuffs just to establish a Martian colony. Let me shock you for a while: The amount of money spent to land the first manned space shuttle on moon is about $25billion, which should be well over $176Billion in today's equivalent _[ref]. Damn! this is more than the entire budget of my state for one year. And here, we're not talking about the moon, but the Mars.

Assuming we have all necessary monetary aids to put people on mars, how do we terraform the red planet? NASA has been planning a mission-to-Mars over a decade now which is slated to happen in 2033, of which they have found a worthy contender for the trip - Alyson Carson. The year chosen for this was on the basis that, in that year, the Earth would be closer to Mars than it has ever been in the last 2millennia, but even in all these, Elon Musk seemed to be faster when he reaffirmed that he would achieve the feat earlier than NASA's speculation _[ref] (it looks like private corporations are now running the show better than the government). But none of these is as important as this question: "How do we survive on Mars".

SURVIVING ON MARS - BECOMING A MARTIAN

Going by statistics, it is about a fraction of 1/3 of the unmanned rockets that were sent to Mars actually made it to mars, others never made it - which could have also happened to any manned spaceship. Assuming all things being equal and we finally land on Mars, first of all, we need to figure out; among other things; the basic amenities we would need. Top on my list is "water". The truth is; it is practically impossible to take all the water we would need on Mars from the Earth, so we would have to source the water from mars itself. But looking at the surface of the Martian planet; and from footages from exploration rovers; one would be quick to assume that mars is just a vast dry desert-like planet. But no! A vast majority of the water in Mars is in form of ice - and even below the ground, there's an ice bed, just like this image of Mars below:

_{Variation of WAVAR: Reverse Water Gas Shift. From Wikimedia, by NASA. Public Domain.}

If there's water in Mars, the only thing we need to do is to extract it. However, doing this would cost a lot of man power and resources, but NASA seems to have found a solution for this; A special device called "WAVAR" which is a reactor capable of adsorbing water-vapour from the atmosphere; this can be used to extract water directly from the Martian atmosphere and convert it to the water we would be needing on Mars. So the problem of water has been taken care of.

Another one is; what are we going to breathe? Again; it is impracticable to take oxygen cylinders from Earth to Mars, so we would also need to source our oxygen from there. The Martian atmosphere is almost completely composed of CO₂ - and humans can't breathe that. But from the knowledge of your high school chemistry, you would have already known that about 2/3 of CO₂ is Oxygen. NASA has leveraged on this to find a solution to this problem of what to breathe on Mars with a device they call MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment). This device is capable of sucking in the Martian atmosphere (CO₂) and expelling Oxygen. Boom!! We can manufacture our own Oxygen right in the red planet.

We have gotten our water and oxygen, now we are getting closer to terraforming Mars. Our next point of call is "what are we going to be eating?". Someone might be saying "plant crops.. blah..blah...blah". I remember a movie I saw some months ago "The Martian", where a marooned astronaut had to plant potatoes on Mars on special hydroponics to survive. But the difficulty in this is; you can only grow VERY small amount of food there. Remember, there is no surface water (yet) to support crop production. That means, we would be dependent on food-haulage from the Earth to survive in Mars. That's the major challenge we'd be facing on Mars, but I believe that as more researches are made, we would, one day, terraform Mars. And when this happens, humans would still screw up the Martian colony like they did to the Earth; poor Mars.

FINAL WORDS

Right from man's first attempt to put man in space, there have been advances to set up an extraterrestrial colony, in which the major point-of-call is Mars. It may have looked impossible from the onset because of lack of basic amenities to support human life in mars, but we are pretty closer than ever to getting across these impossibilities. At least, humans have figured out how to extract water in mars, and how to create oxygen to breathe. Sooner than later, Mars' trips would be just like any other journey here.

> References for further reading

• NASA's Comprehensive Manifesto on Mission-To-Mars.pdf
• Elon Musk's proposition for Martian colony
• Missions to Mars stats - space.com
• Journey to Mars - NASA
• ET Colonization - Futurism
• Mars-one Roadmap

gif by @foundation