NASA wants to put humans on the Red Planet by the 2030s.
For our long-term survival we must colonise other worlds.
Say you wanted to set up a long-term base on the Moon or Mars
what would you need?
If it’s going to be sustainable we have to learn to live off the land. But what would that mean?
If you take the carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere and water which we know exists, and you combine that with a little bit of 19th Century chemical engineering, you have water to drink, oxygen to breathe, with the methane and oxygen you actually have made rocket fuel
WHY MARS?
At an average distance of 140 million miles, Mars is one of Earth’s closest habitable neighbors.
Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth is, so it still has decent sunlight. I
t is a little cold, but we can warm it up. Its atmosphere is primarily CO2 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, which means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere.
Gravity on Mars is about 38% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around. Furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth.
