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Elon Musk declared that he wants to retire on the Red Planet.
According to the data sent back by the Maven probe, Mars may not be suited for colonies after all. It seems like the Red Planet’s atmosphere is doomed by solar winds, making it uninhabitable, unfriendly, and forever dry. But hope is not lost, NASA didn’t spend billions of dollars just to get scared by some winds, be they electrically charged winds that are coming from the sun.
The Maven Data
NASA sent a lot of robots and satellites to Mars in order to see whether or not the planet is able to sustain life. the rovers are constantly pacing the surface, while an array of artificial satellites is orbiting the planet, scanning and analyzing, trying to find out more about it.
And while the machines never sent back any pictures of Martians trying to hide from the camera or doorways to underground settlements, they did discover what happened to the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
According to the data sent by the Maven probe, Mars is being constantly attacked by solar winds that are hurling electrically charged particles towards the Red Planet. These powerful waves drain the gasses from the planet’s surface, turning it into a cold, arid desert where life has no chance of prospering again.
Is the Colonies Dream Over?
NASA spent billions of dollars trying to prepare for a manned mission to Mars. There are additional companies that are working on the same project. Independent agencies are trying their best to head out towards the Red Planet by 2030, so a little solar wind will not stop them from getting there.
The Mars dream is still an ongoing project. The Space Agency is even currently undergoing an experiment to see if potatoes could really grow on the Red Planet.
They have given a second thought to Weir’s book and decided to try and see if the vegetables are going to grow in the arid soil. In order to mimic the dry conditions of the planet, researchers from NASA collected soil from the Pampas desert and planted more than fifty different types of the vegetable.
If they are successful in cultivating potatoes in Pampas soil, then they will continue the experiment in a controlled environment that mimic the thinner atmosphere and the weaker gravitational conditions.
Even though the data sent back by the Maven probe made some believe that Mars may not be suited for colonies, after all, there are still many people actively working on ways to keep the 2030 manned mission alive.
Image source: YouTube
Asteroid exploitation seems a more realistic short term goal. But not to bring stuff back to the Planet. most of the value of off Earth resources is the not having to lift them off of Earth part. The use for these materials is to build in space. Starting at the beginning. Then of course the middle. And then naturally the end in mind to begin with.as well as all the spin offs.
Mine it. Mill it. Smelt it. 3-D print it. Forge it to exact shape. About a billion times. Throw the product to the assembly point, 100,000,000 miles away. All from an office park in Cleveland. Build that impossible Stanley Kubrick space station. Move THAT to Mars, with several hundred people. Then , after dropping a few thousand magnetized iron phone poles a few hundred meters deep into both poles, and installing a custom biosphere, then think about colonizing Mars.
Asteroid mining makes the tools that makes Mars a manageable project. And Mars is where asteroids number 1 & 2 are. Phobos and Deimos. Religious folks might call it a clear message from god. “Mine here”. I just call it really convenient.
underground is where to put colonies, that is where the Martians live here on Earth as their home planet, Mars