Living On Mars

Mars is the next great adventure. It is the fourth planet from the sun. Due to the finely-grained iron oxide dust covering the planet giving it a reddish color, it has earned the nickname “The Red Planet”. It is one of the most explored planets in our solar system with NASA making plans to use it to replace Earth one day. It has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Its thin atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide, argon, nitrogen, oxygen, and very small amounts of water vapor. A year on Mars is 687 Earth days, while each day is 24.6 hours. Here is what we need to do in order to colonize Mars.

Why Go There In The First Place?

Going to Mars is going to be an extremely expensive trip (over $250 billion on just the trip there), so you better have a good reason to go there. Mars is a treasure trove of scientific discovery. We can gain a better understanding of certain fields of study like solar energy by going there. For years NASA has been studying Mars to better understand climate change, and how to fix the problems they cause. The technological advances to make it there would revolutionize the Earth. Its surface contains valuable resources and potentially rare elements that could benefit us and our technology.

Picking The Team

NASA only wants the best of the best at the Mars colony. To weed out those they feel won’t be of significant contribution, they’ll put you through various tests. First, you’ll need to have a Master’s degree or more in a STEM field of studies from an accredited university. For degree ideas visit https://vocal.media/futurism/survival-science. The master’s degree can be replaced with two years of work towards a STEM Doctorate, a complete medical doctorate, or completion of a nationally recognized pilot program. The next requirement is two years of professional experience in your degree field or 1,000 hours of piloting experience. Lastly, you’ll need to pass a physical conducted by one of their doctors.

Getting There

Even if we had the means to survive on Mars tomorrow, we still need to get there. Mars is 140 million miles away from Earth. If we were to travel there, it would be the furthest journey the human race would ever take. It will be a six-month-long trip, one-way. That means not only will you need enough supplies to get established on Mars, but you need some more to get there. You’ll need a lot of people to carry out various tasks, meaning a huge amount of food, water, and first aid care needed to keep everyone alive. As of now, the average rocket can only carry 6,000 pounds of gear, while the shell of a bio-dome with one greenhouse weighs 16,000 pounds.

The Rule Of Three

Just because you are no longer on Earth doesn’t mean the “Rule Of Three” should be tossed aside. The Rule Of Three is our foundation of life. You’ll need to bring your own oxygen or a device that can create it since it is nonexistent on Mars. It is cold and hard with dust storms that can last for months, so your shelter must protect you from all three. It will also need some radiation shielding because the thin atmosphere can’t protect you from the solar wind. For water, Mars has plenty of it. It has 3.5 liters per cubic meter of frozen water just below the surface. Set up a distillery to collect, melt, and purify it. Unfortunately, the planet is barren of all life, so you’ll need to bring greenhouses to accommodate your food supply.

Setting Up Power

There is a good chance that you’ll be living in a bio-dome in order to survive on Mars. So, it will need to be big enough to accommodate everyone comfortably, meaning a lot of power is going to be used to keep operations running smoothly. Coal and other fossil fuel options wouldn’t work as they are not in abundance on Mars. Scientists have just begun finding oil on Mars, but not enough to keep us alive. The best source to fund your power supply is to use geothermal energy. This is because the atmospheric pressure is much lower, causing steam pressure to build up more force. This is what turns the geothermal turbine.

To learn about NASA’s Mars program, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/.