Project 1 - First Draft

On July 20th, 1969, the first man landed in the moon (NASA). It was unbelievable, what was thought to be impossible, was accomplished by people working together. Today, reaching Mars is the next goal; and unlike the Moon, the plan is not only to get there, but to live there. For this, the question that we should ask is, what is the science necessary to establish a sustainable colony on Mars? Thanks to the technologies that have been developed, reaching Mars and colonizing it, is starting to sound less like a dream and more like a reality. With new systems like reusable rockets, a propellant like cryogenic methane (which can be produced on Mars), and efficient rocket launch systems, make it possible not only for humans to reach Mars, but also to stay. There are certainly many obstacles in the way, and many may argue that it is simply too difficult, but with scientific research and further development of technology; humans can tackle these obstacles, and humans can be one step closer to colonizing Mars.

With the all amazing technologies that exist today, and all the progress we have made on aerospace engineering, many it find hard to believe the no man has stepped on Mars yet. If NASA managed to land humans on the surface of The Moon, with only the technology of decades ago available; why haven't we landed a humans on Mars with the technologies we have today? One significant reason is that Mars is very far away. The minimum distance from Earth to Mars, at the time were Mars is closest to Earth (since the planets’ distance from each other varies on their positions on their orbits), is 54.6 million kilometers away (SPACE.com). To put that in perspective, if the Earth was the size of a one foot diameter globe, “Mars would be a mile away, the moon 30 feet away, and the ISS (International Space Station) would be ⅜ of an inch away.” (de Grasse Tyson). However, rockets have already made it to Mars, carrying rovers like NASA’s Discovery, Opportunity, Pathfinder and more. But these rockets carried significantly less weight because they don't carry a crew of “astronauts, supplies, and fuel for a round-trip” (Anuradha K. Herath). Another reason that makes landing humans safely on Mars extremely hard is that, unlike The Moon, Mars has an atmosphere. Since Mars has an atmosphere, it has an active weather with storms and strong winds, making it more difficult to land safely on Mars. Also, the gravity present on Mars is much higher than the one present at The Moon, meaning that the descent to Mars’s surface is much more difficult than the descent on the Moon’s surface. All of this comes down to finding a way to manage the weight and fuel of the spacecraft. If your taking a heavier load, that includes astronauts, supplies and fuel for a round trip; you need more fuel to account for the extra weight. If you have to descend on the atmosphere, with a strong gravity presence and an active weather; you need more fuel to slow the spacecraft down. If you put more fuel on the spacecraft, then the spacecraft gets heavier, so you need more fuel. This conflict gets even more severe when we talk not only about landing humans on Mars, but also about establishing a base there. We need to bring much more supplies for that; not to mention the immense cost of the whole equipment and journey.

With the colonization of Mars being such a hard project, we must have a very good reason to pursue it before we start putting any efforts to it. In other words, before we even start thinking about establishing a colony on Mars, we need to ask ourselves, why should we go in the first place? We need to find a purpose to begin working on how are we going to achieve such an incredibly difficult task. Many argue there is no other reason to go to Mars than our desire to explore, but really there are a lot of benefits that come with having a colony on Mars. First, there is making humankind a multiplanetary species. If one day anything goes wrong on Earth, then humanity should have a back-up plan. Whether it is because of an asteroid heading to Earth, nuclear warfare, or that our planet is unable to sustain more people, humans may eventually need to have another place to stay. Therefore, having a sustainable colony on Mars offers a much more secure future for humankind. Another reason is to understand more about Earth. One big theory of how life started on Earth is that it came from Mars. Even though we already have rovers delivered by NASA cruising on the surface of Mars, having humans scientists there will allow for far more intricate and deeper research to be done on Mars. By having geologists explore the surface of rocks and boulders, we can confirm if there were large bodies of water on Mars surface before, like it is suspected (deGrasse Tyson). If there were large bodies of water before, it means there might have been life. Therefore, since Martian rocks have been found on Earth, it is possible that some rocks that traveled from Mars to Earth, due to some sort of impact, may have carried microorganisms from Mars with it. Also, it is important to mention that Mars is believed to have been very similar to Earth before. That being the case, by means of scientific research, we could possibly determine what happened that made Mars change so much, and if it could happen to Earth.

Yet there is another benefit of establishing a colony on Mars that is often underestimated. This is a benefit that we get from succeeding, but for trying. No one denies that setting up a base on Mars that is able to sustain itself is an immensely difficult task. But undertaking such a task, will bring amazing progress in many fields. For instance, for the Apollo missions, NASA had to develop a new more efficient way of long distance communication. The efforts and advancements that were done back then lead to the creation of the modern satellites we use today. Another example is when the Hubble telescope was launched into space. At first, the telescope took blurry pictures due to an error in its engineering. Due to this, astronomers developed a computer algorithm that helped them better extract the information from the pictures taken. “It turns out the algorithm was eventually shared with a medical doctor who applied it to the X-ray images he was taking to detect breast cancer. The algorithm did a better job at detecting early stages of breast cancer than the conventional method, which at the time was the naked eye” (Orwig). This serves to show that the amount of progress that will take place from humankind's efforts to establish a colony on Mars is immeasurable, unpredictable.

Yet the question remains, what do we need to establish a colony on Mars? What is the science that we need to work on to be able to successfully establish a self sustaining base on Mars? The first thing we need to work on is on the way to get there, safely. To get to Mars, we need a big rocket, one is strong enough to carry all we need all the way to Mars. The problem is that the heavier a rocket is, the harder it is to get it off the ground. However, SpaceX, one of (if not) the leading private companies that focus on space exploration, has recently successfully launched their biggest and strongest rocket, the Falcon Heavy. This rocket has the ability to carry the largest payload in the world to space, by a factor of two. SpaceX’s success proves that we have the technology to develop far stronger rockets, that could potentially make the trip round-trip to Mars carrying people and supplies. But that is not the most impressive aspect of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. When the spacecraft reached Earth's orbit, the thrusters detached, and unlike most rockets whose thrusters simply fall back to Earth and get destroyed, these thrusters landed back at the launch site by themselves. This is extremely important because it proves that there is reusability for these rockets. Consequently, this reduces the marginal cost of launching rockets to space extraordinarily. That brings us to the next thing we need to establish a colony on Mars, affordability. Traditionally, the way we send spacecrafts to space is outstandingly expensive. The entire cost of putting the Hubble telescope in space cost a whopping 14 billion U.S. dollars (Sitrone). At this rate, the price tag of establishing a colony on Mars is unimaginable. However, innovative ideas like SpaceX’s reusable rockets that will make the Mars mission affordable. To build a base on Mars we will need to launch plenty of rockets several times to resupply the base, and eventually bring more people. So reducing the cost of each rocket launch by a significant amount is a must if we are ever to colonize Mars. Still, even the launch costs are reduced we can't bring absolutely everything we will need to Mars. Eventually we need to start producing resources there. One idea is to gather the methane from the atmosphere of Mars to manufacture propellant for the rockets as cryogenic methane. Another idea “involves splitting the water frozen in the subsurface Martian permafrost into hydrogen and oxygen” (Gary) for people in Mars to drink and breathe. This is crucial because one of the most important aspects of a base on Mars is that it needs to be sustainable.