WHY HUMANS WILL NEVER COLONIZE MARS

There are scientists who argue that the human colonization of other planets—especially Mars—is humanity’s best hope for a sustainable future in the event of an environmental collapse here on Earth. But In the final chapter of “UNBOUND: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human…” I described in detail the life-threatening difficulties of colonizing other planets (see https://www.richardlcurrier.com/articles/can-we-colonize-other-planets.html).

  Now, medical researchers have identified two serious health hazards that have affected astronauts exposed to the weightlessness of space for prolonged periods.

The first is the deleterious effect of both microgravity and radiation on our immune systems. These have produced not only dramatically lowered resistance to disease but also a five-fold increase in cardiovascular death rates among astronauts who have spent significant periods of time in deep space. See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/09/02/immune-systems-could-stop-humans-reaching-mars/.

 The second is the damage to the human brain caused by weightlessness, which causes the upper regions of the brain to be compressed against the top of the skull, damaging the frontal and parietal lobes—areas of the brain that control bodily movement as well as the “higher executive functions” such as planning, organizing, attention focus, and memory. See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/11/01/humans-may-need-fake-gravity-reach-mars-without-brain-damage/.

  Yet these are merely the risks of extended space travel—they do not take into account the deadly challenges of the Martian climate, where surface temperatures can plunge to 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-125 degrees Celsius), and where dust storms that last for months at a time can grow large enough to nearly cover the entire planet. Finally, the Martian atmosphere—which is 100 times thinner than Earth’s—is 95% carbon dioxide, with only a trace of oxygen

  Nevertheless, Mars is the only planet in our solar system in which humans could survive for more than a few minutes. On every other planet except Earth, we would—in in a matter of seconds—either be fried like bacon or frozen solid, quickly dissolved in a sea of sulphuric acid, or drowned in oceans of liquid methane and helium thousands of miles deep.

  As for colonizing those “earth-like planets” we believe exist in other solar systems, the nearest of these is Gliese 832c, located twelve light-years from Earth. But even travelling at ten times the speed of our fastest rockets, it would take human colonists 24,000 YEARS to arrive there. This is roughly five times longer than the entire history of human civilization.

  This is why, in UNBOUND’s final chapter, I concluded that “There is only one world we know of that can sustain human life . . . the earth is quite literally the only life support system available to the human species. We have no alternative to keeping the earth’s biosphere healthy and alive so that we ourselves can remain healthy and alive.”