You? Me? Martians??

Could you live on Mars? Would you want to? Would anybody want to? Why?Forget about the political issues that always get raised when somebody brings up Mars exploration for now; they’re a subject of another discussion. I want to focus people’s thoughts on what it would be like if one could get to Mars and visit or live there. Would you want to?

It’s not, as I’ve written in one of my planetarium shows, a quick jaunt. Anybody going to Mars has to be prepared for a lengthy Earth-Mars trajectory. You’d spend about 18 months getting there; that’s a year and a half of low gravity conditions, living in close quarters with a bunch of other people and no chance to get outside for a stroll along the way. There’s no way to stretch your legs, visit a waystation, check out some interesting side-trails. It’s a straight shot.

And, when you get there, it’s a whole new ecology to get used to. Probably you’d live underground or in heavily shielded quarters. You, along with everybody else, will have had extensive training in order to survive Mars; that training would include learning how to live in surface suits that feed you breathable air and protect you from the extreme ultraviolet radiation that cuts through Mars’s thin atmosphere. You’d have a job to do; what it is will depend on what your skills are. Mars colonies (if that’s what we intended to build) will need everything that any frontier “town” would need: people to build things, people to study things, people to suss out the dangerous conditions and help everybody else avoid them (or learn to live with them).

Even if you were part of a solely scientific expedition, everybody would have multiple jobs that span the science studies and survival goals. You can’t send an infinite number of people to Mars, so the ones who DO go will have to be cross-trained.

So, could YOU do it? Would you want to?