why should humans travel to mars

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Mars remains our horizon goal for human exploration because it is one of the only other places we know where life may have existed in the solar system. What we learn about the Red Planet will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future, and may help answer whether life exists beyond our home planet. Like the Moon, Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and a driver of technologies that will enable humans to travel and explore far from Earth.

33 million to 249 million miles from Earth (always changing)

Miles(roundtrip)

-284 degrees F to 86 degrees F

Six Technologies to Get Humans to Mars

NASA is advancing many technologies to send astronauts to Mars as early as the 2030s. Here are six things we are working on right now to make future human missions to the Red Planet possible.

Preparing for Mars

Engineers and scientists around the country are working to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars and safely return home to Earth.

Quick Facts

Periodic dust storms on Mars can last for months, making nuclear fission power a more reliable option than solar power. 

Temperatures on Mars can range from -284 degrees F to 86 degrees F. The atmosphere on Mars is 96% carbon dioxide.

One day on Mars lasts about 37 minutes longer than an Earth day. A year on Mars is almost twice as long as a year on Earth.

Gravity on Mars is about one-third of the gravity on Earth. If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 38 pounds on Mars.

Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. Phobos is 13.8 miles across, and Deimos is 7.8 miles across.

Getting There and Back

When astronauts travel to Mars and back, their vehicle will return home with more than a billion miles on its odometer — more than a thousand times the distance that Artemis I traveled.

Living and Working on Mars

The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, is helping NASA prepare for human exploration of Mars by demonstrating the technology to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for burning fuel and breathing.

Astronauts on a roundtrip mission to Mars will not have the resupply missions to deliver fresh food. NASA is researching food systems to ensure quality, variety, and nutritional values for these long missions. Plant growth on the International Space Station is helping to inform in-space crop management as well.

NASA is developing life support systems that can regenerate or recycle consumables such as food, air, and water and is testing them on the International Space Station.

Like we use electricity to charge our devices on Earth, astronauts will need a reliable power supply to explore Mars. The system will need to be lightweight and capable of running regardless of its location or the weather on the Red Planet. NASA is investigating options for power systems, including fission surface power.

Spacesuits are like “personal spaceships” for astronauts, protecting them from harsh environments and providing all the air, water, biometric monitoring controls, and communications needed during excursions outside their spaceship or habitat.

Communications

Human missions to Mars may use lasers to stay in touch with Earth. A laser communications system at Mars could send large amounts of real-time information and data, including high-definition images and video feeds.

An astronaut's primary shelter on Mars could be a fixed habitat on the surface or a mobile habitat on wheels. In either form, the habitat must provide the same amenities as a home on Earth — with the addition of a pressurized volume and robust water recycling system.

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Together with our partners, we will pioneer Mars and answer some of humanity’s fundamental questions: Was Mars home to microbial life? Is it today? Could it be a safe home for humans one day? What can it teach us about life elsewhere in the cosmos, or how life began on Earth? What can it teach us about Earth’s past, present, and future?

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August 10, 2021

The Ethics of Sending Humans to Mars

We need to avoid the mistakes European countries made during the age of colonization

By Nicholas Dirks

Mark Garlick Getty Images

With Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson recently completing their pioneering space flights that could set the stage for future space tourism, it is worth taking a look at what might be involved for the human exploration of Mars, even though it’s likely decades away.

Elon Musk is perhaps the best-known advocate for going to Mars, but the idea is decades old. In a 1966 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences paper , Gordon R. Woodcock of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center theorized how the Saturn V launch vehicle—at the time in development for the Apollo lunar missions—could be used for a Mars exploration. Technical challenges aside, as we continue to expand our exploration of Mars, there is a broader ethical question at play. What might be the lessons of past voyages of discovery and colonization that we should be thinking about? History provides us with many cautionary tales.

Human exploration has led to many extraordinary new discoveries, but it has also led inexorably to the appropriation and exploitation of natural as well as human resources. The desire to gain control over various commodities such as spices, sugar and oil, propelled both global discovery and the drive for political and economic domination. During the age of empire, European nations derived their wealth and power from colonizing various global regions and controlling land, labor and military power to advance their own interests.

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After the early European settling of what would become the United States, the American colonists declared their independence from an unjust English authority and created the Constitution by which our modern society functions. This did not, however, prevent the settlers from referring to native people as savages and excluding them from the assertion of rights to liberty and happiness.

Then there is the question of “ownership”: does the first country that plants its flag on the surface of another world get to claim ownership? Such claims have been made many times before, and they do not bode any better for the future of space exploration than they have for human history on Earth. Clearly if we are to settle another planet—and likely it will be a multinational effort if we do—we’ll need to write a constitution for Mars, one that would learn from past mistakes, much like in the assignment set by Yale’s Hélène Landemore in a recent course on the political theory of constitutions.

Consider also the issue of Mars’ fragile ecosystem. The planet certainly has a hostile environment for human life, but on Mars, humans will be the invasive species with all that implies. The native occupants of the newly decolonized land of America were quickly decimated by systematic warfare and new diseases as the new settlers expanded their territory. The natural environment with which Native Americans had established a harmonious and symbiotic relationship, was similarly despoiled by the twin logic of expropriation and colonization that spread under the logic of manifest destiny .

Biological life aside, it is possible that Mars has minerals that could have extraordinary properties ideal for future development. We have seen on Earth how mining has had devastating environmental impacts; to think there would be anything less of an impact on the Martian environment is disingenuous.

Based on early missions and recent images sent from NASA’s Ingenuity and China’s Zhurong rover , the Martian landscape appears to be a frigid desert, with no visible trace of life. But the same could be said by aliens if they were to land in the vast desolation of the Gobi Desert. Given the first impression of Mars from pictures sent back by robotic explorers, notions of hostile creatures such as those envisioned in H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, and in movies such as Alien and Independence Day , seem unlikely. But we should be wary of characterizing “life” based solely on Earthly experience.

Stephen Hawking once warned that contact with an extraterrestrial civilization could result in the inevitable destruction of our own. Such an idea is not so far-fetched when you consider the current cost in human lives and economic devastation from a new Earth-based virus that blindsided us when we weren’t looking. While it is unlikely that we will be invaded by multilimbed creatures bent on Earth’s destruction using death rays, we cannot rule out the possibility that there could be a kernel of reality in Hawking’s prophecy.

The technological achievements of the teams at NASA and other space agencies are certainly to be applauded. And the contributions of the related research stemming from the fields of physics, material science, chemistry, medicine and many others is potentially limitless.

As we look to exploring worlds beyond our own, we need to begin now to look at history—while also adopting a more anthropological lens—to consider how best to engage with radically different life forms, cultures and environments. We may be capable of writing a new constitution and committing ourselves to an entirely new form of engagement with other places (and perhaps peoples), but we should begin with the presumption that we need to counter our own invasive impact on another planet that may be completely defenseless—before we embark on a new era of galactic exploration and imperial conquest.

Why go to Mars?

Mars is an obvious target for exploration because it is close by in our Solar System, but there are many more reasons to explore the Red Planet. The scientific reasons for going to Mars can be summarised by the search for life, understanding the surface and the planet’s evolution, and preparing for future human exploration.

Searching for life on Mars Understanding whether life existed elsewhere in the Universe beyond Earth is a fundamental question of humankind. Mars is an excellent place to investigate this question because it is the most similar planet to Earth in the Solar System. Evidence suggests that Mars was once full of water, warmer and had a thicker atmosphere, offering a potentially habitable environment.

Understanding the surface of Mars and its evolution

While life arose and evolved on Earth, Mars experienced serious climate change. Planetary geologists can study rocks, sediments and soils for clues to uncover the history of the surface. Scientists are interested in the history of water on Mars to understand how life could have survived. Volcanoes, craters from meteoroid impacts, signs of atmospheric or photochemical effects and geophysical processes all carry aspects of Mars’ history.

Samples of the atmosphere could reveal crucial details on its formation and evolution, and also why Mars has less atmosphere than Earth.

Mars can also help us to learn more about our home. Understanding martian geophysical processes promises to uncover details of the evolution and history of Earth and other planets in our Solar System.

Human exploration

To reduce the cost and risk for human exploration of Mars, robotic missions can scout ahead and help us to find potential resources and the risks of working on the planet.

Before sending astronauts, we need to understand the hazards. Inevitably, astronauts would bring uncontained martian material when they return to Earth, either on their equipment or on themselves. Understanding any biohazards in the soil and dust will help the planning and preparation of these future missions.

Going to Mars is hard and it is even harder for humans because we would need to pack everything to survive the trip to our neighbouring planet and back. Designing a Mars mission would be easier if we could use resources that are already available locally. Water is a valuable resource for human expeditions, both to consume by astronauts and for fuel. Samples gathered by robots could help to evaluate where potential resources are available for future human explorers and how to exploit them.

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10 Reasons Why Humanity May Want To Colonize And Live On Mars

Last Updated: March 25, 2024

While Earth is honestly the best place for us to live in the solar system, what about other options? While human space exploration has expanded for decades, we have still been limited to this planet, its orbit (the ISS and other space stations), and past missions to the Moon as of June 2023 (crewed missions to the Moon are scheduled to begin next year). But Mars has been on the horizon for decades as the closest planet to our own. While it’s not identical to Earth, human habitation is possible. So, let’s dive into 10 reasons to colonize and live on Mars!

As the closest planet to home, Mars sits at an average of about 140 million miles (225 million km) but varies widely with the closest approaches at about 39-63 million miles (62-101 million km) apart and the opposition when both are at aphelion can be 249 million miles (401 million km) apart.

To make the fastest and most efficient trip, space agencies plan for a launch window around the closest approaches, but they also have to consider options like fuel efficiency and so they might choose to use gravity assists around other astronomical objects like Venus , Earth, or the Moon to speed up the spacecraft which makes the exact travel time a little more complicated. In general, a crewed mission to Mars would likely take about 6.5-8 months (one-way) .

While that’s a long time to be in space, it’s short compared to any other destination. (Check out our pieces on how long it would take to get to Jupiter , Saturn , or Uranus ). This makes Mars the most reasonable next destination in space after the Moon for human space exploration (while Venus is closer, extreme temperatures, atmospheric pressure, and toxic atmosphere make it uninhabitable for humans even though recent research suggests conditions may be favorable for bacteria in certain altitudes of its atmosphere).

In fact, NASA’s upcoming crewed missions to the Moon are actually much bigger than simply lunar colonization. They are the stepping stones for sending humans to Mars by the 2040s. In addition, many private space exploration companies, like SpaceX have expressed interest in or even goals to send humans to Mars in the near future as well. 

So, let’s dive in! What are 10 reasons to colonize and live on Mars?

#1 - The Search for Life off Earth

Knowing whether or not life existed or exists beyond Earth is a fundamental question in our understanding of our planet, our solar system, our universe, and even ourselves. As the closest planet to us, Mars is a prime destination to explore this question. 

In addition, it is the most similar planet to us in the solar system. In fact, evidence suggests Mars used to be covered in water, warmer, and hosted a thicker atmosphere which would make it a much more potentially habitable environment in its past. There is even a theory that life on Earth could have come from rocks rich with microorganisms ejected from Mars and landed on Earth (the Mars Life Theory). 

Martian rocks have been found on Earth as meteors from asteroids and the moon have, though none of these contain signs of life. Human colonization of Mars would increase the chance of finding evidence of past or even current life on another planet.

#2 - Understanding the Surface of Mars and Its Evolution

Studying the surface of Mars will help us uncover clues about this past, its evolution to its present-day state, and possibly even our own future. If Mars used to be like Earth, then Earth’s future may look like Mars. Studying the evolution of its surface can help us understand if it is a potential future for Earth, which provides vital information in our stewardship of the planet for the next several decades and even centuries.

#3 - Testing Ground and Launch Pad for Future Human Space Exploration

If we can colonize and live on Mars, it will allow us to test further human space exploration, helping us to develop better and safer technology that could be used in more hostile environments like those further out in the solar system or asteroids. 

In addition, Mars has about 38% the gravity of Earth (requiring space suits to weigh us down and move effectively on the surface), which means that it would be easier to launch a spacecraft from Mars than it would be from Earth in terms of escaping the planet’s gravity. 

It could prove to be an efficient spaceport for missions to the outer solar system due to this and the fact that it is slightly closer to those targets than we are.

#4 - Develop New Technologies

Exploration has always fueled innovation, especially with technology. Many common objects in daily life today like GPS, medical diagnostic tools, wireless technology, cordless power tools, sports bras, diapers, solar panels, camera phones, and the rumble strips on the highway are because of space exploration. Many medical innovations have come from NASA’s research such as implantable heart monitors, invisible braces, computerized insulin pumps, and artificial limbs. 

The continual robotic exploration of Mars has fueled innovation in robotics, geology, coding, communications, and more. In the words of Mary Roach in Packing for Mars , “If it’s cordless, fireproof, lightweight and strong, miniaturized, or automate, chances are good NASA has had a hand in the technology.” The challenge of sending humans to live on Mars will push us to create new innovations that will not only help the Mars dwellers, but us here at home. 

When the Space Race started, most people wouldn’t have even dreamed of some of the technology we have today because of human space exploration. Who knows what we will create in the service of living on Mars that will have a daily impact on future generations both there and here?

#5 - Encourage Space Tourism

We’ve talked about the current feasibility and cost of going to space today (including after you’ve died ) along with the pros and cons of space tourism in general. We are already sending humans into space at an increasing rate and lower costs (though it’s often still out of reach for the average person as of 2023). 

The goal of colonizing Mars fuels innovations in space tourism and vice versa. As we plan for and eventually send the first humans to Mars, their innovations and tests of these technologies will help us improve space tourism closer to home, making it more accessible and safer for everyone. 

Just as the airplane used to be an extravagance only for the wealthy, space tourism will become more and more available to the average person as human space exploration continues.

#6 - Offer Space Mining Opportunities

The idea of mining minerals and chemical compounds from astronomical objects like the moon, asteroids, and planets has been suggested and studied time and time again especially to fill the growing needs of the technology sector. 

Whether this truly solves our issue of nonrenewable resources or simply elongates our timeline is another matter. However, colonizing Mars could help us better understand how to safely and efficiently harvest valuable materials on the Martian surface and beyond. 

One of the pieces of equipment on the Perseverance Rover (the Mars Oxygen Experiment or MOXIE) is working on converting Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen and is paving the way to help humans live and work on Mars.

#7 - Advancing Science in General

There are the obvious areas of scientific advancement from human space exploration that have already been discussed (search for life, planetary evolution, technology, etc.) but the beauty about science is that it’s all interconnected. 

When we push the boundaries of one area of science, we often make discoveries that impact other areas of science. Exploring and living on a planet other than our own will help us better understand astronomy, physics, and geology as well as less expected areas such as biology, neurology, and psychology as humans have to deal with living in isolation not just from people but from many of the comforts of life we have become accustomed to. 

Another point to note is that many advocate that scientific discovery would happen much faster if humans were on Mars as opposed to just robots. While robots can do an immense amount of research, there is something special about the human brain and its ability to make connections and be creative.

#8 - Ensuring our survival

An obvious reason that is often brought up when discussing sending humans to and colonizing Mars is using it as a second home. If we have humans on planets other than Earth, it provides us with a backup home so to speak if something were to happen to Earth. 

If a meteor like the one that took out the dinosaurs collided with Earth, having humans on Mars would preserve our species (as we discussed in our Near Earth Asteroids article, the odds that this will happen in the next 100 years is essentially zero and even in the next 1,000 years, the chance is negligible). 

We also know that side effects of human advancement have negatively impacted the environment which could make human life more difficult or even impossible in the future. Having Mars as a second option to slowly move people to could help preserve our species (though, many advocate we shouldn’t doom Mars to the same fate by colonizing it before we understand how to care for our own planet sustainably). 

While Mars has many differences that would make life difficult for humans (i.e. the atmosphere, lower gravity, lack of easy reliable access to water, etc.) it is the best option in the solar system currently.

#9 - Advancing as a species

Just as exploration fuels all kinds of scientific discovery, it can help us as a species to advance and become better in a variety of ways. It inspires generations young and old to pursue new career paths. It forces us to consider our humanity and our home.

It forces us to reconsider philosophy. When we better understand the solar system and the universe, it helps us better see just how special our corner of space is and helps us see our similarities instead of our differences in terms of other humans.

#10 - Political and economic leadership and change

space exploration is fueled by policy and in turn, a country can be fueled by space exploration. The space race is proof that space exploration impacts the politics and economy of a nation and its relationships with other nations. 

Since space exploration fuels innovation, the country that makes it to Mars will also see political and economic benefits that the other countries may not, or at least not for some time. When we invest in exploration, we invest in our future, which creates economic and political opportunities.

Especially in recent years, the prospect of going to Mars has become more tangible and exciting. Both space agencies and private space companies currently have plans to send humans to Mars in the coming decades.

 While many may offer the counterargument that we have enough problems here on Earth to focus on before simply moving those problems to another planet, colonizing Mars would provide a number of beneficial impacts for science, innovation, and society. 

We, as a species, and as individual nations will have to make the decision concerning its importance in the coming decades, but as of now, there is interest in at least sending people to the Red Planet. 

Time will only tell how those decisions pan out, but for now, it’s exciting to consider the possibilities and benefits of human colonization of another planet.

Written by Sarah Hoffschwelle

Sarah Hoffschwelle is a freelance writer who covers a combination of topics including astronomy, general science and STEM, self-development, art, and societal commentary. In the past, Sarah worked in educational nonprofits providing free-choice learning experiences for audiences ages 2-99. As a lifelong space nerd, she loves sharing the universe with others through her words. She currently writes on Medium at  https://medium.com/@sarah-marie  and authors self-help and children’s books.

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August 18, 2020

The recent launch of the Mars rover Perseverance is the latest U.S. space mission seeking to understand our solar system. Its expected arrival at the Red Planet in mid-February 2021 has a number of objectives linked to science and innovation. The rover is equipped with sophisticated instruments designed to search for the remains of ancient microbial life, take pictures and videos of rocks, drill for soil and rock samples, and use a small helicopter to fly around the Jezero Crater landing spot .

Mars is a valuable place for exploration because it can be reached in 6 ½ months, is a major opportunity for scientific exploration, and has been mapped and studied for several decades. The mission represents the first step in a long-term effort to bring Martian samples back to Earth, where they can be analyzed for residues of microbial life. Beyond the study of life itself, there are a number of different benefits of Mars exploration.

Understand the Origins and Ubiquity of Life

The site where Perseverance is expected to land is the place where experts believe 3.5 billion years ago held a lake filled with water and flowing rivers. It is an ideal place to search for the residues of microbial life, test new technologies, and lay the groundwork for human exploration down the road.

The mission plans to investigate whether microbial life existed on Mars billions of years ago and therefore that life is not unique to Planet Earth. As noted by Chris McKay, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Science Center, that would be an extraordinary discovery. “Right here in our solar system, if life started twice , that tells us some amazing things about our universe,” he pointed out. “It means the universe is full of life. Life becomes a natural feature of the universe, not just a quirk of this odd little planet around this star.”

The question of the origins of life and its ubiquity around the universe is central to science, religion, and philosophy. For much of our existence, humans have assumed that even primitive life was unique to Planet Earth and not present in the rest of the solar system, let alone the universe. We have constructed elaborate religious and philosophical narratives around this assumption and built our identity along the notion that life is unique to Earth.

If, as many scientists expect, future space missions cast doubt on that assumption or outright disprove it by finding remnants of microbial life on other planets, it will be both invigorating and illusion-shattering. It will force humans to confront their own myths and consider alternative narratives about the universe and the place of Earth in the overall scheme of things.

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As noted in my Brookings book, Megachange , given the centrality of these issues for fundamental questions about human existence and the meaning of life, it would represent a far-reaching shift in existing human paradigms. As argued by scientist McKay, discovering evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars would lead experts to conclude that life likely is ubiquitous around the universe and not limited to Planet Earth. Humans would have to construct new theories about ourselves and our place in the universe.

Develop New Technologies

The U.S. space program has been an extraordinary catalyst for technology innovation . Everything from Global Positioning Systems and medical diagnostic tools to wireless technology and camera phones owe at least part of their creation to the space program. Space exploration required the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to learn how to communicate across wide distances, develop precise navigational tools, store, transmit, and process large amounts of data, deal with health issues through digital imaging and telemedicine, and develop collaborative tools that link scientists around the world. The space program has pioneered the miniaturization of scientific equipment and helped engineers figure out how to land and maneuver a rover from millions of miles away.

Going to Mars requires similar inventiveness. Scientists have had to figure out how to search for life in ancient rocks, drill for rock samples, take high resolution videos, develop flying machines in a place with gravity that is 40 percent lower than on Earth, send detailed information back to Earth in a timely manner, and take off from another planet. In the future, we should expect large payoffs in commercial developments from Mars exploration and advances that bring new conveniences and inventions to people.

Encourage Space Tourism

In the not too distant future, wealthy tourists likely will take trips around the Earth, visit space stations, orbit the Moon, and perhaps even take trips around Mars. For a substantial fee, they can experience weightlessness, take in the views of the entire planet, see the stars from outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and witness the wonders of other celestial bodies.

The Mars program will help with space tourism by improving engineering expertise with space docking, launches, and reentry and providing additional experience about the impact of space travel on the human body. Figuring out how weightlessness and low gravity situations alter human performance and how space radiation affects people represent just a couple areas where there are likely to be positive by-products for future travel.

The advent of space tourism will broaden human horizons in the same way international travel has exposed people to other lands and perspectives. It will show them that the Earth has a delicate ecosystem that deserves protecting and why it is important for people of differing countries to work together to solve global problems. Astronauts who have had this experience say it has altered their viewpoints and had a profound impact on their way of thinking.

Facilitate Space Mining

Many objects around the solar system are made of similar minerals and chemical compounds that exist on Earth. That means that some asteroids, moons, and planets could be rich in minerals and rare elements. Figuring out how to harvest those materials in a safe and responsible manner and bring them back to Earth represents a possible benefit of space exploration. Elements that are rare on Earth may exist elsewhere, and that could open new avenues for manufacturing, product design, and resource distribution. This mission could help resource utilization through advances gained with its Mars Oxygen Experiment (MOXIE) equipment that converts Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen. If MOXIE works as intended, it would help humans live and work on the Red Planet.

Advance Science

One of the most crucial features of humanity is our curiosity about the life, the universe, and how things operate. Exploring space provides a means to satisfy our thirst for knowledge and improve our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.

Space travel already has exploded centuries-old myths and promises to continue to confront our long-held assumptions about who we are and where we come from. The next decade promises to be an exciting period as scientists mine new data from space telescopes, space travel, and robotic exploration. Ten or twenty years from now, we may have answers to basic questions that have eluded humans for centuries, such as how ubiquitous life is outside of Earth, whether it is possible for humans to survive on other planets, and how planets evolve over time.

The author would like to thank Victoria E. Hamilton, staff scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, for her helpful feedback on this blog post.

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There's Only One Way For Humanity to Survive. Go To Mars.

Futurist Michio Kaku sees humans doing ballet on Mars and projecting their brains into the cosmos. And aliens? Oh, they're coming.

As a child in Palo Alto, California, he built an atom smasher in the garage. He later became one of the founders of string theory. Today, with his flowing mane of silver locks, Michio Kaku is one of the most recognizable faces of science, with several bestselling books and numerous television appearances, including on the Discovery Channel and the BBC.

In his new book, The Future Of Humanity , he argues passionately that our future lies not on Earth, but in the stars.

When National Geographic caught up with him by phone at his office at City College, in New York City, he explained how billionaires like Elon Musk are transforming space travel; why laser porting may be the best way to reach other galaxies; and how one day there may be ballet dancers on Mars.

Right at the beginning of the book, you make the shocking prediction: “Either we must leave the Earth or we will perish.” Are humanity’s prospects really that dire? And doesn’t this play into the nihilistic feeling that there is nothing we can do to save this planet?

If you take a look at evolution on Earth, 99.9 percent of all life forms have gone extinct. When things change, either you adapt or die. That’s the law of Mother Nature. We face various hazards. First of all, we have self-inflicted problems like global warming, nuclear proliferation and bio-engineered germ warfare. Plus, Mother Nature has hurled at the Earth a number of extinction cycles. The dinosaurs, for example, didn’t have a space program. And that’s why the dinosaurs are not here today.

On the other hand, we shouldn’t use this as an excuse to pollute the Earth, or let global warming run amok. We should cure these problems without having to leave for Mars or another planet, because it’s impossible to remove the entire population of Earth to Mars. We’re talking about an insurance policy—a backup plan in case something does happen to the Earth. I once talked to Carl Sagan about this, who said, “We live in the middle of a shooting gallery with thousands of asteroids in our path that we haven’t even discovered yet. So, let’s be at least a two-planet species, as a backup plan.”

One of the beautiful images you conjure is of ballet dancing on Mars. Explain why this may one day be less fanciful than it seems.

We have the Olympics, where we have athletes that understand the laws of gravity on Earth, but once we’re on the moon and Mars, we have a totally different set of physical constraints. Here, ice skaters can’t do anything more than a quad ; four rotations in the air and that’s it ! No one has ever done a quint . However, on Mars the gravity is only 30 percent of Earth, so one day we may have an Olympics on Mars where people could do four, five, six, seven rotations in the air, and ballet, or acrobatics, and gymnastics. A whole new set of athletes could be formed because they are adapted to a new environment where the gravity and air pressure is lower. The astronaut Alan Shepard was the first one to golf— golf— on the moon! He snuck on a pair of golf irons. NASA was horrified, yet in the Smithsonian Museum now, you can see a replica of the golf clubs he used, to prove that interstellar sports could become a real possibility.

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You use the phrase “the fourth wave of science.” explain what this means and how it could one day make it possible to terraform mars..

We’ve had three waves of scientific innovation. The first wave, the Industrial Revolution, gave us the steam engine, the locomotive, and factories. The second wave was electricity and magnetism, whereby we had TV, internal combustion cars, a beginning of the space program. The third revolution is high tech: computers, lasers, the Internet.

Now we have the fourth wave of innovation: artificial intelligence, biotech, and nanotech. That’s going to change the way we view Mars. Many people say Mars is cold and desolate, and there’s nothing to grow there. We can genetically modify plants and algae to thrive in the Martian atmosphere. But who’s going to do the heavy lifting? We all would like to see futuristic cities on Mars, but robots are going to become much more adapted to working in these harsh environments by the end of this century, so we expect to see robotic construction workers building the fantastic domed cities you see in science fiction novels.

Elon Musk recently launched his old Tesla sports car into space. Tell us about the “battle of the billionaires” and how they are shaping the future.

Space was very expensive back in the 1960s. That’s why, after we went to the moon, we lost interest. Now we’re talking about a new golden age of space exploration, in part because a whole fleet of Silicon Valley billionaires are fulfilling their childhood dreams, building spaceports on their own. The Falcon Heavy moon rocket launched by Space X was funded by Elon Musk’s own pocket money . It was the most powerful rocket ever and taxpayers didn’t pay one dime.

Both Musk and NASA are focused on Mars as the next challenge. Talk us through the problems we will face, and what solutions we might find.

We’re going to have to be very careful sending our astronauts to Mars. Going to the moon took only three days. You could go to the moon on Monday and come back on Friday. Going to Mars is a whole other picture. It takes nine months just to get to Mars, then you have to wait a few months for the planets to realign and then another nine months to come back. So, it’s a two-year journey where weightlessness, cosmic radiation, and micrometeorites will all be problems. Mars is also frozen, so we’re going to have to heat up the surface, which is called terraforming.

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Early settlers who came to the U.S. almost 400 years ago had game to shoot, plants to raise and topsoil on which to grow crops. But we will have to bring everything to Mars ourselves. That’s why cost is so important and why we want robots to build things, genetically engineered crops to thrive in that environment, and nanotechnology to create lightweight, super-strong building materials that are pre-fabricated to create dome cities.

Travelling to distant stars will require new forms of transportation. Tell us about the Breakthrough Starshot project and other fantastical ideas being advanced.

Once again, Silicon Valley billionaires are opening up their checkbooks to the tune of $100 million to build the first starship to go to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri . We’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood to think that you have to have a gigantic starship, like The Enterprise , with heroic captains, like Captain Kirk. But the first starship that goes to Proxima Centauri could be the size of a postage stamp—a computer chock full of sensors and cameras, with a parachute on it. You inflate the parachute by shooting a laser beam at it from Earth, maybe 800 megawatts of energy, which would shoot these tiny parachutes up to 20 percent the speed of light. That is doable, believe it or not. So in just 20 years some of them may reach the nearest star, using off-the-shelf technology. Looking further into the future, physicists are already dreaming about the post-chemical rocket era when we might use antimatter, fusion power, or ramjet reactors in order to travel at 50 percent the speed of light, which could take us to the stars.

Another problem with deep-space travel is that it may take hundreds of light-years to reach your destination. You suggest deep freezing astronauts, then thawing them out at the other end. To quote John McEnroe: You can’t be serious, can you?

The stars are extremely far away, but one day we hope to use advanced physics to go faster than the speed of light—warp drive. Until we get warp drive, we’re stuck with rockets that are below the speed of light and the planets we have discovered that are Earth-like would take hundreds of years to reach. This means we have to find the secret of extending the human lifespan or learn how to freeze ourselves. Some companies already offer to freeze your body so that when you are thawed out, there’ll be cures for cancer and other diseases. Don’t believe it. These companies, I think, are bogus. However, it’s a possibility that has to be looked at.

We’ve discovered about 60 genes that seem to influence the lifespan of human beings and we know that certain genes allow animals to live for centuries. The Greenland shark , for example, lives to be over 400 years of age. So genetics may make it possible to slow down the aging process.

Your own preferred solution is what you call laser porting. Explain what this is—and how the Human Connectome Project may be laying the foundations.

The first big scientific project was the Manhattan Project , which gave us the atomic bomb. The second was the Human Genome Project , which gave us the human genome. The third could be the Connectome Project. Many nations, including the U.S., have said that the brain is the key to understanding mental health, depression, and suicide. All that could perhaps be unraveled if we understand the connectome, which is a map of the entire brain.

We expect to have this perhaps by the end of this century. But once we have it, what do we do with it? We could look at mental illness, but we could also put it on a laser beam and shoot it into outer space. In one second, you’d be on the moon; in 20 minutes you’re on Mars; and in years you’re on the nearest star. So laser porting is perhaps the most efficient way to explore the galaxy without booster rockets, radiation dangers, or problems from asteroid impacts. You just laser port yourself!

Let’s end with the million-dollar question: Will we one day make contact with another civilization in outer space? If so, when? And do you agree with Stephen Hawking , who warned of the dangers of contact ?

I definitely think we have to take his warning to heart because we will one day encounter other terrestrial life forms. They’re probably going to be thousands of years more advanced than us. They’re not going to want to plunder us for resources because there are a lot of uninhabited planets out there, like Mars, that they can plunder without having to deal with restive natives like us. The main threat is that we might be in the way. In the novel The War of The Worlds , the Martians wanted to take over the Earth not because they were evil or because they didn’t like Homo sapiens . They had to remove us so Martians could thrive on Earth and terraform it so it looked like Mars.

We have discovered 4,000 planets so far in the galaxy, and we now know that on average every star in the galaxy has a planet of some kind. So I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to bump into one of these advanced civilizations and it will change world history. Not like Cortez meeting Montezuma and shattering Aztec civilization in a matter of months. The conquistadors had a hidden agenda. They wanted to plunder the gold of the Aztecs. I don’t think the aliens will want that. And, hopefully, there’ll be a mentor to show us the way to the future without having to go to war and resort to savagery and barbarism.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Simon Worrall curates Book Talk . Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com .

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5 undeniable reasons humans need to colonize Mars — even though it's going to cost billions

Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity.

At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age — Buzz Aldrin , Stephen Hawking , Elon Musk , Bill Nye , and Neil deGrasse Tyson — are saying.

Of course, it's extremely difficult to foresee how manned missions to Mars that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars each , could benefit mankind. It's easier to imagine how that kind of money could immediately help in the fight against cancer or world hunger. That's because humans tend to be short-sighted. We're focused on what's happening tomorrow instead of 100 years from now.

"If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said in 2008 at a lecture series for NASA's 50th anniversary .

That brings us to the first reason humans must colonize Mars:

1. Ensuring the survival of our species

The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum of space is tough and by no means guaranteed.

The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their fossilized remains. A colossal asteroid wiped them out.

Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence thousands if not millions of years from now.

"Humans need to be a multiplanet species," Musk recently told astronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait.

Humans need to be a multiplanet species. — Elon Musk

Musk founded the space transport company SpaceX to help make this happen.

Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth's and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it's the best available option: Venus and Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts.

2. Discovering life on Mars

Nye, the CEO of The Planetary Society, said during an episode of StarTalk Radio in March that humanity should focus on sending humans instead of robots to Mars because humans could make discoveries 10,000 times as fast as the best spacecraft explorers we have today . Though he was hesitant to say humans should live on Mars, he agreed there were many more discoveries to be made there.

One monumental discovery scientists could make is determining whether life currently exists on Mars. If we're going to do that, we'll most likely have to dig much deeper than NASA's rovers can . The theory there is that life was spawned not from the swamps on adolescent Earth, but from watery chasms on Mars .

The Mars life theory suggests that rocks rich with microorganisms could have been ejected off the planet's surface from a powerful impact, eventually making their way through space to Earth. It's not a stretch to imagine, because Martian rocks can be found on Earth . None of those, however, have shown signs of life.

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"You cannot rule out the fact that a Mars rock with life in it landing on the Earth kicked off terrestrial life, and you can only really test that by finding life on Mars," Christopher Impey , a British astronomer and author of over a dozen books in astronomy and popular science, told Business Insider.

3. Improving the quality of life on Earth

"Only by pushing mankind to its limits, to the bottoms of the ocean and into space, will we make discoveries in science and technology that can be adapted to improve life on Earth."

British doctor Alexander Kumar wrote that in a 2012 article for BBC News where he explored the pros and cons of sending humans to Mars .

At the time, Kumar was living in the most Mars-like place on Earth, Antarctica, to test how he adapted to the extreme conditions both physiologically and psychologically. To better understand his poignant remark, let's look at an example:

During its first three years in space, NASA's prized Hubble Space Telescope snapped blurry pictures because of a flaw in its engineering. The problem was fixed in 1993, but to try to make use of the blurry images during those initial years, astronomers developed a computer algorithm to better extract information from the images.

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.

"You can't script that. That happens all the time — this cross pollination of fields, innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another," Tyson, the StarTalk radio host, explained during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2012.

It's impossible to predict how cutting-edge technologies used to develop manned missions to Mars and habitats on Mars will benefit other fields like medicine or agriculture. But we'll figure that out only by "pushing humankind to its limits" and boldy going where we've never been before.

4. Growing as a species

Another reason we should go to Mars, according to Tyson, is to inspire the next generation of space explorers. When asked in 2013 whether we should go to Mars , he answered:

"Yes, if it galvanizes an entire generation of students in the educational pipeline to want to become scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians," he said. "The next generation of astronauts to land on Mars are in middle school now."

Humanity's aspirations to explore space are what drive us toward more advanced technological innovations that will undoubtedly benefit mankind in one way or another.

"Space is like a proxy for a lot of what else goes on in society, including your urge to innovate," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria. He added: "There's nothing that drives ambitions the way NASA does."

5. Demonstrating political and economic leadership

At a February 24 hearing, Aldrin told the US Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness that getting to Mars was a necessity not only for science, but also for policy.

"In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars," he said .

If Americans do not go to Mars, someone else will. And that spells political and economic benefit for whoever succeeds.

"If you lose your space edge," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria, "my deep concern is that you lose everything else about society that enables you to compete economically."

Watch: ELON MUSK: Here's How We Can Fix Mars And Colonize It

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Space experts say sending humans to mars worth the risk.

Summit takes stock of hurdles, technologies, support needed to reach Red Planet by 2030s

MISSION TO MARS   By the 2030s, NASA and the aerospace industry want to send a crew to explore Mars, seen in this simulated image based on data from the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

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By Christopher Crockett

May 24, 2016 at 12:00 pm

WASHINGTON — There’s a long-standing joke that NASA is always 20 years from putting astronauts on Mars. Mission details shared at a recent summit shows that the space agency is right on schedule. A to-do list from 2015 looks remarkably similar to one compiled in 1990. One difference: NASA is now building a rocket and test-driving technologies needed to get a crew to Mars. But the specifics for the longest road trip in history — and what astronauts will do once they arrive — remain an open question.

“Are we going to just send them there to explore and do things that we could do robotically though slower, or can we raise the bar?” asked planetary scientist Jim Bell during the Humans to Mars summit . “We need to make sure that what these folks are being asked to do is worthy of the risk to their lives,” said Bell, of Arizona State University in Tempe.

The three-day symposium, which ended May 19, was organized by Explore Mars Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to putting astronauts on Mars by the 2030s.

While the summit didn’t break new scientific ground, it did bring together planetary scientists , space enthusiasts and representatives from both NASA and the aerospace industry to talk about the challenges facing a crewed mission to Mars and rough ideas for how to get there.

Part of the appeal in sending humans is the pace of discovery. Drilling just one hole with the Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Gale Crater on Mars since August 2012 ( SN: 5/2/2015, p. 24 ), currently takes about a week. “It’s a laborious, frustrating, wonderful — frustrating — multiday process,” said Bell.

Humans also can react to novel situations, make quick decisions and see things in a way robotic eyes cannot. “A robot explorer is nowhere near as good as what a human geologist can do,” says Ramses Ramirez, a planetary scientist at Cornell University. “There’s just a lot more freedom.”

Researchers saw the human advantage firsthand in 1997 when they sent a rover called Nomad on a 45-day trek across the Atacama Desert in Chile. Nomad was controlled by operators in the United States to simulate operating a robot on another planet. Humans at the rover site provided a reality check on the data Nomad sent back. “There was a qualitative difference,” says Edwin Kite, a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago. And it wasn’t just that the geologists could do things faster. “The robots were driving past evidence of life that humans were finding very obvious.”

To get astronauts ready to explore Mars, the Apollo program is a good template, said Jim Head, a geologist at Brown University who helped train the Apollo astronauts. “Our strategy was called t-cubed: train them, trust them and turn them loose.” While each of the moon expeditions had a plan, the astronauts were trusted to use their judgment. Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott, for example, came across a chunk of deep lunar crust that researchers hoped to find although it wasn’t at a planned stop. “He spotted it three meters away,” said Head. “He saw it shining and recognized it immediately. That’s exploration.”

Despite a lack of clear goals for a jaunt to Mars, NASA is forging ahead. The Orion crew capsule has already been to space once; a 2014 launch atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket sent an uncrewed Orion 5,800 kilometers into space before it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean ( SN Online: 12/5/2014 ). And construction of the Space Launch System, a rocket intended to hurl humans at the moon and Mars, is under way. The first test flight, scheduled for October 2018, will send Orion on a multiday uncrewed trip around the moon. NASA hopes to put astronauts onboard for a lunar orbit in 2021.

Meanwhile, the crew aboard the International Space Station is testing technologies that will keep humans healthy and happy during an interplanetary cruise. Astronaut Scott Kelly recently completed a nearly yearlong visit to the station intended to reveal the effects of long-duration space travel on the human body ( SN Online: 2/29/2016 ). And on April 10, a prototype inflatable habitat — the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — arrived at the station and was attached to a docking port six days later. The station crew will inflate the module for the first time on May 26. No one will live in it, but over the next two years, astronauts will collect data on how well the habitat handles radiation, temperature extremes and run-ins with space debris.  

Beyond that, the plans get fuzzy. The general idea is to construct an outpost in orbit around the moon as a testing and staging ground starting in the late 2020s. The first crew to Mars might land on the planet — or might not. One idea is to set up camp in Mars orbit; from there, astronauts could operate robots on the surface without long communication delays. Another idea has humans touching down on one of Mars’ two moons, Phobos or Deimos. When crews do land on the Martian surface, NASA envisions establishing a base from which astronauts could plan expeditions.

 With so few details, it’s difficult for the space agency to identify specific technologies to invest in. “There have been lots of studies — we get a lot of grief that it’s nothing but studies,” said Bret Drake, an engineer at the Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, Calif. “But out of the studies, there are a lot of common things that come to the top no matter what path you take.”

Any mission to Mars has to support astronauts for roughly 500 to 1,000 days. The mission has to deal with round-trip communication delays of up to 42 minutes. It will need the ability to land roughly 40-ton payloads on the surface of Mars (current robotic missions drop about a ton). Living off the land is also key, making use of local water and minerals. And astronauts need the ability to not just survive, but drive around and explore. “We want to land in a safe place, which is going to be geologically boring, but we want to go to exciting locations,” said Drake.

The technical and logistical challenges might be the easiest part. “We do know enough to pull this off,” Ramirez says. “The biggest problem is political will.” Congress has yet to sign off on funding this adventure (nor has NASA presented a budget — expected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars), and future administrations could decide to kill it.

Multiple summit speakers stressed the importance of using technology that is proven or under development — no exotic engines or rotating artificial gravity habitats for now. And a series of small missions —baby steps to the moon and an asteroid before committing to Mars — could show progress that might help keep momentum (and public interest) alive.

“We thought going to the moon was impossible, but we got there,” says Ramirez. “If we dedicate ourselves as a nation to do something crazy, we’ll do it. I have no doubt.”

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Why Should We Ever Send Humans to Mars?

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.

Adapted from  The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees, published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

In the last 60 years, half a dozen spacecraft have flown past Mars, and 15 others have orbited the planet; seven have landed on Mars, and six rovers have traversed part of the Martian surface. Nearly two dozen spacecraft destined for Mars have failed in their efforts, some on the launch pad, some in interplanetary space, and some on the Martian surface. The first Martian fly-by (1964), the first Martian orbiter (1971), the first Martian landers (1976), and the first Martian rover (1996) testify to our stubbornness and problem-solving abilities in overcoming the obstacles to exploring another planet.

These successes may tend to obscure the most significant obstacle of missions to Mars, especially those that require providing life support to astronauts for months on end: It’s a long way to the Red Planet. As Mars and Earth orbit the sun, the distance between them varies by a factor of seven, from 35 million miles at their closest up to 250 million miles at their most distant. Reworking a simile provided by John McPhee, if you imagine the Earth-moon distance as a short fingernail clipping, the least Earth-Mars distance will run to your elbow, while the longest will span twice the width of your outstretched arms. The laws of gravity and planetary dynamics disfavor trips across the shortest path; instead, interplanetary travel to Mars typically covers 300 million miles, even more than the greatest distance to Mars, as the spacecraft swoops outward to overtake the planet. Using our best rocket technology, each journey requires nearly seven months.

The advantages that human explorers now hold over robots will continue to diminish as advances in A.I. and technology increase the robots’ abilities. Future breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to self-guided Martian robots that would follow general instructions while performing the same tasks that human explorers would. We may use the Perseverance rover’s success on Mars to analyze the issue of how astronauts on Mars would improve the situation. What would change if we replaced a fully automated investigation with one with on-site humans? To take sample return as an example, the tasks involved include reaching Mars, choosing the best locations to sample, drilling into the rocks or soil at those locations, extracting material and sealing it for study, bringing the material to Earth, and examining the samples with the instruments best suited to that task. For all of these except the choice of drilling locations, robots rather than humans can perform more safely, more easily, and less expensively. They cannot match the brain of an experienced geologist—for now. Although our robots will continue to increase their artificial intelligence, no one knows when, if ever, they can match us humans, though we must beware of a bias in assessing our own proficiency.

For some people the idea of having humans on the ground provides the paramount reason for space exploration. In that context, the history of our efforts to study Mars appears as a 60-year prelude to the epoch when humans reach Mars and colonize it. Marvelous though this era will be, the issue remains not whether we want it as soon as possible but whether we need it as soon as possible. Consider this heartfelt exclamation from Jeffrey Hoffman, one of the scientist-astronauts who repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. After five missions in space, Hoffman has no hesitation in saying, “I want to know what it’s like being on Mars!” For those of us who are not going there, the desire to put humans on Mars resides not in our own journey but in relishing the views and news from those who do reach the planet. Hoffman himself summarizes the robot/human issue by saying, “If it can be done robotically, do it.”

The scientific rationale for sending astronauts to Mars centers on the expectation that the long experience and human flexibility of scientifically trained astronauts will allow them to search through new locales and to discern special, perhaps unexpected features far more rapidly than any robot can. Steve Swanson, who flew twice on the space shuttle and once to the International Space Station, points to the fact that Apollo 17’s astronauts covered 22 miles on the moon in three days, while the Curiosity rover on Mars traveled about 12 miles in more than six years. Quite so—but Perseverance will cover Martian ground far more rapidly, and its successors will do still better. The same objection applies to the statement that Steve Squyres, one of the chief scientists for Curiosity’s predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, made in 2005: “The unfortunate truth is that most things our rovers can do in a perfect sol [one Martian day of 24 hours and 37 minutes], a human explorer on the scene could do in less than a minute.” In 2009, Squyres left academia to become the chief scientist at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin corporation, which plans to land cargo on the moon by 2023 and astronauts a year later.

Chris McKay, one of the leading astrobiologists involved in planning future missions to Mars, has spent years in the Arctic and Antarctic to study life under conditions as close to those on Mars as Earth offers. When will robots on Mars have abilities equal to those of a human field scientist? Not on the horizon, McKay says. What about abilities equal to those of a capable field assistant? That would require our robots’ current capabilities to be doubled at least five times, he thinks; he notes that at present each doubling requires more than a decade, “but innovations in the space biz may greatly shorten that.”

Those who want to make the strongest scientific case for astronauts on Mars should rely on McKay’s judgment to argue that in order to obtain the best result, we must send our best investigators: humans. The issue then becomes one of how much we are willing to pay for the advantages that humans can provide. Those who favor robots could stress that as more time elapses, the advantage humans hold over robots will continue to decline, eventually to the point that the scientific argument for astronauts disappears. Meanwhile, public enthusiasm for sending astronauts to Mars will persist, not so much because of the superiority of human geologists but instead because of the belief that we ought to go there.

How badly do we want to see humans on Mars? If you want to assess the strength of your own desire, try the following approach. Imagine that advances in technology could produce a superior form of virtual reality that would allow you to transport your senses to Mars, so that you could feel yourself walking on its surface, feeling the light Martian breezes, watching the sun set over Olympus Mons or Tharsis Tholus, or admiring temporary rivulets at the edge of the ice cap at the South Pole. How less satisfactory would this be than traveling to Mars in your actual body? And how much more important would it be for astronauts to reach Mars in person rather than by this advanced application of virtual exploration? If you believe that in-person exploration could reveal more than virtual exploration, you have judged that we need astronauts. But if you believe that we’re not really exploring Mars if we only do it virtually, then your stance reflects primarily your desire to see them on Mars.

The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration

By Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees. Belknap Press.

Honesty compels us to admit that this type of virtual reality probably could never occur, not least because of the many minutes required for any transmission between Earth and Mars. But try the mental experiment not with Mars but with Mount Everest: How different would it be for you to experience everything that a climber does without being physically present on the mountain?

“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids,” Elton John famously sang in his song “Rocket Man.” A lot of people who want to see human settlement on our neighbor planet think he’s wrong. And yes, exploring Mars—understanding its geology, searching for traces of ancient life and for possible existing life in places where liquid water exists, uncovering Mars’s history and how it fits into the origin and evolution of the solar system, flying drones that can map the entire surface of the planet and discover individual locations of intense interest—is a marvelous goal that fascinates all of us. But to achieve this, we don’t need astronauts, whose presence inevitably degrades their surroundings—something that is of special concern if we hope to be sure that any life forms we may discover are indeed Martian. When we send our ever-improved robots there, they confirm that we are indeed on Mars—not individual humans, but all of us, the earthly species that has the ability to explore another planet in an efficient and ecologically sound manner.

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Why should we go to Mars?

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NASA’s vision for living quarters on the Red Planet

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Should Humans Go to Mars?

A human mission to mars once seemed the stuff of science fiction. but thanks to major advancements, reaching—and surviving on—the red planet could become a reality in our life-time. nasa, the u.s. space agency, and several private companies are already developing the technology to make such a trip possible.   but while most experts agree that we’ll one day be able to send humans to mars, not all of them think we should. two scientists weigh in..

NASA has been sending robots to study and collect information about Mars since 1965. The findings have inspired scientists to continue asking important questions, such as: Did life once exist on Mars? Does it exist there today? Could humans eventually live on Mars? What can the planet tell us about Earth’s past, present, and future?

Many scientists agree that only human explorers can answer these questions. Although robots have been extremely helpful in studying Mars—they discovered ice below the planet’s surface—people will be even better.

For one thing, humans will be able to make quicker decisions, without having to rely on commands from scientists on Earth, like robots do. What can take a rover days and weeks to analyze, a person can study in just hours. Humans will also be able to move around the planet much faster. The Curiosity rover, which is currently exploring Mars, can only travel about the length of a football field in one day.

Humans can move faster than robots and make quicker decisions.

However, getting humans to Mars and keeping them safe will require advances in technology. Not only is Mars very far away, it also lacks breathable air, usable water, and protection from the sun. A round-trip to Mars would take about 18 months, and there isn’t enough room on current spacecraft to carry all the food, water, and other items humans would need to survive. That’s why NASA is looking for ways to utilize the Martian soil and water, as well as other resources.

Exploring space is beneficial for all of us. At NASA, we’re confident that one day humans will be able to travel to Mars, live and work there, and return safely to Earth. It’s just a matter of time.

—JAMES GREEN

Chief Scientist, NASA

It’s important to explore Mars, and humans play a valuable role in that research. Though robotic spacecraft can do a lot, they lack the critical intuition, lifetime experience, and decision-making skills that humans have. But sending people to Mars for long periods of time would be extremely unsafe, and we shouldn’t do it.

Space is a very hazardous place for humans. In particular, space radiation—especially galactic cosmic rays (GCRs)—is dangerous. GCRs are energetic particles that come from faraway exploding stars. Without the protection of a thick atmosphere like we have on Earth, these particles can cause cancer and even brain damage. The longer astronauts are in space, both traveling to Mars and on the surface of the planet, the more they’re exposed to these particles and the more damage they’re likely to experience.

Sending people to Mars for long periods would be extremely unsafe.

Luckily, there’s a safer destination for humans in our solar system: Saturn’s moon Titan. Located 745 million miles from Earth, it has a thick atmosphere that provides protection from dangerous radiation. Titan has many other Earth-like qualities that could help us learn more about our home planet. Titan has lakes and seas, as well as wind, weather, and seasons similar to Earth’s, and many resources that would enable humans to build a self-sustaining settlement.

Human exploration of any planet or moon beyond our own is likely to be far in the future. It’s an enormous challenge to get humans safely to these destinations. We should take this giant scientific leap only when we are ready, and we shouldn’t subject our brave astronauts—and the success of the missions—to undue risk. For these reasons and more, sending humans for long-duration missions to Mars would be unwise.

—AMANDA R. HENDRIX

Senior Scientist, Planetary Science Institute

Continue the Learning Journey

• What do you think: should humans go to Mars? Write a persuasive essay including facts, details, and quotes from the article to support your opinion. Be sure to include at least one argument from the other side of the debate and your rebuttal.
• Although humans haven’t gone to Mars yet, wheeled robots—called rovers—already have! Imagine that you are a scientist at NASA in charge of designing a rover to send to Mars and prepare for a future human mission there. In your notebook, illustrate what your rover would look like. Draw arrows to the rover’s different parts and write about what use each part would have on Mars. As you draw your rover, think about what experiments you’d want it to conduct that could help NASA get ready to send humans to Mars.

Cattle are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Hawaiian seaweed could change that.

Local businesses in hawai’i are getting big funding boosts to help make farmed algae part of the solution in addressing the amount of methane cattle produce..

Limu kohu is most traditionally destined for poke bowls, but the distinctive-tasting seaweed is now increasingly in demand for cattle to reduce the amount of methane they burp into the atmosphere. 

Parker Ranch cattle are among the first of Hawai’i’s livestock to be fed farmed red algae. In previous trials, the seaweed has been found to reduce the amount of methane the animals belch by an average of 77 percent, according to Kona-based business Symbrosia. 

The algae’s ability to mitigate cattle’s greenhouse gas emissions has elevated Symbrosia and Blue Ocean Barns, another limu kohu farm based in Kona, in the growing international seaweed farming industry.

Fueled by its litany of potential applications and climate change-mitigating properties, the World Bank predicts the industry could be worth almost $12 billion by 2030. And that is attracting immense public and private investment interest across the globe, including in Hawai’i. 

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The federal government awarded Symbrosia more than $2.2 million in grant funding this year, including a U.S. Department of Agriculture organic market development grant for $1.2 million late last month. 

That catalytic funding will increase the five-year-old operation’s production by 1,600 percent, Symbrosia CEO Alexia Akbay said. That means just over 6,000 cattle could be eating Seagraze, the red algae product, as part of their diet. The cap is currently 250 cattle. 

With a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, awarded in January, it plans to streamline its currently labor-intensive production process, one that involves three stages of finicky cultivation and drying.

Blue Ocean Barns signed on with two major mainland dairies, as well as ice cream producer Ben & Jerry’s, raising $20 million. Symbrosia last year signed on with Organic Valley, the nation’s largest farmers cooperative, and Danone, the country’s largest yogurt producer. 

The recent injection is “really the next step for us to start expanding commercially for our products, for both local producers like Parker Ranch and then some larger companies like Organic Valley,” Akbay said.

But the company does not appear to be leaving any time soon, given the growing conditions and Hawai’i’s unique climate. Symbrosia is expanding its footprint from a quarter of an acre to 15 acres and looking to increase its staff by 70 positions, Akbay said.

That’s partly because of the year-round growing climate for the seaweed farm.

“We probably harvest a little bit more frequently, ship out product more frequently, just because the seaweed grows so quickly,” Akbay said.

But now the race is on to commercialize and scale the product across the world, given how high demand might be in the future, says Jim Wyban, who developed pathogen-free shrimp which underpins the global shrimp industry.

Going global

Major dairy and beef producers worldwide have started expressing serious interest in methane-reducing seaweed since researchers in Australia discovered its potential. The country’s first commercial harvest was in 2022. 

Meanwhile, the Global Methane Pledge, with 155 signatory nations, specifically targets livestock because they contribute the bulk of agriculture’s emissions. And agriculture accounts for 37 percent of the world’s total methane discharged by humans.

A single cow produces between  154 to 264 pounds of methane per year . The U.S., which commands a 20 percent share of the international beef industry, has a  cattle population of more than 87 million.

“They’re going after a really big problem,” Wyban, a leader in Hawai’i’s aquaculture industry, said of the seaweed companies. 

The global market for seaweed-based animal feed supplements could be worth $1.1 billion by 2030, according to the World Bank. 

There has been local interest beyond Parker Ranch, Hawai’i Cattlemen’s Council managing director Nicole Galase said. But many ranchers want to see results first, Galase said.

Symbrosia’s research with Parker Ranch is slated to last nine more months. The red seaweed has been associated with faster weight gain in cattle , more milk production, and even faster wool production in sheep. 

“We want this research and ingenuity coming up because we do want options. Ranchers are always looking for a way to improve,” Galase said. “That takes research, that takes people trying things.” 

But having a locally-grown and produced product is not going to keep more livestock in Hawai’i, where a large proportion of cattle are shipped to the mainland. The number of cattle shipped to the continental U.S. is mainly determined by how much grass Hawai’i has at any given time, a factor largely dictated by drought, Galase said. 

A valuable crop

There are several other algae-based markets, including construction materials, fertilizers, and other agricultural inputs, bioplastics, biofuels, and fabric.

Each represents an opportunity for greater environmental and economic sustainability, said Todd Low of the state Department of Agriculture.

“There’s three kinds of value to seaweed: There’s the ecosystem services, the filtering of water and benefits to the environment. There’s carbon sequestration, … then there’s this value-added processing,” Low said.

Algae already sits just behind cattle as Hawai’i’s fifth most valuable agricultural crop. It was worth $45 million in 2022. Hawai’i’s entire aquaculture sector is anticipated to reach $600 million by 2034, according to the Department of Agriculture. 

“There’s a whole world of different value-added things,” Low said. “For us, the focus on macroalgae or seaweed is the vehicle into that world.”

State lawmakers have expressed interest in aquaculture recently, though Hawaii has largely ignored fish and algae farming in the past, instead favoring land-based farming. Little has materialized from legislation introduced in recent years.

But algae has still grown as an industry, with little help.

What Symbrosia and Blue Ocean Barns have shown is that Hawai’i can compete in the aquaculture space, Low said. 

“ Hawaii Grown ” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawaii Community Foundation, and the Frost Family Foundation.

Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by the Environmental Funders Group of the Hawaii Community Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation, and the Frost Family Foundation.

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Grist is the only award-winning newsroom focused on exploring equitable solutions to climate change. It’s vital reporting made entirely possible by loyal readers like you. At Grist, we don’t believe in paywalls. Instead, we rely on our readers to pitch in what they can so that we can continue bringing you our solution-based climate news.  

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