Hi there! known genius Elon Musk here full of good ideas.
tell me wouldn't it be epic to live on a Mars colony live on the red
frontier. what could be more epic than a
Reddit post?
So, it's a colony on Mars it’s the reason why SpaceX exists
in the first place and they are already working on it the establishment of the colony
itself together with the lunar base is scheduled for 2022 as announced in
2017. following years of feverish work,
the project is already in the CGI rendering stage.
the colony will feature cool surface domes a ton of solar panels
and a remote-controlled self-destruct mechanism in case colonists tried to
unionize. join us on this exciting suicide mission which doesn't have any
practical goals or justifications beyond the law or on Mars.
Yeah, a Mars colony is an extremely stupid and dangerous idea
and it will be for the foreseeable future I’m here to explain why if you
are excited about the Mars colony chances are it's because of Elon Musk. people like Elon Musk who pay millions of
dollars to market themselves as real-life Tony starks have managed to convince
a lot of people that our level of technology is far more advanced than it
actually is.
I call this the Marvel effect since their movies do the exact same thing don't tell me that when you first saw the shield Heli carrier you didn't think it was kind of sort of possible to build in real life with our existing technology and don't get me wrong we have come a long way in terms of what we can accomplish but colonizing Mars.
So, what do we need to do before living on Mars?
if we had the technology to reliably colonize Mars right now
doing so still wouldn't make a lack of sense and so throughout the article,
we'll be considering the following points
1. the logistics of getting to Mars
2. the potential justifications for the economy and the practical
problems of living on Mars
3. the psychological effects on colonists
I find the psychological effect, especially concerning your
mental health and Mars aren’t exactly a match made in heaven exercising mental
hygiene is hard enough on Earth
1.
LOGISTICS
let's get started with problem number one,
the logistics of getting there the average distance between
earth and Mars is about 230 MILLION KILOMETES. it's average because the
distance constantly varies. Earth and Mars
don't orbit the sun at the same speed so you can just launch a spacecraft fully
nearly you have time. it is right in a
so-called launch window so the trip is as short as possible this launch window
is about 30 days occurring every 26 months launching in this window means that
the trip to Mars will only take SEVEN TO NINE MONTHS.
the logistical implications of this are of course pretty severe if a resupply mission fails for whatever reason you're potentially looking at a more than the two-year delay of supplies not to
mention the risk of something going
wrong during a landing now recently the
rate of failure for Mars missions seems
to be lower but compared to a Mars
colony those are very simple missions
where you aren't trying to land years’
worth of supplies or actual colonists
for me this would mean absolute
catastrophe as unmanned
missions can afford the risk of failure manned missions cannot.
Justification
let's take a look at
the potential justifications for a Mars colony and the problem is there are none. discounting
vagaries like it’s for science or the mining on Mars currently, we have absolutely no reason to be
there in person there are no valuables to extract in large quantities
but even if there were shipping them back to Earth would make it the most
unprofitable venture in human history. in terms of science there is not much humans could do
that rovers can't. Mars is a rock desert there is not much opportunity
to be productive now. You can say we can reduce the population but keep in mind
that sending a guy will cost you $40 BILLION with B.
what you thought you
would be on the evacuation rocket?? even
assuming we can put together a
city-sized functional colony on Mars and
we can evacuate say a million people via
rockets those seats will be distributed
based on leverage you will be on the
rocket if you can buy lobby or otherwise
force your way onto it. The thing is there are a few billionaires there are plenty
of millionaires and it means the top 1% of the ruling class can go to Mars.
2.
PROBLEMS WITH MARS
Mars is a kind of orange hell for human beings with a wide
range of dying opportunities available to you. Martian atmospheric pressure is less than one per cent that of Earth which means a very thin atmosphere which means harmful solar radiation and micrometeorites tiny stones flying like bullets aimed at buildings and your pressure suits visor.
Moreover on Earth, the
coldest temperature ever recorded was
minus 89 Celsius measured in the Arctic
on Mars temperatures often go below -120
even if you have a warm period the
thin atmosphere just won't retain any
heat Mars outer core is also frozen
solid meaning no dynamo effect meaning
no magnetic shield meaning hazardous
levels of cosmic radiation even if you
dig in to avoid said radiation colonists
will be exposed to higher than average
rates for the rest of their lives that
means after some years rates of cancer
will be through the roof.
in addition, gravity is
one-third of that of Earth so there's no info on what health problems low
gravity would cause. We can only extrapolate how would the low gravity of Mars
affect pregnancies or your cardiovascular system. if you still love Mars, your only option is to
dig in and live the rest of your life in
a Martian underground bunker only
coming out occasionally when there isn't
a solar flare blanketing the surface
with dangerous levels of radiation and
the wide variety of lethal dangers plus
being crammed together in a small
underground bunker with dozens of others
for the rest of your life will surely do
wonders for your mental health.
3.
YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
let's talk about these psychological effects on colonists.
We actually have precedent and it's not looking too good. consider this
quartz article titled It’s completely ridiculous to Think that humans could
live on Mars
According to the article “Antarctica has no permanent residence
nobody wants to live there. scientists who work at arctic bases suffer from a
mental health disorder called winter-over syndrome. Characterized by symptoms such as depression irritability aggressive behaviour insomnia memory deficits”. You got
my point. Your lives are constantly on a
knife's edge because if your life support systems fail there won't be any rescue operations in such conditions. all colonists would be varying
degrees of insane after a month.
4.
TERRAFORMING
so, let's talk about terraforming. okay first off let's get the obvious out of
the way as things currently stand terraforming Mars is harry potter Hogwarts magic.
we do not have the resources or technology to terraform a planet. Despite what Elon
Musk would want you to believe that’s more of that marvel effect. Elon will
press the magic big brain science button and Mars will just get warmer. the
number one thing you would need to do on Mars is to create an atmosphere but
according to NASA if you combine all sources of greenhouse gases on Mars you
would end up with an atmosphere of 6.9 that of Earth 93.1 short of your goal.
Nuking the Martian
ice caps as suggested by countless
Reddit and Twitter experts. It will give
you 1.2 per cent of Earth's atmosphere.
without an earth-like atmosphere, there
is not much else you can do. we just
don't have the technology or resources even with our current level of
advancement.
5.
ALTERNATIVES TO MARS (SPOILERS: ITS EARTH)
let's look at some of the better alternatives to Mars.
first off, a simple
alternative for all the enthusiasts out there. If you want to try out what it
would be like to live on a Mars colony get together with your enthusiastic
friends and crowdfund a trip to Antarctica. That should curb all your enthusiasm within a few months but suppose we are really serious about colonization and why not I think it's a good idea so why not create a colony on the moon first the moon has about zero per cent atmosphere compared to Mars is 0.6 so as far as you're concerned they're essentially the same you'll have a much nicer view of space and travel time is only 3 days instead of 7 to 9 months
if something goes wrong you can go back to earth or at least
have a panic module able to sustain you until help arrives on the moon.
your internet latency is only 2.5 seconds instead of half an
hour and you don’t have to deal with the soul-crushing realization that you'll
never see your friends and family again.
having a permanent base on the moon could also have actual justifications like an observatory complex free of atmospheric interference or a spaceport that could take advantage of the lower gravity or space tourism facilities for the rich or a massive solar panel installation that can beam back power to earth and so on. some of these ideas are still highly theoretical others are more feasible but there is a good chance we'll be seeing at least one of them becoming reality within our lifetime but what if you just can't let this whole Mars business go if a moon colony isn't enough for you.
Well, I have good news
there is a great opportunity for you to satisfy your scientism-oriented urges. planet earth is a great candidate for terraforming there are vast areas on this planet that are unsuitable for large-scale human habitat. how about we terraform
the Sahara desert and also make sure we don't kill the Amazon rainforest in the process. But that doesn't sound sci-fi
enough to Elon Musk. Talking about Mars because that’s how you maintain the
Tesla stock bubble. (where Elon Musk's 75% wealth exists)
so, as we can see Mars
colony planes are somewhere between complete absurdity and stock manipulation but
there is one last part of this article, which is
ADMINISTRATION
imagine you work for uncle joe in his restaurant, you don’t
like your job, you leave it. Imagine working for Elon Musk on Mars. You can
leave but you’ll be dead by just leaving the facility or Elon can spend another 40 BILLION
DOLLARS on you. Surely even if you sell all your kidneys and eyes, you can’t
recover that cost. Not to mention Elon is running a company just like East
India Company but this time it's Mars instead of India. Also, you can’t unionize
on Mars as Elon is the boss over there.
So above article is the reason why you should analyse every
aspect of Elon’s projects before screaming out loud about Elon Musk’s greatness
on your Reddit account. BTW I wrote it in 2021 thanks to the school for helping me
publish this article