Mr. Trump has appointed as head of NASA a billionaire (who else?) who, like Mr. Musk, thinks we should colonize Mars. These people have been watching too many Star Wars movies. The notion of colonizing Mars is truly, deeply idiotic. I discussed this in an earlier essay; I’m going to approach the issue from a somewhat different angle now.
Antarctica versus Mars
If you’re really determined to colonize something, Antarctica would be a much nicer place. It’s warmer. The average temperature on Mars is a super-cold -70ºF, while the average temperature in Antarctica is a balmy -10ºF. Water is quite scarce on Mars, but in Antarctica you’re surrounded by zillions of tons of solid water. Oxygen? Nothing breathable on Mars, but in Antarctica the oxygen is just fine, thank you.
Sure, we could ship water and oxygen to Mars — but every molecule would have to be recycled. Recycling gobbles up lots of energy, so you couldn’t waste either water or oxygen. The airlocks would have to be super-efficent so as not to let any precious oxygen to escape. Water would be for drinking, sewage, and cleaning only. No bathing, no swimming pools, and showers would be limited to maybe a minute at low flow. You’d have to learn a new discipline for treating water like liquid gold.
Now let’s talk about the cost of actually getting stuff to the two prospective colonies. Right now it costs about $2000 to put one kilogram of cargo into low earth orbit. Getting it all the way to Mars would be considerably more expensive. We don’t have any reliable estimates of those costs, but based only on the energy requirements, I’d say it would cost about ten times more — so we’re talking something like $20,000 per kilogram to get cargo to Mars. Now, Mr. Musk claims that his monster rocket (“Starship”) will greatly lower the costs. So I’ll be charitable and cut my estimate by 75%, all the way down to $5,000 per kilogram.
Compare that with the cost of shipping cargo to Antarctica. Commercial air cargo costs about $2 - $5 per kilogram, depending on the specific circumstances. Again, let’s be charitable to the Mars people and use the highest figure. At $5 per kilogram, cargo to Antarctica costs one-thousandth as much as cargo to Mars.
Let’s not forget transit times. The time to ship cargo to Mars varies, depending upon the relative positions of Earth and Mars, from an absolute low of 3 months to a maximum of 2 years. The time to ship cargo from the USA to Antarctica is less than 24 hours. Hence, a colony on Antarctica doesn’t need extensive redundancy for its systems; if something breaks down, within 48 hours the Amazon delivery guy can be knocking on their door.
Life on Mars versus life in Antarctica
In the aforementioned essay, I asked what colonists would do with themselves, and pointed out that there just isn’t anything economically productive for them to do. I did not mention how miserable their lives would be. If were you a colonist on Mars, there’d be no relaxing strolls in the open air, no outside jogging, no trips to the beach, no sunbathing, no forests to meander through, no birds to watch, no fish to catch, no wildlife to see (no zoos, either), no baseball games, no swimming pools, and no Disneyland. Gardening would be part of life, but it wouldn’t be anything like puttering around in your back yard; everything would be carefully regimented. You’d have to make do with ping-pong, basketball, and exercise machines. Life in a Martian colony would resemble life in an old-folks home. At least you’d be able to play bingo.
Life in Antarctica wouldn’t be as nice as life in, say, Santa Monica; you wouldn’t want to go surfing or build sand castles at the beach. But you could certainly get outside and go for hikes. Penguins would probably be the only wildlife you’d see, but they’re better than the rocks of Mars. But your accommodations would surely be roomier than those on Mars; without the need for tight air seals everywhere, there’d be lots more room to build.
Moreover, there’d be useful things to do. Yes, we really could have mines in Antarctica, and ore processing plants and steel mills and lots of other industrial paraphernalia. We could have the greatest ski resorts in the world.
Another thing: if you go to Mars, you probably aren’t coming back. The trip there is expensive and time-consuming enough; coming back would just be another huge expense. I suppose that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could afford it, but not you. By contrast, a two-week vacation would be plenty of time to fly back home, get a good sunburn, tell tall tales to your friends and relatives about life in Antarctica, and do all the things that you miss doing in Antarctica.
Greenland?
If Antarctica is too harsh an environment for you, there’s always Greenland (assuming that Mr. Trump doesn’t antagonize the Greenlanders so much that Americans become unwelcome.). It’s even warmer than Antarctica; the population has little gardens in the summer. There’s actually soil and you can go fishing in the sea.
So why bother colonizing Mars?
The obvious question is “Why bother? What’s the point of sending people to miserable prisons on another planet?” The answer, of course, is that there isn’t any point to it — it’s just the fever dream of people who have so much money that they cannot imagine what to do with it. But let’s address some of their preposterous excuses for colonizing Mars.
“We’ll need the space”
No, we won’t. Human populations are already declining in developed nations; indeed population decline is now a serious problem in a number of countries. Population is still rising in Africa, but that won’t last long. The current best guess is that the population will peak at 10.4 billion around the year 2086, then begin declining. We’re already at 8 billion, so we won’t be needing lots of new space. If you look at the photos of the earth from space, you can see how much empty land there is here on earth.
“It is our destiny to explore new worlds”
Sheesh. What a pile of 19th-century claptrap! We make our own destiny; there’s no Great God pulling our puppet strings who’ll drag us off to Mars.
“But… but… what about Star Trek?”
I know that this sounds insane, but it sure seems to me that a lot of people are caught up in these fantasies. I love Star Trek; it’s great science fiction. But let’s not forget the fact that it’s science FICTION. It is not a prediction of our future. It’s entertainment, not analysis.
“We need a backup planet in case we destroy earth”
Mars is no backup; a colony on Mars will never be self-sustaining. Even if we somehow build up a colony with a billion people, the cost of extracting enough resources to sustain such a colony from the Martian environment will be too great. The colony will always need shipments of critical stuff from home. If we destroy earth, then the people on Mars will inevitably die.
More to the point, it’s a LOT easier and cheaper to save this planet than to try to build a backup on an inhospitable planet. Earth is a great place to live; it’s got everything we need and love. If we lose the forests and the farms, the clouds and the jungles, the kangaroos and the whales, will the bitter cold desert of Mars be an adequate replacement?
