I think the real question is,
Why?
What’s the point?
To seek the answers to life the universe and everything. It’s Forty two according to Marvin but we need to test it.
Partly, to turn what we see in science fiction movies into science fact (there’s a number of people working towards Star-Trek technology for instance).
A major reason though is scientific, getting people to Mars would mean hands on study on what it’s made of and the forces that shape it. There’s a massive universe out there and we want to know what’s in it and what makes it tick.
Eventually the population will be too large for the amount of resources on earth to support. It’s probably worth while getting a head start so that we stay ahead of that issue with out bumping up against it.
You misunderstand. Science isn’t about why, it’s about why not!
just imagined life on another planet,
play video games and babysit drones and rovers.
A side note, why not send a super heavy ship using this method.
Step 1- build skyscraper sized vehicle capable of spacetravel life support
Step 2- accelerate ship to very high speed on ground using a track that is made
by a massive tunnel boring machine, the whole tunnel is a enormous coil gun.
massive lasers all focus on a point ahead of the ship, the air is converted to plasma and a antenna heats the plasma further with induction, at the same time the EMF rips a tunnel down the center of the plasma, at the same time pushing the plasma backward, negating drag 100% and accelerating using electricity.
now we need a space worthy nuclear reactor (fusion?)
and about 50 years…
power the tunnel using geothermal and super capacitors the size of cars. lots of em.
This way we can put a small micro city in orbit, and cruise it to mars, no return.
Idea = Zeropto Plasma acceleration Dartcraft.
I think the much bigger question is not if we can colonize Mars but are we doomed in our system?
Our sun at one point will be our problem so could we leave the system?!
If humans develop intragalactic transportation technologies, and discover other planets that are far easier to inhabit, would there be a point in colonising Mars?
I don’t think that’s really a concern. By the time the sun even shows signs of becoming unstable we’ll have either left the solar system a million years prior (or the galaxy for that matter) or be long gone.
Before our sun turns into a red giant and swallows us whole Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way and we’ll have two suns.
Just one asteroid strike has the potential to wipe us out as a species, to put all you’re eggs in one basket makes no logical sense.
And that’s just the stuff we know about. Imagine suddenly being wiped out of existence by some cosmic phenomena we never knew existed and had no idea was coming.
what about one of those crazy gamma beam things that randomly shoot from black holes and super nova?
Deathstar via nature.
The sources of most GRBs are billions of light years away from Earth, implying that the explosions are both extremely energetic (a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime) and extremely rare (a few per galaxy per million years[7]). All observed GRBs have originated from outside the Milky Way galaxy, although a related class of phenomena, soft gamma repeater flares, are associated with magnetars within the Milky Way. It has been hypothesized that a gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way, pointing directly towards the Earth, could cause a mass extinction event.[8]
Of course there’s always the supernova threat:
A supernova is a stellar explosion that briefly outshines an entire galaxy, radiating as much energy as the Sun or any ordinary star is expected to emit over its entire life span, before fading from view over several weeks or months. The extremely luminous burst of radiation expels much or all of a star’s material at a velocity of up to 30,000 km/s (10% of the speed of light), driving a shock wave into the surrounding interstellar medium. This shock wave sweeps up an expanding shell of gas and dust called a supernova remnant. Supernovae fuse and eject the bulk of the primary elements of nucleosynthesis. They are potentially strong galactic sources of gravitational waves. A great proportion of primary cosmic rays comes from supernovae. Their many significant consequences make supernovae the most important stellar events in astronomy.
Some scientists believe the mass extinction in which the dinosaurs vanished may have been caused by a nearby supernova. Supposedly there are a few nearby stars that appear to be approaching the supernova stage, of course if that’s true they would have already gone supernova hundreds of thousands of years ago and we wouldn’t know it until the light reached us which would be about the same time the destructive properties of the explosion wiped us out.
Less extinction like and more paralysing of course would be the solar storm which could, if a powerful one erupts, knock us all back to the dark ages technologically by destroying our electronics and communications infrastructure. Apparently The White House is prepping for a single weather event that could cost $2 trillion in damage that event being a possible strong solar storm.
Yup, I believe there are two stars that are looking ripe for bursting that we know of and we just so happen to be in perfect range to be exterminated. At least it would be instant.
And let’s hope that we don’t get in a pulsars line of fire.
what about making a ‘vault of life’ deep inside some sort of gamma shielding material?
What is the best shield for gamma?
Probably just put it deep in the ocean.
There are theories that long gamma ray bursts are the reason we haven’t found life on other planets yet.
Life never gets the chance to evolve beyond a certain point before the planet is sterilised by gamma ray bursts, so the technology needed to navigate far regions of space and make first contact never materialises.
This doesn’t mean that eco systems couldn’t evolve to withstand gamma rays, who knows, but it’s fun for creative minds to ponder, no matter how unscientific the reasoning.
Google the photo of earth taken from the surface of mars and then imagine yourself on that tiny dot, typing away, feeding the internet with questions and wonder.
There’s also tons of variables to consider before declaring that a planet is completely habitable.
Distance from its star, atmosphere composition, magnetic field strength (if it even has one), rotation speed, axial tilt, presence of water, atmospheric pressure ect… The fact is the Earth is highly optimized and fine-tuned for life and a given chance for a planet to be quite hospitable for life is very small.
Agreed, as far as my limited science knowledge can assimilate. There are two physicist and one mathematician in my family but i ended up the artist, so i couldn’t add much to scientific debate beyond google and the discovery channel. I’m a dreamer and imaginer more than an academic.
I think there are more earth like planets within Goldilocks zones within our galaxy than you may think though. Kepler has discovered at least one i know of that could potentially be Genesis two.
The numbers could be in the billions given the distances involved.
We also benefit from the gas giants in our solar system as they hoover up much of the debris that could potentially cause our demise. Or at least our transformation back into the star dust we were made from.