INTERSTELLAR, Passengers and Alien: Covenant. The first is science fiction, the second is a romantic drama and the final is a horror story — three very different genres with something in common — all their underlying plots involve an attempt to colonise a new planet.
The notion of humans being a multi-planet race is one that captures the imagination. But there is a practical urgency to this idea if you believe in what Stephen Hawking says.
Late last year, he warned that humans need to colonise another planet within 1,000 years if we are to survive as a species. Just recently though, he’s revised that timeline to a mere 100 years.
Perhaps a mere century to start migrating from Earth is a bit alarmist but the notion that we eventually need to find a new planet to inhabit is an increasingly popular view.
Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame put it best when he said: “I really think there are two fundamental paths: One path is we stay on Earth forever, and some eventual extinction event wipes us out. The alternative is, become a spacefaring and multi-planetary species.”
The target planets in the three movies I mentioned earlier were in distant galaxies but the one everyone’s seriously looking at in real life is Mars.
THE RED PLANET
One of the most hyped-up advocates of Mars colonisation is Mars One, which in 2012 announced its plan to establish a Martian settlement by 2027, with funding coming from a reality TV show, among other things.
A year later, in 2013, astronaut Buzz Aldrin (the second person to walk on the moon) wrote an article for the New York Times where he proposed a manned mission to Mars.
Two years after that, in 2015, he presented a master plan to Nasa which called for a colonisation of Mars by 2040.
Last year, SpaceX’s Musk told the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico about his plans for an Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which would enable the colonisation of Mars through the rapid delivery of a million people, at a rate of 100 passengers per trip.
According to Musk, ITS is a reusable system that will allow us to colonise the Red Planet within the next 50 to 100 years.
“It’ll be, like, really fun to go,” Musk told the congress. “You’ll have a great time.”
Reality tells us otherwise. But let’s first look at why Mars is the default option for those who are looking at space colonisation.
DEFAULT OPTION
When the planets are most optimally aligned, it’s possible to reach Mars within nine months, which is a very reasonable time frame (there’s no need to invent suspended animation or a wormhole, which is still in the realm of science fiction).
Apparently, there’s water on Mars although it’s currently frozen. The Martian day is also remarkably similar to Earth’s with one solar day being 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds. So far so good, right?
Unfortunately, the challenges of colonising Mars far outweigh the positives.
Let’s start with the relatively “easy” challenges like the inhospitable surface temperature on the Red Planet.
The temperature around midday can be a reasonable 20 degrees C but night time temperatures can go as low as -70 degree C.
The gravity on Mars is also only about 40 per cent of Earth’s. In the short term, that’s okay but in the long term it will have effects on muscle mass and bone density.
Now, let’s look at the much harder challenges, starting with the planet’s low pressure atmosphere, which is about 100 times thinner than that of Earth’s.
Not only that but Martian air consists of 95 per cent carbon dioxide and only about 0.4 per cent oxygen. What these twin factors mean is that we’d not be able to go outside without a pressure suit and oxygen supply.
The lack of a global magnetic field on Mars means there’s no shield or filter for the sun’s cosmic rays. Without strong protective cover, Martian radiation would eventually kill us. To be safe, we would literally have to stay indoors almost all the time.
Far from being fun, life on Mars would be a constant struggle for survival. That said, the challenges are not insurmountable because with the march of progress, we’ll be able to overcome technological barriers. It’s not impossible to colonise Mars. Just incredibly difficult and totally impractical.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
It must be said that it’s not a certainty that Earth will someday become uninhabitable. The doomsday scenarios usually refer to a time when ecological damage is so bad that we literally can’t grow food anymore or when the oceans are so polluted that all sea creatures are dead. Or when a nuclear war or huge asteroid has destroyed a huge chunk of our planet.
Granted, any of these scenarios could very well happen but even if they did, the situation would still not be as bad as current conditions on Mars.
The reality is that no matter how bad things get, it’s hard to imagine a dystopian Earth that is more inhospitable than Mars is right now. Remember, the planet is also completely bathed in radiation and there’s no oxygen to breathe!
Let’s say we pollute the air with dangerous levels of carbon dioxide. For it to be worse than Mars, there need to be more than 96 per cent carbon dioxide.
To give you a sense of how unlikely that is, carbon dioxide currently makes up 0.04 per cent of the Earth’s atmosphere.
What about something cataclysmic like a huge asteroid hitting Earth? Well, that did happen some 66 million years ago. It wiped out the dinosaurs and much of the flora and fauna on this planet. But guess what? Some wildlife did manage to survive. We’re living proof of that as our very distant ancestors obviously made it through that global disaster.
Even if there were a nuclear holocaust that made much of the world a wasteland, it would still be easier to rehabilitate the Earth than it would be to terraform Mars.
Even if the land and air had become so bad that we had to construct massive bio-domes or underground cities for people to live in, it’d still be infinitely easier to do that on Earth than it would be in faraway Mars.
Imagine the amount of raw materials, machinery and labour force that need to be transported all the way there just to build a small structure let alone massive bio-domes or whole underground cities.
So, while the colonisation of Mars is a much more adventurous and even romantic notion than contingency plans for an environmental or nuclear disaster on Earth, the latter is much more practical and realistic.
Ultimately, if we are to avert extinction, the best approach is to take good care of Mother Earth and ensure that we elect leaders who will avert war. Prevention, as they say, is always better than cure.
Oon Yeoh is a consultant with experiences in print, online and mobile media. Reach him at oonyeoh@gmail.com