Three ways that Colonizing Mars (or other locations in the Solar System) helps Earth

“If we adopt the same collaborative mindset and practices that got to the moon and back, and that built the International Space Station, we can alleviate poverty — and do much more.” — Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 million miles

Although it may not seem like a pressing issue, space exploration and colonization has the potential to create significant economic, environmental, and social benefits for both current generations and generations to come. Controversial though it may be, I believe that supporting a second race to space should be one of our top priorities.

Drive the Economy

Colonizing planets and building space stations would spur economic growth through job creation. The space race of the 60s had about half a million people working to put a man on the moon in the United States alone. Colonizing Mars would be, in some ways, the largest global project ever conducted. Achieving a self sufficient and growing colony on Mars within the next decade or two will likely require millions of workers. A second race to space would not only benefit many existing companies and organizations, but would generate the creation of many more companies focused directly on such a goal.

Although we currently possess the technology to go to many locations in the solar system, creating a sustainable colony on Mars will require the development of many new technologies. As we saw in the 1960s, many of the technologies developed during the space race were quickly adapted for public consumption, generating new industries. These new industries and technologies have been built on from the 60s to become common place today.

Colonization attempts would also open up opportunities for mining and manufacturing in space.Late last year (2016), Elon Musk revealed SpaceX’s concept for their initial spaceship destined for Mars. It requires the launch of two parts from Earth, the passenger capsule and the fuel capsule, which will rendezvous in orbit, refuel the passenger spaceship and begin the journey to Mars. He estimates that these spaceships will carry between 100–250 people per journey. To send enough people and equipment to setup a self-sustaining colony will require the launch of an entire fleet of these craft. In the further future we may need to send much larger amounts of equipment or people at once to further locations in the Solar System or Galaxy. These spaceship could be capable of carrying thousands of individuals at a time and would be far too large and heavy to build on Earth. These would require manufacture and assembly in space itself, necessitating the construction of large factories in Space itself. On the side of mining, companies such as Planetary Resources are already planning for attempts to reach an asteroid and carry back the resources we need from them. The Moon, Mars, and many asteroids possess raw materials and minerals that while scarce on Earth are in plentiful supply there. These mining companies could become the primary supplier of raw materials for our spaceship manufacturing facilities in space. What will happen when we mine an asteroid such as this one, packing platinum and other rare metals in a quantity valued at approximately $5 trillion today. Could this drive the cost of such rare metals down in a similar way to what happened with aluminium and the invention of electrolysis? Imagine what could happen if this is the case!

Learn how to control Climate Change

For humans (as we currently exist) to live on the surface of Mars without space suits we will have to create an atmosphere (and maybe a magnetic field) to allow us to breathe and to protect us from solar winds. In doing so we will learn about so many aspects of weather and climate. If all is successful we can take this knowledge and apply it to Earth’s atmosphere as well. Imagine being able to exert our will directly onto the atmosphere! Global warming and climate change could be a thing of the past. While extremely speculative an idea I believe that using a planet like Mars as an experimental test bed for terraforming can have immense benefits to our understanding and control over Earth’s climate.

Back up drive for humanity

Shown here is a small list of potential apocalyptic events. While the odds of any of these occurring tomorrow are small, the likelihood increases the longer time goes by. When looking at asteroid impacts we have observed several near misses of asteroids on a scale large enough to cause global devastation. Eventually there will be one that is on course to hit us. However, while we can create solutions to asteroids on collision courses there are some events that we can do nothing to defend against. By developing off-world colonies we create a backup to allow for the continuation of our species if life on Earth is destroyed. With the development of these colonies, and the technologies already discussed to allow for them, we will also have created the ability to perform a mass evacuation of a planet if necessary.

While these points are only a few of the many benefits to expanding our horizons beyond Earth I hope that this has helped to make it clear that the colonization of our solar system should be one of the main goals of this century because as long as we live on one planet we are a doomed species.