What Our Future Will Look Like on Mars

A detailed look at the tools and technology needed to create a self-sustaining colony on the red planet

It’s human nature to always be looking ahead at what’s next. The minute Neil Armstrong took his historic first steps on the moon, scientists and civilians alike were already turning towards Mars, and wondering how we could go about landing humans there.

The Set-Up of a Colony

For there to be any well-working colony on Mars, there must be extensive research done ahead of time. Scientists and engineers need to determine the optimal locations of future landing sites and how to effectively transport crew and cargo to the Martian surface safely. This should take a while, and will involve the use of rovers and satellites mapping out the surface of the planet.

Photo by Nicolas Lobos on Unsplash

After all these tasks are finished, companies or governments can launch pods containing materials for the starting base. These pods will carry everything from water to structural parts for the base, and will be dropped down at the predetermined location for the colony. They will also carry devices that will allow the astronauts to feasibly produce these essential components, so they won’t have to rely on constant shipments from Earth. This is good for two reasons; because it will enable companies to not have to launch as many rockets, thus lowering the cost for companies, and it will mean that if there is a malfunction for one of the launches, the colonists should be able to wait out for a bit with no danger.

The Basic Necessities for Life on Mars

For life on Mars, humans will need a minimum of 5 things:

• Water
• Oxygen
• Food
• Shelter
• Clothing

At first this doesn’t seem too bad, especially with the knowledge that on Earth we need to find or make water, food, shelter, and clothing as well, and we’re doing just fine with those. However, there’s a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to making these 5 things sustainably on Mars.

Water

Out of the 5, water may actually be the easiest to come by. The Martian soil is composed of up to 60% frozen water, meaning that it wouldn’t take a very complex machine to extract the water from the ground. One of the most widely-recognized ways to go about doing this is to simply dig up the soil and put it in a special microwave-like contraption to heat up the ice and produce liquid water.

Oxygen

Similar to water, the making of oxygen on Mars doesn’t sound so complicated at all. The Martian atmosphere contains roughly 96% carbon dioxide, and each particle of carbon dioxide is around 97% oxygen. This means that with enough shipments ahead of time, astronauts can work to build a large machine that takes the natural carbon dioxide out of the air and breaks it up into carbon and oxygen, and then provides that oxygen to the living areas of the base.

Food

Food will be difficult, most likely substantially harder to sustainably produce than water and oxygen, at least for the first few years of the colony’s existence. The problem is that the Martian soil is not like the soil found on Earth, it is not nearly as conducive to the nurturing of crops as our fertile dirt is. This could theoretically be bypassed by bioengineering the seeds of the plants to adapt to the Martian soil, so they would not be impaired by it, but this would be very hard and would take a lot of time and money. For the most part, astronauts living on Mars would be eating food sent from Earth in special vacuum-sealed packets.

Shelter

As far as the base itself, all the parts would have to be sent before the astronauts arrived. The lander for the astronauts would have to serve as a temporary home while they assemble the parts of the base initially. The base itself will obviously have to be pressurized so astronauts can breathe normally inside of it.

Image Credit: Getty Images

To compensate for the great amount of pressure both being pushed down by the Martian atmosphere and by the Earth-simulated atmosphere inside, the base will have to be made up of cylindrical parts, and preferably covered with a layer of dirt and ice to prevent harmful waves of radiation and solar flares. Just three years of being on the Martian surface is the highest amount of radiation that NASA will allow their astronauts to endure before grounding them. Crews on Mars will have to be swapped out

Clothes

Due to the incredibly fine Martian dust, spacesuits for walking around will have to be attached to the outside of the base, so the dust does not enter the base. This means that there will be certain hatches for astronauts to get in and out of their spacesuits on the side of the base, which shouldn’t be too hard to install in prefabrication.

Powering the Base

On Earth, there are many ways of creating power, however very few of these are logical for usage on Mars.

• One may first think that solar power would be the best option for Mars, but the reality is that because it is farther from the sun than Earth, it is not nearly as affective. Additionally, frequent dust storms can block out the light for days on end, rendering solar panels useless during those time.
• Due to the significantly cooler core temperature of Mars compared to Earth, geothermal power isn’t an option either.
• Wind power seems like a good alternative, but to have enough turbines to efficiently power a whole base, there would have to be too many shipments and building while on the surface of Mars to make it a productive form of energy. In the future, wind power would be a good idea, but for the present, it is too time and labor intensive to set up.
• This leaves the option of nuclear energy, which is most likely the best way to power a new Martian base. Even though it is dangerous, and if a problem arises, potentially catastrophic, it should not take astronauts very much time or energy to set up properly.

Rotating Crews

It will be necessary for the safety of the astronauts involved to have rotating crews. For the first few years of the colony the rotations will be more frequent, about once every 6 months. Later, once the colony is more established and self-sustaining, the crews may swap out closer to once every year. Just three years of being on the Martian surface is the highest amount of radiation that NASA will allow their astronauts to endure before grounding them. This means that the protection from solar flares and radiation will have to be very well thought out, but even then astronauts should not be allowed to stay for very extensive periods of time.

Growing the Colony

Eventually, more and more astronauts will be sent to Mars. They may not stay permanently, but they will certainly stay for longer than the first human missions to Mars. Overtime, the population will grow exponentially and soon it will not be just astronauts, engineers, and billionaires traveling to Mars, but average civilians.

Returning Home

Launching a rocket from Mars is similar to launching one from the moon. Both have a much lesser force of gravity than Earth, meaning there is less thrust needed to get into orbit. At first, shipments of rocket fuel may have to be sent to the Martian surface before each mission, to supply astronauts with enough energy to get home. In later missions, crews may be able to make their own liquid methane, which can be used as rocket fuel. They can do this by extracting carbon dioxide and water from the atmosphere and soil respectively. Once they have the elements, they just need energy and a machine to combine the two molecules, and they can make enough rocket fuel to get back to Earth.

Image Credit: Darrell Etherington

There have been multiple designs for a reusable spacecraft that can get from Earth to Mars and back again, most famous of which is SpaceX’s Starship. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, says that the Starship will be capable of three things;

1. Delivering payloads into Earth orbit
2. Getting to the moon and back safely
3. Getting to Mars and back safely

Evidently, these are some enormous tasks for one spacecraft to be capable of, but Elon Musk and the entire company of SpaceX are very ambitious and revolutionary in their field, and believe that Starship will be ready for commercial flights by 2023.

Future Cities

While it seems like classic science fiction, establishing real metropolitan areas on Mars could come about as early as 2050. Just like Earth does now, Mars could have housing developments, shopping centers, schools, and workplaces. From there, who knows what will happen next… Will we colonize Venus, start living on asteroids, set up a self-sustaining space station, or even set our sights outside of the solar system altogether? For all of these questions, the answers will come with time, but it may be sooner than anyone expects.