If you think of space colonization, you’ll always seem to end up on the Red Planet. There’s a massive media presence suggesting that’s the best and inevitable place to start for humanity.
Technology isn’t that big of an issue any more and even though we’re not there yet, space flights to Mars have been seemingly completed on paper.
But is it really the best option within our solar system? If you scan through the papers released by true researchers from Scientific American or Space.com Mars suddenly loses its appeal and even the Moon seems to become a bad idea to live on.
Instead we should be looking for something that’s better suited for our body and most importantly, our DNA. We tend to forget what a marvelous job our atmosphere does in protecting us from the sun and adverse effects that otherwise would tear through our body fraying our DNA beyond repair. Scientific America even speaks of “brain damage” as a result of exposure to galactic cosmic rays.
To put colonization and importance of protection by an atmosphere in perspective you just need to realize that humans literally need to dig deep on Mars. Sure, Mars does have an atmosphere, but it’s neither robust nor persistent enough and any colonist should be…
