Why Mars

Elon Musk is trying to go to Mars. Of all the planet of the Solar System, why did he selected Mars? In this article I am going to discuss few reasons to choose Mars over other planets.

First thing first,

The Distance vs Habitability

There can be thousands of habitable planets but we have to choose closer ones. NASA Kepler project and some others have discovered hundreds of potentially habitable planets. If you wanna see the list, it’s here. Unfortunately, Mars if not one of them. Actually non of them are located in our solar system, they are far far away. Closest one in the list is located around the star Proxima Centauri. It’s 4.22 light years away from our solar system.

As you think how long will it take to travel 4.22 light years with current technology?

76, 000 years

Here is the reference. I don’t guarantee about the accuracy but you should understand that it’s a pretty long time. So it takes a long time to travel to the closest potentially habitable planet. So what are the options we have? We have to colonize a planet which is not inhabitable.

Closest Planets

Let’s list down celestial bodies in orbits near the Earth.

• Moon
• Venus
• Mars
• Mercury
• etc

As you can see Mars comes the 3rd closest. Then we can discuss why we are not going to habitat Moon and Venus. We all know issues with moon. I am not going to talk about Moon but Venus because Venus is interesting. ;)

Ahh Venus. The goddess of beauty.

Why not Venus? What’s wrong with her?

It seems like everything is wrong with her. Seriously!!!

Of course Venus is the closest planet we have on our solar system, but is it habitable? Here is an image of Venus.

Atmosphere

The first thing comes to mind is the air. The planet should have a thick atmosphere to make it habitable. Of course Venus has a thick atmosphere. People say Venus is the twin planet of Earth, because both are similar by size. Mars is really small compared to both of them.

There for Venus has a gravity similar to Earth. So it can hold a thick atmosphere around it just like Earth does. Mars is on other hand, a small planet with a low gravitational force. Therefore it can’t hold a thick atmosphere around it. (Since moon is really small it almost do not have an atmosphere.)

Unfortunately, even though Venus’s atmosphere is thick it doesn't contain things we need. 96.5 % of it is Carbon Dioxide. Rest of it is Nitrogen(3.5%). Next problem is the atmospheric pressure. Since Venus’s atmosphere is composed primarily of carbon dioxide, it is much denser and hotter than that of Earth. Therefore, it’s atmospheric pressure is much high. On the planet surface pressure is about 93 bar. It is 91 times of earth’s atmospheric pressure. This pressure is roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth.

Temperature

The other issue is the temperature. It is 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius) on planet surface.

She looks cool by face but when you look closer she is really hot..!

Of course Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth but trust me, it is not the reason behind high temperature. Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that it’s because Green House Effect. Yeah it’s a familiar term to us here because it is a reason to Global Warming. Similar scenario believed to be happened in early stages of Venus. It is known as Runaway greenhouse effect.

A runaway greenhouse effect is a process in which a net positive feedback between surface temperature and atmospheric opacity increases the strength of the greenhouse effect on a planet until its oceans boil away.

Until it’s oceans boil away… Mmm . Let’s hope it won’t happen to earth.

Okay, it’s the end of the it. Now you know why Elon Musk choose Mars. You must be tired reading my boring article.

Yeah, an old joke… Bye…!