We won’t live on Mars any time soon despite what people like Elon Musk might try and tell us – iNews

In human experience there will never be an isolation as total as that of Mars.

If its visitors stepped outside their habitat modules they would find nothing in the way of comfort. No movement but the little caused by the wind and the rare landslide. No sound save for their own breathing in their pressure suit. If any of them were to climb the nearest hill, all they would see would be more hills and desert plains.

This summer, three robotic missions to Mars were launched: Nasas Perseverance rover, the United Arab Emirates Hope mission, and an ambitious Chinese mission that includes an orbiter, a lander and rover.

When will the first humans land on Marss red, magnetic dust? We cannot know the answer, but it seems that we will not do so in the next decade, or even, perhaps, in the decade after that, despite what some billionaires will tell you.

It is already too late to launch a human mission before the late 2030s, despite the acceleration of our return to the Moon.

A recent report prepared by the Science and Technology Policy Institute in the US and Nasa noted that in 2017 Congress put a line in Nasas budget for a Mars human space flight mission to be launched in 2033. The report considered this and concluded: We find that even without budget constraints, a Mars 2033 orbital mission cannot be realistically scheduled under Nasas current and notional plans.

The next launch window, in 2035, was also deemed infeasible, pushing the earliest possible date for flying the mission to the following launch window in 2037.

One person who is sure we will get to Mars a lot earlier, in fact within years, is Elon Musk. Even before the next human landing on the Moon he wants to send our first cargo mission to Mars in 2022. The objectives for the first mission will be to confirm water resources, identify hazards and put in place initial power, mining, and life support infrastructure.

As if that wasnt ambitious enough, he has in mind a second mission, with both cargo and crew, targeted for 2024, which will construct a propellant depot and prepare for future human missions. The ships from these missions will serve as the beginnings of a Mars base, then will come a thriving city and eventually a self-sustaining civilisation on Mars.

To do this SpaceX will need to build and fly around 1,000 starships that will transport cargo, infrastructure and crew to Mars over the course of around 20 years. This is notrealistic.

Musks space rival is the richest man alive, Jeff Bezos, who founded the aerospace company Blue Origin in 2000.

A test flight of the rocket Blue Origin is developing reached space in 2015 and he plans, like Virgin Galactic, to begin commercial suborbital spaceflight. Blue Origin has also designed a lunar lander that Nasa has chosen to land on the Moon. Bezos doesnt think humans will ever want to live on Mars.

My friends who want to move to Mars? I say: Do me a favour, go live on the top of Mount Everest for a year first and see if you like it.

Bezos once said that space is really easy to overhype. Hes right. Mars presents unique challenges. We have to learn about the planet and about ourselves.

As I envisage it, the first people to reach Mars will not land there. After a 201-day voyage, the first ship might enter the orbit of Mars in 2039. This is several years later than had once been proposed and not landing is controversial.

But there are good reasons. Thinking of Mars as a kind of Earth in waiting is wrong, and likely to get one killed. Mars is Mars, its features are Martian, forever its own.

Earth has a vigorous dynamo that generates a magnetosphere that shields the Earth from solar radiation and the solar wind. Mars lost that magnetic shield very early on and its atmosphere was ablated by the solar wind and is now a mere 1 per cent of that of the Earth. The lack of a shield allows harmful radiation to reach its surface, sterilising the top metre or so.

Earlier this week, scientists said traces of phosphine gas in Venuss upper atmosphere could be evidence of microbial life but is there life on Mars?

Only away from the surface, underground or possibly in caves, could lowly forms of life cling on, the final survivors of a once-living world with no future.

When our worlds were young our solar system contained far more debris than it does now, and large collisions were common. Many worlds were destroyed, none escaped intact.

If life developed on Mars or Earth it is possible that it could have been taken to the other planet by an interchange of rocks between us. We have identified meteorites on Earth that were blasted off the surface of Mars and there must be Earth meteorites on Mars.

Perhaps if we find evidence for present or past life on Mars we may be looking at life that began on Earth, or we could be looking at our ancestors before they came here, making our Mars mission a journey home.

:: Space 2069: After Apollo: The Moon, Mars and Beyond by David Whitehouse (Icon Books, 16.99) is out now.

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We won't live on Mars any time soon despite what people like Elon Musk might try and tell us - iNews