Category Archives: Mars Colonization

Rising seventh- through 10th-graders from Lilburn, Radloff and Osborne middle schools, and Meadowcreek and North Hall high schools have spent part of their summer at a STEM camp at Piedmont College.

The goal is to work collaboratively to determine how to create a sustainable colony on Mars.

The Piedmont College Woodrow Wilson Georgia Teaching Fellowship STEM Camp seeks to foster and enhance education in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

We seek to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders through learning experiences that promote inquiry and critical thinking, said Bill Nye, the camps director and a science department chair at Meadowcreek High. Moreover, we seek to provide high quality, rigorous and authentic opportunities which promote outstanding academic achievement for all students.

The camp aims to increase campers understanding of survival and sustainability on Mars within activities related to environmental science, biotechnology and engineering robotics.

We believe that through collaborative and well-coordinated efforts, students in secondary schools can find solutions to not only the problems of today, but of the future, Nye said. Students must be challenged to explore possibilities for existence beyond Earth. As Mars is the next most inhabitable planet in the solar system, the exploration of a sustainable life on Mars is warranted.

Nye added that students increased their understanding of biotechnology through DNA extraction and completing a genetic transformation lab by transferring a jellyfish gene into bacteria to witness bioluminescence. The campers applied engineering and coding skills to use a drone to explore a mock Mars landscape, and to program robots to explore regions of interest and extract needed resources. Their further exploration of alternative energy sources will apply their content to energy limitations on Earth as well as Mars.

The field of environmental science has also been explored as students work with simulated Martian soil to determine how to grow crops on Mars and create a sustainable colony. Further explorations into urban agriculture tie directly into the need for locally developed produce and community gardens at Meadowcreek cluster schools and across the community, Nye said.

The instructors for the Piedmont STEM Camp are Woodrow Wilson Fellows in a pre-service teacher graduate program at Piedmont College. These STEM-specialized educators have experience in STEM fields. Theyve been embedded for the past year in math and science courses as intern-partners with a certified teacher and will be experiencing their first year as a classroom teacher in just a few weeks.

This model allows new teachers to develop their craft prior to flying solo and consequently are immediate contributors to their respective departments and colleagues bringing new instructional techniques to the classroom with an emphasis on the application of learning to ensure students are college and career ready upon graduation, Nye said.

The final project for the Piedmont STEM campers was to create a plan for a sustainable Mars colony. Students will have the opportunity to submit their Mars colonization proposal to several NASA competitions including the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest.

Keith Farner writes about education. Good News from Schools appears in the Sunday edition of the Daily Post.

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GOOD NEWS FROM SCHOOLS: Students attend STEM camp at Piedmont College - Gwinnettdailypost.com

July 6, 2017 Latest lab tests show salt minerals on Mars kill basic life form bacteria, implying the 'Red Planet' is more uninhabitable than previously thought

Hopes of finding life on Mars, at least on the surface, were dealt a blow Thursday by a study revealing that salt minerals present on the Red Planet kill bacteria.

In lab tests on Earth, the compounds known as perchlorates killed cultures of the bacteria Bacillus subtilis, a basic life form, a research duo from the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy reported.

Perchlorates, stable at room temperature, become active at high heat. Mars is very cold.

In the new study, Jennifer Wadsworth and Charles Cockell showed the compound can also be activated by UV light, without heat, in conditions mimicking those on the martian surface.

It killed bacteria within minutes, said the team, implying the planet was "more uninhabitable than previously thought."

"If we want to find life on Mars, we have to take this into consideration and look at trying to find sub-surface life that wouldn't be exposed to these conditions," Wadsworth told AFP.

Perchlorates are natural and man-made on Earth, but are more abundant on Mars where they were first recorded by NASA's Phoenix Lander in 2008.

The fact that perchlorates killed B. subtilis in the presence of UV radiation did not necessarily mean that all other life forms would similarly die, said Wadsworth. Further tests would have to be done to confirm this.

Perchlorates have previously been spotted in lines, thought to be brine streaks, on the surface of Mars.

Their presence was presented as evidence by scientists in 2015 of liquid water on the Red Planet.

But the new study said brine seeps, "although they represent local regions of water availability, could be deleterious to cells" if they contain perchlorates.

The findings do contain some good news.

They mean that organic contaminants left on Mars by robotic exploration, of which B. subtilis is a common one, are unlikely to survive long.

It is widely accepted that the Red Planet once hosted plentiful water in liquid form, and still has water today, albeit frozen in ice underground.

Liquid water is a prerequisite for life as we know it.

Explore further: Mars rover scientist hopes to find more evidence of liquid water

2017 AFP

IC 342 is a challenging cosmic target. Although it is bright, the galaxy sits near the equator of the Milky Way's galactic disk, where the sky is thick with glowing cosmic gas, bright stars, and dark, obscuring dust.

Astronomers have discovered a rare, warm, massive Jupiter-like planet orbiting a star that is rotating extremely quickly. The discovery raises puzzling questions about planet formation neither the planet's comparatively ...

A project that explores whether there is a musical equivalent to the curvature of spacetime will be presented on Thursday 6July by Gavin Starks at the National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Hull.

Yale researchers have identified 60 potential new "hot Jupiters"highly irradiated worlds that glow like coals on a barbecue grill and are found orbiting only 1% of Sun-like stars.

When it comes to the distant universe, even the keen vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope can only go so far. Teasing out finer details requires clever thinking and a little help from a cosmic alignment with a gravitational ...

European and Japanese scientists Thursday proudly unveiled the BepiColombo spacecraft ahead of its seven-year journey to Mercury, to explore one of the Solar System's most enigmatic planets.

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This can only come as a shock to those who believe we capture all of the variables in our "simulations".

How do perchlorates affect us human life?

I say misinformation. Have these scientist never heard of Tardigrades or lichen ?

Such a finding has no significance for occasional human colonies at Mars. Its water must be distilled of soil anyway and greenhouses for farming will also block UV. The worse problem is, that the colonization of Mars has no practical meaning not to say economical sense.

Perchlorates are what make you a Jedi.

Perchlorates are poison, not that that matters one iota when it comes to colonization. Man will get it done, whether she speaks Engrish or not remains to be determined.

We settled Phoenix, people live there in the summer, Mars has to be easier.

Perchlorates can be used to generate oxygen. This is useful to human life.

The same feat was accomplished in Harlem, Baltimore, Camden, urban Washington, DC; Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Pacoima...- though it cost $10 trillion during the Obama administration.

Perchlorates....as in Sodium Perchlorate, sold as "Staffel's Weed Killer". Also worked as a rocket propellant when mixed with other substances. Launched many rockets with it. So...it seems mars is covered with 1) weed killer and 2) an essential ingredient for rocket fuel.

We would be better served trying to colonize Antarctica than Mars. If Earth has 100 apocalyptic events it would still be thousands of times more hospitable than Mars.

As a practical matter, the first explorers will rig for Mars as if it were as dead as the Moon -- zero atmosphere, food and water. Any mitigating factor will just be a bonus. Also, this may be a local phenomenon. It may not apply to the whole planet.

Islamic state on Mars !

My parents used to brew coffee in a perchlorator.

So much for Hollywood's idea of living on Mars like Martian as setting up a colony on Mars may need to be dialed back with something on the Moon first; then lessons learn after spending a few years on the Moon might a manned mission to Mars possible.

You need mircrobes that live in acide mine waste

Really, only lunatics would even give a thought that life could have existed on Mars.

OK, I'm on Mars. 1. Where is my air? 2. Where is my water? 3. Where is my food? 4. What will stop me from going crazy from isolation after 6 months?

The martian surface average is more like 8 Rad/year, which can be further mitigated by choice of landing site. The radiation environment in Hellas planitia for instance is some 4 rad/year, still quite a bit more the the 0.6rad/year we get on Earth, but roughly the same as our astronauts are exposed to on the ISS. This also assumes astronauts are just hanging out on the surface without any protection. At the end of the day, radiation isn't the most serious concern in colonizing Mars.

Really, only lunatics would even give a thought that life could have existed on Mars.

@bscott: "This can only come as a shock to those who believe we capture all of the variables in our "simulations"."

It may come as a shock to those who believes that the purpose of simulations is to capture "all" variables instead of deepening understanding by capture system behavior. Especially if they do not see that this was a necessary experimental study (which can lead up to simulations).

@Al: "Shall we spend a $trillion to personally verify Mars is a crap hole?"

We already know that, but it is the best crap hole after Earth for a lot of things such as robotic exploration of once habitable environments. And I doubt Jennifer and Charles had access to that much money

Besides the non-sequitur, that is an erroneous claim. Not only have we seen it happen - Earth started out sterile, now it is not, so life appeared from sterile conditions - we have corroborating and yes, reproduced, evidence from bioinformatic studies of the geological conditions that resulted in emergence of life. [Weiss MC et al. 2016, The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor. Nature Microbiology.; reproduced in: Williams TA et al. 2017. Integrative modeling of gene and genome evolution roots the archaeal tree of life. PNAS.]

Excitingly that geological system is known to have existed on Mars - Spirit found an example - but also in Enceladus - Cassini found that from its plumes, and can be a generic feature of small (chondrite core) *and* large (heated core) ocean moons that are not ice locked towards the core. (So not every ocean moon, unfortunately.)

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Mars surface 'more uninhabitable' than thought: study - Phys.Org

Artists illustration showing SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft landing on Mars.

SAN FRANCISCO Humanity shouldn't dally in its quest to colonize Mars, SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO Elon Musk says.

"Now is the first time in the history of Earth that the window is open, where it's possible for us to extend life to another planet," Musk told a huge crowd here Tuesday (Dec. 15) at the annual winter meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

"That window may be open for a long time and hopefully it is but it also may be open for a short time," he added. "I think the wise move is to make life multiplanetary while we can." [SpaceX's Plan for Mars & Reusable Rockets (Video)]

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk talks to Margaret Leinen, the director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, on Dec. 15, 2015, at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Colonizing Mars has long been a passion of Musk's. Indeed, the entrepreneur has repeatedly said that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species. Having a self-sustaining outpost on the Red Planet would serve as an insurance policy, making humanity's extinction unlikely even if something goes terribly awry here on Earth, Musk said Tuesday.

Colonizing Mars would have other benefits as well, he added; the effort would greatly advance science discoveries and technological capabilities, and it would help inspire and excite people from all walks of life and from all around the globe.

Mars settlement "would be a great adventure," Musk said. "There need to be things that people look forward to when we wake up in the morning."

Colonizing Mars won't be easy, but humanity can do it with a few key technological advances, Elon Musk said. Chief among them are fully and rapidly reusable rockets, and the ability to produce rocket propellant from local materials on the Red Planet.

Currently, rockets are used just once and then ditched into the ocean. That means a lot of money is sinking to the ocean floor after every launch.

For example, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket costs about $16 million to build, but the fuel for each of the booster's liftoffs costs just $200,000, Musk said Tuesday. So finding a way to fly rockets again and again has the potential to slash the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100, he added.

SpaceX is working hard to do just that. The company has tried twice this year to land a Falcon 9 first stage on an "autonomous drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean during orbital launches. Both attempts, which occurred in January and April, were near misses; the rocket stage hit the target but ended up toppling and exploding on the ship's deck.

SpaceX will try again soon to bring a Falcon 9 first stage back down for a soft landing this time, perhaps on land at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Musk said recently.

Mars colonization could be complicated by the discovery of indigenous life forms on the surface, Musk said Tuesday; in such a case, scientists and decision makers would have to make sure Red Planet pioneers tread as carefully as possible.

But Musk doesn't think such planetary-protection concerns will end up being a major issue.

"It really doesn't seem like there's any life on Mars, on the surface at least," Musk said here Tuesday. "We're not seeing any sign of that."

The Martian underground is more hospitable, since any life forms there would be protected from the harsh radiation environment and cold temperatures encountered on the surface, he added. But Musk doesnt think subsurface life would or should derail Red Planet colonization.

"I think anything we do on the surface is really not going to have a big impact on the subterranean life," he said.

Musk hopes to be a key player in the spread of humanity to another planet, but he doesn't expect to be around to see the full fruits of his labor.

"It will be superhard to do this, and it will take a long time," he said of Mars colonization. "I suspect I won't live to see it become self-sustaining."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

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Now Is the Time to Colonize Mars, Elon Musk Says

In BriefAfter a 50-year break, NASA has returned to the idea of usingnuclear fission to power space missions. However, providing energyfor off-world colonists is just one of myriad questions we willhave to answer before we could hope to become a multi-planetaryspecies. Nuclear NASA

Being able to producepower on alien worlds will define our terraforming and interplanetary colonization experiences how we generate atmospheres, produce lifes prerequisites, and power machines for exploration depend on it. NASA experts estimate that a Mars expeditionwould require roughly 40 kilowatts of power around enough to power eight houses on Earth and they think they may know the best way to generate that energy: nuclear fission.

For the past three years, NASA has been funding Kilopower, a project that aims to develop a compact, low cost, scalable fission power system for science and exploration.

The projects budget is around $15 million, and in September, the agencywill unveil the fruits of their labor a 1.9 meters (6.5 feet) tall generator designed to produce up to 1 kilowatt of electric power during testing at the Nevada National Security Site.

Although other alternatives for generating power have been put forward, none are as viable as fission. Solar energy, for instance, would require that astronauts stick to regions that receive an adequate amount of sunlight. If you want to land anywhere, surface fission power is a key strategy for that,Michelle Rucker, an engineer at NASAs Johnson Space Center, told Space.com.

Project Kilopower marks something of a fission resurgence for NASA after a hiatus of more than 50 years. The last time the agency operated a fission reactor was in 1965, when they launched the Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) project. That project resulted in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that are still used to power spacecraft today, as well as the nuclear-powered spacecraftSNAP 10A, which stopped working 43 days after it was launched into space due to an electrical component failure.

Individuals such as Stephen Hawking have issued warnings that Earth cant survive our habitation for much longer, so finding an alternative home for humanity is becoming critical.The question of how to provide power off-world is one of the biggest ones we face as we consider the Red Planet as our future home.

Other aspects of Mars colonization are already falling into place. Elon Musks SpaceX is driving the transportation elementof the cosmic migration forward, developing detailed plans and working on ever-larger spaceships that we could use to get to our planetary neighbor.

Several solutions have been proposed to help us generate a habitable atmosphere. TheDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)is considering using bacteria that would form algae to warm and thicken the atmosphere, while NASA detailed at the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop earlier this year how they could build an Earth-like magnetic field around the planet.

If we ever successfully move to another planet, these questions and hundreds more, such ashow diseases will respond to spaceand how reproduction will work,will have to be answered. Estimates concerning how long this will take vary, with some saying decades and others saying centuries. At any rate, let us hope it is sooner rather than later if Hawkings prediction proves to be accurate.

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NASA to Test Nuclear Reactor Designed to Power Future Mars Colony - Futurism

Conditions make living on the red planet extremely challenging.

With half the diameter of Earth, Mars has much lighter gravity (one-third of Earth norm) and a much thinner atmosphere. Humans cannot survive unaided on its surface.

The air on Mars, such as it is, is about 1 percent the density of air on Earth. Martian air is composed of more than 95 percent carbon dioxide. Since Mars lacks a substantial magnetic field like the Earth's, the Red Planet cannot deflect harmful radiation that comes from space.

It's also much colder on Mars than on the Earth. On Mars, the average temperature is about 210 Kelvin, or about minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 64 degrees Celsius). On Earth, however, the average temperature of the planet as a whole is about 290 Kelvin, or 62 degrees F (16.8 C).

Mars has two tiny potato-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. They are 14 miles (22.5 kilometers) and 8 miles (13 km) across, respectively.

Colonists on Mars may need to draw up a new kind of clock or calendar. A days on Mars - scientists call them "sols" - are slightly longer than Earth days. One Martian sol is about 24.63 hours, while an Earth day clocks in at 23.94 hours.

The Martian year is also longer than that of the Earth because it takes Mars longer to orbit the sun. One year on Mars lasts 687 days, compared to Earth's 365 days.

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How Living on Mars Could Challenge Colonists (Infographic)

You read that right. A spokesperson for NASA recently went on the record to deny a conspiracy theory that Mars is populated by children who were kidnapped and now serve as slaves.

Guy Webster, a spokesperson for Mars exploration at NASA, responded with the facts about Mars.

There are no humans on Mars. There are active rovers on Mars. There was a rumor going around last week that there werent. There are But there are no humans.

Where did this ridiculous notion come from? It might not surprise many of you to find out it was popularized by an episode of The Alex Jones Show. A guest on the show, Robert David Steele, recently said he believes NASA operates colonies filled with kidnapped child slaves.

We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride So that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony.

Jones, who is known for spreading conspiracy theories without any supporting evidence (Pizzagate, anyone?), weighed in with his own thoughts on NASA.

90 percent of the NASA missions are secret and Ive been told by high level NASA engineers that you have no idea Clearly they dont want us looking into what is happening Every time probes go over they turn them off I dont about Mars bases But I know theyve created massive thousands of different types of chimeras that are alien life forms on this earth now.

This isnt the first Mars colonization conspiracy theory Ive seen (although the child slavery part might be new), but I think its the first time a NASA representative has given one enough credence to respond. I wonder if the believers will accept the official story, or continue undeterred in their irrationality?

The most important part of all this is that neither Jones nor Steele ever provided a shred of evidence for the ludicrous and offensive allegations. This urban legend made it all the way to the mainstream, and into the mouth of a NASA spokesman, without any supporting data.

People spread ideas when they are interested in them, without regard to whether or not there is a good reason to believe, and thats the real problem. We can help stop this spread of harmful disinformation by consistently asking for evidence and sharing legitimate research.

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Child Slaves on Mars? NASA Debunks InfoWars Conspiracy Theory - Patheos (blog)

In BriefSnake-like planetary exploring robots might be able to help usin a variety of ways in space. They could carry out space-stationrepairs, explore inaccessible areas of distant planets, and inspecttunnels for future human inhabitants. Snake-like Space Explorers

In order to remedy the lack of mobility and dexterity of larger space rovers, the building ofSerpentine Robots for Planetary Exploration (SERPEX), which were originally proposed by the Foundation for Scientific and Industrial ResearchhasNTEF), have now been commissioned by the European Space Agency. The research team responsible for these robots is a collaboration between SINTEF, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Space, and the Norwegian Space Centre.

The most likely short term application for such a robot would be helping astronauts to carry out inspections and repairs on spacecraft and structures like the International Space Station. Aksel Andreas Transeth, a Senior Research Scientist on the project, said in a press statement that a snake robot could creep behind the sections, carry out an inspection, and perhaps even perform small maintenance tasks.

Longer term goals include allowing teams to explore places on planets, moons, and comets that traditional six-wheeled craft could not by acting as a detachable arm capable of being operated autonomously. This would allow us to gain a new perspective on the small, hard-to-reach locations and difficult terrains of martian worlds.

Most excitingly, these robots could allow researchers to inspect tunnels beneath planets for habitability, whichis crucial for the potential colonization of other planets. If we adapted to live underground, we would be provided a natural barrier against radiation, comets, and solar rays. The idea has already been linked to the European Space Agencys proposed Moon Village.

Of the first snake robots, a concept robot, called theWheeko Robothas already been developed. It has impressive dexterity and mobility due to to its 10 identical joint modules, each having two motorized degrees of freedom, that are covered with small wheels that enable the robot to slither forward over flat surfaces.

SERPEX could be another weapon in our cosmic investigation arsenal, giving us a new way to explore our Universe. We have so far learned an incredible amount about planets such as Mars by, in part, launching land-based exploration vehicles like the Pathfinder and Sojourner in 1997, Spirit and Opportunity in 2003, and Curiosity in 2012. But these missions have been limited by the terrain that the craft can explore. One example: the Spirit Rovers mission was ended when it got stuck in the mud in 2010.

If SERPEX turns out to be as useful as hoped, however, it will only give us answers to one piece of a much larger planetary puzzle. It will have to be used alongside vehicles such as NASAs Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) which provides information on Mars atmosphere, and the upcoming InSight mission, which aims to burrow down into the planets surface rather than just exploring its small spaces.

We are living in the golden age of space exploration, with more missions and initiatives planned than ever before. The information we have gathered up to this point on our Solar System with fairly rudimentary exploration tools has been weird, wonderful, and fascinating.

Ideas such as SERPEX are pivotal if we are going to become more proficient in space travel and exploration. And, now that the possibilitycolonizing Mars is looking more and more plausible, anything that adds to our database of knowledge will aid our entire species.

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Snake Robots Could Allow Us to Explore the Caverns of Mars - Futurism

Photo: Courtesy of IKEA

Life on Mars seems simply out of this world. Leave it to Swedish furniture company IKEA look to what the future holds and use the conditions of interplanetary life to address problems on Earth while keep an eye to the inevitable colonization of the Red Planet.

IKEA, known for its cheap and chic designs, announced that it has sent a group of engineers to spend three days at the Mars Desert Ranch Station habitat in Utah, with the aim of learning how to create better design solutions for extreme environments.

Mars Desert Ranch Station habitat in Utah, photo courtesy of IKEA

Its a crazy, fun experience. Were basically completely isolated for three days to get a taste of what astronauts go through for three years, Michael Nikolic, IKEA Creative Leader, said in a statement. Its almost like that misery you feel when youre out camping. But of course, its great to be able to sit down and really spend time with amazingly creative people. That in itself is a luxury.

The Mars Desert Research Station is a confined spacecraft-like environment that simulates the experience of outer space and is regularly used by astronauts to train for space flight. The IKEA team will use the station to explore the extreme conditions on life on Mars and use that knowledge to address issues currently affecting life on Earth: impersonal design, overcrowding, and compact living in urban environments.

The United Nations predicts that by 2050, more than 70% of the Earths population will be living in cities. Faced with the twin issues of overpopulation and climate change, engineers are recognizing that something has got to give and they are trying to address these issues before they arise.

Wired UK recently reported that IKEA also hopes to partner with NASA on the development of outer space habitats as plans to colonize Mars get underway. Marcus Engman, head of design at IKEA, told the site, that the company is looking to see how to make space travel homey and simultaneously use space knowledge for a better everyday life on Earth.

IKEA plans to showcase the knowledge gleaned from these studies in their 2019 collection of an estimated 30 items. Some of it is of course electronics, but some of it is very far from being electronic. Life in music is going to be part of it. And actually even looking into garments, Engman told Wired UK.

In an interview with Popular Science, Nikolic revealed, I think that the essence of this collection will be about appreciating what we have on Earth: human beings, plants clean water and air. But also diversity and a sense of belongingthings that we take for granted on a daily basis. After this journey, itll probably feel pretty awesome to come home to my own bed.

Miss Rosen is a journalist covering art, photography, culture, and books. Her byline has appeared in LUomo Vogue, Vogue Online, The Undefeated, Dazed Digital, Aperture Online, and Feature Shoot. Follow her on Twitter @Miss_Rosen.

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IKEA Designers Make Life on Mars Feel Like Homeand Vice Versa - Crave Online

Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has to grow food on Mars, a planet where nothing grows, in "The Martian."

Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP). Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and RealSpace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Ah, Mars. The place that dreams are made of. As long as those dreams involve a poisonous, tenuous atmosphere, inhospitable cold and lots and lots of red. Still, people seem to want to go there. But will we ever make it?

"Yes," if you ask Elon Musk. I agree, but it probably won't be as easy as you might think, even if you think it's going to be really really hard.

What's the problem? Pick up the nearest object and throw it. I don't care if there are people around you. Do it. This is an experiment. This is science. Note how far the object goes before it hits the ground. Now pick it up and throw it harder. It went further, didn't it?

Part of the reason you didn't throw it as far as your ego thought you would was air resistance. Plowing through the atmosphere like a bull in a molecular china shop, the object quickly loses speed. But the actual "hitting the ground part is due to gravity. If you took away all the air, your thrown object would still eventually hit the ground.

In an airless world, no matter how hard you throw the object, it will reach the ground in the same amount of time. That's because gravity only works in the "down" direction, not the "over" direction, so for all gravity cares, you might as well have just lazily dropped it. But the harder you throw it, the more speed it will have, and the farther it will go before inevitably hitting the ground.

Or maybe not so inevitably. Imagine throwing something so hard that in the few seconds before it hits the ground, it reached the other side of a house. Or maybe a street. Throw it harder and you could get it across town. Across the country. Even faster: across an ocean.

Imagine throwing it so fast that by the time gravity gets around to doing its thing, the Earth has curved away from it. Gravity keeps on tugging at the object, but it frustratingly keeps missing the ground.

Ta-da: orbit!

How fast is orbital fast? Around 18,000 miles per hour (or 11 kilometers per second), give or take. There is, after all, an actual atmosphere to deal with.

You can certainly go slower and still visit space. Just make sure you packed a heat shield, because you're coming back down. You can also go even faster than orbital speed and escape the jealous clutches of Earth's gravity altogether, which is what it takes to get to Mars.

And that's the fundamental challenge. There just aren't many ways of pushing stuff that fast. Our best method so far involvesblowing up stuff in a tube, and making sure to leave a hole in one side. Newton's laws do the rest. It seems primitive, but the engineers tell me these "rockets" are actually quite complicated.

We can easily send robots to Mars, because their feelings don't get hurt if you forget to pack the oxygen and food. But people are a different well, animal, altogether. Humans are heavy. Humans need to carry little bubbles of the Earth ecosystem with them everywhere they go. Humans need room to stretch. Humans want to bring human-centric niceties, like hammers and toothpaste and lima beans.

Oh, yeah, and we need to bring them back home, I suppose. So pack the spare rockets and extra fuel.

Let this sink in: at the time of this writing, we don't have the capacity to send humans beyond Low Earth Orbit, the very edge of space, let alone Mars. Getting to Mars is hard, folks, and it requires a lot of new technology.

And that's just enough stuff for a handful of hominids to poke around the place for a bit. A colony? Look around the city you're in, and marvel at all the junk it takes to get you through the day. Think of all the layers of civilization and organization (spontaneous or otherwise) it takes to get you dinner. Made of food. Cooked. On a plate. That you will clean up with water eventually. In a house. On a street. And on and on.

A city is a massively complicated thing. Sure, we've built them from the ground up before, but colonies on Earth have a few advantages, namely, a) breathable air, b) liquid water, c) dirt and d) proximity to other Earth-based cities. Even the U.S. National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station the closest to a Mars colony you can get while keeping two feet on the Earth enjoys most of these advantages, and is still a nightmare to keep alive.

And did I mention the cosmic rays? No? Well, now's a good time cosmic rays are high-energy protons (and some heavier nuclei) zipping through the universe, generated inwell, we're not exactly sure, but probably supernovae and other cataclysmic events. The universe is swimming in them, and they cut through DNA like a hot knife through butter. The butter is you in this metaphor, just to be clear. On Earth the atmosphere makes for nice insulation, catching most of the deadliest cosmic rays, but some still make it through, possibly giving everyone especially airline crews a slightly elevated risk of cancer. [Radiation Fears Shouldn't Hold Back Mars Colonization (Op-Ed )]

But a two-year journey to Mars? Exposure on the surface? Better make sure your transports and habitats are well-shielded or buried underground or at least make sure you have some talented oncologists on staff.

Despite these challenges and more, it's notimpossibleto get people to Mars and start a viable colony. It's not like there's any physics-based reason preventing the escapades. It's just a question of engineering. And money.

Lots and lots of money.

SpaceX has an ambitious plan to get a colony on Mars through private investment in ever-larger, cheap, reusable rockets that could deliver a steady stream of people and supplies to slowly build up a colony over decades. It just takes lots of money.

NASA has an ambitious plan to build the Space Launch System, the biggest, most hard-core rocket ever made. With that kind of fire, you could send all sorts of stuff into space, including a crew to Mars. It just takes lots of money.

There are other ideas, such as Mars One ("I know, just leave everybody there, then we don't have to pay for a return ticket!") and Mars Direct, but in the end it takes time. And lots of money.

So eventually, we'll do it. Humans will go to Mars . Babies will be born there. Civilization will flourish or flounder on the Red Planet. It's just a matter of when, and of how much money we're willing to spend. Did I mention the money part?

Sure, if one day everyone decided that we don't need socks anymore, we could use the leftover savings to fast-track a Martian colony. Full of chaffed feet, but a colony nonetheless. We're certainly at the civilizational stage where sending humans to Mars is feasible, which is a huge first step. A hundred years ago, not only did we lack the technology, but also the economic wherewithal to entertain such a wacky notion.

That's the trick to getting to Mars: either we need to be so wealthy as a society that a trip is so economically insignificant that nobody cares, or there needs to be a large political (if led by NASA) or economic (if led by a company) incentive to do it. One or both of those scenarios is bound to happen, sooner or later.

Hopefully sooner.

Learn more by listening to the episode "Will we colonize Mars?" on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web athttp://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Ann Fisher for the question that led to this episode! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

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Will We Ever Colonize Mars? - space.com

Question: Is there any connection between the fact that the United Nations owns 68% of the national parks in the United States*, and the abnormally high number of disappearances from national parks every year?

Almine: The abductions are part of a multinational initiative, but not by the United Nations. There are several nations involved in populating the human colonies on Mars (theyre underground). This has for decades been done by kidnapping citizens from the various countries involved. Sadly, the underground colonies on Mars are where theyre being sent. For decades this has been one of the biggest causes of the millions of abductions that have happened worldwide (particularly of young people). Theyre abducted from streets, playparks and national forests. In the latter case, they blamed Bigfoot, aliens and others.

Question: What motivates these countries to colonize Mars, and why so secretive?

Almine:

The secretiveness? How are they going to explain where all the people on Mars come from? Or worse why theyve done it? And then if all destructs as they anticipate (remember, they dont know were here and are able to repair and prevent catastrophes), then how are they going to inform people that they have to be left behind while they themselves leave the Earth?

Another impetus for this secret colonization of another planet is that time traveling begins in the 2030s amongst government agencies. The time travelers have been warning of gross overpopulation reducing the quality of life substantially in the future.

Question: Will the opportunity to immigrate to Mars be open to the public in the future?

Almine: Only for large amounts of money.

Related: Why Mars Colonization is Doomed to Failure Abducting Children for Mars Colonization The Age of the Lost Children is in Full Swing (login required)

*(1972 Treaty Grants the United Nations Control over American Historical Landmarks July 2001)

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Why the Secret Mars Colonization? | Almine