Category Archives: Mars Colonization

QUESTION: Is it possible to colonize mars to the extent that human beings could live there? If so, then how would you go about it? Would we ever need to colonize Mars? ANSWER from R. Bourke on January 9, 1997: It may be possible for people to live on Mars in the future, but they must be protected from the environment. Conditions on Mars are much more harsh than any on Earth. It is very cold--far below freezing--there is no water, and the air is very thin and mostly carbon dioxide. Thus people will not be able to breath the air without space suits. In fact, machinery must be used to decompose the carbon dioxide to separate the oxygen to produce breathable air. ANSWER from Jack Farmer on January 30, 1997: The colonization of Mars by humans is being thought of in terms of "terraforming", which simply means modifying the Martian atmosphere and climate to make the "red planet" habitable for life. The Surface Environment of Mars: Cold, Dry and Full of Radiation The present surface of Mars is an inhospitable place for any terrestrial life form, whether microbe or person. The atmospheric pressure averages about 7.5 millibars (the avg. for Earth is 1000 mb). This means that water is unstable and can exist only as ice or vapor at the surface. In addition, the thin atmosphere of Mars is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide (95%) and it lacks the oxygen needed to support human colonists without creating airtight shelters or spacesuits filled with our kind of atmosphere. The lack of oxygen also poses another risk. There is no protective ozone shield and the surface gets a very heavy dose of ultraviolet radiation (3-4X that at the Earth's surface). We know that UV is harmful to most life forms (that's why we have to use sunscreen!). As far as we know, Mars lacks a magnetic field, and that means that lots of other harmful radiation reaches the surface of Mars from the sun that, on Earth, is deflected away from the surface by the magnetic field. The temperature of the Martian surface is below freezing most of the time over most of the surface. Lastly, Mars is very cold (mostly below freezing most everywhere), but humans are able to live in cold climates on Earth, so that is not an insurmountable problem. However, combined with everything else, it makes colonization a real challenge. Building a Martian Atmosphere: An Oxygen-rich Greenhouse Terraforming would involve increasing the atmospheric density of Mars by liberating the water and carbon dioxide that lies frozen in the soils and on the polar caps of Mars to create a "greenhouse" effect (carbon dioxide and water both absorb heat energy from the sun and retain it causing the atmosphere to warm up) that would raise the surface temperature to the point where liquid water would be stable. There are a number of ideas for how to do that, but most involve installing large atmosphere-producing plants on Mars that would pump out carbon dioxide and perhaps other greenhouse gases like methane continuously until the atmiosphere was built up to the right level. Obviously, at some point we would also want to add oxygen to make the atmosphere breathable. On Earth, oxygen in our atmosphere is almost entirely formed by photosynthesis of green plants. So during terraforming, sometime after water ahd been rendered stable by the increased atmosphere, we would introduce photosynthesizing plants to contribute oxygen. What other benefit do you think oxygen would add, based on the preceeding discussion? There are a number of people and approaches that have been suggested for terraforming. Additional Reading: Some of these ideas were reviewed in a recent book by Robert Zubrin titled "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must" (1996, Free Press Publishing). Jack D. Farmer, PhD. NASA Ames Research Center ANSWER from Mark Adler on June 20, 1997: Yes. But it won't be easy. Mars is deathly cold (around minus 100 F), has a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere with almost no oxygen, and has no ready supply of water. You'd have to *really* want to live there. A few people could be sustained on Mars with a steady line of supplies coming from Earth. In the long term, decades, we could find ways to provide some of those supplies on Mars, allowing the small colony to become more and more self-sufficient over time, and to possibly even grow. It would be a very long time, perhaps a century or more, before a colony on Mars could be completely independent. On even longer time scales, a few centuries, some people believe that we could change Mars globally to make it more hospitable for people by somehow making the atmosphere thicker and warmer. ANSWER from Mark Adler on July 29, 1997: There is certainly the possibility of humans exploring Mars. It's simply a matter of the rather high cost. Mars' atmosphere is extremely thin (less than 1/100th as thick as our atmosphere), is composed mostly of carbon dioxide, and is very cold. In short, Mars' atmosphere cannot support humans or other Earth life. However, that does not mean that we cannot inhabit the planet someday. We would need special enclosures to contain a warm, Earth-like atmosphere to live in. Mars' atmosphere of carbon dioxide and some nitrogen can be used, with some machinery and electrical power, to create and replenish an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere in the enclosures. Water is a bit more of a problem, but there may be solutions there as well. Some people talk about actually changing Mars' atmosphere on a global scale to make it thicker and warmer in order to make habitation easier This is inspired in part by human's inadvertent but noticeable effect on Earth's atmosphere. However, it will likely be a long time before we have the technology and sheer presence to make global changes on Mars. Mark Adler ANSWER from Jim Murphy on June 22, 1998: I do not think that humans will NEED to colonize Mars, but I believe that we will have a very strong desire to do so since it is a challenge to be met (like going to the moon was..). I don't believe that current and future environmental problems we must deal with here on Earth are a good argument for developing a Mars colony. Rather, I'd prefer that we deal with our problems here. If we can develop the technology to build and sustain a Mars colony, then we can certainly develop strategies to deal with our problems here on earth without running (or rocketing) away to another planet. I certainly think that a Mars colony is possible. I would not expect one to be developed/built prior to 50-100 years from now, unless some form of life is discovered there, which would greatly accelerate the desire to get a base established. The cost will be enormous, and currently neither the money nor political will exists to fund the effort, but there are people thinking about how to do it. The advantages to having a Mars colony are to be able to conduct long-term science studies there, and to be able to travel over large distances on the surface repeatedly. Since the day length on Mars is 24 hours and 36 minutes, I would think it would be no problem to adjust to that day length. A colony would need to be "self contained", that is a structure not directly opened to the Martian atmosphere, since the Martian atmosphere is not capable of sustaining people (the lack of oxygen, and low atmospheric pressures would be deadly to anyone directly exposed to the atmosphere). Weather would play a role in determining how people travel about on the surface. Being out during a dust storm might make determining which direction to go difficult, and the large winds which might sometime blow could be a problem for some of the structure. ANSWER from Donna Shirley on July 9, 1998: I don't think humans "need" to colonize Mars in the sense that colonizing Mars will save us from the affects of overpopulating or despoiling the earth. If we get into such a situation I don't think that we will be able to afford to colonize a planet so far away. I think we "need" to explore Mars from the standpoint that we are a curious, exploring species. Donna Shirley

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NASA Quest: Possibility of colonizing Mars

We are an international symposium, spanning students and professionals, scientists and laymen alike, all with a desire to colonize and terraform Mars. Our visitors have the opportunity to submit ideas in these evolving fields, knowing they are literally writing the books on Mars. Their articles are discussed by the scientific community until the most comprehensive, efficient and realistic Plan is developed and enacted. Read the

Mr. Gellert also stated that data has been collected during the day and the night, and both have good data. The importance of this statement, beyond having a working spectrometer, is that the APXS sensor is sensitive enough to pick up thermal noise in the sensor between the day and night. The MER detectors

Ken Edgett, the MAHLI Primary Investigator, was next to speak and showed

During the Q&A session, Joy Crisp, MSL Deputy Project Scientist, fielded a question about the

The

- posted by Jim@ 23:51 EST

The conference was kicked off with Jennifer Trosper, MSL Mission Mananger, re-assuring us that we are in the final Sol of characterization. Today, Sol 37 puts the team one day behind schedule, but, according to Trosper, in her experience on Pathfinder, which she noted lost 1 in 3 sols to unexpected events, and MER, which lost 1 in 10, that the MSL team is doing well. Thus far, Curiosity has shown that her arm can reach all of the calibration targets and "teach points," which are points that would be needed to be reached to fulfill the science mission, such as moving over the

Ms. Trosper also noted that over the next couple of days the MastCam will be pointed to the sun to watch the transits of Phobos and Deimos, and event that only happens twice a Martian Year. MastCam will take video of the transit, but will only transmit back a few frames to Earth. The rest will be stored until a later date because of constraints on bandwidth and the importance of engineering data at the moment.

Additionally, it was added that the RTGs are producing 115W of energy and the rover is kept between 7C and 37C, right where they should be. Also, the rover has driven 109m according to the odometer, but only 82m the way the crow flies. Glenelg is approximately 400m away and Curiosity can move 30m/sol to 40m/sol depending on the terrain and science-team needs.

Over the next two months, the team will attempt to move back to Earth-time. Currently the team is using Mars-time in order to maximize the time they have before needing to send commands to the rover from the time they get the downlink. Currently it takes approximately 8 hours to figure out what the team wants to do and another 8 hours to turn that into a sequence of commands. By Sol 90, it is hoped that the team will be fast enough to allow them to function on Earth-time.

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Red Colony - Colonizing and Terraforming Mars

"Red Mars" redirects here. For the planet, see Mars.

The Mars trilogy is a series of award-winning science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the intensely personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.

The three novels are Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996). The Martians (1999) is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. The main trilogy won a number of prestigious awards. Icehenge (1984), Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements. The trilogy shares some similarites with Robinson's more recent novel 2312 (2012), for instance, the terraforming of Mars and the extreme longevity of the characters in both novels.

Red Mars starts in 2026 with the first colonial voyage to Mars aboard the Ares, the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built (interestingly, from clustered space shuttle external fuel tanks which, instead of incinerating in the atmosphere, have been boosted into orbit until enough had been amassed to build a ship and also used as landing craft) and home to a crew who are to be the first hundred Martian colonists. The mission is a joint Russian-American undertaking, and seventy of the First Hundred are drawn from these countries (except, for example, Michel Duval, a French psychologist assigned to observe their behavior). The book details the trip out, construction of the first settlement on Mars (eventually called Underhill) by Nadia Chernyshevski, as well as establishing colonies on Mars' hollowed out asteroid-moon Phobos, the ever-changing relationships between the colonists, debates among the colonists regarding both the terraforming of the planet and its future relationship to Earth. The two extreme views on terraforming are personified by Saxifrage "Sax" Russell, who believes their very presence on the planet means some level of terraforming has already begun and that it is humanity's obligation to spread life as it is the most scarce thing in the known universe, and Ann Clayborne, who stakes out the position that humankind does not have the right to change entire planets at their will.

Russell's view is initially purely scientific but in time comes to blend with the views of Hiroko Ai, the chief of the Agricultural Team who assembles a new belief system (the "Areophany") devoted to the appreciation and furthering of life ("viriditas"); these views are collectively known as the "Green" position, while Clayborne's naturalist stance comes to be known as "Red." The actual decision is left to the United Nations Organization Mars Authority (UNOMA), which greenlights terraforming, and a series of actions get underway, including the drilling of "moholes" to release subsurface heat; thickening of the atmosphere according to a complicated bio-chemical formula that comes to be known as the "Russell cocktail" after Sax Russell; and the detonation of nuclear explosions deep in the sub-surface permafrost to release water. Additional steps are taken to connect Mars more closely with Earth, including the insertion of a geosynchronous asteroid "Clarke" to which a space elevator cable is tethered.

Against the backdrop of this development is another debate, one whose principal instigator is Arkady Bogdanov of the Russian contingent (possibly named in homage to the Russian polymath and science fiction writer Alexander Bogdanov). Bogdanov argues that Mars need not and should not be subject to Earth traditions, limitations, or authority. He is to some extent joined in this position by John Boone, famous as the "First Man on Mars" from a preceding expedition and rival to Frank Chalmers, the technical leader of the American contingent. Their rivalry is further exacerbated by competing romantic interest in Maya Katarina Toitovna, the leader of the Russian contingent. (In the opening of the book, Chalmers instigates a sequence of events that leads to Boone being assassinated; much of what follows is a retrospective examination of what got things to that point.)

Earth meanwhile increasingly falls under the control of transnational corporations (transnats) that come to dominate its governments, particularly smaller nations adopted as "flags of convenience" for extending their influence into Martian affairs. As UNOMA's power erodes, the Mars treaty is renegotiated in a move led by Frank Chalmers; the outcome is impressive but proves short-lived as the transnats find ways around it through loop-holes. Things get worse as the nations of Earth start to clash over limited resources, expanding debt, and population growth as well as restrictions on access to a new longevity treatment developed by Martian scienceone that holds the promise of lifespans into the hundreds of years. In 2061, with Boone dead and exploding immigration threatening the fabric of Martian society, Bogdanov launches a revolution against what many now view as occupying transnat troops operating only loosely under an UNOMA rubber-stamp approval. Initially successful, the revolution proves infeasible on the basis of both a greater-than-expected willingness of the Earth troops to use violence and the extreme vulnerability of life on a planet without a habitable atmosphere. A series of exchanges sees the cutting of the space elevator, bombardment of several Martian cities (including the city where Bogdanov is himself organizing the rebellion; he is killed), the destruction of Phobos and its military complex, and the unleashing of a great flood of torrential groundwater freed by nuclear detonations.

By the end, most of the First Hundred are dead, and virtually all who remain have fled to a hidden refuge established years earlier by Ai and her followers. (One exception is Phyllis Boyle, who has allied herself with the transnats; she is on Clarke when the space elevator cable is cut and sent flying out of orbit to a fate unknown by the conclusion of the book.) The revolution dies and life on Mars returns to a sense of stability under heavy transnat control. The clash over resources on Earth breaks out into a full-blown world war leaving hundreds of millions dead, but cease-fire arrangements are reached when the transnats flee to the safety of the developed nations, which use their huge militaries to restore order, forming police-states. But a new generation of humans born on Mars holds the promise of change. In the meantime, the remaining First Hundredincluding Russell, Clayborne and Chernyshevskisettle into life in Ai's refuge called Zygote, hidden under the Martian south pole.

Green Mars takes its title from the stage of terraforming that has allowed plants to grow. It picks up the story 50 years after the events of Red Mars in the dawn of the 22nd century, following the lives of the remaining First Hundred and their children and grandchildren. Hiroko Ai's base under the south pole is attacked by UN Transitional Authority (UNTA) forces, and the survivors are forced to escape into a (less literal) underground organization known as the Demimonde. Among the expanded group are the First Hundred's children, the Nisei, a number of whom live in Hiroko's second secret base, Zygote.

As unrest in the multinational control over Mars' affairs grow, various groups start to form with different aims and methods. Watching these groups evolve from Earth, the CEO of the Praxis Corporation sends a representative, Arthur Randolph, to organize the resistance movements. This culminates into the Dorsa Brevia agreement, in which nearly all the underground factions take part. Preparations are made for a second revolution beginning in the 2120s, from converting moholes to missiles silos or hidden bases, sabotaging orbital mirrors, to propelling Deimos out of Mars' gravity well and out into deep space so it could never be used as a weapons platform as Phobos was.

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Mars trilogy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From Ad Astra July/August 1996

Among extraterrestrial bodies in our solar system, Mars is singular in that it possesses all the raw materials required to support not only life, but a new branch of human civilization. This uniqueness is illustrated most clearly if we contrast Mars with the Earth's Moon, the most frequently cited alternative location for extraterrestrial human colonization.

In contrast to the Moon, Mars is rich in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, all in biologically readily accessible forms such as carbon dioxide gas, nitrogen gas, and water ice and permafrost. Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen are only present on the Moon in parts per million quantities, much like gold in seawater. Oxygen is abundant on the Moon, but only in tightly bound oxides such as silicon dioxide (SiO2), ferrous oxide (Fe2O3), magnesium oxide (MgO), and aluminum oxide (Al2O3), which require very high energy processes to reduce. Current knowledge indicates that if Mars were smooth and all its ice and permafrost melted into liquid water, the entire planet would be covered with an ocean over 100 meters deep. This contrasts strongly with the Moon, which is so dry that if concrete were found there, Lunar colonists would mine it to get the water out. Thus, if plants could be grown in greenhouses on the Moon (an unlikely proposition, as we've seen) most of their biomass material would have to be imported.

The Moon is also deficient in about half the metals of interest to industrial society (copper, for example), as well as many other elements of interest such as sulfur and phosphorus. Mars has every required element in abundance. Moreover, on Mars, as on Earth, hydrologic and volcanic processes have occurred that are likely to have consolidated various elements into local concentrations of high-grade mineral ore. Indeed, the geologic history of Mars has been compared to that of Africa, with very optimistic inferences as to its mineral wealth implied as a corollary. In contrast, the Moon has had virtually no history of water or volcanic action, with the result that it is basically composed of trash rocks with very little differentiation into ores that represent useful concentrations of anything interesting.

You can generate power on either the Moon or Mars with solar panels, and here the advantages of the Moon's clearer skies and closer proximity to the Sun than Mars roughly balances the disadvantage of large energy storage requirements created by the Moon's 28-day light-dark cycle. But if you wish to manufacture solar panels, so as to create a self-expanding power base, Mars holds an enormous advantage, as only Mars possesses the large supplies of carbon and hydrogen needed to produce the pure silicon required for producing photovoltaic panels and other electronics. In addition, Mars has the potential for wind-generated power while the Moon clearly does not. But both solar and wind offer relatively modest power potential tens or at most hundreds of kilowatts here or there. To create a vibrant civilization you need a richer power base, and this Mars has both in the short and medium term in the form of its geothermal power resources, which offer potential for large numbers of locally created electricity generating stations in the 10 MW (10,000 kilowatt) class. In the long-term, Mars will enjoy a power-rich economy based upon exploitation of its large domestic resources of deuterium fuel for fusion reactors. Deuterium is five times more common on Mars than it is on Earth, and tens of thousands of times more common on Mars than on the Moon.

But the biggest problem with the Moon, as with all other airless planetary bodies and proposed artificial free-space colonies, is that sunlight is not available in a form useful for growing crops. A single acre of plants on Earth requires four megawatts of sunlight power, a square kilometer needs 1,000 MW. The entire world put together does not produce enough electrical power to illuminate the farms of the state of Rhode Island, that agricultural giant. Growing crops with electrically generated light is just economically hopeless. But you can't use natural sunlight on the Moon or any other airless body in space unless you put walls on the greenhouse thick enough to shield out solar flares, a requirement that enormously increases the expense of creating cropland. Even if you did that, it wouldn't do you any good on the Moon, because plants won't grow in a light/dark cycle lasting 28 days.

But on Mars there is an atmosphere thick enough to protect crops grown on the surface from solar flare. Therefore, thin-walled inflatable plastic greenhouses protected by unpressurized UV-resistant hard-plastic shield domes can be used to rapidly create cropland on the surface. Even without the problems of solar flares and month-long diurnal cycle, such simple greenhouses would be impractical on the Moon as they would create unbearably high temperatures. On Mars, in contrast, the strong greenhouse effect created by such domes would be precisely what is necessary to produce a temperate climate inside. Such domes up to 50 meters in diameter are light enough to be transported from Earth initially, and later on they can be manufactured on Mars out of indigenous materials. Because all the resources to make plastics exist on Mars, networks of such 50- to 100-meter domes couldbe rapidly manufactured and deployed, opening up large areas of the surface to both shirtsleeve human habitation and agriculture. That's just the beginning, because it will eventually be possible for humans to substantially thicken Mars' atmosphere by forcing the regolith to outgas its contents through a deliberate program of artificially induced global warming. Once that has been accomplished, the habitation domes could be virtually any size, as they would not have to sustain a pressure differential between their interior and exterior. In fact, once that has been done, it will be possible to raise specially bred crops outside the domes.

The point to be made is that unlike colonists on any known extraterrestrial body, Martian colonists will be able to live on the surface, not in tunnels, and move about freely and grow crops in the light of day. Mars is a place where humans can live and multiply to large numbers, supporting themselves with products of every description made out of indigenous materials. Mars is thus a place where an actual civilization, not just a mining or scientific outpost, can be developed. And significantly for interplanetary commerce, Mars and Earth are the only two locations in the solar system where humans will be able to grow crops for export.

Mars is the best target for colonization in the solar system because it has by far the greatest potential for self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, even with optimistic extrapolation of robotic manufacturing techniques, Mars will not have the division of labor required to make it fully self-sufficient until its population numbers in the millions. Thus, for decades and perhaps longer, it will be necessary, and forever desirable, for Mars to be able to import specialized manufactured goods from Earth. These goods can be fairly limited in mass, as only small portions (by weight) of even very high-tech goods are actually complex. Nevertheless, these smaller sophisticated items will have to be paid for, and the high costs of Earth-launch and interplanetary transport will greatly increase their price. What can Mars possibly export back to Earth in return?

It is this question that has caused many to incorrectly deem Mars colonization intractable, or at least inferior in prospect to the Moon. For example, much has been made of the fact that the Moon has indigenous supplies of helium-3, an isotope not found on Earth and which could be of considerable value as a fuel for second generation thermonuclear fusion reactors. Mars has no known helium-3 resources. On the other hand, because of its complex geologic history, Mars may have concentrated mineral ores, with much greater concentrations of precious metal ores readily available than is currently the case on Earth because the terrestrial ores have been heavily scavenged by humans for the past 5,000 years. If concentrated supplies of metals of equal or greater value than silver (such as germanium, hafnium, lanthanum, cerium, rhenium, samarium, gallium, gadolinium, gold, palladium, iridium, rubidium, platinum, rhodium, europium, and a host of others) were available on Mars, they could potentially be transported back to Earth for a substantial profit. Reusable Mars-surface based single-stage-to-orbit vehicles would haul cargoes to Mars orbit for transportation to Earth via either cheap expendable chemical stages manufactured on Mars or reusable cycling solar or magnetic sail-powered interplanetary spacecraft. The existence of such Martian precious metal ores, however, is still hypothetical.

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The Case for Colonizing Mars, by Robert Zubrin

One of the primary obstacles to human colonization of Mars is the funding -- creating a habitable environment and sending humans across the gulf of space is a costly process, well beyond the exploration budgets of most nations. But Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft and Big Brother co-creator Paul Romer have a brilliant solution that will put colonists on Mars by 2023.

The key: Fund the whole shebang by turning the mission into reality TV.

The Dutch company Mars One is managing the project, and in its explanatory video below, talking heads call the project (a little euphemistically maybe) a "media event," comparing it to the moon landing. They also tout the fact that its apolitical and taxpayer-independent, a private space endeavor, paid for by eyeballs on screens.

Romer told The Daily Mail:

The entire world will be able to watch and help with decisions as the teams of settlers are selected, follow their extensive training and preparation for the mission and of course observe their settling on Mars once arrived. The emigrated astronauts will share their experiences with us as they build their new home, conduct experiments and explore Mars.

The part of that quote that sticks out is that an audience will be able to "help with decisions." Shifting the selection process from experts handpicking the best candidates to, perhaps, people texting in to vote for their favorite explorer is an ... interesting idea.

Four explorers would hit the surface of the Red Planet by 2023 -- where, the company promises, a habitation will already have been built -- with more trickling in over the next 10 years until 20 people are there. Construction rovers would be sent first to make sure housing is set up for the first wave, with more houses going up as needed.

Mars One has received letters of interest from aerospace companies potentially willing to donate hardware for the mission, and the presence of some real scientists rather than businessmen lends credence to the project, but colonizers on Mars in a little more than two decades is still a lofty goal, whether it's funded by NASA or by prime-time.

[via The Daily Mail]

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Mars Colonization Mission Will Happen Live on Reality TV ...

Robert Zubrin Lockheed Martin Astronautics PO Box 179 Denver, CO 80201, USA (Originally found as badly formatted text at http://www.magick.net/mars/docs/m_econom.txt, a part of Mars Direct Manned Mars Mission Home Page)

The economic viability of colonizing Mars is examined. It is shown, that of all bodies in the solar system other than Earth, Mars is unique in that it has the resources required to support a population of sufficient size to create locally a new branch of human civilization. It is also shown that while Mars may lack any cash material directly exportable to Earth, Mars' orbital elements and other physical parameters gives a unique positional advantage that will allow it to act as a keystone supporting extractive activities in the asteroid belt and elsewhere in the solar system. The potential of relatively near-term types of interplanetary transportation systems is examined, and it is shown that with very modest advances on a historical scale, systems can be put in place that will allow individuals and families to emigrate to Mars at their own discretion. Their motives for doing so will parallel in many ways the historical motives for Europeans and others to come to America, including higher pay rates in a labor-short economy, escape from tradition and oppression, as well as freedom to exercise their drive to create in an untamed and undefined world. Under conditions of such large scale immigration, sale of real-estate will add a significant source of income to the planet's economy. Potential increases in real-estate values after terraforming will provide a sufficient financial incentive to do so. In analogy to frontier America, social conditions on Mars will make it a pressure cooker for invention. These inventions, licensed on Earth, will raise both Terrestrial and Martian living standards and contribute large amounts of income to support the development of the colony.

A frequent objection raised against scenarios for the human settlement and terraforming of Mars is that while such projects may be technologically feasible, there is no possible way that they can be paid for. On the surface, the arguments given supporting this position appear to many to be cogent, in that Mars is distant, difficult to access, possesses a hostile environment and has no apparent resources of economic value to export. These arguments appear to be ironclad, yet it must be pointed out that they were also presented in the past as convincing reasons for the utter impracticality of the European settlement of North America and Australia. It is certainly true that the technological and economic problems facing Mars colonization in the 21st century are vastly different in detail than those that had to be overcome in the colonization of the New World in the 17th century, or Australia in the 19th century. Nevertheless, it is my contention that the argument against the feasibility of Mars colonization is flawed by essentially the same false logic and lack of understanding of real economics that resulted in repeated absurd misevaluations of the value of colonial settlements (as opposed to trading posts, plantations, and other extractive activities) on the part of numerous European government ministries during the 400 years following Columbus.

During the period of their global ascendancy, the Spanish ignored North America; to them it was nothing but a vast amount of worthless wilderness. In 1781, while Cornwallis was being blockaded into submission at Yorktown, the British deployed their fleet into the Caribbean to seize a few high-income sugar plantation islands from the French. In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte sold a third of what is now the United States for 2 million dollars. In 1867 the Czar sold off Alaska for a similar pittance. The existence of Australia was known to Europe for two hundred years before the first colony arrived, and no European power even bothered to claim the continent until 1830. These pieces of short-sighted statecraft, almost incomprehensible in their stupidity, are legendary today. Yet their consistency shows a persistent blind spot among policy making groups as to the true sources of wealth and power. I believe that it is certain that two hundred years from now, the current apathy of governments towards the value of extraterrestrial bodies, and Mars in particular, will be viewed in a similar light.

While I shall return to historical analogies periodically in this paper, the arguments presented here shall not be primarily historical in nature. Rather, they shall be based on the concrete case of Mars itself, its unique characteristics, resources, technological requirements, and its relationships to the other important bodies within our solar system.

In order to understand the economics of Mars colonization it is necessary first to examine briefly the different phases of activity that will be necessary to transform the Red Planet. I define four phases, which I term "exploration," "base building," "settlement," and "terraforming."

The exploration phase of Mars colonization has been going on for some time now with the telescopic and robotic surveys that have been and continue to be made. It will take a quantum leap, however, when actual human expeditions to the planet's surface begin. As I and others have shown in numerous papers1,2,3, if the Martian atmosphere is exploited for the purpose of manufacturing rocket fuel and oxygen, the mass, complexity, and overall logistics requirements of such missions can be reduced to the point where affordable human missions to Mars can be launched with present day technology. Moreover, by using such "Mars Direct" type approaches, human explorers can be on Mars within 10 years of program initiation, with total expenditure not more than 20% of NASA's existing budget.

The purpose of the exploration phase is to resolve the major outstanding scientific questions bearing on the history of Mars as a planet and a possible home for life in the past, to conduct a preliminary survey of the resources of Mars and determine optimum locations for future human bases and settlements, and to establish a modus operandi whereby humans can travel to, reside on, and conduct useful operations over substantial regions of the surface of Mars.

The essence of the base building phase is to conduct agricultural, industrial, chemical, and civil engineering research on Mars as to master an increasing array of techniques required to turn Martian raw materials into useful resources. While properly conducted initial exploration missions will make use of the Martian air to provide fuel and oxygen, in the base building phase this elementary level of local resource utilization will be transcended as the crew of a permanent Mars base learns how to extract native water and grow crops on Mars, to produce ceramics, glasses, metals, plastics, wires, habitats, inflatable structures, solar panels, and all sorts of other useful materials, tools, and structures. While the initial exploration phase can be accomplished with small crews (of about 4 members each) operating out of Spartan base camps spread over bast areas of the Martian surface, the base building phase will require a division of labor entailing a larger number of people (on the order of 50), equipped with a wide variety of equipment and substantial sources of power. In short, the purpose of the base building period is to develop a mastery of those techniques required to produce on Mars the food clothing and shelter required to support a large population on the Red Planet.

The base building phase could begin in earnest about 10 years after the initial human landing on Mars.

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The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization

WASHINGTON Mars One is gearing up to send an unmanned lander to the Red Planet that would follow in the mold of NASA's successful Mars landers.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit has sealed a deal with security and aerospace company Lockheed Martin to develop a mission concept for its lander. This surface craft is slated to launch toward the Red Planet along with a communications satellite in 2018 six years before Mars One aims to blast four people toward the Red Planet on a one-way colonization mission.

Based on NASA's Phoenix lander, Mars One's lander will include new thin-film solar cells, a water extraction experiment, and other demonstration technologies that will be required for human settlement on Mars. [How Mars One's Lander Will Explore the Red Planet (Infographic)]

"Phoenix is a proven delivery system," Ed Sedivy, a civil space chief engineer at Lockheed Martin who was the program manager for NASA's Phoenix lander flight system, said in a news briefing Dec. 10. "There are very few impediments to continuing on beyond the study concept."

The objectives of the Phoenix mission, which lasted from May to November 2008, were to study the history of water in all its phases on Mars and to search for evidence of habitability. The lander had a robotic arm to dig through the top layer of soil on Mars to get to the water ice below, and it found evidence of water vapor in soil samples it heated up in an onboard oven.

The planned Mars One lander will be very similar to Phoenix, Sedivy told SPACE.com. It will have a robotic digging arm for excavating the soil, as well as an experiment to extract water, the design of which has not yet been finalized.

For power, the lander will sport two circular solar panel arrays, like Phoenix, as well as an experimental thin-film solar panel the long "tongue" shown in the artist's impression above. Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp said the organization will open a call for proposals for the new solar panel, whose size will depend on the tradeoffs of payload weight and power-generating ability.

"The solar panels will be very important for a manned mission, because we dont want to depend on nuclear power," Lansdorp said.

The lander will also have a camera, which will relay video from the surface of Mars to Earth via a satellite orbiter expected to launch with the lander in 2018. To help fund its manned missions, the first of which is slated to launch in 2024, Mars One has said it plans to organize a global media event around the colonists and their journey to (and stay on) the Red Planet.

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