Mars used to have enough water to have an ocean but because it doesn’t have an atmosphere space stole it through evaporation and winds. Mars still has a lot of water locked up in ice deep underground. So technically you could figure out a way to harness that and keep it in a closed loop system and you’ve got yourself an extraterrestrial data center.
The issue is more likely the end of Mars’s magnetic field which it likely lost when the much smaller planet cooled enough that its metal core stopped moving as a fluid, and ceased generating a global magnetic field.
With that gone there’s little left to protect the atmosphere from solar wind and it got stripped away. The atmosphere Mars has today is very thin and comprise of heavier gasses like CO2 which may spend part of the year precipitated into solid form on the surface.
low atmospheric pressure makes more of the water ocean turn to vapor, which the solar wind strips off the planet. eventually, most of the surface water is gone except for that which is frozen solid at the poles or subsurface
Sure. But it would cost more money than has ever been created across the entirety of human civilization on earth. Meanwhile we have a perfectly good planet in earth that we are already living on.
I'll go further and say that I don't think we'll even get humans to Mars at all. The money and interest just isn't where it has to be and if it ever does get there, Mars will no longer be the target. It'll switch to space colonies like in Gundam or something like that.
How gravity affects the human species could be one main reason to live on a planet opposed to space itself. Extended periods of time in space alter even DNA. Being grounded, while going from point to point, could be a resolution to that complication of living off world.
Well, if we start dumping the right facilities, machines, habitats, and tools there then we can begin the process of terraforming Mars so that it's reasonably habitable -
The reason why it's worth going there now and laying the groundwork for that is cos that's gonna take a century or two and need a lot of research and exploration of the planet first.
"the best time to plant a tree.." and all that.
It's worth having another planet that's safe for large scale habitation, because we don't yet have the resources or the technology to build large scale orbitals to perform that function (and arguably it's easier/cheaper to maintain a habitat on a planet than it is on a massive space station or collection of space stations, if we're talking about long term habitation).
We can't even maintain the habitable environment that already exists on our own planet, and people think we're somehow going to create one from scratch on Mars?
Yes. Eventually. We know how to do it, it's just a very time consuming and expensive process.
It's also worth noting that part of the reason why we should move industry into orbit and to other planetary bodies is because of exactly what you described - there are no guarantees of habitability on Earth in the future, precisely because of all the damage we've caused and will continue to cause to Earth's environment.
Why would anyone in their right minds want to keep our most polluting industries on Earth, when we can gradually move it elsewhere?
Polluting our environment is the problem in the first place, so saying we can just ship that behavior to Mars is not helping the case for creating a habitable environment there.
Even if it was possible to terraform Mars, why wouldn't it be easier to just work with what we've already got here on Earth? There's "no guarantee" either way, but those odds seem a lot better.
One thing doesn't preclude the other here tho?
We can do both things - start to cleanup Earth and start to ship industry to Earth orbit, Luna, Mars et al.
We can't afford to just sit around waiting for the perfect tech to solve all our problems, or wait for the best possible carbon waste cleanup operation on Earth - life doesn't work in clean absolutes like that.
We should start preparing Mars for future operations asap, and we should use more carbon capture technologies here on Earth (and eventually ship our excess carbon to Mars to help with terraforming, cos why not).
If "preparing Mars for future operations" means funneling more money into private companies like SpaceX, then all you'd actually be doing is lining the pockets of some scam artist while further entrenching the forces that are currently dismantling our environment.
Whatever about the reality of the situation, I do believe that Elon believes we are going to live on Mars. There is plenty of evidence that SpaceX has concrete plans and the will and money to execute them.
Ehhh no way it was fake. Too many factions involved would have had reason to debunk it if it were imo. As for why no other nations have,its expensive af and we were uniquely situated to do it in the aftermath of the early 20th century craziness. Also the prestige of being first is gone so its not a huge national ego thing like the cold war was.
But yeah no one alive now is seeing commercial space travel to other solar bodies. Unless some crazy breakthrough happens, which is unlikely
Mars won't matter because in 1 billion years the sun will slowly get hotter and brighter. This heat will boil away Earth's oceans and end all life on the planet. In 5 billion years the core will run out of hydrogen. Forget mars we need to be working warp drives so we can leave this backwater solar system we call home.
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u/Comprehensive-Shoe11 12h ago
Nice pile of sand and rocks