If We Want A Better World, We Have To Stop Thinking About Mars
Another planet is a convenient solution to allow bad things to happen right now.
There are plenty of reasons to lean into the doom and gloom of the world right now. We have public protests every day urging for a far-right extreme government to stop bombing innocent children.
A new report continues to show how the richest people in the world are screwing over the planet. All the while those people telling us how to live better lives.
We have a government agency investing nearly $2 billion USD into an inefficient way to solving a problem.
Rental prices are predatory as hell.
We have people with incredible power screwing over social safety nets while claiming to be the one to solve our problems.
And many countries are feeling like they are being torn apart from the inside due to people loving conservatism too much and conservatives with power behaving more like fascists.
All in all, it would be foolish to think we are living in the best times in the world right now. Even with things messed up as they are, there are still opportunities to change things around — though I doubt we would solve some of the bigger issues completely at this point. Like climate change.
But one possible solution that I hear once in a while is the idea of moving over to Mars.
As if Mars is this panacea to all of our problems, people cling to little tidbits of information that keep these individuals hopeful. Films like The Martian imply that almost a decade ago, we could theoretically have people living there for months at a time.
So why not a year at this point since space tech probably has expanded since then?
And then we have billionaire Elon Musk saying ever since 2001 that he wanted to colonize Mars. The man is the second richest in the world. He’s totally a smart guy. Right?
Well even if by tomorrow we somehow find a way to allow hundreds of thousands of people to live there, going over to Mars isn’t the panacea that we think it is. That and the public should be focusing on much better ways to solve these problems rather than running off to Mars.
First, Mars’ Climate Is Terrible
To start, we take colonizing Mars as a way for humans to survive for granted. To put it into perspective, people who want to permanently live on Mars will have to undergo way more than a physical.
They would need to radically change their brains and bodies to even survive the environment.
To be fair, humans do have the capability to do that. Why humans have different skin pigmentations comes down to living in particular environments. Thanks to UV radiation, our bodies over time adopted to those environments.
But we’re not just travelling to a different climate. We’re also going out to space and there is a difference in air and gravity than on Earth.
Before we even get to Mars our usual body functions are stunted due to space being space. We knew since the 1960s and 70s space does a number on muscles and bones.
Well it also messes with our heart, creating blockages and circulatory issues. Then there is also our immune system and cell repair which is impacted by going to space.
And all of this before you even step foot on Mars.
Once there you’re introduced to air pressure that’s not even 1 percent of Earth air pressure, and temperatures that average about -63 degrees Celsius (-81 Fahrenheit).
So even in the best of times, Mars is about as warm as one of the coldest days on Alaska. And on other days it’s much colder.
If you’re not properly dressed, you’ll get hypothermia in about five to seven minutes.
Now if we somehow manage to warm Mars up to a more comfortable temperature, you still have gravity to deal with which can mess with health and even our ability to reproduce on the planet in the first place.
You also have to account for daily life and needs — such as water and supplies. The water there isn’t drinkable, and it takes months for a space ship to arrive at Mars. As this article points out, from the time frame to how we build space ships these days, supplying colonies with enough to survive until the next shipment is just not realistic.
At the end of the day, Mars wouldn’t be a realistic place to live for another 50 to 100 years, despite the fact Elon Musk says we can totally get there as early as the 2050s.
Which reminds me.
Billionaires Are Using Mars As A Scapegoat
Between Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, we have a three-way race amongst billionaires on who can build the better space company and get people to enjoy the wonders of it. It all sounds great on the surface and it’s always fun to gossip about that sort of stuff (like that cage match).
But you’d be falling for the oldest trick in the book if you leaned too much into it.
Because at the end of the day, those three men are billionaires.
And while we do have a sort of idolization of these individuals, we can’t deny the damage that these people have done. And looking at the fact they are so focused on getting to Mars is kind of telling of what their intentions are.
We already know that flying is pretty harmful to the environment. But space tourism is even worse. And both Bezos and Musk have already haemorrhaged plenty of natural resources with electric vehicles (which are more resource intensive than electric bikes) and putting products into boxes and filling most of said box with plastic wrapping.
In the case of Musk and Bezos, it seems like their way of thinking is “now that we’ve screwed over the planet, let’s just go.” But instead of trying to vanish into obscurity, their long-con plan is to distract people with various antics or strategies.
Musk bought Twitter and routinely does something on a regular basis to get people to cover him.
The reality is much like Musk’s promise for self-driving cars being “just around the corner”, the words don’t reflect the actions and the reality of the situation. Self-driving, as we can currently attest to, is not that great right now.
And chances are it’ll take much longer.
The more logical solution is billionaires are disillusioned as they always have been and are hoping to entice us with something else to put our mind off of the real damage they are causing on Earth.
It’s simply another one of their talking points that distracts us and prevents us from addressing the real problems we face today.
Then There’s The Mental Challenges
Even in the scenario where billionaires are somehow right in this case and we manage to address the myriad of problems that have to do with Mars itself, humanity would struggle still in the early processes of settling because of mental challenges.
We already know the COVID pandemic was mentally taxing on us for a variety of reasons.
But now imagine that being the case while living on an entirely different planet.
Research found that there would be at least four psychological effects weighing on us over a long period of time there. Those being:
- Confinement
- Loss of privacy
- Lack of mental health services
- And social isolation
With no ability to touch or go outside and transmissions to Earth taking ten minutes to cross, people permanently living there would not have a good time.
In the end, Mars right now is a death sentence. If the environment doesn’t get to someone, then their own mental breakdown probably would since a lot of those problems can lead to depression, severe anxiety, emotional instability, and fatigue, amongst other things.
As someone who wants to travel, I can understand the appeal of going to a different planet. Especially in these circumstances where there is so much pain and suffering happening in the world.
Where the world seems like it’s stuck and there isn’t much good happening in the world, it’s easy for us to give up or think about these alternatives.
But having this kind of discussion doesn’t really get us anywhere. It doesn’t solve the very real problems that we are facing right now. Wage inequality is rampant and executive pay is absurd. We’re dealing with housing crises, wars, and just terrible people.
All while trying to survive in a system that is fundamentally broken or systematically racist.
But we can change things around. Humanity has persisted because of our ability to pivot and adapt to a changing environment. It’s our duty these days to spark change and to improve what is already built.
And one change that we can make is stop wishing about moving to another planet and learning to have more care about the current planet that we got right now.
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