Introduction
Mars is one of the planets that occupy the fourth position from the sun. The first three planets are Mercury, Venus, and Earth. The planet Earth fully supports life because it contains life-supporting elements such as water and air. Earth has millions of people and lately, there is a lot of congestion, and evidence in many countries on earth reveal that some communities live in slums. Others opt to construct story buildings to accommodate more people because there is limited land to expand their territories. This paper has a new prospect of whether it could be possible for people to inhabit the planet Mars. Of course, nothing is impossible for man. The new innovations and technologies could transform and overcome all hurdles and issues that make it hard for man to inhabit planet Mars.
Earth is a finite planet, and as we move forward, all of us should be aware that we shall soon exhaust all the natural resources available on its surface. The result will be a state of confusion where people shall search for more resources anywhere. People have demonstrated that Mars can be the next planet for man to enjoy life. It is worth noting that during the initial inhabitation stages, one of the most critical resources would be infrastructure that purposely sustains human life, but not for further scientific investigation. Once man has settled and overcome most of the sustainability issues, he can proceed to seek sophisticated techniques to allow comfort and extra necessities.
Meaning of the Term “Habitable”
One of the first critical aspects that we need to understand is the meaning of “habitable.” What do we mean when we say an environment is “habitable”? While using exoplanets as the reference, the term “habitability” implies the chances that water may exist on a planet’s surface. However, the concept of the presence of water on the planet’s surface is inadequate to allow the inference that a planet supports life. If we consider Earth, its southern and northern poles do not have any water because the extremely low temperatures have caused freezing leaving no liquid water for human beings. Also, the low Earth orbit does not contain any drops of liquid water. Despite these two indicators, man has inhabited both zones for many years. Therefore, our examination of mars should not incline on this definition alone.
Our solar system has the habitable zone but Mars is on the outer boundary of this habitable region. It is worth noting that liquid water cannot exist on a surface for a long period of time. However, this fact does not guarantee the fact that people can live on this planet. Mars can only be habitable if man thought of relevant innovations that would establish our own man-made habitable regions on the planet’s surface.
Problems and Innovations
Mars has many resources such as iron, chlorine, titanium, and calcium. The planet’s most abundant material is silicon dioxide. The first innovation that would be critical is to invent conversion mechanisms that will facilitate the conversion of these materials into useful resources than shall benefit man’s survival. It is worth noting that Mars has so many of these resources, and this fact suffices to categorize the planet as the most habitable region apart from Earth. Cockell (2014) postulates that through a conference at NASA Ames Center, McKay enlisted the essential resources that could benefit early Martian inhabitants. These colonists could exploit these resources to make the planet a good play to stay.
Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide, Nitrogen, and Argon
It is easy for human beings to access mars’ atmosphere, and this access offers an opportunity for human beings to manufacture methane propellants. The techniques for this process are simple, utilize less power, and man has been using them on earth for many previous years. Another essential that man needs to put in mind is the need to pressurize large surface habitats. During this process, man will require a non-reactive gas (s) to reduce the oxygen demands; thus a reduced risk for fire. Human beings will achieve this target by using Nitrogen and Argon gases which are also prevalent in the planet’s atmosphere. The separation of these two gases is achievable using industrial chemistry technology.
Water and Perchlorates
Life depends on water to a greater extent. Human beings need water for drinking, washing, bathing, and many other industrial uses. Mars is colder than any other terrestrial cave, and drier than Earth (Schörghofer, 2021). However, a comparison between mars and other celestial bodies like the moon reveals that Mars’ surface has more water than these other bodies. Most of its surface water is in form of a polar cap comprising of water ice and dry ice. It is possible to purify this water for consumption and for purposes of other critical needs. Apart from that, man could use electrolysis concepts to electrolyze this water to yield oxygen and hydrogen gases (Newborough, 2021). These two constituents can form the basic raw materials which when combined with atmospheric Carbon dioxide produce many types of plastics. Man needs these plastics as storage elements, carrying units, and food preservation containers.
One of the physical obstacles that make it hard for human beings to inhabit mars is toxic perchlorates. According to Beech (2021), an analysis performed on the surface reveals that the regolith comprises about 0.5% perchlorate which is toxic. Research findings reveal that perchlorates can disturb the homeostatic functioning of the thyroid hormone and destabilize the thyroid autoantibody level in the human body (Wang et al., 2022). If we assume that man has sufficient technology to isolate himself from all exposure mechanisms to the regolith, he can inhabit the planet. Alternatively, there is a need to seek biomedical solutions to all thyroid challenges resulting from perchlorate exposure.
Food will be essential for the Martian inhabitants and therefore, they must find a way to produce crops that will serve them as food. Apart from their own food, man shall need to have pasture for animals if he will domesticate animals. This process may not be a big issue because the regolith contains nitrates that could serve as fertilizer. Man can also use greenhouses to cultivate fruits, flowers and any other vegetables because the regolith has high proportions of Nitrates. Studies by NASA revealed that nitrates were approximately 1100 ppm in the drill samples that were checked (Lutz, 2021). Since perchlorates are toxic and coexist with nitrates in the regolith, a suitable technology is needed to cause the leaching of the perchlorates using water.
Food production on planet Mars will be a crucial aspect that man should think about as we purpose to make mars a habitable place. The place is so cold that it may not support plant life. Ideally, plants can photosynthesize under optimum conditions that encompass warmth (suitable temperature), carbon dioxide, and water. The challenge on this planet would be the extremely low temperature that may not support plant life. However, studies reveal that placing silica aerogel shields over a large surface of the Martian floor may cause some warmth in the area below these shields. Studies have used modeling approaches and found that a two or three centimeters thick silica aerogel shield can allow the transmission of sufficient visible light for plant use. The shield can also prevent dangerous ultraviolet rays, and raise the low ground temperature above the melting point of water. All these processes do not require any sources of internal heating. Consequently, the warmth will allow plants to photosynthesize normally. It is this normal photosynthesis that will avail plant food materials that man requires as he inhabits the new planet.
Other Critical Resources
One key observation is that Mars has many basaltic rocks. Human beings could use these rocks for construction purposes. Construction will entail erecting houses in which human beings will stay, protecting themselves from the atmospheric coldness and sheltering their property in safe custody. They will also need these rocks to build pet houses including dog shelters because dogs could provide extra security when man is asleep. Apart from that, Martian rocks have a high percentage of metal oxides such as Iron Oxides, Silicon Oxides, and Aluminium Oxides (Baldry, 2022). It would require large amounts of energy to break these oxides from the rocks. However, if man seeks a technology to overcome this obstacle, he can mine them to produce important metallic structures and glass. Mining and the extractive industry are significant sectors because apart from yielding essential construction materials and raw materials for the manufacture of other products, man can accrue income from the sale of these materials. Consequently, his living standard shall improve because he will have financial power.
Another resource on this planet is Fluorine. Martian rocks have about 10% Fluorine by weight as fluorite. Although fluorites are less useful in industrial uses, the chemical is the best raw material in the manufacture of Perfluorinated compounds (Whitehead et al., 2021), shortened as PFCs. This class represents a category of greenhouse gases. After release into the atmosphere, the compounds remain in the atmosphere for many years, thus immensely contributing to global warming (Sungur, 2022). Although we consider global warming an adverse effect on Earth, the phenomenon is beneficial on Mars because its inhabitants will need it to maintain a terraformed climate and atmosphere. Man shall enjoy the warm conditions because apart from providing comfort, he will dry grains, and firewood and use the warmth for other general uses.
Advantages of colonizing Mars
Human beings struggle in their daily encounters to ensure their survival is achieved. Life on earth has many miseries and catastrophes, and most of these are a result of rapid population growth. Expanding past the planet earth is advantageous because man will have escaped the vulnerable conditions on earth such as conflicts, natural calamities, and ethnic clashes. Mars appears to have life-supporting conditions, hence it can act as a backup home for man. We should all live on earth knowing that life on this planet will be impossible. A live example is a dinosaur that is no longer on earth because it lacked a space program. If man comes to the verge of becoming extinct, the space program would come into play (Pelton, 2021).
The breakthrough that follows man’s innovations to make Mars a habitable place will have several other merits. Apart from enjoying a new home full of new unlimited resources, man could use brains to develop new technology. For instance, man could consider technological developments of small and medium-sized innovations in a laboratory in Mars. Man could use this new lab to test and develop many new things that will be beneficial for his stay on Mars. For instance, the technologies on earth have exhaustively developed many new things, and man has no more options. His stay on Mars may lead to the development of new ideas, and tools because he will have an opportunity to interact with new resources.
The congestion and the stiff competition for daily resources on earth will necessitate that man had on earth will be an issue of the past. Mars has many useful resources than could sustain human stay and activities. However, man should devise different technologies and innovative approaches to convert the resources into useful forms to make Mars a life-supporting planet. Some of the technologies are already in place and have been in use for many centuries. An example of such technologies are those used in converting carbon dioxide and hydrogen gases into methane, mining and extractive metallurgy, and many others. Although other processes may require advanced systems and innovations to break through, the few technologies in the present situation are sufficient to make Mars a habitable planet, hence a second home.
References
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Cockell, C., Burchell, M., & Martins, Z. (2014). The fifth UK Astrobiology Conference (ASB5). International Journal of Astrobiology, 13(2), 99.
Newborough, M., & Cooley, G. (2021). Green hydrogen: The only oxygen and water-balanced fuel. Fuel Cells Bulletin, 2021(3), 16-19.
Pelton, J. N. (2021). Asteroids and Planetary Protection Systems. In Space Systems and Sustainability (pp. 103-119). Springer, Cham.
Schörghofer, N. (2021). Ice caves on Mars: Hoarfrost and microclimates. Icarus, 357, 114271.
Sungur, Ş. (2022). Environmental fate and transportation of perfluorinated compounds. In Emerging Contaminants in the Environment (pp. 203-224). Elsevier.
Wang, H., Jiang, Y., Song, J. et al. The risk of perchlorate and iodine on the incidence of thyroid tumors and nodular goiter: a case-control study in southeastern China. Environ Health 21, 4 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-021-00818-8
Whitehead, H. D., Venier, M., Wu, Y., Eastman, E., Urbanik, S., Diamond, M. L., … & Peaslee, G. F. (2021). Fluorinated compounds in North American cosmetics. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 8(7), 538-544.
Lutz, K., & Fairhart, A. (2021). Mars Settlement Water Life Cycle: H2O Production, Infrastructure, Treatment, and Storage. In ASCEND 2021 (p. 4218).https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-4218
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