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A review by brucefarrar
How We'll Live on Mars by Stephen L. Petranek
4.0
Humans could go to Mars now, according to Petranek; it’s just a matter of commitment. Wernher von Braun estimated in 1952 that we could be there by 1965, and until Richard Nixon slid that to the back burner of NASA’s priorities in favor of earth orbiting military projects it’s pretty much remained there since. Petranek sees commercial interest in space, especially Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, as reviving interest in the project, which he sees as vital to human survival. He describes how to deal with a planet with a small atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide, great for plants, but not for humans. He anticipates a large supply of water frozen beneath the planet’s surface that could be the oxygen supply that humans would need if they are to subsist on Martian resources alone. He envisions the eventual terraforming of the planet, a process that he expects will take somewhere between three centuries and a millennium.
Outside of catastrophic failure of life to survive on Earth, which he sees as a real possibility, what would tempt humans to move to Mars and live in pressurized buildings and suits? The new “gold rush” will be mining the mineral wealth of asteroids. Because of its small size and lower gravity, Martians will save money on expensive rocket fuel compared to what it would cost if Earth is your home base. Interestingly, one factor Petranek does not speculate on is what the long-term effect of this low gravity (about 38% of Earth’s) will be on future generations of humans, whose ancestors evolved on a planet with much stronger gravity.
Outside of catastrophic failure of life to survive on Earth, which he sees as a real possibility, what would tempt humans to move to Mars and live in pressurized buildings and suits? The new “gold rush” will be mining the mineral wealth of asteroids. Because of its small size and lower gravity, Martians will save money on expensive rocket fuel compared to what it would cost if Earth is your home base. Interestingly, one factor Petranek does not speculate on is what the long-term effect of this low gravity (about 38% of Earth’s) will be on future generations of humans, whose ancestors evolved on a planet with much stronger gravity.