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Life on Mars: when will humans live on the Red Planet?
Fifty years after the first close-up images of Mars, Rosa Silverman speaks to the science writer who believes there will be life on Mars before the 21st century ends
The human race was able to view the furthest reaches of the solar system in high-definition glory this week, as Nasa’s New Horizons space probe sent images back from Pluto, 3.5 billion miles away.
The extraordinary pictures of icy mountain tops and deep ravines astounded scientists, and allowed ordinary laymen to dream of life on another piece of rock floating in space.
For Stephen Petranek, these are not idle dreams, but firm predictions. The award-winning science writer, whose TED talk on the end of the world has been seen by 1.5million people, believes that humans will not just visit, but actually live, on another planet within the next generation: Mars.
Compared with Pluto, Mars is practically short-haul, just 250 million miles away, and could sustain the human race if an asteroid hit our planet, or a nuclear war wiped out most of Earth.
If it sounds like science fiction, consider this: the technology for such a venture has been in place for almost 50 years already. Or so says Petranek, whose new TED book, How We’ll Live on Mars, sets out a vision for the future of mankind, no less.
“In the year 2027, two sleek spacecraft dubbed Raptor 1 and Raptor 2 [will] finally make it to Mars, slipping into orbit after a gruelling 243-day voyage,” his book predicts. On arrival, the space pioneers on board will deploy a base camp habitat and inflate “buildings” in the form of domed, pressurised tents in which they can grow food. And so will begin the next stage in the progress of the species homo sapien.
Stephen Petranek believes that humans will not just visit, but actually live on Mars within a generation
The timescale, says Petranek, is down to the man most likely to get us there – Elon Musk, the controversial founder and CEO of the US aerospace manufacturer SpaceX.
The company made headlines last month when its unmanned Falcon 9 rocket, which was destined for the International Space Station, exploded less than three minutes after blasting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. But the setback caused Petranek to lose none of his faith in Musk, nor his ambition to send humans to Mars.
“Musk says he’s going to be there in 2025. My guess is it will be 12 years,” he says.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. July 20 marks the 39th anniversary of the first photograph ever taken from the surface of Mars, and we’ve come a long way since then.
But it won’t be Nasa who lands us on Mars, says Petranek, despite the mission to Pluto this week being theirs. Space is rapidly becoming a private business and governments are losing control of it, he contends: “Private companies seem to be able to do it better, faster and cheaper.”
So what will the fabled life on Mars actually look like? How on earth, if you’ll pardon the expression, will anyone survive on this great freezing ball of basaltic rock as it hurtles through space at an average distance of 142 million miles from the sun (compared to Earth’s 93)? Bear in mind its average temperature is a chilly -81F (or -63C); its gravity is about 38 per cent as strong as Earth’s; and crucially, there is almost no readily available oxygen.
Not a problem, insists Petranek, pointing out that we’ve managed to survive on Antarctica. “I suspect Antarctica’s a pretty good analogy of how we can build habitats in a hostile environment,” he says. “The food’s pretty good, there’s a lot of entertainment, people have a lot of camaraderie. There are now several year-long stations at the South Pole. The French have one and they have fabulous food.”
I suspect there will be less fabulous French food on Mars, for a start.
“[On Mars] they’re going to have to stay indoors most of the time because once they go outside they’re subject to radiation,” concedes Petranek. “So people will mostly live underground, or in very shielded habitats. It will be a very shielded lifestyle and they’ll have pressurised vehicles to get around in so they don’t have to wear space suits.
The 'Happy Face Crater' that was captured in a wide-angle image recorded in 1999 by Mars Global Surveyor's camera
“It’s likely we’ll be able to genetically modify people so they can survive much better in a high radiation environment.” A brave new world indeed.
His book explains how we could make our own oxygen on Mars through the process of electrolysis – that is, passing an electric current through water. But that supposes there is water to be found.
Petranek is optimistic. “There’s a ton of water on Mars. A lot of it is ice. It’s a matter of jack-hammering that soil free in the right places.”
Even French food could then be possible. Indeed, as in any colony, the settlers will bring with them their own traditions, which will fuse to create something unique, he says. The best parallel might be his native America (Petranek is from Washington DC). “People will bring their cultures and knowledge but a new society will evolve.”
But why would anyone want to go, given they’ll never be able to come home?
One of the first colour images from the Phoenix Mars Lander shows the surface of Mars after it landed in the first-ever touchdown in 1976
“Tens of thousands of people have signed up for the Mars One programme,” he points out. This is the Netherlands-based non-profit project to create the first human settlement on Mars, also by 2027, at a cost of $6bn just for the first crew. “We’re experiencing one of the largest waves of immigration ever seen, we have an extraordinary number of people displaced, people whose lives don’t have the brightest future.
“For the same reason people emigrated to the US in the 1700s, I don’t think there’ll be any shortage of people who want to go. I think we’ll see a lot of people who are middle-aged, in dead end jobs, who want to do something new with their lives. I imagine whole families will sign up.”
Petranek, now 70, would be 82 before anyone made his predicted move. But he would nevertheless be a willing candidate. As a child he built his own telescope, and grew up in an age of space exploration that made him “passionate about the possibilities.”
His wife and son, a 39-year-old college professor, are less certain. “They don’t like the idea of going to Mars very much,” he admits.
Nor is Mars the final frontier. “Mars is the most habitable place in the solar system but there are other possibilities,” says Petranek. “You go to Mars, figure out how to live there and then go to other places. Moons of Saturn and Jupiter could be suitable. Eventually we’ll learn how to do it and do it well.
“Eventually we’ll have to get out of this solar system because our sun is dying. If humans want to survive as a species they’ll have to get out.”
It may be one giant leap for mankind too far. Or maybe, just maybe, Petranek will be proved right.
How We’ll Live on Mars, by Stephen Petranek, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £7.99. To order your copy call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk