The Pros And Cons Of Colonization Of Mars

To say colonisation is realistic, we must first establish a reason for it. Capitalist nations such as the United States are notorious for only committing to such operations with the promise of a significant amount of money in return. With the Apollo missions, the reward was seen to be victory over the competing USSR. As the Earth is drained of natural resources such as fuels and more recently, water, mankind is to be stretched further to find materials to maintain its population. In September of 2009, NASA announced that it has discovered traces of water on the moon. The state funded company estimated that there was at least 600 million tonnes of ice at the North Pole in sheets of pure ice of a few metres thickness. With this information,

This proved Mars is reachable and opened the debate about whether or not to send humans. However, I believe the moon would be a short-term alternative, allowing scientists to study the effects on the body that living on an alien planet would undoubtedly have. It would allow time to develop technologies which would make it easier to live in these harsh environments. Furthermore, it would enable the measuring of factors such as the surface radiation levels; assessing the effects of galactic and cosmic radiation. Further advantages of choosing the Moon, linking with Mars also, is the idea that the moon would be a suitable location to launch rockets that would be set for mars. This would be easier than from Earth as the Moons gravity is lower and therefore requires a much lower escape velocity. This means less propellant used and theoretically a lower price. Of course this does not take into account the manufacturing cost of creating a base on the moon capable of building and launching a rocket, and also assumes all materials used to make the rocket were mined from the Moon. You also have a relatively short transit time. The Apollo missions took approximately three days, and this was with technology far inferior to what we would have now. In comparison, a trip to Mars would take 6 months. It would then take 19 months to wait for the planets to realign, and then 6 months for the return