5 Reasons Humans Are NOT Going To Mars In The Near Future

 

Apart from our home, the Earth, Mars is by far the most habitable planet in our Solar System.  In fact, it’s the only planet that is even in the discussion for humans to potentially visit someday.  Being so close to the sun, Venus and Mercury are non-starters with their extreme temperatures and solar radiation among many other problems, making them absolutely off limits for humans.  Beyond Mars, there are only gas giants with no surfaces, but these planets are so large that even if we could walk on them, the gravity alone would be deadly.  And so, Mars is the planet we imagine astronauts someday visiting; it’s the planet stories are written about and movies are made about.

But one man, Elon Musk, has aspirations of making these stories and movies a reality.  His vision for Mars includes a self-sustaining civilization on the red planet, with the goal of ensuring the long-term survival of our species.  The thought of a human civilization thriving on Mars is fascinating, but despite the fact that it’s the one and only planet we can even dream of visiting, it is still far from an easy trip – in fact, it would be easily the most treacherous and deadly journey ever attempted by a human being. 

Climbing Mt. Everest would be a stroll in the park compared to a trip to Mars.  And the trip itself is just one of many challenges in making Musk’s vision a reality – a vision he seems to believe is truly going to happen in the near future. However, despite assurances from Musk that a crewed mission to Mars will take place by 2029, the fact is human beings will not be visiting Mars anytime soon.  By anytime soon, I mean humans will not step foot on Mars in the lifetime of Elon Musk himself, nor in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of any human being alive today. In today’s video, I’ll run through 5 main reasons why, unless you’re watching this video hundreds of years from the day I uploaded it, we’re not going to Mars anytime soon.

1. Space-X Failures

SpaceX is the Space Technology company founded by Elon Musk with the intention of eventually creating a colony on Mars.  Not unlike NASA, there have been many successes and failures within SpaceX, but their latest project, Starship, has been an absolute disaster.  The program has launched eight flight tests.  The first two exploded, which is not a total surprise, since they were early test flights.  But the most recent two tests, Starship 7 and 8, both launched this year, also exploded.  

These failures alone don’t mean SpaceX can’t fix the issues and continue to progress towards their goal, but they are in the absolute infancy as far as a timeline goes.  At the moment, the test flights, which are using a reusable rocket that can re-enter Earth – a technology we have already had for years - are exploding.  They are making important strides, but haven’t even gotten close to some more advanced missions testing technology like refueling in orbit and actually sending an unmanned aircraft to Mars and landing it safely on the surface, forget about finding a way to get it back to Earth.  As we will soon see, these goals are not even on the horizon and won’t be there anytime soon.

The goals that Elon has set for landing on Mars this decade are completely nonsensical, and I doubt even he believes it.  Just because there are some possible launch windows coming up which would be ideal times to depart towards Mars based on how far away it would be from the Earth when the astronauts arrive, that doesn’t mean we will be anywhere even close to ready to make it happen. There is no clear cut plan for how it could possibly happen that soon, and based on the progress SpaceX has made so far, it is quite literally impossible.  Not to mention, it would be absolutely reckless and deadly to put any astronauts in a spacecraft that blows up over 50% of the time, even if we did have a plan to get to Mars and back, which we don’t.

2. The Technology

Although there are scientists, engineers and other experts working hard to develop a way to make it work, we simply do not have the technology, equipment or method to propel a spacecraft to Mars and safely land human beings on the planet, much less get them back to Earth alive.  We were barely able to establish a method to land rovers on Mars without damaging them as the thin Atmosphere of Mars cannot slow down a parachute like Earth’s atmosphere can.  For the Mars Rover programs, we had to invent all sorts of wild methods to get the rovers on Mars without too much damage.  A descent method would have to created in order to land humans safely on Mars, which I have no doubt could be done, but it would need to be developed and thoroughly tested, and astronauts would have to be thoroughly trained on how to execute it. 

But before even worrying about that, just getting to Mars is going to be an immense challenge that most people might not fully grasp.  Mars, at its closest point, is about 36 million miles away from the Earth.  The moon is a mere 238,900 miles, 145 times closer.  Just from a distance perspective, thinking we can go to Mars because we’ve been to the Moon is like walking to your mailbox successfully and thinking you’re now ready to run an ultramarathon.  Unlike going to the moon, in which a massive rocket allowed the astronauts to enter Earth’s orbit, then escape Earth’s gravity, and shortly thereafter, enter the Moon’s gravity, the Starship would need to be refueled while in Earth’s orbit, a technology that is still in development, in order to have the capability of reaching deep space.  SpaceX plans to use "tanker" Starships to deliver liquid oxygen and methane propellants to a depot in orbit, but this technology is in the early stages of development, and is not even close to actual testing much less execution in an actual mission to Mars.  

And the Starship might need more refueling in Mars’ orbit, an entirely different challenge altogether that cannot even be practiced on Earth, and a way to get the astronauts safely back to Earth has to be developed, tested, etc. etc.  There is so much technology that has to be developed, then tested multiple times, so many test missions that don’t include actual astronauts that have to be successfully launched, which in and of themselves could take years, it’s actually laughable and concerning that we are supposed to believe a manned mission will be sent to Mars anytime soon.     We just don’t have to technology yet.  That’s not to say we never will, but it’s going to be a while – a long while.

3. The Danger

While it’s true human beings love to take risks, innovate, break barriers and expand our horizons, we still have to use some semblance of common sense regarding the danger we are willing to put our fellow humans in.  Before even talking about the dangers on the actual mission, it has to be repeated – the SpaceX Starship is blowing up over 50% of the time its launched.  Would you like to be on that spacecraft?  It’s entirely possibly the astronauts won’t even have to worry about all the risks involved in leaving Earth’s gravity for so long and entering into the unforgiving and treacherous Mars environment; they might die in an explosion shortly after launch the way things have been going.

So, until Starships stop blowing up, it’s safe to assume no astronaut will be going near one.  But even if we get to the point that the thing stops exploding, it will have to go through years and years – honestly decades – of tests as the technology develops before a human being will be approved to step on board.  And even then, the missions will be very gradual, just as they were in the Apollo program.  Except it will take a lot longer, because the mission will involve so much more, and inevitable failures will occur along the way.  

But for argument’s sake, let’s assume the technology to get humans to Mars and back has been developed, and enough tests were done to merit the first manned mission to the Red Planet.  This will take decades at best.  Even if that point comes, the entire mission would take nearly two years, assuming a short 30 day stay on Mars.  That in and of itself would set a record for the longest time spent in space, as the current record is about 14 months, set by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who stayed in Low Earth Orbit for over a year.  The medical effects of space travel have been well documented and include the wasting away of muscles and bones, fluid shifts, and eye problems.  Humans evolved or were created to live on Earth – our bodies are used to the precise gravitational pull of the Earth and the exact elements that we breath.  With a journey of this magnitude, if the astronauts get sick and start to die midway through the journey, there would be no way to help them and no way of them getting back in time to recover.

And it won’t just be leaving Earth’s gravity that causes illness.  The space radiation will be much worse outside of low Earth Orbit, and the full effects are not completely understood.  Astronauts, whose bodies will be ravaged and weakened from being away from Earth for so long, will have to deal with cosmic rays and solar radiation at a level no human has ever endured, leading to lung disease and other major health problems.  Obviously, these will be issues that will be addressed beforehand, but for the time being, all the solutions are in the developmental stage at best.  And all of this ignores the dangers of Mars itself.  In reality, before any human actually steps foot on Mars, several manned missions would have to successfully get to Mars, or make partial trips, and return to Earth just as Apollos 8, 9 and 10 made trips to the moon and returned before Apollo 11 finally landed on the surface.  

These manned test missions will take decades themselves, as they will be so much more difficult and time consuming than the Apollo missions.  Data will have be collected, the health effects will need be studied, and disasters and problems will have to be investigated and solved, while the technology continues to develop towards the ultimate goal.  And if it is determined someday that human beings are ready to make the trip to Mars and walk on the surface, they will have to deal toxic dust, extreme temperatures, Martian dust storms and they won’t even get a break from the constant radiation since Mars lacks an ozone layer to protect itself.  The Moon is no picnic either, but the longest astronauts stayed there was 75 hours.  The astronauts on Mars would presumably stay much longer, not only to justify the long trip, but if the ultimate objective is to establish a colony on the planet and have a million people living there by the 2040s, as Musk has stated, astronauts will be the ones to begin building the colony.  Of course, in reality, we will not even be close to stepping on the surface of Mars by the 2040s, much less have a million people living there.  This time schedule is not only unrealistic, it is completely reckless, and would cause the deaths of many astronauts before the entire program would be shut down.  

4. The Money

Yes, it’s true that Elon Musk is a billionaire, with a net worth of $369.7 billion.  But even if he could somehow turn every dollar of that into money going directly to the Mission to Mars project, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.  Although a manned mission to Mars has been quoted at costing around $500 billion, when considering the vast amount of missions, launches and tests that would be involved in this process as well as expensive equipment such as life support systems, not to mention the non-stop development and technological efforts put into such an endeavor, and considering how many failures will happen along the way, which will likely include tragic deaths, the entire thing will probably cost over a trillion dollars if not much more, and that’s before ever charging individual people money to go live on Mars, which is not going to happen for hundreds if not thousands of years.  

Obviously,  a manned mission to Mars will require a collaborative effort with money coming from the government as well as private companies.  But will these entities be willing to fork over billions and billions of dollars to get us to Mars anytime soon.  Previous points have already left no doubt, we’re not going to be sending humans to Mars in the next few years, but let’s say in 20 or 30 years, SpaceX is no longer blowing up every other spacecraft, the technology is developed and there is a clear cut plan on how it can all go down.  Even then, will the money be available to start sending out actual human beings on test missions towards the Red Planet, considering everything we’ve discussed already?  Probably not.  Which brings us to...

5. A Justifiable Reason

Any time human life is put in danger and massive amounts of money are spent, there has to be a motivating factor – a practical and powerful reason that motivates and pushes us towards reaching the goal regardless of the risks and the cost.  Oftentimes, this is a geopolitical reason – such as in the trip the Moon in which, as Teasel Muir-Harmony explains in her book, Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo, “ It was not science, the innate human thirst for exploration, or economic incentive that drove the human spaceflight program; instead, it was politics, or more precisely, the particular geopolitical moment, where global superpowers competed for global leadership through demonstrations of technological superiority”

In other words, there needs to be a geopolitical motivation before the government will commit to spending potentially trillions of dollars in missions that will likely cause people to die.  And there will likely be no reason, geopolitically anyway, anytime soon, that will motivate the United States government or any other government, to move forward with such a monumental, deadly and costly project.  

Another motivating reason could be to save the human species.  The ultimate plan Elon Musk has thrown out there includes terraforming Mars in order to create a habitable environment for humans.  First of all, let’s consider what we’re talking about.  The technological revolution was only about 100 years ago when cars were first invented and we’re already considering moving to another planet because we might destroy Earth, a planet perfect for us because we evolved here, and so we might need another place to live.  If just getting to Mars didn’t seem hard enough, imaging terraforming it which would involve changing its temperature, making it breathable, building an atmosphere and quite literally making it rain.  This is purely science fiction at this point in time, but even if we could imagine having the capability of doing that, that would also mean, we would easily have the capability to fix our own planet, as noted by Neil Degrasse Tyson.

There could come a day in hundreds or more likely thousands of years from now that we do terraform Mars and send colonies there, but this will be long after we’ve already completely repaired our own planet and likely are suffering from overpopulation.  But the bottom line is, we’re not going to Mars anytime soon and we sure aren’t going to be terraforming.  Even if we did, the gravity will still be way off as Mars is about half the size of Earth, which will wreak havoc on human bodies over time, possibly only solvable by waiting millions of years for humans to better adapt the Martian gravity through evolution.  So, some type of technology creating artificial gravity might be a requirement, which perhaps won’t be an issue since we’d already have all types of futuristic technology we can’t fathom today in order to terraform the planet in the first place.  

But we’ve gone way off the rails here, because the point of the video is – we are not going to Mars anytime soon, and don’t let Elon Musk or any one else convince you otherwise.  It’s fun to think about and dream about and watch movies about, but the reality is, we are more likely to step foot on Mars is 3028 rather than 2028.  There is nothing wrong with thinking about future generations and developing technology to explore other planets like Mars, with hopes and dreams of someday sending human beings there, but the reality is, we are in the very early stages of the dream, which at this point in time is just that, a dream.  I do hope it happens someday, but I have no expectations of being around when it does.  Let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below; I hope you enjoyed today’s video on the possibility of someday sending humans to the Red Planet – and I’m not saying it will never happen because never is a long time, but if you’re watching this video and we’ve been to Mars, I guarantee you’re watching it in the very very deep future long after 2028.  Have a great day every one and we’ll talk to you in the next one.