A colony on Mars

Elon Musk has competition from Boeing, NASA

Entrepreneur Elon Musk recently outlined an ambitious scheme for establishing a large colony. The idea of exploring Mars has been on the table ever since astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli saw canals on the planet (actually he saw canali, or straight lines) circa 1877. Mr Musk has explained that his desire is more in the nature of a hedge against extinction. As a matter of fact, Earth has suffered several global extinctions and, as such, one way for homo sapiens to avoid being wiped out by a future catastrophe would be to become a multi-planetary species. For example, the dinosaurs were wiped out 66 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, creating a crater some 175 km in diameter. The debris raised by that impact cut down sunlight, setting off a long period of cooling. Ironically, that extinction contributed to the rise of mammals, which occupied evolutionary niches vacated by the dead saurians.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that a giant asteroid strikes Earth again. A nuclear war, which sparks off a nuclear winter with similar destructive effects, is perhaps more likely than that. For that matter, if global warming continues, it could lead to more extinctions without any human help. Therefore, a colony on Mars would be analogous to what computer scientists describe as a backup. Mr Musk estimates that human settlers could be sent to Mars as early as 2022 and that the costs of establishing a Martian colony could be greatly reduced by using reusable rockets. However, the engineering problems are formidable and the costs mind boggling. With current technology it would cost about $10 billion just to land a settler on Mars. Maintaining human life on the red planet would also be very difficult and expensive.

However, Mr Musk believes those costs can be reduced to about $150,000 per head and at that level it may be possible to establish a self-sustaining city. In his scheme, a Martian colony would be sustainable if it consisted of about one million highly productive individuals. The first stage to fulfilling this ambition is to design reusable rockets to reduce the cost of transport. Mr Musk's company, SpaceX, is attempting this; it has demonstrated elements of its so-called Interplanetary Transport System. The concept is multi-stage. A launch vehicle will put the transporter into Earth orbit, where it will be refuelled for the journey to Mars. The Mars colony will produce propellant (a methane-oxygen combination) to refuel the transporter for the return journey. SpaceX appears confident about reusable rocket designs, though it suffered a recent setback when a rocket blew up. The complex logistics of orbital refuelling would be the next step.

But the challenges don't end at transportation. Mars' environment is inhospitable. Its atmosphere is very thin - less than one per cent of Earth's - and it contains little free oxygen; there is no free surface water. Temperatures are quite low, a summer night could be as cold as minus 70 degree C and winter temperatures drop to minus 200 degrees C. Radiation levels are much higher and the gravity is less. Designing a habitat for such a terrain would not only be difficult but also expensive - Mr Musk estimates that it would take 10 cargo trips for every trip with humans. Not to mention the fact that the long-term health effects of these conditions are still unknown.

The idea itself may seem farfetched - Mr Musk admits it does - and the timelines and cost estimates may be unrealistic, but it's no more outlandish than the sea voyages crossing the Pacific in balsa rafts. The underlying imperative driving Mr Musk - "create a backup for homo sapiens" - should resonate with everyone who has lost data in the digital era. The attempts to design viable solutions to transport, establish and maintain such a colony will surely lead to many interesting spinoffs. Mr Musk already has competition: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg said this week that he means to ride his dark horse straight to Mars, beating Mr Musk, NASA, and everybody else to the Red Planet.