Wednesday 23 May 2018

Mars Won't Be Earth Mk II

The dinosaurs ruled the Earth for tens of millions of years and as far as i am aware they never damaged it much so us humans have been in charge for only a tiny fraction of that time and we have made a complete pigs ear of things so until another comet comes along to wipe us all out and allow the dolphins to take over, the poor old Earth is stuck with us polluting it.
As the climate warms and things get worse we need to look for an escape route and all our eggs seem to be going into the basket marked 'Mars'.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is leading the charge and wants to get humans to Mars as soon as possible and is planning on massive, heavy-lift rockets to carry colonists in fleets of ships to the Red Planet.
A quick glance around the solar system shows us just how limited our options are so Mars is the best of a bad lot but our technology just isn't up to scratch just yet so we are bound to this little ball of rock with our polluted sky, sea and ground until we not only find a way to get to Mars but work out how to terraform it for our needs.
The problem is Mars really isn't anything like Earth with one third of our planet's gravity but also has unbreathable air and very little water which is a bit of a drawback to breathing and water drinking humans.  
Our options are therefore to have a go at colonising a very inhospitable Mars with all the inherent problems or keep looking for somewhere a bit more Earth-like but then you have the problem of looking outside of our Solar System and unless the scientists figure out a method for speed many times what we can currently achieve it is a very, very long term plan and that's just to find
somewhere. 
Mars is a nice dream but i don't think its the solution to our problems of the increasing need for an Earth Mark II and we should be concentrating our efforts on looking elsewhere. 

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