Mars is the very epitome of a desert world gone awry. A planet that some three and a half billion years ago was likely to have been briefly blessed with river deltas, lakes, and maybe even an ocean. Yet fast forward to the rust-colored desolation of today and the red planet only appears suitable for robotic rovers that are tough enough to withstand its dust storms and extreme temperatures.
But in his latest book, “The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet,” astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin argues that Mars represents the future of humanity in a way that nowhere else can.
In one volume, Zubrin —- the founding president of the International Mars Society and author of “The Case for Mars,” has achieved what few other books on Mars have been able. He offers an astoundingly comprehensive road map for how to make dreams about colonizing Mars become reality.
Zubrin writes that Mars’ colonists will generate a lot of their early income from the sale and licensing of intellectual property mainly for consumption back on Earth. He argues that the profile of typical Mars colonists will be highly-motivated individuals who will collaborate in a Martian Silicon Valley-type ‘Menlo Park.’ Furthermore, Zubrin writes that “people visiting Mars for scientific, commercial, recreational, and medical reasons will be a moneymaker for a Mars settlement right from the start.”
But before any such Martian economies of scale can be created, the first visitors will need to focus on the basics of food, water, and shelter. Zubrin notes that the first bases will concentrate on developing water extraction techniques from Martian permafrost; constructing greenhouses; and pressurized structures for human habitation as well as industrial and agricultural activity.
Zubrin notes that it’s “highly probable that underground hydrothermal reservoirs exist on the red planet” and once these reservoirs are discovered, they can provide Mars settlers with abundant supplies of water and geothermal power.
Zubrin Advocates Global Warming On Mars
To warm the planet up to temperatures that are more clement than the freeze-dried desert that Mars experiences today, Zubrin advocates releasing a Mars manufactured cocktail of chlorofluorocarbons. Ironically, these are the same sort of fluorocarbons that were banned decades ago here on Earth in deference to repairing our depleted ozone layer.
But as this intentional global warming is induced on Mars, the planet will warm and its ancient hydrosphere will become reactivated, notes Zubrin.
“Water will melt out from the ice and permafrost, flow into the streams, rivers, and lakes, evaporate, and come down everywhere as rain and snow,” Zubrin writes. “Pioneering cyanobacteria and primitive plants will produce about 1 millibar of oxygen to allow advanced plants to propagate across Mars.”
The result will be a more temperate climate, as well as a thickened carbon dioxide atmosphere to supply pressure and greatly reduce the space radiation dose, Zubrin writes.
Plants that can tolerate Mars’ surface regolith and perform photosynthesis at much higher efficiency than here on Earth will then be released, along with bacterial symbiotes (organisms living in symbiosis), across the planet.
“Using such biological systems, the required 120 millibars of oxygen needed to support humans and other advanced animals in the open could be produced in about 300 years,” Zubrin writes.
Martian Iron Should Be Readily Available
Mars’ natural red landscape is due to copious amounts of iron oxide, basically, what we earthlings call rust.
“To get metallic iron from this rust, all you need to do is react the iron oxide with carbon monoxide, as people have done on Earth since about 1500 BC,” writes Zubrin. “We could electrolyze Martian water to produce hydrogen and react that with the iron oxide to produce metallic iron and water.”
As for energy?
The energy basis for a Martian civilization will need to be nuclear power. Although uranium and thorium have been widely-detected on Mars, Zubrin predicts that the technology to support the large-scale settlement of Mars is fusion power.
A Mars Roadmap For The Ages
Well written and accessible for even the non-specialist, the book is free of jargon and acronyms that so often plague other such tomes. Yebt “The New World on Mars” is detailed enough that it could easily be used as a chapter-by-chapter syllabus for any good college course on off-world settlement and colonization.
Zubrin covers every aspect of Mars settlement and colonization —- from food, water and shelter to cultural and societal issues —- like the potential for totally novel aspects of the arts, sports and tourism.
Sadly, the timeframes for seeing any of this happening within this generation or next is still iffy.
NASA still doesn’t have a firm launch date for its first crewed mission to the red planet. NASA’s website only highlights the fact that the space agency is currently working on six technologies needed for a successful two-year crewed mission to Mars. Thus, Zubrin’s dream of using private funding to get to the red planet may have more currency than previously thought.
That’s one reason that longtime Mars settlement advocates like Zubrin think that making Mars a for-profit enterprise is crucial to settling the red planet. The proof will come within the first few decades after humanity first puts boots on the Martian surface. By then, it will be clear whether Zubrin’s ideas will see fruition or forever remain one grand idyllic notion.
