Destination Mars

Gepubliceerd op 8 oktober 2025 om 19:07

Destination Mars: The Long Road Ahead.

Establishing a human colony on Mars has been desired by space agencies and entrepreneurs for years. The first human setting foot on Mars has become more than just a scientific quest. The quest to set foot on Mars has become a quest for knowledge, resources and,… money. But there is also another reason to establish a colony on Mars and that is the reduction of extinction risk. Spreading humans over 2 planets reduces the risk of extinction in case of a catastrophic event. Remember the dinosaurs? It took one big rock to end their world dominance. The extinction of the human race by another asteroid hitting the Earth is unlikely, more likely is that humans get extinct by their own hand (Bostrom, 2002). Other planets in our solar system are not suitable for human life leaving Mars as only nearby option (Levchenko, et al., 2021). 

For a Martian colony to prevent human extinction it should be self supportive and that includes reproduction (Gottlieb, 2019). It has been estimated that you need a minimal population of 110 people on Mars to prevent human extinction (Salotti, 2020). I'm going to contradict that. In ecology there is a 50/500 rule saying you need 50 specimens of a species to prevent inbreeding and a population of 500 specimens to keep that population healthy for the long-term. For some species a threshold of 100/1000 is proposed (Clarke, et al., 2024). Making a Martian colony of 1000 people is more likely to prevent human extinction. And if you have some basic knowledge on inbreeding it seems smart if all those 1000 people are unrelated.

Mars acent/desent vehicle (Cichan, et al., 2017).

There are 3 routes for the first human to set foot on Mars. The first option is a direct landing straight from earth to the Martian surface. The second one is a landing staged from the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos (Canales & Brown, 2021). And the third one is landing from a manned station that’s circling Mars (Cichan, et al., 2017). Until now about 50% of the landing attempts from earth directly on the surface of Mars failed. Using the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos as gateway to Mars is an unproven method and until JAXA’s MMX mission isn’t successful that’s uncharted territory. That leaves a landing initiated from a manned station circling Mars. We have experience with manned stations circling a planet such as the Mir and ISS. And docking and landing on the planet below is proven technology. The NASA’s Artemis IV program has planned to construct a Lunar Space Station, making a manned Martian Space Station the most logical road to set foot on Mars. The road to settling on Mars is a long one and will take longer than entrepreneurs and commercial companies intended. 

 

The scenario that humans will establish a permanent settlement on Mars the coming decades is unlikely (Puumala, et al., 2023). However, habitats such as Biosphere 2, the Laboratory Biosphere and the Controlled Environmental Life Support System have technologies developed for usage in space (Nelson, et al., 2009). Agricultural systems have been developed and tested by NASA for food production (Caraccio, et al., 2014; Wheeler, 2014). The first step should be going to the moon and use the moon as a testing ground for technologies already developed for the exploration of the moon, Mars and beyond (Connolly, et al., 2018).

Literature:

Bostrom, N. (2002). Existential risks: Analyzing human extinction scenarios and related hazards. Journal of Evolution and technology, 9.

Caraccio, A., Poulet, L., Hintze, P. E., & Miles, J. D. (2014). Investigation of bio-regenerative life support and trash-to-gas experiment on a 4 month Mars simulation mission (No. KSC-E-DAA-TN17765).

Cianciolo, A. D., & Brown, K. (2015). Impact of Utilizing Phobos and Deimos as Waypoints for Mars Human Surface Missions (No. NF1676L-20755).

Cichan, T., Bailey, S. A., Antonelli, T., Jolly, S. D., Chambers, R. P., Clark, B., & Ramm, S. J. (2017). Mars base camp: an architecture for sending humans to Mars. New Space, 5(4), 203-218.

Clarke, S. H., Lawrence, E. R., Matte, J. M., Gallagher, B. K., Salisbury, S. J., Michaelides, S. N., ... & Fraser, D. J. (2024). Global assessment of effective population sizes: Consistent taxonomic differences in meeting the 50/500 rule. Molecular Ecology, 33(11), e17353.

Connolly, J. F., Drake, B., Joosten, B. K., Williams, N., Polsgove, T., Merrill, R., ... & Percy, T. (2018, October). The moon as a stepping stone to human Mars missions. In International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2018) (No. JSC-E-DAA-TN61646-2).

Gottlieb, J. (2019). Space colonization and existential risk. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 5(3), 306-320.

Levchenko, I., Xu, S., Mazouffre, S., Keidar, M., & Bazaka, K. (2021). Mars colonization: beyond getting there. Terraforming Mars, 73-98.

Nelson, M., Dempster, W. F., & Allen, J. P. (2009). The water cycle in closed ecological systems: perspectives from the Biosphere 2 and Laboratory Biosphere systems. Advances in Space Research, 44(12), 1404-1412.

Puumala, M. M., Sivula, O., & Lehto, K. (2023). Moving to Mars: The feasibility and desirability of Mars settlements. Space Policy, 66, 101590.

Salotti, J. M. (2020). Minimum number of settlers for survival on another planet. Scientific reports, 10(1), 9700.

Wheeler, R. M. (2014, November). NASA's controlled environment agriculture testing for space habitats. In International Conference on Plant Factory (ICPF) (No. KSC-E-DAA-TN18592).

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