Mars: The Plan

It could be turning into a bit of a Mars week.

The latest discovery from Mars is that there is enough water locked up at the South Pole to cover the planet in an ocean 11 metres deep. Surf's up dude.

Which got me thinking, it reminded me of that Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Total Recall, where at the very end he starts an alien machine which appears to melt ice which then gives Mars an atmosphere.

Could this be a cunning plan, melt the ice cap to provide oxygen from the water. Although I am not sure what you would do with the left over hydrogen because burning it in Oxygen would just create water again.

How Terraforming Mars Will Work (How stuff works article)

This suggests that in order for water to exist in liquid form we would first have to create a greenhouse effect to warm the planet. Sounds a bit ironic to me.

What it does say is that the earth had a similar atmosphere until photosynthetic bacteria developed on earth. So why not put some of these bacteria on a rocket and blast them off to see if we can start terraforming Mars.

Lets say the atmosphere is taken care of so we can start melting the ice. The article suggests that solar mirrors focusing sunlight to melt the ice may be an option.

Admittedly this may take centuries but at some point we will have a planet capable of supporting life with water and a breathable atmosphere. Then we can finally move in.

As well as this grand plan I want to suggest that rather than waste time with sending people to the moon, send them to Mars, after all the moon will never be more than a transit station where as Mars has real potential.

Of course a problem with any mission to Mars is the time taken to get there and the isolation. Any round trip with any prolonged stay on Mars would have to be in the five year time span and the crew is always going to be small with maybe four being a practical complement.

So any crew is going to have to be mentally tough, I was thinking that we are probably looking at the kind of people that travel around the Arctic and Antarctic by foot and husky dog. The rugged Ray Mear's survival types with the mental toughness and resourcefulness to survive. They will need to survive as any trip to Mars will be inherently dangerous, there is a good chance they would not make it back or be marooned in space with no hope of rescue.

The recent discovery of the seven caves could provide any team with a ready made base, seal the entrance and you would have an airtight home, which could with a bit of clever engineering be given a breathable atmosphere so that the Mars residents would not have to wear space suits all the time.

Having said that I do not think that all these dangers should put us off going and aiming to eventually set up a permanent colony on Mars. Obviously I am not expecting this all to be completed in my lifetime but I would like to see the first steps taken by humanity on the red planet.