• Question: do you think people will be able tolive on mars and why do you think that

    Asked by Killian Is Boss to Gavin, Karen, Mark, Michel, Roisin on 8 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Michel Destrade

      Michel Destrade answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      Yes they could, but it wouldn’t be fun at all. Read “The Martian” if you want to learn more about human life on Mars. It’s terrifying! (and even better than the movie).

    • Photo: Mark Kennedy

      Mark Kennedy answered on 9 Nov 2016:

      Michel’s recommendation of reading “The Martian” is a good one – it’s an excellent book.

      And I suspect people will be able to live on Mars in the future. There are a lot of problems to over come first (there’s not enough oxygen for us to breath, there’s not enough water there for us to drink) and even if we get there, if we stay there too long, we wouldn’t be able to come back (since the surface gravity of Mars is less than Earths, people who stay there for a long time will lose bone density, so if they came back to Earth, gravity would be too strong for them here and hurt them. This is also why astronauts can’t stay in space for too long, and have to exercise every day while they’re in space! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_osteopenia )

    • Photo: Gavin Coleman

      Gavin Coleman answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      We will definitely be able to, humans are a resourceful and adaptive species! It certainly will comes with many challenges, such as dealing with the lack of atmosphere, water, and the lower gravity having an affect on astronauts bones and muscles. Even further than this, while an astronaut who grew up on earth may be able to readapt if they ever came back, a child growing up on Mars might need specialised equipment to deal with Earth’s higher gravity, and that mightn’t be a fun life.

      As it stands, there are many challenges with being able to send enough resources to support a colony (especially in terms of money), and certainly for a long time it would be a one way trip, as there is no infrastructure on Mars to help us build a rocket to fly back, just a few wandering robots 🙂

    • Photo: Karen

      Karen answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      As the lads said?

    • Photo: Roisin Jones

      Roisin Jones answered on 13 Nov 2016:

      I think the guys have covered this one excellently! There’s actually a privately funded program that is aiming to set up the first colony on Mars (http://www.mars-one.com/), though how close their goals are to achievable I’m not sure, I’d say Mark might be able to comment on that better than me!

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