Article #009: Planetary Colonization and Terraforming

Our mother, Planet Earth, is slowly dying and it showing us clear signs that are being communicated through nature. Even though our efforts to preserve the Planet are very serious, they are practically ineffective. The global warming and pollution problems are rising at a rapid rate and the amount of pure drinkable water is shrinking at an unfathomable rate. Without clean drinking water, life on Earth will stop thriving. New problems that threaten human extinction rise every year such as extinction through meteor collision. To solve these problems, tech billionaires and government funded organizations have started working on projects to help human civilization colonize other planets.

History of Mars

Around four billion years ago, Mars is rumored to harbor thriving environments where life may have survived and evolved. However, due to meteor collisions and the already-thin atmosphere, the surface was destroyed and radiation from the sun broke down the atmosphere and killed all life on Mars. It hasn't been proven if life on Mars ever existed since we aren't able to find any fossils but there is strong evidence proving Earth to have rivers and oceans of liquid water just like our planet Earth once had. The water on Mars has now frozen and accumulated on the ice caps in the North and South regions of the planet (furthest from the Sun).

Mysterious doorway found on Mars produced by natural erosion was rumored to home aliens on Mars (Image Credit: Gigapan)

SpaceX Terraforming Planet Mars

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has worked on countless missions including the Falcon 9 and now SpaceX is finally working towards building the Starship rockets. These rockets have revolutionized space travel because Starship is designed to be a fully reusable and orbital rocket which reduces lunch costs and maintenance between flights. This allows for easy transportation of multiple humans at a time. The Starship rocket will be able to carry tons of weight out of Earth's strong gravitation pull by using a super heavy booster powered by Raptor and Raptor Vacuum engines. Falcon 9 is designed to life cargo in and out of Planet which is perfect to transport materials over to Mars to build bases.

To be able to fully terraform Mars and make it safe for human colonization, the process is very long and tedious. First, let's check though what the Planet Mars is missing for life to be able to thrive. Unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have a thick enough atmosphere that we humans can breathe with and the thin atmosphere also doesn't block enough radiation which threatens cancer for all humans on Mars. So, we will need to artificially create an atmosphere on Mars by importing gases such as Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Carbon Dioxide for the atmosphere. Mars also doesn't have any water or soil to grow plants. Melting Mars' surface into oceans of lava, will melt the ice caps to produce liquid water and also replenish the soil with a lot of nutrients from Mars' surface. We can install an artificial magnetic field by placing 2 magnets across the rotational axis of Mars.
To learn about the extreme process of terraforming Mars, check out this Kurzgesagt video!

Elon Musk says he is willing to set off nuclear bombs on the Planet Mars to replenish the soil and melt the ice caps to bring back some water on Mars. This however, sounds extremely dangerous because if the radiation leaves Mars and leaks into outer-space it will be a huge problem for humans in the future.

NASA Artemis Missions Moon Base

Generally speaking, the goals of Artemis are to enable scientific discovery, open up new economic opportunities, and inspire a new generation of scientists, technologists, and leaders. However, the real specific goals of the Artemis missions are to find water on the moon and other resources that support long-term space exploration.

NASA launched Artemis 1 on November 2022 in hopes of sending materials to the moon in order to be able to create the first ever moon base. The idea behind constructing the Artemis Base Camp is to be able to build a surface habitat so that astronauts can remain on the moon's surface for days or even weeks, to collect samples and data for further research. NASA, is finally sending humans back to the lunar surface for the first time in 50 years. But this time the astronauts are building a moon base, so they can do more than just moon walks like the Apollo astronauts did.
Researchers will run multiple experiments, measure plant growth with intense radiation from the sun, measure plant growth without gravity. Since the moon's motion is a lot faster than the Earth, time will run a lot slower as well. Since the time on the moon is a lot slower and since the moon experiences eclipses from the Sun quite often, it will be hard to grow plants with minimal sunlight. Researchers will need to use artificial light and heat sources on the moon to be able to survive. The lunar soil has also been tested on Earth from the samples brought from the moon and proves that plants can be grown using Lunar soil.

Not only does this huge achievement in space exploration help in conducting long-term research on the moon, but it also takes us one step closer to figuring out how to colonize other planets or celestial bodies in our solar system. This advancement created a break-through in planetary colonization and will definitely advance human scientific discovery immensely.

Illustration of NASA's Artemis Base Camp models on the lunar surface (Image Credit: Pierre Carril/ESA)

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Written by BooleanCube :]