A Message to the Humans on Mars

“I don't know why you're on Mars… But whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you.” That is part of the recorded message astrophysicist Carl Sagan left to the future humans on Mars, a few months before his death in 1966.

On average, Mars is approximately 140 million miles away from Earth; 250 million at its furthest point and 30 million at its shortest. If you were to take the shortest possible non-stop trip to Mars and back with our current technology, you would be in a spaceship for over a year, and one way would still take seven to eight months. What would make that journey worth it? Why is exploring Mars such a big part of the future of humanity? To answer these questions we must first know the geography of Mars.

Mars is the next closest planet to the sun after Mercury, Venus, and Earth. It is believed that at one point, Mars may have been very Earth like. Great floods changed the surface and left similar features that we see on earth today, massive ancient flood plains and valleys cover the face of Mars. But now, the atmosphere of Mars is too thin, and too cold for water to last on the surface. What water there once was has receded to the ice caps at the north and South Pole. But the amount of ice is nowhere near to what it should be if all the water on the planet froze. Maybe the water all evaporated into the atmosphere, leaving behind the dry rocky surface we see now. But then why is the atmosphere of Mars so thin? Perhaps all the water soaked into the ground and remains disperses in the soil deep underground.

Knowing the history of water on Mars is the key to understanding the entire history of its climate and how planets evolve, including Earth. If we can unlock the...

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... end up going out with a bang on the way. The spacecraft could explode on the launch, get riddled by asteroids on the way, or burst into flames on the way down, those are all hypothetical things that anyone willing to make that journey must be mentally prepared to accept.

Also, any human on Mars will not be able to set foot outside of a pressurized room without a spacesuit. Any leak could quickly kill a person. There is not enough air in the atmosphere to vent it into any living capsules of any sort. So where would people get air in the first place? Mars one had the idea of putting soil in an oven where the ice crystals in the soil could be converted into a breathable air, but that may only work for so long.

So as a population expanding and advancing onward through time, we have come to the point where we need to ask ourselves, “To go to Mars, or not to Mars?”