Elon Musk has rockets for which he seeks profitable payloads. Hence his
advocacy
for a Mars colony of one million peoplee to be created within the next 40 to 100
years.
Question is, how will one million people raise the cash to purchase the ticket that will get them to Mars and what will they do to make a living once they are there?
Colonizing Mars won't bear much relation to the European colonization of the Americas
or Australia during the late 19th and early 20th Century, Then, for ten bucks, anyone
tired of Europe could reach the New World in relative safety aboard an
ocean-going liner. Be caught stealing a chicken, and from Britain to Australia it was a free ride.
In America, there was government land for purchase at just a buck twenty-five an acre. That is fertile land. Land with trees from which to build a cabin, and land, once cleared of trees, to plant a garden or raise some corn. In Australia, at the only price most could afford, emancipated convicts could get 30 acres of government land for free.
Mars is a different proposition. The cost of getting there will be a huge barrier. Musk is talking of a one way trip for a few hundred thousand dollars. At that price the cost of access would largely preclude colonization by exactly the dynamic and adventurous young people needed to create a new world.
What's more, the air on Mars is almost non-existent and what there is of it is poisonous.
And the light isn't the best. Twice the distance from the sun as Earth, sunlight on Mars delivers only one quarter the energy per unit area as on Earth. But unlike the Earth, Mars has no significant ozone layer to filter out the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. So, on the Red Planet, five-minutes at the beach is about as long as you could spend without serious sunburn. That's if there were a beach which there is not, Martian surface waters having long since evaporated to be either lost to space or become locked up in the polar ice caps. Also unlike Earth, Mars lacks a magnetosphere to deflect high energy Cosmic rays and energetic particles from the Sun that pose a major risk to human health.
So what exactly is the attraction that will draw Musk's million to Mars? The land? Hardly. Perchlorates, which are toxic to humans and poisonous to plants, account for up to one percent of the soil mass. So where are Musk's million gonna live and what will they eat? Food, either imported from Earth or grown hydroponically in air-conditioned capsules with artificial light will be expensive -- very.
You can't grow cucumbers under a 60 watt light bulb. At a
distance of ten feet, the light from a 60 Watt incandescent lamp has an energy of about 0.05
watts per square meter. Here on Earth, in the temperate zone, midday sunshine on a June day is about 20,000 times brighter -- a difference you hardly notice because the human eye has such an amazing adaptive capacity. And to grow crops you absolutely need sunlight or the equivalent, not lamp light just enough to read by.
Thus, in addition to other astronomical costs in establishing a colony, Musk will need nuclear plants on Mars to provide the power to light the lamps with which to grow the food to feed his Million. That's unless Walmart or Amazon Fresh extend service to the extra-terrestrial community. But the cost would be, well astronomical: $2.49 for the cuke, plus something in the thousands per kilogram for shipping.
But let's hear it from Elon. How's this million-person martian colony going to work? What is the economic basis for this wonderful world on an alien planet where the air, what little there is of it, is poisonous, where sunlight burns exposed flesh in minutes, where it never rains, and where the soil is letbal to plants?
The reality is that Mars is a Hell of a place to live. The air and soil are poisonous; the year-round global mean temperature at the equator is zero Celcius; there are no surface waters; and there is no obvious means to earn a living. Exploration of Mars may provide limited employment for a few geologists, but any resources worth extracting for export to Earth can be located with robots. As we've discussed elsewhere, tourism appears to be the only economic basis for hauling humans to Mars.
Related:
Martian Exploration and Exploitation
NASA To Put Humans on the Moon in 2028: How Dopey Is That?
Leonard Susskind: Why Mars Is a Death Trap
