Elon Musk is something of a joker, so we might be tempted to dismiss as an April fool's hoax his announcement that test flights of the rocket that could take humans to Mars will begin next year.
Musk, however, is dead serious.
Some say he is being irresponsible in rocketing ahead of Nasa's 2033 goal for landing people on Mars, but he has at least admitted that "for the early people that go to Mars, it will be far more dangerous". No kidding. In 2016, science writer Eric Mack, who follows planetary matters closely on CNet.com, published a list of all the ways there are to die on Mars. Think on these things next time you complain about the hardships of economy class.
First - assuming you survive the eight-month journey in a confined capsule travelling at unconscionable speed through a dark vastness - on Mars you will face killer levels of radiation that planetary scientist Pascal Lee says will "zap" anyone who doesn't remain at least 3m underground at all times.
Should you be foolish enough to wander around on the surface unsuitably attired, you would also be subject to extremely low atmospheric pressure, which would cause your body to dehydrate and shrivel up like fried spinach. Mack comfortingly points out that the evaporation of water from all your soft tissues "wouldn't kill you right away, but would probably make your demise from suffocation even more horrible".
Because of all the CO in Mars's minimal atmosphere, humans without access to manufactured air will suffocate. Even with breathing equipment you might still choke, because Martian dust particles are much finer than any earthly matter and impossible not to inhale, particularly during the dust storms that tear frequently across the planet.
Dust, as anyone who has had to clean a basement will know, also makes its way underground, so those deep burrows are not necessarily safe. Also, they had better be reliably heated, because on a bad night the temperature can drop to -143°C.Apart from all that, Mars must be a lovely place, otherwise why is so much money being spent on getting there?
WHY MARS?
Space, as dozens of films keep telling us, is the final frontier. Humans want to conquer it because humans like to conquer things. Two years ago, at the launch of the National Geographic Channel's Mars TV series, I met science writer and Mars enthusiast Stephen Petranek, who answered the "Why" question by saying that plans to make Mars habitable are "an insurance policy for humanity".
The TV series took off like one of Musk's early rocket experiments - that is to say, it crashed into the ocean and sank without trace - but what the production lacked in entertainment value was made up for by the insights of those on its advisory panel, Petranek among them.
In his book How We'll Live on Mars, Petranek claims that "living on Mars is not just possible, it's inevitable". He also addresses the question of how the demands of this airless colony will affect the type of people who may live there. Genetic editing and augmentation are expected to play a part. In other words, we might create a special race able to survive in unearthly conditions.
"Why can't we re-engineer human lungs or human blood cells to split the carbon atom from the CO molecule?" Petranek asks.
"Perhaps we won't be able to change humans within one lifetime to be able to breathe an atmosphere of CO, but I expect we'll be able to genetically change egg and sperm cells to effect that change in our progeny."A blunter answer to why we would go to all this bother and expense was given by space-programme veteran and professor emeritus John Logsdon, who worked on the Apollo 11 mission and was also on the National Geographic Mars advisory board.
"Why should we do it? Because we're humans," said Logsdon. "If you spend a lot of money in a technological sector, you're going to make progress, and some of that progress will have earthbound benefits. But that's not why we do it. We do it because it's there."
STANDING ROOM ONLY
Despite Musk's optimistic announcement that "short up-and-down flights" to Mars might commence next year, the establishment of a human settlement there is going to take a bit longer. That hasn't stopped recruitment drives for astronauts to be the frontrunners, and there has been no shortage of applicants.
Nasa has been conducting experiments to assess the physical and psychological impact of long-term space exploration. In one study, six people were locked in the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation dome for a year. All survived, but one of them had to resort to playing the ukulele to deal with the interminable boredom.
There is confusion about the difference between Nasa's plans and those of the private Dutch project Mars One, which a few years ago staged a highly publicised global search for the first group willing to live on Mars. A hundred finalists - one of them South African physicist Adriana Marais - were picked from more than 200,000 applicants. These will be whittled down to 24 people who will, it is claimed, land on Mars in 2032, a year ahead of Nasa's ETA.
Mars One has yet to meet its crowd-funding targets, but still hopes to raise enough money to buy a rocket ship and all the other devices needed for space travel. There is much scepticism about this venture, but Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp remains positive.
JUST ANOTHER 'SURVIVOR' EPISODE
At a recent investment conference in South Africa, Lansdorp said: "Five hundred years from now, kids will learn how humans landed on Mars in the 21st century. It doesn't matter who does it first, it will happen. It will change the world completely. People will believe that anything is possible."
The second arm of Lansdorp's company, Mars One Ventures, hopes to make a mint from the broadcasting rights, based on the assumption that about four billion people will have internet access in 2032, and that they will all want to watch events unfold in outer space. Should his astronauts make it to the Red Planet, their exploits will be beamed to Earth as a reality show.Lansdorp is not only a canny businessman but a profound source of wisdom: "The most important thing the crews will have to do when they land on Mars is survive," he said.
And then there is Musk. His SpaceX company, which receives a lot of its money from Nasa contracts, is working with the US agency in some ways and on its own in others. Musk believes his plans for a reusable Big Falcon Rocket (affectionately referred to by its familiars as the big something-else rocket) is the way to go.
His enthusiasm is always infectious, but when he said last month that "there's going to be an explosion of entrepreneurial opportunity because Mars will need everything from iron foundries to pizza joints to night clubs", he might have been pushing the boundaries of credibility just a little too far, even for him.
There is little doubt that astronauts will go to Mars, and it is entirely likely that one day a human settlement might exist there, although probably not in the lifetime of anyone reading this paper.
Futurists have highlighted the potential of a space colony as the chance for humans to start over by founding a truly equal society where there are no race, gender or wealth divisions.
If we can do that, learning to breathe CO will be as easy as falling off a bicycle.THE MARS LAND GRAB
The questions of how humans will get to Mars and how they will survive there have understandably received most attention, but at some point there will have to be a discussion about how to allocate land and resources.
The international Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids the establishment of military bases or the deployment of weapons in space or on any planet other than Earth. It is not terribly clear on private ownership, which wasn't really an issue in 1967. It might be settled in the old-fashioned way of finders keepers.
Given the deteriorating relations between the US and everyone else, we might see a space race like the one that took place during the Cold War, although unless they are keeping very quiet about it, the Russians don't seem to be making much effort to claim the red planet.
Nasa's recruitment posters for brave souls to apply for Mars experiments called for farmers, teachers, surveyors and other professionals to apply.
The posters were largely tongue-in-cheek, but the technology to grow food in space is one of the agency's priorities. A study monitoring the cultivation of plants on the International Space Station is under way, so maybe those farmers will be needed after all...