The proposal that humans will ever sustainably colonize Mars (much less in the next 30 years) is painfully stupid.
Never mind the obvious issues that Mars has no food and virtually no oxygen or water, so we would need to haul all that shit out there just to set up a small enclosure that could support life.
The bigger problems are geological. Mars has no global magnetic field. Couple that with the thin atmosphere, and the sun would bombard any human on Marsâs surface with ionizing radiation. Even assuming we could eventually set up a colony there, its inhabitants would need to be artificially shielded (in spacesuits, under ground, etc.).
And Mars has only 38% of Earthâs gravity. Living in reduced gravity long term could have all kinds of negative impacts on human health and could potentially fuck up our ability to reproduce. And the low gravity coupled with the lack of a magnetic field means any attempt to terraform Mars (i.e. create an Earth-like atmosphere) would be doomed to failure - the Sun would eventually blast it away.
Can we solve this problem? Not in our lifetimes. Youâd have to somehow slam Mars with asteroids or some shit for millennia, and wait for it the resultant composite to form a solid planet of sufficient mass. Weâre talking about geological time scales here. And even then, thereâs the problem of how to get a global magnetic field going on Mars.
And further: even if we could do all of that, compared to Earth, Mars is 50% further from the Sun. Which means we canât just add an atmosphere and some water and hope to replicate Earthâs climate there. (This problem would be exacerbated if we donât go to the trouble of scaling Mars up to Earthâs size and mass).
Itâs fun to ponder extraterrestrial colonization and space exploration is important if for no other reason than it expands our knowledge. But talk of a near-term sustainable colony anywhere outside of the thin little habitable shell on our home planet is fucking idiocy.