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Asked by doggyloverHP to Jonathan, Kellie, Kevin, Melissa, Stephanie on 28 Apr 2016.
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Jonathan Jackson answered on 28 Apr 2016:
Hi DoggyloverHP,
I think you’ve been following space news as closely as I have! Yesterday, SpaceX announced plans to send a spacecraft to Mars in the next couple of years or so. Their plan is to be able to send a LOT of stuff over to the Red Planet, far more than NASA can handle right now. So it looks like SpaceX is pushing development forward for a Mars colony.
Right now, the NASA timetable for sending humans to Mars is the 2030s; I’m guessing if SpaceX, NASA, and other space companies and space agencies work together, we can have a permanent Martian colony by the 2040s or the 2050s. However, that all depends on whether people are still interested in going to Mars in 30 or 40 years.
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Stephanie Moon answered on 28 Apr 2016:
I think that humans will be able to make a colony on mars, but I don’t think we’ll make it over there sooner than we expect. There’s a lot of problems with just being in space for a long time. After humans leave the protection of the Earth’s atmosphere, they are exposed to radiation in space that’s much stronger than what they would normally be exposed to. This radiation can cause a lot of problems for a biological system like a human. It is really important that we figure out how this radiation works, and come up with ways to protect astronauts and colonists from it (we’ve certainly done this enough to protect people in space for only a little while, but if people are going to be living on mars, maybe for their whole lives, it will have to be even better!)
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Kellie Jaremko answered on 28 Apr 2016:
Yes I think that this is possible but it depends on how much money is invested to do so. There are many problems that we must overcome like making sure food, oxygen, and other supplies can make it there and thrive for humans. Here is NASA’s site on Mars: http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasas-journey-to-mars
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Kevin Baker answered on 28 Apr 2016:
I think we are a bit farther away from the goal of reaching colony development on Mars. One of the issues is money (as Kellie mentioned). It is very expensive to go to space, and it is even more expensive to stay in space for a long time. This does not include the money we would need to invest in new technologies.
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Melissa Wilson Sayres answered on 30 Apr 2016:
I don’t know how close we are to creating a colony on Mars. One thing we must take into account is how species will evolve (and diverge from species on Earth) if we do form a colony on Mars (presumably humans won’t be the only species we introduce – we’ll also want other plants and animals with us – and we’ll certainly have tag-along bacterial, viruses, fungi and other microbiota).
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