Mars has always been a popular colony of earth in science fiction. Now, as space settlements become ever more likely, a British scientist has issued a warning about the nature such ”colonies” might take.
Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, warned that privately funded efforts to create colonies might result in ”Wild West” conditions. It was possible that fortune-seeking adventurers may spearhead early high-risk expeditions to Mars, he said. They would be following the example of explorers who set out from Europe for the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries, mainly bankrolled by rich monarchs.
What would happen when humans reached Mars depended on the nature of the first expeditions, Sir Martin said. If they were government-led, or international missions, then exploration and exploitation of the planet would be carefully controlled, as it was in Antarctica. But if the missions were privately run, the situation would be more like early pioneers staking out new territories across America.
Sir Martin told the British Association Festival of Science at Leicester University: ”If the explorers were privately funded adventurers of a free-enterprise, even anarchic disposition, the Wild West model would be more likely.”
One scenario for the second half of the century would involve a permanently manned lunar base, a band of pioneers on Mars, and possibly small artificial habitats cruising the Solar System attached to asteroids or comets. However before any of this became feasible manned spaceflight would first have to become affordable and routine.
Mars is the Roman god of war. The planet has always been a favoured place of space settlement among science fiction writers. Early sighting of ”canals” were thought to indicate that life had once existed on it. In 1877, an Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, called lines he observed on Mars ”canals”. A US astronomer, Percival Lowell, made a detailed study of the channels on Mars first noted by Schiaparelli and speculated about the existence of life on the planet. But the ”canals” were imaginary.
Several spacecraft have visited Mars including Mariner 4 in 1965. Mars 2, was the first spacecraft to land on Mars. Mars Pathfinder landed in 1997.
Mars has a varied terrain which includes Olympus Mons which, at 23774 metres, is the largest mountain in the Solar System, and Tharsis, a huge bulge about
4 000 kilometres across and 10 kilometres high. There is also a network of canyons 4 000 kilometres long and ranging between two and seven kilometres deep.
Although much of the Martian surface is old and cratered, there are also much younger rift valleys, ridges, hills and plains. Mars has a thin atmosphere composed mostly of tiny amounts of carbon dioxide plus even less nitrogen, argon and traces of oxygen and water. The average pressure on the surface of Mars is less than one per cent of earth’s but it is dense enough to support very strong winds and vast dust storms that sometimes engulf the entire planet for months. Mars has permanent ice caps at both poles composed mostly of solid carbon dioxide. – Sapa-DPA