Realizations

Realizations
Earth vs Luna vs Mars

Wow, you are going to live on Mars!

Your bags are all packed and your flight leaves at sun up tomorrow. You must be excited. Imagine a new world to explore, all the open spaces and finally peace and quiet away from the hustle and noise of city life, fantastic. I do hope you have packed everything you will need because the closest shopping mall will be 118 million miles away. (190 million Km)

Man has fantasized about living on the moon or another planet and written fantastic stories about it for over a thousand years. Now that lunar or interplanetary colonization is within our grasp it’s time we stopped looking at this in a fanciful way. A search of images about colonization is proof of our continuing fantasies.

I wish to provide a reality check here, that might be enough to bring you back down to Earth, literally. Here are just a few of the issues with colonizing the moon or another planet or asteroid.

Not very difficult for anyone to see how different each place is or how barren and desolate the moon and Mars are. These visual comparisons are just the obvious differences. The real differences are in the details. 

Earth	Moon	Mars
Right here	384,000 km away	190,000,000 km away
Pleasant atmosphere	No atmosphere	Toxic (deadly) atmosphere
71% water	Dig if you can find any	Dig if you can find any
Avg. Temp. (61 F or 16C)	(27 F or 38.5 C)	(- 20 F or -28C)
Coldest (-128F or -89C)	(-298 F or -183C)	(-195F or -125C)
Hottest (134F or 56.7C)	(260F or 127C)	(70F or 20C)

Now about personal desires and wants - Let’s consider the next 20 years as our time line:

Earth	Moon	Mars
Fresh Meat – Yup	Nope	Nope
Fresh Dairy – Yup	Nope	Nope
Fresh Vegetables – Yup	Rare – No farms	Rare – No farms
Beer – Yup	Nope – probably banned	Nope – probably banned
Smoking indoors – Yup	Nope – not outdoors either	Nope – Not outdoors either
BBQ – Yup	Nope	Nope
Fresh water – Yup	Nope – recycled pee	Nope – recycled pee
Cosmetics & perfumes – Y	Nope  -  Bad for filters	Nope – Bad for filters
Pets – Anything you want	Nope	Nope
A night on the town – Yup	Nope	Nope
Money to spend – Yup	Nope – no place to spend it	Nope – No place to spend it
Go for a sunset drive – Yup	Nope – only if authorized	Nope – only if authorized
Privacy – Yup	Not likely	Not likely
Social media - Yup	Sort of – 3-4 sec delay	No live chat – 5-20 minute delay, or longer
A walk in the park – Yup	Only after decompression	Only after decompression
Hospital – Yup	Nope – Limited facilities	Nope – Limited facilities

Not so fanciful now, is it? The list above is just a few of the major “inconveniences” you will face. The deprivations and the confining solitude or removal from society can be quite ominous if you are not prepared mentally and physically for the journey, and a stay at “Mom & Pops Martian B&B”

Getting to and from space is expensive and somewhat dangerous; travelling to another celestial body, more dangerous. Living on another celestial body, it’s not going to be a picnic anytime soon.