Living on Mars -- I

Mars lander over Valles Marineris by William Black

It's a common belief that millionaires and billionaires will, after they've ruined the Earth, migrate to Mars.  There are a few tiny problems with that.

1. Mars has an average surface temperature of -60 C.  Earth's average is 15 C.  Mars is as cold as the Antarctic highlands, and Antarctica at sea level averages just -10 C.  This is because Mars is further from the sun, and it has no atmosphere to speak of.  Earth's atmosphere  acts as a blanket, helping retain the radiant heat from the sun. Without it, the average temperature on Earth would be -18 C.
2. Mars's air pressure is 6 millibars.  Earth's averages just over 1013 mb at sea level.  At the summit of Mt Everest, the air pressure is 337 mb.  Even 15 kms (50,000 feet) up, the air pressure on Earth is 111 mb, 18 times higher than on Mars, and 10 times higher than the air pressure in Mars's deepest impact crater, Hellas Planitia, or Valles Marineris, the 4000 km long, 7 kms deep crack in Mars's crust just south of the equator.
3. The very thin atmosphere consists 95% of CO₂, which is unbreathable by man and animals, but might suit some plants—if plants could survive the low air pressure and freezing temperatures. If you went outside you would have to wear a space suit and carry oxygen.
4. Mars is bombarded with deadly radiation.  First, because there is hardly any atmosphere, the sun's ultra-violet rays are unimpeded.  On Earth the atmosphere filters out most of the UV which falls on Earth.  And even then we can get sunburnt and get skin cancers.  Mars's overall UV flux is comparable to the Earth's because of CO₂ and dust but UVC and UVB are much stronger and also biologically much more damaging.  
5. Mars has no magnetic field, unlike the Earth.   The Earth's magnetic field protects us against cosmic rays from outer space and the solar wind from the sun.  They're not really 'rays' at all, but very high speed particles, usually hydrogen ions.  Because they are ions, they have an electric charge, and so are deflected past Earth by our magnetic field.  That doesn't happen on Mars.  The planet's surface is bombarded by cosmic rays.
6. The 'soil' on Mars, AKA  regolith (which means 'blanket stone' in Ancient Greek), is full of toxic chemicals such as perchlorates which make life, including microbial life, difficult to impossible. 
7. Except regolith isn't 'soil'.  Soil on Earth is a complex living entity, with bacteria, fungi, insects, worms, and organic material all sharply differentiating it from regolith.  To make the first soil on Mars, we will probly have to bring a soil from Earth, protect it from cosmic rays during transit, then gradually add organic matter and de-toxed regolith to the original soil until the new material turns into soil.  Compost and human waste will be incredibly valuable on Mars, for decades after first settlement.
8. Mars has gravity only 40% as strong as Earth's.  No one knows whether humans can survive in low gravity environments.  Long-term weightlessness produces muscle atrophy, bone loss, anaemia, heart weakness, and changes in the immune system.  Mars's gravity may be enough to prevent these problems.  Or it may not.  We won't know until we've been there and stayed there.

So, not a paradise for the 1%.  Maybe they should just try and improve things here on Earth so that they won't have to migrate to Mars?

In my next post I'll talk about ways to deal with some of these problems. [See Living on Mars -II]