The US ought to establish an independently viable colony on Mars by 2070

In space lies mankind's best destiny, but we ought to oppose any proposition to colonize Mars in less than 52 years time as overambitious, hasty, perilous and deleterious to the overall project of humanity"s spaceward expansion. Among the most evident obstacles are legal & political considerations, technological deficits, health & safety concerns, environmental threats, unbalanced priorities, considerable costs and the dampening effect of failure on future ventures. I. Legal & political considerations. A. Unilateral US colonization is illegal. 1. The US has ratified and remained party to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Article II of that treaty states: "Outer Space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". [1] 2. Similarly, the Common Heritage of Humanity principle of international law holds that Space ought to be held in common trust for future generations and protected from exploitation to the benefit of individual national or corporate entities. [2] B. Unilateral US colonization may be seen as provocative to the security interests of rival states. Human expansion into space ought to be perceived as a project of, by, and for all humanity to avoid becoming an object of jealous antagonism or a symbol of imperial intention. C. A global project would reduce competition and spread out the cost. D. Life on Mars is popular in concept but paying for such a project is consistently less popular. Three Gallup polls in 1969 (53%), 1999 (54%), and 2005 (58%) found that a majority of American oppose setting aside funds for a manned mission to Mars (much less the far greater sums required to build and maintain a colony). [3] II. An American colony on Mars would require permanent production of breathable air, water, food, living space, heat, transportation, resource extraction, Martian and interplanetary communication, and energy on sufficient scale to fuel these requirements. A Martian colony would first require decades of expensive research & development. Examples include: A. Faster spaceships. At present, the shortest trip to Mars takes 260 days. Shorter trips equal critical cost savings. B. Mining and extraction technologies that can extract sufficient water elements from the atmosphere or beneath the surface. C. Martian core sampling and survey. D. Energy requirements and supply. Maximum solar irradiance on Mars is only 59% of Earth on the best day. Dust storms and orbital eccentricity make solar energy far less abundant and predictable than on earth or in space. We must determine whether solar can meet minimum requirements and evaluate nuclear options. E. Martian dust is a major challenge. Airlocks, filters, spacesuits must be designed and tested to prevent dust from clogging lungs and essential machinery. F. Lighter, more flexible, and longer lasting than present ISS pressure suits must be developed. G. The sun will occlude direct communication for months at a time. A network of satellites at Lagrange points or trailing Mars" orbit must be developed and deployed. III. Myriad health and safety concerns have yet to be addressed. A. Radiation. Annual radiation doses on are estimated to be 15 times the maximum Dept. of Energy limits for radiation workers. [4] The longest time any human has spent outside of the protection of the Earth"s Van Allen belt is 12 days. Mars offers little natural defense vs. solar radiation. An assessment of long-term risks of cancer, brain damage, and DNA degradation is required and development of protective strategies. B. Mars gravity is only 38% Earth gravity. The longest consecutive human space flight is only 438 days but just a few months spent in weightless environments results in muscle atrophy, bone density loss, permanent eyesight and balance disorders, and significant brain changes including loss of proprioception. [5] C. Historically, more colonies fail due to disease than any other cause Many bacteria like salmonella are far more virulent in low gravity. A Martian colony must be capable of responding to a daunting range of medical crises. D. Immunity is also a problem for an isolated community. Children born without exposure to natural populations will significantly immunodeficient. Will new settlers be able to join unexposed populations? Will tourism be supportable? Will Martians be immunologically capable of visiting Earth? E. Psychological. Life on Mars will mean hard work and profound boredom, punctuated by sudden, life-threatening crisis. Add constant dust management, supply shortages (even famines), cramped space, little privacy, little to no autonomy. Mars will be stressful and some colonists are going to crack. IV. There are also several environmental considerations. A. Do we preserve the natural Martian landscape or subject it to colonial resource exploitation, pollution, real estate development, etc.? B. Colonization may inhibit science"s ability to discover and document evidence of prior microbial life on Mars. C. Short term colonization may make future terraforming difficult or impossible as Martians object to relocation, disruption, climate change. D. US Strategic Command estimates that more 170 million artificial objects weighing 6,000 tons are presently in orbit around the earth. Increased density improves the chances of a collisional cascade (Kessler Syndrome), an event with the potential to destroy many satellites and make future launches more hazardous if not impossible, stranding a Martian colony. A sustainable program of orbital housekeeping must be implemented prior to space expansion. V. There are at least two higher priorities for space exploration. A. Human populations are already exhausting the availability of many essential elements on Earth, clean water being the most important of these. Mining space has great potential for exploitation but Mars is hardly the best destination. Asteroids have significant advantage over Mars in terms of water and mineral abundance and mining asteroids in zero-G would be far cheaper than the cost of transporting out of a planetary gravity well. B. The Moon ought to be mankind"s first space colony. The moon is close at hand, cheaper for transport, easier to rescue, easy to communicate with. Most of the important unsolved problems of colonization can and should be tested on the Moon before expanding further afield. Once built, the Moon may serve as an essential base and transport hub for future expansion, lessening the costs of Martian colonization. VI. Cost A. Given that so much necessary research and development has yet to be undertaken, realistic cost estimates are virtually impossible. 1. By far, the most relied upon estimate comes from NASA"s 1989 SEI study. Not including R&D, a single round trip to Mars including a 3 year stay was estimated to cost $500 billion dollars. [6] 2. Multiplying SEI"s life support costs for a 3 person, 3 year mission by the minimum number of colonists required to create a self-sustaining population (160) we get something like $300 billion/yr at the outset. B. Whatever the present estimates, it is clear that the price of a Martian colony needs to be dramatically reduced before it can expect popular support from US taxpayers. VII. A viable exploration of space will require significant shifts in US priorities and technological capacities. Above all, early space exploration projects must be successful enough to garner support for expanded projects. Goal-setting is important but entirely unrealistic objects like a Martian colony by 2070 create a false sense of scope and priorities. Hasty, underfunded, underdeveloped projects are more likely to fail and each or any failure may likely inhibit humanity"s will to venture further. Put succinctly, the US is entirely unready to colonize Mars by 2070. (Please find citations in comments)