We Asked an Expert: Are We Really Going to Colonize Mars?

The Red Planet has always fascinated humanity. Today, it’s inextricably linked to the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. The founding mission of Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, is to make humans a multiplanetary species, and last April he told employees that he expects 1 million people to be living on Mars in 20 years’ time. As a prominent lieutenant of President Trump, Musk’s spacefaring Promethean dream has become one of the key myths of MAGA 2.0 and an important element in the spectacle of renewed American dynamism.

But is the Mars vision an uplifting, heroic goal or a galaxy-sized waste of time and energy? And is this cold, distant world of radiation and toxic dust really somewhere humans can thrive? Won’t shit just get weird? Have they really thought this through?

For answers, we spoke with anthropologist Kathryn Denning, Associate Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, whose work explores the cultural, scientific, and ethical dimensions of human engagement with space, and the search for extraterrestrial life.

VICE: Why do we have such a long-held fascination with Mars?
Denning: An interesting question. Thousands of years ago, ancient people—who didn’t even necessarily know what a planet was—were looking up at this beautiful dark sky with lovely lights, and Mars was so striking due to its red color. Mars also moves weirdly in the sky, which captivated ancient astronomers, and led to traditional stories about what it was doing up there. It’s one of the few planets that we can see decently with optical telescopes from here on Earth, so astronomers have looked at it through a lens for four centuries, seeing more clearly as technology improved. It’s also close enough that our unmanned spacecraft can get there, with a surface that landers can land on and on which robots can operate. And of course people adore the Mars rovers, because they are awesome.

“[Mars] has this air of being a blank canvas, which some people find appealing because they feel that it’s theirs to do with as they wish.”

And there’s something else really important: we are pretty sure the conditions for life were once present on Mars. But scientists don’t yet know for sure whether life itself is, or was, present. That research is hard and still underway.

For an inhospitable planet millions of miles away, Mars has come to feel oddly ever-present in the human story.
Indeed it has. When we got images taken by landers and rovers right there, on the surface of Mars, it started to convince people that we belong there. Photos like that give us this sense of presence on that other world. It helps that Mars superficially looks like some deserts on Earth.

Now that Mars is theoretically within reach of human missions, it’s tremendously compelling to some people; a destination, a target, in the same way the Moon was before the Apollo landings. It has this air of being a blank canvas, which some people find appealing because they feel that it’s theirs to do with as they wish. But there’s a great deal that we don’t know about Mars that would be really good to find out before someone starts messing it up.

In terms of the scientific interest, may it hold clues about how life began on Earth?
Yeah, if scientists are ever able to find definitive evidence of extinct or extant life on Mars, that would open up so many questions. First, if there is or was life on Mars, what is its relationship to Earth life? It’s possible that life originated on Mars and then arrived on Earth. Or maybe Mars life and Earth life shared a common ancestor. Or maybe they both arose independently. Any information about potential Mars life is also critical for the safety of human missions. But we can only do this science effectively if Mars isn’t biologically contaminated, which is why planetary protection is so important and why human missions shouldn’t be rushed.

How has science-fiction shaped our ideas about Mars?
Science-fiction generally projects Earth themes and concerns onto other planets and places, with some interesting technical details to convince the reader that all this drama is actually happening somewhere else. But it’s human stuff, fundamentally.

“How can you be ‘free’ in a place that has no air? It kind of removes options for resistance, doesn’t it?”

I think the sci-fi that has most shaped popular current understandings of Mars, at least in North America, is the fiction that convinces us we’re already there. It’s The Martian with Matt Damon as a stranded astronaut at a tiny Mars base. Or Ad Astra, where there’s a long-term Mars base, or The Expanse, where the people of Mars are trying to terraform. Playing out these compelling stories on a Martian stage creates a vivid sense that this is definitely part of humanity’s future. But fiction doesn’t foreground all the barriers to a sustained human presence on Mars, so many don’t understand just how big those barriers are.

What kind of challenges would a human mission to Mars face?
It depends! The first thing we have to do when talking about humans and Mars is be really specific about what kind of mission we’re talking about. Are we talking, for example, about sending crewed science missions? Say you’ve got a small crew of humans on a spaceship: they do the journey to Mars, and they stay in orbit controlling robots on the surface, doing ‘low latency telerobotic’ research, and then return to Earth. That would be a major achievement in itself, to get humans safely to Mars orbit and back. That hasn’t been done before, but we know the long journey would be challenging and hazardous.

Then, if you’re talking about actually landing people on Mars, staying briefly, then going back to Earth, that’s a different type of mission. Then, if you’re talking about them surviving on Mars for several months, that’s another level of challenge… And if you’re talking about trying to make a self-sustaining settlement on Mars that is independent of Earth, that’s an entirely different magnitude of challenge. And at each layer you run into serious questions about the ethics, the human factors, and also the reasons why one wants to do this at all.

There’s a very clear purpose to the astrobiological robotic investigation of Mars—it’s an amazing research site. There’s a really clear purpose to doing Mars sample-return missions. But what exactly is the point of sending humans to Mars? People have very different ideas about the “why” and what they want to do with the planet. Some people clearly think they are entitled to do what they want with it, and other people disagree. So where does that leave us? We have the Outer Space Treaty, which has rules about harmful contamination, and it has rules about appropriation. But humans are basically autonomous microbe distribution systems. You can’t have humans on Mars without contaminating the place. And so some people still argue that humans should not go at all, until Mars is better studied robotically.

Say humans do get there. What would a self-sustaining settlement have to deal with?
This is where the illusions of Mars start to matter. It’s a very different world. The lack of breathable air, the toxic dust, the temperature extremes, the radiation, the gravity, the many hazards—it’s all really problematic. If the first human missions go anytime soon, the chances of them making it long without significant health issues are not great, frankly. And those issues could escalate the longer that they stay.

But let’s say hypothetically that you managed to get a few people there, that enough of them are OK, and your tiny little Mars base is working. If you then try to add more people, and your objective is ultimately to have that settlement be self-sustaining, you run into different levels of ethical questions. How do you socially and politically organize this settlement? For example, there’s been some great work done on the question of liberty in space: How can a person actually be ‘free’ in a place that has no air? It kind of removes options for resistance, doesn’t it? So the conditions would lend themselves to oppressive forms of population control. And even in a benign situation, it would be an extremely artificial and confined environment.  Conditions like that are hard to endure, even on Earth.

And we’ve no idea what the psychological impact will be of being so far from Earth…
Absolutely. Or of not being able to return. People try to draw analogies, like suggesting it would be just like emigrating from Europe to America in the 1800s. No, it isn’t, because it’s a different planet. And I can’t underscore that enough.

And then if you were going to the next stage after that—and I emphasize this is highly theoretical—but if you actually want a self-sustaining settlement, then you have to look very seriously at the human reproduction questions. And I would say that right now there isn’t good hope for successful human reproduction beyond Earth. This isn’t like the engineering challenges of in situ resource utilization: it’s something different. Women and children are not machines. Pregnancy and childbirth are already risky on Earth anyway, and this would be much riskier to even attempt. Experimentation would be extraordinarily ethically dubious. And if it even could work, what about the rights of the individual child? Planet Earth is still a better habitat for humans than Mars could ever be. These issues are discussed less often, perhaps because there are relatively few women in the conversation.

The central rationale that’s given for the Mars settlement project, particularly from Elon Musk, is that there’ll inevitably be an extinction event at some point on Earth for the human species and so we should get ourselves an off-ramp, a ‘Planet B.’ You can understand the appealing logic of that, and it makes a rational kind of sense, but it also gives the project an apocalyptic charge, this religious sense of the End Times.
First, on the eschatological, quasi-religious aspect of this: that’s always been there. There’s a really great book about it by Catherine Newell called Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future and America’s Final Frontier. Particular ideas about human destiny and about American destiny have been woven through the American space program since the beginning.

As for this current idea about existential risk to humans on Earth: undeniably, the risk is there both in cosmic terms and in more imminent concerns, like the climate change and biodiversity collapse underway and unfolding here and now. For the risk of eventual human extinction due to, say, an asteroid impact to Earth, sure, that risk is there, but what do we do about it? Seems like a better idea to mitigate those risks directly for the billions of humans and other species on Earth instead of shipping a handful to another planet to live in extremely marginal conditions. Especially since Mars has plenty of existential risks, too. There’s also the option of just accepting that our species won’t endure forever.

“It’s really hard to argue in evolutionary terms that it’s natural for us to go places where there’s no readily available air, water, or food, and where we’re quite likely to die quickly.”

For those who really want that ‘plan B,’ there are certainly political motivations there too. Some people think of Mars as a frontier, as a chance to recapture the conditions of early America. Some want to create a new and independent society with its own rules. Others seem to think that Mars should fly an American flag.

The Cold War Space Race was a key factor in humans getting to the moon. Are we in a similar scenario of geopolitical competition today?
Definitely, yeah. And it’s a common justification for aggressive timelines in the American space world: “If we don’t, China will.” Presumably something similar is being said in China about the USA. Anyway, apparently China is currently aiming for crewed missions in 10-25 years, starting with a mission that orbits Mars. But interestingly, China recently opened up their 2028 Mars sample-return mission to international collaboration.

Another key justification for the Mars settlement idea is that human beings are explorers by nature and that manned space exploration—becoming a spacefaring species, as they say—is an inevitable consequence of this. What do you make of that?
I don’t buy it. I mean, there’s human nature and there’s human culture. In terms of nature, all mammals are exploratory to the extent that we need to find food and water, a place to sleep, and places to raise young. But what people have in mind when they say ‘exploration’ is actually culture, driven by particular customs, forms of commerce, and politics. Traditional human societies moved around geographically but their reasons for doing so were not the same as those of colonial powers or corporations in the 1800s, 1900s, or 2000s. So I think what’s going on right now with space is all about culture, not nature. And that means it’s within our capacity to think about it, and when sensible, to put the edges on it. It’s not this innate drive with inevitable outcomes. Even if we are wired for exploration on Earth—and I don’t think that’s the way to put it—it’s hard to argue in evolutionary terms that it’s natural for us to go somewhere with no readily available air, water, or food, and where we’re quite likely to die quickly and not reproduce well.

But on the level of human nature: humans are primates, we’re curious, visually oriented, and we make and use tools. So of course we want to see and know more about space, and build things to send to space, which is why continued robotic exploration and telescopes make a lot of sense for our species—more sense than humans actually trying to live beyond Earth.

What would an alternative attitude towards space look like?
In the best of all worlds, we could combine our ancient human legacies—access to dark and quiet skies and ancient stories about the stars—with space research that helps Earth, modern scientific robotic exploration of other worlds, and a respectful stewardship of the solar system; instead of space being all about resources to extract and sell, territory to acquire and hold, and military advantage. But unfortunately some societies are rushing in the latter direction, and I don’t think humanity will be better off because of it.

Follow Joe Banks on X @joepbanks

Previously — We Asked an Expert: Will Bird Flu Be the Next Pandemic?