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00:00At its closest, Mars is 34 million miles away from Earth.
00:05At its farthest, it's 249 million miles away.
00:10With current technology, it's 6 to 9 months at least for a spaceship.
00:15Even light takes between 3 and 22 minutes to bridge between here and there.
00:21Do you think we'll ever make it to the Red Planet?
00:26To answer this question, we need to identify the major hurdles standing between humanity and the Red Planet.
00:32The most immediate problem is diminishing public support for space exploration.
00:36According to the Pew Research Center, 69% of Americans in 2023 believe that the U.S. should be a leader in space exploration.
00:44While that's high, it's down 3% from 2018.
00:48And space exploration has never been a top priority for voters, who generally have more earthly concerns.
00:54In 2019, another Pew poll found that roughly two-thirds of Americans believe that NASA should focus more on climate change than on space exploration.
01:03That sentiment was shared by former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver.
01:08Why, then, should we even care about Mars?
01:11First, it's hard to overstate the significant technological and scientific advances a concerted Mars shot could produce.
01:18The Apollo missions to the Moon, for example, represented huge leaps forward in technology.
01:23The technologies developed for Apollo missions have affected everything from footwear to firefighting.
01:29They discovered new construction materials and load-bearing methods.
01:33NASA scientists pioneered solar panels, cordless power tools, and digital imaging tech now used in medical scanners like MRIs.
01:41Their tremendous impact on our day-to-day lives has been immeasurable, permeating every aspect of modern technology.
01:48A Mars mission could do the same in the 21st century, ushering in a new era of consumer and industrial technologies.
01:55Biologists believe that studying Martian history could help us understand life on Earth and elsewhere in the cosmos.
02:01That same 2023 Pew poll saw more than half of Americans excited about space tourism.
02:07Finally, there is no way to quantify the economic potential of space mining.
02:12Mars is the closest planet in the solar system to the asteroid belt.
02:16NASA has claimed that the mineral and rare element wealth contained within the belt is equivalent to around $100 billion for every individual on Earth.
02:25The installation of a Martian mining base could lead to a 21st century gold rush.
02:29A sobering but glaring fact remains, however.
02:32Even if the human race drummed up the collective willpower to explore and colonise Mars, there are two major practical obstacles.
02:39The first is its distance from the Earth.
02:42On a cosmic scale, Mars is our closest neighbour – just one door over, so to speak.
02:47On a human scale, well, close is a relative term.
02:50In truth, the average distance between Mars and Earth is 140 million miles.
02:55With our current technology, a one-way trip to Mars takes about six and a half months.
03:00That means that if something were to go wrong with a Mars mission, there's very little help available for our astronauts.
03:06Worse, outside of Earth's magnetosphere, astronauts are exposed to solar radiation, which can penetrate spacecraft and spacesuits.
03:14The longer the trip to Mars, the more exposed astronauts are to harmful solar winds.
03:19While we're currently working on countermeasures, we don't yet have a definitive answer.
03:24To make Mars colonisation feasible, we need to significantly cut down on that travel time.
03:30Fortunately, there are plans in the works to get us there faster.
03:33Scientific teams around the world are working on new propulsion systems that, if successful, could potentially open up our entire solar system to exploration.
03:42At the start of 2023, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, or NIAC, division approved 14 new propulsion concepts for Phase One development.
03:52In the summer of 2023, NASA announced a new partnership with DARPA and defence contractor Lockheed Martin.
03:59The organisations are going to design and build a nuclear-powered rocket.
04:03A nuclear-powered engine could be three times more efficient than a standard chemical rocket.
04:08Projections cut a six- to seven-month odyssey with a chemical rocket down to just a 45-day jaunt with a nuclear engine.
04:15NASA hopes to put a working prototype into space by 2025.
04:19Private companies, too, are getting in on the alternative propulsion market.
04:24Evo Limited is partnering with SpaceX to launch and test their electric quantum drive in October of 2023.
04:31If successful, they could rewrite what we know about the laws of physics, creating thrust without propellant.
04:37The last and most daunting barrier to colonising Mars is that the Red Planet is a dead planet.
04:42Mars is arid, rocky, and cold.
04:45The Martian atmosphere, such as it exists, is over 100 times thinner than ours.
04:50The average temperature on Mars is about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and Martian gravity is just over one-third of standard Earth gravity.
04:58Those are workable problems, but when you factor in the lack of liquid water and a lack of oxygen, Mars appears to be less than hospitable.
05:06To be clear, there is water on Mars, in the form of ice, especially at the poles.
05:11Studies have also discovered ice sequestered underneath the Martian surface.
05:16While we don't yet have technologies needed to extract and thaw that ice, NASA is hopeful.
05:21They hold a yearly competition for university science departments called Mars Ice Challenge.
05:26They're optimistic that emerging technologies will make ice mining a feasible solution.
05:31The atmosphere, though, is a trickier problem.
05:33The Martian atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide.
05:37There is virtually no oxygen to speak of, bad for humans, and very little nitrogen, bad for plants.
05:43On top of that, because the air pressure is so low, colonists would have to live in pressurized habitats.
05:49There is a debate among scientists and engineers about the ethics of how to deal with these issues.
05:54Some advocate for exploring and colonizing space in situ, adapting ourselves to the environment.
06:00Others say that sustainable colonization requires terraforming, or adapting the planet to our needs.
06:06NASA is currently working on options for both.
06:09For example, NIAC has partnered with TechShot Incorporated to create sealed biodomes for in situ colonization.
06:16Using screw mechanisms to mine subsurface ice for water, they would deploy large colonies of oxygen-producing cyanobacteria and algae.
06:25This way, colonists could have a sustainable source of oxygen.
06:29Terraforming is a more complicated matter.
06:31We would need to essentially create a livable atmosphere from scratch by triggering a greenhouse effect.
06:37Filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases would both thicken it and warm the planet.
06:42Elon Musk once proposed nuking Martian poles to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
06:47The problem is that Mars likely doesn't naturally have enough of those compounds to terraform the planet completely.
06:54Scientists have proposed importing ammonia, methane, or other hydrocarbons from planetary bodies within the solar system.
07:01The practicality of those plans is dubious, given current technology.
07:05However, with upgraded propulsion systems, it would be much easier to travel to various moons and asteroids to extract those elements and transport them.
07:13Another, slightly more feasible plan would be the importation of fluoride compounds, like PFCs and CFCs.
07:20These compounds have more bang to the greenhouse buck than CO2 and ammonia.
07:25Generating 170 kilotons of fluoride compounds per year could get us where we need within a decade.
07:32This could be achieved either by bombarding the planet with PFC and CFC rockets, or by local mining efforts.
07:39If we managed any of these complex terraforming schemes, though, all that work to create a habitable environment would be undone by solar radiation.
07:47Current research suggests that at some point in the distant past, Mars was a warmer, wetter world with an Earth-like atmosphere.
07:55But along the way, the Martian magnetosphere died, and solar winds wiped its atmosphere away.
08:01Without a magnetic field to protect the planet, any atmosphere we create would be temporary.
08:06And without protection from solar radiation, astronauts, explorers, scientists, and colonists are all at increased long-term risk for cancer.
08:14As of now, the technology to give a planet a magnetic field is well beyond our abilities.
08:20However, NASA's former chief scientist, Jim Green, has devised a plan for that.
08:25He's proposed erecting an artificial magnetosphere at the L1 Lagrange point between Mars and the Sun.
08:31Due to the distance, it could be much smaller than a planet's magnetic field and still shield Mars.
08:37With that magnetic shield in place, the atmosphere would stabilize and start to slowly terraform on its own.
08:43Without any further intervention, the air pressure and temperature would both significantly increase over time.
08:49President John F. Kennedy announced America's moonshot in his famous 1962 speech, saying that,
08:55quote, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
09:02End quote.
09:03The fact is, in terms of difficulty, colonizing Mars makes travelling to the moon look like child's play.
09:10The obstacles are as substantial as the potential rewards.
09:13In a world contending with climate change, layered on top of our day-to-day concerns, it's easy to dismiss Mars exploration as a pipe dream.
09:21But while their work may not always make headlines, many scientists around the world are still making strides towards that goal.
09:29They are slowly, quietly developing the technologies needed to make humanity a multi-planetary species.
09:37Mars colonization would require a tremendous investment of money, effort, and hope.
09:43If humanity can come together with a common goal and a common dream, one day, life on Mars may very well be possible.
09:52What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.
09:56Check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.