Welcome fine readers. Thanks for being here.
Philip the Bard will return next week with tales of Max Gavaskar and her world. This week we are discussing the Evolution Expo, just held in Oakland California.
I’ve been mentioning how much I enjoyed rubbing shoulders with celebrities from TV, the movies and science but the expo wasn’t all about parties. I was fortunate enough to make it to several lectures on science.
Several of the scientists there were working heavily on Mars. I think most laymen who think about man’s future in space think Mars would be our most likely candidate for colonization. I’ve kind of leaned that way my self. Not so fast.
There are some huge problems with trying to live on Mars. First of all the red soil is highly acidic. Sure, we can go there and build settlements but anything we build will most likely corrode within a couple of years or sooner. Seals will break down and fail. Maintaining a clean environment will be almost impossible. Until we solve this issue our visits to Mars will have to be held to a matter of days or weeks.
I think I’ll take a pass on Mars One.
What if we terraformed the planet? It is looking like there is enough water there that we could indeed create an atmosphere that would be breathable and could sustain life. However, Mars doesn’t have the mass or the magnetic field to hold on to an atmosphere for very long. We could possibly make Mars comfortable but it would only last for a couple of hundred years.
One well known scientist I spoke with, Pascal Lee, said he believes we’ll colonize a planet about another star before we live permanently on Mars.
Never mix red wine with Oodo.
Earth Year 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment