In the 2030s, NASA plans on launching people onto the first ever Mars missions. While this could lead to many potential discoveries and benefits, staying on Mars and surviving is a hard task. There are many risks associated with Mars, including radiation, and the lack of both gravity and oxygen. However, there are some things that we can do to improve the quality of life on Mars. One of the ways we could do this is to terraform Mars, which would greatly increase quality of life on Mars. The problem is, terraforming Mars is a very hard task, and it has a very controversial argument associated with it. However, despite the argument, the benefits of terraforming Mars far outweigh the potential damage we could do to Mars.
First, what does it mean to terraform Mars? Terraforming a planet is to change it to make it more hospitable for human life. Some ways of terraforming Mars include adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere to make it so that the temperature on Mars increases to the point where liquid water is stable on the surface of the planet. This, combined with adding minerals to the Martian soil to make it rich, and would allow plant life to grow on Mars, which would greatly increase the quality of life on Mars.
The problem is that while terraforming Mars sounds good, it could have some negative impacts on the planet and its potential life. While it has not been proven that there is life on Mars, to terraform Mars would be to ruin all chances of that life surviving on Mars. This would be similar to someone breaking into another’s home, and then adding poison gas into the house while preventing to owner from leaving it, which would kill the homeowner. So is it worth making the planet more hospitable to us while ruining it for potential alien life?
The answer is yes. This is because being able to create have humans on Mars would greatly benefit humans. Having humans be self sufficient on another planet would greatly reduce the chances of humans becoming extinct. Another thing is that there isn’t any proof of life on Mars. The Viking 1 lander landed on Mars in 1976, and after that many more landers and rovers all landed on Mars, yet aside from the fact that there used to be liquid water on the planet, there is no further evidence of life on Mars.
Establishing self sufficient humans on Mars will be very difficult, but terraforming the planet would make Mars a lot more hospitable, and would greatly increase the chances of human survival.
