Humans can’t even live on Mount Everest, let alone migrate to Mars. Does this statement make sense?

Recently, a science program called "Upload2021" has been circulating on the Internet. Jia Yang, the designer of the Zhurong Mars rover, said something during an interview with the host. The core content of the speech was: Only after a ticket office and a convenience store were built on Mount Everest, the conditions for humans to land on Mars were ripe.

This sentence became popular for two reasons: first, the person who said this was not an ordinary person, but Jia Yang, the designer of China's Zhurong Mars rover, which has been successfully launched and is currently working on Mars. This represents authority; second, people have always had doubts about the timetable for landing on Mars, and now there seems to be a rigid standard, which is whether there is a convenience store on Mount Everest and whether the onlookers can buy beer and kebabs there.

Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world, 8848.86 meters high. It is not a place that ordinary people can go to now. If there is a ticket office and a canteen there, it means that it is a place where everyone can go to travel. The implication is that the conditions on Mars are much worse than Mount Everest. If you can't even go to Mount Everest, how can you go to Mars?

So is this understanding reliable?

I think this statement is correct, but the understanding is biased. As a contributor to China's aerospace industry, I respect Mr. Jia Yang very much, and I think what he said is worth our deep consideration. But we cannot take a sentence out of context, and we cannot worship a sentence as an imperial decree.

To be honest, the conditions on Mars are indeed much worse than those on Mount Everest. The temperature on Mount Everest can drop to -40°C, and the air pressure is only 41% of that at sea level; while the average temperature on Mars is -60°C, the lowest temperature at the poles can reach -140°C, the highest temperature at the equator during the day can reach 30°C, and the temperature at night can drop to below -70°C, with a temperature difference of 100°C between day and night; the air pressure on Mars is only 0.75% of that on Earth, and only 1/55 of that on Mount Everest.

So in this sense, if humans can’t even reach Mount Everest, how can they survive on Mars? This is where Professor Jia Yang is right.

But the reality is that although most people cannot climb Mount Everest, a few elites have already climbed it. It is generally accepted in the mountaineering community that New Zealander Edmund Hillary was the first person to climb Mount Everest. He climbed to the top of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953. Since then, people have climbed Mount Everest in an endless stream. As of February 2020, a total of 4,469 people have successfully climbed Mount Everest, and many of them have climbed Mount Everest multiple times.

So far, no human has landed on Mars, so landing on Mars is much more difficult than landing on Mount Everest, and the difficulty is not on the same order of magnitude.

But do we have to wait until a ticket office and a canteen are set up on Mount Everest before humans can land on Mars? This is a bit too much. Because landing on Mount Everest is just a challenge and an adventure, not a place to live, there is no need to set up a ticket office and a canteen. Therefore, even if humans land on Mars in the future, or migrate to Mars, there will not necessarily be a ticket office and a canteen on Mount Everest.

Therefore, we should understand Mr. Jia Yang's words as landing on Mars is much more difficult than Mount Everest, and not narrowly understand that landing on Mars can only be successful if a canteen is set up on Mount Everest. Moreover, with modern technology and capabilities, humans must build a canteen on Mount Everest. It is not impossible, but the cost will be very high and there is no need for it.

Since Mount Everest cannot be inhabited, is there no need to develop Mars?

This is a question and thought of many people. Many people think that the deserts, oceans and glaciers on Earth, even the worst places, are much better than Mars. Why should humans go to such great lengths to develop Mars?

In fact, this perspective is extremely narrow. Scientists are studying and exploring Mars, landing humans on Mars, and may migrate to Mars in the future. This is not because the Earth will be overpopulated in the future and there will not be enough good land, so they have to go to Mars to open up wasteland. Instead, it is a sense of worry for a rainy day. There are at least two purposes:

One is that the Earth will eventually become uninhabitable. For example, the sun will become brighter and brighter, the temperature will rise, and the greenhouse effect will turn the Earth into Venus, where the seas and rocks will dry up and crumble. It will be useless to hide anywhere on Earth, let alone in the desert. This trend has already begun to emerge, and the time left for humans does not seem to be long. When humans have to flee the Earth, where will they flee to?

Another reason is that human civilization is still very fragile and cannot resist some major natural disasters, such as sudden changes in the sun, large collisions of earth plates, etc. Once such a huge disaster occurs, it is likely to destroy the entire ecology, including humans. Only by storing the eggs of human beings in two or even more baskets, that is, as Musk said, only when humans become a multi-planet species, will the probability of long-term survival be greater.

But migrating to another planet is not something that can be accomplished overnight. It requires the continuous efforts of many generations to succeed. Therefore, all the far-sighted people are doing now is to prepare for the future, so as to avoid failure to do so at the last minute.

Mr. Jia Yang also has a very thorough understanding of this point. In an interview, he said: Since the emergence of mankind, it has been developing technology to expand its living space, from forests to land, from oceans to the sky, and the next step is deep space. Exploration is an instinct engraved in human genes and it is the right direction.

How long will it take for humans to colonize Mars?

Mr. Jia Yang could not give an answer to this question, but he said: If someone told me that there would be colonization on Mars in 5 years, I would not believe it. But if it was 5 years or 500 years, there would be no reason to doubt it. He gave a time concept of 5 to 500 years.

To realize the immigration to Mars, the first step is to realize the manned landing on Mars. In the early stage, it is only the exploration activities of a small number of astronauts to understand the situation on Mars more clearly. The survival materials needed by humans to start the exploration of Mars can be brought from the earth, but the future immigrants on Mars will not be able to rely on the earth for the supplies they need for long-term life.

Therefore, a series of experiments must be conducted on Earth to solve the problems of human landing on Mars and surviving on Mars. These problems mainly include:

The problem is how to transport people and cargo to Mars in large quantities; since Mars has no magnetic field and atmospheric protection, the radiation from the sun and cosmic rays is very high, how to solve the radiation problem; there is no oxygen to breathe on Mars, how to produce oxygen or transform the Martian atmosphere; the Martian soil has no organic matter and cannot grow plants, how to transform the Martian soil; the gravity on Mars is only 2/5 of that on Earth, how to solve the problem of human survival in low gravity, etc.

Many organizations have already been doing all of these. The most high-profile and typical one is the legendary scientific entrepreneur Elon Musk. Not only has he built a giant starship that can transport 100 people (total load capacity 100 tons) to Mars each time, he is also developing electric cars that can travel on Mars, Starlink satellites for communications, indoor farms that can be replicated on Mars in the future, underground high-speed transportation, construction robots, brain-computer interfaces, etc. He has vowed to send the first group of people to Mars by 2030 at the latest, build 1,000 starships within 10 years, send 1 million people to Mars within 50 years, and build a Martian city of a corresponding size.

This plan seems a bit radical, and is based on the transformation of the Martian atmosphere and environment while migrating. The specific operations are: initially mainly relying on robots to build, 3D printing various buildings and facilities, finding underground caves to build settlements to protect against radiation, using Martian water ice and thin atmosphere to produce oxygen, liquid water and methane fuel for human survival, and using various Martian minerals to manufacture daily necessities.

Although many people are full of doubts about this plan, Musk, the world's richest man who often makes surprising statements, is full of confidence and is spending a lot of money on it. All the boasts he made in the past have come true: for example, the rocket recovery technology has been successful, greatly reducing the launch and transportation costs; the huge starship finally succeeded in the explosion-filled launch test, successfully launched into the earth's orbit and returned to the ground smoothly; the new energy vehicles he developed are leading the world trend, with sales far exceeding all major car brands; the brain-computer interface has been put into the experiment of allowing paralyzed people to walk, etc.

There are more conservative plans for transforming Mars, which is to use robots to build a giant nuclear-powered chemical plant on Mars, produce a large amount of greenhouse gases to raise the temperature of the Martian environment, dissolve the frozen water underground, and form rivers, lakes and seas on Mars; then sow genetically modified plant seeds on Mars. After thousands of years, the plants will continuously release oxygen, transforming the Martian atmosphere into an ideal atmosphere suitable for human survival, and finally transforming Mars into a blue sister planet to the Earth.

Experts estimate that this plan will take at least a thousand years, tens of thousands of years, or even 100,000 years to realize. However, Musk, who specializes in being the first to try something new, thinks that 10,000 years is too long and that he must seize the day. Can he magically shorten 10,000 years to 100, or even 50?

Now, Musk has staked his life and fortune on his dream of going to Mars, and has threatened to retire on Mars and be buried there. But this is really a big boast, and the Earth can no longer contain it. Will it be blown away if it goes to Mars? We can wait and see.

Judging from what Jia Yang said during the interview, he still chose to partially believe Musk, because he did not say that the time for Mars immigration would be 1,000 years later, but gave a range of 5 to 500 years. I admire Musk and of course believe in him, and I firmly believe that the road to human immigration to Mars is no longer a dream, but a plan that is being implemented.

In the future, due to reproductive isolation, it is a foregone conclusion that humans will differentiate into a Martian race. What do you think? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

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