Advantages And Disadvantages Of Mars

What is Mars? Mars is the fourth planet away from the sun. It has a surface area of

144.8 million km2, while Earth’s surface area is 510.1 million km2. A day on Mars is 24 hours and 37 minutes meaning that its only 37 minutes longer than on Earth. If we decide to colonise, it wouldn 't be that difficult to adjust to the day length. Just like Earth, Mars has seasons but some are a bit longer because its further away from the sun. The two main reasons why seasons happen on Mars are the planet’s tilt and the distance from the sun when orbiting around it. It has 2 moons; Deimos and Phobos, and a full orbit period on Mars takes 687 days, around twice as much as on Earth. There are also some disadvantages to colonising Mars, one being the cost and

O. Glenn Smith (former manager of shuttle systems engineering at NASA’s Johnson Space Center) said, “If we send nine crews to Mars it will cost around 1.5 trillion euros.” However the NASA administrator recently said, ”If we were to pioneer Mars it will cost around 2 trillion euros.” The question is, who will pay for all this money. Will it be all the space administrations or should all the countries give an amount of money to the mission? But why do we have to spent so much money on the mission to Mars when we have bigger problems on Earth. We have global warming to fix, unemployment, lack of education, poverty, etc. and why not use it for those important

The astronauts will have to be able to breathe properly, but Mars’s atmosphere is made up of 95% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and 0.13% oxygen. On the other hand, Earth’s atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. Therefore, there’s a difference in the surface temperature on Earth and Mars. The average temperature on Earth is 14 degrees celsius, while on Mars the average temperature is -46 degrees celsius. During the winter on Mars temperatures can reach up to -143 degrees celsius. During the summer temperatures can reach up to 35 degrees celsius. Since there is only 0.13% oxygen in Mars’s atmosphere, the astronauts can 't breathe in the oxygen needed to survive. In the book, “Mars - a new view of the red planet” by Giles Sparrow, it has an idea of how to to change the atmosphere in Mars to make it liveable for all living creatures. They say we should “pump” greenhouse gases into the thin air which would create a global warming effect that would melt the polar caps. The polar caps will release carbon dioxide and water, this helps thicken the planet’s atmosphere. The atmosphere protects us from the intense light from the sun and it can hold oxygen, which makes it similar to Earth’s atmosphere. The global warming effect can also make the red planet’s temperature warmer, which makes it liveable for us humans. When that step is finished, the second step is to plant trees. The trees will then process carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. This whole process