5 Reasons Going To Mars is a TERRIBLE Idea | Answers With Joe

this video is supported by the great courses plus in 1987 construction began on one of the most ambitious scientific experiments in the 20th century it was called biosphere 2 a completely self-sustaining ecosystem designed to test technologies that we could use to colonize Mars the idea was to have 8 people live in this compound for two years completely cut off from the outside world growing their own food recycling their own waste and breathing oxygen from a rainforest that they maintained themselves project cost over 200 million dollars in over four years to build they brought in 3,800 different species of plants and animals to create a stable environment including bringing in a specific species of hummingbird that could pollinate the flowers and not smash into the glass walls and kill itself for women and for men in her biosphere - in September of 1991 two huge media attention but only 12 days into the mission one of the crew people cut her hand while processing rice and had to be taken outside of the compound to treat it already breaking the rules and when she returned many people notice that she was carrying a duffel bag with her filled with unknown items which breaks even more rules in only a few months after that they started to notice carbon dioxide rising to dangerous levels it turns out that when they provided soil for the plants they wanted to grow really well so they provide a very nutrient-rich soil will the bacteria in that soil started releasing a whole bunch of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere so they had to bring in co2 scrubbers which also broke the rules and that still didn't quite fix the problem by January 1993 the oxygen levels were so low it was comparable to a mountain climber at 17,000 feet so they started bringing in compressed oxygen tanks at this point the whole concept of the thing was out the window and after two years of living under constant surveillance plagued by hunger and the stress of dealing with the same people day in and day out for years at a time the eight biosphere Ian's emerged from the compound completely splintered into two groups Lord of the Flies style they refused to even talk to each other the biosphere project went down the history books is a total disaster despite hundreds of millions of dollars and years of planning by some of the brightest minds in the world showing just how difficult it actually is to create a self-sustaining colony so the question is if we can't make that work here on earth how exactly are we gonna make this work on Mars I've talked in several videos about the different plans that NASA and SpaceX have about getting to Mars and I'm generally very enthusiastic on the idea but enthusiasm alone isn't enough to overcome some of the challenges involved so here I'm talking about the top five reasons that going to Mars is a terrible idea it's your number one radiation let's face it we're spoiled the earth is like a warm bosom comforting us protecting us nurturing us and that's all we know so we like to think that the rest of the universe is the same way it's not the universe is a nightmare outside our protective magnetic spheres space is a shooting gallery of cosmic rays and high-energy particles and radiation that can wreak havoc on our body in ways that right now we can only speculate there are only 24 people in human history that have left the protection of our magnetosphere during the Apollo program and many of those astronauts reported seeing weird flashes while they were out there that were determined to be high-energy cosmic rays charged particles that were slamming against the back of their retinas and also a study in 2016 found that there was a very high prevalence of heart disease cardiovascular disease amongst these 24 people that was much higher than the general population even though astronauts in general are more healthy than the general population you kind of have to be to be an astronaut in fact astronauts who have flown in low-earth orbit have a lower prevalence of cardiovascular disease than the general population and these guys were only exposed to this for two weeks a trip to Mars would take forty three weeks exposing the passengers to 2,500 times more radiation in cosmic rays and that's just getting there it would be double that to get back to earth and then there's the 18 months you would spend on Mars which doesn't have a magnetosphere in a very thin atmosphere now there are some solutions to that problem one is to build a satellite that would produce a tesla tube magnetic field at the l1 Lagrangian Mars and the Sun this would deflect the solar winds to not only protect the astronauts while they're on Mars but also reduce the thinning of the Martian atmosphere similar electromagnetic shield could theoretically be built on the ships that are going to Mars although you'd have to make sure that it wouldn't mess with the sensitive electronic equipment on board and once on the planet the habitats that people are living and working in could be radiation resistant or they could live underground but the fact remains this is a huge unknown humans had never been exposed to this type of radiation for this long it's a problem we've never dealt with before and it's going to be a huge challenged overcome issue number two extremely low air pressure the Martian atmosphere has only 1% the air pressure of Earth you know the air pressure we've evolved over billions of years to live in this causes a host of problems alone obviously we can't breathe on Mars not just that there's not enough oxygen in the atmosphere is that there's not enough of anything in the atmosphere walking outside on Mars is not that different from walking outside on the moon from a life-support systems perspective and all of our habitats and modules that have to be completely airtight the seals would have to work perfectly all the time which is gonna be very difficult on a planet that's covered with very fine dust more on that in a minute and looping back around to the radiation issue the thin atmosphere does very little to scatter the cosmic rays on earth the magnetosphere does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to deflecting radiation but we also rely quite a bit on a thick atmosphere so even if we could build an electromagnetic shield between Mars and the Sun you would still have to deal with these cosmic rays that are bombarding the planet and not being scattered throughout the atmosphere like they are here on earth a thin atmosphere is also a nightmare for landing on Mars the track record for landing on Mars is actually pretty bad because the the atmosphere is thick enough that you have to deal with the heat of reentry but it's not thick enough to slow you down so where on earth you can burn through the atmosphere and then deploy some parachutes and float gently down into the water on Mars there's not enough air pressure for the parachutes to make that much of a difference you wouldn't slow down to anything anywhere close to safe that's why smaller Rovers like Spirit and Opportunity use these bizarre airbag systems to bounce once they landed on the ground and the Curiosity rover which was much bigger more the size of a car used parachutes and a propulsive landing thing with a crane this weird bizarre contraption it was amazing that it worked out at all so SpaceX is vertical for pulses landing system is probably the best way to go but it's still very new and we're only gonna get a couple of tries before humans get on there I will not be on that first ship number three perchlorates in the soil in the biosphere 2 project they grew their own food in the soil there in the biosphere and still they struggle to have enough food and when they emerge they were emaciated and malnourished growing your own food in greenhouses is challenging even without the soil being poisonous in 2008 the Mars Phoenix lander found significant quantities of perchlorate the Martian soil for chlorates our salt compounds that are often used in rocket propellants and they're very toxic to human beings they interrupt the thyroid gland and prevent the body from being able to absorb iodine which leads to a plastic anemia that's when your bone marrow can't produce enough red blood cells and red blood cells are what carry oxygen throughout the body so minor problem or if aplastic anemia isn't your thing you might get a granulocyte OSIS which keeps your body from producing white blood cells you know the stuff that keeps your body from dying from minor infections so it's possible that prolonged exposure to perchlorates in the Martian soil could leave your body oxygen deprived and vulnerable to even the slightest infections you'd be like the boy in the bubble literally your habitat would be like a bubble except there would be other weak anemic highly infectious people in the bubble with you the potential for a deadly outbreak that wipes out the whole colony is extremely high it's like War of the Worlds in Reverse basically now this is a worst-case scenario the actual damage caused by long-term perchlorate exposure is still difficult to quantify because we just don't have that much of it here on earth Chris McKay at the Ames Research Center said that if this much perchlorate was in your backyards it would be a Superfund site so basically Mars is a giant toxic waste dump so if we are gonna grow our own food on Mars which we will have to do we would either have to haul in our own soil or figure out a way to get these poor chlorides out of the soil which might be very energy intensive and difficult but even if we got it out of our food some amount of exposure is inevitable Martian dust is a fine powder much like the regolith on the moon and it was a real problem after only a few days on the moon this fine dust got all in the gears of the equipment and made the entire inside of the capsule look like they've been mining coal and the moon doesn't have any wind Martian sandstorms are a real thing and they can be several thousand kilometers wide covering almost the entire planet the dust will get everywhere and it will make the job of sealing up these airtight habits an ongoing hassle they'll mess with sensitive electrical equipment they'll grind down the gears and mechanical equipment just take one look at curiosity's wheels now and you can see how much damage they can do often when it comes to space exploration it's not the big problems that get you it's the little annoying details that can bring an entire mission to a halt and the Martian soil could be the biggest little annoying problem of them all number four the gravity problem Mars is smaller than Earth with only 38% the gravity of which means that an average hundred and fifty pound guy on earth would only weigh 57 pounds on Mars granted this sounds awesome the first Olympics on Mars are gonna be epic but the effects of weekend gravity on the body over long periods of time are a big unknown right now we do have some idea of what long-term zero-gravity looks like thanks to astronauts like Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko who just finished a year-long spaceflight on the ISS although the record was set in 1995 by Valery Polyakov who was on the MIR Space Station for 437 days and obviously the effects are traumatic bone loss atrophied muscles cardiovascular issues in fact here's footage of Scott Kelly struggling to walk after he landed back on earth and this was with two hours of exercise on the space station every day while the trip to Mars would be shorter than a year it's not really by much even optimistic assumptions put it at around 200 days that's seven months only 10 people in history have traveled in space for longer than that so the first week or so on Mars are gonna be challenging to say the least because the entire crew is gonna have to be relearning how to walk after not using their muscles for seven months on top of the fact that they're learning how to function and one-third gravity for the first time in their lives and then they're gonna spend 18 months on Mars with that one-third gravity will that be enough for it to maintain their bone density and their muscles we don't know but we do know that at the end of that 18 months are gonna spend another seven months in total weightlessness before landing back on earth at which point their loved ones will hug them and shatter every bone in their body okay maybe that won't happen but it's gonna be rough now the human body is resilient and this damage will probably be temporary a lot more temporary than say the radiation exposure that they'll attain still it's it's gonna be rough on the other hand lighter gravity on Mars could help out in some ways especially if you're constructing habitats and whatnot being able to lift things with only one-third of gravity sounds pretty awesome and you'll also save fuel line landings and launches but last but not least number five the contamination problem we've talked in a lot of videos about the Fermi paradox and the Drake Equation and trying to determine whether or not there's intelligent life in the universe we know some of the variables in the equation the rate of star formation the number of stars with planets we have data to back that stuff up but in the drakes equation f sub L the one about life forming on these planets we so far only know of one that's earth which is why finding microbe life somewhere else in the solar system would be one of the most profound discoveries in human history because if life could form twice in one solar system the potential for intelligent life to a form somewhere out there in the universe goes up drastically so one of the biggest problems about going to Mars is that we're not just bringing ourselves we're also bringing our microbes the second we land on Mars we've contaminated it in fact some would argue that we've already contaminated it there have been 14 probes that have landed on Mars crash some of them but despite sanitation procedures that are borderline obsessive it's impossible to know whether or not there were any microbes on those probes but at the same time we don't fully trust our machines and probes to verify microbial life on Mars either so it's a catch-22 you can't verify the microbes are there without going there but by going there you and validate the results the Mars uncertainty principle I just made no no of course if there were any microbes on Mars it would probably be a species that we've never seen here on earth so we could validate them that way as we all know nothing bad could come from a group of astronauts with weakened immune systems being exposed to a bacteria that no human body has ever encountered before do you ones on bees because that's how you get zombies so just to sum up if you did choose to go to Mars you would probably come back home nearly four years later having been exposed to massive amounts of radiation and cosmic rays your bones and muscles atrophied to the point that you could barely walk your body's starved of oxygen and ravaged by extremophiles bacteria still think going to Mars is a great idea excuse me can I just offer a counter-argument no it's counter-argument Jo well yes please while it's true there are some challenges to face here that's what we do the human race is a species of explorers and pioneers that Forge bravely into the unknown it's in our DNA what if our evolutionary ancestors had never climbed down from the trees what if they never spread outside of Africa where would we be if we hadn't learned to navigate the Seas and spread our descendents throughout all four corners of the globe we're the only species that has the instinctive need to travel expand explore regardless of the consequences so it makes us who we are going to Mars is just the next step in our journey as a species and it's an important one yes there will be some challenges but I think it's worth it okay I've just got one question would you be on that first ship to Mars oh god no that's what I thought what he didn't say no ridiculous you didn't say death wish so if you were on a ship to Mars for seven months your muscles might atrophy but your brain doesn't have to that's because there's the great courses Plus that's right the great courses plus has thousands of hours of high-quality lectures from some of the brightest minds from Ivy League schools all around the world topics ranging from astronomy to quantum physics it was one for computer science one for AI coding some one for coding there's one on nature photography from the people at National Geographic really yeah it's like auditing a class from Neil deGrasse Tyson or Sean Carroll there are no tests learn at your own pace and you can get access to their entire library totally for free for one month if you go to the great courses plus comm slash answers with Joe but what if I want to take tests well you'll just have to go somewhere else then really you got to go sometimes I'm going to finish them for you okay so anyway thanks again to the great courses plus for supporting this channel and gonna also give a big thanks to the answer files on patreon and they'll keep the lights on around here you might have noticed some new faces in the answer file coming here really do appreciate your support there's gonna be a lot more of those people joining I want to give a quick shout out to the people who just joined in the last week we've got my Rick kissed krysta fiak Mercedes case Matty parens Michael Luce and Simon Pyle and Rudy Ruiz thank you guys so much for joining if you would like to join them get access to some cool behind-the-scenes stuff including my secret vlog you can go to patreon.com/scishow what do you think do you have any possible solutions for these problems do you think the risks are overblown do you think the risks are worth it share in the comments below like and share if you liked it and if this is your first time here and you like the cut of my jib I encourage you to subscribe because I come back with videos just like this every Monday alright thanks again for watching you guys have an eye-opening week and I will see here in this Monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 1,205,852

Rating: 4.4809685 out of 5

Keywords: answers with joe, fermi paradox, drake equation, spacex, nasa, going to Mars, mars missions, mars spirit, mars opportunity, Curiosity rover, mars, space travel, space disaster, mars radiation, can humans live on mars, life on mars, scott kelly, mikhail kornienko, chris mckay, biosphere 2

Id: ESQ1bKd7Los

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Pizoo]

« Terrible » en Anglais est uniquement dépréciatif

[u/kisifi]

Dans le titre J'aurais traduit "a terrible idea" par "une très mauvaise idée" plutôt .

[u/Im_A_Reptilian_AMA]

Elon Musk fait des trucs incroyables avec SpaceX, il parle souvent de vie humaine interplanétaire, des performances de ses fusées sur des A/R Terre/Mars, mais il parle jamais de l'adaptabilité de l'homme sur une autre planete.

J'ai toujours été sceptique sur cet aspect. Le gars sur cette vidéo nous explique en quoi vivre sur Mars est quasi impossible, et restera probablement de la science-fiction.