Mars, the great red planet. It has been observed by humans for hundreds of years, but quite recently has sparked interests with scientists across the world to one day go. But they don’t want to go for resources, or to study, no, they want to establish a new home on a new planet for the human civilization to thrive. Scientists even say we may go in the next 10 years and one day have cities all across the planet. But no, they won’t stop there, they hope in the next few hundred to a thousand years to make the planet fully suitable for human life. Let me explain the steps to getting there and what the journey will bring along.

“No, I don’t ever give up.I’d have to be dead or completely incapitated.” Elon Musk said in early production of his failing space company. In May 6, 2002 Elon Musk the founder of SpaceX, had created his space company in search to colonize space and planets beyond our reach. But he had many hardships in the beginning of his journey. His rockets always would blow up when landing, and it had started to run his company broke, till one day, out of the blue, his one random launch had gone successful and if it wasn’t for that launch there would be no SpaceX to this day. After that everything started running smoothly. He had more successful launches and more funding coming in. SpaceX had officially become the new NASA and was doing really well in it’s golden years.

Over 14 years later, in June 2016 Elon Musk had announced that he was planning to send humans to mars in the next 10 years. After that, the media went crazy. Now Mars is all people can talk about since we’re going in just a few short years. But the question is what do we need to get there. Well before we even send humans, the first thing we need to do is send supplies like food supplies, building supplies for a hab to live in, and all other sorts of resources to get us going. The first launch for supplies will be launched very shortly in the year 2022. Then in 2024, we SpaceX will send another rocket to mars. But by the year 2026, we will be ready to send the first settlers to colonize mars.

The first crewed mission to mars will hold around 100 people on board the ship. The only people who are going to go on the first few missions will most likely be people who are doctors, engineers, physicists, chemists, botanists and all other people who have majored in some field of science. They are going to need people who have a masters in these fields because many things can go wrong, whether it be running out of food, losing oxygen, or blowing up the rocket. And do keep in mind, the journey is around 7 months and they will be hundreds of millions of miles away from home.No human has ever gone that far or that long in space. They need to have every person living on mars and in space to do a job that will cause the mission to prove successful so we can send more humans to the red planet and eventually make it home.

“You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to even look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on”…”So It’s a fixer upper of a planet.” Elon Musk commented. Now other than colonizing mars, there’s even talk of making it habitable. Now what would we need to do to do that? Well first, we would need to increase the magnetic field around mars so we can keep the atmosphere trapped. After that, we would need to increase the amount of oxygen to make the atmosphere suitable for life, and create enough carbon to warm up the planet. After that it gets easier. All we would have to do after is to plant grass and trees around the planet, and let the water from the ice caps melt so we can form oceans. Scientists say this could take from a few hundred to a thousand years for mars to be habitable, so not in our lifetimes, but we can definitely make it to mars in our own lifetime. The quickest ways scientists say to terraform it though is to nuke the polar ice caps. It could help by warming up the planet and adding oxygen flowing through the atmosphere better, but on the downside it could cause the plane to freeze up even more and cause radiation all throughout the planet making it even less habitable so it’s a 50/50 shot, but Elon Musk wants to take those odds when he can.

Many people though say humans aren’t ready for mars for many reasons. One reason is that we could blow up since their rockets that they want to use for mars have recently been exploding. Another reason is that we could lose communication which would block us from earth. We could also run out of supplies even as well. There are just too many risks. Some people also like to make the argument saying how we will end up ruining another planet with pollution. Either way, in my opinion, by the time we are ready to go, I think we will have fixed these issues and will be 100% ready to visit the red planet.

These are the tasks we would need to accomplish and dangers to avoid to colonize and terraforming mars. We may never be alive to see it fully habitable in our lifetime, but at least we’ll be able to hopefully one day visit mars. Elon Musk says it will only cost around 100,000$ per ticket so it could be affordable for most people. Who knows, maybe Mars will be our new home in the future, and maybe we’ll even find new homes to colonize in the further future.