Land a man, ALIVE, on Mars ? No Can Do !

Michael Marshall

Lots of people deny new science's claim that 'Lifeboat Earth' is the best and only livable home of Humanity.

I am not one of them.

But old-school scientists claim we can live on Mars, terraform it into a facsimile of Earth, compound edible food and breathable oxygen out of minerals and lots of human ingenuity.

'Taint so.

Mars does not have enough atmosphere to land humans in
spaceships safely in the manner we do it on Earth.

Nor does it have the tiny atmosphere, tiny gravity and tiny distance from Earth that the Moon has - which also makes it possible to land humans safely upon its surface.

But to make a human-carrying ( ie heavy) spaceship go from
Mach Five speeds to much less than Mach One speeds in less than 90 seconds, without crushing delicate human bodies with massive G-forces, during a live Mars landing isn't yet possible.

Even getting small spacecraft with sturdy equipment safely down on Mars has proven very challenging - ie most have been multi-billion dollar failures.

With human cargoes, the cost of experimenting with failure rises to infinity --- if you value human life as much as I do.

Old-school scientists (a warm shout out to *Newt Gingrich !) say that the 97% percent of world climate scientists who accept the consensus model of dire human-caused global warming is not enough certainty to let them sleep soundly at night.

But  these same old-school scientists, Newt prominent among them , have no problem with the science or economics of a Man on Mars ---despite the science here being about .00097% certain.

A living Man on Mars in my lifetime?

Count me proudly among the DENIERS.....

* Newt Gingrich is best known as a politician and historian. But he also earned his living as university professor in geography and environmental studies - by my definition (see my earlier blog  post on the subject) that definitely makes him a scientist.