“In a galaxy far far away” , human like creatures travel from one galaxy to another within a blink of an eye. With powerful light sabers and magic that is quite complex to understand has been the fantasy of humans for a long time. Many of the Hollywood production companies has made billions of dollars by making movies and take us closer to the dream of travelling from one planet to another across interstellar space. So how far are we from the dream ?
Doomsday one day or another our planet may die and what happens to those living in it ? We have two chances. One we get extinct. Other, we travel across galaxy from one planet to another, saving our species. Galaxies apart, what about other planets in our solar system ?
Well, Venus is too acidic to hold any life. Mercury is too close to the sun and too “hot” for us to bear. Eventually, this leads us to the planet Mars. Mars, the fourth planet in the solar system that once may have supported life. On some point in its life, mars lost its atmosphere and that meant the end to all the living beings that might have walked across the surface of the planet. Now remains a far-stretching “Red Sand” land with an atmosphere that we can breathe for about a minute before we die. So then why is Mars the point of attraction for many ?
Scientists claim that it is possible to bring back the atmosphere of Mars. And once atmosphere is back, it could once again support life back again.
It all is well and good but how do we travel from Earth to Mars. Well of course it is not supposed to happen for next 50 years. But is its going to happen, we would be needing a big ship. Even to carry a 100 people.
With our current rocketry systems, it would take 2 years for a spacecraft to travel from Earth to Mars. To carry 100 people, we must have enough supplies of oxygen and food to keep them alive for two years. And fuel to carry the ship of that size to mars. Engines of course to power the giant monster.
If we are going to start a civilisation in mars, then we need a mode of transportation between the two planets, like the airplane that we use to travel from one country to another. Then we would need 100’s of ships to take people across the planet. And we can’t rebuild ships every time. We need to make them strong enough to make 100’s of safe travels across the planet. That would mean that we can’t launch the craft land every time as it puts too much stress on the air frame. This leads to the only option, A space port – capable of refuelling the ships its inter-planet journey.
Several companies like SpaceX has been working to make this dream a reality. Elon Musk,CEO of SpaceX claims that one day the cost of transportation to mars would be so low, that people would save up money to travel to mars in hope of a new life, like the way people saved money to travel from Europe to America in the early 20th century.
Just as any new land with opportunities, the cities of mars would be flooded with jobs at the start thus encouraging more and more people to travel across the planet. But there is one still major problem to be solved, Communication.
It takes maximum of 22 minutes for message from mars to reach earth and vice versa. If we are going to make a civilisation in mars, we have to identify new methods of faster communication between the planets. Imagine that you send a “hi” to your friend back at earth at it takes atlas 44 minutes to receive back a “hi” ? You can only hope that there are beautiful girls at Mars.
But all this who formulates it all? To whom does Mars belong ? If USA starts a colony first does it mean that mars is one the State of United States of America ? Well, that question is still unanswered. Many private companies are using this opportunity to make up a fortune. One company is already looking forward to mine on the Moon. New rules are necessary to keep the new worlds regulated of course.
I can only hope that this all could become a reality and one day i can travel to Mars before i die. I look forward for the travel.
-Arul Prakash Samathuvamani