Life on Mars can be more than a pretty song to sing to, it may become a realistic life experience, once NASA starts building a steady plan on how to support life on the red planet.
NASA is working to devise the first expected human landing on Mars, which will happen in 2030. By then, researchers and scientists have launched a challenge through a solutions-crowdsourcing platform, to get a little help from space-savvy friends.
NASA is looking for help among us, to imagine the perfect landscape of human living on Mars. As long as you envision a realistic solution to support life on Mars for 500 days without supply reinforcement from Earth, you may be the lucky winner of the competition. Best ideas will be rewarded with 5000$.
Speaking of best ideas, these should consider perfect supplies or capabilities to gain or keep water, oxygen, build social interactions, imagine a system of medical support, communication and climate control and so on. Each and every aspect that can support life on the Red Planet should be taken into account by those who apply for submissions.
Climate control is a very important aspect, as well as the weight and volume of supplies carried to Mars. The participants must answer simple but essential questions on how life can be built from ground zero, on a planet where there’s no oxygen in the first place.
So, oxygen is a good starting point, but we must also think of shelter, water, food, communications, exercise, medicine and interactions. NASA encourages every piece of innovation in the realm of ideas in supporting life on Mars.
Richard Dawkins is one of the most popular voices who ever spoke of the need for planetary colonization to ensure the survival of humans. NASA comments that their present initiative is far from the colonization process, but more tied to finding an alternative to life on Earth in the first place. We just need to figure out how we can do that and for how long we can leave Earth and survive in extreme and completely different and rather unfriendly environments.
Colonization, as defined by NASA, should be a one way ticket to Mars, with no opportunity to return. Instead, they would like to rather imagine a gradual transition to a stable and steady human presence on Mars.
The public opinion on this matter is rather skeptical, starting with the comments on the low prize that doesn’t necessarily celebrate innovation in thinking. Haters are bragging that for this kind of challenge, which is a pretty serious one, money should be much better. There is a considerable amount of effort that needs to be put into this idea, it’s about extreme innovation and envisioning, so the rewards should be as consistent as the goals of the challenge.
Image Source: americaspace.com
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