Last week , Elon Musk causeda turn of a stirwhen he intimate that his forthcoming plan to colonize Mars – which we should be hearing week – might not just stop at the Red Planet .
Musk has long been working on something called the Mars Colonial Transporter ( MCT ) , a mysterious proposal to take 100 hoi polloi on a journey to colonise the planet . But on Twitter last Friday , he revealed that the MCT could go “ well beyond Mars ” , so he ’d instead be calling it the Interplanetary Transport System ( ITS ) .
Now , there ’s still a lot we do n’t know about Musk ’s program . But , assuming he ’s talk about sending humans to destinations elsewhere in the Solar System , where might be on the agenda ? Let ’s take a look at some of the candidates .
Mars
Mars , of course , is the obvious interface of call for colonization . It ’s an attractive proposal for being fairly similar to Earth . It ’s a rocky macrocosm with an average aerofoil temperature of -55 ° C ( -67 ° F ) , it once had liquid water on the Earth’s surface , and it has got resources thatmight be usefulto a human colony .
It ’s the latter point that often gets people talking . Mars has a immense amount of frozen carbon dioxide at its pole , and possibly vast reservoirs of water under the surface . If we are to set up a colony somewhere , it must be ego - sustaining . These resources offer a tantalizing source of fuel and zip .
Is Mars our best bet for a dependency on another world ? NASA
Mars also appears to have a replenishing source of methane , fed by nameless processes ( the first part of the ExoMars missionary post , the Trace Gas Orbiter , is due to arrivein Octoberand tell us more about this ) . Some have suggest this methane could be used to make fuel on the surface – and there have even beententative teststo prove this is potential .
Another welfare of Mars is that , comparatively speaking , it ’s quite confining . Every 26 months , Mars and Earth align in such a way that we can make the trip to the Red Planet in about seven or eight months with current technology . At their closest , they are less than 60 million kilometers ( 37 million miles ) apart , faithful enough for us to broadcast resupply missions or sustenance for a colony on Mars .
What a colony on Mars might look like is anyone ’s guesswork , though . The base itself might be partly buried underneath Martian grunge for protect it from solar radiation , and it will likely be heavily reliant on solar power . You ’d also need a spacesuit to explore the surface – although some indicate that we couldmelt the fixed carbon paper dioxideat the poles of Mars to try and activate world-wide warming , producing breathable oxygen and warm the major planet up , too .
Titan
Aside from Earth , Titan is the only situation in the Solar System that we know to have bodies of liquids on its surface . true , on Titan these are lake of liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane , rather than water . But it does still give Titan some Earth - like equipment characteristic , such as a weather and clime arrangement not altogether different to our own .
Interestingly , Titan has just1.5 clock time the air pressureof Earth . This means , in theory , you could walk around on the surface with a thin protective suit of clothes and a breathing masquerade party , rather than a fully - fledged spacesuit .
It ’s pretty chilly though , at about -180 ° C ( -290 ° F ) on average , so the temperature would certainly be a cistron . But those lakes of fluid methane are enticing – they could essentially be vast reservoirs of fuel , if we could learn how to harness methane such as on Mars .
" Titan ’s probably the one after Mars , " Jonathan McDowell , an astronomer at the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics , state IFLScience . " It has an atmosphere ( unbreathable of course ) , and frozen water and methane for fuel . "
NASA ’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed much of what we cognise about Titan so far . NASA / JPL - Caltech / Cassini
Titan also has an extremely duncical atmosphere , which does a right job of blocking radiation therapy from the Sun and Saturn . It ’s potential , too , that there may even be water hiding beneath the surface of Titan .
Getting there would be a bit of an issue , though , with a one - room journey prison term bordering on about half a decennary with current propulsion systems . But if we can utilize everything available to us at Titan , would we even need to come back ?
The Moon
A bit closer to home , we ’ve got the Moon . apart from Earth , it ’s the only place in the Solar System man have put foot on . And it could be a great theatrical production frontier settlement to research other world .
The Moon has basically no atmospheric state , leaving any explorers in full exposed on the surface . It ’s also fairly devoid , with no detectable resources plain apparent .
But late evidence suggests that in some volcanic crater on the Moon that are in permanent darkness , water - ice may live . One proposal is to build a base at thesouthern poleof the Moon , which experiences endless sunshine , and use the solar power generated here to issue a nearby base , perhaps one with access code to a permanently shadowed crater .
Europe and Russia have been in talks about building a Moon base . ESA / Foster + Partners
Having about 17 percent of Earth ’s gravity , bring down on and leaving the Moon is also relatively well-situated liken to , say , landing and launch on Earth . If we could set up a base there , it could be a good place from which to establish elsewhere , using the Moon ’s water - ice to make rocket fuel .
Many often also highlight the existence ofhelium-3on the Moon , an isotope that could supposedly be used in nuclear merger machines . That ’s very suppositional at the mo , but it could be another reason why we should refund to the Moon – and never allow for .
Venus
life sentence on the control surface of Venus might not be too fun . Temperatures are hot enough to unfreeze lead , and the atmospherical atmospheric pressure is 90 times that on Earth .
But , about 50 kilometers ( 30 miles ) above the surface , there ’s a rather intriguing region . Here , the atmospherical temperature and pressuremimic Earth .
And how would we make use of this ? Why , with floating cities of course . Yes , it has been touted that we could make fundamentally giant drift blimps that err around this part . From these , you could either seek to repurpose the atmosphere into something more terrestrial , or employ these float cities to shade the ground , lower its temperature .
It ’s unbelievable Musk has developed a way to colonize Venus . But perhaps he could inspire our descendants to do so far in the time to come .
Animated view of Venus . M. Perez - Ayœcar & C. Wilson , IDA / DLR / MPS / ESA
Europa
Perhaps even more fanciful than Venus is the prognosis of colonise Jupiter ’s moon Europa . The acute radiation therapy from the gas behemoth makes the surface of Europa pretty much off terminus ad quem , but what aboutunderground ?
Europa has a thick-skulled frozen eggshell , beneath which we think there is avast sea . This ocean may in turn be fed rut by hydrothermal vents at the ocean floor . This has led some to ponder whether there may be liveliness under Europa ’s surface .
water supply , patently , is also a jolly ready to hand resource . If we could get at it , we could practice it to nurture some sort of colony .
Life on Europa would be problematical , but not impossible . NASA / JPL - Caltech
The only problem is , we do n’t know how to drill beneath the several kilometers compact ice crust yet . Onenovel propositionsuggests that we could hold back for cracks on Europa to afford , and drop a probe down them to taste the subsurface layer . Harnessing the water , though , would not exactly be well-off .
Europa might not be the best terminus for Musk to consider at the moment , then . But there are mickle of other enthralling Earth the ITS could – and perhaps will – set up its quite a little on .
