How Humans Will Become a Multi-Planetary Species

Imagine watching Earth rise from your home at Mars Base Alpha, a place bustling with mining robots, research pods, and cargo landers. Together they are building the next human neighborhood 140 million miles from the original home planet — on a new home planet.

Years earlier, robots scoured Mars for ice deposits and usable regolith to produce oxygen, water, and building materials. Solar panels, ferried on cargo flights from Earth, generated power to fuel automated construction.

Now, Mars' first human inhabitants are conducting research and growing food in biodomes. They're eating 3D-printed beef and pizza. They're hosting tourists. They're even Instagramming.

Perhaps in this century, humans will become a multi-planet species. We'll begin on the Moon and Mars, our closest planetary kin, before exploring outposts in our solar system. We'll take this monumental leap because we can — and should. Earth won't be here forever.

As disaster management expert Vinay Gupta said, "Making life interplanetary, and then interstellar, enables creation to generate untold wonders over potentially trillions of years."

Why Humans Should Become a Multiplanetary Species

Earth might be in its endgame. Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, has detailed the numerous "existential risks" our planet confronts: nuclear holocaust, genetically engineered mistakes, destructive nanobots, and even the gradual loss of human fertility. Meanwhile, MIT research suggests the planet's oceans could contain enough carbon by 2100 to begin a "mass extinction event."

The effects of such events might last 10,000 years or longer, but it would be smart to start and prepare now. One way or another, Earth has an end date, meaning some of us should consider moving. SpaceX founder Elon Musk believes that a Martian colony requires one million people to be sustainable. Musk said we could scale up that population within a century.

The prospect of establishing a human presence on another planet might seem implausible since humans haven't truly tamed Antarctica. Two Swiss scientists believe we'll never live on Mars or anywhere else.

So why should we try? "In order to have a bigger future," said Robert Zubrin, founder and president of the Mars Society. "In order to have an open future. In order to open the possibility to create new branches of human civilization that will add their creative talents to the human story."

Besides, we're already on our way.

NASA's 50 Objectives for Becoming a Multiplanetary Species

NASA's Artemis program plans an incremental, decades-long strategy for visiting the Moon and Mars. The program will rely on commercial- and government-funded projects to land and sustain humans on both surfaces.

As part of the Artemis program, NASA unveiled a list of 50 objectives to reach Mars, build sustainable living systems, and return to Earth. Among them:

• Develop a transportation system that the crew can routinely operate from the Earth-moon vicinity to Mars's orbit and Martian surface.

• Develop systems for the crew to live, operate, and explore on the Martian surface to address critical questions concerning science and resources.

• Develop integrated human and robotic systems with inter-relationships that enable maximum science return from Mars's surface and orbit.

• Create and advance autonomous construction, precision landing, surface transportation, industrial scale ISRU and advanced manufacturing capabilities to support a future and continuous human lunar presence and robust lunar economy.

• Demonstrate the ability to use commodities produced from planetary surfaces or in-space resources, reducing the mass required to be transported from Earth.

We're rapidly developing technology to achieve these goals while making them safe and cost-effective at scale. Musk ranks cost as a pivotal factor in sending people to Mars.

Elon Musk's Mission to Make Mars Travel Affordable

In 2017, Musk estimated the cost of a Mars trip using traditional space agency tactics would cost $10 billion per person. Any discussion of a Mars Base Alpha ends there. But if that cost were equivalent to the median price of a U.S. home (about $440,000 in Q2 2022), then people would be interested, Musk theorized.

Lowering the travel cost requires four key elements:

• Reusable rockets

• The ability to refuel in orbit

• Producing propellant on Mars

• Choosing the most efficient propellant

SpaceX and other commercial enterprises are developing technology to achieve those goals. In February, Musk said that SpaceX's Starship is closer to becoming a fully reusable transportation system that could carry one million tons of cargo to Earth orbit annually (assuming three launches per day). Musk cites one million tons as the cargo threshold necessary to operate a self-sustaining city on Mars.

Researchers are modeling the development of in-situ propellants from local Martian materials and high-speed propulsion systems to develop fuel-efficient, cost-effective transport. Once there, how will humans live on Mars? Living (biotech) tech might hold the answer.

Supporting Multi-planetary Life With Living Tech

Lynn Rothschild, a senior research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, is an expert in astrobiology. She believes humans on Mars will generate electricity using bacteria and grow houses from fungi. Rothschild said that growing structures on Mars from fungi instead of shipping construction materials could save 90% of the transport upmass problem. The key is synthetic biology.

Rothschild calls this "living tech," which starts with the power of the cell. Microscopic organisms will produce silk, wool, latex, silica, and other materials. We'll send digital information to biofactories on Mars through DNA sequences. We'll generate and store power using living organisms. Rothschild said one of her students incorporated silver atoms into plant DNA to make an electrical wire.

"Once you think of life as technology," Rothschild said, "you've got the solution."

Humans have many practical reasons to become multi-planetary. But the mission shouldn't represent merely a life insurance policy for the species. We're still explorers and visionaries, so let's harness that ambition for an aspirational purpose.

"Life can't just be about solving problems," Musk said. "There have to be things that inspire you, that move your heart. Going out there, being a space-faring civilization, and making science fiction not fiction forever, I think that's one of those things."