Building a Marsbase is a Horrible Idea: Let’s do it!

From hostile deserts, to lonely islands and the highest mountains, wherever there is space to expand into humans do so. So, it's hardly surprising that we're already making preparations to set foot on Mars, and to create the first permanent colony outside of Earth -- maybe even terraform another planet and turn it into a second blue home.

But wait, before we can get to the nice future stuff, we first have to complete the second phase of colonization; creating a semi-permanent outpost to prepare the ground for a larger human presence. But doing so will be gruesome.

Even for an expansionist species like us, Mars is extreme. At first glance, Mars seems familiar -- polar ice caps, large valleys, liquid water under its surface, and a day barely longer than Earth's. The ideal place for us to go. Unfortunately, Mars is actually a cold, radioactive desert where the ground is poisonous and breathing is impossible.

Mars is awful. You almost certainly don't want to go there. The pioneers doing the hard work on Mars will have an intensely stressful life, filled with incredibly challenging problems never encountered before. But there are plenty of people willing to do that work and we have the technology to enable them to do it.

For this video, we will assume there have been prior missions to Mars to scout out a good place for an outpost, store resources and equipment, and that there's already a moon base that serves as a hub for Mars missions. The first major challenge for our outpost, is the fact that Mars is very energy poor.

Because of its distance from the Sun, solar power is only 40% as effective as on Earth. But even this weakened sunlight is often obscured for days by enormous dust storms. Solar power alone will probably not be enough. Alternatives, such as wind power, and geothermal energy are also unfeasible as there's hardly any atmosphere and Mars' interior is much too cold.