The new book sees Mars as a speculative planet where human ingenuity is king

Mars is the very epitome of a desert world gone wrong. A planet that some three and a half billion years ago was likely briefly blessed with river deltas, lakes and maybe even an ocean. However, fast forward to today’s rust desolation and the red planet seems fit only for robotic rovers tough enough to withstand its dust storms and extreme temperatures.

But in his latest book, “The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet,” astronaut engineer Robert Zubrin argues that Mars represents humanity’s future in a way that nowhere else can.

In one volume, Zubrin —- founding president of the International Mars Society and author of “The Case for Mars,” has accomplished what few other books on Mars have accomplished. It offers a surprisingly comprehensive road map for how to make dreams of colonizing Mars a reality.

Zubrin writes that Mars colonists will generate much of their early income from selling and licensing intellectual property primarily for consumption back on Earth. He argues that the profile of typical Martian colonists will be highly motivated individuals working together in a Silicon Valley-style “Menlo Park” Mars. Additionally, Zubrin writes that “people visiting Mars for scientific, commercial, recreational, and medical reasons will be profitable from the start for a Mars settlement.”

But before such economies of scale can be created on Mars, early visitors will need to focus on the basics of food, water and shelter. Zubrin notes that the first bases will focus on developing techniques to extract water from the Martian permafrost. construction of greenhouses; and structures under pressure for human habitation as well as industrial and agricultural activity.

Zubrin notes that it is “very likely that underground hydrothermal reservoirs exist on the red planet,” and once these reservoirs are discovered, they could provide Martian colonists with abundant supplies of water and geothermal energy.

Zubrin supports global warming on Mars

To warm the planet to temperatures cooler than the frozen desert Mars experiences today, Zubrin advocates the release of a Martian-made cocktail of chlorofluorocarbons. Ironically, these are the same fluorocarbons that were banned decades ago here on Earth in deference to repairing the depleted ozone layer.

But as this intentional global warming is induced on Mars, the planet will warm and its ancient hydrosphere will be reactivated, Zubrin notes.

“Water will melt from ice and permafrost, flow into streams, rivers and lakes, evaporate and come down everywhere as rain and snow,” Zubrin writes. “Pioneer cyanobacteria and primitive plants would produce about 1 millibar of oxygen to allow advanced plants to spread to Mars.”

The result will be a more temperate climate, as well as a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere to provide pressure and significantly reduce the dose of space radiation, Zubrin writes.

Plants that can tolerate the Martian surface regolith and perform photosynthesis at a much higher efficiency than here on Earth will then be released, along with bacterial symbionts (organisms that live in symbiosis), across the planet.

“Using such biological systems, the required 120 millibars of oxygen needed to support humans and other advanced animals in the wild could be produced in about 300 years,” Zubrin writes.

Martian Iron should be readily available

Mars’ natural red landscape is due to copious amounts of iron oxide, basically what we earthlings call rust.

“To get metallic iron from this rust, all you need to do is react iron oxide with carbon monoxide, as humans have been doing on Earth since about 1500 BC,” writes Zubrin. “We could electrolyze Martian water to produce hydrogen and react it with iron oxide to produce metallic iron and water.”

As for energy?

The energy base for a Martian civilization should be nuclear energy. Although uranium and thorium have been widely located on Mars, Zubrin predicts that the technology to support large-scale Mars settlement is fusion power.

A road map of Mars for the ages

Well written and accessible even to the non-specialist, the book is free of the jargon and acronyms that so often plague other such volumes. Yebt’s The New World on Mars is detailed enough that it could easily serve as a chapter-by-chapter syllabus for any good college course on off-world settlement and colonization.

Zubrin covers every aspect of settling and colonizing Mars — from food, water and shelter to cultural and social issues — including the potential for entirely new aspects of arts, sports and tourism.

Unfortunately, the timelines for seeing any of this happen within this or the next generation are still tenuous.

NASA does not yet have an exact launch date for its first manned mission to the red planet. NASA’s website only highlights the fact that the space agency is currently working on six technologies needed for a successful two-year crewed mission to Mars. So Zubrin’s dream of using private funding to reach the red planet may have more currency than previously thought.

That’s one reason longtime Mars settlement advocates like Zubrin believe making Mars a for-profit venture is crucial to settling the red planet. The proof will come within the first few decades after humanity first sets boots on the surface of Mars. Until then, it will be clear whether Zubrin’s ideas will come to fruition or forever remain a grand idyll.