Mars is the Next Step for Humanity — We Must Take It

http://www.space.com/28513-mars-is-the-next-step-for-humanity-we-must-take-it.html?cmpid=559070

I found this to be a very interesting and informative article. I pay attention to articles like this because both Moon and Mars colonies figure prominently in my SIMPOC series and soon to be released Virus series.

The article makes some sound arguments about going straight to Mars and not bothering with a moon colony. The point being, that putting a ton of money into a moon colony as a stepping stone to Mars doesn’t make any sense, the environments are too different and the pay-off too little.

According to the author, the problems with going to Mars are all solvable and the cost isn’t that high when you drop the requirement to make the moon a stopping off point.

In my series Virus and SIMPOC, I have colonies on the moon and Mars. I have the moon colony just for mining Helium-3, which has a major potential for nuclear fusion. I didn’t create the moon colony in my story as a Mars stepping point.

The article went on to say that in 50 years, we could transform the planet into something that is almost livable. Not exactly Palm Beach but somewhere where we could survive.

I hope that we have the vision to pull this off. We need an exciting objective in our future to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. If we want them to take the STEM courses, we need to provide an exciting scientific objective.

 

Ray Jay Perreault

Science Fiction