Elon Musk seems to believe that we – humans – particularly the subset known as Americans – and the smaller subset known as Elon Musk – can and should create a colony of one million people on Mars.

And why not? Raised on the Technocratic wet dreams of his grandfather and perhaps the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein, Musk knows, or rather believes, that there is nothing that man generally and men who are engineers specifically can not do or invent; that there is no problem that we can not solve, including terraforming Mars. After all, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Scotty terraformed planet Genesis – quickly – on Star Trek.

Robert Heinlein’s novels “The Red Planet,” “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” “Stranger in a Strange Land”, and Isaac Asimov’s novels “Nemesis,” the ”Foundation Trilogy,” and its sequels and prequels all feature Mars, other planets, or moons that support life, including human life. They also feature technologies such traveling faster than the speed of light or thru worm-holes in space. And time travel. They do that too on Star Trek. 

Hey Elon, Let’s do that next.

But seriously, as Matt Damon’s Mark Watley did in the Andy Weir book and Ridley Scott film, “The Martian,” let’s science the shit out of it.

This would be a colony with a population slightly less than the state of Rhode Island, slightly larger than the cities of San Francisco and Berkeley, CA, combined, or about half the size of Brooklyn, NY. I would start with a small proof of concept, say a colony of about 100 on the Moon, but unlike Elon, I’m a chill normal dude. As Elon said, on SNL, about 5 years ago, he’s not.

It’s also between 33.9 and 250 Million miles away. I suppose that’s right around the corner when you consider the vast distances of space but it’s not exactly a day trip.

There are a few other details that Elon seems to have failed to consider regarding his Mars colony. Firstly, these stories are all works of fiction. Sure they are adventures; stories of heroes facing and triumphing over dangers; stories of bravery, courage, responsibility, and ingenuity; fighting villains overflowing with arrogance, cruelty, and an insatiable hunger for power. However, the key word here is “fiction.” These are fantasies. They may be compelling, but they are no more real than “The Lord of the Rings,” “Harry Potter,” or “Game of Thrones.”

Secondly, Elon appears to disregard key aspects of Mars, particularly its ecology, or lack thereof; its atmosphere, the weather and the climate.

• • Mars’ atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, and 1.6% argon, with traces of oxygen, carbon monoxide, water, methane, other gases, and dust. Mars’ atmosphere is also thin – roughly 100 times less dense than Earth’s.
• • Mar’s mass – and gravity – is roughtly 38% of Earth’s. This may explain it’s thin atmosphere.
• • The surface of mars is radioactive.
• • It’s cold. The average surface temperature is around -81°F, (-63°C) with a range from a high of about 68°F (20°C) near the equator at noon to a low of about -243°F (-153°C) at the poles.
• • There is no ozone layer to block cosmic rays.
• • Regarding the soils and the oceans – there aren’t any. No oceans, no rivers, no lakes, no streams. This means no fish, no algae, and no plankton. No soil means no land based plants, no herbivores, and no carnivores. There may, however, be frozen water and frozen CO2 crystals below the surface, and these may contain bacteria.
• • Mars is a desert. And it’s more barren than Death Valley and the Sahara. It never rains. Not Ever.

This is not an environment that can support human life!

Musk also ignores the biology, ecology, and geology of Earth. Our planet is about 4.5 Billion years old. It took 500 million to one billion years for geologic evolution to create conditions for life, and for those next 500 million to one billion years those life forms were bacteria, other microbes and viruses. So Mars may be about 3 to 3.5 billion years behind Earth in terms of geo-evolution.

No arable land means no herbivores; no meat, no grains, no vegetables. The one million colonists; roughly the combined population of San Francisco and Berkeley, would have to be fed on soups grown in hydroponic vats; probably four of five million gallons of water and a protein, fat, oil, and carbohydrate soup, replenished daily, somehow.

It is possible that below the radioactive surface of Mars there are sufficient deposits of frozen nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen that we can terraform the planet, creating subsurface oceans and soils. However, the colony would have to be built underground or under thick glass domes – to allow light and photosynthesis – insulated from the radiation and temperatures on the surface.

While we are really good at using technology to enhance and accelerate natural processes, Musk’s apparent belief that he can terraform mars, giving it a carbon, nitrogen, oxygen atmosphere with an ozone layer, and oceans, continents, rivers, lakes, forests, and grasslands such that it can support humans, animals, and plants, which took one to two billion years, in anything less than 500 million or 1 billion years is naive and uninformed. It is wishful, magical thinking. He might as well enlist Santa Clause, or Gandalf, or Harry, Hermione, and Dumbledore, or the Warlocks of Qarth, or Melisandre of Asshai, as well as Spock and Scotty. (Although Spock is an alien.)

But here’s the thing. People consider a lot of things to be disposable. Does Elon really think our beautiful blue marble is “disposable?” If so, how does he answer Dana Meadows, who famously said, “where is this ‘away’ things go to when we throw them out?”

And if one million people form a colony on Mars what does that do for the other 8.1 billion people on Earth?

As “Dirty Harry,” Clint Eastwood famously said, “Go ahead, make my day.” To Elon he might repeat, “Are you feeling lucky, punk?”

Elon used to boast of doing more, via Tesla, to combat climate change than Al Gore. Now Tesla sales have evaporated like the Martian atmosphere, and he is hated by many who bought or aspired to buy Teslas. Elon’s mantra may be “Move fast. Get the job done. If something breaks, fix it or thro it out.” That may work with software code but it doesn’t work with planets. As Dana Meadows famously asked, “Where is this ‘away’ things go to when we throw them out?”

Maybe rather than waste time, money, and resources trying to transform Mars into a “Earth 2.0” he should return to his environmentalist roots and help rebuild our Earth.

• • Bio-engineer bacteria, plankton and other microbes such that they can metabolize the plastics in the oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams.
• • Reduce atmospheric CO2 back down to pre-industrial levels of 280 PPM from current levels of 430 PPM.
• • Remove all the non-biodegradable plastics from the oceans and toxins from our food supply, from the whole biosphere, the bio-humano-sphere.

Maybe Elon should listen to the Grateful Dead’s, “From the Mars Hotel,” and pay careful consideration to “Ship of Fools.”