No human has yet set foot on the Red Planet, and yet Elon Musk predicts that a million people will live on this planet by 2050.
The boss of SpaceX and Tesla plans to fly a small group of astronauts to Mars by the end of this decade on his Starship, the largest rocket ever made.
Eventually, a colony of men and women will breed there to increase the population of Mars, the billionaire hopes.
But scientists say the difficulties of having sex on Mars make this highly unlikely, if not impossible.
Kelly Weinersmith, a bioscientist and author based in Charlottesville, Virginia, says people who want to populate Mars “don’t understand how reproduction works.”
Weinersmith, who co-wrote the 2023 book “A City on Mars” with her husband Zac, told the Times: “These billionaires think it’s a technical problem.
“They think if they get a big enough rocket, biology will take care of itself, but it doesn’t.”
Couples can risk the health of their unborn baby by becoming pregnant in space, whether on Mars or orbiting Earth on the ISS.
Eventually, a colony of men and women will reproduce on Mars to increase the human population there, Elon Musk hopes. But scientists say the difficulties of having sex on Mars make this highly unlikely, if not impossible. Pictured: An AI impression of mating on Mars
‘A City on Mars’ – illustrated by Kelly’s husband Zach – won the Royal Society Trivedi’s prestigious science book prize last week.
In the book, the duo addresses the difficult logistics of both recreational and reproductive sex on Mars, as well as masturbation.
On the surface of Mars, gravity is about 38 percent of that on Earth, so this low-gravity environment could hinder the development of embryos or the movement of sperm.
Meanwhile, Mars’ lack of atmosphere and ozone layer allows harmful radiation to strike its rusty surface.
Conception could lead to harmful effects of radiation on an embryo, including possible DNA damage that could cause mutations in the uterus.
In fact, even if sex on Mars leads to a successful birth, the testing atmosphere on Mars is demonstrably no place for a child.
Raising children as Martians is perhaps one of the biggest problems of all, fraught with both ethical and practical implications.
According to Kelly and Zac, even if the problems surrounding sex and conception in space are averted, another problem would be obtaining enough genetic diversity in a Martian population.
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun – a dusty, cold desert world with a thin atmosphere. In the photo, Mars was captured by the Hubble telescope
Elon Musk thinks he can send manned flights to Mars as early as the second half of this decade. The problem is that conditions on Mars can severely damage multiple parts of the body, accelerating disease and death – even while wearing a space suit.
A tribal population would have to consist of several hundred people before they would mate, and even then they would have to mate with the ‘right people’.
A computer program or AI might need to collect genetic information on all space travelers before matching pairs to maintain high genetic diversity.
“It works if we all do what the computer says and no one dies,” says Zac.
David Cullen, professor of astrobiology at Cranfield University, has said there are ‘unanswered biological and legal questions’ surrounding sex in space that ‘urgently need to be addressed’.
He thinks the main issue of sex on Mars would be the effect of the changed gravity, but there is a lack of research to “clearly understand what the consequences might be.”
Professor Cullen told MailOnline: ‘A more obvious question concerns later steps in the full human life cycle, such as the effect of reduced gravity on musculoskeletal developments after childbirth, childhood and adolescence.
‘We know that there is a dynamic effect of the gravitational environment and therefore of the load on the musculoskeletal system, which influences the development of the musculoskeletal system.’
Professor Cullen added that fertilization could possibly occur through sex on Mars, but that “subtle developmental risks” throughout the human life cycle are unknown.
With Starship, Musk could realize his grand ambition of transporting people and cargo to the moon and eventually Mars, making us a “multiplanetary” species. Pictured: Starship prototype in August 2021
In 2017, Musk said SpaceX would launch its first cargo missions to Mars in 2022 and the first crews to the planet in 2024.
Professional astronauts might not admit that they made sex their top priority when they set up infrastructure on Mars as part of SpaceX’s grand plans, though human nature would certainly act sooner or later.
Musk recently said that SpaceX will send its multi-billion dollar Starship rocket to Mars in 2026, although it will be an unmanned mission.
Two years after that, in 2028, Starship will carry humans to Mars for the first time – which would mark the first time humans have ever walked on another planet.
Ultimately, Musk wants to make humans a “multiplanetary” species – meaning we live on different planets, not just Earth.
Musk believes that a natural or man-made disaster will ultimately mean the end of civilization, necessitating a move to another planet – with Mars being ‘the only realistic option’.
This could be a pandemic worse than Covid, with continuously declining birth rates, a nuclear Armageddon or perhaps a direct hit by a deadly comet ‘that takes out a continent’.
His highly entertaining research paper published in New Space, entitled ‘Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species’, outlines the company’s vision.
“History will split in two directions: one path is that we will stay on Earth forever and eventually there will be an extinction,” he says.
“The alternative is to become a space-bearing civilization and a multi-planetary species, and I hope you agree that this is the right path.”