Unit 6 Living on Mars

Narrator Scientists around the world are interested in exploring Mars. Over the past 30
years, there have been dozens of unmanned missions to the red planet.
However, traveling to Mars is not easy: about two-thirds of these missions were
failures.

Because missions to Mars are dangerous and expensive, plans for a manned
mission to Mars have been delayed for decades. The international space
community is still not ready to send humans there. However, a manned mission
to Mars is a goal that Dr. Bob Zubrin really believes in.

Dr. Zubrin NASA had plans to send people to Mars by 1981. Those plans were credible.
We should have been on Mars a quarter century ago.

Narrator Bob Zubrin is president of the Mars Society, an international organization he

helped start in 1998. The Mars Society supports the goal of having humans
explore and live on Mars. Its members talk to government agencies and private
companies to get money to explore Mars.

Zubrin is also doing research to prepare for a manned mission to Mars. The
Mars Society set up living spaces designed for Mars in the deserts of Utah in
the western United States, and on Devon Island in northern Canada. These
remote areas are similar in some ways to the surface of Mars.

Dr. Zubrin We’re trying to find out what field tactics and techniques would be most
usefully applied on Mars, what technologies would be most useful to the crew.

Narrator Zubrin has ambitious ideas. He plans to colonize the planet.

Dr. Zubrin We’re going to Mars because Mars is the planet that has on it the resources
needed to support life and therefore, potentially someday, human civilization.

Narrator For Zubrin, Mars is the new frontier.

Dr. Zubrin Whether or not there has been life on Mars, whether or not there is life on
Mars, there will be life on Mars. And it will be us.

Narrator Zubrin isn’t the only one with plans for the red planet. Dr. Chris McKay has
another idea: he wants to create an atmosphere on Mars so humans can live
there.

Dr. McKay If we go to Mars and find that there is no life, then I say we might as well move
in.

Narrator McKay believes that for humans to eventually live on Mars, they need to start
 by warming up its atmosphere.

Dr. McKay Well, we know how to warm up planets. We’re doing it on Earth.

Narrator The first step to warming up the planet is putting greenhouse gases into the
Martian atmosphere.

Dr. McKay The effect of these gases would be to melt the ice, bring back the atmosphere,
and restore Mars to the conditions it was billions of years ago.

Narrator But if humans are going to live on Mars, they’re going to need oxygen. Chris
McKay has an idea about how to create oxygen on Mars, using tiny organisms
called cyano bacteria.

Dr. McKay These organisms are known as cyano bacteria. It’s a type of algae, a single-cell
type of algae, that has a very long history on Earth. These were the organisms
that first made the oxygen. These organisms could do the same thing on Mars.
Send them to Mars and ask them to change the world.

Narrator Cyano bacteria—the planet changers! Scientists continue to study Mars, so that
one day humans will travel to the red planet. And perhaps someday in the
future, humans will live there.