The Appeal of Mars

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | April 18, 2026

Things here on Earth aren’t so great. We’re at war with Iran, and they seem to have a different understanding of what being “obliterated” means. We’re apparently at least claiming to run Venezuela and are happily stealing their oil by the “millions of barrels” according to our fearless leader, though he would not use the word “stealing.” Instead, he keeps saying, “To the victor goes the spoils” as if we were in the Middle Ages. Plus, we’re threatening Colombia and Cuba, and we’re still looking covetously at Greenland. And of course, the remaining Epstein files are still out there somewhere waiting to be released.

Artemis II and its dash around the moon distracted us for a little while as we claim we’re going to send humans back. Maybe we can use the moon to create some kind of launch platform for a manned Mars mission. Or something.

Space flight is exceedingly difficult and almost bizarrely expensive, but humans are explorers by nature, so go we must. Almost 70 years ago, in 1957, the old Soviet Union started this when they launched Sputnik, the first human-made orbital satellite. It didn’t do much but blink and send back very basic radio signals, but the space race had begun.

We followed just a year later with Explorer, a similarly basic orbiter. The space immediately surrounding Earth has become considerably more crowded since. Eleven different countries have now successfully placed satellites into orbit. The United States Space Command is tasked with keeping track of those 30,000 or so satellites, plus as much as a million pieces of space debris of booster rockets, defunct satellites, discarded parts, human waste (it isn’t stored on the International Space Station), and even a Tesla with a dummy behind the wheel launched by Elon Musk, all the way down to space litter we've created only a few centimeters across.

China, Russia, and the U.S. have also all launched dozens of military missions into space, and we have a pretty good handle on how many are up there though not necessarily what they might all do. We’ve all signed a treaty prohibiting space weapons, but it seems likely that has been ignored by everybody who could ignore it.

Elon Musk’s Starlink communications satellite program alone has placed about 10,000 of his little mini satellites into low orbit less than 500 miles above Earth’s surface. At the other extreme is the James Webb telescope, which is about a million miles above the earth to avoid all light or other forms of interference.

Artemis II was our first trip back to the moon since 1972, our last Apollo mission. People might have forgotten 12 Americans have walked on the moon in six different missions, but nothing since ’72. The old Soviet Union, China, Japan, and India have successfully soft-landed vehicles on the moon, but only the U.S. has safely put humans on the surface.

The idea now is to somehow use the moon as a staging area for putting humans on Mars. We might want to think long and hard before we commit to this. We have discovered there are negative issues with being in space for long periods of time sufficiently significant that whoever goes to Mars will likely have to stay there forever.

Mars is pretty small, its diameter only about half that of Earth’s. Depending on how and when we choose to get there—Mars orbits the sun elliptically and its distance from Earth varies from 34 million to 250 million miles—it will take seven to 10 months. Those arriving will find gravity at only about 38 percent of what we have here, according to NASA.

That reduced gravity over a long period is a real problem for our human bodies. In the micro-gravity of space travel, we lose about 1-2 percent of our bone density every month. Our heart shrinks and weakens. Without gravity, our body fluids tend to migrate up in our bodies impacting vision, hearing, and digestion. Kidney stones are not uncommon among returning astronauts.

Aside from the gravity issue, astronauts will be exposed to cosmic radiation on Mars, which has neither a strong electromagnetic field nor atmosphere to shield visitors from the sun’s dangerous radiation. That radiation also impairs the human immune system and can even change a person’s DNA. (Yes, some shielding can be constructed to protect from radiation but not easily and not quickly.)

We do not know how, or even if, the human body could readjust to conditions on Earth after any period on Mars. A smaller, weaker heart and compromised immune system would not be good.

If things don’t improve here at home, zipping off to Mars might not sound like such a bad idea. Staying there and starting over has more than a little appeal, too.