An astrophysicist is giving Elon Musk’s dream of life on Mars a reality check.<\/p>\n
The SpaceX CEO<\/a> has long set the ambitious goal of building a self-sustaining city on Mars<\/a> as a backup for human civilization if Earth suffers a catastrophe.<\/p>\n Astrophysicist and science journalist Adam Becker says the biggest obstacle to Musk’s dream<\/a> isn’t rockets or distance \u2014 it’s dust.<\/p>\n “The dirt on Mars is toxic,” Becker, author of “More Everything Forever,” a nonfiction book examining ideas of immortality and space colonization, told journalist Taylor Lorenz on her “Power User” podcast. “It’s very fine dust, and so it will be there, and it’ll get into your water. It’ll get into your food, and it’ll get into your body.”<\/p>\n The problem, Becker said, is that Martian dust would cling to astronauts’ spacesuits and inevitably contaminate any habitat they built. Underground shelters, one proposed way to protect colonists from radiation, wouldn’t solve the problem.<\/p>\n “It’s just the one that sort of shook me out of my complacency that we were going to Mars,” Becker added of the Martian dust issue. “I saw that, and I was like, wait a minute, I don’t think this is going to happen.”<\/p>\n Becker said there’s already a long list of challenges before contending with dust. A trip to Mars would take roughly six to nine months, exposing astronauts to radiation and prolonged weightlessness. Once there, colonists would face low gravity, a virtually non-breathable atmosphere, and the enormous logistical challenge of constructing a permanent settlement.<\/p>\n A Martian colony is ‘not theoretically impossible’<\/p>\n Those challenges could be bad news for SpaceX, which has the explicit goal of making humanity a “multi-planetary species<\/a>.” The SpaceX board has also pledged to grant $1 billion in SpaceX shares<\/a> if Musk can create a colony of 1 million humans on Mars.<\/p>\n