• Question: Why can't we live on mars

    Asked by Cozzi to Lucy on 10 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Lucy Kissick

      Lucy Kissick answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      We actually could live on Mars with the right equipment! But we can’t live naked on the surface for a couple of reasons:

      1. Mars has no breathable air: the air pressure is 1/100 of Earth’s, meaning your bodily fluids would turn to gas quite horribly under your skin if you stood there without a helmet. Also, it’s 95% carbon dioxide, which is what we breathe out! There’s very very very little oxygen to breathe in.

      2. Mars is sterile (completely devoid of life, so far as we know) so you can’t grow crops there without bacteria-filled soil. Since these would need the same air as us, they’d need to be kept indoors in greenhouses.

      3. Mars is really, really, really cold. As in, Antarctica-on-the-worst-day-in-recorded-history cold: -70°C, and that’s an average sunny day on Mars. So the human body needs to stay inside nice heated spacesuits whenever it does outside!

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