Conditions for establishing a base on Mars.

Mars I remind you that it has 144.4 million square kilometers, that is almost 16 times the surface of the United States, many dream of terraforming, for example Elon Musk, but it is not going to be easy, we must create a denser atmosphere and a magnetic field that protects the planet and the new atmosphere from radiation and the solar wind, and it is not clear how the difference in gravity will affect terrestrial living beings on Mars, not only the animals and plants that we carry but also ourselves.

An 80 kg person on Earth on Mars would weigh 29.6 kg, perhaps we will not see the transformation of Mars in this century, we may see scientific bases, but in this century we will see them, I am convinced, but when I talk about scientific bases I am talking about bases like those we can find in Antarctica, in Antarctica it is obviously easier to build a base in Antarctica than on Mars.

Among other things, because on Mars we are going to need a pressurized suit to walk on the Martian soil on the surface, there is not enough atmospheric pressure and but they will be bases where there will be a dozen researchers at most, maybe two dozen at most, and in the future I think that There will be closed colonies, but not in this century, although perhaps long-term terraforming will also be done, but in parts.

An example that I usually give Hellas planitia, this crater was caused by a giant asteroid billions of years ago, Hellas planitia has a respectable diameter of 2300 km in diameter and is more than 7 km deep 7 km deep compared to the average The height of Mars, the average height of Mars would be like the sea level of Mars, although it is more complicated to calculate, but it is 7 km deep.

What we do know is that right now at the bottom of Hellas planitia the atmospheric pressure is almost double the average pressure of Mars, it is still far away for there to be liquid water on the surface and for humans to be able to walk around without having to carry a pressurized suit, but it would not be necessary to increase the atmospheric pressure on all of Mars, that would mean vaporizing many gases, it would be enough to increase the pressure enough for the existence of liquid water to be possible on Hellas planitia.

And I'm not saying to increase the pressure to what the atmospheric pressure would be at sea level, a pressure similar to what we can find at 4500 meters above sea level would be enough, it would not be an easy life, but we could have liquid water on the surface and we could walk around without needing a pressurized suit and this Hellas planitia crater is a basin of a little more than 4 million square kilometers, that is, that area could be terraformed that would cover about twice the size of Mexico.

The Earth lost its geomagnetic field for a time, yes, it is the excursions and also the reversal of the poles, but it was not something permanent, which is what happened to Mars; Losing the magnetic field of a planet like Earth is bad news, but it is not, it is not the end of the world, the problem is that Mars lost it for a long time and the erosion of the solar wind and radiation was dragging and drying and removing atmosphere from Mars is a slow process of hundreds of millions of years, that was the tragedy of Mars.

If we want to create a dense atmosphere on Mars, we will also have to build a magnetic field to protect it in the long term, because you don't start terraforming a planet to inhabit it for only 100 or 200 years, you consider it so that it is a living planet for a long time. time and perhaps the habitat of humanity in the distant future.