How Could We Be So Wrong About Space, Mars, and Microplastics?
Ignorance always breaks at scale.
Plastic is everywhere. It’s easy to find a study, a depressing study, that describes the microplastics in the water, in the soil, and in the food we eat. Now they’re finding tiny plastic particles in the air we breathe. We’re finding plastic in places we once thought pristine like the antarctic. There is no escaping them.
So take a deep breath.
Elon Musk has been telling us for years that we need to go to Mars to ensure the next evolution of humanity. If we can get past the plastic everywhere, we might have a chance to see a human land on Mars. My kids or their kids might visit Mars someday. But first, before we can colonize Mars, we’ll have to figure out how to grow food there. We’ll have to figure out how to make oxygen there.
There are no natural sources of oxygen on Mars. There is no life that we are familiar with there. No plants, no animals, just a harsh environment under a very thin atmosphere. All of that might be OK. We could figure out how to deal with that.
But I’m thinking of Matt Damon’s movie, The Martian. I recall how his character figured out how to grow potatoes in Martian soil. That’s neat except for one thing: there are perchlorate salts everywhere on Mars…
