Is Going to Mars Worth it?

      As romantic and as adventurous as going to Mars might sound, the question remains as to whether it is really worth the very real danger of loss of life. This was recently brought to my attention in a video that outlined all the damage that humans suffer when living in an orbital space station such as a significant loss of bone due to decalcification caused by lack of gravity, the atrophy or the weakening and constant wasting away of skeletal muscles which render the astronauts unable to walk once they return to Earth, the damage to vision and an increased risk of getting cancer. There is also the damaging effect of cosmic rays that pour right through the ship's relatively thin hull and plunge into your brain.

      The truth is, that after your long ad arduous voyage, during which the limits of your human endurance will have been tested, you will be in a very bad condition physically at a moment when physical health should be optimal in order to enhance your survival ability. Instead, you will be a physically denigrated human specimen stumbling out of the ship onto a planet that is also totally dedicated to killing you. Remember, Mars is equivalent to the same deadly vacuum of space you have just traveled through. So  the solar radiation and cosmic rays will continue to relentlessly bombard forcing you to immediately seek shelter.

      In short,  there is really no immediate respite from the agony you have just endured during that long trip. Neither is the immediate or long-term future on Mars any better. It simply involves one desperate continuous struggle to survive and perhaps having to do so by going underground.

      Now, there is nothing glamorous about arriving on a planet and immediately having to bury yourself alive for fear of death. Neither does burying yourself guaranteed that a global sandstorm won't knock out your solar array panels on the surface via covering them with sand while simultaneously obscuring the sun. In that case, you will begin  to slowly run out of heating and oxygen. This makes death by suffocation or freezing is a real possibility. Neither can you decide to leave immediately but must wait more than a year for the Earth/Mars orbital synchronization to happen. In short, you are stuck.

    Also, please keep in mind that Marse remains virtually totally unexplored. So  you really don't know if there is life on Mars underground-do you?  Confidently  digging deeply and burying yourself there or perhaps dwelling in some seemingly lifeless cavern might very well expose you to a totally unexpected and very nasty lifeform which might very well perceive you as prey. In the sci-fi film Life, that happens when Martian life is reanimated and turns out to be predatory. the consequences were deadly.

      So considering all these risks, I would say that going to Mars is really not worth it.