Many people expect that the future of humanity will involve Mars. The Red Planet is close enough and not immediately deadly like Venus. That makes it a good enough candidate for future human exploration, and maybe even settling the place. But good enough doesn’t make it good. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Unlike Milton’s Lucifer, we can not make a heaven out of hell when it comes to Mars. The Red Planet might not have an atmosphere that melts lead and crushes you into a patty like Venus, but it is a more extreme environment than any we have on Earth. And there’s no way to simply fix it.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the bombastic plans of Elon Musk by some miracle actually happen. Within a few decade

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