With so much happening on Planet Earth in peril, are humans truly prepared to reach Mars?
“One Strange Rock,” a new National Geographic television series that debuts on Monday, sets out to show viewers what makes the Earth unique among other planets in the solar system, and the conditions it took to foster life on the planet. As part of the series – directed by Darren Aronovsky and narrated by superstar Will Smith – several astronauts give personal anecdotes and perspectives about the planet based on a place few humans who have actually visited outer space.
“One Strange Rock” illustrates the idea that Earth has several frontiers humans have yet to conquer, and functions as a love letter of sorts to the planet at a time when humans have their sights set on redder pastures. Expectations are heightened over efforts to reach Mars – which, if SpaceX founder Elon Musk has his druthers, could happen as early as next year – with eventual human colonization seen as a real possibility.
The Red Planet is “a hard place to get to,” Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space and a former commander of the International Space Station, told CNBC at a press conference recently. “Personally, I do not think we’ll ever get to Mars with the engines that exist now. We will need something better in order to make that leap of distance.”
He added that the voyage itself would take a year, and was fraught with potential risks. “No matter what goes wrong in that year, you can’t go home. That’s like condemning a lot of people to death, because a lot could go wrong.”
With that in mind, CNBC recently asked “One Strange Rock’s” contributors to share their thoughts on the idea of humans departing Earth for life on Mars. Several of them believed that our planet still holds its own unexplored mysteries, and lessons for venturing beyond Earth’s orbit.
