The technologies developed to sustain life on Mars could revolutionize life on Earth

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Excerpt from Chapter 1: Arrival

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Imagine today’s date is in the 2080s and you are part of the third or fourth wave of immigration to the Red Planet. Climate change has made life on earth challenging for most people. Things haven’t gotten better since the 1920’s, our leaders have not faced the problems boldly, and so overpopulation, inequality, poverty and water scarcity have made major metropolitan areas extremely uncomfortable. The earth has become hot, dirty and overcrowded for many people.

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But in this future, an alternative has emerged: A permanent community, BaseTown, has been formed on Mars, and people are lining up to seize the opportunity. The community itself has grown to about ten thousand people and is expected to reach a hundred thousand in the next generation.

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More importantly, however, is the fact that the technologies developed to support life on Mars have begun to revolutionize life on Earth. Cyanobacteria grown to convert nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into organic molecules have been exported back to Earth. At home, these cyanobacteria are now cleaning up the carbon dioxide left in Earth’s atmosphere by the industrial age and helping to rehabilitate degraded farmland. The way BaseTown synthesizes proteins in giant bioreactors has also been exported back to Earth to keep humans healthy after climate change restricted animal husbandry.

However, you don’t see these bacterial bioreactors when you take the transit pod from the orbital landing pad to BaseTown’s cliff entrance. The bioreactors hardly shape the landscape. In reality, they are nothing more than huge underground tanks fueled by solar energy and carbon dioxide. Sunlight is brought down with fiber optic cables, leaving most BaseTown residents only vaguely aware of this part of the infrastructure.

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What catches your attention – what catches everyone’s attention – is the cliff face, which has become a honeycomb of reinforced windows and skylights, carefully designed to withstand the possibility of a meteor impact, tinted to filter out harmful radiation, but so constructed to let in the maximum amount of light possible. Stepping out of the transit shuttle onto BaseTown’s main mezzanine floor, you’re greeted by a surprisingly open and well-lit space full of greenery. One of BaseTown’s enduring design principles is to ensure that every photon of solar energy entering BaseTown is reused. Plants are encouraged to grow in any sunlit location. And each of these plants sucks up extra carbon dioxide, releases oxygen, purifies water, and turns organic molecules into food. The plants are also beautiful to look at: going to the surface is difficult and dangerous, and most people spend their time on Mars indoors. Plants outnumber humans a thousand to one.

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These plants have been bred to cope with the low gravity, lower pressure environment and are all embedded in a hydroponic solution, but your first impression of BaseTown is that every resident needs to be a master gardener.

It’s been a long journey from Earth, and for months you’ve been consuming nothing but freeze-dried and hyper-preserved foods. So you’re eager to try Martian cuisine. You identify a small green food court, use your new ID and order salmon sashimi, roasted seaweed, a garden salad and then, glancing at the drinks, decide on a milkshake.

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The menu lists all of these items as locally sourced, and when they arrive on a conveyor belt, you’re pleasantly impressed.

The sashimi is actually a cell culture that has been 3D printed to look like it came from salmon; As you bite down on the pleasant texture, wonder if this technology may have saved the world’s salmon from being nearly wiped out by overfishing?

The seaweed tastes just like the seaweed on Earth, as does the green lettuce, except this green lettuce is much fresher than what you’re used to, having been harvested from hydroponic beds earlier today. And as for the milkshake, the milk proteins are the product of a specially designed fermentation process, but you have no idea if this milkshake tastes like it’s made from real cow’s milk because you’ve never tasted “real” dairy. In the last two generations, the number of cows on earth has declined, and today it is rare to eat real meat or dairy, and many people choose not to. Regardless, this milkshake from Mars is both refreshing and rich.

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After you’ve finished that first meal on Mars, you’ll carefully place your utensils and dishes in a sterilization chamber, meticulously scraping every remnant of organic matter from your plate and into a sophisticated composting infrastructure. UN training for space pioneers has been very clear on this point. There must be no waste on Mars. Resources are scarce and everything must be carefully managed. Again, perhaps this is another lesson we should have learned ages ago on earth.

You look around your new home – your new beginning – and think: Maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe people back home can learn something from the system we’ve built here?

Partially taken from Dinner on Mars: The technologies that will feed the Red Planet and transform agriculture on Earth by Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser. Copyright © Lenore Newman and Evan DG Fraser, 2022. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com