Greenhouses on Mars? --Some Things We Still Need to Know

      Donald Trump recently ordered NASA to send men to Mars by 2020, at at most 2024 and they wisely replied that it wasn't going to happen.  In this post, we want to examine a few biological reasons why we need a lot more experimentation before we talk about colonization.  In science fiction the viability of agriculture on alien worlds or even in deep space has often been taken for granted.  Consider the greenhouse that Sean Connery's character destroys in Outland, the ridiculously undersized plantations in generation ships like the one in Space Mutiny, or the floating remnants of national parks defended by  Bruce Dern and his bots in Silent Running.  But the truth is that we have precious little information on how plants would exist (or not) far from the vicinity of Earth.

     So far, our expeditions to Mars have focused only on machines.  Can we assume that photosynthesis, the key to any kind of agriculture, would function the same, or function at all, on the surface of Mars?  Is the light on Mars sufficient to allow plants familiar and useful to humans to grow in any sufficient quantity to provide food, oxygen, and waste recycling? Optimists will immediately reply that all will be well once a bit of terraforming is done. However, we should probably make sure that is true, or at least likely, before we begin the immensely expensive process of modifying the atmosphere of the Red Planet.  Even if we are able to construct a magnetosphere to reduce the atmospheric erosion of solar bombardment, would it be enough to enable a viable agricultural infrastructure?  It would seem necessary to observe some kind of plant growth experiments in the vicinity of Mars in order to determine if it works.  And we cannot begin this possibly "polluting" activity until we know a lot more about whether there is already any kind of microbial life on that world.   We cannot afford to take it for granted that great forests would simply spring up as they do in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.  

     Even if terrestrial plants could be coaxed into growing in an existing or easily altered Martian atmosphere and soil, that does not in itself solve all the problems.  One great menace to Earth's plants today is the massive decrease in pollinator populations.  After all, it is not enough just to plant seeds, for the plants must be able to reproduce themselves in the new environment.  Some plants can be pollinated without zoological help, but would they be able to prosper not just for a single season, but in such a way as to re-enrich the soil to a point where continual production is guaranteed?  One element in soil quality is the lowly earthworm, but now we need to know also if that whole collection of creatures could also function sufficiently well beyond the Earth's orbital neighborhood.  Even the experiments performed with biologicals on the ISS are not enough yet to answer these questions.

     It is worthwhile to ponder also who would be the farmers of a colonized Mars.  On Earth, the people who own and manage farms are not necessarily the people who do the work. The majority of human farmers could never afford the price of transportation to another planet. Would governments or corporations be able to persuade them to make the leap?  In our novel Life Sentence, we examine the vicissitudes of agriculture on the colonial world of Domremy.  Most of the  manual labor can only be procured by transporting prisoners, as happened in colonial Australia.  But on Domremy, the majority of the convicts are inept at agriculture and the only success is among a refugee religious sect, The Circle, which has learned subsistence farming the hard way on Earth.  Can you picture NASA's astronomical engineers spending a back-breaking day hoeing rows of vegetables? John Deere will not be right down the road to provide specialized machinery to replace manual work, either.  It is hard to imagine Earth-based governments or corporations paying the transport bill for farm workers without any established proof of profitability.  

     There may even be difficulties in constituting a panel of experts to mull over these problems.  The scientists of Cargill and Monsanto are used to dealing with inalterable terrestrial conditions that they can easily master and mold to their demands, even if it means using economic arm-twisting to force distant farm populations to grow commercial crops, engineering new genetic creations to fit the market, or displacing whole communities thousands of miles to accommodate Big Ag.  The rules will be changed on a new planet. Even the questions to be asked may be radical departures.  They will have to be asked and solved by people on the ground, not in the board rooms.  The issues of agricultural subsistence are being constantly avoided on this planet, lest they disrupt the large-scale economies of multinationals.  Can NASA, ESA, the Russians, or maybe even the Indians or the Chinese reach down to consult practical farming communities to help in the propective greening of Mars?  If so, it might be better to start sooner than later.  In dealing with Mars, mankind will not have the luxury of the many "throw-away" colonies that failed during our own colonial period.  Without careful preparation, our settlements on Mars might become Lost Colonies that would make Cuttihunk, Roanoke Island, L'Anse aux Meadows, or Parris Island look like sedate tea parties.