Mars: Making the New Earth

Mars: Making the New Earth

Ratings: 7.31/10 from 26 users.

As global warming and doomsday threats continue to expose our vulnerabilities here on Earth, scientists are looking to Mars as a potential refuge for humanity. Mars: Making the New Earth outlines the mission to convert this inhospitable planet into our future home.

This conversion process is known as terraforming, a collection of processes by which a planet is reconditioned to resemble Earth. Currently, Mars is a frozen wasteland incapable of sustaining human life. How do you populate endless planes of red dust and rock into fertile soil and teeming forestation? How can you warm the planet's temperature from its current climate of eighty below zero? Would it be possible to transform its radioactive atmosphere into an oxygen-rich environment where humans can thrive?

These are just a few of the challenges that face planetary scientists here on Earth. NASA scientist Chris McKay is one of the believers. The film follows McKay as he attempts to replicate the conditions on Mars, and determine how much warmer the climate needs to be before trees, grass and other vegetation can begin to grow. He conducts these tests alongside a volcano in Mexico, which stands at a towering height of 18,000 feet. This is the closest approximation we have of the temperature and arid conditions found on the red planet.

It will likely take many generations to produce the ideal conditions by which humanity can exist on Mars, but McKay and others are convinced it can be done. But as eager as they are to populate the planet, their mission does come with a caveat. Even if we can achieve this monumental feat, we must stop to consider whether we should.

The film outlines a potential ethical conflict. What if we discover the presence of life on Mars, even of the microbial variety? Should we invade the functioning bio system of an existing life form, or leave it untarnished by human manipulation? The filmmakers include the opinions of experts from both sides of this debate.

Mars: Making the New Earth dazzles with impressive animations from acclaimed visual artist Dan Mass. These images, and the insights that accompany them, give life to complicated science.

Directed by: Mark Davis

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7 Comments / User Reviews

  1. Michael Grøndahl

    Fascinating speculations and presentation I have ever seen about this subject. I simply would hope that this consideration was never needed to be made in the first place. But, here we are, hoping to make the best of the situation.

  2. Geo

    NASA and other such agencies and groups are all about fear mongering in order to gain funding for their unnecessary toys and time spent.

    "Meteors may wipe us all out, so give us money!" "A disease cooked up by our researchers could wipe us all out, so give us money!" "Fossil fuel is killing the environment, so give us money!" ...and so on.

    When we are lazy and allow governments to "take care of things" you get a pile of manure for your tax money spent; you get lies and empty promises. When will we ever learn that government IS the problem NOT the solution?

    How could all the pollution occur without you allowing government to allow it? Just how many levels of government doing the same thing do you need, to steal your money, your rights, and liberty?

    City, County, State, and Federal government. Each one taxing you whether you know it or not. If you rent, you are paying those taxes to your landlord who pays them to all those jurisdictions.

    If you think space is exciting and going to Mars would be great. Gather together, start a club with those who feel similar. Spend your own money to make it happen. Start a "GoFundMe" page. Quit forcing the rest of us to pay for your hobbies.

    Soon enough it becomes a bloated bureaucratic agency absconding with millions and billions of the taxpayers money they could have used to have a decent life and have more time to gather together to prevent corporations from polluting.

  3. Luke Williams

    We once came from mars we burnt out mars same as we are doing too earth through green house gasses I also believe that NASA and the ICC currently have a human populated base on the dark side of the moon and is currently surveying a star that has the potential too sustain life and is similar too earth they have sent many probs and spacecraft to other planets. It will take thousands of years too sustain life on mars even if possible you will still need too wear oxygen masks as the air is not breathable. You study the pyramids and other ancient sites and the pictures and markings on these sites show mars once being a planet full of life seas oceans and humans and it’s our ancestors who left this for us too see I believe that deep in our planet there’s a lot more too mars that we don’t know about that our ancestors have brought with them from mars

  4. insaen

    bad plan

  5. Devil Travels

    Getting to Mars is less about Mars than it is about all of the technologies and products that will increase the profit of those companies that can succeed.
    But I like Isaac Arthur's ideas, better.

  6. GunnarInLA

    I have come to the view that, if crews are sent there for the purpose of staying and perhaps never returning, they will eventually go insane...
    If they WERE to return at some point, they would become passionate "evangelists" for protecting and preserving planet Earth...I'm losing interest in "making Mars bloom" thinking...

  7. bart

    No magnetosphere, so you can't terra form.