★Crowing about a colony on Mars may be fun. But can it done?
★All things considered, no, not immediately. Whether we like it or not, ours is an earthly species.

High-tech gurus have been pontificating about colonising Mars for over 20 years now, dangling before us visions of fantastic new worlds. Ours could become the first species living in a “multiplanetary” dimension, colonising the Red Planet and building a new civilisation, maybe even fleeing from the Earth altogether, if climate change were to make it uninhabitable. It is all sure to happen within the next ten years. Or maybe 20 or maybe 30. Whatever, it’s going to be soon.
This “techno-optimism”, partly heroic and partly unrealistic, most certainly very costly – capable at once of capturing our imagination and arousing widespread amazement – does indeed have more than one defect, the main one being that we are still a very long way away from a possible colonisation of Mars. The fact is that, whatever Elon Musk or some of his emulators might say, it will not be feasible for many years to come.

What is lacking in the calculation is the human factor, at both a physiological and a psychological level. Even if (and it is a big “if”) we were to build capsules with enough charge to travel to Mars, then human beings would be travelling on them. And humans have a physiology that has evolved on Earth and a psychology that has evolved in an open, social environment. The human being is, in practice, an “earthly” species and we have no idea how (and if) it might survive away from this planet.

NASA, which has been studying the effects on the body of being in space, has summed up the principal critical points as: space radiation, isolation, distance from the Earth, gravity, closed environments for a prolonged length of time. Though there has been some progress, most of these points are still a long way from being solved.

It is better – much better – for us to concern ourselves with the only planet we have. The foray into space may be fine in science fiction but humanity needs realistic prospects, here and now, without chasing behind the dreams of some oligarch or other. Partly because no one has ever asked us whether we agree or not. As members of the “monoplanetary species”, we all need to start thinking about this.

Agnese Codignola is a graduate in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology. After working for some years as a researcher, she became a professional journalist and now collaborates with the leading Italian publishing groups (GEDI, Il Sole 24 Ore) and a number of websites (Il Tascabile, Lucy, Ilfattoalimentare.it and others) on topics connected with health, diets, sustainability and the promotion of scientific culture among general readers and specialists alike. She holds lectures and takes part in radio and television programmes, as well as meetings and Italian and Swiss podcasts. Her publications include: Il lungo COVID. La prima indagine sulle conseguenze a lungo termine del virus (Long Covid. The first investigation into the long-term consequences of the virus, 2022)), Il destino del cibo. Così mangeremo per salvare il mondo (The Destiny of Food. This is how we’ll eat to save the world, 2020), LSD. Da Albert Hofmann a Steve Jobs, da Timothy Leary a Robin Carhart-Harris: storia di una sostanza stupefacente (LSD. From Albert Hofmann to Steve Jobs, from Timothy Leary to Robin Carhart-Harris: the history of a narcotic substance, 2018), and Il Corpo anticancro. Come con l’immunoterapia si può vincere la lotta contro i tumori (The Anticancer Body, How we can win the battle against tumours with immunotherapy, 2017).