Good morning judges, parents, special friends and fellow classmates. Today I am going to be talking about the colonization of Mars. For those of you who may not know what colonization means, it means when people settle and take over a new place like on mars.
Before we can live there we have a couple of problems. First is how do we get there. It’ll take about 240 days to get there in a spaceship. I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a tin can for 240 days. This quarantine at home the last 2 months has been hard enough.
Elon Musk, the person who created Tesla also owns a company called Spacex. His mission is to have sent the first humans to Mars in 2025 and have thousands of people living on Mars by 2050. He has built a spaceship called “the star ship” that he plans to take people there and back with.
But before we can live on mars, we need our basic needs – food, water, shelter, and oxygen. First we need water to survive. There are signs that there used to be water on Mars. And now scientists have figured out how to get water out of the soil and the atmosphere.
Next is the air. The atmosphere on Mars is much thinner than on earth and the air is not breathable. Most of the air is carbon dioxide. So scientists have figured out how to change it into oxygen.
Another important thing we need before we can colonize Mars is food. Scientists have come with the idea of having a network of domes that serve as greenhouses that could grow the food that we would need.
Finally, we need shelter. The radiation and temperature extremes would make it difficult to live above ground. Therefore, one idea is for robots and machines to dig tunnels underground to create living spaces. There are also many lava tubes that could serve as shelter.
So why do I think the colonization of mars is possible? Mars is the planet most like earth, about half the size and during the day it could get up to twenty one celsius (but….at night it can go down to -60 degrees) but there are no trees, no grass, nothing green at all.
However, there are some pretty cool places on mars that I would like to visit. Olympus Mons is the most extreme volcano in our solar system. It is about the size of the state of Arizona and 25 kilometers high – which is 3 times higher than Mount Everest. There is also Valles Marineris, which is the largest canyon in the solar system. It is 3000 kilometers long which is 4 times longer than the grand canyon. Of course you wouldn’t want to get stuck outside during a sandstorm. They can cover the whole planet and last for months.
Why do I think we should colonize mars? I think we should colonize Mars because there are many recent events happening in the world like the covid19 and the recent bushfires in Australia that killed millions of animals. Going to mars will give humanity a mission to come together and be the best we can be. Thank you for listening