Life on Mars [Space Mars Home Planet]

THE EARTH and Mars don't rotate around the Sun in synchronisation, so the distance between the two can vary considerably. The closest the two have come in 50,000 years was 56 million kilometres, back in 2003. At the other end of the spectrum, we could max out at 400 million kilometres. The average is around 225 million kilometres. Incidentally, Mars will come as close as 56.3 million kilometres in 2018, making it an excellent chance to eyeball that increasingly appealing real estate. A typical journey across such distances would, however, take between six and 10 months, so multiple journeys by any individual are not feasible. If we are going to go there, we need to plan to stay. So what would a human colony look like on the Red Planet? A three-phase Mars Home Planet competition, organised by HP along with several other technology companies, asked the engineering community to dig deep into its collective imagination to come up with concepts for Martian civilisation.