Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, right, and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attend a campaign event with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Recently, Vice President JD Vance appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast for a wide-ranging interview. One of the subjects that came up was space colonies, which is topical, considering the Artemis program and Elon Musk’s dreams of settling Mars.
Vance began his answer with the promising phrase, quoted on X, “One of the things that worries me is that I want humans to be a multiplanetary species. I want us to go to Mars and set up a colony. I love humanity, and I want it to continue.”
However, the vice president had a “but” after that agreement with SpaceX CEO and space visionary Musk, regarding an issue that he has “not heard a satisfactory solution” for.
“When we’re outside of the Earth’s gravity, our genes — our actual DNA — seems to not function as well when it’s not in Earth-style gravity.”
Vance misstates the time it would take to get to Mars, claiming it would take two years to Mars and two years back. Actually, as Frank Norris, an aerospace engineer and the author of “Colonizing Mars” suggested, it’s more like six months there when Earth and Mars are aligned properly, an 18-month stay and then six months back when the planets are aligned again, using chemical rockets such as the SpaceX Starship.
However, as to the effects on the human body of being “outside of Earth’s gravity,” Vance is on to something, though he is rather vague on the details.
Space is the most hostile environment into which humans have ever ventured. Radiation, temperature extremes, lack of a breathable atmosphere and many other factors can quickly kill any unaided human being. All of these factors can be dealt with using current technology, except for one: microgravity, or low gravity.
Over 20 years of experience on the International Space Station has given scientists a pretty good idea about how microgravity affects the human body. NASA’s website notes that microgravity causes steady bone loss, muscular atrophy and potentially unhealthy distribution of fluids in the human body. NASA employs a combination of exercise, diet and medications to compensate for the losses.
Regarding the vice president’s concerns about microgravity’s effect on DNA, a study in Nature suggests that in combination with space radiation, it can cause some damage leading to cancers and premature aging. However, the results are inconclusive and contradictory.
But what about low gravity, the source of Vice President Vance’s concern? Here, the hard data is a little murkier. Human beings have been subject to microgravity no longer than the three days of each of the last two Apollo moon missions.
Mars has 38 percent of Earth-normal gravity. But a study published by NASA Ames suggests that even partial gravity will have deleterious effects on the human body similar to microgravity.
For Musk’s Mars colony to work, colonists are going to have to have babies and then, when they grow up, the babies will have to have babies. According to a piece in National Geographic, human reproduction on Mars may be challenging.
All this does not mean that Musk’s dreams of forming a new branch of human civilization on Mars will never happen. It does mean that research in the biomedical issues of living in low gravity has to happen before the first settlers venture to the Red Planet to live out their lives in their new homes away from Earth.
The planned lunar base could be the first venue of such research. Scientists can continue the work being done on the International Space Station, only now to replicate it under the moon’s one-sixth gravity. Animal models could be used to examine the difficulties inherent in reproduction under those conditions.
Clearly, Musk is most likely not going to lead his Starship fleet to Mars to found his city on the Red Planet right from the start. The first expedition to Mars will have, as a primary goal, a program to learn how to live on the fourth planet from the sun. One of those lessons will be answering the question of whether or not humans can have children on Mars and can those children grow up to have their own children.
The problem of human reproduction on other worlds must be solved before Musk’s dream of a new branch of human civilization on Mars can be realized.
Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
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