Trump wants to colonise Mars – will it happen?

Donald Trump wants to plant the US flag on Mars. Could humans really live there?

Red Mars landscape. Planet surface with US flag
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Is it possible to colonise Mars?

In 1964, Nasa’s uncrewed Mariner 4 spacecraft made its first successful fly-by of Mars. Then, in July 1976, a craft (Viking 1) made the first successful landing on its surface. In the half-century since, many similar missions have been accomplished, and some have failed. But as yet, no crewed mission has been attempted. Various visionaries have long wanted to change that. The late Stephen Hawking is one. SpaceX’s Elon Musk famously has Mars in his sights. But plenty of sceptics – including eminent astrophysicists such as Martin Rees – believe that, while sending humans to Mars might well be possible, actually living there will be a far bigger challenge.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.