In January, the ever-innovative Elon Musk outlined his plans for sending 1 million people to Mars by 2050. While this may seem like a great idea for those looking to escape life on Earth as it feels more and more like a simulation every day, moving to Mars is just not the move.
The years are far too long
First off, it takes Mars 687 days on Earth to orbit the sun. That’s nearly two years on Earth for one year on Mars. Do we really want to prolong time? I mean, 2020 just keeps getting worse and worse the longer we let it go on. Why not move to Mercury instead, where a year is only 88 Earth days? That means 2020 would’ve ended midway through March, right before everything hit the fan. How perfect!
Travel time
Second, it takes nine months to travel to Mars. NINE WHOLE MONTHS! As a society, we can barely stay inside our homes for four weeks. And now we think we can stuff ourselves into a tiny rocket for the length of a pregnancy? Absurd. There’s probably no Wi-Fi on the ship either, so we’ll have to read books or play board games. Which means we’d probably die of boredom before we even get there.
Bad lighting
Third, it’s so dark in space, like pitch-black. How do you expect to flex on your Instagram followers that you’re in space if you can’t even be seen in the picture? Sure, you can use flash, but then you’ll look so bright and otherworldly that your followers will think you’re an alien. Maybe you could pull more clout by pretending you met an alien? Either way, it’s not worth the lack of flattering lighting for pictures.
A lack of the “No. 1 public university in the universe”
Fourth, and probably most importantly, there’s no UC Berkeley on Mars. Who are you supposed to scream, “Go Bears” to? The void of never-ending darkness that is space? Is there even an Artichoke Basille’s Pizza on Mars? I’m not sure what the science is on bears surviving on another planet, so good luck convincing Oski to move to Mars with you all.
Before you sign up to be part of the 1 million people to hop on the next ship out of our planet, consider what you’ll be leaving behind. The grass really isn’t greener on the other side.
