Have you ever wondered what it would take for humans to live on Mars? Billionaires like Elon Musk say that we’ll visit before the decade is out, with the long-term goal of building a self-sufficient civilization. What would this effort take? Whether we’re dreaming about terraforming to make a new Earth or just scraping out the most meager of subsistence farms, let’s be honest that living away from our home world wouldn’t be easy.

The Atlantic once wrote that Mars is a hellscape, and they weren’t wrong. The climate is frigidly cold, the atmosphere is toxic and thin, the surface is covered in dust and bathed in radiation. If there was ever life, we’ve found no evidence for it. And if that’s not enough, there’s little to no water. Yet, Mars is still our most promising celestial neighbor and is one place where we think humans could live with the technology we have today. Let’s talk about the Red Planet: its risks and dangers, what living on the surface might look like, and the promise we would find in settling a new world.

Dr. Nicholas Castle is a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, AZ, a not-for-profit research institution that specializes in coordinating remote work and multi-institute collaborations. A graduate of Lehigh, the University of Washington, and the University of Alberta, he has 25 years of experience studying geology, planetary science, and the how-to of space exploration. He’s worked with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the past 7 years as a mission operator with the Curiosity rover, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission.

A petrologist by training, he is interested in understanding how planets form and differentiate, and the differences in how volcanoes work on different worlds. He uses optical and electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and mass spectrometry to analyze experimental results and natural samples, including meteorites. As a field geologist, he loves to incorporate field observations with laboratory studies, and through robotic exploration has extended his work to encompass numerous terrestrial worlds, from the Earth to Mars, Mercury, and asteroids. As an aspiring mission planner, he is developing proposals to study volcanoes on the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. In his spare time, he plays board games, hikes, and plays with his two young children. Ever an espresso enthusiast, he can often be found haunting a local coffee shop, always working on the next new science proposal. He lives in the greater Boston area.