September 30, 2015 8:07 pm

Is Mars the kind of place to raise your kids? Find out Friday.

Artists concept of a Mars colony. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center, courtesy of Wikipedia..

An early artist’s conception of a human Mars base, with a cutaway revealing an interior horticultural area. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Mars is in the news again, thanks to NASA’s announcement Monday of the discovery of evidence that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

Does this discovery make it more likely that we’ll be colonizing Mars in the future?

That’s exactly the kind of question we’d expect you to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson in this week’s episode, Cosmic Queries: Colonizing Mars.

Unfortunately, this week’s episode was actually recorded before the NASA announcement, so that question won’t be in Friday’s podcast.

But here are just a few of the subjects Neil and Chuck Nice will be taking a swing at this week:

Should we send a psychologist to Mars along with colonists?

How long before terraforming allows colonists to grow crops outside of greenhouses on the surface?

Is it more efficient to send pre-fab habitats or a giant 3D printer to build them?

Do colonists on Mars need to worry about earthquakes?

Will children born on Mars adapt to Martian conditions?

Will there be Internet on Mars?

Are there any international treaties governing the colonization of Mars?

Could we revive Mars’ magnetic field?

How would the Martian atmosphere and gravity affect a baseball game between the NY Yankees and the Mars Reds?

Please join us for Cosmic Queries: Colonizing Mars Friday, October 2nd at 7:00 pm EDT, right here on the website, or via iTunesPodcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons

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