This House Would Populate Mars
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After three missions to Mars in the last year, the red planet is at the forefront of both the scientific and public consciousness. Are our limited resources better spent on Earth, or is the ‘new space race’ a hopeful expression of a noble ambition? According to Elton John, ‘Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids’, but as billionaires race skyward, is now the time to prove him wrong and expand the frontiers of civilization?
Proposition
Dr. Greg Autry
Space policy expert, entrepreneur, and author. He is chair of the Safety Working Group on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. He served on the NASA Agency Review Team for the incoming Trump administration in 2016 and as the White House Liaison at NASA in 2017.
Alfredo Munoz
Founder of ABIBOO Studio and member of the Technical Committee of Space Architecture at the AIAA. He has been named one of the most influential Spanish architects, and headed the design of Nuwa, a self-sufficient Martian city, and of Onteco, a science-based metaverse on Mars.
Opposition
Sylvia Ekström
A scientific Collaborator at the Geneva Observatory. She has published more than 200 papers on astronomy and astrophysics and is currently working on stellar physics research. She represents the University of Geneva in many science festivals and science promotion actions.
Dr Sean McMahon
Chancellor’s fellow in Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the search for traces of ancient life in rocks from Earth that resemble those from Mars.
Dr Anjana Ahuja
Anjana Ahuja is a science columnist for the Financial Times, covering the social, political and ethical issues raised by science, technology and global health. She also writes for other outlets, including the New Statesman. She is co-author, with Sir Jeremy Farrar, of the Sunday Times bestseller Spike: The Virus Vs The People, the inside story of the pandemic. She is a trustee of Sense About Science, a charity that champions the use of evidence in policymaking and public life. She has a PhD in space physics from Imperial College London.
