Could the USA have a secret colony on mars?

Question

I've read a number of articles suggesting that the USA has a mars colony, including (if I recall correctly, but I can't find the link now) one where an official in China stated that they believed the USA had a secret military base on Mars, and another that indicates that the USA attempted to recruit the great-granddaughter of President Eisenhower for a mars colony project. While the latter seems to likely be malarkey, it seems to be one of the more common references to a USA mars colony project. I'm curious about whether anyone's put any serious thought whether the USA could secretly create a mars colony.

Is there any evidence that the USA either has or plans a secret colony on mars?

Is it logistically possible that the USA could start a mars colony and keep it secret?

Thanks for reading!

Answer 1

Of course there is a secret colony on Mars. The same people that kept the secret that we faked the moon landing are also keeping the secret that we went to Mars and established a colony...

Okay, in all seriousness, please select a launch that was supposed to have sent anything off to Mars that included people or the equipment to support those people. Here is a list of all past NASA launches for you to choose from. I'm sure that whatever mission you choose, I will be able to knock a hole through any conspiracy theory that even the 9/11 troofers will think anyone who believes this is nuts.

The logistics in launching a manned mission to Mars would be so large that it would be impossible to hide it. Conservative estimates place the price-tag at $1 TRILLION, and hiding that sort of spending would be neigh impossible (and keep in mind that most estimates of any government program are usually way under).

There are many ideas for a Mars mission, and if anyone got there, it would be a coup of historic proportions that no one would want to keep it secret. Much like with the moon landing hoax insanity, if we hadn't got there, the Russians would have been all over it. If the US has managed to get to mars, it would be front page news all over the world, and would be used in every possible manner to showcase the US in a positive light.

As Oddthinking said, "extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence", and I have seen none!

Answer 2

Perhaps we can turn this ridiculousness into a lesson about skepticism.

Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability and discourage accepting claims on faith or anecdotal evidence. Skeptics often focus their criticism on claims they consider to be implausible, dubious or clearly contradictory to generally accepted science. Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds - rather they argue that claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena should be critically examined and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity. [Wikipedia: Scientific Skepticism]

This idea that "extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence" (also known as Sagan's Standard) means that we must provisionally accept the more prosaic explanation - e.g. that there is no secret colony on Mars - until some significant evidence suggests the opposite.

This is an extraordinary claim. It would require a huge conspiracy far beyond the bounds of any we have ever discovered to date. Because that extraordinary evidence is lacking - in fact any evidence at all is lacking - the only reasonable answer that can be given is "No."

Answer 3

I'd like to add that no one knows how to land a large payload safely on the surface of mars. According to that link, the prevailing opinion is that we have landed manned spacecraft on the moon, which is small and has no atmosphere; and that we've also landed manned spacecraft on earth, which is large with a thick atmosphere. Mars is inbetween the earth and the moon both in size and atmospheric density, so it should be easy.

Not so: the atmosphere isn't thick enough to appreciably slow a large vehicle enough to safely land or deploy parachutes, like they do on earth. But it's thick enough that, while hitting the atmosphere going mach 26 or so, you can't use rocket engines to slow the spacecraft: the exhaust from such a retro-engine would act like an unstable nose-cone, which would shake the spacecraft to pieces.

with current technology, the only way to land a colony on mars is if you send them off with a "it's about the journey, not the destination" mentality, since upon arrival they will become a smoky crater.

Answer 4

Another idea would be radio amateurs.

Radio amateurs regularly pick up communications between ground stations and spacecraft.

For example we have the story of this guy and if you're willing to believe agencies of US government, there's also this project for space shuttles and another project for ISS.

Another point would be various SETI programs that are currently in existence. Unfortunately, I don't have any links at the time, but I believe that some of them could notice communication between a Mars colony and Earth.

Answer 5

How does this idea rate with the moon landing hoax conspiracy believers? If we have not even managed to land people on the moon, how on earth could we set up a colony on Mars?

And a trip to colonise Mars will take one hell of a lot more than just a Saturn 5. Instead of a week or so to get 3 people to the moon and back, we're talking 6 months in space, plus all they equipment required to live on Mars indefinitely. Start with many tons of plain soil, so the colonists can grow plants and try to feed themselves. We'd also need to include a medium sized nuclear reactor, so the colonists will have enough energy to extract water from the Martian regolith - once we know where to look for water. Let's say that 3 or more Saturn 5 missions might be a bare minimum for a few people. And, going by the number of failures for much simpler Mars missions, let's double that number for redundancy, so say 6 trips. Then remember that the Saturn 5 no longer exists and nothing else comes near its lifting capacity.

Apollo could hold 3 people on a moon mission. For a colony to survive, I would expect closer to 100 people. That's 33 Apollo's, each with it's own Saturn 5 (or larger). Where did they all take off from? It's not something you can hide easily. And how many people could live in an Apollo-size spacecraft for 6 months, and remain sane enough not to kill each other?