Last Friday, NASA tweeted asking the public to submit design ideas for possible astronaut living quarters as part of their Mechanical Maker Challenge. While the idea of humans living on Mars might seem difficult to imagine, scientists at NASA hope to send the first humans to Mars in 20 or 25 years. As our planet faces environmental stress caused by human activity, we are looking for a new planet to flee to.

But we shouldn’t be so quick to leave our planet for another. We need to fix and repair the ecological damage we’ve caused our own planet before we run to Mars.

Elon Musk and many other leading figures in the science community have argued the human species has a greater chance of survival if we exist on more than one planet. And I agree. But while the rest of us wait on Earth for Mars to be ready for our arrival, we can’t be living on a dying planet.

It’s an exciting idea to have a chance in a new world. With little to no prior human interaction, Mars is practically untouched and has seemingly endless exciting opportunities for construction, resource extraction and scientific exploration.

When humans begin to colonize Mars, only a select and small number of people will be able to go. There will likely be a long waiting period before more people are able to join those on Mars.

In the meantime, while we wait for our chance on the red planet, we will be here, on Earth. It’s important that just as we put effort into a chance on Mars, we put in the same effort for a chance on Earth.

To make humans a multiplanetary species, it is necessary to preserve Earth. Otherwise, if we neglect Earth and simply put all of our efforts into Mars, we are a multiplanetary species with one of our planets being a failure. This takes away the whole point of having humans on two planets — because Earth will have been ruined and unsafe.  

Because of climate change, Earth is already in great risk of losing a large percentage of important tree species in the Amazon rainforest — one of the planet’s greatest suppliers of oxygen.  

With greenhouse gases increasing the global temperature, the melting ice caps cause sea levels to rise. Major cities that border the ocean, such as Venice, are especially susceptible to flooding.  

Having Mars as a backup plan is great, but we can’t just leave the mess we’ve created on our birth planet and move to another. It’s only practical to fix or repair the environmental damage we’ve caused our planet before jumping ship to Mars.

Successfully-landed humans on Mars will be a monumental moment for all of humankind. But we cannot abandon our own planet for another. While the scientific community pushes forward to create a livable environment on Mars, we must also push to repair the one we already have.

Claire is a sophomore in LAS.

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