12th of February: Colonizing Mars with Adam Stevens

It is well known in the space exploration community that a manned mission to Mars is always “20 years away” and has been since Apollo 11 in 1969. Yet there are a number of prominent public figures that insist that human beings must colonise another planet sooner rather than later, or face inevitable extinction, and a mission to Mars once again seems to be spreading through the public imagination. Adam’s talk will lead us through some of the intricacies of colonising other planets and look at potential political systems that might arise in extra-terrestrial colonies to ask ‘is living on another planet something we really want to do?’

Adam Stevens is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Edinburgh, working in the UK Centre for Astrobiology to investigate the habitability of extra-terrestrial environments.
He has a broad background in space exploration, including an MSc in Space Technology and Planetary Exploration and a PhD in Planetary Science, and has published articles on a number of topics such as the subsurface of Mars, detecting microbial life in extra-terrestrial analogues, detecting intelligent life on Exoplanets and the economics of extra-terrestrial colonisation.
His website is www.echusoverlook.net and he tweets occasionally @adamhstevens