Mars 2117: UAE Plans To Build City For 600,000 On Mars

Dubai may have once been a small fishing village with only dirt roads to travel on, but they are now embarking on an ambitious plan to build a city on Mars, a project they are calling Mars 2117.

On Tuesday, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the vice president and prime minister of the UAE and Emir of Dubai, made the announcement that the UAE will be seeking to build a “mini-city and community on Mars,” as Popular Science reported. The announcement was made at the World Government Summit to representatives of 138 different governments.

“We aspire to great things, so my brother Mohammed bin Zayed and I today decided the UAE will join the global effort to send humans to Mars.”

Mars 2117 isn’t a plan that will be enacted immediately, however. A city on Mars is more of an idea that has gripped the mind of Al Maktoum, who describes it as a seed that is simply waiting to germinate.

“Mars 2117 is a seed we are sowing today to reap the fruit of new generations led by a passion for science and advancing human knowledge.”

While there are no concrete plans as of yet for this city on Mars, the UAE believes that a city the size of Chicago, inhabited by 600,000 people roughly, sounds like a good size for their Mars 2117 project.

A new city on Mars is certainly a massive goal to strive towards, but there will be many obstacles which will need to be overcome first. As of now, while Russia and Europe have attempted to explore Mars, it is only the United States that has managed to successfully launch and land any spacecraft on the planet.

UAE announces Mars 2117 project
Photos: Dubai Media Office pic.twitter.com/zEPPkAU4sX

— Khaleej Times (@khaleejtimes) February 14, 2017

Time is on the side of Mars 2117, however, and over the years ideas and plans will be drawn up in order to try to determine how best to get to Mars and how also to have a sustainable environment on the red planet, especially one in which inhabitants will be able to grow their own food. How to harness energy will also be another thing that the project will be thoroughly investigating.

Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s intentions are to work with the international community in order to build the UAE’s city on Mars, and has spoken about how landing and living on other planets has long been a dream of humankind, as the Daily Mail has said.

“The landing of people on other planets has been a longtime dream for humans. Our aim is that the UAE will spearhead international efforts to make this dream a reality.The UAE has become part of dynamic human scientific efforts to explore space and making scientific contributions to human knowledge. With the launch of this project, we begin a new journey that will last for decades to come, and it will speed up human endeavours to explore other planets.”

UAE President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nayhan has also spoken at length about how the idea of a city on Mars and Mars 2117 “represents the Islamic world’s entry into the era of space exploration.”

It should be mentioned that Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, Tunisia, and Algeria do currently have space programs, but none of these nations has taken on a task as monumental as this one yet.

Do you think the UAE’s Mars 2117 mission will succeed and that they will have a city on Mars in the next 100 years?

[Featured Image by Kamran Jebreili/AP Images]