The first crewed mission to Mars could launch as soon as the 2030s, and, according to some scientists, it may be just a few decades before we attempt to establish permanent colonies on the Red Planet. But, to keep such colonies up and running, scientists would need to account for issues well beyond the extraordinary logistics of getting there. Presented as a series of interplanetary postcards, this short animation probes short-term and long-term quandaries of procreation and childrearing beyond our home planet, including: could childbirth and development removed from the physics of Earth create new human subspecies? And would it be ethical to rear and raise children in extreme and isolated environments?
Video by BBC Ideas and the Royal Society
Animator: Christopher Brooks
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Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
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History
From Afghanistan to Virginia – the Muslims who fought in the American Civil War
22 minutes
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
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Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
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War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes