In our tour of the solar system, we’ve moved past Earth and are now heading to the planet that’s captured the imagination of Earthlings for years: Mars.
In some ways, Mars may be the most hospitable planet to find yourself on without a spacesuit. By hospitable, I mean you’d probably live the longest before dying horribly. Not Total Recall horrible, but still pretty bad.
Find yourself in the right place at the right time and the temperature might actually be quite nice. On a summer day near the Martian equator, it might be a comfortable 70 degrees F. Though, as Mars doesn’t have much atmosphere to speak of, nightfall would bring -100 degree temps. That would ruin a great view of the stars real quick.
Temperature aside, Mars has other ways to kill you. Of course, there’s no air, so that’s kind of a non-starter. Mars also has an atmospheric pressure that, if you were exposed to it, would evaporate the water in your body, which would be extremely painful. You could cry, but your tears would turn into vapor.
Another danger would be the radiation. The background radiation might not be so bad, but if there’s a solar flare, you’re toast. The Earth has a magnetosphere that offers some protection against solar flares, but Mars isn’t so lucky. The blast of radiation from a solar flare would wreck havoc on your cells. It might not kill you right away, but you’d find yourself wishing it had. You could expect nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, headache, fever, hair loss, and eventually death.
With all those problems though, Mars is still a good bet for a second home. With the proper protection, humans could live there, even grow things like in the Martian. In time, Mars could be terraformed to make it more like Earth, though the gravity on Mars is much less than on Earth. You could jump really high, but it would cause problems to bones and muscle in the long term. Still, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.