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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Animals and humans
Why be dragons? How massive, reptilian beasts entered our collective imagination
58 minutes
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Rituals and celebrations
Flirtation, negotiation and vodka – or how to couple up in 1950s rural Poland
5 minutes
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Technology and the self
In the town once named Asbestos, locals ponder the voids industry left in its wake
16 minutes
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Biology
How the world’s richest reds are derived from an innocuous Mexican insect
5 minutes
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Cities
A lush, whirlwind tribute to the diversity of life in a northern English county
3 minutes
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Physics
The abyss at the edge of human understanding – a voyage into a black hole
4 minutes
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Film and visual culture
‘Bags here are rarely innocent’ – how filmmakers work around censorship in Iran
8 minutes
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Language and linguistics
Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better
8 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
A rare female scholar of the Roman Empire, Hypatia lived and died as a secular voice
5 minutes