Over the past few decades, oil and gas revenue has helped the United Arab Emirates develop at a breakneck pace. Its glistening megacity Dubai is now home to the world's tallest building and just last year plans were announced to build a completely new "city of happiness."
But the UAE's latest venture sets new heights in terms of ambition. On Tuesday, on the sidelines of the World Government Summit in Dubai, the UAE announced that it was planning to build the first city on Mars by 2117.
According to CNBC, UAE engineers at the event presented a concept city about the size of Chicago for guests to explore.
In a statement, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and vice president of the UAE, sounded confident about the project. "Human ambitions have no limits, and whoever looks into the scientific breakthroughs in the current century believes that human abilities can realize the most important human dream," Maktoum said.
And despite the grandiose nature of the idea, the 100-year plan emphasizes some practical steps. "The Mars 2117 Project is a long-term project," Maktoum explained in the statement, adding that the first order of business would be making space travel appeal to young Emiratis, with special programs in space sciences being set up at universities in the UAE.
The project will also create an Emirati scientific team that eventually would expand to include international scientists. In particular, the team would be seeking to develop faster transportation to and from the planet, as well as researching what the settlement would look like and how it would be sustainable in terms of food, energy and transportation.
It won't be the Persian Gulf state's first foray into space travel. The UAE began its space agency in 2014, which entered partnerships with French and British space agencies the next year. The UAE is planning to send an unmanned probe to Mars by 2021, a project that in January was described as "on track."
Other recently announced space exploration plans, particularly those focused on Mars, have been criticized for setting too ambitious a time frame given the huge costs of such a mission. Setting such a distant goal makes the UAE's city a more realistic possibility.
For the UAE, the attempts to break into space technology reflect an attempt to break away from the country's reliance on oil and gas and related industries, which have been hit hard by falling oil prices recently. Although, there's still plenty of sovereign wealth money to invest in Mars.
SundayMonday on 02/19/2017