Mars is not known as a hospitable place. There is little liquid water. The planet is desperately cold, with an average temperature of around minus 60C. The surface is under constant bombardment from powerful ultraviolet rays. The atmosphere is thin and oxygen is scarce. The soil is bursting with toxic chemicals. Dust storms and ice clouds regularly block out the sun. It is little wonder that the authors of A City on Mars, the winner of a science book prize awarded by the Royal Society, have expressed some scepticism about the prospect of human colonisation.

It is not only the physics of a Martian colony that presents challenges but the biology too. Can an embryo develop on a planet that has only 40 per cent of Earth’s gravity? Kelly Weinersmith, one of the authors, has her doubts. Achieving enough genetic variation in the founding population is also difficult: according to a model, a crowd of 98 would do the trick, but only if each of them paired up, somewhat unromantically, with the genetically ideal mate chosen for them by computer. All in all, it does not sound like the perfect getaway.

Yet we should not allow the difficulties of settlement to put us off exploration altogether. Even if the planet is not an ideal venue for the human race’s second home, lethal conditions can be the mother of invention. For example, The Times reports today that a British technology company, Opteran, is partnering with Airbus and the UK and European Space Agencies to build an artificially intelligent system that can navigate the surface of Mars autonomously, using highly efficient algorithms that evolved in the brains of insects. Space rovers’ “thinking time” could be cut from minutes to milliseconds. If the zeal for Martian exploration spurs the development of such nifty robots, that is all to the good — even if, for now, we would rather them than us.