INTERVIEW: What is it really like to shoot a gun on Mars?

By Hugh Langley

What’s it really like to shoot a gun on Mars?

Big news: SpaceX just announced that it plans to send its Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018. It will be an uncrewed mission but one that could help pave the way for putting humans and eventually settlements on the Red Planet.

While we’re still a long way off stepping foot on the Martian surface ourselves, Mars has already featured in many works of fiction, from last year’s movie The Martian to Bethesda’s upcoming game Doom, the latter of which I am going to try to tentatively tie this feature to.

Mars has been a recurring backdrop to the Doom franchise. In Doom 3 – and the upcoming game – the surface of Mars is portrayed as being much more hospitable; in Doom 3 the planet’s gravity was increased to match that of Earth’s. But what would it be like to fight on the surface of Mars for real?

We put our curiosities to Jon Clarke, president of the Mars Society, Australia. The Mars Society is a non-profit research organisation made of scientists, engineers and other passionate people who want to further the goal of human exploration on Mars. As well …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Gaming