As far as vacation spots go, Mars wouldn’t be on the top of many people’s lists. Sure, Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system, might be good for a ‘gram or two. But Mars, on the whole, isn’t a pleasant place to hang out.
There’s its inhospitable terrain, for one, which is mostly canyons, volcanoes, craters, dry lake beds, and not much else. Mars has a thin atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide, without an ozone-protecting magnetosphere or a charged-particle-trapping Van Allen belt to buffer its surface—and anyone on it—from cosmic rays and solar radiation. Temperatures can vary wildly, too, even at the equator, swinging from 70 degrees Fahrenheit on a summer day to minus 100 degrees at night.
Plus, intrepid tourists will have to brace themselves for violent dust storms—much like the one Matt Damon struggled with at the beginning of The Martian—that can span continent-sized distances and persist for weeks at a time.
Then there’s the question of what to wear?