The appearance of people on Mars has been called a reality in the coming years

A US Air Force veteran who now commands "space missions" in the Utah desert has said humans are ready to live on Mars and it could be a reality by 2030.

David Loud, a founding member of the Mars Society, told the Daily Mail that ordinary Americans are already carrying out innovative experiments that could become routine work for the first colonists in space.

As the Daily Mail explains, the Mars Society was founded in 1998 to both educate the public and promote future space missions to explore the solar system.

While humans have yet to set foot on Mars, David Loud and other scientists regularly simulate what astronauts might soon encounter on the Red Planet by conducting two-week expeditions near Hanksville, Utah.

Situated among desert canyons that look very similar to the Red Planet, the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) acts as a scientific training center for those who hope to one day travel into space.

Unlike NASA's strict application requirements, Laud said anyone with an interesting experiment they want to test in Mars-like conditions can apply for the MDRS mission.

"You don't have to have the training, but it just increases the likelihood that you'll be eligible," explains David Laud. "It could be a psychology student who wants to do human factors projects. That's not uncommon. We've had high school students there before."

Laud said most missions take place between October and May. MDRS has three main buildings, including a two-story crew quarters, a greenhouse for biological research, and a domed laboratory for scientific experiments.

There are also plenty of solar panels, a collection of small devices similar to NASA's Mars rovers, and tiny telescope observatories for observing the stars in the clear Utah desert skies.

The region's extreme aridity, with little rainfall and low humidity, is reminiscent of the lifeless environment of Mars, where there is virtually no liquid water.

The base's remote location, far from urban areas, helps the Mars Society simulate the isolation of the Martian environment, recreating the psychological and logistical challenges of colonizing the planet.

The soil in Utah is also rich in iron oxides (which give it a reddish tint), which is similar in chemical composition and appearance to that on Mars, the Daily Mail notes.

The local conditions helped participants conduct research on crops in a makeshift greenhouse, recreating the harsh conditions that await astronauts who need to grow food once they reach the Red Planet.

The landscape also came in handy when Laud and others tested rovers and took walks in makeshift space gear known as extravehicular activity (EVA) suits.

The Mars Society candidates have done all sorts of projects here, including using Elon Musk's Starlink system to wirelessly transmit data from the desert back to MDRS, just as astronauts would have to do when communicating with Earth.

David Laud noted that, as with a real Mars mission, preparation begins 10 months before applicants head to Utah.

"My role as a commander is to organize, manage, train and improve the crew's roles, as well as develop and research projects," he said.

Part of this work involves assigning additional positions to each MDRS staff member during their two-week stay, such as crew engineer and health and safety specialist.

Research projects undergo an approval process that is approved by the MDRS Director approximately one month before the mission begins.

Laud said humans are now in a much better position to successfully travel to space than they were during the first lunar missions: "I think there's a lot more reason to believe it could happen in 10 years. I think it's going to be 2030 to 2035. I think that's probably the earliest I'll see people there. Probably in the very late 2020s."

The Mars Society's mission manager noted that the first flights to the Red Planet would likely involve robots, adding that it would be a "good next step" due to SpaceX's recent series of explosions during tests of its Starship spacecraft.

"Frankly, I don't think they do enough engineering and research before they launch," Laud said. "They're kind of known for launching and seeing what happens... much more than NASA would do."

Unfortunately, Musk and SpaceX may be the only chance humans have of reaching Mars within the next five years due to federal budget cuts to NASA, the Daily Mail reports. The Mars Society has already publicly condemned the funding cuts, saying the group is “100 percent against this cruel attempt to destroy American space science.”

NASA officials confirmed that nearly 4,000 NASA employees have decided to leave the space agency under the Trump administration’s deferred retirement program. While the Mars Society, a nonprofit, does not work directly with NASA or private companies like SpaceX, the group has received some financial support from Musk’s company.