Moral & Technological Problems with Mars Colonization

[Bill Phil]

On ‎1‎/‎16‎/‎2017 at 11:49 AM, mikegarrison said:

Humans have a long history of living in remote places. Sailing ships, arctic bases, ISS, monasteries, etc. etc. For a small scientific base, the social aspects would be nothing new.

The technical challenges, however, would be pretty extreme. The closest that comes to is is probably spending a winter in Antarctica. You have to plan ahead and have all your supplies in place before you start.

The challenge isn't technical, it's paperwork. Von Braun understood this all too well, way back in the day.

[mikegarrison]

5 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

The challenge isn't technical, it's paperwork. Von Braun understood this all too well, way back in the day.

It's not all paperwork.

I suggest anyone wanting to to discuss an expedition to Mars should read South by Shackleton. Not that any of it is completely, directly transferable, but the parallels in terms of complexity and time of the mission and such are similar, relative to the available technology levels of the day. (Fortunately for Shackleton, humans can at least live off the land in coastal Antarctica because they can eat the seals.)

[Stef Morojna]

On 1/14/2017 at 9:32 AM, The Dunatian said:

with so many colonists close together, would epidemics would be much more prone to occur?       

 

From what I know, 99% or more of deadly epidemics come from animals ( animals are immune to them, but a mutation happens to the bacteria that allows it to live on humans ), so as long as they don't start farming animals there, it shouldn't be a problem.

Edited January 23, 2017 by Stef Morojna

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, Stef Morojna said:

 

From what I know, 99% or more of deadly epidemics come from animals ( animals are immune to them, but a mutation happens to the bacteria that allows it to live on humans ), so as long as they don't start farming animals there, it shouldn't be a problem.

Two sources, one is human diseases who mutates the other is diseases who jump from animals. 
Both are extremely unlikely to happen on Mars because of the scale, its decades between any remotely dangerous epidemics. 
Most diseases after WW2 has started in Asia  as its there most people live, small scale farming as in having an pig and some chickens are also common making it easier for diseases to jump between species. 

Now with an population of 700 you will have an 1/10.000.000 less chance of getting an new disease than on earth simply as the population is less. 
One issue during the age of exploration was that explorers from Europe had been exposed to all the diseases from Eurasia brought this diseases to remote islands who had not been exposed to them starting multiple epidemics, this was one way as the islands was to small to develop much diseases themselves. 
 

[kerbiloid]

Herpes, nail fungus, papillomavirus, candidiasis, lungs infection caused by mildew.
On the crew they will come, under space rays mutate, in greenhouse and in bath they will self-cultivate.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Herpes, nail fungus, papillomavirus, candidiasis, lungs infection caused by mildew.
On the crew they will come, under space rays mutate, in greenhouse and in bath they will self-cultivate.

Radiation is higher giving an mutation rate many times higher, however the population level is an far less than millionth of the one of earth so diseased will come to mars with replacement crews. 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

however the population level is an far less than millionth of the one of earth

Original humanity population on th Earth is estimated as several thousands. A tribe size - one hundred.
It's a problem for plague, but absolutely not for less deadly things which don't kill but just make to scratch, cough or occupy the toilet.
But being mutated and living in a close-loop overpopulated habitat, they'll take a chance.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

so diseased will come to mars with replacement crews

Into the same room. And where a hundred was scratching their face bulbs, a thousand will.

[Stef Morojna]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

 so diseased will come to mars with replacement crews. 

Considering the trip is 3-6 months, wouldn't it be discovered long before they arrive?

[magnemoe]

40 minutes ago, Stef Morojna said:

Considering the trip is 3-6 months, wouldn't it be discovered long before they arrive?

Should do unless latent, my point is that an small population don't develop new diseases as they have an small chance of develop in the first place. 

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Should do unless latent, my point is that an small population don't develop new diseases as they have an small chance of develop in the first place. 

A hundred of tribes each a hundred of humans successfully developed most known diseases. 
Also deadly diseases are just psycho maniacs and degenerates between diseases, as they burn their habitat. While most of parasites keep playing nice, mostly causing to scratch the skin or often visit a meditation room.
Herpes can be a harmless bulb on a lip, bun can make intestines to rot. Depends on a little modification. Of course, it has no remedy and lives in almost everybody.

Escherichia Coli lives in a stomach and is a symbiont, but also can cause deadly diseases. Mutating it can get different forms, and you by definition cannot prevent its appearance, as you need it.

Edited January 24, 2017 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

A hundred of tribes each a hundred of humans successfully developed most known diseases. 
Also deadly diseases are just psycho maniacs and degenerates between diseases, as they burn their habitat. While most of parasites keep playing nice, mostly causing to scratch the skin or often visit a meditation room.
Herpes can be a harmless bulb on a lip, bun can make intestines to rot. Depends on a little modification. Of course, it has no remedy and lives in almost everybody.

Escherichia Coli lives in a stomach and is a symbiont, but also can cause deadly diseases. Mutating it can get different forms, and you by definition cannot prevent its appearance, as you need it.

Yes, however you forget the deep time element here and population was still larger than an Mars base. 
Chance for an new disease in one human, is perhaps 1/1.000.000.000 a year, so you get 7 new each year, most is variation of colds and harmless.
However for an group to have an reasonable chance of develop one disease it either need to be an long time span or an large group. 

Most of the highly contagious diseases probably dates to after farming as before population was to spread out for something like an cold to spread effectively. 

[Nathair]

On 2017-01-14 at 4:42 PM, Mikki said:

First colonists might be mid-age male humans (maybe female too, nothing about, but unlikely)

 

Um? How exactly does gender enter into this?

[Shpaget]

Perhaps because men are more inclined to take on risky and dangerous activities, hence more men would volunteer for the mission.

[Carl]

Quote

You may want to read A Case for Mars by Zubrin. He's run the numbers and done the research and specifically addresses why the Moon would be a distraction rather than a stepping stone. Good read.

I haven;t read it but anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell you he''s wrong. The DV cost to get down to mars may be similar to the moon. Shipping anything useful back up from the surface, not so much, especially to LEO. The Moon also has damm near everything a space program might need in it's soil, Mars isn't as god AFAIK.

 

At the end of the day building a colony on mars surface will happen either

 

1. Because we've got such extreme excess space going resources that we can afford to splurge, (so long after we've gone to the moon).

 

2. Because we want to build an antarctica like research outputs. This isn't really a colony and is just an extension of the various existing manned mission concepts.

 

3. Because we discover somthing there we really need and can't get elsewhere. Unless this happens, natch.

 

One point you don't see mentioned often is Martian soil is quite caustic btw. Makes life a lot harder there.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Carl

[Nathair]

7 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Perhaps because men are more inclined to take on risky and dangerous activities, hence more men would volunteer for the mission.

You are joking, right? This is 2017 you must be joking, right?

The only, ONLY, reason there have not been women astronauts from day one is that the women were turned away from the program. Even when women went so far as to privately fund recruiting and testing procedures to parallel the male astronaut program the qualified women were still refused entry.  They took the fight all the way to the U.S. House of Representatives and were again refused entry. The only inclination issue there was an inclination towards sexism and male privilege.

As it stands today NASA's current class of astronauts is fifty percent female and I can think of no reason to expect otherwise.

[Mikki]

8 hours ago, Nathair said:

Um? How exactly does gender enter into this?

I can image females as first colonists, i live in a country where women can take the same career in military as men for example.
Still, very few women are inclined to torture themself mindlessly in certain critical situations, and public opinion about dead men is far more relaxed than about dead women.
Have you done army service allready? If so, you might get the idea why.
 

Edited January 26, 2017 by Mikki
early morning

[Mikki]

15 minutes ago, Nathair said:

You are joking, right? This is 2017 you must be joking, right?

The only, ONLY, reason there have not been women astronauts from day one is that the women were turned away from the program. Even when women went so far as to privately fund recruiting and testing procedures to parallel the male astronaut program the qualified women were still refused entry.  They took the fight all the way to the U.S. House of Representatives and were again refused entry. The only inclination issue there was an inclination towards sexism and male privilege.

As it stands today NASA's current class of astronauts is fifty percent female and I can think of no reason to expect otherwise.

Finally, sexism is a shame.

[Nathair]

1 minute ago, Mikki said:

Still, very few women are inclined to torture themself mindlessly in certain critical situations, and public opinion about dead men is far more relaxed than acout dead women.

 

Did it just get very 1958 in here? There are plenty of women astronauts, sixty (60) of whom have been to space. As I mentioned above, women make up fully half of the NASA's current class. In the CSA's most recent recruiting effort the balance was not quite as equitable but was still a seventy/thirty split. The only way you can think that all the colonists would end up being male for statistical reasons is if you only plan on having a colony of two or three people. Or (and this is much more likely) if the people making the selections have some of the quaint ideas about gender that have popped up in this thread.

 

 

[Mikki]

7 minutes ago, Nathair said:

Did it just get very 1958 in here? There are plenty of women astronauts, sixty (60) of whom have been to space. As I mentioned above, women make up fully half of the NASA's current class. In the CSA's most recent recruiting effort the balance was not quite as equitable but was still a seventy/thirty split. The only way you can think that all the colonists would end up being male for statistical reasons is if you only plan on having a colony of two or three people. Or (and this is much more likely) if the people making the selections have some of the quaint ideas about gender that have popped up in this thread.

 

 

Really no offense, i am married since 24 22 (ups) years, two daughters, many years in the field with guys and girls. I am no sexist at all.
Time will change.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Mikki

[Nathair]

4 minutes ago, Mikki said:

Finally, sexism is a shame.

It is but, in this case, I lament more about the wasted opportunities. What would things look like today if they had said "Hell, yes!" to Jerrie Cobb?

[IncongruousGoat]

4 hours ago, Carl said:

The Moon also has damm near everything a space program might need in it's soil, Mars isn't as god AFAIK.

Well... except water. Which is pretty important. Sure, you can get oxygen out of things like silica and alumina in the regolith, but that's very power-intensive, and it still doesn't solve the water problem. And yeah. there's the water trapped in polar craters. But that isn't particularly much water compared to the amount contained in the subsurface ice in, say, Utopia Planitia. Plus, The most common elements in Martian regolith are silicon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, calcium and magnesium (not necessarily in that order)... the same elements as make up the major components of lunar regolith. Furthermore, Mars has an atmosphere of CO2, which contains carbon. Y'know, that stuff you need for life. On the Moon, you would have to ship every single atom of carbon in from Earth, making expansion of any operations a pain, and strictly in-situ expansion nearly impossible. The atmosphere on Mars is also thin enough to not be much of a hindrance to launches, but thick enough to permit aerobraking.

[Shpaget]

1 hour ago, Nathair said:

You are joking, right? This is 2017 you must be joking, right?

I am not.

1 hour ago, Nathair said:

The only, ONLY, reason there have not been women astronauts from day one is that the women were turned away from the program. Even when women went so far as to privately fund recruiting and testing procedures to parallel the male astronaut program the qualified women were still refused entry.  They took the fight all the way to the U.S. House of Representatives and were again refused entry. The only inclination issue there was an inclination towards sexism and male privilege.

Irrelevant to my point. Just because there were some women who wanted to go to space, it doesn't mean that general female population feels the same.

1 hour ago, Nathair said:

As it stands today NASA's current class of astronauts is fifty percent female and I can think of no reason to expect otherwise.

Is there a policy to maintain that ratio?

What is the ratio of applicants. What are their test scores?

[kerbiloid]

Just watch the great "Marooned" movie.

You are a space commander and must select: who will get the last seat in a rescue capsule (or the last balloon of oxygen).
If your companion is male, you pull matches. Who pulls short - wins fails becomes a hero.
If your companion is a woman, and she pulls short - will you let her die? Maybe. Will the public ever forgive you or your boss? Never.
(That's why your boss will find 1001 reasons to avoid such problem)

All crew members must be equally expendable to make decisions without emotional effects.

Edited January 26, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Carl]

2 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Well... except water. Which is pretty important. Sure, you can get oxygen out of things like silica and alumina in the regolith, but that's very power-intensive, and it still doesn't solve the water problem. And yeah. there's the water trapped in polar craters. But that isn't particularly much water compared to the amount contained in the subsurface ice in, say, Utopia Planitia. Plus, The most common elements in Martian regolith are silicon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, calcium and magnesium (not necessarily in that order)... the same elements as make up the major components of lunar regolith. Furthermore, Mars has an atmosphere of CO2, which contains carbon. Y'know, that stuff you need for life. On the Moon, you would have to ship every single atom of carbon in from Earth, making expansion of any operations a pain, and strictly in-situ expansion nearly impossible. The atmosphere on Mars is also thin enough to not be much of a hindrance to launches, but thick enough to permit aerobraking.

Any operation to use the resources will by nature liberate the oxygen, and there is small amount of hydrogen. But overall if your needing water, carbon, e.t.c. so much that you need to ship mass quantities from earth instead of reusing what you have you allready have a major problem regardless, a successful space program cannot afford to be that wasteful in the short to mid term. because if they're that wasteful of basics like water and carbon they're going to have major issues with everything else.

 

As for Mars, again it's harder to get up and that far outweighs any benefit of aerocapture. Converting the numbers estimate for the cost of shipping Lunar regolith to the L4 and L5 lagrange points ran to around 5.7 dollars a kg. Thats mass drivers for you, they're pretty cheap overall compared to any rocket, you can't use those on Mars, the atmosphere is too thick.

 

Recommended reading:

 

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colonies_chap06.html

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colonies_chap07.html

Edited January 26, 2017 by Carl

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Well... except water. Which is pretty important. Sure, you can get oxygen out of things like silica and alumina in the regolith, but that's very power-intensive, and it still doesn't solve the water problem. And yeah. there's the water trapped in polar craters. But that isn't particularly much water compared to the amount contained in the subsurface ice in, say, Utopia Planitia. Plus, The most common elements in Martian regolith are silicon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, calcium and magnesium (not necessarily in that order)... the same elements as make up the major components of lunar regolith. Furthermore, Mars has an atmosphere of CO2, which contains carbon. Y'know, that stuff you need for life. On the Moon, you would have to ship every single atom of carbon in from Earth, making expansion of any operations a pain, and strictly in-situ expansion nearly impossible. The atmosphere on Mars is also thin enough to not be much of a hindrance to launches, but thick enough to permit aerobraking.

Its water on the Moons poles, caves or lava tubes would be another source, smaller yes but you only need it for the base, 
An colony is far of, reason to go is science and prestige, moon an the extra in that you could export stuff to earth orbit, this is also true for the asteroids but not Mars