Mars Colonization Discussion Thread

[Antstar]

6 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

How on earth is colonizing that grossly inhospitable red ball good for preserving humans? The atmosphere will kill you. The radiation will kill you. The temperature will kill you. Just bringing some boot dirt into your habitat from a surface stroll will kill you. The long term gravity effects will probably kill you. Can't see it.  

Well, take the "red mars" solution to radiation. A couple of meters of crappy dirt blocks a lot of rads. Filling the atmosphere with CO2 gives you pressure and heat (if you can be bothered, but more plausible than an O2 atmosphere). I dispute your assertion about the dirt however. They think that there are probably superoxides there and that these pose a long term (chronic) lung damage issue. Unless you are going somewhere else with this? The superoxides problem would resolve with a CO2 atmosphere, but anyway we use sticky mats for our cleanroom - they are hardly high tech. As for gravity - jury is most deffinately out on that - we have no idea what that gravity would do

3 minutes ago, tater said:

 

As others have pointed out, however, the technology required to colonize space comes with the ability to mitigate most existential risks to Earth. If we can mine asteroids, we can divert them, in short.

I think in the long term we should avail ourselves of our "cosmic endowment," but I'm unsure if Mars will ever be part of that.

Of course it will. The arctic circle is a $hit place to live north of. But people do. If we don't extinct ourselves, and If we colonise space; and yes, if the gravity works out (although we will probably just GM ourselves if not), then Mars too will one day have people on it

[tater]

The worst place on Earth is vastly better for humans than Mars.

[Antstar]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

The worst place on Earth is vastly better for humans than Mars.

Of course. We are not talking about primitive stone age people bootstraping themselves to technology there. But IF we go to space, people gonna people. Hence, every bit of unclaimed land will have to eventually be colonised. Bacteria don't avoid the less nutritious places to grow, they just do worse there and have a hard life. Humans are less adaptable than bacteria, but follow the same basic pattern of colonisation. Plus we have technology. So, again I assert that eventually Mars will look attractive for colonisation - even if it is not easy, good, or the first place we go (and perhaps after we have overcrowded antarctica - the worst place on Earth??)

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, tomf said:

Do you have a source for that? I've felt the effects of breathing high pressure oxygen (2.8 bar) myself, it becomes noticeably harder to breath afterwards but the wikipedia article on oxygen toxicity seems to confirm that hypobaric pure oxygen isn't a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#Hypobaric_setting

I'm not a physician so unlikely I am an authority here.

Afaik the longest hypobaric test with spacemen lasted for 17 days (pure oxygen, 20% atm). There was no significant health impacts and all of them stay healthy, but after the test they suffered for 10 days from the same symptoms like oxygen intoxication causes (sickness, nausea, vision difficulties, pain in chest, teeth, ears).
So this just proved that a spacecraft crew can stay healthy during a short space trip, not all their life.
When you don't breath the air the nitrogen solved in your blood dissipates, so you have a choice: either raise the oxygen pressure, or live at 1/5..1/2 of normal pressure (i.e. like at 5 km height but in oxygen mask), and both ways don't look healthy.

[Kerbal7]

35 minutes ago, Antstar said:

Well, take the "red mars" solution to radiation. A couple of meters of crappy dirt blocks a lot of rads. Filling the atmosphere with CO2 gives you pressure and heat (if you can be bothered, but more plausible than an O2 atmosphere). I dispute your assertion about the dirt however. They think that there are probably superoxides there and that these pose a long term (chronic) lung damage issue. Unless you are going somewhere else with this? The superoxides problem would resolve with a CO2 atmosphere, but anyway we use sticky mats for our cleanroom - they are hardly high tech. As for gravity - jury is most deffinately out on that - we have no idea what that gravity would do

Of course it will. The arctic circle is a $hit place to live north of. But people do. If we don't extinct ourselves, and If we colonise space; and yes, if the gravity works out (although we will probably just GM ourselves if not), then Mars too will one day have people on it

Everything at Mars wants to kill you. Including the dirt. 

Mars Surface Is Looking Much Deadlier Than We Previously Thought

https://www.sciencealert.com/mars-surface-looks-to-be-much-more-deadly-than-we-previously-thought

[DDE]

44 minutes ago, Antstar said:

Humans are less adaptable than bacteria, but follow the same basic pattern of colonisation.

Not entirely. Due to high cost of offspring, especially spacefaring-grade, we tend to be a whole lot more selective than bacteria, so there are a lot more places we haven’t settled even given the chance.

Nobody is sending thousands of people to random places in the Solar system on the off chance that one of these groups will survive and prosper.

Edited February 21, 2018 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Antstar said:

On 05.10.2017 at 10:51 PM, kerbiloid said:

Due to highly automated environment, the staff is mostly engineers and scientists (i.e. educated persons).
So, at any moment ~100 kilohumans out of the Earth at once — a permanent immediate reserve cultural pool if the Earth gets suddenly crashed by a natural disaster or an alien attack.
Their task is not to live independently from the Earth (as writers dream), but in case if the Earth had gotten dead — start restoring its usage and repopulation.

This seems super, super dangerous. A smart (and completely rational but unemotional) person would have to conclude that in the long term Earth would be better off being deliberately destroyed and then reseeded from the superior breeding stock you are sending to Mars...

Not that horrific.
I mean that near several (or all) planets (at least near Saturn with Titan as a resource base, and Mars as a resource base itself) there anyway should be packs of satellites, telescopes, long-range navigation sats and so on.
Somebody would look after this stuff staying right there (at least due to lightspeed delay which makes remote servicing possible but uncomfortable).
So, there anyway would be several large orbital stations with engineers, technicians, scientists, medical staff, etc. Not self-sufficient colonies, but a permanent servicing base with contracted personnel living there for years, then returning to the Earth.

Coincidentally as we can see these bases would anyway be a natural deposit of intellectual and professional elite.
Not self-isolated permanent habitants, but permanently inhabitated exactly by such kind of persons.

So if a big badaboom happens on the Earth they will be anyway the natural candidates as the Earth reconstructors.
Let's make this job more easy for them and create deposits of technics and resources in advance.
Let semi-automated fabrics convert Martian and Titanian ice and atmosphere into plastic bricks, while Phobos stones into metal slabs.
Let them have a local copy of internet and wiki with all human culture.
Let them have digital copies of DNA of life species (except mosquitoes, fleas and spiders) and equipment to build a DNA from its digital description and grow an adult plant/animal. *)
_{*) Important! Do not forget to equip all this stuff with a self-destroy mechanism - just for the case of ET stormtroopers.}

If nothing happens — well, these stashes will just lay down there. If something happens, the survivors will not panic, but start plan B "Earth recolonization".
Anyway even after total devastation the Earth will stay the most hospitable place in Solar System.
So, it will be important to run industry on the Earth as soon as possible, and anyway this will be much easier than colonize Mars.

For me, this is the only thing which gives a real purpose to extraterrestrial expansion — a Solar-System-wide network of:
* telescopes allowing to inventory every flying stone in Solar System (and prevent any unexpected collision)
* telescopes allowing to inventory every extrasolar planet in 1000 ly and research them down to city-size objects (and avoid sending interstellarships to plant flags, as almost all these planets are similarly useless)
* long-range and high-precision navigation and communication across the Solar System.
And as a bonus we have these servicing bases as natural guardians of human culture.

So, for me, there is absolutely no need in Mars colonization, but there is much sense in Mars (and Titan) utilization.

Edited February 21, 2018 by kerbiloid

[DAL59]

7 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Trying to increase the density of atmosphere on Mars is pointless, without magnetic field it'll be blown away into space by solar wind anyway. 

Over a very long period of time, by which magnetic shields could be built.  

[Green Baron]

2 hours ago, Antstar said:

Of course. We are not talking about primitive stone age people bootstraping themselves to technology there.

Nope, we are talking high tech. And with that it is not possible to survive independently on the bad (net even the worst) places on earth.
 

Quote

Plus we have technology.

Yes, but we must haul it to the places where we need it. And a worldwide industry must have made it.

Quote

So, again I assert that eventually Mars will look attractive for colonisation - even if it is not easy, good, or the first place we go (and perhaps after we have overcrowded antarctica - the worst place on Earth??)

The "worst places on earth" would be yeah, the antarctic highlands, the extreme deserts, the open oceans. Nobody survives there for more than a few hours without the help of technology. Which fails. Then people die. And of course with a constant stream of supply.

11 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Over a very long period of time, by which magnetic shields could be built.  

lol. How ? Boil an eventual iron core and stir a bit ? Or a forcefield with a flexibel plan ? Sorry for being sarcatsic, but "building a shield" doesn't sound ... practical.

 

A few specially trained people with a worldwide technological apparatus in their back will eventually reach Mars in 20, 30, 40 years, if all goes well, our economy doesn't explode under our feet and people don't start to battle for resources. I'm so down to earth :-)

Edited February 21, 2018 by Green Baron

[DAL59]

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

lol. How ? Boil an eventual iron core and stir a bit ? Or a forcefield with a flexibel plan ? Sorry for being sarcatsic, but "building a shield" doesn't sound ... practical.

They have millenia.  

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

And with that it is not possible to survive independently on the bad (net even the worst) places on earth.

Yes it is.  A thousand tons of robots, 3-d printers, and smelters could do it.  Nobody is trying to make antartica self suffiecinet.  

Also, you could get more metals from phobos.

[Green Baron]

2 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

They have millenia.  

Who ? Colonists ? Days ! And millennia stir an iron core ?

But people don't think millennia. Years at the most.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Green Baron

[DAL59]

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

Who ? And millennia stir an iron core ?

But people don't think millennia. Years at the most.

Exactly.  The magnetic field isn't the initial terraformer's problem.  They can ignore it and their distant descendants will deal with air loss 1,000 years in the future.  

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

Who ? And millennia stir an iron core ?

A series of magnetic satelites or land strips.  

[Green Baron]

30 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Exactly.  The magnetic field isn't the initial terraformer's problem.  They can ignore it and their distant descendants will deal with air loss 1,000 years in the future.  

Nope. They all died after days or weeks because they were too trustful and support didn't arrive in time.

 

Edit: A series of satellites or landstrips does what exactly to create a planetary magnetic field ?

But even a magnetic field would not enable Mars to hold an atmosphere (not enough gravity) and no speculative process can generate one faster than it escapes.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Green Baron

[tater]

Before discussing terraforming, it might be best to establish that humans can have healthy children in martian gravity.

[Green Baron]

That question can't be answered for quite some time. We can be happy if the first astro-, cosmo- or taikonaut team will return from a successful roundtrip. Before anytwo make short ones and constantly document their development.

[Kerbal7]

36 minutes ago, tater said:

Before discussing terraforming, it might be best to establish that humans can have healthy children in martian gravity.

How are we getting all of our stuff down on the surface of Mars in one piece to start with? We can put 1 ton down unreliably now. They're trying to up that to 3 tons with the low-density supersonic decelerator. But that's not near enough. 

Edited February 21, 2018 by Kerbal7

[DAL59]

30 minutes ago, tater said:

Before discussing terraforming, it might be best to establish that humans can have healthy children in martian gravity.

Tilted rotating cities.

As shown here:

 

[Kerbal7]

16 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Tilted rotating cities.

As shown here:

 

We are going to build an entire city on its side and spin it, on Mars? At some point we must ask ourselves why are we doing this and is it worth it.  

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

22 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

 

 

 

[tater]

1 hour ago, Kerbal7 said:

How are we getting all of our stuff down on the surface of Mars in one piece to start with? We can put 1 ton down unreliably now. They're trying to up that to 3 tons with the low-density supersonic decelerator. But that's not near enough. 

This is a relatively trivial engineering problem. Supersonic retropropulsion is a solved problem. I'm pretty unconcerned about it. Might take a few tweaks, but it will happen.

Human embryology is another issue altogether.

1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

Tilted rotating cities.

As shown here:

 

Stunningly dumb idea.

If this is the solution, Mars is a non-starter. Build in space, where spinning is easier.

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

That question can't be answered for quite some time. We can be happy if the first astro-, cosmo- or taikonaut team will return from a successful roundtrip. Before anytwo make short ones and constantly document their development.

True, in terms of expedition flights. This is a colonization thread, however. Seems like the EZ-mode way to test this is a rotating experiment on orbit.

[DAL59]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

If this is the solution, Mars is a non-starter. Build in space, where spinning is easier.

Only one rotating city, for pregnancy.  

Or one rotating station.

1 hour ago, Kerbal7 said:

We are going to build an entire city on its side and spin it, on Mars? At some point we must ask ourselves why are we doing this and is it worth it.  

To allow a colony to exist.  

[tater]

A centrifuge at a scientific outpost makes some sense. For a colony, it's absurd. If you're making an orbital colony for pregnancy, just make that your colony.

[Kerbal7]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

This is a relatively trivial engineering problem. Supersonic retropropulsion is a solved problem. I'm pretty unconcerned about it. Might take a few tweaks, but it will happen.

I too believe Supersonic retro-propulsion is what is going to allow us to land much heavier payloads on Mars. But from what I'm reading this is not all figured out, unless it's been in the last 5 months.
 

Quote

 

Significant work remains to characterize these flows and to design systems capable of human class missions to Mars.

Based on the analyses completed, the remaining SRP challenge is characterized as one of prudent flight systems engineering dependent on maturation of specific Mars flight systems, not technology advancement.

 

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20170008725.pdf

We are not ready to land giant space freighters on Mars just yet.

 

[tater]

15 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

We are not ready to land giant space freighters on Mars just yet.

Nor will NASA. NASA will also not be able to experiment sending a full-sized payload, as they can launch SLS only once per year. If NASA is supposed to do it (under the assumption they magically get billions of extra dollars), they will need a boilerplate vehicle to send, then 2.14 years later they can iterate, wasting their one and only SLS launch... except that SLS can't in fact get any decent payload to Mars, so they magically need multiple SLS flights in a year (days apart, because their upper stages are hydrolox), or they are stuck at 1 ton forever.

SpaceX can fly BFS suborbitally, then test here in the regime that matches Mars atmospheric density. At some point, their stripped "grashopper" version might need iteration to address issues, then it's like a once used F9 core (pre-Block 5). This vehicle is now entirely free to play with. It costs just propellant to send to Mars. Maybe it makes a crater, but they would likely first send some sats to Mars as GPS and comm relays, so they will then have data from the attempt. NASA would certainly be interested in this data, as they were quite interested in Red Dragon for the same reason---the reason is that it likely needs empirical data, and NASA will simply not be able to do that... ever.

Edited February 22, 2018 by tater

[TheKSPBeginner]

59 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Only one rotating city, for pregnancy.  

 

I'm sorry, for WHAT!?