Elon Musk : "Retire on Mars" : feasible?

[rkman]

yes, most people have become terminally risk averse.

I'll assume you have signed up for Mars One and contribute to its funding.

Good for you, but i will admire your pioneering spirit only after the mission has actually gone underway with you on board. So far it's just talk and pretty pictures (reminding me of the "Venus project").

Why has there been such limited study of closed loop ecosystems in space? Would it be helpful if we got together and designed a cube sat to investigate this?

There is no point testing it in space if a closed loop ecosystem that can run on its own for many years (preferably much longer) has not been realized on Earth.

It requires more equipment than can be fit inside a cubesat.

Controlled Ecological Life Support System

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Ecological_Life_Support_System

Edited December 14, 2013 by rkman

[Seret]

On Mars it doesn't matter if you loose oxygen or water in the process, because you can get it from the atmosphere and the soil.

There would be an energy and infrastructure cost to getting it from the environment, so you'd still want to minimise your losses as much as possible. Having the right elements available locally doesn't give you a free lunch, they would still have to be gathered and processed into the right form before they could be used.

Bottom line: supporting human life in any environment except Earth is always going to be complex and expensive.

[Black_sod]

Would it nearly be easier to build habitats in cylindrical satellites in orbit that spin for gravity, have an enclosed environment and as much power as they need from the sun? food could be grown there/in sepparate modules or just sent up the odd time... don't see why we should make a huge leap towards mars. Or at least before we have invented space elevators

[DerekL1963]

But, I do think that a Lunar base would be a logical stepping stone towards human settlement of Mars.

A stepping stone in the sense of getting experience in operating and supporting a base at a distance, yes. Unfortunately, from an engineering point of view, it's like preparing for an Antarctic expedition by practicing in the Sahara desert.

[Seret]

Unfortunately, from an engineering point of view, it's like preparing for an Antarctic expedition by practicing in the Sahara desert.

Actually that wouldn't be a completely illogical thing to do.

[Godot]

Well, he (or they, if we assume multiple inhabitants of the mars colony) would already run into problems with creating a self sustaining artificial ecosystem.

They already tried it on earth with Biosphere 2, some kind of huge sealed greenhouse, in which it was planned, that a couple of people should survivbe for a set time span without any supply from outside,

just with the ecosystem to feed them, supply them with O2 and clean water and process their wastes (and only electrical power and sunlight getting supplied from outside).

The first attempt failed ... due to sevral parameters of the ecosystem getting out of control (like animal and fungal growth) but also due to unforeseen reactions of the building material with the produced O2 (meaning that, due to the absorption into the building material, the O2 level was slowly falling).

The experiment ended after 2.5 years, during which the inhabitants of the complex had to be supplied from the outside with O2 and other things (thereby invaidating the experimental paradigmum).

A second attempt was a little bit more successful, but lasted only 0.5 years, so it is unclear whether the experiment would have fared better in long term.

If we already have this problem on earth (where we have good estimations about animals and plants and their behavior) you can guess what probably would happen if we tried it on anothr planet, with another gravitation, other composition and strength of sunlight, other day lengths and so on and where we would have only extremly limited ways to estimate, how the whole ecosystem 8which we want to transplant to Mars) would behave under the alien conditions).

And on Mars, any help (like supply runs) would be a long time away, considering the fact that even under good conditions, a trip takes half a year ... so, if there are any problems on the Mars colony that require an emergency supply run within less than half a year, the inhabitants are, without a doubt, lost

[DerekL1963]

They already tried it on earth with Biosphere 2, some kind of huge sealed greenhouse

Biosphere is pretty much meaningless when it comes to determining the viability of close loop life support systems. It was designed by ecological mystics according to their political and philosophical principles, not properly engineered. They leapt from a few dozen cubic meter test facility to the huge Biosphere itself after only 30 days of testing. They completely failed to account for the contraction and expansion of the atmosphere inside... meaning that at virtually the last minute they had to spend considerable money to build expansion chambers. Between this and other stupid crap (spending tons of money to bring in African beach sand for example) they went way, way, over budget and had to rush it into service for public relations reasons without a proper commissioning, testing, and checkout phase. (It's actually not clear that such thing was ever even planned.) The result was a massive cock-up, an utter failure.

But sadly, a failure that continues to poison the well.

[DaveofDefeat]

A stepping stone in the sense of getting experience in operating and supporting a base at a distance, yes. Unfortunately, from an engineering point of view, it's like preparing for an Antarctic expedition by practicing in the Sahara desert.

They are both deserts.

[maccollo]

But the loop wouldn't need to be completely closed.

If the losses are small enough they could be replaced by using oxygen and water extracted from the martian soil. Curiosity is only a few degrees of the equator line and it found the martian soil at it's location was 2% water by weight, and that the soil gave of a decent amount of oxygen when heated by SAM.

There would need to be a way of effectively isolating the gasses, and if possible a less energy intensive way of releasing them than heating the soil to several 100 C would be preferable.

[Nibb31]

Again, we don't know if we can extract oxygen and water from the martian soil. The traces found by Curiosity are not easy to get to and require a whole lot of power over a long time if you wanted to fill a full tank. You would need strip mining and refining equipment, which would end up being quite heavy in addition to the engineering complexity of making the equipment reliable, automated, and low-maintenance.

It sounds nice in theory, but just like the rest of the closed-loop affair, it's at a TRL<1 whereas it needs to be at least 7 or 8 to envisage flying it on a manned mission.

[Nibb31]

A stepping stone in the sense of getting experience in operating and supporting a base at a distance, yes. Unfortunately, from an engineering point of view, it's like preparing for an Antarctic expedition by practicing in the Sahara desert.

Well, NASA disagrees with you there:

NEEMO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neemo

Desert Rats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Research_and_Technology_Studies

Neutral Buoyancy Tests: http://www.geek.com/science/nasa-is-designing-a-lighter-space-suit-for-asteroid-wrangling-1579224/

[Albert VDS]

Again, we don't know if we can extract oxygen and water from the martian soil. The traces found by Curiosity are not easy to get to and require a whole lot of power over a long time if you wanted to fill a full tank. You would need strip mining and refining equipment, which would end up being quite heavy in addition to the engineering complexity of making the equipment reliable, automated, and low-maintenance.

It sounds nice in theory, but just like the rest of the closed-loop affair, it's at a TRL<1 whereas it needs to be at least 7 or 8 to envisage flying it on a manned mission.

Curiosity can only take surface samples and water isn't something which likes to stay on the surface if there is enough room under the surface.

So to me it seems reasonable to think that there is more water the deeper you dig. Which is like how it works here on Earth.

The more water rich the soil is the less effort you need to use to get it out, or lighter equipment.

The oxygen doesn't need to be extracted from the soil, the atmosphere has enough CO2 to aid in keeping oxygens levels up.