71–80 of 98 posts
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Yes, but Elon Musk mentioned them as living spaces.
Plants are living?
There's a lot of hand-waving about how a base on Mars would operate. Remember the Biosphere II debacle, an attempt to build a closed ecosystem in a big dome. That was intended partly as a test for a Mars colony. They had a terrible time trying to stabilize their little ecosystem. They had far more resources at start than a Mars mission could carry, and were only trying to support eight people.
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I would say that the leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are a little more grounded in reality than Musk in this regard. Glass domes and underground Martian tunnels make for some very interesting science fiction, but I'm concerned about the engineering challenges that he seems to be ignoring in favor of his grand statements of intent. To pick a specific example, he seems to have very little concern for radi…
> he seems to have very little concern for radiation shielding both during the trip to Mars or on the Martian surface. I find it hard to believe his team have not considered something so obvious. This seems like one of those statements that assumed the experts are a bit stupid. Just because he hasn't specifically mentioned it doesn't mean it is not considered. And sure somethings are probably not considered, but some…
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one and wait for more details, but at the same time I concede that it's not unreasonable to be wary of claims that the radiation problem "isn't a big deal" from someone planning to sell tickets to Mars. Not everyone has the same notion of what an acceptable risk is.
I am so glad /r/spacex had the chance to host the AMA. Even this thread shows a pretty depressing lack of understanding (so far) of what Elon has claimed and what SpaceX has actually demonstrated. A bunch of tilting at windmills, virtue signalling and strawman construction efforts while the people who have a clue have a real discussion elsewhere.
Here's one time Reddit was actually able to help SpaceX (!) by reconstructing a corrupt video stream:
https://reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/25xsyt/progress_report_...
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> "The radiation thing is often brought up, but I think it’s not too big of a deal" AFAIK no one else within the community would think of saying that. I'm sure that there are people within SpaceX studying this and taking it into consideration, but my concern is mostly with Musk's cavalier attitude towards individual safety.
I don't think you have looked very hard then. Here's Zubrin on the topic: >However, we already have data that shows that the accumulation of slow rates of cosmic ray radiation received during long duration spaceflight is not a showstopper for human Mars exploration. GCR dose rates in low Earth orbit are about half those in interplanetary space. Thus, there is a growing number of cosmonauts and astronauts who have alr…
There's a lot of hand-waving about how a base on Mars would operate. Remember the Biosphere II debacle, an attempt to build a closed ecosystem in a big dome. That was intended partly as a test for a Mars colony. They had a terrible time trying to stabilize their little ecosystem. They had far more resources at start than a Mars mission could carry, and were only trying to support eight people.
Are Elon's mining/tunneling droids discussed anywhere? He's said in the past the Earth cities need to "go 3D", putting cars in tunnels underground. Something needs to be done to cut the cost of tunneling, so I'm interested to learn more. > Initially, glass panes with carbon fiber frames to build geodesic domes on the surface, plus a lot of miner/tunneling droids. With the latter, you can build out a huge amount of pr…
Still, nothing spurs development like the prospect of a juicy colony contract!
I can't believe no one asked about the status of the Atmos 6 investigation.
The leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are barely starting to talk about some small human missions to Mars and then there is Elon, casually discussing glass domes and tunneling drones creating underground networks on Mars. Truly incredible.
I would say that the leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are a little more grounded in reality than Musk in this regard. Glass domes and underground Martian tunnels make for some very interesting science fiction, but I'm concerned about the engineering challenges that he seems to be ignoring in favor of his grand statements of intent. To pick a specific example, he seems to have very little concern for radi…
Musk talks about it because he does not have those constraints.
As for radiation shielding, this has been a topic since the 60s. We know more or less what the risks are, we know the fundamental way to deal with the different type of radiation. The question is how to integrate it in your mission architecture.
He does not spend much talking about this because its not the fundamentally hardest problem that is to solve. The Core Problem to solve is the Transportation Problem. From what he has said about it, he proposed fundamentally the same basic ideas that people have been discussing for many years, and those should work.
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I don't think you have looked very hard then. Here's Zubrin on the topic: >However, we already have data that shows that the accumulation of slow rates of cosmic ray radiation received during long duration spaceflight is not a showstopper for human Mars exploration. GCR dose rates in low Earth orbit are about half those in interplanetary space. Thus, there is a growing number of cosmonauts and astronauts who have alr…
You talk about a Mars exploration mission , hence a relatively short time duration, not about settling and living one's whole life on Mars.
We know most of the physics needed to deal with the situation, if we can get equipment to mars. Radiation is a problem, but its not Problem Nr. 1.