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Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

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Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#21

Post by semi-extrinsic »

jessriedel wrote: post #12
deegles wrote: post #5

I've thought about a lot of things... think of the massive supply chain that would be needed to build semiconductors, for example. Or even something simple like... cheese. There's a reason Musk estimated that a million people would be needed for a fully self sufficient colony.

Semiconductors are one of few products that are so value dense ($/kg) that you can ship them from Earth for a reasonable marginal price. It's everything else with a long production chain (or very large upfront costs, like mining) that's infeasible to do on Mars without 1M+ people.

I imagine construction materials will be a right pain. E.g. concrete is right out, as is most metals, since you need a lot of carbon (coal) in the production process. Those two are pretty important in tunnel digging.

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#22

Post by hugs »

idlewords wrote: post #13
maxxxxx wrote: post #8

I remember a talk by a NASA guy that a first try would be to land some people with limited supplies on the Antarctic and let them live autonomously for a few years. He said before we go to Mars we need the ability to do this easily.

The Antarctic is a poor analogue, since it has abundant water and food. The Atacama desert might be a better one. There's no earthly reason to make people live in the Atacama, but then again, there's no reason to send people to Mars, either.

From my brief trip to Atacama a few years ago, I noticed that the big reasons people are there are for mining, tourism, or astronomy.

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#23

Post by justin66 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #10

The lower gravity than Earth bit sounds like the most debilitating thing about Martian colonization. One of the reasons why I think Venus cloud cities would be a better long-term bet for baseline humanity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8985151

Nobody actually knows what an extended period living in 38% of Earth-normal gravity will do to a person. It seems probable that there will be bone density problems that might not be correctable with any existing drug or exercise regimen, but there's no evidence it will be as systematically debilitating as living for an extended period in microgravity.

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#24

Post by baron816 »

I think there are going to be some very serious mental health issues for people trying to colonize Mars, especially if they're taking a one way trip. First, you have to deal with a different day-night cycle and the reduced gravity. That stuff matters for humans who have gotten used to 24 hour days and 9.807 m/s^2 gravity over the last 200,000 years.

Then, you're going to have to deal with boredom and cabin fever. Mars seems cool in the abstract--"explore another world!"--but its just a big, completely dead desert. I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there. There really isn't that much for humans to learn by going there in person. Those people will just have to stay in a tiny space for years on end without a lot to do. Think of what a bust the video game No Man's Sky was. People hated it because it was boring. But I'm sure exploring planets in that game was much more interested than Mars will be.

As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there, and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different.

Settling to Mars seems so glamorous, but it really will not be a fun affair. It'll be extremely expensive, really depressing, and probably pointless.

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#25

Post by comicjk »

maxxxxx wrote: post #8

I remember a talk by a NASA guy that a first try would be to land some people with limited supplies on the Antarctic and let them live autonomously for a few years. He said before we go to Mars we need the ability to do this easily.

Also, it would be nice if we could make a self-contained ecosystem work on Earth before sending one into space. People seem to think this is a solved problem, but actually all attempts so far have lost their equilibrium pretty quickly, most notably Biosphere 2.

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#26

Post by grondilu »

maxxxxx wrote: post #8

I remember a talk by a NASA guy that a first try would be to land some people with limited supplies on the Antarctic and let them live autonomously for a few years. He said before we go to Mars we need the ability to do this easily.

Or try an other biosphere experiment[1]. The problem is, it would cost almost as much as a real mars mission. So it's not sure it'd be worth it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#27

Post by bluGill »

idlewords wrote: post #13
maxxxxx wrote: post #8

I remember a talk by a NASA guy that a first try would be to land some people with limited supplies on the Antarctic and let them live autonomously for a few years. He said before we go to Mars we need the ability to do this easily.

The Antarctic is a poor analogue, since it has abundant water and food. The Atacama desert might be a better one. There's no earthly reason to make people live in the Atacama, but then again, there's no reason to send people to Mars, either.

Actually that makes Antartic a better place to try. If there is a problem they use the food, water, and air available for survival. Then you learn whatever lessons needed and try again until you get to the point where you can live for an arbitrary amount of time there. Once you solve that problem you can move to the Atacama desert.

Of course since we are on earth either way a rescue plan is at most a few days away (generally hours but bad weather might stop your efforts for days).

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#29

Post by maxerickson »

lindgrenj6 wrote: post #4

Very cool article! It will certainly be interesting to see how we get around these hurdles. The most interesting one to me was definitely the lack of being able to electrically ground anything, we will definitely have to design newer electrical motors etc to get around that!

It wouldn't really impact devices, it would impact buildings.

(for household service, ground and neutral are bonded at the service panel, grounding is a safety issue, not something electrical devices depend on to function)

Re: Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

#30

Post by jcranmer »

idlewords wrote: post #13
maxxxxx wrote: post #8

I remember a talk by a NASA guy that a first try would be to land some people with limited supplies on the Antarctic and let them live autonomously for a few years. He said before we go to Mars we need the ability to do this easily.

The Antarctic is a poor analogue, since it has abundant water and food. The Atacama desert might be a better one. There's no earthly reason to make people live in the Atacama, but then again, there's no reason to send people to Mars, either.

The continental margin and ice shelves are where all the wildlife is. On the interior ice sheet plateau, there are pretty much no animals or plants. Water is, of course, plentiful, albeit in the wrong phase of matter.

Another "advantage" of interior Antarctica is that, in winter time, it is difficult-to-impossible to actually get in or out of it. The Amundsen-Scott research base is isolated for three months of the year, although two medevac flights have been done in winter.

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