51–60 of 132 posts
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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.
What exactly would a Mars colony need to dig tunnels for?
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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.
What exactly would a Mars colony need to dig tunnels for?
On the other hands, tunnels do not provide any sunlight but I don't know if humans can actually use the sunlight on Mars (so a dome might be necessary as an addition or completely irrelevant anyways).
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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.
What exactly would a Mars colony need to dig tunnels for?
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
I understand that's what the estimates say, but how is that reasonable? The mars mission would include a biosphere of some kind, right?
Is the Biosphere 3 estimate far too high? Or is the Mars mission estimate far too low?
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. Mar…
This was the most annoying thing about the film The Martian for me. Everyone crows about the science, but I've not heard anything about the psychological trauma someone marooned and isolated on an alien planet for several months would go through. I imagine it would be something on a par with the Dancing plagues of Strasbourg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518 But without the cheesy disco music.
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. Mar…
They may suffer from an acute version of what is known as prairie madness[1], which American colonists suffered from in the nineteenth century.
> ...and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different.
They will have hope : to go back to Earth.
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. Mar…
I expect Mars would be too much the opposite of boring. We'd be trying to live in an environment that, as far as we know, doesn't support any life at all. It is extremely hostile. The conditions are more difficult than Antarctica. The planet will be trying to kill you in all kinds of ways, some of which we haven't imagined yet. Early colonists will have their hands full solving one life-threatening issue after another, and without the massive manufacturing and diagnostics and natural resources of Earth at hand.
There is a great deal of science to be done there and that would likely be a major impetus for going and one of the selection criteria for early colonists. Even when the planet isn't trying to kill them, they'd have work to do -- mapping, soil samples, ongoing human health research, materials research, agriculture and biology.
Martian colonists would also not be entirely isolated. There's no reason in principle why you wouldn't be able to email people on Earth on a semi-regular basis, or receive the latest books and movies and games -- to the extent that you'd really have time for any of that.
There are people who are attracted to the idea of living in a smaller community in a completely alien environment. They tend to get dismissed out-of-hand, but it's not really all that unusual. Humans are tribal, there are isolated research facilities in remote parts of the world, even a cramped little space station now.
I seriously doubt it will turn out to be pointless. Colonization has usually moved the larger human society forward a little, with new forms of governance, new materials, new technologies or techniques for daily life. We have no way of knowing now what kind of returns we'd get back from a long-term Martian colony, but I don't think the answer is "none".
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. Mar…
> 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. Have you ever been backpacking in a desert, mountains, wilderness? It continues to be amazing for days. Anything that new and different definitely induces novelty more tha…
A better analogy than backpacking would be permanently living underwater at great depth. To leave your underwater habitat, you have to scuba dive or get into a submarine. You never get an unmediated experience of the outside world. Your skin touches the inside of your suit. You smell only the air from your breathing apparatus and your own breath. Forever.
I'd be way more impressed with Mars enthusiasts if they'd admit that this is a problem and then describe how they'll overcome it, rather than just insisting that it all really is going to be one big breathless adventure. It's like mentioning boredom on Mars is a taboo that upsets frail escapists.
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I think we need biologically inspired robots. Have you seen a ground digger wasp (Eastern Cicada Killer)? They can mine many times their body weight in hard soil each day. Landing pods on the surface and then covering them in regolith is going to call for heavy machinery. A boring machine is also heavy machinery. These cost an enormous amount to get to Mars. But insect-like robots over a large timescale could do the…
> [Insects] can mine many times their body weight in hard soil each day. This is because of the square-cube-law. Basically, muscle strength is proportional to cross-sectional muscle area, while muscle weight is proportional to volume. So when you take e.g. an insect and start scaling it up, it gets heavier faster than it gets stronger, thus strength relative to weight decreases. But: I'd seriously doubt that wasps ca…
Not that it matters, given the way you did the calculation, but it's closer to 10+ million.
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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.
Are the bone density problems actually a problem if you never plan to return to Earth?
Wow, soccer would be epic in low G!