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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

#61

Post by branja »

zeristor wrote: post #37
baron816 wrote: post #24

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.

People have in fact talked about these things. Including the science being great, the psychology being preposterous yet entertaining, and the disco being disco.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/stuck-on-mars-with-n...

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

#62

Post by wyager »

seren wrote: post #44
baron816 wrote: post #24

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 am often thinking about food, it will likely be incredibly bland and not very varied. Plus you'll spend probably most of your time indoors. You won't ever lay on a beach listening to the sounds of the wave, or walk on dry leaves in a forest anymore.

There are a huge number of humans on earth who spend their lives in urban centers and also never have those experiences.

Speculating about the quality of food on mars is pointless; we have no idea how that will work. If you can afford regular equipment shipments to mars (which is probably what a mars colony will require with near-future tech), it would probably make a lot of sense to ship up a bunch of spices. They have a very high utility/weight ratio, which is why they were the impetus for the foundation of so many historical colonies.

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

#63

Post by cname »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #48
baron816 wrote: post #24

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…

> Have you ever been backpacking in a desert, mountains, wilderness?

I'm guessing that being on Mars isn't even remotely similar to being out in the harshest Earth environment.

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

#64

Post by elorant »

baron816 wrote: post #24

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…

Busy people rarely get bored. We won't go to Mars for vacations, we'll go to establish a colony. Which means there are a myriad tasks that have to be accomplished on any given day. They'll have to make sure their equipment works in stellar condition otherwise they'll die, build new things, explore, grow plants and taste their food, run experiments, fix things, take notes of everything and report back to Earth, and the list goes on. And once they get there we'll keep sending them new stuff, and probably other people too, quite frequently. Mars is indeed a barren place but imagine being a geologist, it's like Christmas, you have a new world all to yourself to explore and learn new shit. That could keep you busy for a lifetime.

Sure, in the long term they might get depressed assuming a trip back to Earth would be impossible. And that's why we'll send mosty scientists. We want people who are dedicated and passionate about exploration and learning.

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

#65

Post by gehwartzen »

grondilu wrote: post #26
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

Yes it might cost as much as ONE real mars mission. The value comes from being able to analyze and fix all of the problems that occur in the experiment here on earth in real time. On mars many fixes will require a costly second trip or at a minimum a non-trivial time delay in even getting additional expert information to the site.

You want to send the best version possible to mars and not do your survival learning there. Some will of course be unavoidable but much can still be learned here on earth.

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

#66

Post by TFortunato »

Pigo wrote: post #47
baron816 wrote: post #24

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…

It seems like gravity is the biggest factor that the pie in the sky posts always seem to gloss over. As you said, living in the low of gravity, for the rest of your life, has to have untold issues on bodies that evolved here. It would also add another layer of complexity to everything you do. So many people act like it's just a cool destination spot for Sheldon-types. I have no doubt there'd be no shortage of people…

To play devil's advocate - there are a lot of people who would argue that the view: "Why would you do something with so many known and unknown dangers, when you could focus your energies on making a VR simulation of it instead?" also very sad.

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

#67

Post by resu_nimda »

theothermkn wrote: post #58
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This strikes me as the usual motivated denial that you get from Mars enthusiasts. You're not going to "go exploring" forever. At some point, it's just more rocks. 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 ins…

I'd be more impressed with Mars pessimists if they'd admit that it's just not really the kind of thing that interests them rather than insisting that it's going to be a terrible nightmare for anyone.

The GP said the novelty will wear off in one hour, tops. Sorry, to some people, that's a ridiculous statement. Pointing out that it would probably last longer than that is not insisting that it's going to be one big breathless adventure.

People have lived in solitude and isolation before. People have lived on the space station for extended periods of time. There are people that don't really care to come home to their comfortable home and family every night. I'm pretty sure there are some people who would not be miserable living on Mars.

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

#68

Post by jerf »

0xffff2 wrote: post #39
justin66 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We don't know. If the bones are "adapting" to a lower gravity, and stop getting weaker at some point, then it may be OK. If the bones are losing strength all the time, then it may not be.

And, of course, bones are not monolithic atomic objects but complex living things. Different parts of them may be described by either of those two cases, or others.

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

#69

Post by theothermkn »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #57
baron816 wrote: post #24

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 am someone who has wanted to go to Mars for many years now. I first thought about it when I was about 8 years old -- 30 years ago. I'm still enthusiastic about it, although I doubt I'd have the skill sets or youth to participate given the current timeline. 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…

> 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.

I would really like to see the historical data that bears out this broad claim. I'd like to see a more or less representative sample of "colonization" events that "moved society forward," for example. Also, I'd like to see an accounting of the counterfactuals regarding progress that wouldn't have happened. To cite one example, the "new [if that can be alleged] form of governance" that resulted (if that much can be alleged) in the U.S. from the colonization of the New World took a quarter of a millennium. How much longer for the cotton gin?

Ironically, it's been 50 years since we landed on the Moon, and we can't even rid ourselves of the Space Race / World Of Tomorrow propaganda that drives the public's impression of space exploration. I think we need to look elsewhere than colonization to explain progress.

(Where was colonialism in the discovery of integral calculus? In chaos theory? In...? I'll stop.)

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

#70

Post by LeifCarrotson »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #21
jessriedel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> E.g. concrete is right out, as is most metals, since you need a lot of carbon (coal) in the production process.

What you need to make steel is carbon, not coal. You need a lot of energy, currently supplied by coal in most blast furnaces, but electric arc furnaces work too and only need on the order of 2% carbon by weight.

We use coal for both energy and carbonizing the iron because it's a convenient source of carbon here on Earth. On Mars, there is no coal, but the entire atmosphere is composed of 96% carbon dioxide. If plentiful electricity was available from solar panels or nuclear RTGs, this could be split with electrolysis into carbon monoxide and used in metalurgy, or combined with hydrogen (extracted using electrolysis from water in the soil) to form methane or other organics. Or you can simply use plants.

You also have lots of aluminum oxide in the soils (approximately 10%), which is another useful metal that can be extracted using carbon from the atmosphere.

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