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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

#71

Post by marcosdumay »

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.

For most metals, some platinum (much, much less than coal) and electricity (much, much more than when using coal) are enough. It is steel that is the problem, but you can also make it (way more expensively) using atmospheric CO2.

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

#73

Post by munificent »

wyager wrote: post #62
seren wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

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

Those people can and do at least go to parks.

A better analogy is that it would be like living in an underground bunker on Death Valley, with periodic excursions out to the desert, while wearing a spacesuit.

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

#74

Post by emiliobumachar »

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…

gp did say "days", did not say "forever".

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

#75

Post by colordrops »

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…

Everything in your comment presupposes a one way trip, which it doesn't have to be.

Furthermore, the idea isn't just to get there and whittle on your rocking chair until you die. There will be a plan to start building out facilities which is an endless task that will keep colonists busy.

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

#76

Post by LeifCarrotson »

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.

Isn't this essentially what the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is doing? Albeit they're only isolated for 9 months at a time, not years, but still:

1. They have a small group of 50 people. Issues with crew psychology and relationships are mostly covered.

2. They live entirely indoors in small, manmade habitats. They're actually under the snow in much the same way that Martian hab units would be under regolith.

3. They are autonomous. It's completely up to them to survive the winter.

Yes, they're not doing the full biosphere thing - they're surviving on rations brought in by airplane, and breathing the outside air after just heating it - but that's pretty close.

I also think of people on strategic submarine ballistic missile nuclear boomers. They're shockingly big boats, but the crews are in a limited space with a limited air supply and no views of the outside for 70 days at a time. I would be unsurprised if the public information on their maximum deployment times for crews (said to rotate out every 10 weeks) has been exceeded, and I'm sure the navy has studies on it. Also living off rations, but similar.

It's probably more conceivable and informative to try to grow rations in a lab using the constraints that would be placed on martian astronauts than to convince a crew to do the Amundsen-Scott experience or SSBN experience, but with also growing your own food.

Though I imagine after 8 months of Antarctic winter, a salad would sound pretty good...

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

#77

Post by grondilu »

theothermkn wrote: post #69
thaumaturgy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 counterf…

Quite off-topic, but sometimes I even wonder if we should not "de-colonize" Earth. I first thought of that when I learnt that if all human population was living in one place with the same population density as in Tokyo, this megacity would fit in the state of California or something.

That sounds extreme, but I somehow am attracted by the idea of leaving entire continents completely void of humans.

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

#78

Post by zippydoo »

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…

> It continues to be amazing for days.

For days!

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

#80

Post by thaumaturgy »

theothermkn wrote: post #69
thaumaturgy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 counterf…

There's a Wikipedia rabbit hole on the subject at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_colonialism_a....

I don't have any other citations or references at hand, sorry.

But, you're attempting to rebut me using a rather deeply-nested stack of science and technology developed in some former colonies.

You might also give my earlier comment a more careful reading. I didn't imply that progress is limited to colonization, only that it contributes to it.

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