> Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. > The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. > Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes. Such a thin atmosphere will not transfer heat as effectively as it doe…
Poor understanding of physics are exemplified everywhere these days. It's tiring seeing so many armchair experts trying to take over the discourse with their incessant posturing.
I think "guests on a robot-colonized Mars" is the more likely scenario. Humans are poorly adapted to space travel, and it takes a great deal of effort to keep humans alive in space. It's a shame about what's happening to our habitat, when you think about it that way.
Mankind is basically too poor and too stupid at the moment. Building a self-sustaining colony on Mars will require not only tremendous amount of resources, both material and intellectual, but also a transfer of knowledge - which will be impeded by the current legal framework, i.e. copyright laws, for example. But I do agree with Musk: we must colonize Mars in order to survive the next extinction event.
"Poor" and "stupid" aren't helpful terms. The reality is we're heavily disorganized and stagnant, stuck in a scarcity mindset - leading the majority into lower level survival mode behaviour. Leaving it up to capitalism to advance innovation has been interesting, successful, however that doesn't specifically create leaders or organization necessary to solve holistic issues; it certainly has lead to creating pools of wealth especially as automation has occurred, and not being distributed well or fairly. This mess is quickly fixable with the right policies, leadership - educating the population to vote for that, while making sure elections are secure, are foundational supports of that happening; I hope for the world Andrew Yang wins US election, and that the FBI's warnings, along with Mitch McConnell's efforts to block measures securing elections, aren't realized into "Trump" being placed.
> Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. > The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. > Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes. Such a thin atmosphere will not transfer heat as effectively as it doe…
That’s one of the things I’m curious about regarding the Curiousity rover’s RTG. How efficient is convection cooling in order to maintain the thermal gradient to generate electricity?
It has radiator fins, so I assume that’s the main form of cooling over radiation; but with such a thin atmosphere I wouldn’t have that it could take away that much heat.
> Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. > The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. > Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes. Such a thin atmosphere will not transfer heat as effectively as it doe…
Well, there go my dreams of sunbathing on Mars in nothing but a bikini...
I think "guests on a robot-colonized Mars" is the more likely scenario. Humans are poorly adapted to space travel, and it takes a great deal of effort to keep humans alive in space. It's a shame about what's happening to our habitat, when you think about it that way.
Mankind is basically too poor and too stupid at the moment. Building a self-sustaining colony on Mars will require not only tremendous amount of resources, both material and intellectual, but also a transfer of knowledge - which will be impeded by the current legal framework, i.e. copyright laws, for example. But I do agree with Musk: we must colonize Mars in order to survive the next extinction event.
Mostly too poor and perhaps lacking better engines - we really need nuclear propulsion at the very least (with concomitant big amounts of radioactive material) to not spend a year in space just getting there, which could cause damage, physical and psychological. Or maybe some form of suspended animation.
We cannot really build city sized ships, not yet. That'd require huge space stations.
Self sustaining architecture is one thing, getting it scaled up is another - and relatively hard.
Plus design so as to not cause problems related to living in confinement or in dreary space.
This necessitates at least village scale if not a bigger city.
Underground is the only way to live on Mars. So if you can find people on Earth who want to spend all their time underground (with no external food/water/air supply network to fall back on), you have a start.
The next step is finding people who want to live in a permanent totalitarian technodictatorship, given that one small act, say a minor hvac compromise, is all that it would take to kill everyone in the Mars colony within hours. Seriously, on Mars, the consequence of the smallest criminal action is colony genocide. Think of the social and legal consequences of that. Presumption of innocence is too expensive when the consequence of crime is everybody dies.
> Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. > The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. > Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes. Such a thin atmosphere will not transfer heat as effectively as it doe…
Poor understanding of physics are exemplified everywhere these days. It's tiring seeing so many armchair experts trying to take over the discourse with their incessant posturing.
I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of Elon Musk.
Gestation can be solved with the use of spin gravity creating earth normal.
But is it really an issue? Were there experiments in low and microgravity on animals? Even then, a third of G is nowhere near as much of a problem as say microgravity or even lunar one sixth. I'd expect this specific thing to not be a problem - birth may need some assistance which we already know how to do.
How good an analogy are marine mammals? Whales gestate in water, I’m assuming neutral buoyancy isn’t the same as weightlessness when one gets down to the details.
Perhaps aquatic creatures might adapt better to an extraterrestrial environment: Squids in Space!
Underground is the only way to live on Mars. So if you can find people on Earth who want to spend all their time underground (with no external food/water/air supply network to fall back on), you have a start. The next step is finding people who want to live in a permanent totalitarian technodictatorship, given that one small act, say a minor hvac compromise, is all that it would take to kill everyone in the Mars colo…
Isn't this quite similar to the scientific bases that exist on the Antarctic though?
I mean I imagine any Mars colony could be incredibly selective about who to take.