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Last Flight Out

brr.fyi

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Re: Last Flight Out

#151

Post by dylan604 »

dekhn wrote: post #138
ryandrake wrote: post #85

Whenever I read about how humans are about to colonize Mars, I think about how much logistics it takes to keep even a single base with a handful of people populated on the South Pole. It's like Mars, but with plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure, plentiful (albeit frozen) water, shielded from radiation, low-latency communication with civilization, and is reachable by air and ground vehicles. Given how difficult…

humans aren't about to colonize mars. At best we could put people on the surface for a week and return them home safely (with some non-zero probability of death). What's really crazy is what it would take to build sustainable non-earth infrastructure if earth wasn't available. I mean, sure, start with space robots that can extrude aluminum, but ... if you read the story of the western colonizers, it was brutal especi…

>if you read the story of the western colonizers, it was brutal especially if they couldn't get resupplied.

For all of the places western colonizers went, there were always resources that Mars will never have. Skipping past the obvious lack of atmosphere, there are no food sources. While they have found ice meaning some water is available, it is actually potable?

Trying to compare early colonizers of any place on Earth to the experiences of whatever will happen on Mars is just pure folly.

Re: Last Flight Out

#153

Post by 1659447091 »

el_nahual wrote: post #112
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a million times easier to grow food on the South Pole than it is to grow it on Mars And it's a million easier still to import it. So apart from hydroponics for treats and research, it's not a problem worth solving.

> it's not a problem worth solving. Exactly. Farming on mars is not a problem worth solving.

Exactly. We need replicators[0], problem solved.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)

Re: Last Flight Out

#154

Post by dekhn »

dylan604 wrote: post #151
dekhn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

humans aren't about to colonize mars. At best we could put people on the surface for a week and return them home safely (with some non-zero probability of death). What's really crazy is what it would take to build sustainable non-earth infrastructure if earth wasn't available. I mean, sure, start with space robots that can extrude aluminum, but ... if you read the story of the western colonizers, it was brutal especi…

>if you read the story of the western colonizers, it was brutal especially if they couldn't get resupplied. For all of the places western colonizers went, there were always resources that Mars will never have. Skipping past the obvious lack of atmosphere, there are no food sources. While they have found ice meaning some water is available, it is actually potable? Trying to compare early colonizers of any place on Ear…

THe point is to say that if we can't win the game on easy mode, probably best not to try to win it on hard mode.

Re: Last Flight Out

#155

Post by teachrdan »

fragmede wrote: post #108
zbaxrl wrote: post #56

Another blog, about the french-italian base Concordia. https://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/WinterDC1.html

In years past there was also ABigDeadPlace.com, which has since lapsed due to the author's unfortunate death. Thankfully it was published as a book, _Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica_ by Nicholas Johnson. If brr.fyi strikes your fancy, I bet that book would as well. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40919

I can second Big Dead Place. It's an entertaining and slightly cynical take on the Antarctic, including such details as the head of an American base personally removing the "Made in China" stickers from the souvenirs in the gift shop, and a description of how an item brought inside from the outdoors radiates cold like a campfire radiates heat.

Re: Last Flight Out

#156

Post by jxramos »

zeagle wrote: post #146
sph wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beautiful, thanks for sharing. That penguin walked to his certain death, while his mates swam and caught fish, to their certain death. Sadness for it and his supposed insanity only exists for a fleeting moment. In a long enough timespan, it lived and died like any other penguin has or ever will. Nihilism is not necessarily pessimistic. It presents our universe, and life itself, as a glass half full, but it's up to yo…

I speculate, but I imagine that that type of behavior by a group of individuals on a long timescale where most but not fail is one important mechanism of how remote Polynesian islands, ice age American via Beringia, and other areas of the world get populated.

That’s what I was thinking—-the occasional outlier’s success in pioneering out into the new.

Re: Last Flight Out

#157

Post by mlindner »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #103
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Precious space? Its a pretty big continent That you can't farm on. The farmable bits are in protected, heated shelters that are expensive to build and maintain.

It's roughly a million times easier to grow food on the South Pole than it is to grow it on Mars.

On Mars you have soil you can process into something plants can use (note: needs to be washed free of its perchlorate contamination first) whereas at the South Pole there is no soil that is not buried under hundreds of meters of ice. You can't just create a heated greenhouse on top of the ice because it will melt the ice underneath.

They've already done tests where they've grown plants in Martial soil simulant.

Re: Last Flight Out

#159

Post by vkou »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #88
ryandrake wrote: post #85

Whenever I read about how humans are about to colonize Mars, I think about how much logistics it takes to keep even a single base with a handful of people populated on the South Pole. It's like Mars, but with plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure, plentiful (albeit frozen) water, shielded from radiation, low-latency communication with civilization, and is reachable by air and ground vehicles. Given how difficult…

> how difficult and fraught it is to keep a few people alive down there, how does anyone expect to keep a few people alive on Mars, let alone build a colony there? Necessity is the mother of invention. It makes no sense to use precious Antarctic time and space growing all the food when it's cheaper to ship it in. Similar to how civilizations with a history of littoral shipbuilding figured out ocean-faring--if you're…

Let me pose a different question.

If the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and build a self-sufficient colony in the Antarctic?

It'll get you 90% of the way there for way less than 10% of the effort.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and nobody is doing it because it's not actually necessary. Martian colonisation is more of a religion, than the product of an actual positive cost/benefit analysis.

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