A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams • Hacker News Board

Re: A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams

#11

Post by Valgrim » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 3:11 AM UTC

techdragon wrote: post #8

richardjam73 wrote: post #2

Until we can establish independant colonies in Antartica and under the oceans we shouldn't even consider outer space. There are just so many technological steps that need to be accomplished first.

Nah, the thing is there’s different engineering demands on those locations, and a legal issue for Antarctica as well. - shifting ice moving at different rates on a the ice cap and even more so on glaciers, and legally we consider it a protected environment we explicitly don’t want to colonise - the oceans is corrosive, plant and animal life is everywhere from biofilms to barnacles your stuff is going to become covere…

I like your vibe.

Regarding your last suggestion, what you actually want is a skyhook to catch the payload, with Phobos at the center. You can even use Phobos regolith to manufacture the basalt fiber required to build the cable.

Re: A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams

#12

Post by yetihehe » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 9:39 AM UTC

phs318u wrote: post #10

lucas_membrane wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to terra-forming of Mars, i.e. creating a self-sustaining biosphere out in the open there, all settlements there will be underground or so very well sealed to keep oxygen in and radiation out to be faux-underground. Who in the world wants to go that far to spend the rest of their life in a hole in the ground? If we can figure out how to put a sustainable society on Mars, why not Earth first? That would be 100x…

Agreed. We can't even collectively agree on how or who might pay for the reduction in atmospheric CO2 here on earth (hell, we can't even agree on the need to do so). That cost and impact on the global economy of doing that is a drop in the ocean compared to what would be required to terraform another planet.

> hell, we can't even agree on the need to do so

I think that is THE main problem. Once we all agree, there will be money put to this and problem will eventually be solved.

Re: A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams

#13

Post by dsq » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 9:49 AM UTC

As usual, things will happen much differently. Space exploration is likely to be taken over or driven by national security motivations, all idealism shoved aside.

Re: A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams

#14

Post by herewulf » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 10:31 AM UTC

science4sail wrote: post #4

I agree with the authors' argument that our knowledge of how to actually live in, as opposed to visit, space is seriously lacking. The current generation of space nerds (like Musk) tend to focus on transportation systems and neglect equally important "soft" disciplines like ecology (e.g. how to build CELSS[0]) and sociology (e.g. how to build a culture willing to maintain life support systems for generations). Howeve…

> how to build a culture willing to maintain life support systems for generations

Do we not already have a culture willing to maintain culinary water systems, sewage, the electrical grid, etc? Sure it's not as bad if one of those goes offline sad with life support but we pretty well can and do take for granted that those things are always there. And pretty rarely are any of these offline everywhere in a given area. There's plenty of redundancy.

Speaking of which, no doubt some thought will be needed for non Earthly natural disasters.

Re: A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams

#15

Post by w0de0 » Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

herewulf wrote: post #14

science4sail wrote: post #4

I agree with the authors' argument that our knowledge of how to actually live in, as opposed to visit, space is seriously lacking. The current generation of space nerds (like Musk) tend to focus on transportation systems and neglect equally important "soft" disciplines like ecology (e.g. how to build CELSS[0]) and sociology (e.g. how to build a culture willing to maintain life support systems for generations). Howeve…

> how to build a culture willing to maintain life support systems for generations Do we not already have a culture willing to maintain culinary water systems, sewage, the electrical grid, etc? Sure it's not as bad if one of those goes offline sad with life support but we pretty well can and do take for granted that those things are always there. And pretty rarely are any of these offline everywhere in a given area. T…

Water systems and sewage are luxuries, not an ecology.

The Earth and its ecology is a life support system - it’s the only one that’s ever existed for longer than a human generation or two. Though human maintenance is not required - we are inherent to the system - we’ve nonetheless rapidly figured out a way to break it so grievously our own part in it is endangered.

Re: A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams

#16

Post by credit_guy » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 12:02 AM UTC

lucas_membrane wrote: post #9

avmich wrote: post #7

> Chris writes for Ars Technica's science section. A physicist by day and science writer by night, he specializes in quantum physics and optics. Respectable background. > the only clear evidence for how space affects humans is weighted quite strongly against going. That balance could be changed by doing the work to discover the answers to some of the questions posed in the book... So, maybe do the work beforehand? Th…

Prior to terra-forming of Mars, i.e. creating a self-sustaining biosphere out in the open there, all settlements there will be underground or so very well sealed to keep oxygen in and radiation out to be faux-underground. Who in the world wants to go that far to spend the rest of their life in a hole in the ground? If we can figure out how to put a sustainable society on Mars, why not Earth first? That would be 100x…

> and radiation out

About that, I wonder if you can't build a local magnetic field to protect you from radiation. With the much lower gravity and very thin atmosphere and no seismic activity, it should be fairly easy to build ultra-tall antenna-like towers, like hundreds of meters tall. You can then put some cables between them, pass some high voltage potential, and maybe you can deflect the cosmic rays enough to keep a certain area more or less radiation free. In that area then you put some pressurized tents, and you don't need to live underground.