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Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

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Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#171

Post by mr_overalls »

alex_duf wrote: post #119
fuscy wrote: post #99

I never understood why colonizing Mars is needed. Even if a meteorite hits Earth or Yellowstone erupts, Earth would be more "hospitable" to life than any other planet in our solar system because Earth has a lot of resources that are right under our noses: breathable atmosphere, radiation shielding, easily mined metals and organic matter. It's much easier to build and maintain a bio-dome in the Sahara desert, Arctic r…

>I never understood why colonizing Mars is needed. Personally I see quite a few positive things behind colonising Mars. I think it's not about having a "backup", it's not about resources (or in a really long time) it's about the challenge. If we can put our best engineers to solve how we re-use and recycle water, how we grow crops in extreme condition, how to control the O2 CO2 cycle (at a larger scale than on the sp…

Not to mention that Mars gives humanity an opportunity to improve skills essential to expanding to other solar systems.

Besides the obvious - large-scale terraforming - a "practice" settlement of Mars gives us an opportunity to innovate and refine practically every engineering skill, form of social organization, or general skillful endeavor in humanity's repertoire.

Metallurgy, genetics, geology, farming, medicine, psychology - all of these fields are bound to discover new phenomenon and methodologies under the constraints and conditions of an alien planet.

Not to be glib, but necessity is mother of invention. And there is no necessity as powerful as the drive for survival.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#172

Post by ataturk »

fuscy wrote: post #99

I never understood why colonizing Mars is needed. Even if a meteorite hits Earth or Yellowstone erupts, Earth would be more "hospitable" to life than any other planet in our solar system because Earth has a lot of resources that are right under our noses: breathable atmosphere, radiation shielding, easily mined metals and organic matter. It's much easier to build and maintain a bio-dome in the Sahara desert, Arctic r…

You must be descended from the Africans that never left Africa? Europeans who never left Europe? There are people who end up comfortable in their rut someplace where life is easy but that quickly becomes a backwater--the old world, yesterday's familiar boring thing. Then there are the restless explorers who want to see what is just over the next rise, cheat death, and become closer to God. Human curiosity, human adventure, conquest--that's what has brought us to now. And yes, much of it was extremely bloody.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#173

Post by v_lisivka »

richardknop wrote: post #137
coldtea wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easier and much more efficient to get resources such as raw materials and metals from the ground. Being in the air without option of landing means you are completely dependent on import of raw materials to repair/expand your habitat. Very inefficient as well as not economical. Assuming you overcome all the other difficulties and have a colony on Venus' skies, what prevents you from having ships that can go to…

It was my understanding that the surface of Venus is infernal, with super high temperature (hotter than Mercury which is closer to sun), rains of sulphuric acid and very high density. Building machines capable of landing there and being able to return seems like a tall order. Since for humans it is inconceivable to go down to Venus ground (they'd die immediately from the heat), mining materials and then lifting again…

High temperature and strong winds on surface can be beneficial to machinery. You can fight with them or you can use their help to reach goal. IMHO, an AI system and physical simulator can develop some pretty interesting ideas how to use these conditions for efficient mining and transportation.

First idea: use wind to power instruments directly via mechanical or pneumatic link.

Second idea: use silicon to produce machinery and tools.

Third idea: high temperature means it's much easier to melt ores, some metal can be collected directly in liquid form.

Fourth idea: air balloons should be very inexpensive way of transport ores to top of atmosphere, where they can be picked up by colonists.

Fifth idea: use mechanical computers to control equipment. It's not so hard to create surfaces which will perform calculations required to navigation, landing, mining, and floating back to surface. Mechanical computers can be crawled out of silicon, with liquid metal for transportation of messages, and vibration can be used to power such computer. 100kHz vibration is easy to reach. At 100kHz, it will be equal to 1kHz electronic computer.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#174

Post by da_chicken »

alex_duf wrote: post #119
fuscy wrote: post #99

I never understood why colonizing Mars is needed. Even if a meteorite hits Earth or Yellowstone erupts, Earth would be more "hospitable" to life than any other planet in our solar system because Earth has a lot of resources that are right under our noses: breathable atmosphere, radiation shielding, easily mined metals and organic matter. It's much easier to build and maintain a bio-dome in the Sahara desert, Arctic r…

>I never understood why colonizing Mars is needed. Personally I see quite a few positive things behind colonising Mars. I think it's not about having a "backup", it's not about resources (or in a really long time) it's about the challenge. If we can put our best engineers to solve how we re-use and recycle water, how we grow crops in extreme condition, how to control the O2 CO2 cycle (at a larger scale than on the sp…

It's kind of like learning how to program when you don't have any task to complete. Especially for a data store of some kind. If you've ever tried to learn SQL, even if you've got an example database, you'll find it's incredibly difficult not because the syntax is all that difficult or the logic is particularly daunting. No, you'll find it's difficult because you don't have any questions to answer. You'll feel, "Okay, now what?" When you try to make up a question to answer, it's difficult to tell if you're answering the question correctly. You need the focus that a real problem gives you. You need the guidance that understanding what the data means gives you (or someone else) to know if your answer is right or wrong.

It's easy to see what a tool is designed to do. It's very difficult to see what a tool can be used for and why you might want to use it that way, let alone when you might want to deviate from that or find alternatives due to limitations or new requirements. Or when you might need entirely different tools.

We learn best when we're working on a problem. Just like going to the moon required solving a lot of problems which led to major advancements in the 20th century, going to Mars, colonizing Mars, and colonizing the moon have even more challenges.

Goals give research and development a clear purpose beyond, "I dunno, make something people want that we can sell."

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#175

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

fuscy wrote: post #99

I never understood why colonizing Mars is needed. Even if a meteorite hits Earth or Yellowstone erupts, Earth would be more "hospitable" to life than any other planet in our solar system because Earth has a lot of resources that are right under our noses: breathable atmosphere, radiation shielding, easily mined metals and organic matter. It's much easier to build and maintain a bio-dome in the Sahara desert, Arctic r…

>Earth at it's worst is much better than anywhere else in our solar system.

Today, yes. But the first step to terraforming a dead planet is to colonize a dead planet. If we take the first steps and commit to our colony there, maybe someday we can have a second Earth.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#176

Post by stallmanite »

fuscy wrote: post #99

I never understood why colonizing Mars is needed. Even if a meteorite hits Earth or Yellowstone erupts, Earth would be more "hospitable" to life than any other planet in our solar system because Earth has a lot of resources that are right under our noses: breathable atmosphere, radiation shielding, easily mined metals and organic matter. It's much easier to build and maintain a bio-dome in the Sahara desert, Arctic r…

What about an impact like what formed the moon? If the entire crust liquifies, I have a hard time believing it would be easier to survive on lava-earth than Mars.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#177

Post by lmm »

qbrass wrote: post #167
lmm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do need to be colonizing other stars within a quarter billion years or so though. The sun won't last forever! If we don't start now, when? It's the kind of thing that you can always put off for another million years.

We should have done it a million years ago. Once we had fire and the ability to sharpen rocks, there's no excuse not to start colonizing the galaxy.

We spread as far as we could, with the technology we had at the time. Going over the next hill, over the next ocean, and so on was for the best even when we hadn't fixed all the problems at home.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#179

Post by Yptur »

coldtea wrote: post #113
richardknop wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier and much more efficient to get resources such as raw materials and metals from the ground. Being in the air without option of landing means you are completely dependent on import of raw materials to repair/expand your habitat. Very inefficient as well as not economical. It might be cheaper to get to Venus than to Mars but on Mars you can actually start mining and building factories on the ground. At some…

> It's easier and much more efficient to get resources such as raw materials and metals from the ground. Being in the air without option of landing means you are completely dependent on import of raw materials to repair/expand your habitat. Very inefficient as well as not economical. Assuming you overcome all the other difficulties and have a colony on Venus' skies, what prevents you from having ships that can go to…

The atmosphere of Venus on ground level is incredibly hostile. 467 °C temperature, pressure equal to 900 m underwater, winds with speeds of 100 m/s and covered in clouds of sulphuric acid it even has lightning strikes. The longest we have been able to keep a probe operational on the surface of Venus was 2 hours.While the gravity is slightly lower than on earth the pressure itself would make it incredible hard to launch anything from the surface back up. It's like launching an armoured rocket from 900 m below the sea while being bombarded by lightning and acid eating away at you + lifting up resources at the same time.

Re: Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study

#180

Post by zanny »

beamatronic wrote: post #13
dymk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely terraforming a barren wasteland is going to be easier than terraforming a (relative) oasis of life! But in all seriousness, the point of colonizing Mars is not to be a replacement for Earth (although redundancy is quite motivating). It's because colonization and population growth has been our MO for the last 200,000 years.

It’s because Mars is a fixer-upper. You cannot make it worse.

I'd advise never telling mankind they can't make something worse. Humanity will surprise you.
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