Mars likely to have enough oxygen to support life: study • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by notheruser » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

throwaway8879 wrote: post #64

rohit2412 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) humans aren't going extinct, given how much we can change our environment to our comfort, human species will survive meteorites and volcanoes. And even if we do, a self sufficient colony in a nuclear bunker or in Antarctica or on the surface of the ocean is likely to survive these events too. Being spacefaring makes no sense for survival, it does for science, but not for survival. projects 2) I would argue that pu…

This sounds like a short-lived view to me and the exact kind of sentiment I hear in the climate-change skeptic circles. It is one thing to have a handful of humans survive in an underground bunker somewhere, and a whole different thing to have the species colonize the Galaxy. One is barely surviving and the other is thriving. You cannot deny that our best bet for long-term survival is to get off this planet. Musk is…

The universe will end eventually and our species will die. Dreaming of keeping the species going is kind of pointless.

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

#182

Post by Symmetry » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 1:45 PM UTC

richardknop wrote: post #139

adrianN wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars gravitiy is not strong enough causing it to very slowly lose gases to the solar wind. Water vapor included.

So how can we Terraform Mars to make it like Earth then? It seems impossible due to the gravity being so small. Even if we melt ice caps and get liquid water running again, it will slowly evaporate to space? How could a colony on Mars then be self sustaining with this problem?

As the other reply mentioned, this is a millions of years sort of problem. But there are two straightforward solutions. First, in the new atmosphere make sure there's enough oxygen to breath so that an ozone layer forms. That's something we want to do anyways. Also, give Mars a magnetic field. That's a stupendously large but straightforward engineering problem, sort of like terraforming is in the first place but smaller.

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

#183

Post by verelo » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #15

verelo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, why fixate on turning one planet into “habitable” while we do the opposite to the one we are already on? I’d like to see us address those issues of society first before we spread our influence across the literal galaxy.

We have to start somewhere that isn’t earth. Interstellar travel over the next 100-1000 years will be a requirement for the next 5000-10000 years if humans expect to survive that long. Starting development now to understand terraforming and building out the primitives that allow for it in the future is something we owe to generations to come.

I really doubt it’s that critical to get to another planet. Or at least, if it is, we could correct that without leaving ie start treating this planet with a little respect.

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

#184

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

yitchelle wrote: post #151

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 am surprised that as travel to Mars is becoming more of a reality, there are not a lot more folks trying to reach Mars for commercial gain. I am correlating this back to when the Europeans are going around the globe and colonising every land mass they can land on. Why are should Mars be any different?

As Elon Musk said you could have crates of cocaine on the surface of Mars ready to be transported back to Earth and it would still make more sense to buy it locally. It's just too expensive right now. Future spacecraft might change that but as with everything else this will come with scale and this scale right now doesn't have enough customers to justify itself.

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

#185

Post by squish78 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

da_chicken wrote: post #174

alex_duf wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, "Oka…

I'm saving this answer. Love it.

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

#186

Post by henriquemaia » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

robotomir wrote: post #136

dagw wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you are forgetting that Earth also has the biggest threat of them all... Humans So will any place we colonize.

Well in the absence of government regulations you could populate the new place with clones of yourself and institute a personal theocracy.

A Little Prince fantasy?

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

#187

Post by Retric » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

wklauss wrote: post #117

fuscy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are terribly designed for space exploration: die quickly, require sustenance, can't handle high G forces, can't handle radiation. I always believed that if humanity is to colonize something, it would be through robots that do all the exploring and mining for us.

Humans were terribly designed to cross the Atlantic by swimming as well, but we designed boats so eventually we did. Yes, robots are a cheaper and more reliable way to explore and extract resources but I doubt mankind will be happy with just that. We like to explore, and expand, and face challenges so I'd bet that no matter the setbacks or price tag, we will eventually prefer to do this things in person. As an altern…

Humans can physically swim from Eurasia to the Americas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Cox

As to your wider point, the ability to breath oxygen and have long term fat stores makes an Atlantic crossing very easy. We moved from one palace with humans to another place with humans, hardly a massive feat of engendering. Meanwhile people in far more primitive craft ended up living in Hawaii (2,200+ miles from the nearest land mass) of all palaces.

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

#188

Post by anywherenotes » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #155

lmm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see any path to colonising the galaxy that doesn't start with colonising the solar system. It's always going to be a long term project, there are always going to be things on earth that look like more immediate priorities, but I want humanity to spread among the stars, and if we don't start now then when?

Personally I think colonizing planets is a waste of time. There's plenty of minerals and water in asteroids and other space junk, and they don't have large gravity wells to deal with. When it comes time to think about colonizing other star systems, it's going to take a really, really long time to get to them and we'll have little idea what their worlds are like. Seems to me it'd be better to work on colonizing space…

Isn't a planet just a big spaceship with things built in? You can dig inside it for things, you don't need to capture asteroids, planets can travel through space and have a protective shield - the atmosphere, and Earth is already traveling at huge speeds, which are at very least on the level with the fastest spaceships we can currently make. Sure guiding a planet maybe harder than a spaceship made specifically for that purpose, but all the benefits of having resources right underneath, and planets are a proven space ships, with billions of years of testing, no man-made spaceship can match that for billions of years.

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

#189

Post by feefie » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

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 might enjoy this 4 minute video of Dr. Robert Zubrin giving three reasons why we should go to Mars.

I find it very inspirational/motivational to re-energize my focus on my own work, even though I'm not working on anything Mars related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plTRdGF-ycs

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

#190

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

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…

If we colonize mars, and reach the point where we have a full fledged society there it can act as a means of quickly recovering from a catastrophe on earth. The benefit of a fully functioning city/nation sending resources to assist a ravaged earth would boost earths recovery time if the worst were to happen.

Secondly, it acts as a separate bed of innovation. On earth we solve for earth problems, on mars they would solve for different problems, potentially leading to scientific and tech breakthroughs we would otherwise overlook.