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Sorry, my point was that even if Mars had a thick atmosphere (after terraforming) you would still need underground bunkers for protection from solar flares and
by baking 10y ago
Sorry, my point was that even if Mars had a thick atmosphere (after terraforming) you would still need underground bunkers for protection from solar flares and perhaps habitation. A thick roof is insufficient because the charged particles travel in a corkscrew path so you need thick shields on all sides. This is because it lacks a magnetic field and a large enough artificial one is impractical.
EDIT: Also at last years trial, Musk said that a hyperloop design on Mars might not need tubes at all since the atmosphere is thin enough.
- baking 10y agoThe minimum pressure in the test track was 0.125 psi (teams using an air cushion could request a higher pressure and presumably if there was a leak the pressure could be higher than the minimum) while the air pressure on Mars is 0.087 psi.
- NamTaf 10y agoRight, I misunderstood what you were saying. Also, yes, the hyperloop isn't directly relevant to Mars for that very reason - the atmosphere is annoyingly thin from a reentry point of view (enough that you have to protect against heating from it, but not enough that it can be used to bleed off all that velocity from orbit) but that means it's not really an issue if you want to push something fast through it. That said, I wasn't making any comment about the hyperloop itself rather the parent post's comments about why digging tunnels on Mars might be necessary. Not sure why my posts attracted downvotes though (not necessarily from you), but whatever.