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What advantage does living in the Martian underground have compared to living in a free flying space colony somewhere in the asteroid belt? With the latter arr
by bergoid 9y ago
What advantage does living in the Martian underground have compared to living in a free flying space colony somewhere in the asteroid belt?
With the latter arrangement you have lots of minable resources at hand, only a small delta-v away from you. Ik you are ok with long delivery times, transporting them around doesn't cost you much energy.
Whereas on Mars, everything is much more energy-intensive, both mining raw materials and moving them through your industrial processing chain.
Space-based manufacturing is still an alien concept to us and while it comes with its own challenges, the vacuum and zero-gravity of space offers a lot of advantages too:
http://www.permanent.com/space-industry-environment.html http://www.permanent.com/space-industry-environment.html
- blacksmith_tb 9y agoI agree overall, but living in a hole on Mars does offer at least somewhat better shielding against radiation, and people are strangely fondly of gravity, too... (not that you couldn't tackle those both in your hollowed-out asteroid).
- jlebrech 9y agoi'm sure mining including refining would be easier to do on mars. Ok, I just read that link. they need to make a space forge that'll fit on a falcon 9.