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This just shows that we have to do a lot of tedious testing before there is a chance to go to Mars. Even pretty innocent looking things can cause huge problems

• jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago
  I always get downvoted to oblivion for pointing this out, but the Elon Musk hype squad is just not being realistic about how far we are from establishing a permanent colony on mars. Severe issues remain.
  • gryfft 8y ago
    A Mars colony is something humanity should start thinking seriously about once we successfully run a production-grade lunar colony for about a decade-- long enough to recognize and tackle the worst bugs.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      True. On moon you still have a chance to quickly send some new parts which you can’t do on mars.
      • aetherson 8y ago
        Quicker, sure. Though not particularly cheaper. And the moon has a bunch of problems that Mars doesn't, like 14 day nights. The moon's advantages are probably seem intuitively somewhat larger than they actually are.
    • JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Heck how about a colony on top of Mt Everest? Its actually more congenial there, than on Mars. And a hell of a lot closer.
      • maxxxxx 8y ago
        An autonomous station in Antarctica or maybe the Atacama desert would probably be pretty realistic.
        • JoeAltmaier 8y ago
          Not as good as Everest - there's still breathable air in the desert. And its warmer in those places.
      • eximius 8y ago
        Much less flat, though.
        • JoeAltmaier 8y ago
          Mars, flat? It has the highest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons. Plenty of rugged places on Mars that outshine anything Earth can put up. But yeah, we probably wouldn't put a base those places, not initially. Though I wonder if a volcano base would tell us more about the planet's interior...and its fairly flat including lots of high walls to protect against winds/storms? https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Olympus_Mons_-_the_caldera_in_close-up https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Expres...
    • aliswe 8y ago
      A sustainable colony on earth would be a good pilot
      • spacenick88 8y ago
        But without saying "this is a test for Mars" such a colony will never be built. Even in Antarctica shipping in supplies once a year is just sooo much easier.
    • asark 8y ago
      I understand a Martian colony as a kind of romantic dream. I understand a longish-term Martian outpost for scientific purposes. I don't get a Martian colony as a serious proposal for pretty much any reason. It's like 1000x more expensive, dangerous, and inconvenient than colonizing any number of very-inhospitable places on Earth. To survive planetary disaster? Well 1) Mars is already worse than most imaginable post-disaster Earths would likely be, and 2) you could build a couple highly-survivable emergency bunker-habitats and pay people to live in them (in shifts, say, so there are always enough inside to ensure survival but they're not stuck in there full time) for, surely, less money than Martian colony establishment & maintenance would cost. You might still screw it up and they might not succeed if things really got that bad, but I'd bet their odds are better than any Martian colony we're likely to manage to put up in the next 100 years.
      • jacoblambda 8y ago
        While imo the moon is probably a better immediate target for approaching space fairing status, I think Mars does provide useful opportunities. I think on the architectural & engineering side developing structures for Mars would provide immense progress in understanding sustainability for life on earth or elsewhere. This has applications for doomsday scenarios if you care about that as well as just general efficiency and sustainability of structures. Likewise I think Mars has benefit as a potential launch point for space travel as it has an abundance of fuel and a significantly lighter gravity well. Another part is the whole "necessity is the mother of invention" aspect. There is no quicker way to progress than doing. Yes it may be horribly dangerous but trial by fire has been repeatedly shown as a very effective way of exploring the unknown.
      • merlincorey 8y ago
        > 2) you could build a couple highly-survivable emergency bunker-habitats and pay people to live in them (in shifts, say, so there are always enough inside to ensure survival but they're not stuck in there full time) for, surely, less money than Martian colony establishment & maintenance would cost. We could call these bunker-habitats "vaults", maybe. Then proceed to raise some capital for our startup and eventually call it "Vault-Tec"[0]. > You might still screw it up and they might not succeed if things really got that bad, but I'd bet their odds are better than any Martian colony we're likely to manage to put up in the next 100 years. We could further fund it by conducting various sociological experiments. What could go wrong?[1] [0] https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vault-Tec_Corporation https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vault-Tec_Corporation [1] https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vault https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vault
    • simonh 8y ago
      The trouble is many of the problems of living in those environments are very different. Mars does have an atmosphere, which means cheap abundant CO2. It has much stronger gravity. The numerology is completely different. The moon’s vacuum environment is much harsher with starker temperature differences. It looks like sharp moon dust will be a significant abrasion risk to equipment - not a problem on Mars. Also while both have water ice, the methods for extraction will likely be very different.
      • DanBC 8y ago
        > It looks like sharp moon dust will be a significant abrasion risk to equipment - not a problem on Mars Mars has dust fine enough to be effectively aerosolised, and the low pressure makes removing it a bit tricky. NASA has some ideas. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/kennedy-scientists-developing-technology-to-remove-martian-dust https://www.nasa.gov/feature/kennedy-scientists-developing-t...
        • notabee 8y ago
          The Martian dust also contains a lot of toxic perchlorate, which could cause thyroid issues if it gets into the habitats. https://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals.html https://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals...
    • ajuc 8y ago
      We can make sustainable space habitats now. They solve the same problems a Mars colony do, for a fraction of cost, with no huge rockets, months-long trips, and certain death if something goes wrong.
      • TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Except having a solid ground under your feet. We haven't really used spin gravity in practice yet, so there are technical problems to solve there.
  • spacenick88 8y ago
    I don't see why this realization should be regarded as a counter argument to establishing a Mars colony. It's really really hard and a lot of problems need to be solved. The most important thing for me is that most if not all of these problems are extremely relevant on earth and for dealing with climate change and overpopulation. Now one could say that we should then solve them for Earth first, but that's not how things work. We only have solar panels today because there wasn't any better way to power satellites. Earth makes things so easy that we won't go for >99% water reclamation, 0 waste green houses and so on.
    • jcranmer 8y ago
      > I don't see why this realization should be regarded as a counter argument to establishing a Mars colony. It's really really hard and a lot of problems need to be solved. The point is that, right now in 2019, we do not know how to build a self-sustaining colony outside of Earth's biosphere. If you want such a thing to exist, you have to do a lot of research first to enable it. But, in general, the space enthusiast crowd isn't interested in pushing for that kind of research. And without that research, a lot of the arguments for space travel are very moot.
      • spacenick88 8y ago
        I'm such a space enthusiast and I'd absolutely love a Biodome 3. That said, I think that people tend to confuse "sustainable colony" and "self-sustaining colony". If it ever comes to it, we will have a sustained presence on Mars for decades before it becomes self-sustaining. That said even with supplies from Earth a Mars base will need a lot of sustainability tech that can be applied on earth too.
  • njarboe 8y ago
    If people look at creating a Mars colony as a voluntary extreme sport, like climbing Everest, BASE jumping, or wingsuit flying, with their corresponding death rates, you might understand the motivation of the people wanting to go to mars a bit better. For those types of people risking death to do something extreme is fun and going to Mars would be both very high risk and extreme. A safety first attitude won't build a spacefaring civilization, but hopefully the Elon Musk anti-hype squad does not stop people from using their own resources to try and build one. You won't know the what the severe issues are till you are there and trying to stay alive will be a great motivator to solve problems quickly. Simulating Mars gravity on Earth is impossible so Mars is going to be the best place to build a working model of a Mars colony.
    • apocalypstyx 8y ago
      > For those types of people risking death to do something extreme is fun and going to Mars would be both very high risk and extreme. Getting there would be. Living there would be constant danger plus tedium, the space equivalent of working on a farm barely making ends meet for the rest of your life. Such lives don't have enough dopamine hits to keep people of such dispositions around long.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        Getting there would be lots of tedium, too.
        • stcredzero 8y ago
          One could try to turn it into a nonstop zero-G orgy. But that would become lots of tedium too.
        • TeMPOraL 8y ago
          Real life in the West is an unending stream of tedium, ocassionally interrupted by something exciting on TV. Humans, somehow, manage.
      • peterlk 8y ago
  • mikeash 8y ago
    If (and this is still a big if) you can send a hundred tons to Mars for a few dozen million dollars, a Mars colony should become totally doable. A self-sufficient colony is a whole different matter, but it doesn’t have to be self-sufficient.
  • rdl 8y ago
    For me, virtually all of those are worth solving through whatever effort is required, as it gains one advantage you can't get on earth: You're very far away from all the people who can't/won't/etc. go to Mars. For the foreseeable future you'd still be subject to needing resources sent periodically, but this would at least be a pretty limited interface. Hopefully science would be a good enough export to pay for it, otherwise some kind of nonprofit endowment would be needed.
• adrianN 8y ago
  IMHO Biosphere 2 was not a realistic experiment for a self-sustained off-world colony. They tried to to mimic a complex self-regulating biosphere and failed. The pragmatic approach is going with a tightly controlled artificial ecosystem with the absolute minimum number of species and heavy technological involvement. The russian BIOS-3 is a much better model for a Mars colony.
  • mirimir 8y ago
    Yes, this is the key point. Biosphere 2 had too many conflicting goals. Species diversity is cool and all. But if your goal is even century-scale self-sufficiency, you arguably you don't need pieces of so many ecosystems. I mean, what do bush babies really do for you? Cockroaches are a tough problem. And management of soil microbes. But maybe the most practical solution is to gamma sterilize all bulk inputs, and carefully seed with just what you want.
    • stcredzero 8y ago
      Cockroaches are a tough problem. Isn't there something we want that eats them?
      • mirimir 8y ago
        Hmmm. I find: frogs, toads, lizards, opossums and other insects.[0] Not many people eat insects. But the others, sure. https://www.peststrategies.com/pest-guides/cockroach-guides/what-eats-cockroaches/ https://www.peststrategies.com/pest-guides/cockroach-guides/...
• Symmetry 8y ago
  The particular atmospheric problem here would have been pretty easy to solve on Mars since settlers would be allowed to exchange gasses with the atmosphere. But that wouldn't work on a space station. Come to think of it, I wonder if Space Lab, Mir, and the ISS have had their share of unexpected gas mixture related close calls.
• deleted 8y ago
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