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There might be mitigation strategies. First step: colonize Valles Marineris. (It's as much as 7km below mean surface level, so the atmosphere is going to be co
by cstross 7y ago
There might be mitigation strategies.
First step: colonize Valles Marineris. (It's as much as 7km below mean surface level, so the atmosphere is going to be considerably thicker at the bottom than at surface level: for reference, that's the same height as Mount Everest, although due to the difference in gravity the scale height is higher, meaning you don't get as good a pressurization increase as you would on Earth).
Second step: build residencies by drilling horizontal tunnels into the cliff walls and pressurizing the entrances.
Third step: throw large mylar domes (or even roof) over the floor of the canyon and actively compress the air down there to get it up to a temperature at which crops will grow. Scavenge oxygen produced by photosynthesis from the mostly-CO2 atmosphere using cold traps.
(Your colonists aren't exposed to the solar and cosmic radiation because they're living under a couple of km of rock, and their crops are under almost double ambient atmospheric pressure even before you add active pressurization to the farms.)
Note that Vales Marineris is 4000km long and up to 200km wide in places. It's huge -- ISTR hearing that it has roughly the same land area as Germany (but can't find the source right now).
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoYour comment made me even less hopeful we can colonize Mars. What are the benefits that would drive such colonization? On Earth there were rich resources driving human expansion into new areas. This Mars expansion would be like humans repeatedly trying to live in the Atacama desert but orders of magnitude even more harsh. Mars is constantly trying to kill you, and is fantastically expensive due to the distance to Mars and cost to transport things there. What reason would we have to make us attempt it?
- pvaldes 7y ago> Mars is constantly trying to kill you, And the Earth could be trying to do the same in 100 years.
- cglace 7y agoYou believe earth and mars will be on par in terms of habitability in 100 years? If I were confident I would live that long I would take that bet.
- Udik 7y agoUnless you're thinking of some cosmic catastrophe- and a much worse one than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs-, there is no comparison whatsoever between any disaster that can happen on Earth and the environmental conditions on Mars.
- ColanR 7y agoHonestly? Some megacorp that discovered a profitable reason to be up there could (and probably would) make the whole thing happen. They would have the motivation, and the colonists would be glad for the excuse to get up there.