9 ms·

Humans are not biologically adapted to surviving on Mars, and for that reason, any settlement to Mars is bound to fail in the long term.

mandeepj 7y ago
I don't know how fun that would be to roam around with a helmet on your face or live in a giant doom or environment controlled building
- glouwbug 7y ago
  I imagine mars would be terraformed eventually over time. It just needs a little atmosphere to get going
  - krapp 7y ago
    Unfortunately, due to Mars' lower gravity and lack of a magnetically active core, not only can it not hold a substantial atmosphere to begin with, any such atmosphere would inevitably be blown away by solar winds. So there's that. Maybe we can put a big dome around the whole thing like Planet Druidia.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      The timeline for that process is millennia, so if we come up with a continual process for replenishment that works on shorter timeframes, it's maintainable. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-mission-reveals-speed-of-solar-wind-stripping-martian-atmosphere https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-mission-reveals-spee... > MAVEN measurements indicate that the solar wind strips away gas at a rate of about 100 grams (equivalent to roughly 1/4 pound) every second. "Like the theft of a few coins from a cash register every day, the loss becomes significant over time," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "We've seen that the atmospheric erosion increases significantly during solar storms, so we think the loss rate was much higher billions of years ago when the sun was young and more active.”
      - krapp 7y ago
        Fair enough, but that still results in an inherently unstable biosphere.
        0xffff2 7y ago
        The entire solar system is an inherently unstable construct. Luckily for us the instability is on a scale of billions of years. Terraforming mars would be similar. It would be a herculean effort that would take several lifetimes to complete, but the result could be stable on the scale of millions of years without further input. With a bit of maintenance it could well be stable for the life of the solar system.
  - christiansakai 7y ago
    Genuinely curious, is it possible to make atmosphere in Mars just like in Earth? Isn't this because of Earth's unique gravity that we have an atmosphere? I'm not a physicist so please excuse my ignorance.
tardo99 7y ago
Yes. It seems like having robots colonize a planet or the moon would be a lot smarter.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ceejayoz 7y ago
We're not biologically adapted for surviving in Siberia, but we manage it. Hell, you'll get hypothermia on the French Riviera in winter without clothes. Technology has always been our way of expanding into spaces we're not otherwise evolved to cope with.
- ash 7y ago
  In Siberia you can have: breathable air, drinkable water, edible food, safe radiation levels.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Siberia is not survivable without technology. Mars requires more technology, but that's a matter of magnitude, not impossibility.
    - davidiach 7y ago
      This 100%. But you don't need to go to Siberia for Earth to be extremely difficult to survive in. Wherever you are, if you lack technology your chance of surviving is very low. Without clothing, housing, fire, tools it's very, very hard to survive anywhere on Earth. The only reason life is so safe and pleasant right now on this planet is because we changed our environment to make it so. If we were to survive on Mars, we would have to do the same. The advantage with Mars is that we wouldn't have to start from scratch.
    - Cobord 7y ago
      Comprehending orders of magnitude is the problem of humans not groking exponentials.
    - ash 7y ago
      Keeping people warm is the only problem to solve in Siberian winter. Humanity solved it thousands of years ago. Antarctica is cold year around, lacks food, lacks sun light for half a year. Almost no one wants to live permanently in Antarctica. Mars has all of the Antarctica problems, almost zero sun light, lack of air, lack of water, radiation, toxic soil, low gravity, extreme remoteness. It may be theoretically possible for a colony on Mars to survive, but it remains to be seen if enough people would do it in practice.
daxaxelrod 7y ago
Humans are not adapted to live in space either. But because of a couple brave people, we now know a little about how to counteract zero gravity's degradation on the body (Bone and muscle loss -> stricter workout regiment). Bound to fail in the long term is quite the statement to make given our ability to build tools based on data that could increase our chance of survival.
- bergoid 7y ago
  Low gravity is one thing. But the radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field is quite another. People colonizing Mars will need to shield themselves from several types of harmful radiation. Wich means in practice: living underground.
  - daxaxelrod 7y ago
    Could be living underground. Water is also an effective radiation shield. Combined with predictive modeling, we might have a chance. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/index.html#q18 https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/ind...
    - bergoid 7y ago
      Agreed. You could cover your above-ground pressurized habitat with blocks of ice. Or with a thick layer of dirt. But the subjective experience remains about the same as living underground.
      - allannienhuis 7y ago
        There are a lot of people who live indoors almost 100% of the time in the winter in northern climates. A lot of the larger northern cities have underground walkways between buildings with subway access etc. No one wants to even walk across the street when it's 40 below. :) I expect that designs for 'permanently underground/inside' cities would need to include some high-ceiling park-like areas with some bright UV lights, and other considerations, but that sort of thing seems pretty doable. Whether it would be enough to maintain a population's mental heath I guess would need to be seen, but generally speaking I think humans are a pretty adaptable bunch...
pretzell 7y ago
The alternative is we either go extinct on earth or find another earth-like planet to go to, which won't have humans on in and may not be able to support us any better than mars
m4rtink 7y ago
Well, humans are not biologically adapted to surviving outside of a cave of reasonably hot part of ancient Africa. Yet people now manage to survive the winter in Europe just fine using technology. Mars and space settlement in general can be seen as yet another - more challenging - extension of this long term progress. Also possibly in the future one could upgrade people themselves to make living in space easier.

mandeepj 7y ago

I don't know how fun that would be to roam around with a helmet on your face or live in a giant doom or environment controlled building

glouwbug 7y ago
I imagine mars would be terraformed eventually over time. It just needs a little atmosphere to get going
- krapp 7y ago
  Unfortunately, due to Mars' lower gravity and lack of a magnetically active core, not only can it not hold a substantial atmosphere to begin with, any such atmosphere would inevitably be blown away by solar winds. So there's that. Maybe we can put a big dome around the whole thing like Planet Druidia.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The timeline for that process is millennia, so if we come up with a continual process for replenishment that works on shorter timeframes, it's maintainable. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-mission-reveals-speed-of-solar-wind-stripping-martian-atmosphere https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-mission-reveals-spee... > MAVEN measurements indicate that the solar wind strips away gas at a rate of about 100 grams (equivalent to roughly 1/4 pound) every second. "Like the theft of a few coins from a cash register every day, the loss becomes significant over time," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "We've seen that the atmospheric erosion increases significantly during solar storms, so we think the loss rate was much higher billions of years ago when the sun was young and more active.”
    - krapp 7y ago
      Fair enough, but that still results in an inherently unstable biosphere.
      - 0xffff2 7y ago
        The entire solar system is an inherently unstable construct. Luckily for us the instability is on a scale of billions of years. Terraforming mars would be similar. It would be a herculean effort that would take several lifetimes to complete, but the result could be stable on the scale of millions of years without further input. With a bit of maintenance it could well be stable for the life of the solar system.
- christiansakai 7y ago
  Genuinely curious, is it possible to make atmosphere in Mars just like in Earth? Isn't this because of Earth's unique gravity that we have an atmosphere? I'm not a physicist so please excuse my ignorance.

tardo99 7y ago

Yes. It seems like having robots colonize a planet or the moon would be a lot smarter.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ceejayoz 7y ago

We're not biologically adapted for surviving in Siberia, but we manage it. Hell, you'll get hypothermia on the French Riviera in winter without clothes. Technology has always been our way of expanding into spaces we're not otherwise evolved to cope with.

ash 7y ago
In Siberia you can have: breathable air, drinkable water, edible food, safe radiation levels.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Siberia is not survivable without technology. Mars requires more technology, but that's a matter of magnitude, not impossibility.
  - davidiach 7y ago
    This 100%. But you don't need to go to Siberia for Earth to be extremely difficult to survive in. Wherever you are, if you lack technology your chance of surviving is very low. Without clothing, housing, fire, tools it's very, very hard to survive anywhere on Earth. The only reason life is so safe and pleasant right now on this planet is because we changed our environment to make it so. If we were to survive on Mars, we would have to do the same. The advantage with Mars is that we wouldn't have to start from scratch.
  - Cobord 7y ago
    Comprehending orders of magnitude is the problem of humans not groking exponentials.
  - ash 7y ago
    Keeping people warm is the only problem to solve in Siberian winter. Humanity solved it thousands of years ago. Antarctica is cold year around, lacks food, lacks sun light for half a year. Almost no one wants to live permanently in Antarctica. Mars has all of the Antarctica problems, almost zero sun light, lack of air, lack of water, radiation, toxic soil, low gravity, extreme remoteness. It may be theoretically possible for a colony on Mars to survive, but it remains to be seen if enough people would do it in practice.

daxaxelrod 7y ago

Humans are not adapted to live in space either. But because of a couple brave people, we now know a little about how to counteract zero gravity's degradation on the body (Bone and muscle loss -> stricter workout regiment). Bound to fail in the long term is quite the statement to make given our ability to build tools based on data that could increase our chance of survival.

bergoid 7y ago
Low gravity is one thing. But the radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field is quite another. People colonizing Mars will need to shield themselves from several types of harmful radiation. Wich means in practice: living underground.
- daxaxelrod 7y ago
  Could be living underground. Water is also an effective radiation shield. Combined with predictive modeling, we might have a chance. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/index.html#q18 https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/ind...
  - bergoid 7y ago
    Agreed. You could cover your above-ground pressurized habitat with blocks of ice. Or with a thick layer of dirt. But the subjective experience remains about the same as living underground.
    - allannienhuis 7y ago
      There are a lot of people who live indoors almost 100% of the time in the winter in northern climates. A lot of the larger northern cities have underground walkways between buildings with subway access etc. No one wants to even walk across the street when it's 40 below. :) I expect that designs for 'permanently underground/inside' cities would need to include some high-ceiling park-like areas with some bright UV lights, and other considerations, but that sort of thing seems pretty doable. Whether it would be enough to maintain a population's mental heath I guess would need to be seen, but generally speaking I think humans are a pretty adaptable bunch...

pretzell 7y ago

The alternative is we either go extinct on earth or find another earth-like planet to go to, which won't have humans on in and may not be able to support us any better than mars

m4rtink 7y ago

Well, humans are not biologically adapted to surviving outside of a cave of reasonably hot part of ancient Africa. Yet people now manage to survive the winter in Europe just fine using technology. Mars and space settlement in general can be seen as yet another - more challenging - extension of this long term progress. Also possibly in the future one could upgrade people themselves to make living in space easier.