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Even the Moon. ISS visitors are selected very, very carefully to minimise these risks. But as soon as you get a slightly larger colony further from Earth, menta
by TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Even the Moon. ISS visitors are selected very, very carefully to minimise these risks. But as soon as you get a slightly larger colony further from Earth, mental health is going to become a problem.
Which is why Mars is a tougher project than it seems. The ferry part is relatively easy compared to the incredibly difficult challenge of building a self-sustaining stable ecosystem that can survive on a manageably small umbilical to Earth, and the even harder challenge of building a political system that doesn't explode into factional war, regular suicides, and/or mad dictatorship.
Musk is already a little eccentric and doesn't seem like someone with the world's highest EQ. I suspect he's underestimating how hard it's going to be to make a colony work.
- permo-w 6y agoI think the one of the main problems, lack of sunlight, shouldn’t be a huge issue on mars. Nutrition and a sufficiently large social, group on the other hand, may be a problem
- davedx 6y agoMars has significantly less sunlight (in terms of irradiance) than Earth
- animal531 6y agoTrue, but a day on Mars is pretty much the same length as on Earth, which is great for the human cycle. Googling says that lux 100k on Earth would be roughly 44k on Mars, so a lot dimmer, but still better than months of darkness on end. Now the real question is whether colonists can/will live on the surface? But then a secondary addition, due to modern technology we now have much better lighting that can approximate natural lighting, even underground.
- loufe 6y agoIn every book I've read on the subject they mentioned going underground to protect against radiation. The lack of a thick magnetosphere apparently means any surface equipment / personel would be subject to unacceptably high quantities of solar radiation. I guess living in a hole on another planet isn't as glorious as giant geodesic glass domes but I sure hope somebody does sign up for it.
- Anarch157a 6y agoColonists would still have to deal with months of almost darkness during dust storms.
- inglor_cz 6y agoThat might be more of a problem in the higher latitudes, but on Martian equator, sunlight at noon will be comparable to sunlight at noon somewhere around the Baltic Sea - still perfectly fine. Also, Martian atmosphere is thinner and blocks less light than ours. (Unfortunately it also does not prevent harmful UV rays from reaching the surface.) One possible problem not discussed would be the giant dust storms that can cover large tracts of the planet for weeks. We don't have this kind of weather on our cradle planet.
- mkl 6y ago> lack of sunlight, shouldn’t be a huge issue on mars. Mars only gets 43% as much sunlight as Earth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars). On top of that, Mars's lack of a magnetic field like Earth's makes cosmic radiation there worse to the point that colonies will likely be underground, or behind heavy shielding aboveground: https://phys.org/news/2016-11-bad-mars.html https://phys.org/news/2016-11-bad-mars.html
- permo-w 6y agoI stand corrected
- agumonkey 6y agoWell war is probably very healthy. In a way
- snarf21 6y agoI agree. This is what I don't get. We don't have a real permanent colony in space. We don't have a real permanent colony on the moon. Mars is so much further away with less access to resources. It is fine to goal to someday get to Mars but we should have a plan for sustainable living in orbit, then on the Moon, and that will help us know how to get to Mars.