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I don’t see why people are so excited about Mars. 1. For one there’s the perchlorates. Basically the dust is poison. 2. After that, there’s pressure or I s

I don’t see why people are so excited about Mars. 1. For one there’s the perchlorates. Basically the dust is poison. 2. After that, there’s pressure or I suppose the lack there of basically You might as well be in space. 3. Solar panels don’t work for shit on Mars, because it’s so much further away in the inverse square law is a bastard. 4. It’s a long ass way away. 5. The lower gravity has implications long term for having babies. Like, I think we should explore space, and become a multi planetary species, but I don’t know that Mars is the place for a viable long-term colony. I’m much more partial to Venus-cloud-cities or something similar.

AdieuToLogic 2y ago
Perhaps #6 could be that Mars does not currently have a magnetic field like this planet does[0]. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars
- piloto_ciego 2y ago
  This should be #6 - you’re right.
- ninkendo 2y ago
  Yup, the only real way we could ever set up a long term habitat on mars would be to do it underground to shield from the radiation. The only way we could maybe justify the huge pain in the ass it would be to stay there long term, is if we treated it as a purposeful scientific mission with a goal of looking for signs of (potentially ancient) life, and accepted that there’s nothing else useful we could really do there. Whether this is worth it is questionable. What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars.
  - doctorhandshake 2y ago
    Granted it doesn’t look like low-hanging fruit but never, ever is a very long time.
    - AdieuToLogic 2y ago
      >> What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars. > Granted it doesn’t look like low-hanging fruit but never, ever is a very long time. I believe the applicable qualifier here is, "on the surface of the planet." And since this would relegate any long-term occupation to be subterranean, the GP's assertion is difficult to refute.
      - doctorhandshake 2y ago
        The problems are many but the way I see it, we’ve had math for Newtonian mechanics for about 350 years and today we’re flying helicopters on Mars. Long enough term, hard things are possible, if we don’t kill ourselves first.
        ninkendo 2y ago
        “If we don’t kill ourselves first” is doing all the heavy lifting here. I’m not convinced that more time helps us, given that civilization itself is very fragile and we are continually a moment away from nuclear holocaust ending everything we’ve worked to achieve. And that’s not even bringing up the damage we’re doing to the environment we derive all this prosperity from.
  - kibwen 2y ago
    > What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars. Terraforming Mars isn't completely impossible. It's well within the realm of possibility... given about 10,000 years of continuous effort.
    - avmich 2y ago
      You'd think Venus would be much worse in this regard than Mars. Then you get these suggestions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI - and start thinking...
      - zrm 2y ago
        We could plausibly land a human on Mars within our lifetimes and they wouldn't immediately die. To get Venus to that point would take minimum hundreds, more likely thousands of years. Which is neat, but between the two it implies something about the better place to start.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    I wouldn't say never. All the elements necessary to sustain life are present. With a certain level of tech and energy production it becomes viable. Not any time soon, though.
  - tjpnz 2y ago
    You could also ionize particles from the surface of Phobos and then accelerate them so they create a plasma torus along its orbit. This would create a magnetic field but we'll probably already be venturing outside of the solar system by the time we could do it. https://www.universetoday.com/153368/an-absolutely-bonkers-plan-to-give-mars-an-artificial-magnetosphere/ https://www.universetoday.com/153368/an-absolutely-bonkers-p...
bicebird 2y ago
Yeah I always like the sound of a Venus colony more, similar gravity being one of the main benefits but guess being stuck in a habitat in the clouds doesn't satisfy the same explorative instinct as Mars where you could actually walk on a new land
- piloto_ciego 2y ago
  Not immediately, but we could put a gigantor solar panel up as a sun shade and literally freeze out the CO2 on Venus and beam all the power to earth.
  - AdieuToLogic 2y ago
    Wouldn't it be far easier to solve our own problems here than to engineer a solution which could make Venus habitable?
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Looking at the current state of humanity, I don't think so.
      - majormajor 2y ago
        Are you letting ChatGPT do all the engineering and construction for Venus or are you gonna run into those pesky "human" problems there too?
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        If all the Venus-related activities are controlled by a single political entity, those pesky human problems probably won't be a big problem.
        gravescale 2y ago
        Indeed, when opening a hatch and allowing scalding ultra-high-pressure sulphuric acid into the habitat is an option, dissent will be fairly easily handled!
skissane 2y ago
> 1. For one there’s the perchlorates. Basically the dust is poison. Add water: perchlorate dissolves readily in water, so by bathing the dust in water, you remove the perchlorate from the dust and transfer it to waste water. You can then process the waste water further to remove the perchlorate from it and recycle it. (Assume this is happening inside a pressurised habitat/greenhouse/airlock where water can be liquid.) Another option is heating it, which decomposes the perchlorate, liberating oxygen There are also microorganisms which consume perchlorate
- doug_durham 2y ago
  Heating perchlorate also liberates chlorine and other chlorine compounds. That doesn't sound great. Also water isn't exactly easy to come by on Mars. I doubt there will be a whole lot of bathing going on.
  - yinser 2y ago
    https://www.space.com/mars-water-ice-equator-frozen-ocean https://www.space.com/mars-water-ice-equator-frozen-ocean
  - skissane 2y ago
    > Heating perchlorate also liberates chlorine and other chlorine compounds. That doesn't sound great. I think the main thing it produces other than oxygen is HCl. Filter the produced gas through water, the water will absorb the HCl and start to turn into hydrochloric acid. Then we just need to add a base such as NaOH to neutralise the acid. (Not sure what bases are readily available on Mars but I’m sure people will be able to come up with something.) > Also water isn't exactly easy to come by on Mars. I doubt there will be a whole lot of bathing going on. There is evidence that Mars contains substantial quantities of subterranean water ice, at varying depths and ease of access. SpaceX’s plan for fuelling Starship for return to Earth is to manufacture CH4 using atmospheric CO2 and mined H2O. If they manage to mine enough H2O to produce the fuel to refuel a Starship, they’ll have enough H2O to fill swimming pools for the crew to swim in - and to rinse perchlorate out of the soil.
shiroiushi 2y ago
The problem with Venus cloud cities is: what's the purpose? What are people going to do there? Sit around and write software? At least on Mars, you could potentially do mining. On Venus, you can't do anything really, because you'd have no access to the natural resources there. So what's the point? The Moon is the only place that really makes any sense at this point. It's close, it probably has lava tubes, it has lots of natural resources for mining, it would be relatively easy to set up habitats and maybe do things like build low-g factories (could be many industrial applications there that we haven't thought of), and aside from being airless, the surface isn't going to kill you like Venus will.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >At least on Mars, you could potentially do mining. You can also take that idea further and just do mining in space. One of the most interesting regions is simply cislunar space. Human development there means you can haul asteroids in, you could potentially move polluting industry there, do science in environments that you can't do on earth, and so on. It's much safer than being stranded far away, it's relatively easy to get people back to earth, etc. The entire idea of going to another planet simply has the huge problem that you need to waste a ton of energy to get things off the damn planet again so really why not just built habitats in space.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    This is exactly my position. It would be easier to just build habitats (like O'Neal cylinders) in space that have the exact parameters you want, rather than trying to terraform worlds like Venus to be somewhat-habitable after millennia. And yes, asteroid mining looks very promising. Facilities on the Moon might be good for this industry, by providing a place with some gravity to do work, and not be worried about environmental issues (or an atmosphere to get in the way of transport). And it's not far from Earth, so you can take all the products of asteroid mining and easily ship them to where they'll be used on Earth, or launch them out into orbit to build space habitats.
thesagan 2y ago
And Earth is way cooler and it's right here. I can see little dinosaurs flying and singing outside my window at the moment. Cool.
kleton 2y ago
Searching for "bacteria use perchlorate as terminal electron acceptor" it seems that the perchlorate thing is a simple matter of bioremediation, just give some bacterial an electron source (reduced carbon substrate).
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Perchlorate reductase, might be possible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate_reductase https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate_reductase https://www.nasa.gov/general/detoxifying-mars/ https://www.nasa.gov/general/detoxifying-mars/
  - gilleain 2y ago
    > Perchlorate reductase is usually encoded as a combination of four genes, denoted pcrABCD. ... The function of pcrD is uncertain, but may encode a molybdenum-containing chaperone protein specific to assembling the pcrABC system Odd, why would a chaperone protein require Mo? edit: Ok, I see. Seems like pcrD is homologous to a part of the DMSO reductase and that has a chaperone that inserts the Mo cofactor (Molybdopterin) into the complex See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6650914/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6650914/
ben_w 2y ago
3 isn't a huge issue, it's a factor of 2 power loss; the real difficulty there is global dust storms.
arrowsmith 2y ago
I'd be excited to see someone living on Mars, or at least visiting. Just like I'd be excited to see someone climb a previously unconquered mountain or invent an innovative new technology. I want to be part of a species that never stops pushing the boundaries of what's possible - I bet that if we keep persisting, we can go far further than most people today can even imagine. There's an alternate timeline out there where everyone always listened to the "experts" telling them their dreams are stupid or impossible. No-one in that timeline has ever even run a four-minute mile.
helpfulContrib 2y ago
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AdieuToLogic 2y ago

Perhaps #6 could be that Mars does not currently have a magnetic field like this planet does[0]. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars

piloto_ciego 2y ago
This should be #6 - you’re right.
ninkendo 2y ago
Yup, the only real way we could ever set up a long term habitat on mars would be to do it underground to shield from the radiation. The only way we could maybe justify the huge pain in the ass it would be to stay there long term, is if we treated it as a purposeful scientific mission with a goal of looking for signs of (potentially ancient) life, and accepted that there’s nothing else useful we could really do there. Whether this is worth it is questionable. What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars.
- doctorhandshake 2y ago
  Granted it doesn’t look like low-hanging fruit but never, ever is a very long time.
  - AdieuToLogic 2y ago
    >> What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars. > Granted it doesn’t look like low-hanging fruit but never, ever is a very long time. I believe the applicable qualifier here is, "on the surface of the planet." And since this would relegate any long-term occupation to be subterranean, the GP's assertion is difficult to refute.
    - doctorhandshake 2y ago
      The problems are many but the way I see it, we’ve had math for Newtonian mechanics for about 350 years and today we’re flying helicopters on Mars. Long enough term, hard things are possible, if we don’t kill ourselves first.
      - ninkendo 2y ago
        “If we don’t kill ourselves first” is doing all the heavy lifting here. I’m not convinced that more time helps us, given that civilization itself is very fragile and we are continually a moment away from nuclear holocaust ending everything we’ve worked to achieve. And that’s not even bringing up the damage we’re doing to the environment we derive all this prosperity from.
- kibwen 2y ago
  > What isn’t questionable, is the fact that we will never, ever, ever be able to have a viable independent colony on mars. Terraforming Mars isn't completely impossible. It's well within the realm of possibility... given about 10,000 years of continuous effort.
  - avmich 2y ago
    You'd think Venus would be much worse in this regard than Mars. Then you get these suggestions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI - and start thinking...
    - zrm 2y ago
      We could plausibly land a human on Mars within our lifetimes and they wouldn't immediately die. To get Venus to that point would take minimum hundreds, more likely thousands of years. Which is neat, but between the two it implies something about the better place to start.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  I wouldn't say never. All the elements necessary to sustain life are present. With a certain level of tech and energy production it becomes viable. Not any time soon, though.
- tjpnz 2y ago
  You could also ionize particles from the surface of Phobos and then accelerate them so they create a plasma torus along its orbit. This would create a magnetic field but we'll probably already be venturing outside of the solar system by the time we could do it. https://www.universetoday.com/153368/an-absolutely-bonkers-plan-to-give-mars-an-artificial-magnetosphere/ https://www.universetoday.com/153368/an-absolutely-bonkers-p...

bicebird 2y ago

Yeah I always like the sound of a Venus colony more, similar gravity being one of the main benefits but guess being stuck in a habitat in the clouds doesn't satisfy the same explorative instinct as Mars where you could actually walk on a new land

piloto_ciego 2y ago
Not immediately, but we could put a gigantor solar panel up as a sun shade and literally freeze out the CO2 on Venus and beam all the power to earth.
- AdieuToLogic 2y ago
  Wouldn't it be far easier to solve our own problems here than to engineer a solution which could make Venus habitable?
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Looking at the current state of humanity, I don't think so.
    - majormajor 2y ago
      Are you letting ChatGPT do all the engineering and construction for Venus or are you gonna run into those pesky "human" problems there too?
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        If all the Venus-related activities are controlled by a single political entity, those pesky human problems probably won't be a big problem.
        gravescale 2y ago
        Indeed, when opening a hatch and allowing scalding ultra-high-pressure sulphuric acid into the habitat is an option, dissent will be fairly easily handled!

skissane 2y ago

> 1. For one there’s the perchlorates. Basically the dust is poison. Add water: perchlorate dissolves readily in water, so by bathing the dust in water, you remove the perchlorate from the dust and transfer it to waste water. You can then process the waste water further to remove the perchlorate from it and recycle it. (Assume this is happening inside a pressurised habitat/greenhouse/airlock where water can be liquid.) Another option is heating it, which decomposes the perchlorate, liberating oxygen There are also microorganisms which consume perchlorate

doug_durham 2y ago
Heating perchlorate also liberates chlorine and other chlorine compounds. That doesn't sound great. Also water isn't exactly easy to come by on Mars. I doubt there will be a whole lot of bathing going on.
- yinser 2y ago
  https://www.space.com/mars-water-ice-equator-frozen-ocean https://www.space.com/mars-water-ice-equator-frozen-ocean
- skissane 2y ago
  > Heating perchlorate also liberates chlorine and other chlorine compounds. That doesn't sound great. I think the main thing it produces other than oxygen is HCl. Filter the produced gas through water, the water will absorb the HCl and start to turn into hydrochloric acid. Then we just need to add a base such as NaOH to neutralise the acid. (Not sure what bases are readily available on Mars but I’m sure people will be able to come up with something.) > Also water isn't exactly easy to come by on Mars. I doubt there will be a whole lot of bathing going on. There is evidence that Mars contains substantial quantities of subterranean water ice, at varying depths and ease of access. SpaceX’s plan for fuelling Starship for return to Earth is to manufacture CH4 using atmospheric CO2 and mined H2O. If they manage to mine enough H2O to produce the fuel to refuel a Starship, they’ll have enough H2O to fill swimming pools for the crew to swim in - and to rinse perchlorate out of the soil.

shiroiushi 2y ago

The problem with Venus cloud cities is: what's the purpose? What are people going to do there? Sit around and write software? At least on Mars, you could potentially do mining. On Venus, you can't do anything really, because you'd have no access to the natural resources there. So what's the point? The Moon is the only place that really makes any sense at this point. It's close, it probably has lava tubes, it has lots of natural resources for mining, it would be relatively easy to set up habitats and maybe do things like build low-g factories (could be many industrial applications there that we haven't thought of), and aside from being airless, the surface isn't going to kill you like Venus will.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Barrin92 2y ago
>At least on Mars, you could potentially do mining. You can also take that idea further and just do mining in space. One of the most interesting regions is simply cislunar space. Human development there means you can haul asteroids in, you could potentially move polluting industry there, do science in environments that you can't do on earth, and so on. It's much safer than being stranded far away, it's relatively easy to get people back to earth, etc. The entire idea of going to another planet simply has the huge problem that you need to waste a ton of energy to get things off the damn planet again so really why not just built habitats in space.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  This is exactly my position. It would be easier to just build habitats (like O'Neal cylinders) in space that have the exact parameters you want, rather than trying to terraform worlds like Venus to be somewhat-habitable after millennia. And yes, asteroid mining looks very promising. Facilities on the Moon might be good for this industry, by providing a place with some gravity to do work, and not be worried about environmental issues (or an atmosphere to get in the way of transport). And it's not far from Earth, so you can take all the products of asteroid mining and easily ship them to where they'll be used on Earth, or launch them out into orbit to build space habitats.

thesagan 2y ago

And Earth is way cooler and it's right here. I can see little dinosaurs flying and singing outside my window at the moment. Cool.

kleton 2y ago

Searching for "bacteria use perchlorate as terminal electron acceptor" it seems that the perchlorate thing is a simple matter of bioremediation, just give some bacterial an electron source (reduced carbon substrate).

mixmastamyk 2y ago
Perchlorate reductase, might be possible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate_reductase https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate_reductase https://www.nasa.gov/general/detoxifying-mars/ https://www.nasa.gov/general/detoxifying-mars/
- gilleain 2y ago
  > Perchlorate reductase is usually encoded as a combination of four genes, denoted pcrABCD. ... The function of pcrD is uncertain, but may encode a molybdenum-containing chaperone protein specific to assembling the pcrABC system Odd, why would a chaperone protein require Mo? edit: Ok, I see. Seems like pcrD is homologous to a part of the DMSO reductase and that has a chaperone that inserts the Mo cofactor (Molybdopterin) into the complex See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6650914/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6650914/

ben_w 2y ago

3 isn't a huge issue, it's a factor of 2 power loss; the real difficulty there is global dust storms.

arrowsmith 2y ago

I'd be excited to see someone living on Mars, or at least visiting. Just like I'd be excited to see someone climb a previously unconquered mountain or invent an innovative new technology. I want to be part of a species that never stops pushing the boundaries of what's possible - I bet that if we keep persisting, we can go far further than most people today can even imagine. There's an alternate timeline out there where everyone always listened to the "experts" telling them their dreams are stupid or impossible. No-one in that timeline has ever even run a four-minute mile.

helpfulContrib 2y ago

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