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Why on earth (pun intended), would you want that? You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along wi
by hvb2 5mo ago
Why on earth (pun intended), would you want that?
You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along with what they need.
If it is to test an actual community living isolated, sure. But I think it'll always be different because you know that help is at most a few months away and probably a lot less. I don't think you can fake that, unless you're never told you're not alone
- ActorNightly 5mo agoThe point is that we don't have technology (or at least not proven) to make a habitat on earth that can reliably provide isolation from harsh atmosphere. When you are sending people to space on an experimental rocket, with experimental supply for an experimental habitat, all of that shit better be engineered to a huge safety factor, because its not a matter of if things will go wrong, its how often will they go wrong and what the impact will be. To deal with that kind of unknown requires a level of technology that should make it possible to live in Antarctica for extended period of time without any external shipments coming in to resupply. That means heating, oxygen generation, food resources, air filtration, full medical bay capable of advanced surgery, and a bunch of other smaller things that all matter in the end.
- christophilus 5mo agoPlus insane storms and winds that I’m not sure Antarctica will properly simulate.
- mikeyouse 5mo agoAntarctica might be okay as a demo site on that front; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QK5M_UfofRU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QK5M_UfofRU
- hagbard_c 5mo agoThose "insane storms and winds" in an atmosphere with 2% of the density of earth's atmosphere won't be much of a problem.
- ActorNightly 5mo agoThat works both ways. Sure you won't have much density for air to move things, but things moving through air also don't have the drag to slow them down.
- tlb 5mo agoYes, for example taking off or landing a rocket on the surface blasts particles of sand out sideways at 1000s of m/s. The particles can fly in the thin atmosphere for kilometers and sandblast everything. Our intuitions about how far and fast tiny things can fly are only true in an atmosphere of similar density.
- Recurecur 5mo agoYour intuition about how far sand particles can fly at high velocity in the Martian atmosphere is way off base…
- ActorNightly 5mo agoWhile he is exaggerating a bit, the problem still remains - dust can be deadly to equipment because the grains will move way faster. You also have the problem of dust particles colliding and becoming charged with nothing to dump the charge to. A human habitat has to hold positive air pressure, which means that it has to generate its oxygen or get it from the atmosphere. If we don't have the experience of buildings stuff on earth where we can test things, we sure as shit not gonna be able to do it on Mars.
- dotancohen 5mo agoIt will be when it covers your solar cells with dust.
- flohofwoe 5mo agoAre you talking a Mars or Antarctica settlement? ;) (eg any place on Earth is infinitely better than any place on Mars, maybe a couple of scientists are ready to endure Mars for a couple of months at a time, but beyond that? It will be like living in a labour camp in (frozen) hell.
- elevaet 5mo agoNo air, scarce water, radiation challenges. Comms to earth has a 3min lag on a good day, 6mins roundtrip. On a bad day it's 45mins. We are better off at this stage of human civilization to look at building resiliency and redundancy at home. Settling margins of Earth in places like Antarctica, underground, under water is many orders of magnitude simpler than Mars, provides useful models for distant future space colonization, and also provides us with some of the civilizational redundancy and resiliency many space-colony-enthusiasts are looking for.