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One of my pet peeves with Mars enthusiasts is that they ignore the reality that living on Mars is going to truly, truly suck. You will never be outdoors again.

One of my pet peeves with Mars enthusiasts is that they ignore the reality that living on Mars is going to truly, truly suck. You will never be outdoors again. You will have the constant whirr of machinery. You will have to plan outings down to the last bottle of O2. You will eat shit food. And you will gaze upon a dim Sun through a dusty porthole. The idea of Mars is spectacular and wondrous and ecstatic and beautiful. Actual Mars sucks harder than you can possibly imagine.

api 11y ago
... for the first few generations, until people figured out how to live there. People are pretty good at that. Look into native American tribes that lived in the arctic, or ancient peoples who lived in harsh deserts. People would eventually figure out ways of building, living, entertaining, eating, moving, etc. that made the best of what the environment had to offer. The assumption is that nobody would be interested in making a massive investment of effort and personal hardship to create the potential of a new future.
- Leszek 11y ago
  There's a big difference between "it's really cold out here" and "I literally can't breathe the air". Also, making the best of a horrible environment could make it less horrible, but doesn't mean it wouldn't still be pretty horrible.
- theothermkn 11y ago
  > The assumption is that nobody would be interested in making a massive investment of effort and personal hardship to create the potential of a new future. My hypothesis is actually that the most vocal Mars dreamers are escapists and, as such, have latched on to the idea of Mars vs. the reality of Mars. Go into any forum where living on Mars is discussed, and the focus is on how cool it would be, or how you wouldn't be encumbered by political contingencies, or how much science you could do, or how science-fictiony it would all be. It all revolves around how removed from familiar experience that Mars would be, around how thrilling it is. As a matter of emphasis, this is just unrealistic. Your bones will be disintegrating and your muscles atrophying. You'll constantly be stuffy. You'll be breathing stale air. There will be toilets, and people's shit will stink. You'll get rejected by girls on Mars, and have the occasional erectile dysfunction. There is no Internet on Mars. Instead of browsing, you'll be unclogging toilets and scrubbing away mold. You are going to pay rent on Mars, and it is going to be really, really high. All for a "future" that belongs to those who will live long after you die. You live in space right now, and it's a really nice part of space; It has air and food and water and everything. Most of your manufacturing and other work is performed by a local underclass and an overseas underclass at discounted wages. Mars enthusiasts don't talk about that. They talk about the Dream of Mars. Until the day-to-day realities of living on Mars, and not the romance (which you have even done!), are treated in a realistic manner in the discourse of Mars, I don't think that people are really engaged with the actual endeavor. Everybody needs a hobby, though. Mine is complaining on the Internet.
  - api 11y ago
    By that logic, life should have stayed in the sea. ... And yes, there are loads of sci fi heads who talk about this stuff without thinking about it deeply. But those are just noisy internet fanboys and fangirls. It doesn't mean everyone interested in this topic is thinking about it in such a shallow way. I came up with a shorthand description a while back: cross Everest ascent with WWI submarining. Something like that. If I were younger, with no kids, and had the opportunity to do it, I would seriously consider it. I would want to spend many years training, studying, and doing terrestrial experiments first though. The way to do terribly hard things is not by being reckless; there's already enough unknown unknowns, you want to be as thorough as you can about preparing for the knowns. We could create large simulated environments here to test things like construction techniques and survival strategies, which would be a very good idea. If the transportation capability materializes, I hope to see teams doing that. I also think you are underestimating ingenuity, especially very highly motivated ingenuity. The horrible difficulty of life in "stock" habitats would be quite a motivator.
a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
> Actual Mars sucks harder than you can possibly imagine. Well, living in a tin can would suck, but in theory there'd be huge underground caverns with overhead lighting. Maybe even rainforests and lakes in caverns. Anyway, I'm not sure Mars even makes sense vice the Mercury and Venus ideas floating around.
cloudwalking 11y ago
> You will eat shit food. Not necessarily. It should be possible to grow nearly any spice or vegetable, if the greenhouse is complex (and computer controlled) enough. When you have a couple hundred people or more, living for a year (or more) on a base, it would probably make sense to have great food. There will be so few creature comforts (like you point out), they'll perfect what they can. That and fancy VR :)
- Animats 11y ago
  "Not necessarily. It should be possible to grow nearly any spice or vegetable, if the greenhouse is complex (and computer controlled) enough." The Biosphere II project suggests otherwise.[1] Running a small-scale closed ecosystem turned out to be far tougher than expected. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nemanja 11y ago
That is perhaps true, but only until people figure out how to terraform the planet. Americas also sucked (albeit to a lesser degree) for the first settlers, but some 500+ years later we have an economic and technological powerhouse here. Perhaps stark and cruel reality of Mars exploration can provide a similar growth engine for humanity and get the civilization to the next level in the next couple hundred years.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  The Americas were as far as I know considered bountiful paradise by first settlers. It may not have had the infrastructure built as in Europe, but it was (and in many places still is) gorgeous. And within a few decades you could build small settlements as nice as loads of settlements were back home. Mars in contrast looks like shit on first sight and I doubt we'll see terraforming equipment on any large scale for a very, very long time. Anyway I don't necessarily disagree with your point I just don't think the comparison to settlers refutes the idea you were replying to that Mars is very ugly and harsh in every single way (except for the mental notion of doing something unprecedented) for first settlers and likely will be for the entirety of their lives. Quite different from the Americas I think.
  - nemanja 11y ago
    Agreed, Mars is stark compared to the Caribbean, but there is some minimalistic beauty to it all. There may also be some survivorship bias when it comes to the colonies. First colonies often failed and for quite a while (e.g. Roanoke nearly 100 years after Columbus), so I doubt it was all fun and paradise.
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      Guys, we can assume that its shit, but until we actually go there we won't know for sure if there aren't parts of it that are simply gorgeous and amazing too. So far, we've only just scratched the surface of understanding Mars. There are many places un-explored on Mars that will indeed provide a beauty unlike anything on Earth. This is an assumed fact, but it is mathematically just as likely to be true as the decision made that Mars sucks, based on current data. We get there. We explore every bit of it. We find parts of it we can actually live on, quite comfortably - albeit, yes, still in a tank. But there could be parts of Mars we can transform, within a 100 years or so - just like the early settlers of every continent on Earth, ever in the history of mankind - and turn into a habitable place to live. All it takes is one Martian generation, or two, and maybe there will be Martian-humans who have the conversation "I could never live on Earth, far too strange and unknown .."
waterlesscloud 11y ago
What you actually mean here is that you project what you care about in life onto literally every other human and foolishly imagine they all have the same standards for what matters to them. This is of course false. You're not suited for life on Mars. That's fine. Don't go. Other people will, and they'll love it.
- dimino 11y ago
  I think he's just trying to point out some of the unexpected aspects of "going to Mars", and there certainly is a set of the population of people who think they want to go to Mars, but actually would not enjoy the practicalities of life on Mars. It is to those folks that I am guessing his comment is addressed.
  - waterlesscloud 11y ago
    Which would be fine if they were actually unexpected. But it takes about five minutes for someone to point them out in any conversation about life in space.
    - dimino 11y ago
      Yeah, which is what's happening now! Hooray!
- vacri 11y ago
  It's not that far-fetched a description of what people in general like to do. After all, we punish social transgressions by confining people to quarters, drastically limiting their ability to go outside (or to move around much at all), and serve them formulaic food. I agree with the GP. Most mars-lovers would love a working holiday there, due to the exotic nature of the place. But there's a difference between 'working holiday' and 'rest of your life in a (large) canister'. And you better hope that you get along well with your co-colonists...
keslag 11y ago
So you're saying I shouldn't want to marry another guy because you personally don't want to, and your pet peeve is that anything you don't want to do annoys you if others want to do it? Your pet peeve is pretty stupid.
furyofantares 11y ago
I am certain you are correct that anyone who posts on the internet saying they'd personally like to live on Mars probably hasn't given it as much consideration as they would if they were actually given the opportunity. Posting on the internet about moving to Mars is a much smaller commitment than moving to Mars.
yongjik 11y ago
To build upon it a little bit: does everyone remember last Boston snowstorm and how everybody (who still had internet connection) cried and moaned that this is the absolute worst weather they've ever had? Compared to Mars, Boston is so hospitable that you could name it Maui instead. I mean, you could practically open your window, look outside, and not freeze-dry to death in seconds. Mars: for those who want to play basic survival hard-mode.
- antimagic 11y ago
  Mars is not as cold as you seem to think. From Wikipedia: Differing in situ values have been reported for the average temperature on Mars,[20] with a common value being −55 °C (218 K; −67 °F).[21] Surface temperatures may reach a high of about 20 °C (293 K; 68 °F) at noon, at the equator, and a low of about −153 °C (120 K; −243 °F) at the poles.[22] Actual temperature measurements at the Viking landers' site range from −17.2 °C (256.0 K; 1.0 °F) to −107 °C (166 K; −161 °F). The warmest soil temperature estimated by the Viking Orbiter was 27 °C (300 K; 81 °F).[23] The Spirit rover recorded a maximum daytime air temperature in the shade of 35 °C (308 K; 95 °F), and regularly recorded temperatures well above 0 °C (273 K; 32 °F), except in winter.[24] Your biggest problem with opening the window is not the cold, it's the fact that all of your oxygen is going to be going away, along with some depressurisation issues (although these aren't as bad as full space - Mars' thin atmosphere is sufficiently thick that something as simple as a wetsuit would be enough to avoid most of the nasty effects on the human body).
IndianAstronaut 11y ago
I would say Mars is a way point. In the grand scheme of things, we need to eventually develop interstellar technology.
- colordrops 11y ago
  Everything is a waypoint. There is no final destination.
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    Until we are dead.
BurningFrog 11y ago
Not everyone values comfort so highly. A small minority - but still plenty of people - would thrive as pioneers on a new planet. We should let them go first, while you and me sit here and watch.
- return0 11y ago
  What is it that humans can do there , that robots cannot do for us?
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    Be there and see whats happening in real-time. 0ms lag between seeing something happen and it actually happening.
    - jcoffland 11y ago
      Actually your brain has a several ms lag between light entering the eye and recognition. Robots could potentially perceive faster.
      - fit2rule 11y ago
        Sure, sure. Lets just let robots have all the fun.
      - rtpg 11y ago
        but the time it would take to build robots that could react to pretty much any situation (we're nowhere near that on AI research) is a loooot bigger than sending people there.
  - alphadevx 11y ago
    Be inspired.
  - lmm 11y ago
    Force us to develop the technologies we're going to need to settle other worlds. The long-term survival of our species is going to require colonizing other planets in other solar systems.
huuu 11y ago
I had to think about the movies Moon and Oblivion. Not everyone can do the job so the right people are cloned to keep the job going on and on.
someear 11y ago
I think you underestimate how much time can be wasted on the internet - you'll still have access to HN!
- Otik 11y ago
  With a minimum ping of 371600ms, even surfing the web would be a pain in the arse.
  - im3w1l 11y ago
    It's not like HN goes stale that fast. That's simple. have a script that fetches HN along with linked sites hourly. When you want to browse HN, look at the latest snapshot. Quick server-side interactivity would not work I guess, but there are enough sites without that to keep you busy a lifetime on mars. 6 min ping is acceptable for posting comments.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      And to think people on the other thread were criticizing rms' browsing technique of having the website scraped and sent to him by email. He's way ahead of us - ready for Mars!
rasz_pl 11y ago
You describe perfect environment for an average fat computer nerd. Basement and pizza.
- baq 11y ago
  30 min RTT is pretty bad, though.
  - gear54rus 11y ago
    Those lan parties though...
_Soulou 11y ago
Remind me "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" from Philip K. Dick. Selected (clever) people are sent as settlers on Mars, but everybody know it's crappy as hell and that people are surviving thanks to drugs which allow them to remind theirselves what Earth's like. People try to get crazy on Earth to fail tests and avoid being sent there.
- pizu 11y ago
  What a great reminder of a great book. And a science writer that rightly focused on the human side than the tech. Thanks for this.
7952 11y ago
I am convinced that the first stage of colonising Mars should be orbital space stations rather than land bases. The vacumn of space seems like a far less hostile environment than the surface and one that humans have experience of from the ISS. Any long term base on Mars is going to require constant resupply from Earth. So why not leave as much as possible safely in orbit, and make short excursions to the surface when neccessary?
- kaybe 11y ago
  The problem is radiation from solar storms. There is no protective magnetic field. On the ground, it is possible to go underground for those periods, in space, not so much. There is no light-weight option for shielding all that radiation, and being exposed to all of those your whole life is really bad.
smegel 11y ago
> You will have the constant whirr of machinery. You will have to plan outings down to the last bottle of O2. You will eat shit food. And you will gaze upon a dim Sun through a dusty porthole Swap O2 for money and this could describe the life of many city dwellers on Earth. At least you won't have to put up with city traffic!
- weland 11y ago
  Except that, if you run out of money three kilometers away from it, you can still walk to your home.

api 11y ago

... for the first few generations, until people figured out how to live there. People are pretty good at that. Look into native American tribes that lived in the arctic, or ancient peoples who lived in harsh deserts. People would eventually figure out ways of building, living, entertaining, eating, moving, etc. that made the best of what the environment had to offer. The assumption is that nobody would be interested in making a massive investment of effort and personal hardship to create the potential of a new future.

Leszek 11y ago
There's a big difference between "it's really cold out here" and "I literally can't breathe the air". Also, making the best of a horrible environment could make it less horrible, but doesn't mean it wouldn't still be pretty horrible.
theothermkn 11y ago
> The assumption is that nobody would be interested in making a massive investment of effort and personal hardship to create the potential of a new future. My hypothesis is actually that the most vocal Mars dreamers are escapists and, as such, have latched on to the idea of Mars vs. the reality of Mars. Go into any forum where living on Mars is discussed, and the focus is on how cool it would be, or how you wouldn't be encumbered by political contingencies, or how much science you could do, or how science-fictiony it would all be. It all revolves around how removed from familiar experience that Mars would be, around how thrilling it is. As a matter of emphasis, this is just unrealistic. Your bones will be disintegrating and your muscles atrophying. You'll constantly be stuffy. You'll be breathing stale air. There will be toilets, and people's shit will stink. You'll get rejected by girls on Mars, and have the occasional erectile dysfunction. There is no Internet on Mars. Instead of browsing, you'll be unclogging toilets and scrubbing away mold. You are going to pay rent on Mars, and it is going to be really, really high. All for a "future" that belongs to those who will live long after you die. You live in space right now, and it's a really nice part of space; It has air and food and water and everything. Most of your manufacturing and other work is performed by a local underclass and an overseas underclass at discounted wages. Mars enthusiasts don't talk about that. They talk about the Dream of Mars. Until the day-to-day realities of living on Mars, and not the romance (which you have even done!), are treated in a realistic manner in the discourse of Mars, I don't think that people are really engaged with the actual endeavor. Everybody needs a hobby, though. Mine is complaining on the Internet.
- api 11y ago
  By that logic, life should have stayed in the sea. ... And yes, there are loads of sci fi heads who talk about this stuff without thinking about it deeply. But those are just noisy internet fanboys and fangirls. It doesn't mean everyone interested in this topic is thinking about it in such a shallow way. I came up with a shorthand description a while back: cross Everest ascent with WWI submarining. Something like that. If I were younger, with no kids, and had the opportunity to do it, I would seriously consider it. I would want to spend many years training, studying, and doing terrestrial experiments first though. The way to do terribly hard things is not by being reckless; there's already enough unknown unknowns, you want to be as thorough as you can about preparing for the knowns. We could create large simulated environments here to test things like construction techniques and survival strategies, which would be a very good idea. If the transportation capability materializes, I hope to see teams doing that. I also think you are underestimating ingenuity, especially very highly motivated ingenuity. The horrible difficulty of life in "stock" habitats would be quite a motivator.

a8da6b0c91d 11y ago

> Actual Mars sucks harder than you can possibly imagine. Well, living in a tin can would suck, but in theory there'd be huge underground caverns with overhead lighting. Maybe even rainforests and lakes in caverns. Anyway, I'm not sure Mars even makes sense vice the Mercury and Venus ideas floating around.

cloudwalking 11y ago

> You will eat shit food. Not necessarily. It should be possible to grow nearly any spice or vegetable, if the greenhouse is complex (and computer controlled) enough. When you have a couple hundred people or more, living for a year (or more) on a base, it would probably make sense to have great food. There will be so few creature comforts (like you point out), they'll perfect what they can. That and fancy VR :)

Animats 11y ago
"Not necessarily. It should be possible to grow nearly any spice or vegetable, if the greenhouse is complex (and computer controlled) enough." The Biosphere II project suggests otherwise.[1] Running a small-scale closed ecosystem turned out to be far tougher than expected. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

nemanja 11y ago

That is perhaps true, but only until people figure out how to terraform the planet. Americas also sucked (albeit to a lesser degree) for the first settlers, but some 500+ years later we have an economic and technological powerhouse here. Perhaps stark and cruel reality of Mars exploration can provide a similar growth engine for humanity and get the civilization to the next level in the next couple hundred years.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
The Americas were as far as I know considered bountiful paradise by first settlers. It may not have had the infrastructure built as in Europe, but it was (and in many places still is) gorgeous. And within a few decades you could build small settlements as nice as loads of settlements were back home. Mars in contrast looks like shit on first sight and I doubt we'll see terraforming equipment on any large scale for a very, very long time. Anyway I don't necessarily disagree with your point I just don't think the comparison to settlers refutes the idea you were replying to that Mars is very ugly and harsh in every single way (except for the mental notion of doing something unprecedented) for first settlers and likely will be for the entirety of their lives. Quite different from the Americas I think.
- nemanja 11y ago
  Agreed, Mars is stark compared to the Caribbean, but there is some minimalistic beauty to it all. There may also be some survivorship bias when it comes to the colonies. First colonies often failed and for quite a while (e.g. Roanoke nearly 100 years after Columbus), so I doubt it was all fun and paradise.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    Guys, we can assume that its shit, but until we actually go there we won't know for sure if there aren't parts of it that are simply gorgeous and amazing too. So far, we've only just scratched the surface of understanding Mars. There are many places un-explored on Mars that will indeed provide a beauty unlike anything on Earth. This is an assumed fact, but it is mathematically just as likely to be true as the decision made that Mars sucks, based on current data. We get there. We explore every bit of it. We find parts of it we can actually live on, quite comfortably - albeit, yes, still in a tank. But there could be parts of Mars we can transform, within a 100 years or so - just like the early settlers of every continent on Earth, ever in the history of mankind - and turn into a habitable place to live. All it takes is one Martian generation, or two, and maybe there will be Martian-humans who have the conversation "I could never live on Earth, far too strange and unknown .."

waterlesscloud 11y ago

What you actually mean here is that you project what you care about in life onto literally every other human and foolishly imagine they all have the same standards for what matters to them. This is of course false. You're not suited for life on Mars. That's fine. Don't go. Other people will, and they'll love it.

dimino 11y ago
I think he's just trying to point out some of the unexpected aspects of "going to Mars", and there certainly is a set of the population of people who think they want to go to Mars, but actually would not enjoy the practicalities of life on Mars. It is to those folks that I am guessing his comment is addressed.
- waterlesscloud 11y ago
  Which would be fine if they were actually unexpected. But it takes about five minutes for someone to point them out in any conversation about life in space.
  - dimino 11y ago
    Yeah, which is what's happening now! Hooray!
vacri 11y ago
It's not that far-fetched a description of what people in general like to do. After all, we punish social transgressions by confining people to quarters, drastically limiting their ability to go outside (or to move around much at all), and serve them formulaic food. I agree with the GP. Most mars-lovers would love a working holiday there, due to the exotic nature of the place. But there's a difference between 'working holiday' and 'rest of your life in a (large) canister'. And you better hope that you get along well with your co-colonists...

keslag 11y ago

So you're saying I shouldn't want to marry another guy because you personally don't want to, and your pet peeve is that anything you don't want to do annoys you if others want to do it? Your pet peeve is pretty stupid.

furyofantares 11y ago

I am certain you are correct that anyone who posts on the internet saying they'd personally like to live on Mars probably hasn't given it as much consideration as they would if they were actually given the opportunity. Posting on the internet about moving to Mars is a much smaller commitment than moving to Mars.

yongjik 11y ago

To build upon it a little bit: does everyone remember last Boston snowstorm and how everybody (who still had internet connection) cried and moaned that this is the absolute worst weather they've ever had? Compared to Mars, Boston is so hospitable that you could name it Maui instead. I mean, you could practically open your window, look outside, and not freeze-dry to death in seconds. Mars: for those who want to play basic survival hard-mode.

antimagic 11y ago
Mars is not as cold as you seem to think. From Wikipedia: Differing in situ values have been reported for the average temperature on Mars,[20] with a common value being −55 °C (218 K; −67 °F).[21] Surface temperatures may reach a high of about 20 °C (293 K; 68 °F) at noon, at the equator, and a low of about −153 °C (120 K; −243 °F) at the poles.[22] Actual temperature measurements at the Viking landers' site range from −17.2 °C (256.0 K; 1.0 °F) to −107 °C (166 K; −161 °F). The warmest soil temperature estimated by the Viking Orbiter was 27 °C (300 K; 81 °F).[23] The Spirit rover recorded a maximum daytime air temperature in the shade of 35 °C (308 K; 95 °F), and regularly recorded temperatures well above 0 °C (273 K; 32 °F), except in winter.[24] Your biggest problem with opening the window is not the cold, it's the fact that all of your oxygen is going to be going away, along with some depressurisation issues (although these aren't as bad as full space - Mars' thin atmosphere is sufficiently thick that something as simple as a wetsuit would be enough to avoid most of the nasty effects on the human body).

IndianAstronaut 11y ago

I would say Mars is a way point. In the grand scheme of things, we need to eventually develop interstellar technology.

colordrops 11y ago
Everything is a waypoint. There is no final destination.
- jcoffland 11y ago
  Until we are dead.

BurningFrog 11y ago

Not everyone values comfort so highly. A small minority - but still plenty of people - would thrive as pioneers on a new planet. We should let them go first, while you and me sit here and watch.

return0 11y ago
What is it that humans can do there , that robots cannot do for us?
- fit2rule 11y ago
  Be there and see whats happening in real-time. 0ms lag between seeing something happen and it actually happening.
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    Actually your brain has a several ms lag between light entering the eye and recognition. Robots could potentially perceive faster.
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      Sure, sure. Lets just let robots have all the fun.
    - rtpg 11y ago
      but the time it would take to build robots that could react to pretty much any situation (we're nowhere near that on AI research) is a loooot bigger than sending people there.
- alphadevx 11y ago
  Be inspired.
- lmm 11y ago
  Force us to develop the technologies we're going to need to settle other worlds. The long-term survival of our species is going to require colonizing other planets in other solar systems.

huuu 11y ago

I had to think about the movies Moon and Oblivion. Not everyone can do the job so the right people are cloned to keep the job going on and on.

someear 11y ago

I think you underestimate how much time can be wasted on the internet - you'll still have access to HN!

Otik 11y ago
With a minimum ping of 371600ms, even surfing the web would be a pain in the arse.
- im3w1l 11y ago
  It's not like HN goes stale that fast. That's simple. have a script that fetches HN along with linked sites hourly. When you want to browse HN, look at the latest snapshot. Quick server-side interactivity would not work I guess, but there are enough sites without that to keep you busy a lifetime on mars. 6 min ping is acceptable for posting comments.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    And to think people on the other thread were criticizing rms' browsing technique of having the website scraped and sent to him by email. He's way ahead of us - ready for Mars!

rasz_pl 11y ago

You describe perfect environment for an average fat computer nerd. Basement and pizza.

baq 11y ago
30 min RTT is pretty bad, though.
- gear54rus 11y ago
  Those lan parties though...

_Soulou 11y ago

Remind me "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" from Philip K. Dick. Selected (clever) people are sent as settlers on Mars, but everybody know it's crappy as hell and that people are surviving thanks to drugs which allow them to remind theirselves what Earth's like. People try to get crazy on Earth to fail tests and avoid being sent there.

pizu 11y ago
What a great reminder of a great book. And a science writer that rightly focused on the human side than the tech. Thanks for this.

7952 11y ago

I am convinced that the first stage of colonising Mars should be orbital space stations rather than land bases. The vacumn of space seems like a far less hostile environment than the surface and one that humans have experience of from the ISS. Any long term base on Mars is going to require constant resupply from Earth. So why not leave as much as possible safely in orbit, and make short excursions to the surface when neccessary?

kaybe 11y ago
The problem is radiation from solar storms. There is no protective magnetic field. On the ground, it is possible to go underground for those periods, in space, not so much. There is no light-weight option for shielding all that radiation, and being exposed to all of those your whole life is really bad.

smegel 11y ago

> You will have the constant whirr of machinery. You will have to plan outings down to the last bottle of O2. You will eat shit food. And you will gaze upon a dim Sun through a dusty porthole Swap O2 for money and this could describe the life of many city dwellers on Earth. At least you won't have to put up with city traffic!

weland 11y ago
Except that, if you run out of money three kilometers away from it, you can still walk to your home.