A Martian Odd, you see.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The right reason for going to Mars is ...

 

First of all, no matter what the dreamers say, Mars is almost as inhospitable as outer space.  CO₂ atmosphere, no ozone layer, no magnetic field, daytime temperatures not higher than zero Celsius.  No free oxygen, carbon dioxide snow at the poles.  Space suit necessary to leave the vehicle. 

 

Great place to have your genes altered by radiation.

 

And the repair shop is seven months away.

[fan o SC4 128]

The right reason for going to Mars is ...

 

First of all, no matter what the dreamers say, Mars is almost as inhospitable as outer space.  CO₂ atmosphere, no ozone layer, no magnetic field, daytime temperatures not higher than zero Celsius.  No free oxygen, carbon dioxide snow at the poles.  Space suit necessary to leave the vehicle. 

 

Great place to have your genes altered by radiation.

 

And the repair shop is seven months away.

Well call me dreamer, because I am 100% pro-Mars colonization. Maybe it's because I'm a devout futurist, or a science fiction fan, so i'm not without bias. I don't like to think about a future without space, I say go to Mars, build domes, terraform it, whatever we gotta do, Mars is the gateway to the moon of Jupiter and Saturn, and would love to see human colonies brimming about the entire Sol system by the end of my life. For dreamers like me, going to Mars isn't a matter of practicality, it's just the urge to go, expand, and explore, and I think most humans, or at least futurists, can agree with that.

[Prophet42 1,500]

I agree, Mars is extremely inhospitable in its current condition.  However, it has the best chance of any of the planets to be terraformed to the point where humans maybe able to live comfortably on it's surface.  It's axis tilt is 24°, similar to Earth's 23.44°.  It rotation period is 24 hrs, similar to Earth's 23h56m rotation.  It is smaller with less gravity so the atmosphere would have to be correspondingly thicker to produce 1bar of pressure on the surface.  Even though Venus is similar in size as Earth, it will be much more difficult to terraform to the point of habitability.  With an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid 90 times thicker that Earth's, almost no water, a rotation period of 243 day, and surface temperatures of 864°F, Venus is not a nice place to visit.

 

I also agree, that even if we do make Mars habitable, we still need to treat Earth as unique and rare and take good care of our Home Planet.

[KonstantinII 1,106]

The right reason for going to Mars is ...

 

 

You sir are an amateur and you don't know nothing about Mars! I'm the real Mars expert here.

 

 

Mars is almost as inhospitable as outer space.

Not true. The term outer space applies to the space between the debris/oort clouds between star systems. Mars is a planet. It has vast reserves of ice, minerals, and is similar to Earth in many ways. It is almost as hospitable as Antarctica where polar explorers do live.

 

 

 CO₂ atmosphere no ozone layer, no magnetic field,

Earth's atmosphere has much more CO₂ than does the Atmosphere of Mars. Mars atmosphere is mainly composed of Hydrogen and Nitrogen as Earth's but is much thinner. Mars does have a subtle magnetic field.

 

 

daytime temperatures not higher than zero Celsius

Only during the winter. In the summer, daytime temperatures  are higher than 0, and ice, snow sometimes melts and runs through the streams before freezing again.

 

 

No free oxygen

Again, a common misconception. There is enough free oxygen in Mars atmosphere to use an oxygen concentrator for collecting it. But not enough to breathe freely as on Earth.

 

 

Space suit necessary to leave the vehicle. 

 

Space suit is not necessary for Mars. The bulky, pressurized space suits used today are no good on Mars. Instead of space suit, an "oxygen suit" is used. It is like a cross between a diving suit and an eskimo suit. An oxygen suit for Mars needs to be skin tight and self enclosed, not like a puffy space suit. It provides warmth for the wearer. There is also a re-breather or akvalang to provide oxygen for the wearer to breathe. It is like a deep sea diver suit but without foot flippers.

 

Great place to have your genes altered by radiation.

No, not in any way.

 

 

And the repair shop is seven months away.

Another baseless assumption. Seriously, when the Mars colony is built, a repair shop is included so if anything breaks a seven minute walk to it, and fixed. Any services such as repair shops, fuel stations, and greenhouses are in the Mars colony.

 

To start a Mars thread, you have to know a great deal about Mars.

With your knowledge, if we make you the commander of a Mars mission you'll fly the ship past Jupiter!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And you'll find the descendants of Dejah Thoris ruling the city of Helium, too.

 

Mars doesn't have the mass to hold an atmosphere, it has no liquid core and no magnetic field.  It is fully exposed to UV and other solar radiation.  The atmosphere of Mars is about the same as ours at 100,000 feet.

 

Habitats on Mars will always be enclosed.  The best it can be used for is mining for resources to support a large space station which will be the real kick-off to the rest of the solar system and beyond.  Why fight a gravity well, even one as weak as Mars, when it is not necessary.  Be much easier to build a space elevator there, though.

 

Once we stop fiddling with Chinese happy rockets, we might get somewhere.  But first we have to stop blowing our physics and aeronautical research on fire-crackers.  We still haven't the faintest idea about how magnetism nor gravity works.  The LHC might have seen the elusive graviton, but it disappeared into another dimension, or was only an illusion.

 

Mars is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

 

Oh, and won't the Old Ones object?

[Terring 6,473]

"Why would we give up living in the Garden of Eden to move to a frozen hell?"

In my city journal Eden: The New Frontier, I had explored a good reason why we may have to colonize the red planet. Mars is a pristine untouchable world, free from religions, borders, ideologies, governments and corporations, making this planet the new promised land for explorers, scientists, artists and dreamers. After all it's far easier to build a new world than to attempt to update the old one.

"Mars is almost as inhospitable as outer space."

That's not true, since there is no gravity and atmosphere in space.

"And the repair shop is seven months away."

Not necessary. We can build repair shops on Mars after establishing a colony.

"I also agree, that even if we do make Mars habitable, we still need to treat Earth as unique and rare and take good care of our Home Planet."

Earth is our Mother, our birthplace. We don't have the right to treat her as our disposable slave, or we'll die. So simple. Earth is our cradle, but as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said, one cannot live in a cradle forever.

"Mars [...] is almost as hospitable as Antarctica where polar explorers do live."

Er, what? Mars has no oxygen, no liquid water, no ozone, and maybe no magnetic field as well. You can't compare Mars with Antarctica, they're not the same.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

For what's worth, Mars is for now the second-most feasible candidate to build a colony on another world outside Earth (the most feasible candidate would be the Moon due to it's relative short distance to Earth). True, the gravity is less and the atmosphere only has 1% of the density as the one on Earth (not to mention the different composition). But let's face it, compared to other worlds, Mars is just temperate:

 

• We can rule out the gas planets Jupiter and Saturn and ice giants Uranus and Neptune for having no solid surface.
• We can also rule out their moons for having low temperatures (every single one of them below 250K) and that their distance to earth is more than 350 million kilometers up to over 4 billion kilometers.
• We can rule out Venus for having a very hostile environment (high pressure (90 bar), scorching hot temperatures over 600K and it rains sulfuric acid from the skies). Venus is the closest thing to hell in our solar system.
• We can rule out Mercury for extreme temperature swings (between 100 and 600K), and high radiation values from the sun
• We can rule out every object in the astroid belt for being in an unstable environment (collisions quite probable)
• We can rule out the Sun for obvious reasons.
• We can rule out the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, for being astroids in general, which could hardly sustain a colony for long and for having no extra benefit over the planet they are orbiting.

This only leaves three worlds that are not on the list: Earth, the Moon and Mars. In that regard, it's logical to "experiment" with colonisation of other celestial objects by starting at the Moon and Mars.

 

Also, there is a chance that we are not the only world with life in our solar system. There are quite some clues that under the ice surface of Europa (the third largest moon of Jupiter) there's liquid water and an active core that is kept active by Jupiter's tidal forces. This might be a system that can sustain life. And even if all what we can find there is life in it's most simple form, it would still be very meaningful; it would mean that life may be more common in the universe than we thought...

 

Best,

Maarten

[Meg 368]

Oh, and won't the Old Ones object?

 

Probably.  They will turn us 90 degrees away from everything and we will cease to exist.

 

Seriously, though, colonizing other worlds is one way for the species to survive.   Another is to severely "thin the herd" one way or another.

 

Burning through non-renewable resources is one thing but we are also using renewable resources at a greater rate than it takes to replenish them. 

 

Still, as much as I dislike being earthbound, I can't advocate colonizing other planets.  The Matrix was right:  human beings behave like a virus.  I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the galaxy wants to keep us contained here.

[KonstantinII 1,106]

 

• We can rule out Mercury for extreme temperature swings (between 100 and 600K), and high radiation values from the sun

 

I think it's still possible to build a city or rather a chain of cities on Mercury. They are under the terra dome, and it is totally covered with sun panels. A cable transfers electricity from the day side to identical such cities in the night side.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I think space isnt the future. Rather we will find a new universe.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Actually, since Mercury doesn't rotate, the living domes could be along the terminator, allowing for libration.  The temperature differentials will supply all the power you would ever need.  Solar panels would be useless because they would melt.

 

And as far as being dropped into another dimension, Meg, we deserve it.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

And as far as being dropped into another dimension, Meg, we deserve it.

 

Now, now, tone down that nihilistic cynicism! You may only have a few years left, but my generation have at least fifty years left so we don't have that luxury.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Actually, since Mercury doesn't rotate, the living domes could be along the terminator, allowing for libration.  The temperature differentials will supply all the power you would ever need.  Solar panels would be useless because they would melt.

 

Ahem,

 

Mercury does rotate. In fact, all celestial objects rotate. The moon actually rotates all the time; it's just that the axis rotation is completely in sync with it's orbit position¹, which results in the fact that it is always facing its mother object with the same side. Mercury does not have this synchronisation.  A Mercurian orbital period is 88 days, while one rotation on its own axis takes 59 days. This means that the surface is slowly shifting from the sunny side to the dark side and vice versa. There is no sun-free zone. The only way to get a colony there is either to protect it from the harsh conditions the sun poses to the system or to make the entire colony moveable so it stays on the dark side, which is hard because of all the craters...

 

That's astronomy 101 for you

 

Best,

Maarten

 

^{1: more objects show this kind of behaviour. It's because of tidal forces that this rotational sync can happen, and it's quite common in the universe.}

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, when I took astronomy 101 the theory was that Mercury always presented the same side to the sun, more or less.  My how knowledge improves.  Really have to be a troglodyte there, then.  Wonder how the temperature is 1 Km below the surface.

 

And as for Mars, I don't see living on the surface there either.  We have created some mighty tunnelling machines, but getting them there would be a bit of a strain.

 

If we want to live on any reasonable body in the solar system other than Earth, I am afraid we'll all become moles.

 

Try imagining Earth in, say, 30,000 years.  This would be at the end of the next ice age.  Wonder what species will have survived?

[Meg 368]

 

And as far as being dropped into another dimension, Meg, we deserve it.

 

Now, now, tone down that nihilistic cynicism! You may only have a few years left, but my generation have at least fifty years left so we don't have that luxury.

 

 

No, you don't.   (I agree with Nonny, btw.)   He and I will have the luxury of not being around when the house of cards collapses on your children.  [link] 

 

 

 

Seriously, how long do you think that can go on before something radically changes?  

 

Even if vertical farming (or whatever) manages to solve the food problem, what about the fact that we are using trees at a greater rate than they can replenish,  where does the oxygen come from then?   Talk about renewable resources all you want, we are using them faster than they can be renewed.  What is being done with the waste?   Where is enough clean water coming from?  

 

Aside from sunlight and the occasional meteor, this planet is a closed system.  We have to manage what we have and we are not doing a good job of it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

That's an interesting graph.  It is very like a hyperbola which screams off to infinity once you cross the knee of the curve.  This can't happen since we don't have infinite resources, and somewhere in the next hundred years people are going to be dying like flies, probably of starvation or thirst.  The ant heap seems to be out of control.

 

One has to assume that the politicos will eventually have to face up to this and that draconian legislation and policy will be enforced.  The question is, by whom?

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Seriously, how long do you think that can go on before something radically changes?  

 

Even if vertical farming (or whatever) manages to solve the food problem, what about the fact that we are using trees at a greater rate than they can replenish,  where does the oxygen come from then?   Talk about renewable resources all you want, we are using them faster than they can be renewed.  What is being done with the waste?   Where is enough clean water coming from?  

 

Aside from sunlight and the occasional meteor, this planet is a closed system.  We have to manage what we have and we are not doing a good job of it.

 

 

Believe you me I am very aware of what is going to go down in my lifetime: the continued rise of crony capitalism, ever-higher prices of oil and gas, the changing climate, Fukushima, the madness of the exponential economic growth model.

 

The way I see it could be either a slow decline where things get progressively more harder -- until newer technologies and better social engineering begin to alleviate the problem, or things could just snap. It could be another major oil price shock, it could be global hyperinflation as the insane policies of the Fed, BOE, ECB, BOC and BOJ cause disastrous economic consequences, it could be a nuclear salvo between the US and Russia as those two countries once again grind the cold war axe.

 

There is the Fukushima disaster: four core meltdowns, three explosions which blew nuclear materials into the atmosphere, at least two spent fuel rod fires (especially with No 3 where immediately after the explosion there were spent fuel rods littered around the site) with reactor buildings 3 and 4, and of course three years of non-stop flow of radioactive water into the Pacific. Entire ecosystems in the Pacific are dying out, numerous aquatic species are being washed up in beaches around the Pacific- all casualties of the radioactive plumes of water. Cancer rates are creeping higher and higher in Japan, and in the west coast of the US. And they will keep on rising as all of that radioactive uranium, plutonium, strontium, tritium and caesium spreads around the globe. It will kill tens of millions over the next hundred years.

 

Indeed ever you have wondered why cancer is on the increase, aside from the usual causes via obesity, old age and smoking? Perhaps all of that nuclear weapons testing and constant bombardment of microwave radiation, from cell phones and TV transmissions, might be playing a part to?

 

Or global warming, maybe it was predominantly caused by man or by nature. Whoever is to blame let's start thinking about desalination, great sea walls to protect coastal areas, methane extraction in permafrost areas, electricity storage, fusion power and nanotechnology (and from it replicators). Right now we have all the technologies necessary to withstand the worst of global warming, and a global market which is more adaptable than most people realise.

 

Now I believe in mankind's survival for a very personal reason, and it is simply a belief despite being agnostic! And it is basically this; religious prophecy and mankind's evolution. The Torah, the Four Gospels, the Qu'ran and the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. In all four of these holy books they have prophecized the coming of the next Prophet and even the year of his arrival. The Torah -- written by Moses -- alluded to the arrival of Jesus, the King of Jews. The Four Gospels -- written by four of Jesus' apostles -- alluded to Muhammad's arrival. The Qu'ran, written by Muhammed, prophecized the arrival of Baha'u'llah. And the Kitáb-i-Aqdas -- written by Baha'u'llah -- actually states that a thousand lunar years will pass from when Baha'u'llah first revealed his revelation (1863) until another Prophet shall arrive. Prophetic revelation, or God sending in one Prophet after the other to guide mankind.

 

So the next Prophet of God will appear sometime in the 2800s and thus mankind -- in one form or another -- will also be around then. Another amazing thing is how civilization as a whole great developed around the time of each Prophet, and how it continued to rapidly grow for many hundreds of years afterwards. It has been a 151 years since Baha'u'llah revealed himself to be a Manifestation of God, and in those 151 years humanity has radically changed.

 

And my gut instinct is that we are heading towards a new Dark Age (predominantly in the West), before finally a new order, new social engineering methods and new principles emerges that begin the start of mankind's maturity. But you can't flog a dead horse, the vast majority of people will not even see this new Dark Age come because they are dependent on this current unsustainable system. They don't understand what money is, they have not been informed of the dangers, or they are in denial of them, they have overlooked scientific, economic, moral, religious and spiritual warnings. As always humanity only seems to learn the hard way, but I do not know how hard it will actually be.

 

But for all of the chaos, the disasters and the horrendous circumstances; mankind will continue to exist and to grow, even in the face of seemingly impossible obstacles. When I say grow I don't mean in numbers, but grow in the sense of maturity and that is a collective process which no one can stop: not the tyrants, the elites, the cynics or all of those doom and gloomers. That's my own personal belief anyway and nothing will change that.

[Terring 6,473]

A beautiful relative video about the colonization of Mars

[fan o SC4 128]

^Awesome Video, I agree completely with the message. "Grow or die, I think we should grow"-Damn right! couldn't of said it better!

 

PS: Video was so catchy I listened twice, and by listened, I mean jammed 

[KonstantinII 1,106]

Well, when I took astronomy 101 the theory was that Mercury always presented the same side to the sun, more or less.  My how knowledge improves.  Really have to be a troglodyte there, then.  Wonder how the temperature is 1 Km below the surface.

 

And as for Mars, I don't see living on the surface there either.  We have created some mighty tunnelling machines, but getting them there would be a bit of a strain.

 

If we want to live on any reasonable body in the solar system other than Earth, I am afraid we'll all become moles.

 

Try imagining Earth in, say, 30,000 years.  This would be at the end of the next ice age.  Wonder what species will have survived?

 

"The Earth is flat, and you can't sail far from the coast and discover new  land because you will sail off the edge and be eaten by the enormous dragon"

 

However adventurous entrepreneurs and nontraditional thinkers will always be found.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Ever read "Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum?  He did it in 1906 and is acknowledged as the first man to do it.  When he visited Kruger in South Africa he was told he was nuts because the world was flat.

 

I like the blue marble, but we are destroying it.  So, it is go out or go down.  Mars may be a stepping stone, but it would be difficult beyond our present technology because we still don't have a decent space drive.  C'mon physics!

[KonstantinII 1,106]

Well, when I took astronomy 101 the theory was that Mercury always presented the same side to the sun, more or less.  My how knowledge improves.  Really have to be a troglodyte there, then.  Wonder how the temperature is 1 Km below the surface.

 

yeah like you knew anything. A day of Mercury is more than half a year of Mercury. The year of Mercury is obviously less than a year of Earth because smaller orbit, and it takes less time to go around it!

 

If we want to live on any reasonable body in the solar system other than Earth, I am afraid we'll all become moles.

Yeah, and when the steam engine will be invented, we'll all become purple ponies! It will obviously be a good upgrade from your current appearance, considering you are a furry, horned beast who lives in the woods

 

 

Solar panels would be useless because they would melt.

 

What, are your solar panels made of chocolate?  

[AkemiAzula 280]

Colonisation of space is silly when by thinning humanity we can just keep on Earth. Much simpler. Besides look at teens. Suburbs turn them mad by boredom. Imagine youth culture on a flat red lifeless planet. Theyd all be potheads.

[Terring 6,473]

"We have created some mighty tunnelling machines, but getting them there would be a bit of a strain."

If you can build something by yourself, you don't need to bring it from Earth. Extract some Martian minerals, use them to build your own tunneling machines suitable for the Martian environment and you're ready for action.

"If we want to live on any reasonable body in the solar system other than Earth, I am afraid we'll all become moles."

Not if you make the underground cities large and comfortable enough, something like this...
 

 


Don't forget that the concept of an underground city is not as futuristic as it may sounds like. In Turkey there is an ancient multi-level underground city, built possibly by the Phrygians in the 8th–7th centuries B.C.. Of course comparing the ancient with the future underground cities is like comparing Vostok 1 with the Space Shuttle Columbia.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Interesting.  Everything old is new again.

 

The problem with building underground arcologies on another planet, say Mars, is the amount of engineering that has to take place before such a thing becomes inhabitable.  Where do you suppose the construction battalion will live while creating this?

 

When it comes to an extraterrestrial habitat, how about something like DS9 sitting at one of the Earth's LaGrange points?  Come on over to Quark's and I'll buy you a Transgalactic Gargle Blaster.  We could mine the asteroid belt for materials.

[Terring 6,473]

When it comes to an extraterrestrial habitat, how about something like DS9 sitting at one of the Earth's LaGrange points?

Even better, how about something like O'Neil Cylinders? Those cylindric babies can hold millions of citizens and even entire ecosystems. Something like Rama.

 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

We can stop playing "can you top this" when we manage to construct a Dyson sphere.  Much bigger than the cylinders or a ring world.  Would probably take the entire material of a planet to build it.

 

"Hey, buddy, turn your planet inside out"? the Vogon captain said.

[Easy Bakes 253]

We can stop playing "can you top this" when we manage to construct a Dyson sphere.  Much bigger than the cylinders or a ring world.  Would probably take the entire material of a planet to build it.

 

"Hey, buddy, turn your planet inside out"? the Vogon captain said.

probably more then a solar systems material

[Terring 6,473]

According to Freeman Dyson, all we need is to dismantle Jupiter and use it's materials to build a Dyson Sphere in our Solar System. Keep in mind though that Dyson's original idea was not a shell, but a swarm containing enough solar collectors around the Sun to absorb the solar energy. Something like this:
 

[simcity1999 34]

"We have created some mighty tunnelling machines, but getting them there would be a bit of a strain."

If you can build something by yourself, you don't need to bring it from Earth. Extract some Martian minerals, use them to build your own tunneling machines suitable for the Martian environment and you're ready for action.

"If we want to live on any reasonable body in the solar system other than Earth, I am afraid we'll all become moles."

Not if you make the underground cities large and comfortable enough, something like this...

 

 

Don't forget that the concept of an underground city is not as futuristic as it may sounds like. In Turkey there is an ancient multi-level underground city, built possibly by the Phrygians in the 8th–7th centuries B.C.. Of course comparing the ancient with the future underground cities is like comparing Vostok 1 with the Space Shuttle Columbia.

 

That's very possible to build in this modern world. Much more possible and feasible than a 4KM supertall.