Sending people to Mars, keeping them alive there, and bringing them back (optional) is hard.
Sending robots to Mars is easier. It's been done in 1997 and artificial intelligence and robotics have made major strides since.
A semi-autonomous* settlement with life support should be built before we send people there. This will save a lot of time and make the mission far more likely to succeed than if we treat it like a camping trip and make astronauts set their own "tents" up.
* with high-level operations being managed remotely, but real-time operations requiring automation due to the unavoidably high ping between Earth and Mars
29 Comments
Thorry@feddit.org · 9 pts · 7d
Bringing them back isn't optional, unless you want to be shipping tons of stuff to Mars all the time at staggering costs. Just look at how much we ship to the ISS to keep a few people alive there. And that's in LEO where shipping is cheap and if there is any issue, they can just come home within a few hours.
The real world is also a bit harsher than most sci-fi stories. You can't just build something called "life-support" and have that mean you can keep humans alive indefinitely. Humans need a lot of shit to be kept alive and what they need depends on how long you want them to live. So there would need to be a lot of shipments going there to have all that stuff ready. And if you want them to remain longer, more stuff needs to be shipped.
Sure in theory some stuff can get recycled and perhaps some resources can be extracted locally. But that's just in theory right now, the best systems we have aren't good enough by a long shot. And for a lot of stuff we just have ideas, no practical stuff we could deploy. Let alone something we can ship, autonomously deploy on another planet and have them work. It would take huge amounts of money and time to develop those systems and test them. And Mars simply doesn't have a lot of the stuff we need, so even with good recycling and local resource harvesting, they would still need continous resupply from Earth.
The whole idea of setting up a Mars colony is good for fiction and a romantic idea. But in reality it's just a bad idea. Not just the extreme costs, but those people would have a miserable existence. Being locked up in small spaces, at high risk of death at all times, being dependent on shipments just to keep on living. And in all likelihood they would die from something within a few years, just by chance or by exposure to all that nasty dust. And for what? To say they are there? It's not like they could ever be self sufficient or do anything that would make the staggering costs worth while.
Yeah but what about all our eggs in the same basket? That doesn't get fixed until the Mars colony would be self sufficient. And since for a lot of stuff Earth is the only source, that would still be the case. The whole idea doesn't hold up to even a little bit of scrutiny.
People seem to think because Mars is bigger and has something of an atmosphere, it must be possible to live there. But Mars is very much the same as the Moon. Sure it has an atmosphere, but it's extremely thin, hardly an atmosphere at all. And it's bigger, but not big enough to have a magnetic field to protect from the radiation. With just a handful of people, I don't think real estate is the issue. The Moon at least has the upside of being close to Earth, so the staggering costs of keeping people alive there would be a little less.
Unless you are saying ship em off to Mars and have them die in a few weeks, then we don't need to bring them back. But I don't think that would be a popular suggestion. In fact I would think if a mission to Mars would go wrong and there would be corpses there, a mission would be sent to retrieve them.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 7d
Something else that gets hand-waved away are the perchlorates on Mars. Not only does it have very little atmosphere and space radiation, the dirt is toxic
Thorry@feddit.org · 3 pts · 7d
Yeah that dust is nasty. And since it's so dry the particle size ranges from small to extremely small. It will get everywhere and into everything and is toxic af. It will corrode metals as well, with particularly things like hinges being a prime target. If humans are just going to visit for a little while, say a few days, it would probably be fine. But if we are talking weeks, the dust is a huge issue.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 2 pts · 7d
Good points - which is why I suggested working on setting things up BEFORE sending people there, to avoid a Mark Watney situation. (A backup ascent vehicle would be nice.)
And yeah, we will likely see a permanent Moon base a lot sooner than a Mars settlement (hopefully within the next decade thanks to the Artemis program), and this post is speculative at best.
And yes, these things WILL take astronomical (heh) amounts of resources, at least at first. And for a while at least, the only people going there - and back - will be professional astronauts.
However, I think it's possible. Probably not with current technology, but within less than a century of sufficient research and development it's hard to tell.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 7d
Mars is bigger? Than what? Mars is tiny compared to The Earth or Venus, not to mention any of the outer planets. Mars's gravity is only about 1/3 of The Earth's. The lack of gravity is gonna make a permanent self sufficient colony pretty much impossible, not to mention all the other stuff.
Thorry@feddit.org · 2 pts · 7d
Bigger than the moon, I was making a comparison to a moon colony.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 7d
you're right that settling mars seemed impossible for the last 20 years, but that's not so much because of the toxic dust or the radiation or sth; but simply for financial reasons.
basically, as you've already said, it costs a lot of money to do this. and the question is: is it worth it? the question has always been a resounding "no" since the 1970s, but things are starting to turn. the reason is because while the costs are high and the reward is small, it is still positive. self-sustainance can be achieved 99%, it does not have to be 100%, you don't need to produce computer-chips on-site from the get-go; you just need to reduce the mass of necessary imports low enough to make it worth-while. say if people could just produce water and food and maybe some plastics (3d-printing) on-site, that would already cover more than 95% of their import mass, i reckon, and that would make sustaining the whole settlement a whole lot more feasible.
now, about finances: capitalists are constantly looking to invest into the next branch of the economy that promises growth. for decades, this has been computer stuff and similar earth-bound technology because it promised a higher return-on-investment than some astronautics project. but that is starting to turn as it is becoming increasingly clear that IT is a bubble today (AI bubble) and there's economic stagnation threatening all around us. so the economic system will naturally seek to explore new fields that are not bound by the space constraints of Earth, and i think that if you look at it this way, space settlements are not just a wet dream but an economic imperative. (in the sense of, some economics professor will look at this and say "we have to do this").
the dust on-site is less of a problem, i guess, because there's toxins in the soil on earth too. you're not supposed to just eat dirt that you find in your garden because it can contain toxins from bacteria and you can suffer from that. however, we still live just fine on that soil. people have managed to live in the sahara desert and in the midwest as well (where dust storms occurr regularly, i think). with technology, the western edge of the midwest, where it borders into the desert, is actually one of the most agriculturally fertile regions on earth these days (center-pivot irrigation article mentions it).
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 7d
You're ignoring the problem that can't be solved with current tech. Gravity. Humans don't do well in low gravity environments, and Mars is 1/3 the mass, and therefore 1/3 the gravity of Earth.
Venus would be much easier to get into habitable and self sustaining conditions. Venus just needs a few comets worth of ice and some cyanobacteria.
threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 7d
Do we know this for sure? We know that humans don't do well in zero-G environments, but we have barely any dataponts between zero and one. Just a few weeks of data at 1/6 gravity from the Apollo missions.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 7d
oh by the way. the issue can be solved with current tech. centrifuges. they produce the same net effect as a higher gravity. but also that is irrelevant as there's no clear proof that we actually need 1g. probably we could do well with less?
AFAIK, other animals experience the world differently. for example, if an insect (like an ant) falls of a 12-story building, it doesn't even hurt itself when it hits the ground. that is because its surface area is so large compared to its mass, that it never really gets fast while falling down because the air resistance. also, fish don't even feel their own weight because they are about the same density as the water that they swim in, so in net effect, they barely feel any of their own weight.
what i'm saying is, many animals seem to be doing just fine while not really experiencing the effects of gravity. what makes you so sure that we, the humans, definitely can't do without the gravity?
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 7d
It can be solved in space, sure. Just spin the craft at the right speed. You can't be strapped into a centrifuge all the time planetside, and be very productive.
I'm pretty sure we need the gravity to be close to 1 G because we have had issues bringing astronauts back from the ISS, and no one has been on the ISS for as long as a round trip to Mars would currently take. It also does weird things to fetuses, so you couldn't have a self sustaining colony.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 5d
What if they turn the spacecraft into a centrifuge on way back to Earth, like in Project Hail Mary?
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 5d
Like I said, you could solve in space, but by that time the damage would have already been done.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 5d
True, some other solutions are needed. Solutions that people who will know more than me about this will find.
inlandempire@jlai.lu · 5 pts · 7d
I think (just my guess) that's probably the plan, have at minimum the infrastructure on site prior to human arrival
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 7d
Mars is too small to build a colony there for anything other than to say we did it. Venus is a much easier option to eventually put humans on. Venus just really needs a few comets worth of ice, and some cyanobacteria. Might need some temporary shades as well to get the temperature down so the process can start.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 5d
Could be (best I can find is potential for cloud cities being potentially easier to do than Mars).
However, this is a Mars-focused "subreddit" (subfeddit? sublemmy? subpiefed? "community" feels too generic) so I'm talking about Mars. The advice of the post probably applies to Venus as well, I guess?
zo0@programming.dev · 2 pts · 7d
Yeah but what about squatters?
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 2 pts · 7d
Can you clarify? I can only think of three kinds:
zo0@programming.dev · 3 pts · 7d
The alien lifeforms could move in while we're away and refuse to pay rent!
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 2 pts · 7d
I think that it honestly does not even make that much of a difference. In terms of "can the astronauts survive", the answer is probably a "yes" anyway, whether you send robots there first or not. Consider that the ISS (International Space Station, launched in 1998) has been in space for 28 years and has housed around 300 people in that time(source), so we definitely know how to keep people alive in a tin can for extended periods. Basically, the practical approach to housing people on Mars would be to have them live in the spaceship upon arrival and for the next years onwards, because the spaceship naturally already includes a complete live-support system and you can re-use that on-site.
So in terms of "should we build houses there before people arrive?" the answer is simple: "the house arrives with the people", namely in the form of the rocket that is being used to get them there in the first place, because that rocket necessarily includes a live support system anyways for the 6-months travel to get there.
does that clear up some questions for you?
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 5d
Rocket? You mean spacecraft? Also, wouldn't this require the whole thing to land on Mars? Not to mention that the life support system might not last indefinitely just because it can last 6-12 months (return trip included). And sending everything at once would be inefficient and limit how much "everything" can be sent.
It just seems better to prepare things in advance.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 7d
Despite the current hype about AI and robotics, we simply don't have the technology to do that.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 7d
We don't have it yet? Or is there some fundamental law of physics preventing it?
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 7d
It's probably doable. We're just not there yet.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 7d
Fair enough.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 7d
oh and besides my other comments in this thread, i want to note something very important:
lime@feddit.nu · 1 pts · 7d
is anyone planning to go there without doing that?
MousePotatoDoesStuff@piefed.social · 1 pts · 7d
I'm not sure, now that I think about it - at least not when it comes to actual space agencies. But when it comes to amateur proposals, I've seen a few posts in this community modelling Mars settlement after that of the Americas (which is completely wrong for several reasons, the most relevant to this post being that unlike with Mars today, colonizers had to actually send people to the Americas to build settlements there).