Mars Colony by 2025?

[Silversmith]

Don't know whether anyone has seen this so here you go.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20050908/sc_space/newcompanylauncheswithaimofcolonizingmars

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

I saw this just a couple of hours before you posted it, and I'm fixing on making a blog entry about it next week.

 

(Just wait 'til y'all see what I have scheduled for tomorrow!)

[theltemes]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

Just a FYI for those planning on running adventures on Mars. Many people fail to consider the radiological environment on Mars. It has a very thin atmosphere, which means that human visitors/inhabitants on Mars will be exposed to a variety of radiation sources.

 

UV light will be a problem. Any habitats that have exposed windows will need to be UV protected, as will any people travelling on the surface in pressure suits. The UV radiation is significant enough that it would be advisable to have two different methods of UV protection for both the eyes and the skin. I would recommend UV coated helmets in addition to UV goggles. The UV radiation is intense enough that UV blocking sunscreen would not be sufficient. Martian workers would need UV absorbing materials in both their pressure suits as well as a second body glove, which is usually standard with a pressure suit (to regulate body temperature).

 

Cosmic rays and solar particle events will need to be shielded against as well. Approximately one meter of martian regolith will be required to protect habitats and roving vehicles from GCR and SPE radiation.

 

I have examined the radiation environment in three locations: Hellas Planatia, the Southern Highlands and Northern Lowlands. These locations were chosen as probable sites for an underground habitat. It turns out that for occupational radiation exposure (2.0 cSv/yr) that exterior crewed operations will be limited as follows:

 

Hellas Planatia: 19 12-hour days per every 50 day mission cycle

Southern Highlands: 8 12-hour days per every 50 day mission cycle

Northern Lowlands: 14 12-hour days per every 50 day mission cycle

 

So be prepared to have any martian inhabitants be spending a lot of time indoors.

[Nyrath]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

There are some images of a Mars colony here:

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050810_mars_homestead.html

 

Martian dust is a hazard as well. It is abrasive, so it can cause failure in airlock gaskets. It might also cause silicosis if breathed in. What's worse, it can make dangerous electrostatic charges.

 

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=16934

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-atmosphere-05d.html

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/10aug_crackling.htm

[Cancer]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

I strongly doubt a living human will walk on Mars in my lifetime (and the over/under for that is 25 more years). Radiation environment, dust, inadequate atmosphere, no clear in situ power sources, transportation & supply... the list is very long, and it's aggravated by the lack of a reason to go there.

 

In fact, I strongly doubt humans will walk on the Moon again in my lifetime, and that's a much easier place to reach. There still isn't much reason to go there. It is perhaps the best site in the Solar System for astronomical observatories, but that isn't adequate reason to go.

 

However, I am growing old and perhaps overly cynical.

[theltemes]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

Martian dust is a hazard as well. It is abrasive' date=' so it can cause failure in airlock gaskets. It might also cause silicosis if breathed in. What's worse, it can make dangerous electrostatic charges.[/quote']

 

Correct. So you would need a sufficient crew complenment that you could perform routine maintenance on exposed structures. For example, if you had a colony at Hellas Planatia, and a routine maintenance crew consisted of 2 people working a 12 hour shift each day (as I detailed in my post above) you would need a crew of at least six whose job consist only of maintaining the exterior facing components of the habitat. That doesn't account for illness or injury, so if you had a 50% crew reserve, that bumps you up to nine people just for repair work.

[Nyrath]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

I strongly doubt a living human will walk on Mars in my lifetime (and the over/under for that is 25 more years). Radiation environment' date=' dust, inadequate atmosphere, no clear in situ power sources, transportation & supply... the list is very long, and it's aggravated by the lack of a reason to go there.[/quote']

Sad, but true. The standard argument at rec.arts.sf.science is that it would be about ten-thousand times quicker and cheaper to colonize Antarctica, so why bother with Mars?

 

Of course this would all change overnight if they discovered some lichen on Mars that contained a drug that would allow one to lose twenty pounds overnight, cure male-pattern baldness, or give ten times the performance of Viagra.

[Savinien]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

All hail viagra!

[CSgeekHero]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

I strongly doubt a living human will walk on Mars in my lifetime (and the over/under for that is 25 more years). Radiation environment, dust, inadequate atmosphere, no clear in situ power sources, transportation & supply... the list is very long, and it's aggravated by the lack of a reason to go there.

 

In fact, I strongly doubt humans will walk on the Moon again in my lifetime, and that's a much easier place to reach. There still isn't much reason to go there. It is perhaps the best site in the Solar System for astronomical observatories, but that isn't adequate reason to go.

 

However, I am growing old and perhaps overly cynical.

Don't worry. When it comes to space colonization, I usually have extra hope to go around. Here have some.

[Hierax]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

I'm still disillusioned that we didn't have Orbital and/or Lunar Colonies by 1999 like all the futurist books of the 1970s and 1980s promised me in my dreaming naivety of youth I really looked forward to it and I guess I haven't grown up because I still long for extra-terrestrial human settlements in my lifetime.

 

Still seems strange that we could put man on the Moon in the 1960s but despite all of the scientific progress we haven't really progressed much since then

 

If only socieites priorities would have been otherwise... (sigh)

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

What happened to the future predicted by all those old school SF writers?

 

It boils down to a few factors:

 

1. Power technology

The old SF writers knew, or could calculate how much energy it would take to accelerate a ship to Mars at one gravity (technically, accelerate half the trip, decelerate the other half). The problem is that the SF writers assumed steady progress in power plant technology, when in fact nuclear power stalled due to social factors most of them thought unimaginable.

 

Fusion power has been the power source of the future for fifty years now, and unfortunately, it looks like at least fifty more if not closer to a hundred before we get commercially viable fusion power, at least from my own pessimistic viewpoint. First we gotta get a sustained fusion burn, then we have to get more power out than we get in, then we have to find a way to build a fusion plant that can stand up to the neutron flux the fusion reaction will be producing.

 

2. Underestimating radiation issues

Using lead shielding against cosmic radiation isn't a good idea. It produces cascading secondary radiation that is pretty unhealthy. Incidentally, it isn't just the thin atmosphere on Mars that's an issue. There's the little problem of a lack of a magnetic field to shield people on the ground as well.

 

3. Underestimating the complexities of manned spacecraft

The shuttle is one of the most complicated things that mankind has ever constructed, period. Hence the maintenance on the shuttle is completely horrendous. NASA tried to cut costs by creating a reusable shuttle only to find that the complexities involved pretty much negated any advantages given by reusability. The successor to the shuttle is a CEV system which can be roughly described as a next-generation Apollo module. And look at all the problems that the ISS is having right now.

 

Until we can create self-maintaining/self-repairing spaceships and space stations, having human beings in space is going to be expensive and dangerous (and that tends to cut down on commercial development).

 

My own feeling is that by the end of the twenty first century, there will be a manned Mars expedition, but it's going to be a pure "we can do it" sort of thing. Frankly the money would be far better spent on a fleet of unmanned vehicles to Mars, but when you get ego involved, economic sense matters little. The whole Cold War space program was more ego than anything else.

 

I don't think we're going to see a real space age until we get a working space elevator up. Once that happens, other nations will want to get in the space elevator game, and the cost of sending stuff into orbit will plummet. Even then, I don't see much actual development outside of geosynchronous orbit, with a couple of research stations at L4 and L5, launching points for deep interplanetary probes. Most exploration will be done by increasingly sophisticated robotic probes with increasingly powerful onboard computers and flexible robotic limbs.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

Technolocical civilization won't last long enough for that to happen.

 

By 2100, I am convinced that what we think of as civilization will have utterly destrtoyed itself and that what is left of mankind will be subsistence farmers eking out barely enough to survive with no level of social organization higher than the village.

 

The pricnple problem with sending men to Mars, or the Moon for that matter, is that for most practical purposes there's nothing there. The Moon is simply a rock -- a rock that could offer some tantalizing clues about the oprgiins of this planet, but essentially just a rock. There's nothing there that can be put to practical use by humans at an expense that can be reasonably justified. The only reason we went to the Moon in 1969 was so that we could definitely prove to the Soviets that we had the capacity to rain nuclear death on them and there was nothing they could do about it. Once we achieved that aim and realized what was actually up there, our government rapidly lost interest.

 

I think the only reason Bush cares about the Moon and Mars at all is to try and forestall the Chinese space program -- which is ltself largely a collosal bluff intended for domestic polcitical consumption.

 

We could go to the Moon again if we really wanted to, but we don't. There's no compelling reason to go there again, juist as there was no true compelling reason to go there in the first place.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

Technolocical civilization won't last long enough for that to happen.

 

By 2100, I am convinced that what we think of as civilization will have utterly destrtoyed itself and that what is left of mankind will be subsistence farmers eking out barely enough to survive with no level of social organization higher than the village.

Well, these are nice and cheerful thoughts. You do realize that was supposed to happen according to the pessimists by the year 2000, for very logical and practical reasons. The fact is that the technology curve keeps changing the rules and keeps defying predictions. Not to mention human beings are amazingly adaptable creatures.

The pricnple problem with sending men to Mars, or the Moon for that matter, is that for most practical purposes there's nothing there. The Moon is simply a rock -- a rock that could offer some tantalizing clues about the oprgiins of this planet, but essentially just a rock. There's nothing there that can be put to practical use by humans at an expense that can be reasonably justified. The only reason we went to the Moon in 1969 was so that we could definitely prove to the Soviets that we had the capacity to rain nuclear death on them and there was nothing they could do about it. Once we achieved that aim and realized what was actually up there, our government rapidly lost interest.

Actually, I do think the colonization of other worlds is more or less economically unviable, and technologically extremely impractical with the human race as it stands. A post/trans-human race which can survive under harsher environmental standards is another kettle of fish entirely. The problem is for Mars, sans atmosphere and magnetic field, you've got a serious radiation problem down there. You'd have to set up a colony deep underground the planet's surface to keep radiation levels down to what human beings are used to.

 

The moon has similar issues to deal with. I can see a lunar outpost set up for scientific research purposes, but that's about it, at least until we get to a transhuman species that doesn't mind lunar conditions.

I think the only reason Bush cares about the Moon and Mars at all is to try and forestall the Chinese space program -- which is ltself largely a collosal bluff intended for domestic polcitical consumption.

It's ego games. I think that a Mars mission would be valuable as a challenge, forcing us to stretch our muscles. Frankly, I think if we're ever going to settle another world, it's going to be terraforming Venus. Seed the atmosphere with genetically engineered bugs and nanotech to deal with the atmosphere, bind it down into solids and liquids, adjust the chemical balance until it's what we want.

We could go to the Moon again if we really wanted to, but we don't. There's no compelling reason to go there again, juist as there was no true compelling reason to go there in the first place.

Sure there were compelling reasons. Scientific research and discovery, especially given the crude robotics at the time.

 

You seem remarkably anti-technology, which hits the highest levels of irony when we consider how we're communicating over each other, by a technological network the science fiction writers never dreamed of in their wildest dreams.

[theltemes]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

Actually, I do think the colonization of other worlds is more or less economically unviable, and technologically extremely impractical with the human race as it stands. A post/trans-human race which can survive under harsher environmental standards is another kettle of fish entirely. The problem is for Mars, sans atmosphere and magnetic field, you've got a serious radiation problem down there. You'd have to set up a colony deep underground the planet's surface to keep radiation levels down to what human beings are used to.

 

The moon has similar issues to deal with. I can see a lunar outpost set up for scientific research purposes, but that's about it, at least until we get to a transhuman species that doesn't mind lunar conditions.

 

Reread my post about radiation conditions. You will need to live "underground" on Mars, but it only takes about 80cm of Martain regolith to protect you from SPE and GCR radiation. UV can be filtered pretty easily as well. The bigger environmental problem on both the Moon and Mars is actually dust, as others have posted.

 

As far as economic concerns go, it is a lot cheaper to launch spacecraft from either the Moon or Mars, as compared to the Earth. Both planets have an abundant supply of fuel, once it is processed out of the soil. In addition, the Moon and other airless bodies in the solar system, as well as Jupiter and Saturn, have abundant supplies of Helium-3. This is the stuff that will be used in commercial-grade fusion reactors (don't laugh, we are running a D-He3 experimental reactor in the basement where I work right now). In the future, recovery of He3 will be a very profitable economic factor. In fact, one space shuttle's cargo hold worth of He3 would be worth about 40 billion dollars in today's money.

 

For more information on the economic aspects of space, see the course notes from Resources from Space.

[Cancer]

Re: Mars Colony by 2025?

 

we are running a D-He3 experimental reactor in the basement where I work right now

 

Fusion research using a net proton-rich mix for a change. Best news all week.