Living on mars.

[inachu]

Will need to be underground. Caves that has openings to let sun let in will need light filters and first things needs to be done is to grow crops underground. Mars will need to be a farming planet first.


I think currently the machinery on how mars has an atmosphere that is mostly carbon dioxide and how it is created will need to be fundamentally changed and even the first 20 years there will be no change until we start investing in new technologies to convert those gases and even then I would not be sure that just conversion would make the planet livable.

I think the entirety of mars for human survival will be underground.
To even think one day mars could one day have blue skies would mean we would have to move mars into the same orbit as earth.

The next 20 trips would have to be all robots to mars.

1. a few to explore the surface some more.
2. a few to dig down super deep just to see what is down there. water or oil or some other substance.
3. robot farming.
4. robot building builders or buildings that can self construct.
5. robot diggers that do nonstop digging 24/7 to expand underground farming on a mass scale.
6 robots that collect and build solar buildings.


I am sure the list can go on forever but mass creation of robots need to be made that have their own skillsets apart from other robots and humans.

This truly will be a new industry for all nations.

If you think mass immigration of regular humans going to mars in space suits will do everything then you are 100% wrong.

 

[cbrunny]

How would you grow crops with no water?

Edit: I guess there may be water under the ground. Super-irrigation needed. Robots.

 

[inachu]

I suspect that TRUE teraforming will never take place on mars because I suspect the planets magnetic field may not hold that type of atmosphere to support human life.

That is why I think if we do populate mars then it will be mostly underground.

 

[SMOGZINN]

How would you grow crops with no water?

Edit: I guess there may be water under the ground. Super-irrigation needed. Robots.

There is a lot more problems than water, the real problem is that the soil is completely dead. It has no nutrients, and is so high in iron that basicly nothing earth based is likely to grow there.

 

[disappoint]

lol Mars. How about fix the numbskulls on Earth first. That should keep us busy for the next several thousand years or our extinction, you know, whichever comes first.

 

[DrPizza]

Hey, plenty of water in Antarctica. And, it's far far far far more hospitable to life. Why not completely colonize Antarctica?

 

[Retro Rob]

Really, Antarctica would be a perfect testing ground to see how well we would (or wouldn't) work together when handing a planet which currently is ungoverned and uninhabited.

Before we can even discuss the habitability of another planet, we need to first prove we can work together here, or all we'd carry our same dysfunctions and problems with us and compile those on top of habitability/survivability issues.

Like one of my old bosses would say: "If you can't handle this job, why would I trust you to handle another job?".

 

[inachu]

To get the event on mars to profit as quickly as possible would need to export the vast amount of iron that is found there. Use the iron not to ship back to earth but to use it as building material to make more robots and building infrastructure.

I suspect mars has more than just iron so soil sampling should take 1 to 2 years.

No more of these tiny solar radio shack on wheels type buggies but a true 4x4 monster truck with a heavy payload of batteries with fold out solar cells that also shield the vehicle during storms and such and the 4x4 will stay cocooned under the solar cells until fully charged and be controlled by googles driverless technology.

This way it goes farther and can be remote controlled if needed.
Will need those military style worms to survive drops into crevices.
So we need vallery crawlers and mountain top climber robots.

We may even need a few BLOW EM UP style robots who act like the NPC's in WARCRAFT 3 do to blow up the enemy buildings in a terrorist style manner if we may find more/better samples by doing so.

Robot bridges that span out and connect to each other to create massive bridges.

Would be fun to see these in action testing them on earth. MIT and GOOGLE could easily make this possible.

 

[inachu]

Of course the real reason we are doing this is because earth will not be a sustainable planet within 500 years if we keep going like we are.

 

[Greenman]

So whats the point of this thread? Are we trying to see who can come up with the wildest speculation?
Why bother sending mining robots to mars, or digging holes, or terraforming? All we need to do is send one preprogrammed self replicating nanite and the job will be done in a few weeks.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Hey, plenty of water in Antarctica. And, it's far far far far more hospitable to life. Why not completely colonize Antarctica?

Antarctica would be a good alpha test ground for planetary colonization. We really should be doing more long term with no assistance and limited contact tests of colonization in the most inhospitable places on earth. If we can't master those places we can't survive on any planet we could even theoretically reach.

Before we can even discuss the habitability of another planet, we need to first prove we can work together here, or all we'd carry our same dysfunctions and problems with us and compile those on top of habitability/survivability issues.

While Antarctica is somewhat useful for testing some extreme environment survival, you can't really do a good test of rebooting society. Antarctica is simply to close, the people there know that if they REALLY need it they can be rescued, this will keep them holding on to their old systems.

 

[DrPizza]

Antarctica would be a good alpha test ground for planetary colonization. We really should be doing more long term with no assistance and limited contact tests of colonization in the most inhospitable places on earth. If we can't master those places we can't survive on any planet we could even theoretically reach.



While Antarctica is somewhat useful for testing some extreme environment survival, you can't really do a good test of rebooting society. Antarctica is simply to close, the people there know that if they REALLY need it they can be rescued, this will keep them holding on to their old systems.

I have a hard time believing people would actually want to seriously colonize Antarctica. That means, getting married, living there, having children... You want to raise a child in such an environment as some sort of grand experiment?? I think there are a lot of ethical issues to consider.

 

[OverVolt]

Its a science fantasy, bordering on crazier beliefs than Scientology. Its not practical for umpteen million reasons but alot of people firmly believe we'll just colonize the solar system like a hollywood movie.

Look at you go with your robot diggers and robot builders. So what happens when one of the robots breaks eh?

 

[inachu]

Its a science fantasy, bordering on crazier beliefs than Scientology. Its not practical for umpteen million reasons but alot of people firmly believe we'll just colonize the solar system like a hollywood movie.

Look at you go with your robot diggers and robot builders. So what happens when one of the robots breaks eh?

I am sure a reclamation process would have been made.
Imagine an industry of NASA employees operating some of these bots to train them for certain skill by way of macro programming then it can learn the rest on its own.

Using a joystick on earth to unscrew/weld new parts on.

I think the main drive here is how to depopulate earth without killing people is the point ot be made.

I do not think we are that far off to go into space. Engineers are already talking about making bigger ships and using current tech on how to make these future ship self healing when they might leak air.

There is plastic out now tested on milk truck containers and a man shoots at the metal covered in the new plastic and after a few minutes the hole is sealed shut.

Nasa wants to incorporate the healing plastic into certain metals then they can build Lego style bricks that weld together at room temperature.

It will happen but will just take time.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I have a hard time believing people would actually want to seriously colonize Antarctica. That means, getting married, living there, having children... You want to raise a child in such an environment as some sort of grand experiment?? I think there are a lot of ethical issues to consider.

And that says everything that needs to be said about colonizing Mars.

 

[DrPizza]

I think the main drive here is how to depopulate earth without killing people is the point ot be made.

I do not think we are that far off to go into space. Engineers are already talking about making bigger ships and using current tech on how to make these future ship self healing when they might leak air.

Reducing the population is simple: education, birth control. Political tools can easily be used for that purpose. E.g., eliminate tax deductions for having children.

It's silly to think we can move even 1% of the population off this planet. The Space Shuttle was on fairly small rockets. They had no where near the necessary amount of energy to launch a shuttle to the moon. Effectively, the space shuttle wasn't much higher than a jet. The moon is 238,000 miles "up." The space shuttle orbited at about 190 to a bit over 200 miles up. Actually, the distance to the moon is 238,900 miles. The amount I rounded off is 4 times the altitude of the space shuttle.

Now, consider how much fuel it took to launch 8 astronauts on the space shuttle. The 135 space shuttle launches came at a cost of 209 billion dollars. A total of 833 crew members rode on the space shuttles during the entire history of the space shuttle; many of those 833 were people who rode more than once. There are 355 different individuals (including cosmonauts) who have been on shuttle flights.

Let's say you want to send 10% of Earth's population to the Mars on a shuttle sized vehicle. Remember, 5 months in space, not 5 days, might be kind of cramped. That's 700 million + people. At 7 people per flight, that's 100 million flights to Mars. Over 20 years... That's 13,700 flights per day. That's one launch every 6.3 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 20 straight years. And, I've got bad news for you. At current estimated growth rates, that means that by the time you got rid of 10% of Earth's *current* population, the population on Earth actually grew faster than you were shipping people off this planet. You would need well over 10 million flights this year alone, just to keep up with population growth. Sure, you can make bigger ships for these flights. But, the bigger the ship, the more fuel you need. But, you're still never going to send any significant number of humans off planet - not even 1%.

 

[Fern]

You guys can go. I'm staying here.

Fern

 

[inachu]

You guys can go. I'm staying here.

Fern

I am sure by the time space tourism has hit peak then maybe as an old man I;ll be tearing tickets for people who want to see a movie in a theater on mars.

By then fuel will be a trivial thing as more advancements have been made.

If it does not happen then people will laugh at the idea of the MARS FAD.

But maybe with Robots we do not need to go.

 

[Screech]

Of course the real reason we are doing this is because earth will not be a sustainable planet within 500 years if we keep going like we are.

I think you vastly overestimate just how bad earth will be even with the worst prediction for 'within 500 years if we keep going like we are' or vastly underestimate just how difficult it would be to live on mars......

 

[burninatortech4]

I think you vastly overestimate just how bad earth will be even with the worst prediction for 'within 500 years if we keep going like we are' or vastly underestimate just how difficult it would be to live on mars......

Agreed. I think the difficulty of mars colonization is being understated (even underground).

People need to take the Earth and conservation (plants, animals, and abiotic) seriously or we're fucked.

Spaceship Earth yo. It's all we have and we treat it like a fucking cesspool.

 

[doubledeluxe]

Really, Antarctica would be a perfect testing ground to see how well we would (or wouldn't) work together when handing a planet which currently is ungoverned and uninhabited.

Before we can even discuss the habitability of another planet, we need to first prove we can work together here, or all we'd carry our same dysfunctions and problems with us and compile those on top of habitability/survivability issues.

Like one of my old bosses would say: "If you can't handle this job, why would I trust you to handle another job?".

With this kind of thinking we would never make any progress. The job of colonizing other planets and solar systems will not be left to those bickering over religion, money, and power. Once they green light the funds it's mostly out of their hands.

Progress is not a linear function and people are perfectly capable of developing technology and testing it without worrying about the political problems in country capitals.

Thinking we are going to somehow rid ourselves of our faults and humanity is also another fools errand. Odds are we would go extinct before that happened. So yes, we will live on other planets and still have social problems there too.

 

[doubledeluxe]

Hey, plenty of water in Antarctica. And, it's far far far far more hospitable to life. Why not completely colonize Antarctica?

That's not the point of colonizing other planets. Antarctica is a good testing grounds but we've already had permanent research stations there for over 30 years.

 

[doubledeluxe]

Its a science fantasy, bordering on crazier beliefs than Scientology. Its not practical for umpteen million reasons but alot of people firmly believe we'll just colonize the solar system like a hollywood movie.

Look at you go with your robot diggers and robot builders. So what happens when one of the robots breaks eh?

First step would be the moon. There's enough water there to support a colony for at least 100 years. That's more than enough time for us to shit or get off the pot with respect to further colonization in the solar system.

Next step would realistically be mining. The resources we can gather from asteroids is tremendous and once profitable could do a lot to stop us from strip mining, clearing rain forest, etc.

Colonizing Mars is not something I would even see us doing. A small scientific station I can understand but to colonize it permanently would require some form of practical justification. Large scale colonization would be a desperate act only if the Earth is dead or we find some element on that planet that we can't find elsewhere for cheaper. Even then we should be able to do it with unmanned vehicles in short order.

We should have the technology to deflect an asteroid if needed. Even a small probe has a gravitational well sufficient enough to help avoid an extinction level event. As long as we spot it in time. I see that, mining, and pure scientific exploration to be our main motivators at this time. Eventually though we really do have to consider finding another hospitable planet to live on. Mars is probably not it.

 

[doubledeluxe]

Reducing the population is simple: education, birth control. Political tools can easily be used for that purpose. E.g., eliminate tax deductions for having children.

It's silly to think we can move even 1% of the population off this planet. The Space Shuttle was on fairly small rockets. They had no where near the necessary amount of energy to launch a shuttle to the moon. Effectively, the space shuttle wasn't much higher than a jet. The moon is 238,000 miles "up." The space shuttle orbited at about 190 to a bit over 200 miles up. Actually, the distance to the moon is 238,900 miles. The amount I rounded off is 4 times the altitude of the space shuttle.

Now, consider how much fuel it took to launch 8 astronauts on the space shuttle. The 135 space shuttle launches came at a cost of 209 billion dollars. A total of 833 crew members rode on the space shuttles during the entire history of the space shuttle; many of those 833 were people who rode more than once. There are 355 different individuals (including cosmonauts) who have been on shuttle flights.

Let's say you want to send 10% of Earth's population to the Mars on a shuttle sized vehicle. Remember, 5 months in space, not 5 days, might be kind of cramped. That's 700 million + people. At 7 people per flight, that's 100 million flights to Mars. Over 20 years... That's 13,700 flights per day. That's one launch every 6.3 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 20 straight years. And, I've got bad news for you. At current estimated growth rates, that means that by the time you got rid of 10% of Earth's *current* population, the population on Earth actually grew faster than you were shipping people off this planet. You would need well over 10 million flights this year alone, just to keep up with population growth. Sure, you can make bigger ships for these flights. But, the bigger the ship, the more fuel you need. But, you're still never going to send any significant number of humans off planet - not even 1%.

Not with the space shuttle.

You're describing a vehicle that was designed for low earth orbit and comparing it to a vehicle whose purpose would be intersolar travel.

 

[ninaholic37]

lol Mars. How about fix the numbskulls on Earth first. That should keep us busy for the next several thousand years or our extinction, you know, whichever comes first.

Or select a group of 'non-numbskulls' to go to Mars, then start a war: Mars vs. Earth, making earthlings extinct, then the few on Mars come back to a new Earth. :thumbsup: