A Mars Colony in Our Lifetimes?

[Cormac]

Meanwhile - here's an interesting idea:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... -mars.html

[Gawdzilla Sama]

In the end, we'd actually have to work towards terraforming the beast. How is that for unrealistic!

We haven't terraformed the Arctic, and people live there. We haven't terraformed the Sahara, and people live there. We haven't terraformed Wales...

[Cormac]

In the end, we'd actually have to work towards terraforming the beast. How is that for unrealistic!

We haven't terraformed the Arctic, and people live there. We haven't terraformed the Sahara, and people live there. We haven't terraformed Wales...

We probably would need to terraform Mars if we wanted to use it as a lifeboat.

(Obviously, it wouldn't need to be complete, but would need to be in some way started...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We need to make parts habitable, but not the whole thing. I work in a wolf-friendly center. They have enough room to survive and breed. The rest of Missouri is inimical to them.

[Cormac]

We need to make parts habitable, but not the whole thing. I work in a wolf-friendly center. They have enough room to survive and breed. The rest of Missouri is inimical to them.

The New Scientist link talks about using a mirror to raise the ambient temperature in a limited area as you suggest...

[Tyrannical]

We need to make parts habitable, but not the whole thing. I work in a wolf-friendly center. They have enough room to survive and breed. The rest of Missouri is inimical to them.

Just live underground.
The original plan was to use a small nuke to create an underground sealed cavern. The heat would fuse the rocks and seal the fissures, and the radiation would dissipate or fall to the cavern floor. Though there is the possibility of using extinct volcanoes or natural caverns. That gives you plenty of protected space that you could heat, light, and pressurize.

Come to think of it, an extinct volcano should have large empty chambers and tubes connecting them. It shouldn't be solid rock through and through even if their have been collapses.

The largest volcano in the Solar System is on Mars. Olympus Mons rises 24 kilometers high and measures 550 km across

Something that size could have caverns miles large, and maybe even access to veins of pure metal for construction. With enough nuclear power, I suppose you could separate oxygen from sand (SiO2) to get an atmosphere going in the cavern.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've said repeatedly we could make a side canyon of Valles Marinaris an biodome-type habitat for humans. Live it the walls, farm the floor.

[mistermack]

The main problem of living on Mars isn't temperature. People live well on the space station. Rooms can be kept insulated and warm.
There are two fundamental problems, that are bigger than the cold.
First is pressure. Mars has virtually no atmospheric preessure, which means that your bodily fluids would begin to boil if you were there. There is no way to get over this, apart from building pressurised living spaces. It would be a tremendous challenge to build larger pressurised rooms. The forces on the walls would be enormous. So you would always be limited to small living spaces, like the space station.

You couldn't terraform Mars to be like the Earth with a similar atmosphere, because the pull of gravity is so much lower. You would need a MUCH thicker layer of air, to give the same surface pressure as the Earth.

If you used the balloon idea to warm an area, any water would simply boil off, because of the lack of pressure. The boiling point of water would be lower than the freezing point. So ice would just turn straight into vapour.

Mars must have had a thick atmosphere at one time, because of the evidence of liquid water in the sedimentary rocks. So I suppose it's theoretically possible to terraform it. But it would take unimaginable quantities of gas to do it.

The second big problem with living on Mars will always be the low gravity, and the effect it would have on the health of humans. No child has ever been concieved or born in low gravity as far as I know, so we dont know what effect it would have on a fetus, or the growth and development of a child.

I just don't think Mars will ever be liveable on for full lifetimes. Space stations are the answer to that, with their artificial gravity.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Why would it be a tremendous challenge? You don't build huge pressurized spaces, you build small pressurized spaces and link them together. In case of puncture you lose less air that way. And the air didn't go far, Mars has an atmosphere.

And not knowing what will happen is part of exploration and colonization. The people that go won't be expecting to make camp in Central Park.

[mistermack]

Why would it be a tremendous challenge? You don't build huge pressurized spaces, you build small pressurized spaces and link them together. In case of puncture you lose less air that way. And the air didn't go far, Mars has an atmosphere.

And not knowing what will happen is part of exploration and colonization. The people that go won't be expecting to make camp in Central Park.

That's what I said, you would be limited to smaller living spaces.
Of course that can be done, it's BEING done now, in the space station.

There doesn't seem to be much point in the balloon-mirrors, if you are living in a sealed environment anyway. You would think it would be more efficient just to heat the living space internally.

Maybe they could be used to focus sunlight on a small area, for generating electricity from solar panels. But Mars has frequent dust storms, so solar panels might need a lot of maintenance.

In most ways, Mars is more difficult to colonise than empty space. A space station has limitless solar energy, no dust storms, and 1g of gravity, if you spin it correctly. All Mars has going for it is the abundance of water and raw materials. That makes it attractive to mine, but not so much to live on.

I still think the Moon is a better bet, if there turns out to be plenty of water there.
People could live on a space station, and work on and mine the Moon.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"That's what I said, you would be limited to smaller living spaces. "

In the beginning, yes. But not forever. One day we may put a dome over all of Valles Marinaris.

[mistermack]

"That's what I said, you would be limited to smaller living spaces. "

In the beginning, yes. But not forever. One day we may put a dome over all of Valles Marinaris.

That's where the problems start.
Earth atmospheric pressure is nearly 15 psi. The pressure on Mars is less than one percent of that.

So the force on your dome would be millions of tons. I can't be bothered to work it out. Maybe billions of tons.
Far too much, anyway.

Edit : I just did a quick calc, and a ten foot square section of a dome ( 100 sq ft ) would have an upward force of nearly 100 tons. That gives a rough idea of what force a big dome would experience.

[Blind groper]

Don't forget the problem of charged particle radiation. A simple dome is not sufficient to filter out this cancer causer.

My own view is that humans will have to go troglodyte. I don't see that as a problem. Terrestrial miners have created kilometres of tunnels in various places, and it could also be done on Mars. Ten metres of solid rock overhead is enough to screen out the harmful radiation. A good layer of foam on roof, walls and floor will allow insulation, and a warm environment. A nuclear reactor for power, and daylight electric bulbs to permit growing plants underground.

The best place to have the colony, IMHO, would be near the polar ice caps, to give access to large amounts of water ice. The extra cold would not be a problem in well insulated underground living areas.

The development of 3D printers will allow the manufacture of essentials right there on Mars. Some materials will have to be smelted, but nuclear power will allow electric arc furnace based small scale smeltering plants. Pure smelted materials fed into the 3D printer will permit a wide range of manufactured goods.

All of this is, of course, a multi-trillion dollar project, and one that would take decades to set up. However, there is no technical reason why it could not be done.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"That's what I said, you would be limited to smaller living spaces. "

In the beginning, yes. But not forever. One day we may put a dome over all of Valles Marinaris.

That's where the problems start.
Earth atmospheric pressure is nearly 15 psi. The pressure on Mars is less than one percent of that.

So the force on your dome would be millions of tons. I can't be bothered to work it out. Maybe billions of tons.
Far too much, anyway.

Edit : I just did a quick calc, and a ten foot square section of a dome ( 100 sq ft ) would have an upward force of nearly 100 tons. That gives a rough idea of what force a big dome would experience.

"I told Orville. I told Wilbur. Now I'm telling you. That thing will NEVER fly!"

[mistermack]

Blind Grouper, that still doesn't solve the gravity problem.

It's only a spinning space station that can give you that. That makes Mars a place to mine, and extract materials from, but not to live on, long term.
And if you're going to live underground, then you might just as well live on a space station.
Get your materials from the Moon and Mars, but live on a free floating spinning station.

Materials would be harder to lift off from Mars than the Moon, that's why I think the Moon is the vital first step. Eventually though, a space elevator is perfectly feasible on Mars, for lifting materials up into space.