Problem is we will never get to the surface of Mars if we do it in tiny piecemeal fashion...send a small space capsule with a box of tools and supplies and no way to land on the surface? Build a vessel in Earth's orbit that can sustain 50-100 humans plus lots of building supplies and allow it to orbit around Mars until something on the ground can be built. This large vessel also serves a place to dock space capsules ferrying equipment and supplies from Earth. Once there is a sustainable post on the surface of Mars, and the technology to land on Mars, which this alone might take decades, then the mothership can either remain in Mars orbit or travel to the next location. No matter due to the cost, and time, and technology needed, none of this can happen for another 100-200 years...if that...
At that point, it might make more sense to build a Dyson Sphere or ringworld and use Mars as raw material.
It does seem that sending a space station to Mars orbit would be an invaluable first step, since when astronauts finally get to Mars, they will have supplies and expanded living facilities ready for them.
It seems stupid to me to spend billion$ to send a couple of astronauts to orbit Mars and perhaps land on the surface for a few minutes then return to Earth? Some type of mother vessel allows humans to live in orbit for great lengths of time with constant trips to the surface to build whatever it is we think we can build. I'm guessing we can build the mother vessel tethered to the current ISS since it's become a piece of cake to ferry humans and supplies between Earth and the ISS. We have the technology to do this except for the design of the Mars lander, how to make the mother vessel sustainable, and where to find boatloads of money...
The point I'm trying to make is that it would be easier to build a habitat on the surface of Mars (where you can make use of existing caverns or other features, as well as abundant raw materials) than to build a space station in Mars orbit (where there are no existing features or raw materials). It seems to be that any habitat you can build in orbit, you can build more easily on the ground. Do you guys disagree?
I think in the short term, I do disagree. It would be much easier to assemble a station in orbit (since we've already done that) and send it on a gentle path to Mars that may take quite a while, but since it would be unmanned, it wouldn't matter. There, you have a pre-assembled base of operations. With a base on the Martian surface, you have to contend with multiple launches from the planet's surface and back down again. Each one increases the odds that something will go wrong with launch, and you could easily find a launch going bad, leaving whoever is still on the surface stranded. Basically a death sentence. Then...there's the construction. We would not have been able to test to find out if we can actually use the Martian resources to build your surface habitats. And...we've never constructed anything like that before.
Okay, that makes sense. I was envisioning us building something in Mars orbit, which didn't make any sense to me. Well, landing on Mars is easier than landing on Earth, thanks to lower gravity and thinner atmosphere. I also imagine that human-piloted landings would be rare -- the initial colonists, then the occasional move in/ move out. Most landings would be automated resupply shipments. Losing one of them would not be a death sentence, for reasons already discussed. Admittedly, resupplying a base on Mars would be more expensive-per-pound-of-supply than resupplying an orbiting station -- whatever you sent would have to have enough fuel and shielding to land, versus just make it into Mars orbit. On the other hand, such a base would presumably need less supply because they would have the resources of Mars to draw on. Need a wall in space, you have to ship the metal plating from Earth. Need a wall on Mars? Build it out of rock. We know the composition of Mars reasonably well -- mostly basaltic rock. We have thousands of years of experience dealing with such. In terms of never having constructed something like that, again, we have thousands of years experience building stuff out of rock. The only real twist here is lighter gravity and no breathable atmosphere. But lighter gravity actually makes construction more forgiving, and we have experience dealing with pressurized environments. None of those engineering challenges are particularly difficult. What makes Mars hard to build on is what makes any sufficiently remote and harsh environment hard to build on: Where does the power come from? The water? The food? The heating/cooling? A space station will face those same problems.
The reasons we can't live on Mars are simple, and have nothing to do with Mars. It would cost a fortune, and there would be no point. You could never get tax payer support for this. If we want to live somewhere where we can't breath the air, and need to live in a dome or a suit of some kind, we can just use the ocean and the moon for that. The initial thread topic of terraforming Mars is a pointless discussion, aside from amusing ourselves. The current science community is acting like Chicken Little over a 2 degree increase in global temperature on Earth. If we can't solve a 2 degree problem here, the notion that we could create a breathable atmosphere on Mars is a bit silly. It's akin to saying a caveman can build a nuclear reactor, because he is aware that fire burns wood. Terraforming tech is so far off in the future, that discussing what we would do with that tech is pointless, since so much of what we know now will be no longer relevant. The notion that we would want to mine Mars for minerals is also ridiculous. It's doubtful that any metal on Mars could be so rare here, that it would justify the enormous costs of bringing it back home. That said, should we go to Mars, a time or two, for research? Sure! I hope we do. But the reality is we will never live there, under any circumstance. I would actually say it's more likely we came from Mars to Earth, than we would ever leave Earth for Mars.
No...don't agree. It will be a monumental effort solely to put a couple of humans in orbit around Mars. It will be a monumental effort on steroids to place these humans on the surface of Mars...then what? You can't just find a crevice to hide in, or materials to build with, or have equipment to build, meanwhile in parallel trying to stay alive. The mother vessel would be built tethered to the ISS...not in orbit around Mars. My questions would be; how do we transport and sustain 50-100 humans to Mars? How do we transport supplies and equipment? How can humans on the surface of Mars create an immediate sustainable life? Mars is an extremely hostile place that must be dealt with from the second humans step foot on it. I cannot see any other way to build a colony on Mars without having a sustainable mother vessel in orbit around Mars...
If there is a large mother vessel, then the landers can be significant and efficient and safe machines that are no more difficult than driving a car...
We'll need the tech to transmute elements in job lots. If you assume we'll be able to do that, I get to assume we'll have hyperdrive.
You send the habitat and other necessaries on a flight preceding the colonists. The habitat will be ready when humans arrive. As for ferrying people from orbit and back, Mars's gravity well is a quarter of Earth's, so it'll be a lot easier to make round trips.
A large mother ship is an expensive undertaking. Whether or not landers will be as easy and safe to use as cars is based on technology and a track record that we don't yet have.
That was assuming that we had the magic technology to terraform Mars. None of that is likely from where we're sitting.
There's nothing magical about terraforming Mars. We could start doing it today if we made it a priority. There's no way at present we could even start transmuting materials to create a Dyson sphere.
I think you need to go back and read the very first post in this thread. That's the basis of the topic, that terraforming Mars is probably impossible with any technology we currently can imagine.
Just to digress slightly, would self-sustaining sci-fi colonies like this one on environmentally-inhospitable planets or moons be able to survive forever if the earth blew up and there was no chance of resupply ships reaching them? Could they go on recycling their air and water, and growing their food indefinitely?
And I think you aren't imagining properly. We wouldn't have to be in a hurry, and we could start immediately. So what if it takes a thousand years or more?
If you've got about 200 people on a terraformed Mars, that's the fewest number that would be viable for survival. That's assuming that the planet can support life.
I don't think we're talking about a thousand years; more like 100,000. And as the article pointed out, we are not going to get enough atmosphere. and of course unless we have a technology to reheat the core of Mars to generate an electromagnetic field to protect against cosmic rays.... Basically if your position that in the long run, we'll have technology to make us god like, than we'll be able to do anything, so terraforming Mars will be small potatoes.
Creating a pseudo magnetosphere for Mars would be relatively easy. We'd put a dipole 2-tesla magnet in Mars's L1. The magnet would protect Mars from solar radiation: A NASA scientist (Jim Green) proposed launching a magnetic dipole field between the planet and the Sun to protect it from high-energy solar particles. It would be located at the L1 orbit at about 320 RAstronomical symbol of Mars. The field would need to be "Earth comparable" and sustain 50,000nT as measured at 1 Earth-radius. The paper abstract cites that this could be achieved by a magnet with a strength of 1-2 Tesla (or 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss) [43] If constructed, the shield would allow the planet to restore its atmosphere and become habitable.
It makes us realise how bloody marvellous our own planet is; I mean it just hangs there completely open to space, battered by meteors and solar radiation etc, yet it's animal and plant life just goes on recreating itself over and over for millions of years without the input of any alien supply ships or whatever..
