RE: Colonising Mars

#3
'Azareal' pid='828473' dateline='1507729235' Wrote: but what would it really be like?
A bunch of rich people promise to totally for realsies make a craft capable of reaching and colonizing Mars while surreptitiously stuffing comically large bags of money with dollar signs on the side into their pockets.

10 years and 15 trillion dollars later a big paper mache mockup Totally Real Rocket explodes in a huge fireball on the launchpad. The whole program gets quietly scrapped and a million golden parachutes deploy.

The next year the company in charge rebrands, spends a cool hundred mill on a new logo, and starts suckering in more investors so the cycle can begin anew.
~writing is hard~

RE: Colonising Mars

#4
The biggest problem with colonizing Mars is that there really isn't a reason to. The cost of shipping materials back to Earth means there is no economic reason and if people are worried about overpopulation how would sending a couple people to mars help. It would take ages and cost an insane amount of resources to ship a significant portion of the population to Mars.

RE: Colonising Mars

#5
It would take a year to get there, in what is mostly likely a little tin can with hundreds of other people, I doubt you could colonise it in one trip, so there's probably hundreds of these tin cans. There is no gravity in outer space, so your muscles would atrophy on the way.

Astronauts have tried all sorts of things like exercise, but they just can't stop their muscles atrophying due to the micro-gravity. You probably wouldn't even have a shower, as who has the water to spare in a situation like that? Internet? It would lag to hell and back and probably be used for important things. No cat videos for them.

You'd probably be stuffed in a tiny tin can squeezed in with a bunch of other colonists with the equipment for building your colony taking up much of the room. One idea NASA had was to put them into stasis or something on the way there to stop them going crazy, and they're doing research into that area.

RE: Colonising Mars

#7
In the forseeable future it would likely be a research colony, similar to research stations in antarctica and ISS.
The trip back and forth is not all that inconciveable, as it used to take months to travel by sea back in the colonial era. The psycological aspects should probably be compared with what happened in the colonial era.
The point where such a colony might expand would probably require several advances to be made. Here is a list of things that could signiciantly help such colonies:
1) Effective fussion reactor; with these the cost of fueling those spaceships would go down by a lot.
2) More economical spaceship designs (would be much easier with practical fussion reactors, even just on the ground).
3) Better self-reliance systems (think biodomes and such).
4) Exploration of mars based resources. Being able to aquire resources on plannet would make a colony much cheaper to maintain.
5) Terraforming of mars, in an economically feasable fashion. This would enable better living conditions and reduce maintance costs.

The first 3 points are already being worked on, and are within the realms of technologies that has a decent chance of ending up working. We already have a net postive energy fussion reactor, but there is a lot more work to be done on that topic. Economical spaceship designs are already a few generations in (the spaceshuttle was one of those genrations). There are several self-reliance systems project, at least I have heard about some several years ago, though the results were not all that impressive (which is why I suggested needing better ones).
The 4th would be a natural mission for future exploration of mars, possibly by such research colonies.
The 5th is still mostly science fiction. There have been several suggestions for how it could be done, but the feasability of them were somewhat questionable.

RE: Colonising Mars

#8
One benefit of Mars is that the gravity is weaker than Earth, so a space elevator would potentially be feasible using known materials. That's where much of Mars' minerals could be used - building spacecraft (and the elevator itself) to go to further reaches in the solar system and beyond, far cheaper than what Earth would be capable of building them at. Also a space elevator would drastically lower the cost of returning minerals to Earth.

Building the space elevator is another issue, but it would still be easier than building one on Earth.

As for the crew going insane... unlikely? Unless something seriously goes wrong, astronauts are psychologically screened and trained as part of the space program. Many astronauts also spend extended periods on the ISS without long-lasting psychological issue. Mental problems with one of the crewmen on Mars itself - after multiple years without seeing animals or greenery, perhaps - could be that big of a problem, though... which makes for a good story, come to think of it.
My (Science) Fiction - Desolate Stars.
And historical - Out of the Motherland.
Go to a new fiction. Review it. Help the little guys.

RE: Colonising Mars

#10
Well... the pioneers of such an endeavor would have it rough for sure.  I believe the current plan is to send everything ahead so that the astronauts could essentially start assembling a primitive station once they got there.  But that initial group would have to spend six months getting there, then have to wait another nine months for the Earth and Mars to line up at their shortest distance from each other, and then the six month trip back.  That's a lot of time for things to go wrong.  Will definitely be a challenge.  I just hope that they manage to put an observatory on Mars, or another Hubble-like telescope orbiting it so we can see more cool stuff ;)
Author of Don't Feed The Dark - an apocalyptic serial novel. 

Former member of The Order of Phantasmal Architects - a collective of unusual, excellent and diverse stories

 

RE: Colonising Mars

#11
ATM there's about three groups thinking of actually doing their homework and making preparations for this within the next 50 years. NASA, SpaceX and I think MAYBE Mars One. And as someone who's into this stuff, it is a GIANT pain in the ass to figure out.
How much oxygen do you breath in a day? How much CO2 do you release? All of this and a shitton more maths have to be done just to make sure they don't die within a day. Then water. Then food. Then amenities. Then medical care. It's a giant headache of worrying you'll make someone the first person to die on Mars. Getting there is possible with current tech but it's a one way trip baby. We just don't have the technology to have enough fuel to come back home. Maybe in far future if you stored enough fuel. Oh and you can't bring alot of fuel,water or air with you, too heavy. So all the stuff we need to breathe? Yea gotta have a machine sit on Mars for about 5 years to create enough oxygen just to breath for good amount of time.

As far as the journey there? I've heard most proposals from NASA saying they'd get about 25ft personal space which is better than colonial times when they had maybe 5ft per person. The longer in the journey the longer the delay in communications. A touchdown occurs on Earth in the Super Bowl. You'd get the images on the television 7 minutes later. So progressively less ability to talk with loved ones. They'd have all the food, water and exercise they need. Biggest problem with the flight there is the solar radiation threatening to kill them all but I think the plan is to have their water supply tank be the shielding or something.

Guess what I'm saying is, it's gonna be a stressful freaking existence. One thing goes wrong and they die a slow agonizing death. And when I say one thing I mean one thing. A bad seam in the shelters means a leak in atmosphere and they die. If a filter breaks down and they don't have a spare,they die of CO2 enrichment. But on the flip side they can still watch TV, YouTube and other stuff. If they wanna take a risk they can do it. Just don't expect a ride home


Oh and their main protein source will be crickets. Highest protein source available. Take of that what you will.

Re: Colonising Mars

#12
The main problem is what benefits do you get for it? So far there is no Unobtainium to be found. The planet can not be terraformed it has virtually no magnetic field, and very low gravity. Any breathable air you create would just blow away on the solar winds. (The opposite problem Venus has, it's massed magnetic field literally tosses lighter gasses into space.) You would have to tunnel underground to survive. That being said, Mars probes have tested several soil samples with very toxic levels of Perclorates.  We don't know if these levels are common below the surface.  If they are underground, then tunnels are out as well. 

If improvements are made and the trip can be made in 6 months, scientific trips are possible but any long term stay would leave you too weak to survive coming back to Earth gravity.  Perhaps someday it will exist as a mining and manufacturing center, mainly populated with automated machinery. But even then, almost pure metals are common in asteroids, so it will all come down to transport costs of asteroids vs refining and smelting of Mars based ore.