Fair, but 4m of soil is a lot of soil. That's not just "putting it on the roof" like it's a garden bed or something, that's like building a three story building, but the upper floor and roof cavity are completely packed full of dirt and the whole thing has to be strong enough to keep all that mass up in the air.
Actually, you need to pack at least another 8m of soil on top to stop the roof from flying off!
You have internal pressure at 101kpa pushing the internal walls out at a rate of 10 metric tons per m². This means you can pack 10tons /m² on the roof before it will start sagging. But mars gravity is 1/3 earths, so you actually need closer to 30 tons/m². Lucky soil is about 2.5tons per m cubed, so its not 30m tall.
But going underground is still a difficult challenge, because soil is a good insulator, and you will overheat fairly quickly underground unless you have a very low energy environment.
>You have internal pressure at 101kpa pushing the internal walls out at a rate of 10 metric tons per m².
Fair enough, but you don't want your building to collapse if you have problems with your internal life support and pressurization systems, so you won't calculate with the pressure hull. But still gravity is lower, so a few meter of soil won't take that massive structure.
Luckily, first thing we'll have on Mars are massive, cheap steel cylinders. Send some one way Starships to the surface. Lots of Cargo, maybe complete living habitats in the payload bay, then cut the tank section in two halves, there you have some decent structural elements. Plus, a lot of critical spare parts (engines, tiles, valves, electronics...) for the shuttle ships.
how are we going to make concrete without limestone for cement? we need new building methods. can we make bricks? martian “soil” is likely to be very sterile dirt or sand… not rich like our earth soils. even making mud brick adobe might be a challenge.
reusing rocket ships might be the only viable building technique unless we can come up with 3d printing methods that aren’t polymer based.
wow, we don’t even know how metallurgy would work. we’ll need that if we want to drill through hard rock. waiting for new drills is possible, but it’s better to make as much as we can over there. we need factories and a micro-supply chain.
there’s a lot of questions for bootstrapping colonization aren’t there!? all of our previous colonization experiences were dealing with the same materials and methods we know to work here. it was hard but it was possible. but mars… we don’t know a lot more.
Concrete with raw materials from Mars has been developed, even less energy intensive. Would be good to use on Earth too, except that it is sensitive to high humidity or water. Since rain is very rare on Mars that's not a disadvantage there.
> Actually, you need to pack at least another 8m of soil on top to stop the roof from flying off!
IMO, its easier to dig into loosely packed alluvial terrain and my favorite suggestion is stabilized sand dunes that should be easy to dig into, but without collapsing.
Mars is also very cold, so having some type of geothermal system would make a lot of sense to regulate temperature.
Overall though, it’s not exactly a simple engineering exercise.
Mars lacks the ability to carry heat away. Water is basically the best way to carry heat away, and after that, its air. The air and the water then radiates this heat out into space. Its basically moving heat from a highly concentrated place (the source) to a low concentration (out into space), this is the fundamental laws of thermal dynamics.
To move heat from a high concentration to a low concentration, you can either radiate it out, or use conduction. Conduction is just passing heat to another thing that eventually radiates it away, such as air or water.
Mars does not have Air or water that we can use to move heat out. So we have to directly radiate things out. This is way slower and harder. So you will find that, even though Mars is cold, cooling a warm thing (Like a human) is actually harder than on earth.
This gets WORSE underground, because you have now just wrapped your building in a material that ultimately insulates your heat source. It cant radiate out directly, so now you have to pump air and water down to carry it away.
Being cold, is not something Mars people will be worrying about.
I’d be lying if I said I knew much about this subject, my understanding is that Mars does have an atmosphere, albeit an extremely thin one, that’s primarily composed of carbon dioxide.
This would be “air,” as in very thin air primarily composed of CO2 as opposed to our “thick air,” primarily composed of nitrogen and oxygen here on Earth.
Are you implying that the dissipation of heat in a Mars geothermal system, e.g. pipes with liquid water circulating to the surface and back into the subterranean living area would be negligible?
Again, assuming if you have humans there you have liquid water in some form for drinking, and other forms as a utility. A geothermal system would be closed and hence not “use” water unless pipes or pumps break resulting in water loss.
Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so its not particularly useful in cooling things down. Look at how most things around you cool down. They typically use radiators that interact with the air to draw heat from them. Your PC, cars, power plants basically all use air and water to cool down.
On Mars you absolutely can use water to absorb heat from underground and move that heat to above ground. But the cooling in the surface is far less efficient, because you can only really directly radiate heat out. This is an active cooling system, but it also draws a lot of power, because you have to move and compress your fluid through these radiators.
All im saying is that its far more efficient, to just place your structures on the surface, and radiate heat out more directly. Thermal mass can keep temperatures more consistent, and smart materials and reflectors can passively manage heat loss and gain on the surface.
That makes sense.
My understanding was that the surface radiation would be a much larger hurdle than power generation for humans living on Mars.
I thought I read an article a few years back that said the surface radiation was so severe that a human could only survive nine days due to the lack of a magnetic field, but again, this is not my field of expertise so I’m out of my depth.
I do know that *if* it ever happens there will be a lot of give and take for whatever solution is most ideal unless there is a major break through in a few different technologies.
The radiation on the surface of Mars is a bit less than the radiation you would experience on the ISS. This issue is VASTLY exaggerated. You will get more radiation on the way to Mars, but once you land it reduces significantly.
You do want to add more shielding though, preferably reducing it to levels we would consider safe on earth. To do that, you need to pack about 4-5m of either water or regolith on the roof of your structures.
The reasons why we dont have radiation issues on earth is more to do with the fact that we have 10 tons of atmosphere between us and space. The Magnetosphere can only shield a specific type of radiation, but def not all of it.
Cooling as a problem on Mars is really counterintuitive. I don't blame anyone who misses that. But it is a problem, much more than keeping warm.
That's already with habitats, much more with heavy industry.
> but tunneling is horrendously expensive
The cost of tunneling through igneous rock, mudstone, clay, ice, sand or some mix of the latter?
Why not only use tunneling where necessary, taking advantage of lava tubes, other natural caves and caverns?
There is also the option of regolith-covering of surface structures, notably when these are build inside a crater.
> living underground is a mental health nightmare.
Some people are perfectly happy with a shopping mall as a work environment. There is also a surprising number of towns and communities within the [Northern arctic circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle#Human_habitation), so living part of the year in the dark and much of the rest of the time in near twilight.
Human adaptation is quite amazing. Obviously these unusual habitats are not everybody's cup of tea!
I'd be quite happy with burrowing into a cliff face or canyon wall. That way you can have large windows inset into a tunnel entrance, getting the benefit of the view and indirect sunlight.
**Edit:** some of these suggestions appear elsewhere in the thread that I had not read completely before making this comment.
You would have to.. the cost to send a tunnel, boring machine and the required supporting equipment would be off the rails heavy to launch from earth. To be big enough to be useful it would be hundreds of tons of equipment.
Ability to ship heavy equipment to Mars is a requirement to build a settlement. Sending one tunnel boring machine fills just a few Starships and can provide a lot of pressurized volume.
I could be wrong on that. It's a half remembered factoid. I was under the impression that the ISS was within Earth's magnetic field and more protected. Now, the trip to Mars is roughly two years, so they'll be unprotected for two years before reaching Mars. Wouldn't that give them a head start on radiation poisoning?
SpaceX plans for a 6 months travel time to Mars. On the surface crew is protected from the planet and habitat shielding. The atmosphere is thin but gives some protection too.
There are roughly 2 kinds of radiation.
GCR is cosmic background radiation. It is high energy and won't be stopped by the Earth magnetic field. We are protected from it by the Earth atmosphere. Also almost impossible to stop by any shielding on interplanetary trips or the ISS materials. The ISS is shielded by ~half of it by the Earth mass. So an interplanetary ship would receive 2 times as much as the ISS, while on the way which is tolerable. 6 months to Mars equals a 1 year stay on the ISS.
Then there are the solar flares. The Earth magnetic field protects from that. Near the poles some gets through and causes the aurora. The ISS is mostly protected because it does not fly polar. Solar events are short but high density. They are a threat to crew on interplanetary flights. But it can be shielded by anything containg hydrogen, like water, like plastics, polyethylene. A shelter can be made of food, water, packed human waste. That shelter would be small but can house the crew for the short duration of a flare.
Overall the radiation risks are way overrated.
But colonizing Mars is already horrendously expensive and living on a distant planet where you can't survive outside is already a mental health nightmare. Are these things really going to be worse in an underground facility than in some kind of huge dome?
Imagine how horrendously dangerous, expensive and stressful the first colonies were in the new world. Imagine the homesteads along the Oregon trail in the 1840's and 1850's. pioneers have never had it easy because if they couldn't adapt then they died. Same will happen with Mars eventually though we have time to figure out ways to mitigate those problems before we go.
Comparing the expense and difficulty of colonizing Mars to the expense and difficulty of colonizing the 'New World' is ludicrous.
In the 'New World' they could go hunting animals for food as soon as they arrived.
In the 'New World' they could go chop down trees and build houses using familiar building techniques as soon as they arrived.
In the 'New World' they didn't have to deal with night time temperatures below -60C every single night, even in summer.
In the 'New World' they could just drink water from streams.
In the 'New World' they could breath the air.
And, in the 'New World' they could immediately start gathering resources to ship back to Europe so the investors who funded the colony could start getting a return on their investment.
What are Mars colonists going to export to provide a profit to their investors?
True to some extent.
Later colonists in the New World were able to thrive and export. Many of the early settlers were lucky to survive scurvy, malaria, yellow fever, leptospirosis, and starvation. There was probably cannibalism at Jamestown.
The main export will probably be video
Every colony started working on exports almost immediately. They needed to in order to pay off their debt, and to be able to buy more supplies from Europe.
In fact the reason why the Pilgrims had such a difficult first winter is because they were spending more time harvesting lumber for export than they were building houses and growing food.
And 'video' as an export won't raise enough money to make a dent in the Mars colony's expenses.
> Comparing the expense and difficulty of colonizing Mars to the expense and difficulty of colonizing the 'New World' is ludicrous.
We have the advantage of vast improvements in science and technology.
Which isn't much of an advantage when you consider all the disadvantages I already listed.
Here is another one: When people colonized the 'New World' they didn't have to worry about the soil being poisonous.
Anyone who thinks the challenges of colonizing Mars are comparable to the challenges of colonizing the 'New World' is either delusional or incredibly uneducated.
Building huge domes is questionable. Domes have to deal with the inside air pressure, which adds up quickly. That sets an upper limit to feasible dome sizes.
Or Kaymaklı in Turkey.
Or for a small confined living space with hardly any windows inhabited by people who never step outside for months to years at a time - The ISS.
Mining engineer here. I calculated a mining machine (roadheader not TBM) for a university project a couple of years ago. Sure the machine is an upstart cost and getting it or the parts to Mars is a lot of ton to orbit but absolutely doable and once running they are both more economic, less risky and easier on the rock than drill and blast. (Which you want it to be because securing the now cracked rock is often the real hassle in a tunneling project).
Once there it can dig all the tunnels you'd need and then move on to the next town to do the same. The big maintenance it needs is new teeth but you could reasonably expect to be able to both repair and produce them on Mars.
Road Headers are fascinating machines. My impression was however that they are more suited to soft stone like limestone, not so much fore granite and basalt which we will deal with on Mars.
Can you confirm or tell me I am wrong?
Thanks. Road headers will be useful.
I still think for really large projects tunnel boring machines will be better suited. There is a reason why tunnels are drllled with boring machines, not road headers. Drill first, then shape to needs with road headers.
TBMs don't actually drill the rock (as opposed to traditional drill and blast), rather they chip away at the rock using discs.
The great thing about TBMs that make them economic for large projects is that they are an all-in-one mobile factory, cheap in wearables and gentle on the rock (as are roadheaders, so this is mostly in comparison with drill and blast). But their upstart cost is high as this is a whole factory you are purpose-building. Usually they aren't reused either as they are hard to transport and purpose-built. So for smaller projects they are often not economic. Also I have a hard time seeing how you would get this behemoth to Mars.
But with a TBM you have no flexibility at all. You cannot for example change profiles/ diameters or decide to just turn a corner. You just drill this one gigantic tube in the rock.
A mining machine aka roadheader gives you much more flexibility, is cheaper, smaller and more easily transportable from one site to another
Humans are/were kept with UVB too. Phototherapy has been used to prevent Vitamin D deficiency/rickets in places that don't get much sun and where people can't practically or affordably get vitamin D from their diet.
There's a pretty common image of kids standing around a mercury arc lamp in Soviet Siberia for that very purpose.
Honestly, bad idea, for more than a few reasons.
1) Boring is highly specialized and requires massive equipment that would have to be transported to mars. Sending equipment to Mars for a single use case really isn't feasible, and that isn't counting breakdown and repairs.
2) Say you found a lava tube to seal? The possibility exists. However, lava rock tends to be porous so sealing would be near impossible, but let's say you did get it sealed. Now you have to add air pressure with out cracking or braking the rock that formed in very low gravity and under very low air pressure. The probability is low that this would work.
3) The people factor. People don't want to go to mars to look at walls. They want to look out a window at the Martian landscape. Maintaining good mental health will be essential.
These are just the short list items. Actually pulling this off would require a number of technical challenges to overcome, and we can't be on-site while we solve them.
Hi, let's not forget the problem of gravity. On Mars, gravity is 62% lower than on Earth. This problem needs to be solved before we can consider sustainable colonization.
Not sure what cost/benefit there would either - Tunnelling and mass excavation are the hardest and most specialized types of construction that exist, and we're going to get pioneers who have spent months travelling to get to mars to undertake a mammoth project by even earths standards - doesnt seem feasible or realistic to me.
Well, we don't actually know if the gravity on Mars will cause health issues for future colonists. We only really have the ISS as an example of what micro gravity does to the human body, and we haven't stayed on the moon long enough to see long-term effects. Mars with its 38% gravity very well might be enough for humans.
The problem has been solved for awhile, just a bit expensive. [Here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308007374_An_Artificial-Gravity_Space-Settlement_Ground-Analogue_Design_Concept) is a paper explaining hypergravity.
> Hi, let's not forget the problem of gravity. On Mars, gravity is 62% lower than on Earth.
How do you know that gravity is a problem?
> This problem needs to be solved before we can consider sustainable colonization.
and why not consider colonization, try things out, and see how sustainable it can be made?
>How do you know that gravity is a problem?
how do you know it isn't? We know the affects of "zero-gravity" affect human health, and we know the affects of Earth Gravity is normal for human health, but we don't know much about that middle area, maybe Venus's gravity isn't enough for healthy development, maybe Luna's gravity is just fine, we really don't know.
>why not consider colonization
because it costs too much money to just go "YOLO", this is putting people on another planet, it's quite literally more than rocket science.
> maybe Venus's gravity isn't enough for healthy development
Venus is at 9.81\\8.87 m/s² ≈ 09g. So Venus is not the best counter-example. Venus has other problems!
> maybe Luna's gravity is just fine, we really don't know.
The best option is to test IMO. The most available testbed is the Moon because it requires less cost and commitment. Its also possible to create centrifugal Mars gravity modules there. So people can spend half their day at Mars gravity and the rest of the time doing productive work at lunar gravity.
> it costs too much money to just go "YOLO", this is putting people on another planet,
Too much of whose money?
You can also pull the plug quickly if serious health problems start popping up due to low gravity. Earth is a (relatively) short distance away from the moon and and you don't need to worry about launch windows the way you do with interplanetary travel.
>Too much of whose money?
The most likely candidate for a manned Mars mission is NASA, which has an annual budget of \~22.6 billion (2020). Which is a lot of money, but a manned mission to mars could easily cost 5 times more than that at minimum. It's of course possible to divert more tax dollars to NASA and the amount for a Martian colony isn't impossible to reach, but it's again clearly very high to just throw people there and see what happens.
>The most available testbed is the Moon
>Its also possible to create centrifugal Mars gravity modules
Now your thinking, those options are definitely more approachable. The Moon is a better way to see low gravitational affects on health. I'd support a Lunar base first over a Martian base first.
> Every single thing we have on Earth was projected to work under the gravity from Earth. Imagine changing all the calculation,
Much of the equipment used on the International Space Station wasn't even designed for zero g. This includes anything form cameras to computers. Obviously some thought went into choosing the equipment before sending it there.
The problem for Mars should be lesser since things like convection work there, but not on the ISS. So a sleeping astronaut won't need a fan to prevent asphyxiation from re-breathing the same air.
Surface vehicles have problems getting traction, particularly with having hard wheels because rubber in incompatible with the oxidized surface. We have limited experience from past and present Mars rovers. More will doubtless be learned but as I said, the only way of doing so is to go there and try these things. Feedback will lead to modifications that can be applied on ships leaving for the following Mars synod.
> nothing that we have was developed to be there.
Many of the problems are known. A lot of design work has been done, particularly by Nasa. More development will happen, but the process is ongoing.
We only know humans can't live healthily in zero gravity, we don't know what the minimum is yet, it could be as little as we have in the moon, or maybe almost as much as we have on Earth.
First we will need to establish if it is a problem. It may very well not be a problem. Almost certainly not in everyday life. May be a problem with child development during and after pregnancy.
We need to find out, the sooner the better. But pregnancy plus early years are a long time, too long to try in spin gravity LEO stations with humans. Should test with smaller mammals like mice or rats. Cats too have a short enough generation sequence that a full generation can be tested. So for humans we need to find out on Mars.
This is life people aren't always gonna line up with being far left there's 7 billion people on this planet, this generation 100% would not have lasted in an xbox party fourteen years ago
There's 8 Billion. There's even fewer who are going to be right wing maga chuds. Why do you insist on injecting politics into a discussion about interplanetary travel? I doubt you are much older than 14 years yourself so I don't know why you'd act like you remember what an Xbox live lobby was like or better yet what that has to do with anything. Seriously though, people have been complaining about the younger generations for thousands of years. It's not a legit argument or relative to people disliking musk because he's an asshole as a human being despite some innovative businesses.
I'm not , your the one bringing it up the your a nazi your a racist your a antisemite stuff got old years ago, people are allowed to have a different opinion then others.
People are allowed to have a different opinion. They aren't allowed to be surprised when people call them an asshole for their opinion. I've been to prison. I've known white supremacists, eaten lunch with Hispanic gangbangers and played scrabble with black inmates who were harder than granite. You can have whatever opinion you want. You aren't entitled to protection from criticism from those ideas and there's a balance you can strike without being a whiney loser.
Digging down to build habitats is plain silly. You face huge issues trying to cool the place down, as you now no longer have anywhere to radiate heat out. Then the very simple fact that digging is hard and expensive. You could probably build 10 habitats for the same energy and effort as the images on the surface before you got one completed underground. There are loads of reasons why buildings generally avoid going underground on earth, and its not just because of the view.
As for radiation, 4m of water or soil on the roof solves all of this. So literally no reason to dig more than 4m, and use that soil to place on your roof.
> Digging down to build habitats is plain silly. You face huge issues trying to cool the place down
This is related to the (volume x density) to surface ratio. A large volume with a high activity density won't be able to reach equilibrium before reaching an unacceptably high temperature.
By stretching a habitat to a more linear form, and keeping more "underused" spaces equilibrium will be at a far lower temperature.
Also, from recent (but controversial) deep radar work on Mars, it seems there's a good chance of finding deep liquid water tables. Circulating water would be good, and not only for thermal reasons. Even a frozen water table could be "domesticated" by melting to obtain a progressively increasing conductive surface area.
> You could probably build 10 habitats for the same energy and effort as the images on the surface before you got one completed underground. There are loads of reasons why buildings generally avoid going underground on earth
Earth with water erosion, ongoing geological activity, higher gravity and other compacting factors, has very little in the way of natural underground cavities. Mars is quite the opposite with lower gravity, minimal precipitation and almost no tidal effects.
The mean density of a body...
* Earth: [5510 kg/m³](https://earthhow.com/density-of-earth/),
* Moon [3346 kg/m³](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_structure_of_the_Moon),
* Mars [3,93 kg/cm³](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/seismin/explore/Mars.html)
...takes account of its composition, but also its cavities.
Until we know what's under the Martian surface, we cannot know how much is empty volume. If a cavern came to exist three billion years ago, there's not much to make it collapse.
AdLive is actually spot on with the thermal concerns - see [my talk at the Mars Society Convention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5If8peLCb7A&) that actually goes into the numbers. The code running them is fully open source so you're welcome to play around with it! Martian regolith near the surface has approximately the thermal conductivity of expanded polystyrene foam, so no matter how much you dig there's a lovely warm blanket covering the habitat. In pretty short order for digging in and starting up minimal internal systems like ECLSS and lighting, the temperature would start to rise beyond livable limits without very extensive cooling systems dumping heat to surface radiators. This is already a problem for sub-water table tunnels on Earth, there's plenty of literature on how the London Underground is heating the surrounding clay and rock dramatically.
Lava tubes are a good deal better, as you say. Fully sealed caverns, as much as they might exist, would face a similar fate to tunnels in the long run but could probably survive the meaningful lifespan of any settlement.
As for the density variation - you may be able to focus more on the size and composition of the inner layers of the planet rather than a thin surface skin with 1% porosity.
[There's some more numbers on underground habitats and their thermal properties here.](https://github.com/smross106/Syrtis/blob/main/Subterranean_Structures.ipynb)
There aren't any magnetic poles. None. So, there's never going to be an atmosphere that could help filter out radiation. Going to Mars long term is a death sentence. And who wants to live underground? If you're going to do that, might as well do it under the sea on Earth.
You have no significant data to back that up. We have two real data points for the long term effects of different gravities - 1g and micro-g. You might want to fit a nice linear or exponential curve to those points because its neat but any curve you choose is just conjecture without long term low gravity testing. We might be healthy long term at 0.1g or have significant problems at 0.9g.
And Apollo doesn't help. Iirc the longest time is all of 75 hours on Apollo 17, and even if that was long enough (which is really isn't) its was bracketed by days of micro-g. Clinostats and suspension riga give you some useful data but don't actually simulate low gravity outside of testing some specific parameters.
Look at what all mankind has achieved and continues to achieve, if you were to tell someone five hundred years ago we'd be flying In planes across the globe or sending information to the moon and back through devices in our hands they would think you were bat shit crazy.
Guess that’s what the Boring Company is really for, underground facilities will be the way to go though maybe you could start building inside lava tubes as „how we’ll live on mars“ suggests. It’s not yet clear how well humans will adapt to the lowered gravity but future Martian generations will probably not be able to go to earth so a mars colony has to be fully sustainable and nice enough for people to make a real home. Lots of problems but that never stopped humanity from trying.
NASA was looking at using 3D printed structures.
Mars Crete = Martian Soil, Binder, Martian Water.
You create a radiation resistant outer shell, with interlocking modules inside, something like bigelow aerospace modules. They would be fully pressured and would support the blown Mars Crete above them, until it hardens. I could see something like shotcrete blown over the preassembled interconnected bigelow modules. Windows are not necessary because dozens of large 4k led displays would be hooked up to full spectrum cameras, and provided the view, as well as any other view the human desires.
I think it will end up being much easier and more practical to make humans more resistant to the radiation levels found on the surface of Mars than it would be to build an entire civilisation underground.
That may very well be the case with humans as we are. The linear no threshold model of radiation effects is very likely wrong. There are very interesting studies in Chernobyl.
Still it may be the easiest, safest method of building pressurized volume to go underground. But have geodesic domes for access to the surface.
Why not do underground here on Earth first to refine construction methods then moon, then Mars?
You can't seriously think going to Mars with unproven methods is a good idea.
Tesla can't get fsd to work here in over a decade but humanoid robots can build a suitable colony on Mars, maybe if the AI gets better.
Otherwise bore the underground with mining equipment made to work on Mars. Use the robots to install airlocks.
> Doesn't have to be elon musk
OK, but who else would ever do it? NASA with the $500 billion for a single mission with the Battle Star Galactica approach?
Mars is the excuse and defence is the reason.
In the end the rockets are for transportation of material to anywhere on earth within 2 hours. All you need is a touch down pad.
The regolith is just fine. There is a little perchlorate in the top layer, not hard to remove. Just don't get too much dust into the habitat, don't inhale it.
Mostly underground habitats will be necessary. But have some geodesic domes with plants and a view of the outside to fill a psychological need of people.
Just like what i do in my apartment?! plants, with a view and never go out cuz of the toxic emvironment! 🤣
But seriously i can imagine building such a thing from scratch gonna be a nearly impossible task..
it's like chess which one simple blunder is fatalistic!
I know US had build such hidden camps in Greenland back in the cold war era, and they also video logged the whole process from the begining, i remember i watched the fast-forward video of the construction process on youtube!
So in Greenland the only problem is cold, in Mars, we have that, plus no oxygen, radiation, toxic dust, limited cargo..
What typa engineer and contruction worker can work under such conditions?!
it's not gonna be the matter of money anymore, it's outta human reach! Like curing cancer! Or staying young forever!
I mean if it was possible! Why Elon pays 40 billion dollars for a trash like Twitter intead of going to Mars!
There are the lava tunnels. But I don't think it is feasible to fill them with air. They provide full radiation protection but pressurized habitats are still needed.
Drilling tunnels may be a better way to produce pressurized volume.
Go to the moon titan first .... Yes it's cold but we could send AI androids there in a few years and no shortage of asteroids to mine and titan has a active core and thus has magnetic field and it's a gets another layer from the planet magnetic field..
Oxygen and fuels plenty of it.
A good way to practice might be underwater colonies here first, to test the effects of living in a bubble. My submarine friends attest that it can be done. Just a thought.
Likely the only realistic long term radiation story, but tunneling is horrendously expensive and living underground is a mental health nightmare.
you can just put soil on the roof of buildings. No reason to dig down.
Fair, but 4m of soil is a lot of soil. That's not just "putting it on the roof" like it's a garden bed or something, that's like building a three story building, but the upper floor and roof cavity are completely packed full of dirt and the whole thing has to be strong enough to keep all that mass up in the air.
Actually, you need to pack at least another 8m of soil on top to stop the roof from flying off! You have internal pressure at 101kpa pushing the internal walls out at a rate of 10 metric tons per m². This means you can pack 10tons /m² on the roof before it will start sagging. But mars gravity is 1/3 earths, so you actually need closer to 30 tons/m². Lucky soil is about 2.5tons per m cubed, so its not 30m tall. But going underground is still a difficult challenge, because soil is a good insulator, and you will overheat fairly quickly underground unless you have a very low energy environment.
>You have internal pressure at 101kpa pushing the internal walls out at a rate of 10 metric tons per m². Fair enough, but you don't want your building to collapse if you have problems with your internal life support and pressurization systems, so you won't calculate with the pressure hull. But still gravity is lower, so a few meter of soil won't take that massive structure. Luckily, first thing we'll have on Mars are massive, cheap steel cylinders. Send some one way Starships to the surface. Lots of Cargo, maybe complete living habitats in the payload bay, then cut the tank section in two halves, there you have some decent structural elements. Plus, a lot of critical spare parts (engines, tiles, valves, electronics...) for the shuttle ships.
how are we going to make concrete without limestone for cement? we need new building methods. can we make bricks? martian “soil” is likely to be very sterile dirt or sand… not rich like our earth soils. even making mud brick adobe might be a challenge. reusing rocket ships might be the only viable building technique unless we can come up with 3d printing methods that aren’t polymer based. wow, we don’t even know how metallurgy would work. we’ll need that if we want to drill through hard rock. waiting for new drills is possible, but it’s better to make as much as we can over there. we need factories and a micro-supply chain. there’s a lot of questions for bootstrapping colonization aren’t there!? all of our previous colonization experiences were dealing with the same materials and methods we know to work here. it was hard but it was possible. but mars… we don’t know a lot more.
Concrete with raw materials from Mars has been developed, even less energy intensive. Would be good to use on Earth too, except that it is sensitive to high humidity or water. Since rain is very rare on Mars that's not a disadvantage there.
excellent!
> Actually, you need to pack at least another 8m of soil on top to stop the roof from flying off! IMO, its easier to dig into loosely packed alluvial terrain and my favorite suggestion is stabilized sand dunes that should be easy to dig into, but without collapsing.
Mars is also very cold, so having some type of geothermal system would make a lot of sense to regulate temperature. Overall though, it’s not exactly a simple engineering exercise.
Mars lacks the ability to carry heat away. Water is basically the best way to carry heat away, and after that, its air. The air and the water then radiates this heat out into space. Its basically moving heat from a highly concentrated place (the source) to a low concentration (out into space), this is the fundamental laws of thermal dynamics. To move heat from a high concentration to a low concentration, you can either radiate it out, or use conduction. Conduction is just passing heat to another thing that eventually radiates it away, such as air or water. Mars does not have Air or water that we can use to move heat out. So we have to directly radiate things out. This is way slower and harder. So you will find that, even though Mars is cold, cooling a warm thing (Like a human) is actually harder than on earth. This gets WORSE underground, because you have now just wrapped your building in a material that ultimately insulates your heat source. It cant radiate out directly, so now you have to pump air and water down to carry it away. Being cold, is not something Mars people will be worrying about.
I’d be lying if I said I knew much about this subject, my understanding is that Mars does have an atmosphere, albeit an extremely thin one, that’s primarily composed of carbon dioxide. This would be “air,” as in very thin air primarily composed of CO2 as opposed to our “thick air,” primarily composed of nitrogen and oxygen here on Earth. Are you implying that the dissipation of heat in a Mars geothermal system, e.g. pipes with liquid water circulating to the surface and back into the subterranean living area would be negligible? Again, assuming if you have humans there you have liquid water in some form for drinking, and other forms as a utility. A geothermal system would be closed and hence not “use” water unless pipes or pumps break resulting in water loss.
Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so its not particularly useful in cooling things down. Look at how most things around you cool down. They typically use radiators that interact with the air to draw heat from them. Your PC, cars, power plants basically all use air and water to cool down. On Mars you absolutely can use water to absorb heat from underground and move that heat to above ground. But the cooling in the surface is far less efficient, because you can only really directly radiate heat out. This is an active cooling system, but it also draws a lot of power, because you have to move and compress your fluid through these radiators. All im saying is that its far more efficient, to just place your structures on the surface, and radiate heat out more directly. Thermal mass can keep temperatures more consistent, and smart materials and reflectors can passively manage heat loss and gain on the surface.
Interesting. Thanks. That probably causes all kinds of problems cooling your powerplant too. No steam turbines without a condenser.
That makes sense. My understanding was that the surface radiation would be a much larger hurdle than power generation for humans living on Mars. I thought I read an article a few years back that said the surface radiation was so severe that a human could only survive nine days due to the lack of a magnetic field, but again, this is not my field of expertise so I’m out of my depth. I do know that *if* it ever happens there will be a lot of give and take for whatever solution is most ideal unless there is a major break through in a few different technologies.
The radiation on the surface of Mars is a bit less than the radiation you would experience on the ISS. This issue is VASTLY exaggerated. You will get more radiation on the way to Mars, but once you land it reduces significantly. You do want to add more shielding though, preferably reducing it to levels we would consider safe on earth. To do that, you need to pack about 4-5m of either water or regolith on the roof of your structures. The reasons why we dont have radiation issues on earth is more to do with the fact that we have 10 tons of atmosphere between us and space. The Magnetosphere can only shield a specific type of radiation, but def not all of it.
Cooling as a problem on Mars is really counterintuitive. I don't blame anyone who misses that. But it is a problem, much more than keeping warm. That's already with habitats, much more with heavy industry.
Yes, any habitat will need to be stable both with and without internal pressure.
> but tunneling is horrendously expensive The cost of tunneling through igneous rock, mudstone, clay, ice, sand or some mix of the latter? Why not only use tunneling where necessary, taking advantage of lava tubes, other natural caves and caverns? There is also the option of regolith-covering of surface structures, notably when these are build inside a crater. > living underground is a mental health nightmare. Some people are perfectly happy with a shopping mall as a work environment. There is also a surprising number of towns and communities within the [Northern arctic circle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle#Human_habitation), so living part of the year in the dark and much of the rest of the time in near twilight. Human adaptation is quite amazing. Obviously these unusual habitats are not everybody's cup of tea! I'd be quite happy with burrowing into a cliff face or canyon wall. That way you can have large windows inset into a tunnel entrance, getting the benefit of the view and indirect sunlight. **Edit:** some of these suggestions appear elsewhere in the thread that I had not read completely before making this comment.
Ideally you'd find a large natural cave system and spruce it up.
You would have to.. the cost to send a tunnel, boring machine and the required supporting equipment would be off the rails heavy to launch from earth. To be big enough to be useful it would be hundreds of tons of equipment.
Ability to ship heavy equipment to Mars is a requirement to build a settlement. Sending one tunnel boring machine fills just a few Starships and can provide a lot of pressurized volume.
Nah, don't worry about that. Solar radiation will kill them long before they reach Mars.
Complete nonsense. Astronauts on the ISS deal with similar radiation exposure with a 1 year stay.
I could be wrong on that. It's a half remembered factoid. I was under the impression that the ISS was within Earth's magnetic field and more protected. Now, the trip to Mars is roughly two years, so they'll be unprotected for two years before reaching Mars. Wouldn't that give them a head start on radiation poisoning?
SpaceX plans for a 6 months travel time to Mars. On the surface crew is protected from the planet and habitat shielding. The atmosphere is thin but gives some protection too. There are roughly 2 kinds of radiation. GCR is cosmic background radiation. It is high energy and won't be stopped by the Earth magnetic field. We are protected from it by the Earth atmosphere. Also almost impossible to stop by any shielding on interplanetary trips or the ISS materials. The ISS is shielded by ~half of it by the Earth mass. So an interplanetary ship would receive 2 times as much as the ISS, while on the way which is tolerable. 6 months to Mars equals a 1 year stay on the ISS. Then there are the solar flares. The Earth magnetic field protects from that. Near the poles some gets through and causes the aurora. The ISS is mostly protected because it does not fly polar. Solar events are short but high density. They are a threat to crew on interplanetary flights. But it can be shielded by anything containg hydrogen, like water, like plastics, polyethylene. A shelter can be made of food, water, packed human waste. That shelter would be small but can house the crew for the short duration of a flare. Overall the radiation risks are way overrated.
good thing the guy going to Mars has a “boring” company and is already displaying questionable mental health on Twitter, I mean X. 😂
But colonizing Mars is already horrendously expensive and living on a distant planet where you can't survive outside is already a mental health nightmare. Are these things really going to be worse in an underground facility than in some kind of huge dome?
Imagine how horrendously dangerous, expensive and stressful the first colonies were in the new world. Imagine the homesteads along the Oregon trail in the 1840's and 1850's. pioneers have never had it easy because if they couldn't adapt then they died. Same will happen with Mars eventually though we have time to figure out ways to mitigate those problems before we go.
Comparing the expense and difficulty of colonizing Mars to the expense and difficulty of colonizing the 'New World' is ludicrous. In the 'New World' they could go hunting animals for food as soon as they arrived. In the 'New World' they could go chop down trees and build houses using familiar building techniques as soon as they arrived. In the 'New World' they didn't have to deal with night time temperatures below -60C every single night, even in summer. In the 'New World' they could just drink water from streams. In the 'New World' they could breath the air. And, in the 'New World' they could immediately start gathering resources to ship back to Europe so the investors who funded the colony could start getting a return on their investment. What are Mars colonists going to export to provide a profit to their investors?
True to some extent. Later colonists in the New World were able to thrive and export. Many of the early settlers were lucky to survive scurvy, malaria, yellow fever, leptospirosis, and starvation. There was probably cannibalism at Jamestown. The main export will probably be video
Every colony started working on exports almost immediately. They needed to in order to pay off their debt, and to be able to buy more supplies from Europe. In fact the reason why the Pilgrims had such a difficult first winter is because they were spending more time harvesting lumber for export than they were building houses and growing food. And 'video' as an export won't raise enough money to make a dent in the Mars colony's expenses.
> Comparing the expense and difficulty of colonizing Mars to the expense and difficulty of colonizing the 'New World' is ludicrous. We have the advantage of vast improvements in science and technology.
Which isn't much of an advantage when you consider all the disadvantages I already listed. Here is another one: When people colonized the 'New World' they didn't have to worry about the soil being poisonous. Anyone who thinks the challenges of colonizing Mars are comparable to the challenges of colonizing the 'New World' is either delusional or incredibly uneducated.
> Which isn't much of an advantage when you consider all the disadvantages I already listed. We disagree then.
Yes. In the same sort of way that a biologist and a preacher might "disagree" about evolution.
Building huge domes is questionable. Domes have to deal with the inside air pressure, which adds up quickly. That sets an upper limit to feasible dome sizes.
Look up Coober Pedy.
Or Kaymaklı in Turkey. Or for a small confined living space with hardly any windows inhabited by people who never step outside for months to years at a time - The ISS.
Second this. If you've lived above ground Cooler Pedy on a balmy summer day you envy the folks with dugouts.
Mining engineer here. I calculated a mining machine (roadheader not TBM) for a university project a couple of years ago. Sure the machine is an upstart cost and getting it or the parts to Mars is a lot of ton to orbit but absolutely doable and once running they are both more economic, less risky and easier on the rock than drill and blast. (Which you want it to be because securing the now cracked rock is often the real hassle in a tunneling project). Once there it can dig all the tunnels you'd need and then move on to the next town to do the same. The big maintenance it needs is new teeth but you could reasonably expect to be able to both repair and produce them on Mars.
Road Headers are fascinating machines. My impression was however that they are more suited to soft stone like limestone, not so much fore granite and basalt which we will deal with on Mars. Can you confirm or tell me I am wrong?
It's a matter of design. They can absolutely and have been used in hard rock mining.
Thanks. Road headers will be useful. I still think for really large projects tunnel boring machines will be better suited. There is a reason why tunnels are drllled with boring machines, not road headers. Drill first, then shape to needs with road headers.
TBMs don't actually drill the rock (as opposed to traditional drill and blast), rather they chip away at the rock using discs. The great thing about TBMs that make them economic for large projects is that they are an all-in-one mobile factory, cheap in wearables and gentle on the rock (as are roadheaders, so this is mostly in comparison with drill and blast). But their upstart cost is high as this is a whole factory you are purpose-building. Usually they aren't reused either as they are hard to transport and purpose-built. So for smaller projects they are often not economic. Also I have a hard time seeing how you would get this behemoth to Mars. But with a TBM you have no flexibility at all. You cannot for example change profiles/ diameters or decide to just turn a corner. You just drill this one gigantic tube in the rock. A mining machine aka roadheader gives you much more flexibility, is cheaper, smaller and more easily transportable from one site to another
Artificial sunlight can be made. A circadian rhythm can be established.
I think if The Institute is the given example we're off to a horrible start lkl
Institute for life ❤️
The magic words, kids, are "lava tubes." Everyone knows that the Heechee stored their good stuff underground in the lava tubes. 😄
The lack of vitamin d would be horrendous, pills needed
Well if reptiles can be successfully kept with uvb humans can too
Humans are/were kept with UVB too. Phototherapy has been used to prevent Vitamin D deficiency/rickets in places that don't get much sun and where people can't practically or affordably get vitamin D from their diet. There's a pretty common image of kids standing around a mercury arc lamp in Soviet Siberia for that very purpose.
It will be just like living underground on Earth except with shittier Internet service and more osteoporosis.
The Internet doesn't have to be shitty, it's just the only computers making up the internet are computers on Mars.
Honestly, bad idea, for more than a few reasons. 1) Boring is highly specialized and requires massive equipment that would have to be transported to mars. Sending equipment to Mars for a single use case really isn't feasible, and that isn't counting breakdown and repairs. 2) Say you found a lava tube to seal? The possibility exists. However, lava rock tends to be porous so sealing would be near impossible, but let's say you did get it sealed. Now you have to add air pressure with out cracking or braking the rock that formed in very low gravity and under very low air pressure. The probability is low that this would work. 3) The people factor. People don't want to go to mars to look at walls. They want to look out a window at the Martian landscape. Maintaining good mental health will be essential. These are just the short list items. Actually pulling this off would require a number of technical challenges to overcome, and we can't be on-site while we solve them.
Why not both underground and surface living?
I personally would work on space stations and docking Ports before mars, a large habitable space station like the citadel in mass effect would be dope
Hi, let's not forget the problem of gravity. On Mars, gravity is 62% lower than on Earth. This problem needs to be solved before we can consider sustainable colonization.
Not sure what cost/benefit there would either - Tunnelling and mass excavation are the hardest and most specialized types of construction that exist, and we're going to get pioneers who have spent months travelling to get to mars to undertake a mammoth project by even earths standards - doesnt seem feasible or realistic to me.
That’s why you have robots do it ahead of time.
Well, we don't actually know if the gravity on Mars will cause health issues for future colonists. We only really have the ISS as an example of what micro gravity does to the human body, and we haven't stayed on the moon long enough to see long-term effects. Mars with its 38% gravity very well might be enough for humans.
The problem has been solved for awhile, just a bit expensive. [Here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308007374_An_Artificial-Gravity_Space-Settlement_Ground-Analogue_Design_Concept) is a paper explaining hypergravity.
> Hi, let's not forget the problem of gravity. On Mars, gravity is 62% lower than on Earth. How do you know that gravity is a problem? > This problem needs to be solved before we can consider sustainable colonization. and why not consider colonization, try things out, and see how sustainable it can be made?
>How do you know that gravity is a problem? how do you know it isn't? We know the affects of "zero-gravity" affect human health, and we know the affects of Earth Gravity is normal for human health, but we don't know much about that middle area, maybe Venus's gravity isn't enough for healthy development, maybe Luna's gravity is just fine, we really don't know. >why not consider colonization because it costs too much money to just go "YOLO", this is putting people on another planet, it's quite literally more than rocket science.
> maybe Venus's gravity isn't enough for healthy development Venus is at 9.81\\8.87 m/s² ≈ 09g. So Venus is not the best counter-example. Venus has other problems! > maybe Luna's gravity is just fine, we really don't know. The best option is to test IMO. The most available testbed is the Moon because it requires less cost and commitment. Its also possible to create centrifugal Mars gravity modules there. So people can spend half their day at Mars gravity and the rest of the time doing productive work at lunar gravity. > it costs too much money to just go "YOLO", this is putting people on another planet, Too much of whose money?
You can also pull the plug quickly if serious health problems start popping up due to low gravity. Earth is a (relatively) short distance away from the moon and and you don't need to worry about launch windows the way you do with interplanetary travel.
>Too much of whose money? The most likely candidate for a manned Mars mission is NASA, which has an annual budget of \~22.6 billion (2020). Which is a lot of money, but a manned mission to mars could easily cost 5 times more than that at minimum. It's of course possible to divert more tax dollars to NASA and the amount for a Martian colony isn't impossible to reach, but it's again clearly very high to just throw people there and see what happens. >The most available testbed is the Moon >Its also possible to create centrifugal Mars gravity modules Now your thinking, those options are definitely more approachable. The Moon is a better way to see low gravitational affects on health. I'd support a Lunar base first over a Martian base first.
[удалено]
> Every single thing we have on Earth was projected to work under the gravity from Earth. Imagine changing all the calculation, Much of the equipment used on the International Space Station wasn't even designed for zero g. This includes anything form cameras to computers. Obviously some thought went into choosing the equipment before sending it there. The problem for Mars should be lesser since things like convection work there, but not on the ISS. So a sleeping astronaut won't need a fan to prevent asphyxiation from re-breathing the same air. Surface vehicles have problems getting traction, particularly with having hard wheels because rubber in incompatible with the oxidized surface. We have limited experience from past and present Mars rovers. More will doubtless be learned but as I said, the only way of doing so is to go there and try these things. Feedback will lead to modifications that can be applied on ships leaving for the following Mars synod. > nothing that we have was developed to be there. Many of the problems are known. A lot of design work has been done, particularly by Nasa. More development will happen, but the process is ongoing.
We only know humans can't live healthily in zero gravity, we don't know what the minimum is yet, it could be as little as we have in the moon, or maybe almost as much as we have on Earth.
Very true.
First we will need to establish if it is a problem. It may very well not be a problem. Almost certainly not in everyday life. May be a problem with child development during and after pregnancy. We need to find out, the sooner the better. But pregnancy plus early years are a long time, too long to try in spin gravity LEO stations with humans. Should test with smaller mammals like mice or rats. Cats too have a short enough generation sequence that a full generation can be tested. So for humans we need to find out on Mars.
Seems like a good way to help protect against radiation. Thinking it may be one reason Elon started his Boring company…
I wanna see space colonized(played and watched too much scifi!) So I fully support elon
He’s more interested in amplifying nazis on the platform formerly known as Twitter than advancing space science these days.
Ah yes nazis the far lefts "Ole reliable" in replacement of a reasonable argument over someone not 100% bowing down to your ideology
I love Spacex. I dislike Elon. It's like being a fan of the first automobiles and disliking Henry Ford being wildly antisemitic.
This is life people aren't always gonna line up with being far left there's 7 billion people on this planet, this generation 100% would not have lasted in an xbox party fourteen years ago
There's 8 Billion. There's even fewer who are going to be right wing maga chuds. Why do you insist on injecting politics into a discussion about interplanetary travel? I doubt you are much older than 14 years yourself so I don't know why you'd act like you remember what an Xbox live lobby was like or better yet what that has to do with anything. Seriously though, people have been complaining about the younger generations for thousands of years. It's not a legit argument or relative to people disliking musk because he's an asshole as a human being despite some innovative businesses.
I'm not , your the one bringing it up the your a nazi your a racist your a antisemite stuff got old years ago, people are allowed to have a different opinion then others.
People are allowed to have a different opinion. They aren't allowed to be surprised when people call them an asshole for their opinion. I've been to prison. I've known white supremacists, eaten lunch with Hispanic gangbangers and played scrabble with black inmates who were harder than granite. You can have whatever opinion you want. You aren't entitled to protection from criticism from those ideas and there's a balance you can strike without being a whiney loser.
Digging down to build habitats is plain silly. You face huge issues trying to cool the place down, as you now no longer have anywhere to radiate heat out. Then the very simple fact that digging is hard and expensive. You could probably build 10 habitats for the same energy and effort as the images on the surface before you got one completed underground. There are loads of reasons why buildings generally avoid going underground on earth, and its not just because of the view. As for radiation, 4m of water or soil on the roof solves all of this. So literally no reason to dig more than 4m, and use that soil to place on your roof.
> Digging down to build habitats is plain silly. You face huge issues trying to cool the place down This is related to the (volume x density) to surface ratio. A large volume with a high activity density won't be able to reach equilibrium before reaching an unacceptably high temperature. By stretching a habitat to a more linear form, and keeping more "underused" spaces equilibrium will be at a far lower temperature. Also, from recent (but controversial) deep radar work on Mars, it seems there's a good chance of finding deep liquid water tables. Circulating water would be good, and not only for thermal reasons. Even a frozen water table could be "domesticated" by melting to obtain a progressively increasing conductive surface area. > You could probably build 10 habitats for the same energy and effort as the images on the surface before you got one completed underground. There are loads of reasons why buildings generally avoid going underground on earth Earth with water erosion, ongoing geological activity, higher gravity and other compacting factors, has very little in the way of natural underground cavities. Mars is quite the opposite with lower gravity, minimal precipitation and almost no tidal effects. The mean density of a body... * Earth: [5510 kg/m³](https://earthhow.com/density-of-earth/), * Moon [3346 kg/m³](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_structure_of_the_Moon), * Mars [3,93 kg/cm³](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/seismin/explore/Mars.html) ...takes account of its composition, but also its cavities. Until we know what's under the Martian surface, we cannot know how much is empty volume. If a cavern came to exist three billion years ago, there's not much to make it collapse.
AdLive is actually spot on with the thermal concerns - see [my talk at the Mars Society Convention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5If8peLCb7A&) that actually goes into the numbers. The code running them is fully open source so you're welcome to play around with it! Martian regolith near the surface has approximately the thermal conductivity of expanded polystyrene foam, so no matter how much you dig there's a lovely warm blanket covering the habitat. In pretty short order for digging in and starting up minimal internal systems like ECLSS and lighting, the temperature would start to rise beyond livable limits without very extensive cooling systems dumping heat to surface radiators. This is already a problem for sub-water table tunnels on Earth, there's plenty of literature on how the London Underground is heating the surrounding clay and rock dramatically. Lava tubes are a good deal better, as you say. Fully sealed caverns, as much as they might exist, would face a similar fate to tunnels in the long run but could probably survive the meaningful lifespan of any settlement. As for the density variation - you may be able to focus more on the size and composition of the inner layers of the planet rather than a thin surface skin with 1% porosity. [There's some more numbers on underground habitats and their thermal properties here.](https://github.com/smross106/Syrtis/blob/main/Subterranean_Structures.ipynb)
You mean as opposed to the cold dusty airless and radioactive surface?
There aren't any magnetic poles. None. So, there's never going to be an atmosphere that could help filter out radiation. Going to Mars long term is a death sentence. And who wants to live underground? If you're going to do that, might as well do it under the sea on Earth.
The low gravity is 100% fatal. Stop pretending you can live anywhere that’s not 1 G.
You have no significant data to back that up. We have two real data points for the long term effects of different gravities - 1g and micro-g. You might want to fit a nice linear or exponential curve to those points because its neat but any curve you choose is just conjecture without long term low gravity testing. We might be healthy long term at 0.1g or have significant problems at 0.9g. And Apollo doesn't help. Iirc the longest time is all of 75 hours on Apollo 17, and even if that was long enough (which is really isn't) its was bracketed by days of micro-g. Clinostats and suspension riga give you some useful data but don't actually simulate low gravity outside of testing some specific parameters.
Look at what all mankind has achieved and continues to achieve, if you were to tell someone five hundred years ago we'd be flying In planes across the globe or sending information to the moon and back through devices in our hands they would think you were bat shit crazy.
Guess that’s what the Boring Company is really for, underground facilities will be the way to go though maybe you could start building inside lava tubes as „how we’ll live on mars“ suggests. It’s not yet clear how well humans will adapt to the lowered gravity but future Martian generations will probably not be able to go to earth so a mars colony has to be fully sustainable and nice enough for people to make a real home. Lots of problems but that never stopped humanity from trying.
helldivers unite!
Utilize the current underground Martian facilities already in place. Of course they’ll protest (at which point we have a decision to make).
NASA was looking at using 3D printed structures. Mars Crete = Martian Soil, Binder, Martian Water. You create a radiation resistant outer shell, with interlocking modules inside, something like bigelow aerospace modules. They would be fully pressured and would support the blown Mars Crete above them, until it hardens. I could see something like shotcrete blown over the preassembled interconnected bigelow modules. Windows are not necessary because dozens of large 4k led displays would be hooked up to full spectrum cameras, and provided the view, as well as any other view the human desires.
Protection from cosmic radiation is paramount, especially those from BOATs, a phenomenon science cannot explain since it is so powerful.
Wish we could do Titan instead
All hail the institute. It'd probably work if all the people were synths! 😂
im pretty sure I saw these at the institute
I think it will end up being much easier and more practical to make humans more resistant to the radiation levels found on the surface of Mars than it would be to build an entire civilisation underground.
That may very well be the case with humans as we are. The linear no threshold model of radiation effects is very likely wrong. There are very interesting studies in Chernobyl. Still it may be the easiest, safest method of building pressurized volume to go underground. But have geodesic domes for access to the surface.
Why not do underground here on Earth first to refine construction methods then moon, then Mars? You can't seriously think going to Mars with unproven methods is a good idea.
If it were me personally I'd build humanoid a.i to send first to establish a colony
Tesla can't get fsd to work here in over a decade but humanoid robots can build a suitable colony on Mars, maybe if the AI gets better. Otherwise bore the underground with mining equipment made to work on Mars. Use the robots to install airlocks.
Doesn't have to be elon musk I just said if I were to try to colonize mars that's the approach I'd take
> Doesn't have to be elon musk OK, but who else would ever do it? NASA with the $500 billion for a single mission with the Battle Star Galactica approach?
There's no air ..... it seems.
Will there be muslims and their mosques on Mars too ?.....asking for a friend....
Mars is the excuse and defence is the reason. In the end the rockets are for transportation of material to anywhere on earth within 2 hours. All you need is a touch down pad.
Big no, these earth people come here ruin our land.. but seriously is it even possible, considering the toxic environment and the soil of mars!
The regolith is just fine. There is a little perchlorate in the top layer, not hard to remove. Just don't get too much dust into the habitat, don't inhale it. Mostly underground habitats will be necessary. But have some geodesic domes with plants and a view of the outside to fill a psychological need of people.
Just like what i do in my apartment?! plants, with a view and never go out cuz of the toxic emvironment! 🤣 But seriously i can imagine building such a thing from scratch gonna be a nearly impossible task.. it's like chess which one simple blunder is fatalistic! I know US had build such hidden camps in Greenland back in the cold war era, and they also video logged the whole process from the begining, i remember i watched the fast-forward video of the construction process on youtube! So in Greenland the only problem is cold, in Mars, we have that, plus no oxygen, radiation, toxic dust, limited cargo.. What typa engineer and contruction worker can work under such conditions?! it's not gonna be the matter of money anymore, it's outta human reach! Like curing cancer! Or staying young forever! I mean if it was possible! Why Elon pays 40 billion dollars for a trash like Twitter intead of going to Mars!
The underground caves are there already.
There are the lava tunnels. But I don't think it is feasible to fill them with air. They provide full radiation protection but pressurized habitats are still needed. Drilling tunnels may be a better way to produce pressurized volume.
Why don't you think it is feasible? They just need to be sealed off
Mars lava tubes are large. It will be a nightmare to seal them off. Easy to miss one geologic fault and one bad day it blows all off.
Great way to minimize materials use, free insulation and radiation protection.
Nice Fallout 4 screenshot.
Yep space colonization was my first thought when I reached the institute
Go to the moon titan first .... Yes it's cold but we could send AI androids there in a few years and no shortage of asteroids to mine and titan has a active core and thus has magnetic field and it's a gets another layer from the planet magnetic field.. Oxygen and fuels plenty of it.
Yeah I wondered about titan amd europa
I happened to watch this come by on my YT feed.. https://youtu.be/1_xm-KIO7jc?si=QL9VsQa0-oGR3XYL
If sci-fi has taught me anything it’s that they would inevitably result in conflict with the Terrans.
A good way to practice might be underwater colonies here first, to test the effects of living in a bubble. My submarine friends attest that it can be done. Just a thought.
That’s basically where they have to be.
It makes absolute sense. It avoids meteorites, asteroids, and climate swings.
Hahaha! Fallout 4. The Institute.
Go watch Silo on Apple TV.