Hi there, I’d like to connect with people to discuss technical aspects of settlement of mars.

I’d look at a house on earth and ask: what things have to be supplied from the outside; what things can be produced inside the house? Houses on earth have piping for water, and cabling for electricity.

Plants can be grown in a green-house using these two ingredients, and the people can sleep in a spaceship.

Comment whatever comes to your mind.

  • harsh3466
    190·
    2 months ago

    Not sure if this falls within the scope of what you’re thinking, but radiation shielding is gonna be a big part of figuring out how to make it on mars.

    • viking
      110·
      2 months ago

      I honestly think the best approach would be to use old magma tunnels to establish a base deep underground. That provides sufficient shielding, and also gets the settlement closer to water reservoirs.

      • PennomiEnglish
        70·
        2 months ago

        Temperature is also a lot more stable underground… there’s a lot of good reasons to build in a cave or lava tube. Works on the moon too.

      • EpicMuch
        50·
        2 months ago

        I agree with you as tunnels would address many concerns but I also find it fantastically ironic that once we become advanced enough to colonize another planet we right away go back to living in caves

        • threelonmusketeersEnglish
          40·
          2 months ago

          It has a certain amount of poetic symmetry which would be quite nice.

        • nikaaaOP
          20·
          2 months ago

          yeah and agriculture/food security becomes a serious issue and problem again

      • Harvey656
        21·
        2 months ago

        Remember to put down the red faction rebels down there first!

      • threelonmusketeersEnglish
        50·
        2 months ago

        Chlorates and perchlorates are fairly unstable, and readily decompose into chlorides + oxygen gas when heated. Could we solve two problems at once by washing the perchlorates out of the soil, and then decomposing them to produce oxygen for breathing and propellant?

        • NegativeInf
          20·
          2 months ago

          Sure, just gotta dig 11.5 to 20 km down to get to some water. Or melt the ice caps, which probably already have the perchlorates frozen in them.

      • nikaaaOP
        10·
        2 months ago

        I don’t see perchlorates as a big problem.

        After all, plants grow quite well without soil, like hydroponics, I guess.

          • nikaaaOP
            30·
            2 months ago

            I was thinking three options:

            • mining from underground (hoping that there’s enough ice underground/water in the mineralic crystals that can be thermically released)
            • water from the atmosphere (believe it or not but the atmosphere in the early morning is actually saturated with moisture - about 0.25 mbar iirc) so it could be extracted through something similar to a room de-moisturizer
            • polar caps (unrealistic in the early game)
    • Nightwatch Admin
      73·
      2 months ago

      … and the cold, and the storms…
      hmmm

      When, exactly, were we going to ship the rich people off to Mars? Asking for a friend.

    • nikaaaOP
      51·
      2 months ago2 months ago

      Yeah, I guess. I’ve read on Wikipedia that a year on Mars gives a human 200 mSv of radiation. While the limit for US radiation workers is 50 mSv a year. So that’s 4x the allowed dosis.

      Still, I wonder how much that can be alleviated by metal shielding. A spaceship’s outer walls are 5mm solid steel, and I’ve read somewhere that most of the radiation is particle radiation (not electromagnetic radiation), so that can be stopped with solid steel quite well. Unfortunately, I don’t have any actual numbers, though.

      Edit: Source

      Edit:

      250 mSv: 6-month trip to Mars—radiation due to cosmic rays, which are very difficult to shield against

      Apparently I was wrong. It’s not just particle radiation, it’s actual electromagnetic radiation. Which is much more difficult to deal with.

        • nikaaaOP
          10·
          2 months ago2 months ago

          the current attempt seems to be that ISS is low enough to be protected by earth’s magnetic shield (which, as I understand it, only protects against particle radiation, not EM radiation). So that would stop most radiation from hitting the ISS and astronauts. So the radiation dose is a bit lower than in true (even-farther-out) outer space, and then pray for the best, basically.

          Edit: Ok, now I’m thoroughly confused. Multiple sources contradict one another about what kind of radiation is actually most prevalent in outer space. Most say it’s particle radiation (which would be easy to protect against), but some say it’s electromagnetic radiation, which would be way more problematic.