DailyDirt: Planning For A Mars Colony

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Oct 14th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The Martian is inspiring some re-vitalized enthusiasm for manned missions to Mars. Along with the discovery of liquid water flowing on the surface of the red planet, science fiction combined with actual science is making space exploration sound cool again. However, there are still plenty of harsh realities for manned space exploration. Men have walked (and driven) on the moon, but beyond that, it's unclear how much anyone really benefits from having people touch the surface of another moon or planet -- without a plan to stay there and accomplish even more significant tasks. Becoming an interplanetary species sounds like a nice idea, but it's not a pressing issue to actually do it -- and we probably won't be ready for it until we can actually set long term goals (ahem, and pass budgets on time).

NASA has thought through the steps that could take people to Mars -- and published its plan to try to give it a boost in Congress. The report gives a brief overview of how NASA plans to move from space stations that need to be constantly re-supplied to "Earth independent" stations that wouldn't require a consistent supply line from terrestrial resources. [url]
There's a socio-economic argument that Martian "cities" are unlikely to exist simply because Mars is so remote and isolated, and cities require a network of trade and commerce. Essentially, there is a vast amount of infrastructure and resources to build up on Mars before it's anything more than a scientific curiosity outpost. No unobtainium exists to make Mars a worthwhile location for anything (yet?). [url]
Mars simulations have been performed on isolated camps, and NASA is also working with Navy submarine training facilities to get a better idea of how to deal with living in sealed environments for long periods of time. NASA wants to avoid situations that some reality TV shows (eg. Big Brother and Real World) encourage. (Even Mars One isn't going to do a reality show anymore.) [url]

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Filed Under: interplanetary travel, manned missions, mars, mars colony, mars simulation, martian cities, navy, space exploration, submarine
Companies: mars one, nasa

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 14 Oct 2015 @ 5:50pm

I plan on retiring on Mars
I will repair and maintain robots that farm for me. Preserve and store the resulting foods and make them available for purchase. The ones who made the most money during gold rushes were the grocers, not the miners.
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- Anonymous Coward, 14 Oct 2015 @ 7:03pm
  
  Re: I plan on retiring on Mars
  Wrong, it wasn't the grocers with their nickel and dime operation, it was the land owners.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 14 Oct 2015 @ 8:00pm
    
    Re: Re: I plan on retiring on Mars
    Who secretly were the grocers! What do you think they were investing in?
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    - Ninja (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 6:16am
      
      Re: Re: Re: I plan on retiring on Mars
      Which means piracy is harming land owners! /hollywood
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Oct 2015 @ 6:26pm

Call me when they find the Prothean beacon
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Oct 2015 @ 8:30pm

Yes, it is a pressing issue. Because what we worry about here on Earth is stupid.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Oct 2015 @ 10:01pm

Powerful/rich people want the sheeple to go first indeed.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 6:11am

"The Martian is inspiring some re-vitalized enthusiasm for manned missions to Mars."

Interesting. I thought it might instill some skepticism about one's odds of survival.
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- Mason Wheeler (profile), 15 Oct 2015 @ 7:44am
  
  Re:
  The truly weird thing is that, for all of its hard-science realism focus, the basic premise is completely invalid: the atmosphere of Mars is too thin for the intense sandstorm/windstorm that drove off most of the astronauts and left one of them behind to arise in the first place!
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  - Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 11:38am
    
    Re: Re:
    Yup.
    However, that does not mean it would be a cake walk for humans. So many things that could, and eventually would, go bad. Why did they not have a backup comm system? Manned missions usually have backup for the backup.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2015 @ 6:27am

NASA will never get more funding because the NSA took it all.
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