Dear Elon: We will NEVER colonize Mars

[UnseenParticipant]

This video lays out some reasons why it won’t happen:

But there are other reasons as well. For example, Musk wants to terraform Mars to give it a breathable atmosphere. But Mars has a hard time holding onto an atmosphere for two reasons: 1) it has 1/10 the mass of Earth and 1/3 the gravity, and 2) unlike Earth, Mars has no magnetic field and it’s Earth’s magnetic field that deflects the solar wind which has scoured almost all of the atmosphere Mars had off into space. While it’s possible through advanced engineering on a planetwide scale to create a magnetic field, it’s impractical and unfeasible.

Another problem is that of attending to serious medical problems. Imagine, for example, that halfway to Mars one of those aboard the craft develops something as common (and random) as appendicitis or has a potentially fatal embolism. Even if it were to happen on a fully-developed Mars colony, there will be emergencies best handled back on Earth.

Given today’s technology, the trip back to Earth would take about nine months, and that’s assuming a craft ready to blast off, which isn’t typically how these things go.

I don’t think we’ll ever colonize Mars. I don’t think we’ll ever leave Earth much beyond the Moon, to tell you the truth.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Radiation exposure alone should consign the whole project to the bad ideas bucket.  Without 24/7 shielding it would be like getting a whole-body CT scan every few days. People love to talk about terraforming, domes, or underground habitats, but Mars is basically a slow-cooker for human DNA.

Some suggest digging habitats 5-10 meters underground to use Martian soil as shielding. But that’s logistically insane—digging tunnels and moving thousands of tons of regolith with equipment that we can’t even send there yet.

Even with all the hype, it’s easier to live in Antarctica, the deep ocean, or even on the Moon than it is to survive long-term on Mars. Anyone who still believes in Mars colonization as a realistic goal is either underestimating the radiation problem or overestimating human adaptability. At best we would need full-time life support and a constant supply chain from Earth.

[UnseenParticipant]

@ Reg

Ever heard of Biosphere 2? It was an experiment designed to simulating a self-sustaining Mars colony. Suffice it to say, there were problems. Lots of problems.

To be clear, it was an experiment and it had problems resulting in data that might lead to future adjustments and improvements, so it was a failure in one sense and a success in another. One thing it succeeded in showing is that we are a long way from setting up a self-sustaining environment away from Earth. If it can’t be done on Earth, you can forget Mars or even the Moon.

One serious problem was that oxygen levels depleted over time dropping to 2/3 the normal starting level. This is equivalent to living your day at 15,000 ft, which is 1,000 feet higher than the summit of the tallest mountain in the lower 48, Mount Whitney. I spent 6 month on the shore of Lake Tahoe, which is at about 6,200 feet and believe you me, I felt it. It was difficult sleeping because when starting to drift off, I’d wake up gasping. I can’t even imagine what 15,000 feet would feel like. (And no, I never got used to it.)

In the end, the most serious and intractable problems were psychological in nature. When you put people in a situation where they need to rub elbows a lot and from which there is literally no escape, well, you can only imagine the psychodynamics. It culminated in an act of rebellion where a member of the team flung the doors open, allowing fresh air inside.

Finally, if simply making a colony on Earth work is so fraught with difficulties, try to imagine the issues involved in super-long ventures like a trip to the nearest star, which in addition to all the problems mentioned in the video, would require people to get along for several generations, with many people along the way neither experiencing Earth nor the success of the mission, which raises severe ethical issues.

BTW, in case you’re wondering “What about Biodome 1?,” it’s kind of a joke. Biodome 1 is the planet Earth.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@unseen – I remember it being covered in a BBC documentary, maybe 30 years ago? I had not really thought about it since. I guess it provided insights into the complexity of maintaining a closed ecological system and the impact of CO₂ on ecosystems.

The Martian air is 95.3% CO₂ and only 0.13% O₂. The atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth’s, making it ineffective at trapping heat and blocking radiation. Global dust storms can last for weeks or months, reducing solar power availability.

Temperature:

Average: -63°C (-81°F)
Daytime Maximum (Equator): 20°C (68°F)
Nighttime Minimum: -125°C (-195°F)

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg and Unseen,

It’s like I mentioned earlier, the Universe is trying to kill us.

Now, perhaps in the future, something that could be feasible would be to send remote-controlled, AI-enhanced escavating and centrifuge technology to Mars to extract rare and precious stones or Metals, but that would only make sense if we knew they were there.

The one simple thing that made Biospere 2 nonsense is The Second Law of Thermodynamics: In a closed system, things go from order to disorder. And boy, did it ever!

[UnseenParticipant]

@Reg

The bee population depleted due to the blocking of UV light while the cockroach population exploded. Cockroaches can reproduce asexually. A female can produce viable eggs parthenogenetically without the need of a male. So, all it took was one female cockroach stowaway and the species was off to the races.

Many of the species of plants brought in to provide food and oxygen failed to thrive in the provided environment.

 

[UnseenParticipant]

Actually, settling on Venus in zeppelin-style airships is far less fraught with problems. Venus has a dense atmosphere which means that normal earthly air pressure would be sufficient to float air-filled balloons above the ridiculously hot surface of the planet.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@unseen – The bee population depleted due to the blocking of UV light while the cockroach population exploded. 

I was on a client site yesterday. A department manager recently brought in 2 bee hives to the large green area behind their building. It is part of a “green initiative” for businesses. We were talking about “how rumors spread within a organization when I noticed a 15KG box of “Hive Alive” bee food.  I had no knowledge of it and had assumed no human intervention was required.  But with up to 80,000 bees per hive it is useful when they are ‘city dwellers’. He said he was about to feed them if I wanted to watch the process.

It gave me a bad idea. There were people waiting outside his office and as the door was ajar………we took one of the 1KG bags from the box (like this one) and he cut it with a blade and removed a ‘sample’. I pretended to sniff it. “Man, there is a serious buzz from that! I’ll take the whole 15 keys”. The stares from the hallway were hilarious, especially when he dumped all of the ‘product’ into a bucket of water!!

[PopeBeanieModerator]

I’ve believed for years that current plans to colonize Mars can’t work, but I won’t say that it will never be possible. If/when we can unlock unlimited energy, say with fusion, there is no limit to moving large payloads great distances, and maybe even one of Elon’s kids can send a fusion reactor and a boring machine to get things started underground. Or maybe China could do that. Just a couple of examples there.

OTOH, unlimited energy would likely (IMO) raise the risks of humanity self destructing here on Earth. Just the ability to produce it would still necessarily also release unlimited heat as a byproduct, unless there comes another technology that can safely send all that heat somewhere else. (This would be less of a problem on Mars.) I’m optimistic about humanity, but I still don’t have enough faith to believe the most powerful people can ultimately be nice enough to the rest of us.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Reg

In the spirit of “There’s no such thing as as stupid question…is there?”…

I’m not sure what you were getting at there. I think I was supposed to find it amusing, but I guess there are some bits of knowledge I’m lacking. Please explain.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

It was just two grown men being goofy on a Friday afternoon. We were planning an Oscar winning comedy about how rumours start and things quickly get out of control.  The event is true  but it is unlikely that ‘The Night of the Bumble Bee’ will make it to the big screen.

My client is involved in the movie industry.

 

[_Robert_Participant]

If the livability of Earth ever approaches the quality of conditions on Mars, humans are probably all long gone already.

 

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