Human settlement of Mars in 2023

[igrowone]

but it doesnt matter if we want to do it, only if we could do it, and once it is possible (read: artificial gravity) we wont be limited to any planet.

we actually do have that capability, or at least the physics
if you build a spin environment, you can use it to complement existing gravity like mars
the planet gravity, and the spin gravity can be combined as a vector sums, with properly configured structures
you could have a subterranean environment, picture very large hub and spokes
of course, this could be a pricey endeavour

 

[guest 77721]

Here's a good Wiki link that explains a lot of the issues around going to Mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars

With our rocket based technology, a mission can only be launched when both the Earth and Mars are close to minimize the amount of energy used to travel. This window opens up every 2 years, 2 months. The average travel time is about 400 to 450 days.

So a mission would be launched when the 2 year Window opens up with a travel time of over a year to get to Mars. The Astronauts would have to live on the planet or in orbit for another year for the return Window to open and then travel a year to get back to Earth.

The mission would have to travel with 3+ years supply of air,water,food and enough fuel and equipment to make a return trip.

 

[ShroomDr]

Sorry if youre on a 56k, but this is pretty fucking cool, and kinda fits in here.

 

[Anti]

Sorry if youre on a 56k, but this is pretty fucking cool, and kinda fits in here.

View Image

Same thing, but in video:

[YOUTUBEIF]HEheh1BH34Q[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[igrowone]

love the neighbourhood map that ShroomDr put up, reminds of other ideas that have been floated out there
gravity is a bitch, would be nice to have a homey 1 G environment, other than Earth
but there is! Venus is 1 G, very close anyways, though it is a bit warm, and the air is a touch heavy
but with all the global warming goings on here(or talk thereof, best to stick to topic), solar 'shrouds' that reflect extra solar radiation away could get Venus to a much nicer temperature
after that, you do have the dense atmosphere of CO2 and H2SO4, but those are just inconvenient molecules
CO2 could be O2 and C, i.e. coal or charcoal, get that into sequestration pits and you've got a good start
and H2SO4 could be H2O, O2, and S, where again the sulphur could go to sequestration pits, or something similar
all the raw material for a nice atmosphere is there, just got to do some honest work to get Venus into shape

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

Now compare it to galaxies, and then galaxy cluster.

our entire solar system is literally just dust in the wind. lol

 

[Space Toker]

we are STILL "primitive as fuck", and the earth would still be in good shape if we were not. thinking that we were "meant'' to do a damn thing has it's roots i religion, and religion has always been one of the excuses we use to fuck things up whenever and wherever we see fit.

we don't even have a permanent base on the moon because A.)there is nothing there worth having and B.) we can't make it work in the first place

mars won't belong to us any time soon

wrong there are plenty of rescources on both the moon and mars for anyone bold enough to make 1000x or more on their return of investment, problem is they will have to take a big chance initially if it is ever to happen.

Have they figured out how to protect from the radiation exposure yet?

The Earth's Van-Allen belt provides good protection from cosmic radiation and fair protection from solar flares. That's why astronauts can spend a lot of time in the space station.

Radiation isn't just a risk to getting Cancer. It also causes electronic systems to glitch and fail. Not nice when your survival is dependant on computers and other gadgets.

There's no radiation shield when you travel to Mars and Mars itself has no magnetic shield because it has no spinning iron core like the Earth.

Mars is a one way trip to Cancer, at this time.

if you think in primitive terms and not what CAN BE DONE maybe but I like to think we are so more advanced than that. A spinning disk for artificial gravity and yes some radiation shielding and we should be good to go. not that hard just takes a little initiative willpower and investment.

 

[Space Toker]

point is, we could go to mars now with current technology and we should do so now! It will be well worth it in every sense of the word!

 

[cashmunny]

As an aerospace engineer I could retire off a human settlement on Mars. People make careers out of projects that size. That shit is just corporate welfare..cough.. I mean manna from heaven..cough for Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, etc. The cost of the international space station in low earth orbit was 150 billion dollars. An outpost on MArs would be probably half a trillion to a trillion dollars.

It would be great for me personally. Demand for engineers in my field would go through the roof. But that money would be better spent on education and health care for all Americans IMO. These days the federal budget being what it is, you can't have both.

Plus I've got news for all you dreamers. We're stuck on thiis planet with each other. We can't even terraform Earth successfully and people think we can terraform Mars , LOL.

I'll close my rant with something a little OT I'm probably mangling from Carl Sagan. "There are ONLY TWO possibilities as to the existence of extraterrestrial life 1) We are utterly alone in the Universe 2) We are not alone in the Universe, however interstellar distances being what they are we will never know.

I know it's an OT quote but in away it's not because I think it's a reminder to always splash the cold reality of science and economics over science fiction dreams of colonies on Mars.

 

[supermanlives]

been there ,its overrated lol

 

[igrowone]

the technical/cost hurdles are immense, but there is an elephant in the room that is probably even more of a deal killer
international treaties and politics
if memory serves, we and most of the potential players are signatories to a treaty which forbids 'seizing' territory in space
so if you want to colonize, you'd have to negotiate a deal with the UN
or just break the treaties and do what you want

 

[greenmatter]

"wrong there are plenty of rescources on both the moon and mars for anyone bold enough to make 1000x or more on their return of investment, problem is they will have to take a big chance initially if it is ever to happen."


right ..... there are plenty of resources on both the moon and mars, but there is no way to get them back here so they could be used that i know of. how many kilos of moon rocks have been brought back? at how many thousand dollars a gram? and they did what for us so far? when you start looking at bringing train loads of stuff from planet A to the surface of planet B things get complicated

getting things into orbit from earth is something we have done a lot of. getting things back down is not so simple. the space shuttle did not come back loaded with our space junk because of the weight/mass problems. one day we might solve that issue but we are not there yet ................. they can't get a $20 bag of rock phosphate from oregon to colorado for less than $30 in shipping these days, so by that math even if they found a gas station on mars that was charging 3 cents a gallon by the time they got it back here it would be running about $250,000 a litre

 

[Anti]

We need a space elevator system. That would massively reduce the cost of getting equipment into space and allow for much easier importation of exo-planetary materials. Or we could just send the equipment up the elevator and start refining raw material in a pressurized warehouse on the surface of the moon. Send back the refined metals instead of the tons of raw material needed to produce them.

Space elevators on the moon or mars would be even more efficient than those on earth, since they'd be fighting against much less mass.

It is estimated that the first such elevator could be built for around 20 billion (because you'd also have to build the infrastructure around it) but that subsequent elevators could be built for around 7 billion each.

For a comparison, the US has spent 1.2 Trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years. (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf) That's enough to have built 176 space elevators.

It's estimated that space elevators would reduce the cost of sending things into space from roughly $10,000/lb. (the costs based on the now-retired shuttle program) to around $100/lb.

We've spent less on NASA's entire history than we spent on one piddly war in Afghanistan.

Priorities people. We need 'em.

 

[igrowone]

pretty good little thread here, space/the final frontier - maybe
i did see not too long ago some private group/organization that has mentioned they could do asteroid mining in the near future
how real that is, well, let the reader beware
it meshes well with the colonization 'plans' since if you start getting your base materials in space, you don't need to boost as much stuff from earth
and boosting from earth has been the deal breaker due to cost

 

[TLoft13]

@Anti: We need an space elevator and/or a fucking big cannon. Have you ever read up on the stuff this crazy south african engineer did? Jules Verne's idea may be possible afterall.

 

[Storm Shadow]

http://io9.com/5924210/could-going-into-space-actually-make-people-live-longer

Could going into space actually make people live longer?

The idea probably seems ridiculous. We know from the few astronauts who have spent prolonged periods in space that zero gravity makes the body weaken and muscles atrophy. But if we're anything like worms, space could be good for us.

Only four people - all Soyuz cosmonauts in the late 80s and early 90s - have logged even an entire year continuously in space (technically, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov only made it to 364.9 days, but I think we can be generous here), and Sergei Krikalev, the record holder for most time spent in space, has spent about 2.2 years in space over the course of six spaceflights. Those are some impressive lengths of time, and more than enough time to see how easily the muscles can atrophy and bones can deteriorate - among a bunch of other serious negative side effects - after extended time spent in the great weightless expanse of space.

A new study led by Dr. Nathaniel Szewczyk of the University of Nottingham doesn't refute any of that, but it does offer up a seriously intriguing potential complication. He and his fellow researchers have found that, in worms taken up to the International Space Station, spaceflight causes certain genes to be expressed at lower levels than they would be on Earth, and toxic proteins that normally accumulate in the muscles are largely suppressed in space. When Dr. Szewczyk replicated these changes in gene expression in the worms C. elegans - a species frequently used in space travel research because the ways in which they suffer muscle atrophy are surprisingly similar to those of humans - the laboratory worms started living longer.

Of course, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves here. Observing an effect in worms in laboratory conditions is very different from seeing the same thing in humans out in space. Moreover, the team still isn't totally sure what is causing this longevity effect. But Dr. Szewczyk has some ideas, and there's a decent chance humans could enjoy this same boost in life, as he explained in a recent statement:


"We identified seven genes, which were down-regulated in space and whose inactivation extended lifespan under laboratory conditions...We are not entirely certain, but it would appear that these genes are involved in how the worm senses the environment and signals changes in metabolism in order to adapt to the environment. For example, one of the genes we have identified encodes insulin which, because of diabetes, is well known to be associated with metabolic control. In worms, flies, and mice insulin is also associated with modulation of lifespan.

As for what this means for astronauts and future space travelers, Dr. Szewcyzk could only speculate:


"Most of us know that muscle tends to shrink in space. These latest results suggest that this is almost certainly an adaptive response rather than a pathological one. Counter-intuitively, muscle in space may age better than on Earth. It may also be that spaceflight slows the process of aging."

Again, it's hard to say how much this effect would really show up in humans. Even granting that these metabolic processes in worms would work the same way in humans, spaceflight is known to cause some serious problems with the immune and cardiovascular systems, which are pretty damn important, even by the standards of the body's biological systems.

And for any spaceflight outside the immediate vicinity of Earth, there's the pesky issue of cosmic radiation, the harmful effects of which could very easily overwhelm any slowing of the aging process. But if and when humans strike out on decades-long journeys to other stars, it's a pretty cool thought that space itself might keep those explorers alive long enough to reach their destinations.

Via Scientific Reports in Nature. Image via NASA's Johnson Space Center.

 

[igrowone]

a very good finding there Storm Shadow, which would make one wonder how Mars 40% gravity(or so) might affect biologies
maybe Mars will be the Florida of the future

 

[Sundance]

space/the final frontier

i did see not too long ago some private group/organization that has mentioned they could do asteroid mining in the near future

Planetary Resources - mining asteroids for natural resources and helping create a further foothold deeper into space

Backed by diverse group of NASA space experts, billionaires, explorers - James Cameron too

http://www.planetaryresources.com

Great stuff

The future of space exploration belongs to the private sector

Sundance

 

[Space Toker]

cashmunny: very incredibly short-sighted, especially for someone of your background! We can and should settle space, gradually moving our species farther and farther out into the solar system as the habitable zone moves farther out. And eventually to the stars. And it should be done as soon as possible. Not as soon as we are good and ready, then it may be too late. Not once it is totally safe, for it will never be totally safe. Not once it is super inexpensive as costs may go down but only if we start extending ourselves into space. We need a frontier to keep pushing us as a species, otherwise we will become a race of apathetic pussies. Well that already has happened largely but not too late to turn it around. We can either last as long as the universe does as long as we keep expanding with it, or we can hide and whine about everything else being more important when in reality nothing is more important to humanity than saving itself from extinction!

 

[Sundance]

Here is the latest update from Planetary Resources discussing their plans and near term mission

A very interesting read

http://www.planetaryresources.com/2...0a094a5a-pri_update_20120713&utm_medium=email


Sundance