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A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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It's not missing technology that kills the (pretty silly) idea of "Mars colonization" - it's missing ecology.
They can't even maintain functioning civilization in Antarctica... yet they "dream" of doing so in a place that's hundreds of times more hostile to human life.
One of the things standing in the way of an"civilization" on Antarctica is that it's illegal to build a civilization on Antarctica. We could absolutely do it, assuming we were willing to fight a war and the resources were worth it
Every exploration into hostile environments heavily relies on goods and services imported from the rest of Earth. Biosphere 2 is as far as I know still the only time we ever tried to actually build a completely independent ecological system, but that was 30 years ago, in a non-hostile environment, only run for a short amount of time, still had tons of problems and would still be missing a lot of stuff to be truly self sustaining for long time periods (e.g. no industrial facilities).
They would ship in a new scrubber but could they? We have to assume that a colony might need to self subsist for long periods, at least as long as Biosphere 2 was running, because of the practical considerations in shipping replacement parts to Mars.
Biosphere 2 is a great story and I wish there were more follow ups. They tried to set up favorable initial conditions and then seal the hatch. They found that the environment inside shifted and became inhospitable. The crops they planned on didn’t all sustain. Then they called it all off.
What if they had allowed the biosphere to keep shifting until it found its equilibrium point, and then set about finding advantages in that? Crops that would sustain in that?
An iterative process could build on mistakes and learnings. A one-shot, naive, all-or-nothing attempt where your starting conditions have to be just right… no wonder that it failed, but where was the next iteration? Why give it all up instead of tuning? I know it’s about money, but I wish someone with money cared enough to keep this thread going.
That's not why it failed:
In any case, it is still in operation.
These would be the problems that are currently being worked on prior to manned Mars (and to a lesser extent, lunar) missions.
We absolutely will not be shipping containers of food to Mars. That's absurd.
We absolutely will be. You have no concept of the amount of energy and resources needed to feed a single human being on Earth for one meal, let alone a whole colony on another world without a breathable atmosphere and possibly toxic dirt for an indeterminate time. Farming under the best of conditions is extremely energy consuming, then there's the need to either import hardware from Earth that is specially made for Mars or go old fashion and do a lot of it by hand. There is no where else in the solar system where you can just throw seeds at the ground in large enough quantities and feed whole cities. I do homesteading, my dad tried to be totally self sufficient foodwise when I was a teen. Guess what? Turns out that's really, really hard to do. And that's under the ideal conditions of Earth.
But you didn't have NASA level technology. There is a lot you can do to increase food production using less space if you're willing to pay the upfront and energy costs.
Lol no wonder you know so little about this
This is one of those things that will need baby steps.
— using local water and dirt are probably a minimum for any non-trivial stay
— yes we really need to be able to grow our own food, at least if we want to scale up from a temporary base for a handful to something larger or more permanent. Again, this is one of the things we probably need to go there to find out: is it possible to grow a lot of our own food?
I disagree, I believe we would ship containers of food to Mars in the early days. Just like we do for mcmurdo in Antarctica.
It's doubtful we'd ship past the initial landing and support phases, which was my point. It's likely we'd send several ships out for any permanent presence, but 18 months is just too long and too much investment between trips.
If you send say 20 people to Mars, let's do the math. An average person requires approximately 2 to 3 lb of food per day. 18 months = 6,500 days x 20 people = 131,000 pounds of food, or about 65 tons. You could probably drop the weight significantly by freeze drying it and recycling the water.
In any case, 65 tons isn't a whole lot - that's about what, half of a starship payload? Zubrin's a case for Mars likewise discussed the need to bring all of your food supplies over with you.
Now over many years you could build up enough buy a waste and build a recycling system to start recycling to buy a waste in a greenhouse, but we don't know how viable like greenhouse on Mars will be for growing food. It's likely going to have to be more of a grow lab/vertical farm setup. Very energy intensive.
Doesn’t the outer space treaty place similar restrictions on mars?
AFAIK it only prevents weaponization of space.
It also prohibits countries from claiming sovereignty, and it actually used the Antarctic treaty for inspiration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
Which is not to say that it’s exactly the same situation as Antarctica, but the treaties are more similar than you might assume.
It prohibits countries from claiming sovereignty over territory beyond Earth, but the colonies themselves can still be sovereign. Assuming the treaty continues as it is it just means that countries won't be able to draw borders around vast lifeless regions on Mars or the Moon and claim jurisdiction over them, they'll still be able to build cities there and the cities will be theirs to control.
Treaties like these lapse or get amended over time as the realities of life make them obsolete, though. I expect that once there are cities on Mars there'll be borders as well.
Yeah it's just that the sheer scale of planetary colonization kind of makes this a problem for the year 4,000 or so.
Oh, right... that is what has stopped the Phony Starks from building capitalist Utopia in Antartica - it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it's utterly inhospitable to human civilization at all.
That and lack of exploitable resources, meaning a lack of capital. There's no shortage of capital for the modern space age.
Yeah... because Antarctica lacks water. And wind energy. And some of the most protein-rich waters on the planet.
Poor, poor Phony Starks... imagine being held back by legislation they could easily bribe into non-existence if they wanted!
We're not exactly hurting for water
This doesn't require building a civilization of any sort
Oh really?
I guess you're the kind of fantasist that believe they invent food at the supermarket, eh?
California is a localized problem, as all water shortages are, because we live on a fucking water planet.
Fishing does not require supermarkets. It requires driving a boat to where fish are, then driving home.
So... not like Mars?
And the boat will be useful on Mars because...?
You're talking about Antarctica. Pick a topic.
Soooo... you agree that Antarctica has tons of resources which Mars doesn't.
Remind me... which one is your hero Phony Stark planning to build his capitalist Utopia in again?
That’s a good point. There is at least as much to learn from Antarctica as from Mars. Maybe less maybe more, but certainly more relevant since it’s on Earth. Plus easier to get to than Mars. Yet we can’t scrounge up enough to keep a larger presence there.
Sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that we are living in another dark age. We need a real renaissance to shake it.
One of the mandatory precursors to that is a major Hundred Years war that kills lots of people and displaces even more.
Luckily, that's one field where we've made a lot of progress, we won't need even close to one hundred years.
I've been hearing this "we need a new renaissance" spiel since the 80s. It really sounds like "I've got no ideas, so I'll distract with mentioning a time that is revered for it." to me nowadays.
"We need a new renaissance" is a dog whistle for "we need a white culture (Rome was a good example) to dominate and destroy the societies adjacent to it again, so that while they are recuperating, rebuilding and repopulating, we will assert our white cultural dominance and leverage that to impose our ideals and religion into every facet of other cultures and then call it a renaissance".
Notice how you never read about the Islamic renaissance or anything from India, Asia or Africa, or even South American native cultures when "renaissance" is mentioned?
Give me a break.
Maybe some use as dog whistle but I am not. The color or creed of the people who were around during periods of progress is irrelevant to me. I care about the progress.
And Rome had more people of color in positions of power and influence than we can even dream of today. However they did have slaves. Lots of white, Germanic slaves. Google it and chew on that while you think about your accusations of racism.