You know that if you take the lack of air and water, the weaker sun, the lower gravity and the toxic soil, Mars is not as bad as a place to live. And there are certainly worse places to life, as I don’t know, Ohio (that can say that because I grew up there). But in the past two decades there has been a big boost not only to go to Mars and to visit how we did fifty years ago with the moon, but to stay there. Beat roots. Establish us. Build a colony or a settlement.
We have the Mars Foundation, we have Occupy Mars, we have Mars. Everyone proposes great plans to build a human settlement, a city on the red planet within the next generation.
I will give it clear to you, because if you look at this show, I’m bet, you are the kind of person who appreciates a factual approach.
We don’t go to Mars soon.
I know that there are some… announcements … floating around there, and at the time of this recording, who knows what the current administration suggests, we say that we should go to Mars in 2026 or 2029. I can tell you with the greatest trust that the people who work out these appointments do not do because they have a good covered of technological improvement to make these reasonable goals.
They do it because these are the next open start window. That’s it. Let’s go to Mars in 2026 … because we can go to Mars next time. It is as to say: “Hey, everyone, I have a plan: We should go to Barbados all the morning morning” because the next flight off, not because they actually developed a plan to go to Barbados. Or even have the money. Or a swimsuit.
Although we can be pessimistic at short notice, we can still be optimistic in the distant future. There is no law of physics that makes a Marsial settlement impossible. Sure, it may be the hardest technical challenge of all time, but it is not impossible – and that is a big difference.
So let’s dive into what a Mars city could actually look like and how we could be able to build one. But first we have to talk about how a city on Mars will be completely unlike what we have on earth.
Because it’s Mars.
Let’s start with the raw numbers. The average temperature on Mars is minus 63 degrees Celsius or -80 Fahrenheit. While it can get warmer, up to something that approaches the lower valleys during the summer months, it can also be much colder, except for -153 Celsius or -225 Fahrenheit.
Remember Mars is a planet that is cold enough to freeze not only water but also carbon dioxide.
The number one, every human settlement has to deal with extreme, bitter, year -old cold. Even the most remote and extreme places on earth, like the South Pole, do not reach the temperatures as low.
And the South Pole has the advantage that they know to breathe air what the Mars is missing. The air pressure on Mars is less than 1% of the air pressure on earth at sea level. And what has air is mostly carbon dioxide, which is great news … if you are a system.
Now it is not so complicated to build a ship under pressure in order to maintain a regular, breathable atmosphere against which a vacuum essentially maintains. The international space station does it all the time and it is quite large … and it was also designed not to keep more than a few people. And it is right there in the orbit in the earth, makes rehearsal and – if necessary – evacuated relatively easily, at least as simple as something in space.
But Mars is not close. The average distance to Mars is 140 million miles or 225 million kilometers. For chemical rockets, a trip there takes months. Just think about it: The usual crew rotations for the space station are around the same time. And the Apollo missions to the moon were much, much shorter. A typical astronaut stay at the Hotel ISS therefore corresponds approximately to the trip to Mars, without being there and coming home there.
And even then we have to wait until a start window is opened when the earth and the Mars are on the same side of the solar system, which takes place around every two years.
Sorry Mark Watney, but rescue will not be an option. Also is not reuse. If something goes wrong or the settlers go out of a critical component or ingredient … that’s it. You have to find out yourself.
There will be a constant exposure to cosmic rays for your daily headaches. This is a fatal radiation that comes from the deep space, from exploding stars and black holes and so on. On earth, our atmosphere has a wonderful task to absorb most cosmic rays, but even then they can slide to the surface. They are hit by a cosmic beam about every second, and these cosmic rays contribute to 1 to 3% of all cancer incidents.
Mars has no atmosphere. Which means that the surface of the marso gets a lot of radiation. And only simple metal abdomen will not cut it. This is because a cosmic beam simply hits the metal and create a shower of subatomic particles in the shelter. You need a lot of things – stone, water, gas, whatever – between you and the dangerous sky.
Speaking of rocks, yes, they are poisonous. And not poisonous like social media personality, I actually mean to be poisonous. Poisonous. Dangerously touching, breathing, taking up or being nearby in other ways. The floor is full of perchlorates, which are sometimes used as an ingredient in rocket fuel. Every food grown on the Mars must use treated soil that is used, the white how much water.
Oh, that’s right, water. Yes, it is water on Mars, but it is almost completely frozen. There may be some liquid pockets that are buried deep below the polar ice caps, which is not accessible from afar, so we just have to be. The rest of the frozen water is buried underground, which… mining means. A lot grab dirt, heat it, sort it and separate the water.
Mining itself will be a big problem for every long -term dwelling. On Earth we are used to finding just finding out and making a blow on it. I mean, I assume that the actual mining process is more complicated than that, but I played a lot of Minecraft, so I have the feeling that I understand the basic core. It’s not that easy on Mars. Without flat tectonics to confuse the crust, we have no idea whether there are rich metal concentrations, which means that something heavy must be sent from the earth.
And we have to talk about the dust. Mars Sand. It is course and rough and irritating and it comes everywhere. No, wait, actually it is the other way around. It has been blown around Mars for billions of years, and this constant movement has ground the dust grains into almost perfectly smooth, almost microscopic bits. And when dust storms begin, you can literally circle the entire globe.
In 2018, only a global dust tower killed the chance of NASA. The storm blocked the sun for so long that the rover did not get enough juice from its solar collectors, and it went calm. Future settlers will probably have to rely on solar energy at least partially, which means that they will constantly fight dust from day 1.
As I said, we won’t go to Mars soon because we have not solved … let me check my notes … Ah, that’s right, one of these problems. And we will not solve them in just a few years.
But that does not mean that we cannot make progress.
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