3 mo. ago • 82%

[discuss] essential elements for survival on mars

Hi there, I'd like to connect with people to discuss technical aspects of settlement of mars.

I'd look at a house on earth and ask: what things have to be supplied from the outside; what things can be produced inside the house? Houses on earth have piping for water, and cabling for electricity.

Plants can be grown in a green-house using these two ingredients, and the people can sleep in a spaceship.

Comment whatever comes to your mind.

24 comments

Not sure if this falls within the scope of what you’re thinking, but radiation shielding is gonna be a big part of figuring out how to make it on mars.

19
- I honestly think the best approach would be to use old magma tunnels to establish a base deep underground. That provides sufficient shielding, and also gets the settlement closer to water reservoirs.
  
  11
  
  Temperature is also a lot more stable underground… there’s a lot of good reasons to build in a cave or lava tube. Works on the moon too.
  
  7
  
  I agree with you as tunnels would address many concerns but I also find it fantastically ironic that once we become advanced enough to colonize another planet we right away go back to living in caves
  
  4
  
  Remember to put down the red faction rebels down there first!
  
  1
- Don't forget perchlorate mitigation!
  
  5
  
  Chlorates and perchlorates are fairly unstable, and readily decompose into chlorides + oxygen gas when heated. Could we solve two problems at once by washing the perchlorates out of the soil, and then decomposing them to produce oxygen for breathing and propellant?
  
  5
  
  I don't see perchlorates as a big problem.
  
  After all, plants grow quite well without soil, like hydroponics, I guess.
  
  1
- .. and the cold, and the storms…
  hmmm
  
  When, exactly, were we going to ship the rich people off to Mars? Asking for a friend.
  
  4
- Yeah, I guess. I've read on Wikipedia that a year on Mars gives a human 200 mSv of radiation. While the limit for US radiation workers is 50 mSv a year. So that's 4x the allowed dosis.
  
  Still, I wonder how much that can be alleviated by metal shielding. A spaceship's outer walls are 5mm solid steel, and I've read somewhere that most of the radiation is particle radiation (not electromagnetic radiation), so that can be stopped with solid steel quite well. Unfortunately, I don't have any actual numbers, though.
  
  Edit: Source
  
  Edit:
  
  250 mSv: 6-month trip to Mars—radiation due to cosmic rays, which are very difficult to shield against
  
  Apparently I was wrong. It's not just particle radiation, it's actual electromagnetic radiation. Which is much more difficult to deal with.
  
  4
  
  How do they currently do it on space stations?
  
  2
  
  How do they currently do it on space stations?
  
  1
Oxygen. Heating/cooling. Water. Food. Electricity. Radiation shielding. Medical supplies. Spare parts for equipment repair. Roughly in that order of precedence.

6
- Also need to factor in waste management as well. With sufficient bacteria and time, the effluents can be converted to compost. It will take a ton of algae bioreactors to prevent the CO2 generated from becoming toxic. Packaging can be buried, but I think it would be better if it was compostable as well.
  
  We also need to consider fire suppression. A fire in a low gravity and/or high oxygen environment is going to be dangerous quickly and could harm critical systems. The fire suppression material itself could also imbalance the environment and , at minimum, could be a big hassle to clean up.
  
  In regards to food growth, aeroponics can be fine tuned and automated, but this works best for leafy vegetables. Keep in mind that Mars doesn’t have the inert Nitrogen atmosphere that Earth does, so nitrogen fixing doesn’t work to our benefit, which means we’ll need to acquire sources of bio available nitrogen.
  
  Phosphorous may also be a problem, since our best stores of that currently come from bird and bat guano.
  
  3
- oxygen could be produced from water and electricity though.
  
  Heating/cooling: when you're exposed to 20°C water, it feels much colder than if you're exposed to 20°C air. That is because water has a higher density, and transports heat away from your body much faster. Now, mars has a very thin atmosphere. That means that it transports heat away from your body much more slowly. So even if it has -50°C, it will not feel likek -50°C on earth. Because you will feel only a fraction of that coldness.
  
  0
Your Mars house will need pressurization, and some sort of airlock if you're planning on coming and going.

6
- Hmm yeah, airtight buildings are a challenge to construct.
  
  That's why I've favored the people on Mars living in the spaceships. The building already exists, and is naturally air-tight (after all, it has been airtight for 6 months in outer space). But that has its downsides: less protection against radiation, mostly. (due to only having 5mm of steel and 200 kg/m² CO2 above your head instead of meters full of dirt and rock.)
  
  2
Off the top of my head, you could get some solar power with a massive array. It’s possible to generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, as NASA recently proved.

I would think any permanent structure on Mars is going to be more like the ISS except underground. So, basically everything will have to be resupplied from Eart. There could be some in-situ resource utilization but it’d be challenging.

4
- I think that water is an important resource. Once that you have water and electricity, you can produce oxygen easily. And you need large quantities of water anyways.
  
  2

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