At least so this news story claims:
https://www.unilad.com/technology/space/mars-declared-unsafe-humans-survive-four-years-356854-20240320
After four years on Mars, radiation exposure will exceed safe levels.
So, it is absolutely impossible for any humans to settle permanently
on Mars and make it their new home.
There are of course two fundamental errors in their logic.
Robert Zubrin would point out that "safe levels" that are established
by standards on Earth involve a very low tolerance for risk, and so
the information in the article only implies that people living on Mars
would have a somewhat greater cancer risk than people on Earth.
That doesn't make Mars uninhabitable any more than, say, Boulder,
Colorado is uninhabitable.
I would point out that while a certain amount of shielding does indeed
make cosmic rays worse, thanks to secondary radiation - something the
article alludes to - still more shielding eventually fixes that.
Otherwise, Earth's atmosphere would make cosmic radiation worse here
than in space.
Mars is a *planet*. So there is plenty of rock available to use for >shielding. I really doubt that people living, say, *75 feet
underground* on Mars will be in any particular danger from radiation,
and it's perfectly possible to use simple mirror systems to take
sunlight from the surface of Mars, and focus it and send it down a
very narrow hole to allow a deep artificial cavern to be well-lit.
On the bottom of the page on my web site
http://www.quadibloc.com/science/spa02.htm
I illustrate such an optical system.
We _can_ settle Mars, even if construction there will be more
expensive than on Earth.
John Savard
But... why would we? We lack (by a large margin) the knowledge to
survive there without massive amounts of traffic from Earth supplying >resources. And there's no value in being there.
On Sun, 24 Mar 2024 22:21:00 -0600, Chris L Peterson
<clp@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
But... why would we? We lack (by a large margin) the knowledge to
survive there without massive amounts of traffic from Earth supplying >>resources. And there's no value in being there.
Do we?
I would tend to admit that the amount of traffic from Earth to supply >start-up resources would still be "massive" by current standards, even
if, as seems not unlikely to me, there was the ability to harvest
volatiles from comets for use by a Mars colony.
But if you mean, as I think likely, massive *continuing* traffic from
Earth supplying resources... I disagree. We do lack the knowledge to
have a completely closed cycle on a *small spaceship*, but just build
a large enough colony occupying several acres, stock it with a wide
variety of Earth lifeforms, going heavy on oxygen-generating plants... >reproducing a viable isolated ecosystem surely isn't that hard.
As long as the scale is larger even than that of the failed "Biosphere
II" experiment.
As for value in being there... given that both Russia and China have
nuclear weapons, Earth is claustrophobically small. Humanity,
civilizatiion, and liberty MUST survive under all conditions
whatsoever, and therefore Mars colonization is an imperative, given
that nuclear war, or avoiding it by surrender, or Trump getting
elected in 2024 (avoiding it by a Co-Dominion scenario, or one like in
the "Fatherland" novel) are not impossible.
John Savard
At least so this news story claims:
https://www.unilad.com/technology/space/mars-declared-unsafe-humans-survive-four-years-356854-20240320
After four years on Mars, radiation exposure will exceed safe levels.
So, it is absolutely impossible for any humans to settle permanently
on Mars and make it their new home.
There are of course two fundamental errors in their logic.
Robert Zubrin would point out that "safe levels" that are established
by standards on Earth involve a very low tolerance for risk, and so
the information in the article only implies that people living on Mars
would have a somewhat greater cancer risk than people on Earth.
That doesn't make Mars uninhabitable any more than, say, Boulder,
Colorado is uninhabitable.
I would point out that while a certain amount of shielding does indeed
make cosmic rays worse, thanks to secondary radiation - something the
article alludes to - still more shielding eventually fixes that.
Otherwise, Earth's atmosphere would make cosmic radiation worse here
than in space.
Mars is a *planet*. So there is plenty of rock available to use for shielding. I really doubt that people living, say, *75 feet
underground* on Mars will be in any particular danger from radiation,
and it's perfectly possible to use simple mirror systems to take
sunlight from the surface of Mars, and focus it and send it down a
very narrow hole to allow a deep artificial cavern to be well-lit.
On the bottom of the page on my web site
http://www.quadibloc.com/science/spa02.htm
I illustrate such an optical system.
We _can_ settle Mars, even if construction there will be more
expensive than on Earth.
I'm not convinced it will ever be worth the effort of humans visiting
Mars - except possibly for some incredibly high budget reality TV show
along the lines of Big Brother where contestants get to vote who has to
leave the ship next.
On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 14:33:09 +0000, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
I'm not convinced it will ever be worth the effort of humans visiting
Mars - except possibly for some incredibly high budget reality TV show
along the lines of Big Brother where contestants get to vote who has to
leave the ship next.
That's probably the most likely scenario! Unless we are successful in eliminating the existence of billionaires (let's hope!), one of the
crazier ones may well blow a ton of money to grandstand a mission to
Mars, with people who don't necessarily have to be kept alive.
Soft Mars landings don't
have an exactly stellar record either. The Martian atmosphere is just
thick enough to burn you up on entry but not thick enough to make
parachutes particularly useful.
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