I always thought a settlement would be underground

The first quick yet difficult solution I can think of is periodic centrifugal training. (I think we lucked out living on a high-gravity world rather than the other way around - imagine trying to simulate consistent Martian gravity on Earth.) There are other solutions I can think of for this problem, but that's all this is - a problem in need of a solution.

But you are right that there are powerful influential people (looking at you, Elon "Mars Soon" Musk) selling speculative fiction as reality.

Could be (best I can find is potential for cloud cities being potentially easier to do than Mars).

However, this is a Mars-focused "subreddit" (subfeddit? sublemmy? subpiefed? "community" feels too generic) so I'm talking about Mars. The advice of the post probably applies to Venus as well, I guess?

Great point, thanks! I would rather live in a generation ship on the way to a habitable planet than as an elongated mole martian!

I never said either of the things in those "quotes".

I'm saying there are very real effects which would make life very difficult for humans living on Mars. The effects would be very detrimental to long term inhabitants. So much so that the only reseaonable option is a scientific research station. A permenant settlement for thousands of people is science fiction.

Unless of course we become advanced enough to control gravity. But the way things are going we're closer to turning Earth into Venus than Mars into Earth.

Humans are well suited to live in a small band of air and a powerful ecosystem - with an atmospheric pressure at sea level of 1 atmosphere, with Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 20.%, Carbon Dioxide ~0.04% (currently ~420 ppm due to human activity). On Earth, natural background radiation is safe for long-term exposure, but on Mars, 240–600 mSv/year exceeds NASA’s 500 mSv lifetime limit for astronauts. Mars habitats require underground shelters or thick shielding to reduce exposure. In addition comes your observation concerning gravity, and there are definitely additional factors that will make life on Mars very hard for humans. A visit may be possible, but to live on a celestial body, or in a spacecraft for half a life time is tough going. Evolution took care that humans are well adapted to our current surroundings, but not to the cruel environment of outer space. Now that everybody is so orgasmic about robotics and AI, I suggest people send robots out there.

You jumped from "living on Mars would change people and may have to be permanent" to "therefore it's impossible"

Mars is too small to build a colony there for anything other than to say we did it. Venus is a much easier option to eventually put humans on. Venus just really needs a few comets worth of ice, and some cyanobacteria. Might need some temporary shades as well to get the temperature down so the process can start.

The alien lifeforms could move in while we're away and refuse to pay rent!

Fair enough.

It's probably doable. We're just not there yet.

I'm not sure, now that I think about it - at least not when it comes to actual space agencies. But when it comes to amateur proposals, I've seen a few posts in this community modelling Mars settlement after that of the Americas (which is completely wrong for several reasons, the most relevant to this post being that unlike with Mars today, colonizers had to actually send people to the Americas to build settlements there).

Can you clarify? I can only think of three kinds:

1. people trying to hitch a ride on the unmanned launches to Mars - good luck lmao, they probably won't even make it past the launch alive
2. another space agency taking advantage of the infrastructure without approval - could be an issue, but hardly an unsolvable one, with solutions ranging from sanctions to orbital and on-ground defenses
3. somehow previously undiscovered Martian lifeforms, in which case we'd be too excited about life on Mars to be upset about infrastructure loss

We don't have it yet? Or is there some fundamental law of physics preventing it?

Despite the current hype about AI and robotics, we simply don't have the technology to do that.

Yeah but what about squatters?

is anyone planning to go there without doing that?

I think (just my guess) that's probably the plan, have at minimum the infrastructure on site prior to human arrival

the thing is, converting CO2 to O2+C is a very energy-intensive process, and not one that is easily done inside the spacesuit. it is easier to just bottle up the oxygen, in my opinion.

How about filtering out CO2 from the gas mixture? Then you need less O2, maybe bringing you close to the 1kg.

Keep it a mix of O2 and N2 to reduce risk of fire inside the suit.

If you filter the CO2, how about reducing it back to O2+C by some process, which would depend on somehow having the energy to do that.

thanks

right-click on images to open them in a new tab

Here's the full size image, it should be 1648x1200 pixels

flickr doesn't seem to let me right-click on images to open them in a new tab, so i'll reupload it here:

👍

Love the shot. The sunlime shows southern summer at the time. Which mea a the carbon dioxide in the cap will be close to minimum, so this is the smallest (or nearly) extent that will be shown. The largest extent is actually hard to photograph through since it is in southern winter and would be in shadow.