Colonizing Mars

POSTED BY: Evans
UPDATED: Thursday, October 31, 2002 23:54
VIEWED: 4709
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EVANS

Thursday, October 31, 2002 2:22 AM

In a "New Yorker" magazine article a couple of years ago, the magazine's house physician, Jerome Groopman, gave reasons why it is unlikely we Terrans will be colonizing our neighbor Mars any time soon. I no longer have the article (I pass the issues along), but as I recall ...

1) The ill effect of weightlessness on the human body is far more serious than the layman is led to believe. Will the colonists (astronauts)really be able to perform work when they arrive at Mars?

2) We who are Earthbound are protected from all kinds of radiation by our atmosphere (I read somewhere else that our hair is turned grey by the effect of cosmic radiation). In space, radiation will pass right through any walls and any soft tissue as well, causing lesions on the brain as well as other problems.

3) Cabin fever. You can't go outside for a smoke, or for a bicycle ride. And when you get to Mars, you still can't. Those of us who like our jobs know that we have to get along with our coworkers, no matter how annoying we all are. Will the colonists/astronauts keep themselves from going mad?

4) Surgery in space. Not trivial. Remember the scientist in Antarctica who discovere she had breast cancer? In space, in weightlessness, if there needs to be surgery, how will the blood and other fluids be handled?

These paragraphs are my extremely simplified versions of Dr. Groopman's arguments.

Here's another, from an amateur astronomer (me). Mars is smaller than Earth. Even though it a relatively near neighbor, the U.S. and other countries have often failed to get probes to reach Mars, and the probes are lost. In other words, it's a tough target to hit. Do we really believe we can send colonists to Mars, support them, and bring them back as required? Look how much trouble it is to support the international space station.

m.

DELVO

Thursday, October 31, 2002 2:49 AM

1) If a ship flew fast enough to get there, they wouldn't have been weightless for long. I think much faster travel is assumed in any colonization prediction, whether or not the predicter has any idea how. The trouble is that, while a ship trip lasts a while and ends, colonists stay there forever, and Mars's gravity is 0.38 g, which is far lower than those predicting Mars colonization seem to acknowledge. So no matter how fast they fly to get there, gravity will ALWAYS remain a huge problem.

2 & 3) These points make it obvious enough that a bubble colony on Mars could never work. But I think most of those who foresee Mars colonization are picturing "terraforming". The problem is that the planet's just an awful candidate for terraforming. Its gravity is too wimpy to sustain an atmosphere, and the raw materials for it aren't there. Venus, on the other hand, still has some supply of those lighter elements and compounds, it's just a matter of what form they're in. And Venus's gravity is more suitable: 0.903 g.

4) Well, if you can manage long enough for the trip, and let's remember that we have to assume it'll be a quick one for a variety of reasons anyway, there IS gravity when you get there.

Quote:
the U.S. and other countries have often failed to get probes to reach Mars, and the probes are lost.

How many times has this happened, and how many times have they gotten there? And of the "lost" ones, more importantly, how many really "missed" and how many lost contact with Earth because of malfunction? And how do you explain that we can keep reliably "hitting" trickier targets than that, such as outer planets reached after multiple slingshots around other planets?

EVANS

Thursday, October 31, 2002 3:10 AM

Quote:
So no matter how fast they fly to get there, gravity will ALWAYS remain a huge problem.

There are astronauts in training NOW. It's scary. I wonder how fast they think they'll fly?

Quote:
Venus's gravity is more suitable: 0.903 g.

Too bad Venus is so Hellish that she melts her visitors.

Quote:
how do you explain that we can keep reliably "hitting" trickier targets

Lots and lots of money and dedicated people, back when NASA's budget was a separate entity, not so subject to the slings and arrows of daily fortune. The Voyagers are ancient. Galileo was badly crippled. Cassini is on its way, a six-year voyage to Saturn.

m.

THEGN

Thursday, October 31, 2002 7:49 AM

Weightlessness:
The flight time between Earth and Mars could be as little as 6 months. Over this duration the effects of weightlessness would be minimal, especially when one considers the reduced gravity of Mars. In fact, it may be that most of the effects of weightlessness would not be felt at all until the astronauts return to earth. Furthermore, many of the ill health concerns associated with the effects of weightlessness are do to a single type of hormone. This means that the effects are not entirely physical, but biochemical and therefore could be medically treated. Thirdly, it's likely that particularly long flights will be with ships that have an artificial gravity. It's particularly difficult to build such a ship, but it's well within engineering possibility and simply a factor of money. In the end, we don't actually know if the effects of weightlessness are as bad as this article seems to suggest. It certainly will be a major contributing factor to any Mars flight, but it will not be what stop humans from reaching Mars.

Radiation:
Radiation is another major concern, but like weightlessness, it's effects on human while dangerous, are not going to stop anyone from reaching Mars.
[list][*]UV – by far the largest amount of harmful radiation in space is the sun's ultra-violent radiation, which can very quickly cause burns, melanomas, ect. However, this radiation is of little concern since it would not pass through the haul or even the windows of the ship.
[*]solar particles – These high energy particles composed what is called the solar wind. In a high enough intensity they could be very dangerous. However, in general they are not in high enough intensity to be of concern, except following a solar flare. However, gamma/X-rays would also be released by solar flares and they travel much faster then the solar wind and would be an indicator on when the HE particles would arrive.
[*]gamma/X-ray – Solar gamma/X-rays would only be a concern during a solar flare, since the sun typically does not radiate in this region. During the solar flare the astronauts could spend that time in a shielded room which would protect them from both the majority of the gamma/X-rays as well as the intense Solar Wind.
[*]cosmic rays – Finally, the so-called cosmic rays which actually are just your typical gamma/X-rays, (but I thought they deserved their own bullet) are the only real concern in space. Much of them would be shielded by the ships haul. That's a fact that a lot of people make light of, but it is true. However, enough would get through to cause health concerns. Not immediate health concerns, but simply an increased risk of cancer, compounded length of exposure. Conservatively speaking, a week in deep space might shorten your life by 1 day, but that's a statistic not a certainty. As far as grey hair is concerned, that's an effect of radiation poisoning. It is NOT necessarily an effect of exposure to cosmic rays. I don't know where you got that, but it looks like an extrapolation that someone made. [/list]

Cabin fever:
That's really very dependent on the astronaut. Likely, the astronaut will be selected and trained specifically to reduce this, and drugs are available to suppress it. This is the least of anyones' concerns and is more media hype then any kind of real problem.

Surgery in space:
Don't. It would be ill-advised. Chances are part of the selection and training process would involved making sure any potential surgery concerns would be limited. Artificial gravity would drastically decrease the complication of surgery, but gravity or not, any health concern that required surgery while in space would be a very complicating factor. However, it is also so statistically minimal as to be of little concern. People have dared far worst potential danger.

Failure to "hit" Mars:
This is almost a meaningless concern. The calculations are straightforward and can be made to as many as 11 significant figures, which is far more then is needed to hit Mars. Th

KITHKILL

Thursday, October 31, 2002 10:50 AM

Every one of those points you raise is valid, but I think everyone's missing the point here. If we go to Mars, it shouldn't be because it's safe, it should be because it's worth doing. Since we're on a Firefly forum, after all - was it safe to colonise America? There were dangerous "savages", new plants and animals that we had no idea about, and the voyage itself was pretty risky. All your assets gambled in the hope you'd get some land and not wind up broke with nowhere to go. Out on the fringes there were few doctors, so illness and injury claimed far more than it would have done otherwise. But people still went in droves, because it was a new frontier to explore and experience.

Whilst every effort should be made to ensure the safety of those who would make the trip to Mars, at the end of the day, it'll never be 100% safe. It's not safe in Antarctica, and we still have brave hardy souls going out there because they believe in exploring it. And just as well - it's the human ability to stare the odds in the face and say "Well f**k it, I'm going anyway" that's got us where we are today. All this "It isn't safe" is just a continuation of modern-day sensibilities - the same ones that have led to whole countries of people who believe that nothing bad should ever, ever happen to them, and therefore if it does, it must be someone else's fault, so they can sue them.

I don't give a damn about any of those reasons - if NASA came to me today and said "Want to be one of the first settlers on Mars?" then I'd be on the shuttle before they could even blink. How often does a chance like that come along? To help shape the future of mankind? It's worth the risk. To hell with it, it's worth twice the risk, even if you ended up never making it there.

And anyone who wants a really good insight as to how colonisation could be acheived, check out "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must" by Robert Zubrin ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684835509/qid=1036061134/sr=2-
3/ref=sr_2_3/104-6106043-8175937)

Cheers,
Kithkill

MUDDER999

Thursday, October 31, 2002 2:37 PM

I think space colonization is inevitable. Isn't the human population growing astronomically? It's either space or war. These technological problems will be overcome when the need is strong enough.

MALAKILI

Thursday, October 31, 2002 3:47 PM

As Thegn mentioned, a ship equipped with artificial gravity is within the realm of possibility. I don't think it'd even be that hard to do. All you'd need to do is attach habitat modules at either end of a girder of suitable length, then spin the whole thing at the correct rate. I think I read somewhere that a 60 meter long structure spun at 4 RPM would have Earth-like gravity.
As for travel time, NASA is currently working on a superfast new form of rocket engine called the Magnetoplasma drive. When it's tested and ready, it will cut travel time to Mars to only
3 months! Read all about it here (official NASA site):

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/mars/technology/propulsion/aspl/index.html

As for radiation... well, a 3 month trip would mean less exposure for the crew, so that's another advantage of the new rocket engine design.

LJSQUARED

Thursday, October 31, 2002 4:22 PM

There's always someone stupid enough to do it.

Firefly@Trekvideo.com
http://www.trekvideo.com/firefly

JUGGERNAUT

Thursday, October 31, 2002 5:35 PM

I read a science-laden but great novel on a 'realistic' colonization of Mars in the near future -- I believe it was 2050 or so. I believe it was called "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Reason I bring it up is because the author precisely addresses all of these things. Down side is I can't remember exactly how.

Gravity: simple. They spun the ship. They assembled it out of a cluster of spent shuttle external fuel tanks, and just put it into a spin at .38 gravity.

Cramped quarters: It's possible -- look at the space station, etc. Once on Mars, you could greatly expand the living area.

Radiation: They all took heavy doses until they had shelters built. If I remember, they went underground and built out of thick concrete block.

Anyway -- wish I could remember it better. Interesting stuff. With NASA budget cuts, most of us would be lucky to see it in our lives, but I'm hoping our kids will...

THEGN

Thursday, October 31, 2002 11:18 PM

Yes, I think I red that book a while ago. That was pretty good.

I used to be very interested in the concept of colonizing Mars. I spent much of the early years of grad school thinking about that. I finally had to abandon it when I started to focus on my thesis, but it's always been an interesting concept. There are some rather formidable problems with colonizing Mars, and getting there is the least of them. But most of the problems do have solutions. It is do-able. It's really a question of money more then anything else. While we may visit Mars, the impetus to colonize it may not be present until conditions on earth deteriorate significantly more then they have already, simply because the cost in dollars of colonizing Mars would be monumental.

So it is really money, not science or threat of danger that is holding us back. As romantic as it might be to imagine pioneering souls sailing off to Mars disregarding the dangers of deep space, any Mars-faring Daniel Boones are dead in the water without the money.

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In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.

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