The Mars Colony
 

The side discussion in the suckup administration thread got me to thinking about what it would take to create a self sustaining colony on Mars that was large enough to ensure the survival of the human race if a "planet killer" asteroid were to hit earth. What would be the minimum population required? What would it take to make a colony self sustaining? What would be the economic incentive for creating a colony?

I can only answer the last question with any degree of certainty, and the answer is "Much more than any rock in this solar system has, Mars included". There would have to be a remarkable advance in spacecraft propulsion to make it profitable to mine gold on Mars, let alone the worthless rock that it is primarily composed of. I think the day will come when it is economically feasible to exploit extraterrestrial resources, but we're a long way from it at present.

Self Sustaining? Not in the near future, best defense against a PKA would be a well developed space infrastructure- the ability to get stuff in to LEO quickly.

Economic Incentive would be farming (in domes and underground) to support mining in the Asteroid Belt. (see below)

Minimum population requirements are moot, genetic material could be transported and stored to breed future colonists. Eventually sending probes with such genetic material and the gear to artificially gestate new humans to other stars would be a good idea.

Doubt we would go to Mars for mining, Asteroids are better sources of rare ores, talking up to tens of trillions of $ per asteroid here. Hollowed out Asteroids also make good colonies or even spaceships.

Also asteroids are not just found in the space between Mars and Jupiter but near our orbit. Sometimes they are even closer to Earth than the Moon.

This topic keeps coming up as "Justification" Despite massive job loss environmental disasters and other priorities that would better served by the TRILLIONs of dollars needed to do a serious mars colony.

Why do I say trillions? Lets just talk about a few of the things that we would HAVE to develop.

Fully functional multi use SSTO shuttle 1 stage no booster or anything falling off.

PB11 fusion

50 percent efficient with holographic multi angle multi spectrum thin film solar that is reliable for 10-20 years with only 20 percent drop being pounded by mars dust particles

Fully functional and efficient dual use Hydrogen fuelcell and ultracapasitor energy storage system.

Complete Algae protein to foodstuff system. (Growing massive amounts of traditional food on mars is a waste of space and any disaster would cause starvation)

Laser drilling

A low power system to break up and enrich ore so the colony can be self sustaining.

A complete system to cheaply extract carbon from the atmosphere to manufacture plastics.

A said a few and these MASSIVE economy changing techs are just the start of what is needed for a serious colony. What about radiation in the thin atmosphere? etc...

100 years minimum

Then we are agreed. How marvelous!

True, but most official sources indicate that the Earth will have run out of Aerosmith by the time we can develop the technology to drill on asteroids, making the mission all but pointless.

Aerosmith?

I know its a band but Huh?

BTW They just flew a space probe in to an asteroid a few years ago to see what its made of on the inside. In other words they blasted a lot of potentially valuable ore in to the cosmos

Kinda like a Gulf Oil Spill in space. All we need is a ship in space to collect and process the ore then crap out the good bits in the direction of Earth.

I'm not sure what the minimum population would need to be. To maintain the human race, I would think it would need to be a rather large sample, which would not be sustainable for quite a long while. After the colony is established, the population could be enlarged, but starting out it would need to be much smaller.

It would take years for any colony to become completely self-sustaining. The very first outpost is going to need large quantities of power and water. Mars has water, but most of it is currently frozen. Once a colony has been established, mining water from the polar caps will be an option, as well as vaporizing and condensing it from the soil. But at the beginning, water (or hydrogen to combine with oxygen generated by other processes) will be one of the most valuable resources. The power supply could be provided at first from methane/oxygen fueled generators, supplied by rather simple production facilities that have already been demonstrated, but this fuel might be better used for rockets and other vehicles. Mars soil is rich in silicon, which can later be used to produce solar panels, but that would come much later. Some areas of the planet are also young enough to be useful for geothermal power, but that also will be a resource that will take time to develop. I think the most useful power source for founding the colony would be a nuclear reactor. (However, just imagine the environmental lobby's reaction as soon as you mention you want to shoot a reactor into space... yeesh). Once you have sufficient water and power, you can begin to use native resources to expand the colony. With water and soil, you can create bricks to build structures. Dig a trench, line it with bricks, vault it over, and pile dirt on it, and you've got a structure that you can pressurize with breathable air, and will even be self sealing if leaks develop. Any air leaking out will contain moisture, which would freeze in the soil, sealing the leak. Food is another early concern. Large supplies of food will need to be imported early on. As materials are shipped, or become available from native sources, domes could be constructed, and pressurized for growing food crops. Importation of livestock, and methods of raising them, would be problematical at first. Meat could be shipped in from Earth, but I believe that the first colonists would need to get used to a very highly plant based diet.

Economic incentive? That's where the plan falls apart. It'll be quite a long time before the colony is able to show a profit. That's the main reason I doubt that any private company will get into the game anytime soon. However, if the colony could be established and maintained, new technologies for travel to and from will be developed, possibly making transportation prices drop significantly. Eventually, products that once needed to be imported will be replaced by local production. But it will be a long time.

@TLAM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon_(1998_film

I was sure everyone would get the reference.:cry: Aerosmith did the theme song for "Armageddon", and while the song was a hit, the movie sucked, hence "making the mission all but pointless".

You know I had forced that horrid movie out of my brain along with Star Trek V! Thanks for making me remember! :damn:

Its late, I would have gotten the joke eventually. :O:

Why do we HAVE to develop these technologies? We could go to Mars, and begin colonizing with today's technology. While I agree it would be horribly expensive, I don't see that any new tech is needed to begin, or even carry out the process.

While asteroids are a good source of ores, we don't know exactly what might be available on Mars. In addition, any resources on Mars have the benefit of not having been ravaged for thousands of years.

Ravaging of billions (not thousands unless you are a Jesus riding a dinosaur christian.:03:) of year of ionizing radiation from the sun simply means more exotic elements (the fun stuff at the bottom of the Periodic Table) are likely to form. Exotic is valuable.

I was referring to thousands of years of human civilization ravaging the useful, easily obtainable bits of metals and such. Mars, having been a wet planet, is speculated as likely to form many of the same ores as Earth. And they haven't been picked up and dug out and stuck in someone's pockets yet.

Deuterium, I believe, is also supposed to more plentiful on Mars. Useful for fusion, if we ever get that working.

But exotic is valuable mainly because it is rare. What does the infusion of another complete planets worth of exotic elements do to their value?

Deuterium and He3 are even more plentiful on Saturn and Uranus (insert joke here). Mars is just a way station to that rich region.

Makes expensive high tech things get cheap. There is a huge amount of gold and titanium in the space shuttle. What would happen if it became as cheap and plentiful as silicon? Mass production of spacecraft and space stations.

Value can mean many things, not just that something has monetary value.

You HAVE to develop those technologies for the colony to have even the SLIGHTEST hope of being self sustaining.

People really have no idea what an advantage having breathable air and easily accessed water is. Have no idea how much it costs to send even simple probes to mars much less many ton modules. Have no idea how much energy it takes to mine even high quality ore. etc. etc..

Why do I mention Algae for instance? NASA loves to show their hydroponics and all that Jazz but if you look at how much real life farmland it takes to feed a single person every year you quickly realize how silly it is. Sure some needs to be grown such as herbs medical use plants and some foodstuffs but history has shown us that disaster can come out of nowhere. There is no escaping a potato blight on mars. A major crop disease could mean collapse of economy due to how workforce is affected. Algae technology tho grows a GREAT amount of food in a single day without genetically altering it. What is needed is to be able to transform that algae into something reasonable to eat. That will take a bunch of time and money. But the risk of failure due to the food failure is too great otherwise.

Do it today? Sure put the entire world on the project somehow stop discrimination and corruption and politics overnight and at the same time convince the populace that all entitlement and social services and 75 percent of the military is going to mars instead. I'm being serious.