[RD] Pessimism about Mars

[Mouthwash]

This article lays out a number of arguments for why Martian colonization is a pipe dream and will never be done by the human race. I'm quoting the highlights, but I recommend you ignore them and just read the whole thing.

Spoiler Atmosphere and Temperature :

Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes.

Spoiler Radiation :

Living underground or in shielded bases may be an option, she said, but we have to expect that cancer rates will still be “an order of magnitude greater” given the added exposure over time.

“You can only do so much with radiation protection,” Horgan said. “We could quantify the risks for about a year, but not over the super long term. The problem is that you can’t stay in there [i.e. underground or in bases] forever. As soon as you go outside to do anything, you’re in trouble,” she said.

Horgan pointed to a recent Nature study showing that radiation on Mars is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.” Depending on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns, radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Spoiler Quality of life :

Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly protected surface stations with severely minimized access to the outdoors. Life in this closed environment, with limited access to the surface, could result in other health issues related to exclusive indoor living, such as depression, boredom from lack of stimulus, an inability to concentrate, poor eyesight, and high blood pressure—not to mention a complete disconnect from nature. And like the International Space Station, Martian habitats will likely be a microbial desert, hosting only a tiny sample of the bacteria needed to maintain a healthy human microbiome.

Another issue has to do with motivation. As Friedman pointed out earlier, we don’t see colonists living in Antarctica or under the sea, so why should we expect troves of people to want to live in a place that’s considerably more unpleasant? It seems a poor alternative to living on Earth, and certainly a major step down in terms of quality of life. A strong case could even be made that, for prospective families hoping to spawn future generations of Martian colonists, it’s borderline cruelty.

Spoiler Gravity :

Seidler, an expert in human physiology and kinesiology, said the issue of human gestation on Mars is a troublesome unknown. The developing fetus, she said, is likely to sit higher up in the womb owing to the lower gravity, which will press upon the mother’s diaphragm, making it hard for the mother to breathe. The low gravity may also “confuse” the gestational process, delaying or interfering with critical phases of the fetus’ development, such as the fetus dropping by week 39. On Earth, bones, muscles, the circulatory system, and other aspects of human physiology develop by working against gravity. It’s possible that the human body might adapt to the low-gravity situation on Mars, but we simply don’t know. An artificial womb might be a possible solution, but again, that’s not something we’ll have access to anytime soon, nor does it solve the low-gravity issue as it pertains to fetal development (unless the artificial womb is placed in a centrifuge to simulate gravity).

...

For other colonists, the minimal gravity on Mars could result in serious health problems over the long term. Studies of astronauts who have participated in long-duration missions lasting about a year exhibit troubling symptoms, including bone and muscle loss, cardiovascular problems, immune and metabolic disorders, visual disorders, balance and sensorimotor problems, among many other health issues. These problems may not be as acute as those experienced on Mars, but again, we simply don’t know. Perhaps after five or 10 or 20 years of constant exposure to low gravity, similar gravity-related disorders will set in.

...

“There are a lot of questions still unanswered about how microgravity and partial gravity will affect human physiology,” Seidler told Gizmodo. “We don’t yet understand the safety or health implications. More needs to be done.”

Astronauts who return from long-duration missions have a rough go for the first few days back on Earth, experiencing nausea, dizziness, and weakness. Some astronauts, like NASA’s Scott Kelly, never feel like their old selves again, including declines in cognitive test scores and altered gene function. Work by NASA’s Scott Wood has shown that recovery time for astronauts is proportionate to the length of the mission—the longer the mission, the longer the recovery. Disturbingly, we have no data for microgravity exposure beyond a year or so, and it’s an open question as to the effects of low gravity on the human body after years, or even decades, of exposure.

Spoiler Food :

Colonists will also need stable food sources, and figure out a way to keep plants away from radiation. The regolith, or soil, on Mars is toxic, containing dangerous perchlorate chemicals, so that also needs to be avoided. To grow crops, colonists will likely build subterranean hydroponic greenhouses. This will require specialized lighting, genetically modified plants designed specifically for Mars, and plenty of water, the latter of which will be difficult to source on Mars.

These are really serious issues and I'm upset (but not surprised) that none of them have ever caught my notice before now. Unfortunately, while the article also sensibly dismisses terraforming, it is credulous of pseudoscience like cybernetics, nanotech and genetic engineering.

Personally, I don't think there is any need to expand human civilization to hostile planets. Giant arcologies in space will probably be capable of creating a near-Earthlike environment, though I doubt there will ever be a substitute for actually living on our homeworld. I think we'll be able to counter most threats to it as well (except for nuclear war, but I also think that future political developments will mitigate that risk).

Even if Martian colonization is possible, it will assuredly never be done by optimistic tech types like Elon Musk. Maybe a tight-bound religious commune. Even though people wouldn't want to live there given the choice, it's really difficult to get to Earth from it and requires a lot of resources per person, which makes it different from other hostile environments like Antarctica in a way that is usually ignored. So yes, I can imagine a splinter group of colonists going native while the rest get out while the going's good.

 

[Ajidica]

If we don't go to Mars, where else will we find an attractive princess to rescue[URL="http://?"]?[/url]

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This article lays out a number of arguments for why Martian colonization is a pipe dream and will never be done by the human race. I'm quoting the highlights, but I recommend you ignore them and just read the whole thing.






These are really serious issues and I'm upset (but not surprised) that none of them have ever caught my notice before now. Unfortunately, while the article also sensibly dismisses terraforming, it is credulous of pseudoscience like cybernetics and genetic engineering.

Personally, I don't think there is any need to expand human civilization to hostile planets. Giant arcologies in space will probably be capable of creating a near-Earthlike environment, though I doubt there will ever be a substitute for actually living on our homeworld. I think we'll be able to counter most threats to it as well (except for nuclear war, but I also think that future political developments will mitigate that risk).

Even if Martian colonization is possible, it will assuredly never be done by optimistic tech types like Elon Musk. Maybe a tight-bound religious commune. Even though people wouldn't want to live there given the choice, it's really difficult to get to Earth from it and requires a lot of resources per person, which makes it different from other hostile environments like Antarctica in a way that is usually ignored. So yes, I can imagine a splinter group of colonists going native while the rest get out while the going's good.

Read Bova (Mars, Return to Mars, Mars Life). It will leave you with a feeling of optimism.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I've always considered Martian colonisation a pipe dream.
The only viable reason I've seen for doing it is building a colony that would be independent of Earth in the event of destruction of Earth but that would require a hell of an effort. Most Mars colonies I've seen envisaged would be pretty dependent on Earth for the foreseeable future.

 

[Mouthwash]

Read Bova (Mars, Return to Mars, Mars Life). It will leave you with a feeling of optimism.

Why? Does it present a better means that I haven't taken into account, or is it just about the feeling?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Why? Does it present a better means that I haven't taken into account, or is it just about the feeling?

International cooperation, financing (of course it doesn't hurt that some multi-billionaires decided to support later expeditions for various reasons), and yeah, Bova's mostly about the science. International cooperation gives me optimism, rather than each country vying to be the first one to stick a flag in the ground for the sake of national pride.

The idea that any colonies would be insular religious communities makes no sense, because those tend to be anti-science. Good luck surviving when you reject the very principles that keep everything going.

 

[Mouthwash]

International cooperation, financing (of course it doesn't hurt that some multi-billionaires decided to support later expeditions for various reasons), and yeah, Bova's mostly about the science. International cooperation gives me optimism, rather than each country vying to be the first one to stick a flag in the ground for the sake of national pride.

Okay, but is that relevant to anything the article said?

The idea that any colonies would be insular religious communities makes no sense, because those tend to be anti-science. Good luck surviving when you reject the very principles that keep everything going.

I disagree. Even the most ardent Young Earth creationists don't struggle to install air conditioning or build houses.

 

[Commodore]

We have to colonize Mars. Where else will we get our cyberdongs from?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Okay, but is that relevant to anything the article said?

You asked about the Bova novels. What I said is relevant to those, and that what he writes gives me a sense of optimism.

I haven't read the article yet.

I disagree. Even the most ardent Young Earth creationists don't struggle to install air conditioning or build houses.

We're talking (at least I'm talking) about going to another planet (which takes hydrocarbon fuels that couldn't possibly exist if the world is only 6000 years old), and a myriad of other scientific principles and knowledge that doesn't fit into their worldview. In this case, air conditioning and houses (at least the type built on Earth) are irrelevant.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's funny how all of these problems have straight forward solutions but they're all dismissed as being hard or whatever. The only potentially insurmountable problem is the long-term effect of 1/3 gravity on human physiology. That may be a really tough nut to crack or it may not be a big issue at all; we just don't know. There are even solutions to that including centrifuges but that would be a really clumsy solution. We don't currently have drugs or gene editing to overcome the potential effects of low-g on human health either so I discount those possibilities.

Everything else is readily solvable though with current launch technology, exorbitantly expensive. Thickening the atmosphere will lessen the dangers of both radiation and decompression and that's actually one of the easier things to do. Normal industrial activity and regular launches will bulk up the atmosphere quickly, more so when colonists take steps to deliberately thicken it. It won't be breathable for a very long time but a thick, un-breathable atmosphere is much less dangerous than a non-existent one. Adapting crops to local conditions won't be a huge challenge either given how advanced our breeding and gene-editing techniques for such purposes already are. Decontaminating the soil isn't particularly difficult for the volumes needed for colonization and the rest of the regolith will decontaminate more or less naturally as the atmosphere thickens. Quality of life will be pretty sucky but it's already pretty sucky for lots of people worldwide and the challenge and thrill of building a new world will overcome it.

The biggest technical challenge right now to launching any colonization effort is in the launching itself. It's just so damn expensive to get stuff out of the gravity well right now but that price is collapsing in leaps and bounds as rocket technology is undergoing a sea-change.

In the end though, I don't really know if there will be enough people actually willing to go through the process of leaving Earth to settle Mars for it to ever become a reality. There's a lot of people who say they'd go for it but I suspect that a lot of them only entertain the idea as it's a fantasy at the moment. When it becomes a real possibility, I think a lot of those people won't go through with it.

Mirroring my comments on finding extraterrestrial life, I think that we're going to begin directly interfacing with computers in the same time frame as we can realistically colonize Mars and that alone will undermine any efforts to do so. Why risk a dangerous, scary journey to Mars when you can perfectly simulate it inside a computer?

 

[Truthy]

I think the health effects would be so detrimental that we'd be looking at very accelerated natural selection for populations that make the trip to Mars. Provided we can keep people alive long enough to reproduce, and anyone is even willing to go, we'd have a sibling species in pretty short order by evolutionary standards.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think the health effects are completely overblown with the notable exception of unknown effects of 1/3 gravity. We already have lots of examples of people living in relatively sterile environments for extended periods without dying. And Mars colonies won't be that sterile in comparison to a submarine or whatever. People are going to bring along bugs, germs and animals because those are all necessary inputs for our civilization on one level or another. The very first landings, not so much, but once they start building out farms (which will have to happen pretty soon after the first few landings), yeah, we're going to be dragging along a lot of organisms with us. The radiation is certainly dangerous but not a deal breaker. We already have teleoperation technology and the beginnings of general purpose robots (on top of lots and lots of specialty robots) to go out on the surface and do the heavy lifting in rad-hard environments. Most people will stay safely underground until the atmosphere thickens which again, won't take that long.

I've pointed out this same example before but it's worth bringing up again. There is a famous NASA design study on building giant solar power stations in orbit from the 70's. This study was built on the premise that we'd use materials from the moon to build the solar power stations because the moon has the resources required and requires a lot less energy to boost things into orbit. Anyways, the scientists showed that just a handful of normal factories and rocket launches would quickly dump enough gas into the lunar environment to give it a noticeable atmosphere. Inside a hundred years the Moon would actually approach high-altitude conditions from the Earth though the gases wouldn't be safe to breathe. And that's without trying to make an atmosphere! We are lucky that the Earth is so massive with such a massive atmosphere that our own activities haven't added too much bulk but that's not true of Mars. And on Mars, they will definitely be trying to bulk it up so I expect it to become thick enough to mitigate radiation inside a century but it will take thousands of years to make it oxygen-rich and low in toxins.

 

[uppi]

Spoiler Atmosphere :

Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes.

The author has either the attention span of a goldfish or insufficient scientific understanding of temperature to compare freezing on Earth to freezing on Mars in a paragraph about atmosphere. Either should be an indication of not exactly being the best author for such a piece.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah just from skimming the snippets posted here was enough to tell me it wasn't worth clicking through to read the entire thing. You succinctly got at what I meant by: It's funny how all of these problems have straight forward solutions but they're all dismissed as being hard or whatever.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The author has either the attention span of a goldfish or insufficient scientific understanding of temperature to compare freezing on Earth to freezing on Mars in a paragraph about atmosphere. Either should be an indication of not exactly being the best author for such a piece.

What, you mean you actually need something through which to exchange heat? Nonsense. People just INSTA FREEZE in space, trufax .

 

[Hygro]

We have to colonize Mars. Where else will we get our cyberdongs from?

I don’t know what a cyberdong is but you’ve convinced me.

 

[Lexicus]

I don’t know what a cyberdong is but you’ve convinced me.

Pretty sure normal people just call them "vibrators"

 

[Berzerker]

in other Mars news

https://phys.org/news/2019-08-lomonosov-crater-evidence-mega-tsunami-mars.html

Giant tsunami from asteroid impact maybe 3.5+ bya might have decimated the planet

 

[Hygro]

Mars is aight the real prize are the moons of Jupiter. The ultimate prize is Venus.

 

[Mouthwash]

We're talking (at least I'm talking) about going to another planet (which takes hydrocarbon fuels that couldn't possibly exist if the world is only 6000 years old), and a myriad of other scientific principles and knowledge that doesn't fit into their worldview. In this case, air conditioning and houses (at least the type built on Earth) are irrelevant.

YECs use hydrocarbons here on Earth as well. I don't know of any principle essential to modern technology that they reject.

Mirroring my comments on finding extraterrestrial life, I think that we're going to begin directly interfacing with computers in the same time frame as we can realistically colonize Mars and that alone will undermine any efforts to do so. Why risk a dangerous, scary journey to Mars when you can perfectly simulate it inside a computer?

I don't think that people will ever buy into VR en masse, no matter how good it becomes. Even if they do, they won't be reproducing (as children require a strong investment in meatworld that even modern computer addicts no longer have).

The author has either the attention span of a goldfish or insufficient scientific understanding of temperature to compare freezing on Earth to freezing on Mars in a paragraph about atmosphere. Either should be an indication of not exactly being the best author for such a piece.

My own fault, actually. It's only one paragraph.