Could we ever colonize another Earthlike planet?

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't see this as unfortunate, I see that as the only way to do it?

It's unfortunate because it is difficult to bring enough air to Mars in the form of asteroid and comet impacts rather than baking it out of the crust gently through global warming.

There is enough trapped gas to start the process of giving it a decent atmosphere, but it will never be enough to allow live on without a spacesuit. The resulting pressure is just too low.

 

[innonimatu]

Luckily, if you're throwing comets at Mars to deposit gas, you'll naturally bring a lot of water with them.

How feasible do you think will be to some day in the future throw comets at Mars to achieve this?
And how long could a dense atmosphere be expected to last there, with the lower gravity and probably no core activity?

I guess the neat thing about colonizing Mars is that the lower gravity and likely more available resources to be mined would make it a good stepping stone for further explorations. But I still doubt Mars can ever be made useful.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Very feasible. It's not that hard if you have lots of time on your hands.

I don't think we'll find anything on Mars that justifies the cost of colonization other than living space and technological growth, plus the insurance of having a backup planet for life. From a purely economic standpoint, I doubt it will be a net gain until tens or hundreds of millions live there and it becomes truly self-sustaining.

 

[Tinkerharrison]

Haven't scientist now find out that there is the possibility to live on Mars? And i remember that they found some water on Mars so that organisms could survive but i am not sure any more.
i like the thought, that we could live on two or more planets...i think it would solve some of our problems...overpopulation, climate change, the bad environment..

sometimes i go for a camping weekend and then think of it as a weekend on another planet, with rest and just some people walking by...i bought myself a new tent (article can be translated easily with Google or something like that) at the beginning of the year but we all know how the year ends up so i wasn't in the nature this year... so sad about that...

what do you think about living on mars? possible or not?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think you could live for at least 10 years on Mars with adequate external support. You would not be able to survive in out in the environment without a space suit or a sealed habitat.

I don't see a fundamental reason why someone couldn't live longer than a decade there, but I'm cautious to put a number to it as there are so many unknowns. And we do know that 10 years in 0 G may be lethal to many people as even a few months extract heavy tolls on physically fit astronauts. Unfortunately we have 0 data on environments between 0 and 1 G, and with Mars at ~1/3 G, we just don't know what will happen.

Radiation will be quite bad over 10 years, but there are pretty straightforward and easy ways to cut that drastically.

 

[uppi]

I think you could live for at least 10 years on Mars with adequate external support. You would not be able to survive in out in the environment without a space suit or a sealed habitat.

I don't see a fundamental reason why someone couldn't live longer than a decade there, but I'm cautious to put a number to it as there are so many unknowns. And we do know that 10 years in 0 G may be lethal to many people as even a few months extract heavy tolls on physically fit astronauts. Unfortunately we have 0 data on environments between 0 and 1 G, and with Mars at ~1/3 G, we just don't know what will happen.

Radiation will be quite bad over 10 years, but there are pretty straightforward and easy ways to cut that drastically.

I would expect 1/3 g to be much better than 0 g, because you would use your muscles in a similar way as you would on earth, just with much less force applied. You would probably use a chair and sit instead of floating around in microgravity. Unfortunately, there is not going to be any data on this until somebody tries. And after staying on Mars long enough, living back on Earth would probably be difficult

Yes, you could cut radiation drastically if you stay holed up in an underground bunker, but if you are going to do that, why go to Mars? Still, radiation on the surface is not that bad (if you have that bunker to retreat to for solar events), so you would probably be able to live a few decades. But I would expect life expectancy to be significantly shorter than on Earth.

 

[innonimatu]

I believe it's feasible with current tech to settle some people in Mars, but they might as well volunteer to be prison inmates here on Earth. Living in Mars will have no appeal at all for your average person.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Your average person would not apply to move there in the first place.

 

[EgonSpengler]

If we're talking about interstellar travel, "4 months later..." really isn't all that long, is it?

Leaving our solar system will be a massive undertaking but I think colonizing other planets in our own solar system is become less and less of a hurdle. Obviously we're not there yet but launch costs are falling precipitously as our technology improves. The shuttle cost ~$20k/kg to put things in space and there are rockets now that achieve around 1/10 to 1/20th of that with others in development that could conceivably bring the price down to the low $100's per kilo.

I was thinking that a possible solution to launch costs would be construction of vehicles and habitats out in space. iirc, Kim Stanley Robinson proposed an automated factory, built by robots, which would then produce more robots, which would then disassemble asteroids for base materials and construct an orbital station and a space elevator on Mars. Once you're up out of the gravity well, the need to eventually return people to the surface of Earth is the limiting factor, isn't it? With the amount of material available out there, I would think that you could construct a space station that's, like, the size of Manhattan and all it would take is time.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

I think the biggest hurdle will be the time it takes to get humans to this new planet. As @EgonSpengler suggests, it would seem logical a lot of this will be automated. Not perhaps to the level of factories (well not intitially) but sending robots which could harvest the resources around it, and turn it into materials ready for use.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Gosh I hope it happens faster than posts around here though!

 

[Henri Christophe]

I think space colonization should start on Moon or Mars because is near. After start think Earth-like planets, who is in other constelations.
I guess the most Earth-like planet we have to go is the Europe Planet, who is around Jupter, I guess. It's a liquid planet as Earth, but the liquid isn't water.