Current Events > So what does CE think about colonizing mars?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It takes roughly 1,000 days to get there. Imagine riding in an airplane for 1,000 days. Now imagine floating during this entire trip. Sounds absolutely insane.

I kind of want to go just to be one of the first to settle there. It is an incredible journey. I'd like to make history.

What are your thoughts on space colonization. It feels like this might be a recipe for disaster because we have not even colonized the moon...we should probably colonize that before mars. It'd be much easier to fly off the moon to mars than from earth to mars, right?

Just freeze me

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Wake me when we get there

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How is that going to work? Do we have to send like a million ships at once to carry everything we need?

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It's completely impractical for the foreseeable future. To maintain a colony on such an inhospitable planet would be an extremely difficult undertaking requiring our most advanced tech and a constant flow of supplies going from Earth to Mars. The supply chain would be of irregular length: it would be especially dangerous if a problem arose when Mars was furthest away and supplies(and help) would take the longest to get there. Like, you need to shield the colonists from radiation, keep them supplied with oxygen, food, tools, construction materials, etc. etc. And you have to somehow keep all that dust from mucking everything up. Just spitballing off the top of my head.

A moon colony would be easier, but only because the supply chain is shorter. It would still be near impossible at best with current tech and capabilities.

In both cases, the much weaker gravity would make returning to Earth difficult for colonists(if it's possible for them to adjust back to Earth gravity at all), and the long-term effects on a human body from living with such weak gravity aren't really known at all, but they're probably bad!

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It's a fool's dream. You could nuke our planet a dozen times over and slam a meteor into the planet, and that devastated Earth would still be infinitely more habitable to us than Mars.

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inTaCtfuL posted...

How is that going to work? Do we have to send like a million ships at once to carry everything we need?

According to spacex website the starship can carry like 100 tons of stuff. Sounds like a terrifying trip. Especially considering it is pretty much a one way ticket. I imagine it is a lot like how the pilgrims came and settled here. Life changing trip for sure.

Who knows what we will find there.

Fix the problems on earth before we go stinking up some other planet.

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PyroBlade1985 posted...

Colonize it how? By making dome cities?

Cowboy bebop @Scotty_Rogers

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I'm all for it. Let's work towards making Mars more habitable.

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ElatedVenusaur posted...

It's completely impractical for the foreseeable future. To maintain a colony on such an inhospitable planet would be an extremely difficult undertaking requiring our most advanced tech and a constant flow of supplies going from Earth to Mars. The supply chain would be of irregular length: it would be especially dangerous if a problem arose when Mars was furthest away and supplies(and help) would take the longest to get there. Like, you need to shield the colonists from radiation, keep them supplied with oxygen, food, tools, construction materials, etc. etc. And you have to somehow keep all that dust from mucking everything up. Just spitballing off the top of my head.

A moon colony would be easier, but only because the supply chain is shorter. It would still be near impossible at best with current tech and capabilities.

In both cases, the much weaker gravity would make returning to Earth difficult for colonists(if it's possible for them to adjust back to Earth gravity at all), and the long-term effects on a human body from living with such weak gravity aren't really known at all, but they're probably bad!

Interesting thoughts. Musk is definitely adventurous. I think had he said we need to colonize space and we are going to start with the moon i think it does not sound so outlandish. Building a city and investigating the moon, maybe terraforming it etc. All sound like great ideas already, but this guy wants to skip that and go to mars. I am pretty sure less than 100 people have been on the moon. Surely we would understand space travel much more if we had a base/city there. Then go to mars...doesnot make sense to me.

TerraSeeker posted...

I'm all for it. Let's work towards making Mars more habitable.

What about its native ecosystem?

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Waifu-man posted...

What about its native ecosystem?

I'm not aware any life there we need to worry about.

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I would go if they let me

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TerraSeeker posted...

I'm not aware any life there we need to worry about.

Ya cuz you know, those robots that were sent there clearly did a great job scoping out the place...

After doing some research it looks like we are in fact heading to the moon before going to mars. I am so excited to potentially be able to live on the moon. What an exciting time to be alive.

Not for at least a thousand years, if humanity makes it a thousand more.

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Reminds me of 10th grade when my Honors English class read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

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Get your ass to Mars.

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Never going to happen.

It would be nice if billionaires would rather put their money to resolve the issues we have on this planet.

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Mars has little to no oxygen or water and zero food. Meaning all supplies must be sent from earth.

The soil there is radioactive because it has no magnetic field to protect it like earth does. So we can't even grow food there.

It takes so long to get there, that astronauts muscles will atrophy. Meaning that once they get there, they will not even have enough strength to stand up on their own. Not to mention the radiation they will be exposed to on the way there might kill them before they even get there.

It's a suicide mission.


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Imit8m3 posted...

Mars has little to no oxygen or water and zero food. Meaning all supplies must be sent from earth.

The soil there is radioactive because it has no magnetic field to protect it like earth does. So we can't even grow food there.

It takes so long to get there, that astronauts muscles will atrophy. Meaning that once they get there, they will not even have enough strength to stand up on their own. Not to mention the radiation they will be exposed to on the way there might kill them before they even get there.

It's a suicide mission.

Musk:"We prefer the title Task Force X"

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There are issues on Earth that are more pressing and need the attention and financial capital at the moment.

That said, spreading out into the universe is the ultimate destiny of our species (or at least we should believe that's the case and act accordingly) and colonizing the moon and Mars is the first step towards that.

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We need to start terraforming it.

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I think it'd be a whole lot more manageable to fix Earth than to build Mars up from scratch.

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Pepys Monster posted...

We need to start terraforming it.

That's pretty much impossible. It has no magnetic field so the sun will strip away any atmosphere we create. Also we are nowhere near capable of creating a atmosphere in the first place

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TrollTrace posted...

It takes roughly 1,000 days to get there. Imagine riding in an airplane for 1,000 days.

On the way to Mars, do I still get stuck behind the kid throwing a tantrum?

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