
Huge Mars Colony Eyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk - waterlesscloud
http://www.space.com/18596-mars-colony-spacex-elon-musk.html
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sixQuarks
I love what Elon Musk is doing, and usually he makes pretty reasonable
assumptions, but I think he's wrong when he says "most mid-40 somethings" can
afford $500,000.

Being able to afford a $500k house is different than having $500,000. Houses
can be mortgaged for 30 years, but if you're going to Mars, you're not going
to have an income and can't pay back that loan.

I don't think a lot of 40 somethings have $500k laying around.

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cryptoz
What? Why wouldn't you have an income? That's a silly assumption. The Martian
colonies won't be full of jobless bums as there will be lots of work to do. A
prime export to Earth will probably be software, for example.

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lutze
This is a pretty big assumption, why would it be a prime export?

What makes Mars so great for producing software that would cover the added
expense of firing a programmer all the way there in a rocket?

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adriand
> What makes Mars so great for producing software that would cover the added
> expense of firing a programmer all the way there in a rocket?

I'm not sure if you're asking this question rhetorically or not, but one
answer might be that you wouldn't have nearly as many distractions as on
earth. No commuting, no Starbucks, no phone calls (from earth, anyway), no
going for a walk or a bike ride, no going to the beach - you get the idea. In
fact, spending a lot of time working in some kind of virtual, computerized
environment might be the only way to keep from going nuts up there.

What's sort of interesting, though, about being on Mars when it comes to an
economy is that exporting stuff to Earth might be somewhat questionable. With
the exception of digital goods like software and entertainment, the only stuff
worth buying on Earth is stuff that can be transported to you, and that would
be so costly that your exports better be extremely valuable. While on Mars, if
I wrote a program and sold it to you on Earth for $1 million, what good is
that $1 million to me?

So other than basic bartering among your fellow settlers, I imagine that you'd
probably spend most of your time just trying to survive on Mars itself,
without exporting much of anything at all. You also can't trade with the
native populations, since there aren't any, which is another major departure
from most earthbound settlements.

I think any attempt to settle on Mars would experience many of the same sort
of risks that ultimately doomed the Norse settlement of Greenland between AD
985 to approx 1500.

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lutze
Isn't being a basement dwelling shut in already a nerd trope?

No need to go to Mars for that, heh.

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cryptoz
The whole concept here is that we have hundreds of thousands of people _who
desperately want to live on Mars_. You don't seem to be getting that in this
comment thread. YES, we _know_ it's cheaper to live on Earth.

We.

Don't.

Care.

We want to live on Mars. We will give anything to go live on Mars. It'll cost
more. Yes. It'll be tougher. Yes.

We.

Don't.

Care.

We want to live on Mars.

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shanelja
I don't want to live there, but I sure as hell would love to spend some time
there, how many people for the next 50 years will be able to say they have
been to Mars?

I want to be one of the lucky ones.

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hazov
I do not understand why not a lunar base first.

It's closer to us, will lead to much more complicated problems to solve that
we can get on Mars>

\- dealing with plants in greenhouses with the much reduced gravity of the
Moon compared to Mars \- no atmosphere, although this means no weather, which
makes things more predictable compared to Mars.

For me there's no way a space colony grow to be huge without addressing ways
of dealing with food production and stand alone survival of the colony, if we
have ways to study this without spending months travelling, reducing risk and
cost, then it's better, it would sum us more knowledge.

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btilly
He addressed that in a recent interview.

The Moon has far less water than Mars. No CO2. And it has a 28 day rotation
cycle, which makes growing plants much more difficult. Mars has water,
plentiful CO2, and a day that's only about 40 minutes longer than Earth's.
This makes growing plants on Mars much, much easier.

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Lambdanaut
Not to mention the extra gravity. We'll need all of the gravity we can get if
we want to stave off muscle and bone degeneration. It's possible that Mars'
light gravity (40% of Earth's) isn't even enough to keep us healthy without
excessive exercise.

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fudged71
If a baby were born on mars, I am curious how their growth would be affected
by the difference in gravity. Would their muscle/bone development be cause
problems due to evolutionary effects, or would they grow to match the physics
of this planet, and therefore be physically fine. Perhaps the only issue would
be growing up on one planet and moving to another.

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gambiting
And no mention how would he solve the problem of radiation for these people
living there. On Earth we get an equivalent of one chest x-ray per year just
from cosmic rays. On Mars it's more like 80 x-rays per year. Survivable for a
2-3 years long expedition,but for permanent settlement?

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vitno
Radiation dangers on Mars missions are often exaggerated.

In Mars orbit, we have data that indicates approx. 22 milirads a day. It
should be a fair bit less on the surface. That gives the colonists about 3
years of unshielded radiation exposure till they hit the radiation max that
NASA recommends (remember, they should be shielded somewhat though)

There is also a decent amount of recent evidence that chronic radiation
exposure in this quantity is no where as near as dangerous as a concentrated
burst.

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indiecore
Didn't Curiosity recently show that radiation on Mars was pretty much the same
as on the ISS because the atmosphere of Mars thickens during the day?

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btilly
A significant detail that is not in the article.

He's asking a half million each to go there. But the return trip is free. Why?
He's got to get the spacecraft back anyways, and the cost of that dwarfs the
cost of adding passengers.

There may be a lot more people who are willing to go when they know that, if
it does not work for them, they can come back to Earth for free.

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mtgx
Why haven't we solved the gravitation issue for these sort of spacecrafts yet?
Can't we get gravitation if we do a spinning part around the ship like
suggested here?

<http://youtu.be/3kuPkc7D35U?t=1m10s>

How long would it take us to go to Mars at current speeds? A year? What would
be the ideal travel time till there so we don't get affected by space
radiation too much?

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jlgreco
My impression is that while emulating gravity with a rotating reference frame
is certainly possible, the things holding that approach back are engineering
realities. In order to minimize the "gravity" gradient felt over the length of
a human standing up, the radius of your spacecraft needs to be quite large.

If you are lifting that sort of mass already, your time is probably better
spent lifting several tons or water that would be used to fill a double hull,
providing protection from radiation. Then you can give your crew a few rubber
bands and count on some minimal muscle loss. (We have kept people in space and
reasonably healthy for the several months getting to Mars would take, but that
is in LEO where radiation is much less of an issue).

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stcredzero
Just have two capsules separated by a tether. No need for a torus of huge
radius.

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Symmetry
NASA has a deathly fear of tethers for some reason, but I suppose that
wouldn't stop Musk.

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deadlysyntax
If Elon Musk achieves everything he has set out to do, his name will surely be
etched into the history books. And, it seems, those history books will be read
by humans further into the future than perhaps otherwise, BECAUSE his name is
in them.

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nickhalfasleep
It's much harder to colonize when you don't have locals to oppress. I'm
surprised Musk isn't targeting all the pretty rich universities that would pay
tens of millions to put grad students down on the red planet scraping up
research material.

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carterac
I worked at a lab that studied the effects of non-standard gravities on early
development, and the results were not encouraging.

Has anyone encountered research on how we might be able to have children in
non-standard gravity environments?

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fudged71
How does one study the effect of non-standard gravities on early development?
What effects did you discover?

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adambard
"I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact."

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stcredzero
If that we're a wish, it would be in adequately specified. For example, it
includes being tossed broken from the wreckage in a torn spacesuit and dying
while your dissolved gasses boil your blood.

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adambard
Elon said it, not me.

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stcredzero
Keep that man away from djinn!

