A million of Martians
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May be an interesting read - but it is classified as science Fiction, not a science. I pointed to "The World Without Us" because it is classified as Science (although somewhat popularized). The author (and his informants) have not take the freedom to ignore nature's laws when they are a hindrance for the progress of the story. I haven't read Man Plus, and the book may have a general respect for scientific knowledge, but when it is labeled as fiction, you cannot be certain of it. (And, the Wikipedia article does not give any impression of this story carrying any realism. E.g. the brain is one of they body's major consumers of oxygen, and that will prevail even if you create an artificial body.)
You're obviously not familiar with Pohl's work. He used to research more stringently than 99% of astronomers, and make up less cr@p than 100% of them.
Member 7989122 wrote:
the brain is one of they body's major consumers of oxygen
It also consumes (AIRI; can be checked) between 70 and 95% of all the glucose you ingest, depending on what you're doing, and harvesting monosaccharides is a tad more destructive to the plants than just letting them produce O2. Just find a list (there are probably hundreds of instances of them on-line) of nutritional needs at the biochemical level, and you'll easily be able to roughly classify them according to difficulty.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Sidetracking a little here: I will say the same about James P. Hogan. I have a Comp.Sci Masters degree and 40 years of experience, judging his books from the perspective of a computer expert. I picked up the 1979 "The two faces of tomorrow" again not too long ago, and it still holds up. "Realtime Interrupt", 16 years later (but 25 years old today) still raises essential questions that cannot be pushed aside. (And a few of my collagues, to whom I have recommended the book, have had nights of bad sleep, essentially because the comp.sci parts still holds water after 25 years. As a computer professional, I know that the issues are real. People with less background tend to laugh it off as more or less pure fantasy. If I read books too far out of my own field of expertise, I would like to have other experts confirm the realism. For a Mars settlement, there are so many issues that it would take a large flock of experts in different areas to confirm the realism of it. That is what Weisman did with "The World Without Us". While he wrote the text, and is fully responsible for it, in every chapter he leans heavily of one or more top experts in the field. (Hogan also use to include thanks in he preface to those experts that have read through the manuscript to verify that there are no factual errors or impossibilities in the story.)
A little farther aside - have you read anything by William Gibson? He was writing about virtual worlds decades ago. In the movie "Hacker" they called the supercomputer the Gibson in honor of him.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Tahiti, it's a magical place.
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Rob Philpott wrote:
I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock
Did Elon specifically say anything about people volunteering for this...?
That makes it sound like Australia, except without all the poisonous critters.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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I do believe you are overthinking the problem. Q: Will Musk succeed at putting even one person on Mars by 2050? A: No There. Thinking done.
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Abusing Extension Methods, Null Continuation, and Null Coalescence OperatorsNo objection. Myself, I never considered to be anywhere in the neighbourhood of realism. Not by a magnitude or two. But when you meet the fanboys, you often wish you had a checklist to point to, displaying 24 main reasons why the project is completely unrealistic, each of the 24 points certified by an internationally recognized expert. Okay, okay, I know: Internationally recognized experts don't have a clue when you try to defend your own job in the coal or oil industry; then the experts are just talking bullshit. If you are working with Ovibos moschatus[^], you do not want that work to be turned down, either. But a list of 24 well argued objections would be welcome.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote:
Solve propulsion problem to allow us to get to MarsStarship SN01 is being built in open sided tents in Texas today.
Solve renewable water problemLand at a location where orbital sensing indicates large amounts of water frozen a few meters down in the regolith. Then start mining. The amount needed as an input (along with CO2) to the sabatier process to create the methane needed as fuel for the trip home and as a backup power source during sandstorms will dwarf that needed for human consumption.
Solve renewable oxygen problemThe previous step gets this one for free because you want to run your rocket engines fuel rich in order to keep the chamber temperatures low enough to avoid melting and burning them.
Solve renewable energy problemTesla and Solar City.
Build StarbucksI'm pretty sure he can get Starbucks to pay him for the privilege of being the first franchise opened on Mars. (Just threaten to go to Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, etc instead.) :-\
Transport peopleBuild a bunch of Starships. To fund doing this he's building Starlink; which is expected to a be $15-30bn/year printing press for money. And although you neglected it, The Boring Companies tunneling machines can be used to dig the large underground vaults needed to build habitats on Mars. Elon's reach may exceed his grasp; but all of the projects he's juggling feed into his long term goal.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
Um, yeah, my post was just a joke to highlight how all major tech innovation seems to power nothing but vapid consumerism.
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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Practicalities aside, I think it dubious that you'd find a million people willing to leave the lushness of Earth to die on a baron airless rock. It's not exactly Tahiti...
Probably not a million, but we already know there are thousands of people already signed up for this trip. I could see millions attempting to go on nothing more than a hope of a better life.
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Last Monday, the CP Daily News brought the link to Elon Musk Says He’ll Put A Million People on Mars By 2050[^]. This set me thinking: Recycling water is quite straightforward. Recycling oxygen not so. I do not have enough information to even estimate how may tons of oxygen a million humans require a day. (A ton is a million grams, one gram per person.) Can anyone put me on the right track? Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis. When the type and required number of plants, of various kinds, have been determined, we could try to estimate how much water would be bound in these plants and their soil. Transporting that water from earth would be a major taks. So would be an effort to break it loose from the south pole ice-cap and transport it the 2500 km to equatorial land, melt it and heat it up to a temperature suitable for the plants. With no oxygen available, we can't use diesel trucks for transportation, or any tool requiring oxygen for cutting the ice. (We obviously could cover half of the Martian surface with solar cells to produce electricity for electrolyzing the south pole ice cap, rather than using the water for growing plants. That is certainly not in the "sustainable" group of alternatives - and how much solar panels would it require? I suspect that the panels would all have to be brought from Earth.) I really liked the kind of analysis made in The World Without Us[^] by Alan Wiesman, and wish that someone would make a similarly scientifically founded evaluation of the realism of a one million people Mars colony. Well, I suspect that it could easily end up more like Solar FREAKING Roadways, Are they REAL?[
There's non-biological ways to produce oxygen. A few years back I got interested in recycling of CO2 back to O2, and there's multiple paths to do that. There's also other ways to get O2, like by disassociating water. However, as raddevus pointed out about the biosphere project, making a long term viable environment is hard. The more closed, the harder.
I live in Oregon, and I'm an engineer.
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He said he'd put a million people on Mars by 2050. He didn't say they'd be alive when they got there. It's probably feasible now to put samples of the cremated remains of 1 million people on a vehicle and have it soft land on Mars.
Software Zen:
delete this;Per Douglas Adams, send the hairdressers and phone sanitizers first .. Oh! and the politicians. (no offence to hairdressers intended)
Live long and prosper
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Last Monday, the CP Daily News brought the link to Elon Musk Says He’ll Put A Million People on Mars By 2050[^]. This set me thinking: Recycling water is quite straightforward. Recycling oxygen not so. I do not have enough information to even estimate how may tons of oxygen a million humans require a day. (A ton is a million grams, one gram per person.) Can anyone put me on the right track? Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis. When the type and required number of plants, of various kinds, have been determined, we could try to estimate how much water would be bound in these plants and their soil. Transporting that water from earth would be a major taks. So would be an effort to break it loose from the south pole ice-cap and transport it the 2500 km to equatorial land, melt it and heat it up to a temperature suitable for the plants. With no oxygen available, we can't use diesel trucks for transportation, or any tool requiring oxygen for cutting the ice. (We obviously could cover half of the Martian surface with solar cells to produce electricity for electrolyzing the south pole ice cap, rather than using the water for growing plants. That is certainly not in the "sustainable" group of alternatives - and how much solar panels would it require? I suspect that the panels would all have to be brought from Earth.) I really liked the kind of analysis made in The World Without Us[^] by Alan Wiesman, and wish that someone would make a similarly scientifically founded evaluation of the realism of a one million people Mars colony. Well, I suspect that it could easily end up more like Solar FREAKING Roadways, Are they REAL?[
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Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis.
with the use of solar energy collectors and artificial lighting, Earth-like levels can be replicated or increased. but will the 'soil' support terrestrial vegetation ?.
Live long and prosper
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Last Monday, the CP Daily News brought the link to Elon Musk Says He’ll Put A Million People on Mars By 2050[^]. This set me thinking: Recycling water is quite straightforward. Recycling oxygen not so. I do not have enough information to even estimate how may tons of oxygen a million humans require a day. (A ton is a million grams, one gram per person.) Can anyone put me on the right track? Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis. When the type and required number of plants, of various kinds, have been determined, we could try to estimate how much water would be bound in these plants and their soil. Transporting that water from earth would be a major taks. So would be an effort to break it loose from the south pole ice-cap and transport it the 2500 km to equatorial land, melt it and heat it up to a temperature suitable for the plants. With no oxygen available, we can't use diesel trucks for transportation, or any tool requiring oxygen for cutting the ice. (We obviously could cover half of the Martian surface with solar cells to produce electricity for electrolyzing the south pole ice cap, rather than using the water for growing plants. That is certainly not in the "sustainable" group of alternatives - and how much solar panels would it require? I suspect that the panels would all have to be brought from Earth.) I really liked the kind of analysis made in The World Without Us[^] by Alan Wiesman, and wish that someone would make a similarly scientifically founded evaluation of the realism of a one million people Mars colony. Well, I suspect that it could easily end up more like Solar FREAKING Roadways, Are they REAL?[
If you wonder how they'll eat and breathe, and other science facts, repeat to yourself "It's just PR, I really should relax."
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A little farther aside - have you read anything by William Gibson? He was writing about virtual worlds decades ago. In the movie "Hacker" they called the supercomputer the Gibson in honor of him.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
Neal Stephenson too. In 1992, who'd have thought of a cyberpunk world where some rich dude is buying up ancient Sumerian artifacts for nefarious purposes? (Snow Crash) And yet, here we are.
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The engineering required for long-term presence on Mars is much more than provision of food, water, air, and power. On Earth, the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere do a good job of protecting us. Mars has neither. The colonists would have to dig down to a depth of a few metres in order to protect themselves (and their crops) from radiation. We also have no idea how the radiation would affect the micro-biome that all of us carry around inside us. There are indications that quite a few diseases may be caused by the replacement in the gut of some benign bacteria by less benign varieties. All in all, I would be very surprised if humanity has any permanent colony on Mars in 2050, to say nothing of a million people.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
There was a suggestion (and some design) by NASA about having something electromagnetically active at the Mars/Sun L1 point, such that it would divert the solar wind around Mars. At a million or so kilometers from Mars (which is about how far its L1 point is), you're talking about a far smaller device to shield the entire planet than trying to do it with an electromagnetic field actually around the planet. I found that discussion very interesting: theoretically, the device could power itself using the very radiation it would be deflecting... and other stories.
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Last Monday, the CP Daily News brought the link to Elon Musk Says He’ll Put A Million People on Mars By 2050[^]. This set me thinking: Recycling water is quite straightforward. Recycling oxygen not so. I do not have enough information to even estimate how may tons of oxygen a million humans require a day. (A ton is a million grams, one gram per person.) Can anyone put me on the right track? Next question: How many plants does it take to produce a ton of oxygen a day? Obviously, a huge pine tree will produce more than, say, a tomato plant. I guess that plants will have to double as both oxygen and food sources; there wouldn't be room of huge forests within that plastic bubble. Do food plants vary a lot in their oxygen prodction capabilities? With Mars being roughly speaking at 1.5 times the Earth's distance from the sun, solar radiation is at 40-45% of Earth levels; I guess that could affect the photosynthesis. When the type and required number of plants, of various kinds, have been determined, we could try to estimate how much water would be bound in these plants and their soil. Transporting that water from earth would be a major taks. So would be an effort to break it loose from the south pole ice-cap and transport it the 2500 km to equatorial land, melt it and heat it up to a temperature suitable for the plants. With no oxygen available, we can't use diesel trucks for transportation, or any tool requiring oxygen for cutting the ice. (We obviously could cover half of the Martian surface with solar cells to produce electricity for electrolyzing the south pole ice cap, rather than using the water for growing plants. That is certainly not in the "sustainable" group of alternatives - and how much solar panels would it require? I suspect that the panels would all have to be brought from Earth.) I really liked the kind of analysis made in The World Without Us[^] by Alan Wiesman, and wish that someone would make a similarly scientifically founded evaluation of the realism of a one million people Mars colony. Well, I suspect that it could easily end up more like Solar FREAKING Roadways, Are they REAL?[
The real problem with this is that, in a colonization situation, you have to rely solely on all the things you bring with you, or on all the things that those things make. Generally, you're talking about a situation in which just about all the components which make up your colony are mission-critical, and there's maybe one or two backups/work-arounds for each one. It wouldn't take much to kill the colony completely: perhaps two or three simultaneous points of failure - effectively, it's a question of when - not if - you go and kill a whole lot of colonists - perhaps all of them. We're too used to thinking in terms of living in a relatively robust system which has multiple workarounds built into it to overcome any number of failures; in most cases, you have to actively put yourself into a lethal situation on Earth in order to get killed (statistically speaking, that is). On Mars, you're in that situation all the time, and you have to actively keep removing yourself from it. Whole different concept.
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There's non-biological ways to produce oxygen. A few years back I got interested in recycling of CO2 back to O2, and there's multiple paths to do that. There's also other ways to get O2, like by disassociating water. However, as raddevus pointed out about the biosphere project, making a long term viable environment is hard. The more closed, the harder.
I live in Oregon, and I'm an engineer.
It takes significant amounts of energy to tear up the bonds between the C and the O2 (and the process is far from 100% efficient). It is like "paying back" the energy you gained by burning the carbon, or the hydrogen. If you want to do that by electricity from solar panels (with an efficiency in the low 20s - most PV panels sold today are below 20%) you must cover enormous areas with PV panels. We need to calculate the size. And the energy cost of shipping them from earth - I don't think we can expect neither to find the raw materials nor to establish a production plant for PV panels on Mars.
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The real problem with this is that, in a colonization situation, you have to rely solely on all the things you bring with you, or on all the things that those things make. Generally, you're talking about a situation in which just about all the components which make up your colony are mission-critical, and there's maybe one or two backups/work-arounds for each one. It wouldn't take much to kill the colony completely: perhaps two or three simultaneous points of failure - effectively, it's a question of when - not if - you go and kill a whole lot of colonists - perhaps all of them. We're too used to thinking in terms of living in a relatively robust system which has multiple workarounds built into it to overcome any number of failures; in most cases, you have to actively put yourself into a lethal situation on Earth in order to get killed (statistically speaking, that is). On Mars, you're in that situation all the time, and you have to actively keep removing yourself from it. Whole different concept.
SciFi stories are not really meant for the stars, but for our life on earth. A scaringly high percentage of Western humans seem to believ that if we can simplify the biology to provide us with the life forms supporting us, today, then we can make earth a much more efficient machine for supporting our lives... Maybe thorough analyses of the vulnurability of a Mars colony can contribute to an understanding of the complex interactions among life forms on earth. You cannot just extinguish a species and clap your hands: It was predator, we are happy that it is gone! The interaction with other species is far more complex. Biologists know, of course. They have quite good simulation models to tell what would happen if we extinguish, say, the wolf. Their problem is making the general public accept the models, and conclusions, they present. Make people understand the complexity of various forms of life we are dependent on. I had a mental experience/breakdown several years ago when my car had a collapse, and I failed to fix it myself. That set me thinking of all the different people and professionals I depend on to survive: Car mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, electricians: What if they are not here? How would I manage? To clear up my thoughs, I started writing my own novel about such a situation: All adults aroud me have died from an unknown virus infection, but not me. What do I do now? The scenario I painted was neither Martian nor Titan, but similar to a worldwide sprean of the Corona virus, or Black Death. I have related to that issue for years, now. One of my conclusions is that most "preppers" don't have a clue. First; What it takes to suvive without the support of a society. Then, and more significant: How to manage a new society, created from the group of people within that bunker of yours. I think we - as a society - should spend more effort on educating the people at large, "the man in the street", in how things fit together, how they affect each other, how they interact, and how they depend on each other. Thinking back on my own school days, we wasted a lot of energy learning details of isolated system, from how to operate a sawing machine to how to solve differential equations. Teachers of today are of course trained to reject such comments, insisting that today they present it in a wider frame of knowledge. It isn't true. They just widen the scope within their own frame of reference, which is just as narrow as before. They do not extend it beyond that. As a father, my p
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SciFi stories are not really meant for the stars, but for our life on earth. A scaringly high percentage of Western humans seem to believ that if we can simplify the biology to provide us with the life forms supporting us, today, then we can make earth a much more efficient machine for supporting our lives... Maybe thorough analyses of the vulnurability of a Mars colony can contribute to an understanding of the complex interactions among life forms on earth. You cannot just extinguish a species and clap your hands: It was predator, we are happy that it is gone! The interaction with other species is far more complex. Biologists know, of course. They have quite good simulation models to tell what would happen if we extinguish, say, the wolf. Their problem is making the general public accept the models, and conclusions, they present. Make people understand the complexity of various forms of life we are dependent on. I had a mental experience/breakdown several years ago when my car had a collapse, and I failed to fix it myself. That set me thinking of all the different people and professionals I depend on to survive: Car mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, electricians: What if they are not here? How would I manage? To clear up my thoughs, I started writing my own novel about such a situation: All adults aroud me have died from an unknown virus infection, but not me. What do I do now? The scenario I painted was neither Martian nor Titan, but similar to a worldwide sprean of the Corona virus, or Black Death. I have related to that issue for years, now. One of my conclusions is that most "preppers" don't have a clue. First; What it takes to suvive without the support of a society. Then, and more significant: How to manage a new society, created from the group of people within that bunker of yours. I think we - as a society - should spend more effort on educating the people at large, "the man in the street", in how things fit together, how they affect each other, how they interact, and how they depend on each other. Thinking back on my own school days, we wasted a lot of energy learning details of isolated system, from how to operate a sawing machine to how to solve differential equations. Teachers of today are of course trained to reject such comments, insisting that today they present it in a wider frame of knowledge. It isn't true. They just widen the scope within their own frame of reference, which is just as narrow as before. They do not extend it beyond that. As a father, my p
Very good. Yes - Heinlein apparently thought so, too: "specialization is for insects," he wrote, while making his point that one should strive to be able to do anything. As a programmer, I choose to believe that the "perfect programmer" should be able to write software for anything; to do that, he has to know everything - so if the zen is in the journey, then the search for all knowledge is zen itself. Or something. Sadly, reality is a messy, lethal, unpredictable, entropic affair, and most people are scared to death of it, thus they choose to view a sort of abridged, safe version of it in which they have a soul which lasts forever, and even death can't really hurt them - a shame, because it effectively cheapens one's life to the point of meaninglessness... and other rants. I guess the point of all that is that you can't educate someone who's frightened enough not to want to learn... and that describes most of the population. Oh well: at least we'll never be unemployed.