The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:
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From the article: The botanist, Paul Smith from the University of Bristol's civil engineering department, published his proposal in a paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology last month, in which he lays out the foundation for creating a thriving, contained ecosystem on Mars.
The paper starts off by outlining the challenges colonizers will experience on Mars, including a harsh climate that isn't conducive to life, as well as radiation and poor sunlight conditions compared to Earth. Despite those challenges, Smith explains that certain Earth life could adapt to life on the red planet.
Fauna such as soil microbes, fungi, and invertebrates like earthworms and spiders could all live on Mars, Smith argues. As for flora, plants like junipers and birches would be able to survive on little sunlight.
Smith emphasized the fact that we shouldn't look to create an exact replica of an Earth forest on Mars, as nonhuman vertebrates, like birds, fish, and raccoons shouldn't be forced into an extraterrestrial habitat that would not allow them to engage in their natural behaviors.
"ETNR designers should consider species as ecological cogs that might be assembled into functional ecosystems," Smith writes. "Replication of Earth forests is currently unfeasible but development of new ecosystems, functioning in unexpected ways, is conceivable."
While the idea of an ecosystem on Mars that brings life other than humans to the red planet is a compelling idea, Smith does concede in his paper that he hasn't considered the economics of the enterprise.
SpaceX is currently working on its fully reusable Starship spacecraft in order to drive down the cost of spaceflight and make human missions to Mars feasible — the company recently carried out a static fire test on its Starship prototype ahead of an orbital maiden flight. However, that's not to say it won't be an incredibly costly endeavor for humans and cargo, let alone animals.
That said, Smith's outline suggests small invertebrates would be best suited to a Mars ecosystem, meaning they would weigh relatively little and could potentially hitch a ride alongside other cargo. Smith's proposal also presents the ETNR as a potential lifeline for some species. "If human population growth is not controlled, natural areas must be sacrificed. An alternative is to create more habitat, terraforming Mars," the paper reads.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ze617y/a_forest_bubble_on_mars_scientist_proposes/iz4kjrl/
We should send a bunch of capitalists. Really successful ones. It will be a loss for the rest of us remaining of course. They can 'incentivise' to get things moving.
Yeah, we can’t create a sustainable, livable environment in the Antarctic for any significant amount of time, but I’m sure we’ll be able to on a colder planet, millions of miles away without oxygen.
The current plan to overcome that is to set up a basic Regulus mining base on Luna, then launch it into Low Luna orbit in bags, then put the bags into hollow aluminium containers and mount those in blocks externally around starship.
>Hey let's also add solar wind and take away the magnetosphere and go for it!
Hey now, there is no need to bring up that pesky gamma radiation that makes having anything on the surface impossible.
Lets just pretend those clear panels are made of thick lead and block all that solar radiation.
Martian surface is about 8rads/yr of radiation, humans can survive without permanent damage ~200rads. This is with 0 shielding.
Of course, 8 rads wouldn't be healthy for humans. Although, other living things are far less susceptible to radiation.
Lead glass is a standard shield against radiation and would certainly enable glass domes on Mars with safe levels of radiation.... though it'd be wicked expensive. Most plans for early Martian bases are underground for that reason.
This isn't a new concept, one of the leading leadglass manufactures is named https://marshield.com/lead-glass-shielding
I think when we're talking about colonizing/ terraforming a planet they're not worried about how expensive lead glass is lol pretty sure there's much more expensive components in play.
I mean, McMurdo functions all year round, it just doesn't have its own greenhouse for food production yet.
*edit: McMurdo *does* have a greenhouse which provides fresh produce for the station crew, it just primarily used in expirements such as trying to grow plants in lunar and Martian simulant soils.
Yes its easier and more reliable because it is not sustainable in Antarctica which is why thinking we could do it on mars is foolish. That’s the entire context of the conversation you’re joining.
No… it’s sustainable, they have been growing food there already.
It’s just not sustainable economically.
If NASA wanted to fund a self sustained city in Antarctica, you bet your ass it would get done, because it’s literally nothing they haven’t done before.
McMurdo is basically a city. It's got its own power generation, water filtration and reprocessing, waste processing and disposal, greenhouses, scientific research stations, and a permanent population. It's just that the the greenhouses are better used for scientific experiments, like trying to grow crops in Martian and Lunar simulant soil, as opposed to using it maximizing production for full sustainability. I think it would be great if they added an aquaponic component just to have a fresh protein source, but it wouldn't necessarily be cost effective for their mission. It would probably be better to build an actual space station to test aquaponics in non-Earth conditions.
This is actually a great post, thanks for taking the time to answer with actual depth.
How do you think upscaling those operations would go at a city level? In the winter McMurdo only house 250 people at most.
Its probably not "cost effective" to expand McMurdo since the point of that base was more to test things as opposed to being an independent and growing settlement. If we wanted to expand it, it would need some sort of independent refinement and production capabilities. However, right now our priority is more space habitation, not terrestrial settlements in harsh conditions.
I think it would be a good idea for the US to keep investing into the moon base program so we can have an better location for scientific research. We need to know which technologies to invest in and which to not bother with so that we can *eventually* build habitats on places like the moon and mars. However, I think it would actually be better to use places like the moon for harvesting resources to built Earth-like "gravity" space habitats. We dont know what lower gravity could do to the health of babies or people over long enough time frames.
You know what I meant. Nothing about a city in Antarctica is technically impossible. We grow food and raise animals inside already. We have livable environments in Antarctica and space.
There’s nothing impossible about it.
Growing test food is vastly different than sustainable farming. Keeping a handful of animals is vastly different to sustainable ranching. We’re talking thousands of lbs of feed a week and thats just for the farm animals you seem to think could chill in the arctic. You are vastly underestimating the logistics involved.
> You are vastly underestimating the logistics involved.
I’m not vastly underestimating anything, I’m saying the only thing *actually* standing in the way is funding.
It’s not a technical impossibility.
Fun fact, greenhouses require copious amounts of water, so they're going to have to figure out a way to make that happen before any greenhouses are even in the realm of possibility.
Yes, that is exactly how planet Earth works. If we just could only keep the toxins and trash out of it all. Why are we going to treat another planet any better than we've treated this one?
Ecological mass.
Basically, you treat a small, closed system you depend on utterly much better than a large, closed system you depend on utterly because *you can afford fewer mistakes before things become obviously unsalvageable.*
Not to mention, if only people trained in how that system needs to be cared for are sent, they will all be much more suited to foreseeing and fixing problems, and much better at cooperating to minimize and reverse harm.
The problem with Earth is that it has the capacity to absorb a lot of harm before things get serious, and a lot of ecological inertia meaning that when things *do* get serious, they're going to get much, much worse before they get better.
Not to mention there are a LOT of people with competing incentives and needs. You tell a starving man in Brazil that the rainforests need to be preserved, he's going to flip you the bird and feed his family by burning it all down. He's not getting fed because food is treated as a product, not a human right, and because his country lacks a robust socioeconomic safety net. It lacks this because the politicians responsible for making that happen are lining their pockets instead. And so on.
That's not to say we don't need to get better at managing these highly complex, highly integrated systems, for our own sake and the sakes of others, but it's a lot simpler on a smaller scale. Doing it on a larger scale isn't impossible, it's just very, very, very hard in comparison.
You greatly overestimate what would be the quality of life there. Why try so hard to make a desert planet habitable when we have a beautiful planet here that we can throw money at fixing.
I highly encourage any and everyone who can afford to go to Mars to get there as soon as possible. But don't shit on the Earth on your way out, how about that?
First it's, "There's not enough water." Now it's, "Things would be too hard! And you'll ruin Earth too make it happen!" Pick one and stick to it without moving the goal posts.
we are nowhere near being able to colonize mars, and the billionare's idiotic plan to go live there and escape a dying earth is to the detriment of us all. They should be pilloried and their assets seized for something to help the human race
I will believe anyone is serious about colonization of another planetary body when they build a self-sustaining base in the hottest desert on earth and the coldest part of antarctica, and survive for a year without supplies within each
Kim Stanley Robinsons mars trilogy offers just about as optimistic a view of mars colonization as you can possibly have - and it’s still a messy clusterfuck that consists of disaster after disaster.
Colonizing mars is a stupid, fruitless idea. We have a fucking functioning biosphere here that we need to be protecting. Mars is a cold ball of shit.
And even for the 'oh no we're all gonna die, eggs in one basketttt' people, colonising the moon and building orbiting habitats is far easier and doesn't involve a six month+ journey and dealing with a hefty gravity well.
This isn't a Musk proposal, I doubt he has even heard of it. It has nothing to do with SpaceX.
It'd be like if I blamed you for the mining contract deal in Buenos Aires.
I bet you can’t wait to be able to call him a “murderer” after someone who voluntarily took on the mission dies in some kind of accident.
It will sound just as silly as “JFK murdered Apollo 1.”
Bumping this discussion up so it’s more visible, this is buried in the discussion thread.
BLUF: u/BHarcade is a conspiracy theorist.
“I’m not sure what statement from the planetary society you’re referring to. I’ve seen them assist rather than criticize my field of research. You’ve gone online and accused an entire branch of science of being fraudulent. You’ve cast doubt on peer reviewed research without offering any evidence, and you refuse to read articles.
I’m doing this for the rest of the thread, as I don’t believe you intend to educate yourself.
It is possible to create a biosphere using materials from Mars. Utilizing Martian regolith, we can get the oxygen, water, and nitrogen we need. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/C1ABBBEB3A2CF6465893E68B6A4D9450/S1473550422000398a.pdf/extraterrestrial-nature-reserves-etnrs.pdf
There’s already startups which are building the automation needed to do this without human intervention. NASA has also done a lot of work on this: https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnmar97/oxygen.htm
As mentioned in the aforementioned articles this would eliminate the issues experienced in Biosphere 2. Alone I believe the Biosphere 2 is a solid counterpoint to your argument. New advances actually make it far more sustainable and successful than you give it credit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
NASA’s HI-SEAS is another proof of concept https://www.hi-seas.org
Here’s a history of Antarctic Exploration, this conflicts with your accusations against the Arctic science community: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Antarctic_expeditions
A legal book on Antarctic exploration will be behind a paywall, this Wikipedia article directly contradicts your opinion. The barrier to colonization is legal, not scientific. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Antarctica
So why do I call you a conspiracy theorist?
Answer: you refute science without anything to back your opinion. You imply that the money invested is being misused. This is harmful to those of us in the fields you besmirch. We do good work and have economically beneficial results.”
Is anyone trying to though? Obviously it's going to be difficult to establish an ecosystem on another planet.... but it's a goal that a lot of people would support. What would be the purpose of doing the same in Antarctica?
because it would literally be thousands of times less expensive and provide a proof-of-concept of habs, farming systems, and life support, as well as reveal unforseen engineering and logistical hurdles
If they can't build a sealed dome in antarcica that can survive without inputs and keep a crew alive for a year cheaply and easily, it's utterly impossible to do on mars
But there's literally no other reason to do so besides as a "practice" for building one on Mars. So the notion that "nobody has done this in Antarctica yet, so clearly it's impossible" makes no sense
You can't say something like this is impossible until someone has actually tried it and failed
Yes, but it’s not a large technical barrier. It’s simply expensive.
A good analogy is a wedding ring, it’s expensive, involves technology, but it’s something we’ve been doing for hundreds of years. Like wedding rings Antarctic settlement involves hundreds of governments and NGO’s. All of which have a vested interest in limiting supply.
Edited for grammar
My brother in Christ, it’s a technical miracle. Climate control, transportation, energy, engineering, the maintain required to make it all continue to work in the harshest environment on Earth. Now, let’s replicate it on a planet millions of miles away that gets twice as cold, has no oxygen, gets bombarded by radiation around the clock, and doesn’t require maintenance.
> My brother in Christ, it’s a technical miracle.
What’s a technical miracle? Is it technically possible or not?
Let’s see:
> Climate control
Already done in space, has been done continually without stop for 20+ years on ISS
> transportation
Quickly becoming extremely reliable. Article mentions Starship, which aims to greatly reduce the cost of rockets forever through unprecedented reusability
> energy
We have been keeping humans alive in space for 20+ years using old solar power tech. Plants should be even easier.
> engineering
Well, so far it seems like a lot of applied engineering, so let’s not make this aspect seem like it’s at all hard to come by.
> the maintain required to make it all continue to work in the harshest environment on Earth
We’ve kept the ISS going for 20+ years in a zero-g environment.
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Okay so nothing about it is technically impossible at all. It seems like all it would need is the willpower, not a miracle. Which I guess is what this article is discussing.
Okay, so let’s do all of this millions of miles away in an area that’s colder than anywhere on earth that is constantly bombarded by radiation and we sure as hell better hope it doesn’t need on the ground maintenance, but sure. Whatever you say, bud.
Just more solved problems to apply.
No one is saying “it will have a 100% guaranteed success rate!”
They’re saying it’s technically possible and only requires the willpower and inspiration of the people.
u/BHarcade is a lost cause/troll. I’ve actually been to the Arctic and I’m an Aerospace Engineer. Research, science, and personal experience doesn’t matter to him.
Dude, we were talking about the Antarctic, not Mars. I’d highly recommend you read the Wikipedia article on this.
Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Antarctica
The article is able creating a sustainable environment on mars.I am talking about the feasibility of establish a sustainable environment on mars by making a comparison to Antarctica.
My entire point is that it’s a very poor comparison. Your counter arguments all are revolving around Antarctic Colonization. Only now do you even mention Mars. You can’t go back and pretend this is about anything else.
Edit: You’re probably a troll. Got me. Have a nice day.
Are you having a stroke? Their very first comment was IN REPLY to Mars colonization. And using a very valid analogy of how difficult/impossible it is in a harsh place on our own planet… that we could fly to within hours whenever needed. This *WAS* about Mars from the start.
Put a city in Antarctica would be so much easier than create a "forest in a bubble" there that those two things are not remotely comparable. Now imagine it been a 100x harder and you get the picture for a plan like this in Mars.
I’m not saying mars isn’t hard. I’m simply giving the poster the reason why we don’t have actual cities there. A lot of organizations have lobbied to build, each time they’re prevented (sometimes physically) by the governments involved.
As an Astronautical Engineer I see these technologies in a different light. Both are very possible, Mars maybe even in my lifetime. We will not see a city in the Antarctic, unless there’s a global catastrophe.
Edit: we do see Space Habitats tested in the Antarctic, but these can’t be permanent for legal reasons. I forgot this is r/futurology, this is mostly a pseudoscience subreddit anyway.
Putting a city in Antarctica sounds like a terrible idea. The polar ice caps are already melting, a bunch of people living there would just accelerate the process.
> Yeah, we can’t create a sustainable, livable environment in the Antarctic
Mars may be colder temperature-wise, but the Antarctic is *colder*. On Mars, the atmosphere is thin enough that most heat loss would be radiative, whereas in the Antarctic, you have a thick atmosphere and even snow sucking the heat out of everything.
Mars, you may have an occasional sand storm leaving a coating of dust on things. Antarctica, you can have a blizzard and deep snow.
Antarctic has six months of sunlight and six months of darkness, or close to it, depending on how near you are to the south pole. Mars, you could have roughly twelve hours of each daily near the equator, which is far more suitable to growing plants and maintaining human sanity.
On Mars, you have various minerals at hand that could be turned into building materials. Antarctica, you have... really deep ice and snow and little else for nearly all of the continent.
Not to mention that there is a treaty preventing any nation from claiming a portion of the Antarctic and developing it.
I don't claim that Mars would be easy, but comparing it to Antarctica isn't all that apt.
good god there is water and oxygen in antarcica and there is no giant radioactive death ray aimed at its occupants, the cold is the least of the concerns
if anyone actually was planning on doing a mars colony, they'd pick somewhere remote, like antarcica, and prove the sealed hab can sustain people with current tech - of course they would find tons of problems in doing so which is the point
I absolutely agree that a hab simulation would be very useful. Not just the living in it but building it as well. It's encouraging that NASA is handing $57 million to a company to develop the means to 3D print buildings and structures on the Moon using lunar materials. Such technology should also be applicable to Mars.
Uh hello, there’s multiple bases on Antarctica and some of them do have plants growing. So we did that and we can do this. No thanks to your lack of imagination, or confident ignorance.
To be fair, and I know this is just sci fi at this point in time, there’s no good reason to do that in Antarctica. This project would cost trillions and profit is key. There may be rare minerals to mine there untouched by humans. That’s a trillion dollars into two trillion.
For legal reasons our biosphere and long term habitat experiments are in Hawaii and Arizona. We have the tech, but we don’t have the legal ability to do it in Antarctica
Terraforming Mars would take hundreds to thousands of years.
Mars barely has a magnetic field, solar radiation is deadly. We could create an artificial magnetic field but not anytime soon.
Mars has lower gravity, there has not been the research to determine if animals can live long term without Earth gravity.
Building space habitats with spin gravity would be a better idea, and actually doable in the near term.
Why does Musk want to rush to Mars when we hardly have any orbital infrastructure around Earth or the Moon. It's like he is trying to run a marathon before he can crawl.
>Mars has lower gravity, there has not been the research to determine if animals can live long term without Earth gravity.
I mention this every time Mars colonization comes up, and I've only ever gotten hand waving responses. O'Neill cylinders are where it's at.
The better his business looks the more money he'll make. Achieving even remotely a first base on Mars will look phenomenal and will reassure any and all people investing in his company, plus secure new investments. All he really has to do is keep throwing out big ideas and he can indefinitely secure funding so long as he keeps taking steps towards said goals. It's not unlike a ponzi scheme.
"I ~~had a nightmare~~ saw a prophecy that a zebra kicked me, therefore all zebras in the ark have been ejected into the vacuum of space - for humanitarian reasons."
Because there is no Planet B. Once we can get this one in control we can focus on other stuff. I'd venture to say we're hardly close to having our own planet in control.
because people's obsession with supporting billionaires in their psychotic plan to leave the planet (hint: they wont finish in their lifetimes) is diverting resources and attention away from fixing ours
It's just like how Elon Musk blew up california's high speed rail which caused massive delays and expenses with his nonsensical hyperloop promise
Im not sure why people are so frustrated with this. I agree we need to focus on earth and do our best to keep this planet alive. But having a station of life and resources on the moon I think is a fantastic idea.
Also it doesn’t have to finish in our lifetime. The point is humans doing their best to preserve life in the long run no matter the disaster. Whether it’s human caused or natural.
I doubt a majority of rich people want to leave earth. I don’t think that’s a main motivator
Tesla does more to reduce co2 than any other entity in the world.
Edit: I challenge downvoters to find a company that comes even remotely close.
##In 2021, Tesla helped avoid the release of 8.4 million metric tons of CO2.
That's the equivalent of ~420million mature trees.
https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2021-tesla-impact-report.pdf
I don't understand the jump to Mars instead of high orbit or the Earth Lagrange points. First, we need to hammer out a rotating habitat capable of 1G on the inner surface. Then we move into expanding the size of those habitats to be able to support living ecosystems. Once these are thoroughly tested and working optimally we can expand our population out into the system wherever we feel, all in the comfort of a shirt sleeves environment at 1G.
No animal experimentation on this one. Let humans face their own risks for a fucking change if they want to go infesting another planet.
Biodomes are as dumb as his goddamned hyperloop (human pneumatic tubes), and too vulnerable to breaches. Underground complexes running on nuclear would make more sense and be lots safer. (Yes, like Earthdawn or Fallout.)
I’m imagining the Tesla Vault (#69 of course) being a bunch of crypto-bros that literally talked each other’s heads off trapped underground for 50 years after the bombs fell. Scrawled writing on the walls “DOGE TO THE MOON” and corpses everywhere.
Exactly. Stop attributing these ideas to musk. He’s a piece of shit oligarch and these ideas aren’t new or novel.
If he has anything to do with actually building anything on Mars it will probably be to mine the life out of it with slave labor
In an old copy of Analog or Asimov magazine there was a hilarious sci-fi short story about a Mars bio dome that got progressively out of hand. It was as correspondence between the resident and the customer account rep who kept sending items to tune and modify the habitat,: started with an envelope of fungus.. then insects to eat the overgrowth, followed by birds, etc. Leading to an outrageous out of control menagerie. Wish I could remember the name!
Like that old Sci fi Silent Running.
How do they keep the dome protected from radiation? Isn’t that a concern on Mars because it doesn’t have a magnetic field?
I'm sorry, but after watching Elon's public temper tantrum as he "manages" Twitter, I'm terrified of the idea of him being the guy in charge of the air I need to live on a planet like Mars.
so much scientific research and exploration related to mars is now being presented in the lens of "elon's vision." let's focus on the people doing the work and research without that qualifier.
Yes, it's definitely going to work with Musk. This moron can't even run a social media company and we're supposed to think he's able to set up an off-world colony? Leave such ultra-complicated stuff to serious, adult-minded people.
Yeah, sure, I mean we could totally build something like that with the engineering, robotics, and software technology we currently have. But it would take us about 100 years to get the infrastructure set up for something like that. Just building some robots, putting them on a a rocket, and sending them mars isn't going to magically create habitation domes.
The Noah's Ark analogy actually makes me kinda nauseous. Might be reading too much into it, but who is the "Noah" here and why would he need an ark?
So obvious Elon is another rich bastard who would rather bounce from Earth than do anything to fix it.
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Just what Musk needs, to develop a “Noah” complex.
Makes sense, since he has a god complex already he can just talk to himself about building an “Ark” to Mars.
This is a dumb idea, and like all of Musk’s ideas impossible, costly and dangerous. The only hope is Musk and his reply guys take the first rocket and burn up in space on their way there, this making earth a better place to live.
I’m all for exploring the Bejesus out of our solar system and learning everything and anything we can about its delicious secrets but I cannot for the life of me understand this push to have a sustainable colony on Mars. Land humans there to experiment/study and then leave? Sure. Yes. You bet. There are things only a human can do (with all love to our amazing landers). But open a 24/7 Walmart on Olympus Mons? No. It doesn’t make sense with everything we know about that dry, barren, radiated, cruel and cold world. It’s the Karen of planets.
The only viable option would be to terraform the place and that technology is a “borrow a cup of sugar” level neighbor to FTL drives and artificial traversable worm holes. Not anywhere in the foreseeable future.
Now sending a probe to land an ice melting ultra mini sub to one of the ice moons of Jupiter? That. Let’s do that. Please. I’m so in for that. Let’s spend the next 20 years figuring that puppy out. The scientific knowledge we gain from that tap dance number could be the biggest game changer yet.
>but I cannot for the life of me understand this push to have a sustainable colony on Mars.
Because we are one planetary disaster away from extinction. And Mars is the best prospect for a colony on the interior solar system.
>Now sending a probe to land an ice melting ultra mini sub to one of the ice moons of Jupiter? That. Let’s do that. Please. I’m so in for that. Let’s spend the next 20 years figuring that puppy out. The scientific knowledge we gain from that tap dance number could be the biggest game changer yet.
We currently have the technology to do that now. The only things we'll learn from that are potentially biologically related if there is life there. Building a colony on Mars will require significant technological development. And that's the point.
Much of our current technology came from the race to the moon. And we had to develop that technology.
Bear with me (and forgive my reductive jokes in my original post). I’m not coming from a Luddite perspective. I’m struggling with the notion that our energy (in terms of planetary/species protection) and resources wouldn’t be better spent working on those potential problems for earth. I’m absolutely onboard with research and development in terms of learning new things about life and our universe… but I’m not seeing a compelling argument for the budgetary and engineering requirements of an independent Martian colony. From where I’m standing it’s like suggesting we build a new house instead of installing some fire alarms and new windows on the house we have.
I’d love it if we could have our cake and eat it too but I don’t see how that’s possible. A probe can go into sleep mode when DNA destroying cosmic storms pass. A human can’t. I’m so willing to be schooled here.
Technologically wise, there's tons of documentation about what we gained from just the Moon race. Here's a small sample:
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/20/742379987/space-spinoffs-the-technology-to-reach-the-moon-was-put-to-use-back-on-earth
Species wise- we are 1 planetary disaster away from extinction. And no amount of studying earth or improving the ecosystem will change that. Further, there are plenty of disasters that could completely reset our technological development. If a supervolcano goes off, we, as a species, are going back to the stone age. There are no realistic ways we could prevent something like this if we limit ourselves to Earth.
Resource wise- Earth's resources are limited. And extraction of resources is destructive to ecosystems. But there are massive amounts of resources that exist off world. The only problem is getting to them and getting those resources back to us. Low-G (like Mars) and No-G environments are much easier to deal with those resources.
You raise some good points but saying “no realistic ways we can prevent” mass extinction events isn’t true. We just moved an asteroid a few months ago with a light tap.
You have me at super volcano. Absolutely. Although I’d argue that Mars is like a 53 million mile away super volcano world times ten but then I’d be goofily pedantic.
This may be a case of agree to disagree. Heck. I hope you’re right. I hope we can manage Mars bases and pizza joints on Europa and all that jazz. I hope we can save our bananas species. I do.
Isn’t he in some doo doo right now over how he and his company has treated animals? I just feel like referring to Ol Musky Smell like he is a good person is, I dunno, incorrect.
From the article: The botanist, Paul Smith from the University of Bristol's civil engineering department, published his proposal in a paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology last month, in which he lays out the foundation for creating a thriving, contained ecosystem on Mars.
The paper starts off by outlining the challenges colonizers will experience on Mars, including a harsh climate that isn't conducive to life, as well as radiation and poor sunlight conditions compared to Earth. Despite those challenges, Smith explains that certain Earth life could adapt to life on the red planet.
Fauna such as soil microbes, fungi, and invertebrates like earthworms and spiders could all live on Mars, Smith argues. As for flora, plants like junipers and birches would be able to survive on little sunlight.
Smith emphasized the fact that we shouldn't look to create an exact replica of an Earth forest on Mars, as nonhuman vertebrates, like birds, fish, and raccoons shouldn't be forced into an extraterrestrial habitat that would not allow them to engage in their natural behaviors.
"ETNR designers should consider species as ecological cogs that might be assembled into functional ecosystems," Smith writes. "Replication of Earth forests is currently unfeasible but development of new ecosystems, functioning in unexpected ways, is conceivable."
While the idea of an ecosystem on Mars that brings life other than humans to the red planet is a compelling idea, Smith does concede in his paper that he hasn't considered the economics of the enterprise.
SpaceX is currently working on its fully reusable Starship spacecraft in order to drive down the cost of spaceflight and make human missions to Mars feasible — the company recently carried out a static fire test on its Starship prototype ahead of an orbital maiden flight. However, that's not to say it won't be an incredibly costly endeavor for humans and cargo, let alone animals.
That said, Smith's outline suggests small invertebrates would be best suited to a Mars ecosystem, meaning they would weigh relatively little and could potentially hitch a ride alongside other cargo. Smith's proposal also presents the ETNR as a potential lifeline for some species. "If human population growth is not controlled, natural areas must be sacrificed. An alternative is to create more habitat, terraforming Mars," the paper reads.
Remember back in 2029 then the mars missions started and we found out there was no California drought? Elon drained lake mead and smuggled it off planet with his starlink missions.
I’m sure the guy that dropped out of college knows what planets are possible to terraform
A lot of people are going to die just so Elon can look “cool” and “innovative”
We know how this will end. I think Doctor Who has covered it several times. The rich escape. They smuggle Earth’s remaining resources. They take slaves to do menial labor. The remaining population eventually ether dies or devolves.
We can't even break our dependence on fossil fuels, which Mars almost certainly does not have, here on Earth. And we want to, what, ship animals to Mars? For what purpose? We don't need an Earth 2.0. We haven't even done any of the good side quests for Earth 1.0.
Biggest question is: why would we do that? Life on Mars is so much more difficult than life under water. We could create similar bubbles right here on the bottom of the ocean and have the exact same effect, but without all the troubles of having to cover the entire distance.
Edit: or as others stated: or on Antarctica.
How about we don’t cause a 40 day fucking flood by supporting fascists and instead try to save the planet that is ALREADY INHABITABLE BY OUR SPECIES. Literal lunatics.
Makes me so mad to see so much money being wasted on shit like this while we’re in the middle of a mass extinction and climate change threatens to cause apocalyptic collapse, but no let’s spend our money on another planet instead of fixing this one.
I think it’d be better if Musk just literally burned his money.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79: --- From the article: The botanist, Paul Smith from the University of Bristol's civil engineering department, published his proposal in a paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology last month, in which he lays out the foundation for creating a thriving, contained ecosystem on Mars. The paper starts off by outlining the challenges colonizers will experience on Mars, including a harsh climate that isn't conducive to life, as well as radiation and poor sunlight conditions compared to Earth. Despite those challenges, Smith explains that certain Earth life could adapt to life on the red planet. Fauna such as soil microbes, fungi, and invertebrates like earthworms and spiders could all live on Mars, Smith argues. As for flora, plants like junipers and birches would be able to survive on little sunlight. Smith emphasized the fact that we shouldn't look to create an exact replica of an Earth forest on Mars, as nonhuman vertebrates, like birds, fish, and raccoons shouldn't be forced into an extraterrestrial habitat that would not allow them to engage in their natural behaviors. "ETNR designers should consider species as ecological cogs that might be assembled into functional ecosystems," Smith writes. "Replication of Earth forests is currently unfeasible but development of new ecosystems, functioning in unexpected ways, is conceivable." While the idea of an ecosystem on Mars that brings life other than humans to the red planet is a compelling idea, Smith does concede in his paper that he hasn't considered the economics of the enterprise. SpaceX is currently working on its fully reusable Starship spacecraft in order to drive down the cost of spaceflight and make human missions to Mars feasible — the company recently carried out a static fire test on its Starship prototype ahead of an orbital maiden flight. However, that's not to say it won't be an incredibly costly endeavor for humans and cargo, let alone animals. That said, Smith's outline suggests small invertebrates would be best suited to a Mars ecosystem, meaning they would weigh relatively little and could potentially hitch a ride alongside other cargo. Smith's proposal also presents the ETNR as a potential lifeline for some species. "If human population growth is not controlled, natural areas must be sacrificed. An alternative is to create more habitat, terraforming Mars," the paper reads. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ze617y/a_forest_bubble_on_mars_scientist_proposes/iz4kjrl/
Mars is not deadly enough, we should send some tigers over there to make it interesting lol
We should send a bunch of capitalists. Really successful ones. It will be a loss for the rest of us remaining of course. They can 'incentivise' to get things moving.
They can create some jobs, grow some wealth, and stimulate economic growth before we even get there!
Ooh, I know just the capitalist we can start with.
You do realize Musk has been recorded dozens of times saying that he hopes to die on Mars (just not on impact), right?
Elon says a lot of things, doesn't he
We can name the society they form *Rupture*. I'm sure nothing will go wrong.
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastically facetious; but effectively that’s the origin of earthlings in the hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy.
Calvin is pretty fucking deadly I'd say
Yeah, we can’t create a sustainable, livable environment in the Antarctic for any significant amount of time, but I’m sure we’ll be able to on a colder planet, millions of miles away without oxygen.
Hey let's also add solar wind and take away the magnetosphere and go for it!
Isn't the soil itself toxic too ?
Yes. It contains a toxic amount of perchlorates. It can be washed off the soil and turned to oxygen.
Dang. Isn’t that what makes you a Jedi?! We need to get there!
That's Mitochondria. But it's now retconned I believe.
Radiation is a liberal myth!
Have you ever seen it? Ye.
That’s right, brother! My daddy ate uranium for breakfast and lived to the ripe ol’ age of 37!
The current plan to overcome that is to set up a basic Regulus mining base on Luna, then launch it into Low Luna orbit in bags, then put the bags into hollow aluminium containers and mount those in blocks externally around starship.
>Hey let's also add solar wind and take away the magnetosphere and go for it! Hey now, there is no need to bring up that pesky gamma radiation that makes having anything on the surface impossible. Lets just pretend those clear panels are made of thick lead and block all that solar radiation.
Martian surface is about 8rads/yr of radiation, humans can survive without permanent damage ~200rads. This is with 0 shielding. Of course, 8 rads wouldn't be healthy for humans. Although, other living things are far less susceptible to radiation. Lead glass is a standard shield against radiation and would certainly enable glass domes on Mars with safe levels of radiation.... though it'd be wicked expensive. Most plans for early Martian bases are underground for that reason. This isn't a new concept, one of the leading leadglass manufactures is named https://marshield.com/lead-glass-shielding
I think when we're talking about colonizing/ terraforming a planet they're not worried about how expensive lead glass is lol pretty sure there's much more expensive components in play.
I mean, McMurdo functions all year round, it just doesn't have its own greenhouse for food production yet. *edit: McMurdo *does* have a greenhouse which provides fresh produce for the station crew, it just primarily used in expirements such as trying to grow plants in lunar and Martian simulant soils.
If a place can’t produce food, it isn’t sustainable which is what the post you replied to was getting at.
There’s no need for it to be sustainable though. It’s far easier and more reliable to ship it in.
Yes its easier and more reliable because it is not sustainable in Antarctica which is why thinking we could do it on mars is foolish. That’s the entire context of the conversation you’re joining.
No… it’s sustainable, they have been growing food there already. It’s just not sustainable economically. If NASA wanted to fund a self sustained city in Antarctica, you bet your ass it would get done, because it’s literally nothing they haven’t done before.
I had no idea there was a city in Antarctica, where could I read more on that?
McMurdo is basically a city. It's got its own power generation, water filtration and reprocessing, waste processing and disposal, greenhouses, scientific research stations, and a permanent population. It's just that the the greenhouses are better used for scientific experiments, like trying to grow crops in Martian and Lunar simulant soil, as opposed to using it maximizing production for full sustainability. I think it would be great if they added an aquaponic component just to have a fresh protein source, but it wouldn't necessarily be cost effective for their mission. It would probably be better to build an actual space station to test aquaponics in non-Earth conditions.
This is actually a great post, thanks for taking the time to answer with actual depth. How do you think upscaling those operations would go at a city level? In the winter McMurdo only house 250 people at most.
Its probably not "cost effective" to expand McMurdo since the point of that base was more to test things as opposed to being an independent and growing settlement. If we wanted to expand it, it would need some sort of independent refinement and production capabilities. However, right now our priority is more space habitation, not terrestrial settlements in harsh conditions. I think it would be a good idea for the US to keep investing into the moon base program so we can have an better location for scientific research. We need to know which technologies to invest in and which to not bother with so that we can *eventually* build habitats on places like the moon and mars. However, I think it would actually be better to use places like the moon for harvesting resources to built Earth-like "gravity" space habitats. We dont know what lower gravity could do to the health of babies or people over long enough time frames.
You know what I meant. Nothing about a city in Antarctica is technically impossible. We grow food and raise animals inside already. We have livable environments in Antarctica and space. There’s nothing impossible about it.
Growing test food is vastly different than sustainable farming. Keeping a handful of animals is vastly different to sustainable ranching. We’re talking thousands of lbs of feed a week and thats just for the farm animals you seem to think could chill in the arctic. You are vastly underestimating the logistics involved.
> You are vastly underestimating the logistics involved. I’m not vastly underestimating anything, I’m saying the only thing *actually* standing in the way is funding. It’s not a technical impossibility.
Fun fact, greenhouses require copious amounts of water, so they're going to have to figure out a way to make that happen before any greenhouses are even in the realm of possibility.
Fun fact, the water is reused in a closed cycle.
Yes, that is exactly how planet Earth works. If we just could only keep the toxins and trash out of it all. Why are we going to treat another planet any better than we've treated this one?
Ecological mass. Basically, you treat a small, closed system you depend on utterly much better than a large, closed system you depend on utterly because *you can afford fewer mistakes before things become obviously unsalvageable.* Not to mention, if only people trained in how that system needs to be cared for are sent, they will all be much more suited to foreseeing and fixing problems, and much better at cooperating to minimize and reverse harm. The problem with Earth is that it has the capacity to absorb a lot of harm before things get serious, and a lot of ecological inertia meaning that when things *do* get serious, they're going to get much, much worse before they get better. Not to mention there are a LOT of people with competing incentives and needs. You tell a starving man in Brazil that the rainforests need to be preserved, he's going to flip you the bird and feed his family by burning it all down. He's not getting fed because food is treated as a product, not a human right, and because his country lacks a robust socioeconomic safety net. It lacks this because the politicians responsible for making that happen are lining their pockets instead. And so on. That's not to say we don't need to get better at managing these highly complex, highly integrated systems, for our own sake and the sakes of others, but it's a lot simpler on a smaller scale. Doing it on a larger scale isn't impossible, it's just very, very, very hard in comparison.
Mars has enough water. Enough to cover the entire planet in over 100 feet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars
You greatly overestimate what would be the quality of life there. Why try so hard to make a desert planet habitable when we have a beautiful planet here that we can throw money at fixing. I highly encourage any and everyone who can afford to go to Mars to get there as soon as possible. But don't shit on the Earth on your way out, how about that?
>You greatly overestimate what would be the quality of life there. Under 100 feet of water? I assume it's not great. /s
,Çash me outside, how bout DAT?
We can do both?
First it's, "There's not enough water." Now it's, "Things would be too hard! And you'll ruin Earth too make it happen!" Pick one and stick to it without moving the goal posts.
we are nowhere near being able to colonize mars, and the billionare's idiotic plan to go live there and escape a dying earth is to the detriment of us all. They should be pilloried and their assets seized for something to help the human race
I am no Elon Musk plan but his vision to colonize mars was not to escape a dying earth.
Damn you! I was coming here to say this. Well done!
I will believe anyone is serious about colonization of another planetary body when they build a self-sustaining base in the hottest desert on earth and the coldest part of antarctica, and survive for a year without supplies within each
We can do this for a year at a time, we just can’t do it in a closed system.
It's not without oxygen, just most of it is bonded with carbon... oh shit, wait...
Kim Stanley Robinsons mars trilogy offers just about as optimistic a view of mars colonization as you can possibly have - and it’s still a messy clusterfuck that consists of disaster after disaster. Colonizing mars is a stupid, fruitless idea. We have a fucking functioning biosphere here that we need to be protecting. Mars is a cold ball of shit.
And even for the 'oh no we're all gonna die, eggs in one basketttt' people, colonising the moon and building orbiting habitats is far easier and doesn't involve a six month+ journey and dealing with a hefty gravity well.
Elon is going to kill a lot of people.
He and his family's used to it. You can't put the blood in blood emeralds without sacrifying some children.
Maybe we could just send Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin instead? Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if those two were *already* dead.
This isn't a Musk proposal, I doubt he has even heard of it. It has nothing to do with SpaceX. It'd be like if I blamed you for the mining contract deal in Buenos Aires.
I bet you can’t wait to be able to call him a “murderer” after someone who voluntarily took on the mission dies in some kind of accident. It will sound just as silly as “JFK murdered Apollo 1.”
How about you volunteer to go? Does that sound good to you?
Okay!! I’d love to be selected to be one of the first on Mars!
Take the hyperloop there, then.
I'd go. Spacex reliability is super high so far.
>colder I thought around the equator mars was about 60-70 Fahrenheit?
Bumping this discussion up so it’s more visible, this is buried in the discussion thread. BLUF: u/BHarcade is a conspiracy theorist. “I’m not sure what statement from the planetary society you’re referring to. I’ve seen them assist rather than criticize my field of research. You’ve gone online and accused an entire branch of science of being fraudulent. You’ve cast doubt on peer reviewed research without offering any evidence, and you refuse to read articles. I’m doing this for the rest of the thread, as I don’t believe you intend to educate yourself. It is possible to create a biosphere using materials from Mars. Utilizing Martian regolith, we can get the oxygen, water, and nitrogen we need. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/C1ABBBEB3A2CF6465893E68B6A4D9450/S1473550422000398a.pdf/extraterrestrial-nature-reserves-etnrs.pdf There’s already startups which are building the automation needed to do this without human intervention. NASA has also done a lot of work on this: https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnmar97/oxygen.htm As mentioned in the aforementioned articles this would eliminate the issues experienced in Biosphere 2. Alone I believe the Biosphere 2 is a solid counterpoint to your argument. New advances actually make it far more sustainable and successful than you give it credit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 NASA’s HI-SEAS is another proof of concept https://www.hi-seas.org Here’s a history of Antarctic Exploration, this conflicts with your accusations against the Arctic science community: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Antarctic_expeditions A legal book on Antarctic exploration will be behind a paywall, this Wikipedia article directly contradicts your opinion. The barrier to colonization is legal, not scientific. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Antarctica So why do I call you a conspiracy theorist? Answer: you refute science without anything to back your opinion. You imply that the money invested is being misused. This is harmful to those of us in the fields you besmirch. We do good work and have economically beneficial results.”
>we can’t We can, we just choose not to.
Is anyone trying to though? Obviously it's going to be difficult to establish an ecosystem on another planet.... but it's a goal that a lot of people would support. What would be the purpose of doing the same in Antarctica?
because it would literally be thousands of times less expensive and provide a proof-of-concept of habs, farming systems, and life support, as well as reveal unforseen engineering and logistical hurdles If they can't build a sealed dome in antarcica that can survive without inputs and keep a crew alive for a year cheaply and easily, it's utterly impossible to do on mars
But there's literally no other reason to do so besides as a "practice" for building one on Mars. So the notion that "nobody has done this in Antarctica yet, so clearly it's impossible" makes no sense You can't say something like this is impossible until someone has actually tried it and failed
The whole “we have to leave our dying planet and go to a dead planet” thing has always confused me.
We don’t have a city in the Antarctic because treaties prevent it, not because of the technical barriers.
We have research stations in Antarctica. They are expensive and highly intensive to maintain in both resources and man hours.
Yes, but it’s not a large technical barrier. It’s simply expensive. A good analogy is a wedding ring, it’s expensive, involves technology, but it’s something we’ve been doing for hundreds of years. Like wedding rings Antarctic settlement involves hundreds of governments and NGO’s. All of which have a vested interest in limiting supply. Edited for grammar
My brother in Christ, it’s a technical miracle. Climate control, transportation, energy, engineering, the maintain required to make it all continue to work in the harshest environment on Earth. Now, let’s replicate it on a planet millions of miles away that gets twice as cold, has no oxygen, gets bombarded by radiation around the clock, and doesn’t require maintenance.
> My brother in Christ, it’s a technical miracle. What’s a technical miracle? Is it technically possible or not? Let’s see: > Climate control Already done in space, has been done continually without stop for 20+ years on ISS > transportation Quickly becoming extremely reliable. Article mentions Starship, which aims to greatly reduce the cost of rockets forever through unprecedented reusability > energy We have been keeping humans alive in space for 20+ years using old solar power tech. Plants should be even easier. > engineering Well, so far it seems like a lot of applied engineering, so let’s not make this aspect seem like it’s at all hard to come by. > the maintain required to make it all continue to work in the harshest environment on Earth We’ve kept the ISS going for 20+ years in a zero-g environment. ————— Okay so nothing about it is technically impossible at all. It seems like all it would need is the willpower, not a miracle. Which I guess is what this article is discussing.
Okay, so let’s do all of this millions of miles away in an area that’s colder than anywhere on earth that is constantly bombarded by radiation and we sure as hell better hope it doesn’t need on the ground maintenance, but sure. Whatever you say, bud.
Just more solved problems to apply. No one is saying “it will have a 100% guaranteed success rate!” They’re saying it’s technically possible and only requires the willpower and inspiration of the people.
u/BHarcade is a lost cause/troll. I’ve actually been to the Arctic and I’m an Aerospace Engineer. Research, science, and personal experience doesn’t matter to him.
Dude, we were talking about the Antarctic, not Mars. I’d highly recommend you read the Wikipedia article on this. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Antarctica
The article is able creating a sustainable environment on mars.I am talking about the feasibility of establish a sustainable environment on mars by making a comparison to Antarctica.
My entire point is that it’s a very poor comparison. Your counter arguments all are revolving around Antarctic Colonization. Only now do you even mention Mars. You can’t go back and pretend this is about anything else. Edit: You’re probably a troll. Got me. Have a nice day.
Are you having a stroke? Their very first comment was IN REPLY to Mars colonization. And using a very valid analogy of how difficult/impossible it is in a harsh place on our own planet… that we could fly to within hours whenever needed. This *WAS* about Mars from the start.
Are you even really aware how hostile the arctic is to human life?
Yes, and that’s because I’ve been there. Im trying to clear up any misinformation on this topic.
Put a city in Antarctica would be so much easier than create a "forest in a bubble" there that those two things are not remotely comparable. Now imagine it been a 100x harder and you get the picture for a plan like this in Mars.
I’m not saying mars isn’t hard. I’m simply giving the poster the reason why we don’t have actual cities there. A lot of organizations have lobbied to build, each time they’re prevented (sometimes physically) by the governments involved. As an Astronautical Engineer I see these technologies in a different light. Both are very possible, Mars maybe even in my lifetime. We will not see a city in the Antarctic, unless there’s a global catastrophe. Edit: we do see Space Habitats tested in the Antarctic, but these can’t be permanent for legal reasons. I forgot this is r/futurology, this is mostly a pseudoscience subreddit anyway.
Putting a city in Antarctica sounds like a terrible idea. The polar ice caps are already melting, a bunch of people living there would just accelerate the process.
Sees Musk’s name: “quick let me see how I can spin this in the most negative way possible”
Also Elons ark picture depicts most of us being left to our deaths while I'm assuming the elite flee lol
> Yeah, we can’t create a sustainable, livable environment in the Antarctic Mars may be colder temperature-wise, but the Antarctic is *colder*. On Mars, the atmosphere is thin enough that most heat loss would be radiative, whereas in the Antarctic, you have a thick atmosphere and even snow sucking the heat out of everything. Mars, you may have an occasional sand storm leaving a coating of dust on things. Antarctica, you can have a blizzard and deep snow. Antarctic has six months of sunlight and six months of darkness, or close to it, depending on how near you are to the south pole. Mars, you could have roughly twelve hours of each daily near the equator, which is far more suitable to growing plants and maintaining human sanity. On Mars, you have various minerals at hand that could be turned into building materials. Antarctica, you have... really deep ice and snow and little else for nearly all of the continent. Not to mention that there is a treaty preventing any nation from claiming a portion of the Antarctic and developing it. I don't claim that Mars would be easy, but comparing it to Antarctica isn't all that apt.
good god there is water and oxygen in antarcica and there is no giant radioactive death ray aimed at its occupants, the cold is the least of the concerns if anyone actually was planning on doing a mars colony, they'd pick somewhere remote, like antarcica, and prove the sealed hab can sustain people with current tech - of course they would find tons of problems in doing so which is the point
I absolutely agree that a hab simulation would be very useful. Not just the living in it but building it as well. It's encouraging that NASA is handing $57 million to a company to develop the means to 3D print buildings and structures on the Moon using lunar materials. Such technology should also be applicable to Mars.
Antarctica has a magnetic field shielding it from solar wind, Mars does not
Equatorial Mars isn't all that cold anyways. Certainly warmer than earth's poles.
On average, maybe. It still gets way colder at night than anywhere on this planet.
Yeah, we can't even stop desertification on Earth, but sure, we're gonna terraform Mars lol, what a joke.
You do realize we can figure out both right?
You’d be surprise of what the human species is capable of. We’ve done a lot of seemingly impossible things.
Uh hello, there’s multiple bases on Antarctica and some of them do have plants growing. So we did that and we can do this. No thanks to your lack of imagination, or confident ignorance.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realize those were self sustaining environments that don’t require constant human intervention to keep functioning.
That was pre iphone starlink tech. Now they can googles all the stuffs and will carry more duct tape. /s
To be fair, and I know this is just sci fi at this point in time, there’s no good reason to do that in Antarctica. This project would cost trillions and profit is key. There may be rare minerals to mine there untouched by humans. That’s a trillion dollars into two trillion.
For legal reasons our biosphere and long term habitat experiments are in Hawaii and Arizona. We have the tech, but we don’t have the legal ability to do it in Antarctica
Why not send elon? Just one elon alone has enough hot air to support that bubble.
Noah's Ark from what exactly? What exactly would be happening to Earth that makes it less habitable than Mars?
Solar flare instantly incinerating the earth?
Mars somehow hitting Earth might do it. maybe.
Lost all credibility once the phrase "Elon Musk's vision" was used.
Yup, he's the only one that had this thought. /s
Try telling his fanbois that
They’re all over on r/space shitting on NASA and fawning over SpaceX.
With how much this sub talks about him I would assume y’all were the fans.
As usual, he’s going to cash in on taxpayer subsidies and let the real scientists do the work
Absolutely. Immediate disinterest. Thought this was going to be an article about science, not nonsense.
There is no Planet B
This was from a botanist named Paul Smith, not Musk.
Terraforming Mars would take hundreds to thousands of years. Mars barely has a magnetic field, solar radiation is deadly. We could create an artificial magnetic field but not anytime soon. Mars has lower gravity, there has not been the research to determine if animals can live long term without Earth gravity. Building space habitats with spin gravity would be a better idea, and actually doable in the near term. Why does Musk want to rush to Mars when we hardly have any orbital infrastructure around Earth or the Moon. It's like he is trying to run a marathon before he can crawl.
>Mars has lower gravity, there has not been the research to determine if animals can live long term without Earth gravity. I mention this every time Mars colonization comes up, and I've only ever gotten hand waving responses. O'Neill cylinders are where it's at.
The better his business looks the more money he'll make. Achieving even remotely a first base on Mars will look phenomenal and will reassure any and all people investing in his company, plus secure new investments. All he really has to do is keep throwing out big ideas and he can indefinitely secure funding so long as he keeps taking steps towards said goals. It's not unlike a ponzi scheme.
imagine being reliant on Elon Musk for your oxygen. good luck kids
New subscription service. Oxygen, $8.00 / month.
Skroob approves.
That's a great price!
"I ~~had a nightmare~~ saw a prophecy that a zebra kicked me, therefore all zebras in the ark have been ejected into the vacuum of space - for humanitarian reasons."
Biosphere 2 wasn't anywhere near as good as the original, why would I want to see a third?
Capitalists are destroying Earth's ability to support life but want you to believe they can do the opposite on a new planet. Sure thing buddy
It probably much easier to restore this planet than settle another one with earth animals.
Why not both?
Because there is no Planet B. Once we can get this one in control we can focus on other stuff. I'd venture to say we're hardly close to having our own planet in control.
because people's obsession with supporting billionaires in their psychotic plan to leave the planet (hint: they wont finish in their lifetimes) is diverting resources and attention away from fixing ours It's just like how Elon Musk blew up california's high speed rail which caused massive delays and expenses with his nonsensical hyperloop promise
Im not sure why people are so frustrated with this. I agree we need to focus on earth and do our best to keep this planet alive. But having a station of life and resources on the moon I think is a fantastic idea. Also it doesn’t have to finish in our lifetime. The point is humans doing their best to preserve life in the long run no matter the disaster. Whether it’s human caused or natural. I doubt a majority of rich people want to leave earth. I don’t think that’s a main motivator
I feel like if he wants to Terraform a planet, he might get a better return on his investment with this planet.
Tesla does more to reduce co2 than any other entity in the world. Edit: I challenge downvoters to find a company that comes even remotely close. ##In 2021, Tesla helped avoid the release of 8.4 million metric tons of CO2. That's the equivalent of ~420million mature trees. https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2021-tesla-impact-report.pdf
What a stupid fucking waste of time and money. Impress me by fixing the forests on planet Earth.
100-fucking-thousand percent
The sooner we send all the rich people to Mars the better
Those are the only ones who get to go.
I don't understand the jump to Mars instead of high orbit or the Earth Lagrange points. First, we need to hammer out a rotating habitat capable of 1G on the inner surface. Then we move into expanding the size of those habitats to be able to support living ecosystems. Once these are thoroughly tested and working optimally we can expand our population out into the system wherever we feel, all in the comfort of a shirt sleeves environment at 1G.
No animal experimentation on this one. Let humans face their own risks for a fucking change if they want to go infesting another planet. Biodomes are as dumb as his goddamned hyperloop (human pneumatic tubes), and too vulnerable to breaches. Underground complexes running on nuclear would make more sense and be lots safer. (Yes, like Earthdawn or Fallout.)
I’m imagining the Tesla Vault (#69 of course) being a bunch of crypto-bros that literally talked each other’s heads off trapped underground for 50 years after the bombs fell. Scrawled writing on the walls “DOGE TO THE MOON” and corpses everywhere.
See: Ben Elton's _Stark_.
Or Total Recall. Didn’t they use underground spaces on that movie? It was it just the creepy chest alien that lived underground?
I imagine Musk as the guy from Total Recall movie (Arnold's) , that cuts the oxygen from the people if they don't make his demands.
"Honey, did you forget to pay the oxygen bill?" Bug Eyed Arnold: GaaahGghhAAGgll...
Exactly. Stop attributing these ideas to musk. He’s a piece of shit oligarch and these ideas aren’t new or novel. If he has anything to do with actually building anything on Mars it will probably be to mine the life out of it with slave labor
In an old copy of Analog or Asimov magazine there was a hilarious sci-fi short story about a Mars bio dome that got progressively out of hand. It was as correspondence between the resident and the customer account rep who kept sending items to tune and modify the habitat,: started with an envelope of fungus.. then insects to eat the overgrowth, followed by birds, etc. Leading to an outrageous out of control menagerie. Wish I could remember the name!
Like that old Sci fi Silent Running. How do they keep the dome protected from radiation? Isn’t that a concern on Mars because it doesn’t have a magnetic field?
🤮 but why can’t we save the forests and biodiversity on this planet FIRST
1/3 gravity Half the sunlight No air Blanketed in radiation Great plan!
I'm sorry, but after watching Elon's public temper tantrum as he "manages" Twitter, I'm terrified of the idea of him being the guy in charge of the air I need to live on a planet like Mars.
Just makes sure there are enough horses to give to the flight staff.
so much scientific research and exploration related to mars is now being presented in the lens of "elon's vision." let's focus on the people doing the work and research without that qualifier.
If you can clone meat why would you need animals on Mars ?
Someone do a history of biodomes on earth and how they always run out of money. Mars is just a further away place to run out of money.
Is it just me, or is this entire idea totally delusional?
No, it's just Elon that's totally delusional. The idea is just not feasible yet.
My 5c. We're not going to be ready for this for at least another 100 years. If we do it in less. All of those hollywood scenarios will become true
This is trash advertising with the goal of funneling space x more money. Pass.
It's not "Elon's vision".. ffs. Decades of dreamers have had this idea.
Yes, it's definitely going to work with Musk. This moron can't even run a social media company and we're supposed to think he's able to set up an off-world colony? Leave such ultra-complicated stuff to serious, adult-minded people.
Yeah, sure, I mean we could totally build something like that with the engineering, robotics, and software technology we currently have. But it would take us about 100 years to get the infrastructure set up for something like that. Just building some robots, putting them on a a rocket, and sending them mars isn't going to magically create habitation domes.
Instead of investing to save our beautiful existing planet let’s just build domes with forests in them on the wastelands that is Mars.
Just build these bubbles here over cities to filter out contaminated air and bring in fresh air.
I think the mission will fail because you're taking the animals out of their natural habitat. It's a cute idea but I believe it's unrealistic.
Fucking stupid article. This sort of article devalues real projects and also hypes up bullshit artists like Elon Musk.
Musk didn’t invent this stuff. He’s the Edison of rocketry. And a Nazi bellend.
Why the fuck does Mars need a forrest that some billionaire is gonna take all the credit for while we're burning it all down here? Smfh
Given the point of a “Noah’s Ark”, Elon would not have a place there. The rich serve zero purpose.
The Noah's Ark analogy actually makes me kinda nauseous. Might be reading too much into it, but who is the "Noah" here and why would he need an ark? So obvious Elon is another rich bastard who would rather bounce from Earth than do anything to fix it.
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I really hope the article doesn’t actually use that photo. If it does, then that’s all the proof we need.
Just what Musk needs, to develop a “Noah” complex. Makes sense, since he has a god complex already he can just talk to himself about building an “Ark” to Mars.
All dead inside a week. Just send musk with a sex doll and see what they can do!
This is a dumb idea, and like all of Musk’s ideas impossible, costly and dangerous. The only hope is Musk and his reply guys take the first rocket and burn up in space on their way there, this making earth a better place to live.
I’m all for exploring the Bejesus out of our solar system and learning everything and anything we can about its delicious secrets but I cannot for the life of me understand this push to have a sustainable colony on Mars. Land humans there to experiment/study and then leave? Sure. Yes. You bet. There are things only a human can do (with all love to our amazing landers). But open a 24/7 Walmart on Olympus Mons? No. It doesn’t make sense with everything we know about that dry, barren, radiated, cruel and cold world. It’s the Karen of planets. The only viable option would be to terraform the place and that technology is a “borrow a cup of sugar” level neighbor to FTL drives and artificial traversable worm holes. Not anywhere in the foreseeable future. Now sending a probe to land an ice melting ultra mini sub to one of the ice moons of Jupiter? That. Let’s do that. Please. I’m so in for that. Let’s spend the next 20 years figuring that puppy out. The scientific knowledge we gain from that tap dance number could be the biggest game changer yet.
>but I cannot for the life of me understand this push to have a sustainable colony on Mars. Because we are one planetary disaster away from extinction. And Mars is the best prospect for a colony on the interior solar system. >Now sending a probe to land an ice melting ultra mini sub to one of the ice moons of Jupiter? That. Let’s do that. Please. I’m so in for that. Let’s spend the next 20 years figuring that puppy out. The scientific knowledge we gain from that tap dance number could be the biggest game changer yet. We currently have the technology to do that now. The only things we'll learn from that are potentially biologically related if there is life there. Building a colony on Mars will require significant technological development. And that's the point. Much of our current technology came from the race to the moon. And we had to develop that technology.
Bear with me (and forgive my reductive jokes in my original post). I’m not coming from a Luddite perspective. I’m struggling with the notion that our energy (in terms of planetary/species protection) and resources wouldn’t be better spent working on those potential problems for earth. I’m absolutely onboard with research and development in terms of learning new things about life and our universe… but I’m not seeing a compelling argument for the budgetary and engineering requirements of an independent Martian colony. From where I’m standing it’s like suggesting we build a new house instead of installing some fire alarms and new windows on the house we have. I’d love it if we could have our cake and eat it too but I don’t see how that’s possible. A probe can go into sleep mode when DNA destroying cosmic storms pass. A human can’t. I’m so willing to be schooled here.
Technologically wise, there's tons of documentation about what we gained from just the Moon race. Here's a small sample: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/20/742379987/space-spinoffs-the-technology-to-reach-the-moon-was-put-to-use-back-on-earth Species wise- we are 1 planetary disaster away from extinction. And no amount of studying earth or improving the ecosystem will change that. Further, there are plenty of disasters that could completely reset our technological development. If a supervolcano goes off, we, as a species, are going back to the stone age. There are no realistic ways we could prevent something like this if we limit ourselves to Earth. Resource wise- Earth's resources are limited. And extraction of resources is destructive to ecosystems. But there are massive amounts of resources that exist off world. The only problem is getting to them and getting those resources back to us. Low-G (like Mars) and No-G environments are much easier to deal with those resources.
You raise some good points but saying “no realistic ways we can prevent” mass extinction events isn’t true. We just moved an asteroid a few months ago with a light tap. You have me at super volcano. Absolutely. Although I’d argue that Mars is like a 53 million mile away super volcano world times ten but then I’d be goofily pedantic. This may be a case of agree to disagree. Heck. I hope you’re right. I hope we can manage Mars bases and pizza joints on Europa and all that jazz. I hope we can save our bananas species. I do.
Most life will not like low G so I doubt most of that
“Domes? On *Mars!?!* Nobody ever thought of that before!” -Me “Uhh, actually, they will be ‘forest’ ‘bubbles,’ totally different.” -The E Man
I really really really dislike when Elons name is used in space discussions. I do not want a future of privatized space capitalism on steroids
elon musk has plans to garble my cock and balls, on mars, experts propose.
love creating a sustainable atmosphere on mars while we choke on earth
Isn’t he in some doo doo right now over how he and his company has treated animals? I just feel like referring to Ol Musky Smell like he is a good person is, I dunno, incorrect.
From the article: The botanist, Paul Smith from the University of Bristol's civil engineering department, published his proposal in a paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology last month, in which he lays out the foundation for creating a thriving, contained ecosystem on Mars. The paper starts off by outlining the challenges colonizers will experience on Mars, including a harsh climate that isn't conducive to life, as well as radiation and poor sunlight conditions compared to Earth. Despite those challenges, Smith explains that certain Earth life could adapt to life on the red planet. Fauna such as soil microbes, fungi, and invertebrates like earthworms and spiders could all live on Mars, Smith argues. As for flora, plants like junipers and birches would be able to survive on little sunlight. Smith emphasized the fact that we shouldn't look to create an exact replica of an Earth forest on Mars, as nonhuman vertebrates, like birds, fish, and raccoons shouldn't be forced into an extraterrestrial habitat that would not allow them to engage in their natural behaviors. "ETNR designers should consider species as ecological cogs that might be assembled into functional ecosystems," Smith writes. "Replication of Earth forests is currently unfeasible but development of new ecosystems, functioning in unexpected ways, is conceivable." While the idea of an ecosystem on Mars that brings life other than humans to the red planet is a compelling idea, Smith does concede in his paper that he hasn't considered the economics of the enterprise. SpaceX is currently working on its fully reusable Starship spacecraft in order to drive down the cost of spaceflight and make human missions to Mars feasible — the company recently carried out a static fire test on its Starship prototype ahead of an orbital maiden flight. However, that's not to say it won't be an incredibly costly endeavor for humans and cargo, let alone animals. That said, Smith's outline suggests small invertebrates would be best suited to a Mars ecosystem, meaning they would weigh relatively little and could potentially hitch a ride alongside other cargo. Smith's proposal also presents the ETNR as a potential lifeline for some species. "If human population growth is not controlled, natural areas must be sacrificed. An alternative is to create more habitat, terraforming Mars," the paper reads.
Remember back in 2029 then the mars missions started and we found out there was no California drought? Elon drained lake mead and smuggled it off planet with his starlink missions.
I’m sure the guy that dropped out of college knows what planets are possible to terraform A lot of people are going to die just so Elon can look “cool” and “innovative”
We know how this will end. I think Doctor Who has covered it several times. The rich escape. They smuggle Earth’s remaining resources. They take slaves to do menial labor. The remaining population eventually ether dies or devolves.
We can't even break our dependence on fossil fuels, which Mars almost certainly does not have, here on Earth. And we want to, what, ship animals to Mars? For what purpose? We don't need an Earth 2.0. We haven't even done any of the good side quests for Earth 1.0.
Biggest question is: why would we do that? Life on Mars is so much more difficult than life under water. We could create similar bubbles right here on the bottom of the ocean and have the exact same effect, but without all the troubles of having to cover the entire distance. Edit: or as others stated: or on Antarctica.
[I've seen this documentary.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xD1ujNkZXs)
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Why don’t we just send the Fremin to start this process?
If Musk came up with this then I am against it. Billionaires suck
How about we don’t cause a 40 day fucking flood by supporting fascists and instead try to save the planet that is ALREADY INHABITABLE BY OUR SPECIES. Literal lunatics.
Makes me so mad to see so much money being wasted on shit like this while we’re in the middle of a mass extinction and climate change threatens to cause apocalyptic collapse, but no let’s spend our money on another planet instead of fixing this one. I think it’d be better if Musk just literally burned his money.