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[GreatWyrmGold]

If you insist on using solar panels on Mars, dust might get in the way. But you could, you know, send someone out with a broom or something.

Seeing as he was suggesting that we make energy on Mars and beam it out--and this would somehoe be better than using it locally--that point is a bit moot.

Okay, I guess a really big asteroid would do the trick. On big enough to melt the whole surface. But I think it's easier to have a anti-asteroid system than to settle Mars, and a Fondation at this point would be moot, as there would be no-one to recover your knowledge anyway.

Face? Meet palm.
What about major wars? Those things I kept bringing up? You know what Albert Einstein said about World Wars III and IV, right? Fun fact: There are still people to fight WWIV with. Those people would be plenty alive.

GreatWyrmGold, the problem is that there is nothing the threaten civilization on Earth that you cannot protect yourself from by digging deep. So yeah, staying on Earth would mean you won't be protected from whatever is happening on Earth. But given the fact that Mars or the Moon are irradiated wasteland without an athmosphere, if you can survive that you can survive whatever is going to happen on Earth.*

Sigh. I guess that you're just a foolish optimist who doubtlessly sees me as a stupid pessimist. Can we agree to disagree (and then possibly have the people who don't think that the subject of this thread is worth talking about leave)?

In terms of technology, space stations (semi autonomous, I guess), are harder than Mars colony (which can technically be autonomous).

In terms of technology we already have every piece of technology we'd need for a space station while Martian colonies would require a lot of new stuff.  The needs for a station are actually pretty easy:
-snip-
The most advanced thing in this list is solar panels and we'e had them for forty years.  The only thing stopping us is the massive up front investment.

What else would we need for Mars? It's like space, but with gravity, minerals, and a trace atmosphere.

2. I highly doubt anyone would try to evict an NGO which worked hard to set up a home on Luna or Mars and didn't cause trouble, especially since no one has claimed either of those worlds.

2. Internation Space law: Any partaking country (Ie, pretty much anyone) is responsible for anything that it's citizens/NGO's/coorporations do in space. I also believe that claiming planetary bodies is illegal.

How do multinationals count, and what if they don't actually claim the body in question?

Headquarter location, ie where they pay their taxes, and the country which legalisation they are supposed to follow. Also, a nation is responsible for everything it's citizens/organisations do even if they don't claim anything. If they drop a sattelite on someone's house, the compagny (or the governement) has to pay. Also, you don't get to keep the sattelite. All launched objects remain property of their original owner.

Good to know. Also gives a bit of legal precedence for getting to keep a colony one makes. Remember, the colony does not lay claims on anything past its own borders.

Oh? How do you get enough food? (Hypothetically, you could use the same sort of greenhouses I've been proposing for Lunar or Martian colonies, but space on a cruise ship is MUCH more limited. Related:) Where will you put everything and -one? How will you get resources to make new clothes, books, whatever when the old ones wear out? What will you do, bereft of any kind of mineral or other resource, many of which are so common on Mars, when something inevitably breaks?

You have pretty much unlimited space around you in the form of ocean.  Making a floating greenhouse isn't all that difficult.

...Even pretending that the ocean's surface is worthless for all causes at the moment and ignoring political consequences, weather alone will cause more problems than Luna's environment ever will (assuming a good standard of construction for the colony). And the ocean surface is pretty important for, you know, phytoplankton and such...ever hear of it? Base of the marine food chain, produces 50% of oxygen on the planet? A single greenhouse might not impact it much, but there would be impact, meaning that it's not "unlimited."

Solar storms are freaky, if unlikely. Normal storms are evadable, and usually not that bad. A good modular,flexible colony should be able to weather them without problems. People inside will get sick, probably. (Actually, it depends. If the entire thing weights enough, it might just ignore the waves at all. Same reason why a modern Cruise ship doesn't experience waves that much, but a small fisherboat would be thrown over immediatly.)

1. Solar storms are in fact bad, but deserve classification under "Radiation" rather than "Weather," because they're just radiation. Radiation, and waves of ionized plasma.
2. Normal storms? No problem. Big storms? Problem. Especially given that global climate change seems to be making worse oceanic storms...All depends on the design. If you're really scared of storms, you can even have  sinkable habitat that takes shelter below the sea.

1. Meh, still not really weather.
2. More complexity, more cost. At what point do the shrinking extra costs of space colonies finally stop making their net benefits worth it? (Also, unless you're in really deep water or have a thin habitat, you'll still have problems from storms.)

Also, since you're going to be eating that plankton, and encouraging it's growth, you'd end up increasing the amount of carbon fixated. Provided you let enough plankton live, and open up enough space for fishes, you can expand quite far.

...How would the growth of plankton be increased?
How do you increase the growth of plants? Give them nutrients / food. In the ocean's case, probably iron and other minerals. You're going to get it back in food anyway, so after the initial investement everything should be alright.

How the heck do you get all the iron?

Getting resources on the ocean is pretty irrelevant since you were talking about the limits of space.

So? You'll still need resources once on-site. Are you going to ship steel and plastic to your greenhouse

Bioplastics?

Expand and explain, please.
You got algea. And biological compounds. This, with some basic advanced chemistry and other stuff allows you to create a wide range of carbon based plastics that can be used for most of what you need. Since the main ingredients are carbon, water and energy, a supply shortage is unlikely.

I see.

I was just pointing out the absurdly bad return on investment of colonizing mars for land area, for a fraction of the cost of making people live in cramped conditions on mars you could make them live in luxury on the ocean.  And we haven't even filled up very attractive landmasses like New Jersey yet.

"Live in luxury?" I doubt it. Not unless you want to spend more resources, which you could by the way also spend to make the Lunar colony more spacious. And Earth's surface is a lot more useful than Luna's or Mars's.

Launchcosts alone justify the earlier statement.

Yes, it costs more. Guess what? It also offers more of the benefits which I was talking about.
Not really. The only "large" benefit you've been talking about would be being away from Earth. Far away from any help your colony might need should anything go wrong. And besides, since your plan requires mass space transport to work, that "advantage" will have been lost before the colony can be founded. Any kind of disaster and Mars is going down with the Earth, or at least being severly troubled by refugees/collateral damage.

1. In case of emergency? Help's not on the way no matter if you're in the Andromeda galaxy or NYC.
2. You keep proposing solutions to problems involving clever engineering...which won't be cheap and which will increase the amount of times this breaks down.
3. Why the heck would Earth's fall bring down a self-sufficient colony?
4. As noted, the entire main point I've been bringing this Mars--or Lunar--colony is only particularly help-up by that distance. STOP BRINGING UP "ALTERNATIVES" WHICH DON'T SOLVE THE SAME PROBLEM.

Oh, so you want to save human knowledge, fondation-style? Well, send computers in orbit. There, no need for a colony, and it's way cheaper.

That's a technicality and only lasts as long as the computers (a couple decades at most). Besides, knowledge is useless without humans to know it...and, um, this isn't the first time I mentioned this.
Might as well inscribe some pictures on golden plates and shoot them into space. Those'll probably last way longer.

Still doesn't solve the actual problem! STOP BRINGING UP THESE NON-SOLUTION ALTERNATIVES!

2) Even if you decide you want self-sustaining librarians with your library, I still do'nt see why Alaska wouldn't be a better choice than Luna or Mars. Just buy the damn mining right, it's not like the US government is preventing any mining in Alaska.

Guess what? You're still vulnerable to every-freaking-thing that affects Earth! WHICH IS EVERYTHING I'M SUGGESTING MAKING A FREAKING LUNAR COLONY FOR! IF YOU OFFER ALTERNATIVES, MAKE SURE THEY ARE ACTUALLY ACHIEVING THE SAME GOALS!
Point above. By the time the colony is a technical viability, it's no longer really usefull. Or at least the isolation will no longer be the major advantage. Prevention is much better than trying to fix what's broken.

Guess what? I'm all for prevention. I'm also interested in backups before it's too late.

If asteroid mining become a reality, will companies pay royalties? Who will they be paid to? The UN? It'd be nice to have royalties use to fund up all those causes that developing countries need to beg or all the time.

That would be nice. Doubtful, but nice.
Currently a leading issue in space Law actually. Nobody has decided yet who owns the spacerocks.

Oh. Oh well.

Just going to restate that all evidence points to the moon being a very large, spherical rock with minimal natural resources.

What, no minerals?

Mars, on the other hand, has copious amounts of liquid water, a carbon dioxide atmosphere, complex geological formations, fertile soil, a day/night cycle similar to that of Earth's (growing plants on the moon would not work because of its 30 day cycle), a relatively high level of deuterium, and large amounts of hematite and almost certainly other metal ores. Out of all these resources food, fuel plastics, building materials, potable water, and possibly geothermal power can be produced. If you take a few chemical reactors, an air pump, and a greenhouse, Mars wouldn't be an insurmountable goal.

...Wow. Suddenly Mars seems like a better option. I change my vote back in the Bay12 Space Program thingy.
You'd need a sealed greenhouse, though. Air pressure still sucks. High enough that you probably won't die of decompression, I think, but that's about it.

Geothermal is unlikey. Or at least, will have a seriously limited power production. Air pressure is way to low for human survival (Really, carbon dioxide athmosphere really doesn't count. For most purposes, it might as well be non existant. It's more of a problem, through weather). Deuterium is mostly worthless. It's tritium or He-3 we're looking for.

There's always solar. And, you know, Martian metals.
 

Fear asteroids?  Mars has no protection against them -- so you'd have to dig massively.  A ring can move out of the way of anything dangerous.

Mars has about the same chance of being struck by an asteroid as Earth--lower gravity, but closer to the asteroid belt. It's still pretty low, especially for anything that affects a single colony.
Asteroid belt has nothing to do with asteroid impact risks. (Besides, the asteroid belt contains mostly planetoids) Also, I doubt your ring can avoid microasteroids. The first thing you see of those is a hole in the hull.

1. That makes the risk of asteroid impacts on Mars lower than on Earth. Thanks.
2. Microasteroids will probably not be too much of an issue. They're less common than you think once you get past Earth and would probably not cause severe damage given halfway adequate defense procedures. After all, you left out the size of the hole.

Want minerals -- either send a ship to shoot the stuff off of a planet (for the massive amounts of material factor) or the more subtle mining.

And how is that better than having all the hematite you want at your feet?
Yeah, you're just incurring double launchcosts. (And shooting planets for minerals is just silly)

...I'm talking about minerals for the colony's purpose. You know, the colony on that planet. How does that cause launch costs?

10 meters of bulk mass should do it.  Or just keep the station inside the earths magnetosphere.  Although there are some idea to make an artificial magnetosphere.

10 meters of bulk mass around a station spinning fast enough to provide 1 g gravity. That thing is going to tear itself apart before you get even a third of the way. As for the Earth's magnetosphere. It isn't perfect. Astronauts get about ten times normal radiation. I believe it's comparable to working in a nuclear plant*. (The inner parts, not the control centrum and other radiation proof areas). Fine for a short time, but living there isn't agreeable.

I believe that working in any nuclear plant which complies with safety standards gives you radiation comparable to living in Denver. (Assuming the power plant is at sea level.) Or I could be confusing that with the radiation leaked out of the plant (nil, by regulations).

In terms of technology we already have every piece of technology we'd need for a space station while Martian colonies would require a lot of new stuff.  The needs for a station are actually pretty easy:
gravity (spin it)
food (grow it)
oxygen (photosynthesize it)
energy (solar panels)
materials (build a catapult on the moon)

The most advanced thing in this list is solar panels and we'e had them for forty years. The only thing stopping us is the massive up front investment.

You seems to consider that all this stuff is "easy" while most of your examples could be the same on Mars (but they're inaccurate, we can't create oxygens from photons, we can't fulfill a human station/colony needs with solar panels, and so on).

Also, except for a scientifc point, a space station would have no point. That's why we have ISS, which is great for astronomic reasons.

Mine oxygen from asteroids. 
Or send the rocks from the moon.  Silicon aluminum and oxygen rich stones, they are.  Yoda speaking I don't know why I am.

Cheaper to just live on the Moon.

-----

Some summary:
1. Would you mind removing any bits of posts that you're not replying to?
2. Could you reply outside quote tags, please?
3. Any alternatives you propose should actually solve the same problems as what they're replacing.
4. Seriously, this is a thread about space colonization. Why are there people who are saying that space colonization can't ever happen, there's no reason for it to happen, etc? That's distracting from the discussion, and guess what? People are already working to colonize space. Where there's a will, there's a will.

[PanH]

Mine oxygen from asteroids. 
Or send the rocks from the moon.  Silicon aluminum and oxygen rich stones, they are.  Yoda speaking I don't know why I am.

Can you explain to me how that would be easier than an Mars based colony (or an moon colony, or an "asteroid" colony) ?

[Sheb]

Well, unless you give me an exemple of something that can threaten a Earth base, yes, I'll consider you as an uninformed pessimist who like space. And war ain't it. Just dig deep enough, keep the location more or less secret. If there is anything that can threaten you, humanity is advanced enough they don't need your help.

[10ebbor10]

Well, unless you give me an exemple of something that can threaten a Earth base, yes, I'll consider you as an uninformed pessimist who like space. And war ain't it. Just dig deep enough, keep the location more or less secret. If there is anything that can threaten you, humanity is advanced enough they don't need your help.

Just to further reinforce this point.

-Asteroid impact: Survivable, and preventable. Especially the large ones. And especially with the tech level we need to build a colony
-Solar flare: Survivable, and a Martian colony will be hit much harder than Earth.
-WWIII: You really think that an off planet colony will be able to maintain neutrality? After all, an offworld location is one of your best assets to break the MAD stalemate
-Gamma ray burst: Just kills everything.

And besides, the requirements for a fully, completely autonomous colony are enormous.

[vadia]

Mine oxygen from asteroids. 
Or send the rocks from the moon.  Silicon aluminum and oxygen rich stones, they are.  Yoda speaking I don't know why I am.

Can you explain to me how that would be easier than an Mars based colony (or an moon colony, or an "asteroid" colony) ?

Sure --1. the energy to go to a whole bunch of asteroids and mine them is much less than landing on Mars.  (the joke among astronomers is that leaving the earth gravity field is the half way point to the rest of the universe.  Mars is probably only about a fourth as bad as the earth, but it's still a lot of fight to leave and return)

2 the energy collected on Mars vs. a full time space station is significant (Mars gets less than half the solar energy that Earth does Mercury gets like 10 times more)  And no energy is expended on cleaning off the solar panels.  (Mars is awfully dusty -- which is a problem with the spirit and opportunity [rovers&  b4 curiosity])

3. More variety of mining [or at least less friction to mess up the travel to mine]  Importantly WATER is much more common in asteroids -- or it may be possible to mine a comet for water.   (This does exclude the poles but according to the wiki article  "When the poles are again exposed to sunlight, the frozen CO2 sublimes, creating enormous winds that sweep off the poles as fast as 400 km/h" -- I don't think that's a smart place to put a station)

4. Once you've gotten it started you can make other things (such as something to mine out the whole of Mars -- which you can't do with a planet without causing instabilities and messing up with gravity (there is virtually no gravity in the middle of the planet because the pull goes in all directions equally)

[vadia]

Well, unless you give me an exemple of something that can threaten a Earth base, yes, I'll consider you as an uninformed pessimist who like space. And war ain't it. Just dig deep enough, keep the location more or less secret. If there is anything that can threaten you, humanity is advanced enough they don't need your help.

Just to further reinforce this point.

-WWIII: You really think that an off planet colony will be able to maintain neutrality? After all, an offworld location is one of your best assets to break the MAD stalemate


And besides, the requirements for a fully, completely autonomous colony are enormous.

A series of space stations can maintain neutrality -- first off they are mobile enough to just leave -- second off -- fighting in a ring in space is suicide.



I DID however realize why a permanent Mars base may become a reality more than any other reason.  It is something the politicians can sell best to their voters.  (or NASA to the politicians).

Because almost all sci fi is set on planets and not orbiting rings the average Kirk thinks of colonizing Mars, not a space ring.

[PanH]

1. So ? Once you're on Mars, you can actually mine it without sending mining robots from Earth/Luna (because well, you can't produce rovers in space). Also, if you want to mine an asteroid, you want that the mined materials get back. I guess it would be tricky in space, but not impossible, although fairly less than a truck on Mars.

2. You can't produce energy for a human colony with solar panels only, be it on Earth, Mars, Space, or whatever (maybe Sun, but that would be geosunny).
And I don't even want to imagine the issues of overproduction of energy in space.

3. That's interesting, but nothing prevents you to sent a mining probe from Luna or Mars either.

4. No you can't. Your space station won't be holding in the space like that. It will be in Earth's orbit (no, it can't cancel gravity forces by spinning on itself). And I don't know why you would want to collapse Mars. We don't mine the whole of Earth because it's costly and not interesting, not because it's unsafe.

Well, unless you give me an exemple of something that can threaten a Earth base, yes, I'll consider you as an uninformed pessimist who like space. And war ain't it. Just dig deep enough, keep the location more or less secret. If there is anything that can threaten you, humanity is advanced enough they don't need your help.

I'm not about a colony for safekeeping humanity. Space colonization will happen, be it only for the mining/expansion of humanity. Planet colonies are just more realistic than space stations.

[vadia]

1. So ? Once you're on Mars, you can actually mine it without sending mining robots from Earth/Luna (because well, you can't produce rovers in space). Also, if you want to mine an asteroid, you want that the mined materials get back. I guess it would be tricky in space, but not impossible, although fairly less than a truck on Mars.

2. You can't produce energy for a human colony with solar panels only, be it on Earth, Mars, Space, or whatever (maybe Sun, but that would be geosunny).
And I don't even want to imagine the issues of overproduction of energy in space.

3. That's interesting, but nothing prevents you to sent a mining probe from Luna or Mars either.

4. No you can't. Your space station won't be holding in the space like that. It will be in Earth's orbit (no, it can't cancel gravity forces by spinning on itself). And I don't know why you would want to collapse Mars. We don't mine the whole of Earth because it's costly and not interesting, not because it's unsafe.

Well, unless you give me an exemple of something that can threaten a Earth base, yes, I'll consider you as an uninformed pessimist who like space. And war ain't it. Just dig deep enough, keep the location more or less secret. If there is anything that can threaten you, humanity is advanced enough they don't need your help.

I'm not about a colony for safekeeping humanity. Space colonization will happen, be it only for the mining/expansion of humanity. Planet colonies are just more realistic than space stations.

1 Why can't you make rovers in space -- you're going to be making everything in space.  And where is this "back" that you are talking about -- you're home -- and the best RV ev--er

2. why can't you fully supply with solar energy -- the rovers do it.  If you need more energy just add more panels -- it's not like there is a limit of space in space.  And if the energy supply is getting too much -- shade some panels.

3 mining probes take up a lot of energy to land -- thus they need fuel and that means bigger ships which means more energy to get out of earth's orbit etc., 

4.  You don't get it -- a space station with angular momentum need not be in orbit around anything.  It can go anywhere and be anywhere -- there may be no point to being at pluto -- but if it saw a point, it would just motor on over.  There is no reason for it to be tethered to the earth it's a mobile home. 
And if the center of Mars is molten metal why shouldn't we mine towards it?  It's not as if it would stay molten when exposed to space -- And even the dirt may have uses (like growing crops if you didn't want to go hydroponic)

[10ebbor10]

1. Let's replace that with: It's quite complicated to make rovers in space. Or even better, it's quite complicated to make rovers. NASA is currently spending several million on a robot that can barely dig into the surface. Making a autonomous mining robot isn't easy. Also, damages occur often, and need to be compensated for. With all this requirements, you quickly come to the conclusion that you need a significant working industry before you can even make enough mining robots to support a beginning small industry. As for where back is, all those minerals are quite useless

2. The rovers have a max speed of 500 meters a day, run out of power frequently(I'll mis you, Spirit) and are screwed every time a dust storm happens. Also shading increases energy absorbtion, so it doesn't help. It just increases overheating. As for why the solar pannels aren't a very good power choice.
        1. Max lifetime of 10 years (Space is a dangerous environement)
        2. Very low energy production. It might be better than on Earth, but you're going to need a lot of pannels to run any significant spacestation.
        3. Orientation mechanics clash with the fact that the station has to rotate. This combined with a large size means that the pannels will suffer severly from centrifugal force. After all, in order to get decent efficiency you have to point your cilinder at the sun, and only use one layer of pannels (any next layer would just be shaded by the first) This means that they have to extend a long way from the station, hence enormous centrifugal force. They'll tear the station apart.
 
3. Hence it's better to land and keep the minerals on the ground, in the base were they can be used immediatly rather than launching them to a central space station.

4. A space station always needs to be in orbit of something. Otherwise it's crashing into something, or wasting ridiculous amounts of energy for maintaining it's position. The only thing angular momentum does is creating artificial gravity and allowing the spacecraft to maintain it's current heading. It doesn't supply any force to negate gravity. (If it did that, It would either need to slow down or be producing infinitive energy)

Also, you seem to be completely unaware of the giant energies required in all of your mining plans. The center of Mars, when you suddenly manage to strip away the entire atmos/ crust and mantel, will still remain liquid for a long time. The outer most layer might solidify, but it will still be hot. In fact, removing the surrounding materials will increase the liquidity, because you lower the pressure and hence the melting point.

I get the idea you have no bloody idea what you're talking about. Really, saying that land based colonies would be to innefficient/costly and then suggesting mining techniques that require enough energy to terraform Mars, Venus and even the moon.


Also, forget about maintain neutrality. There's no way that you can move your massive turning station faster than anything that's shot towards it. Hence, forget about intercepting, as dumb warheads will do the trick. Thirdly, infiltrators. Hack lifesupport, food supplies or whatever and you control the station.

[Morrigi]

...Guys, if solar flares were as bad as you're making them out to be, the ISS and everyone on it would be slightly dead. They're not, and Mars is twice as far from the sun as we are.

[10ebbor10]

...Guys, if solar flares were as bad as you're making them out to be, the ISS and everyone on it would be slightly dead. They're not, and Mars is twice as far from the sun as we are.

...Guys, if radiation was as bad as you're making it out to be, all nuclear plants and everyone around it would be slightly dead. They're not, so enjoy your free plutonium.

Non sarcastic sillyness aside. The ISS is in a very low orbit, hence mostly protected from radiation. Besides, every time a flare could hit the station everyone is evacuated to the emergency reentry pod. (It has thicker walls). . Even then, astronaut radiation intake is quite high. Other, farther out sattelites power down important instruments, or even shut down completely And lastly, it's the risk of a large flare* that counts, not the normal day smaller ones. And lastly, flares become more dangerous the larger you go.

*Worst case scenario is 60% of all power transfomators on Earth totally destroyed. Expecting 6 months - 3 years before power can be restored. Between 10-20 years before the economy completely recovers. (It would be awesome to look at though)

PN: Thanks for remembering me to say that giant solarpannels would also pose a risk for solar flares.

[Morrigi]

Right, so there's no reason a Mars colony couldn't power down important equipment and have a structure covered in a large number of sandbags and/or be underground in case of a solar flare as well as using EMP hardened electronics, of which the U.S. military has spent decades developing.

Also, Martian solar panels are dumb. Poor output, expensive as hell, unreliable due to dust, etc. Chemical, nuclear, and radioisotope power sources are simply better options for anything using a significant amonut of electricity.

[10ebbor10]

Right, so there's no reason a Mars colony couldn't power down important equipment and have a structure covered in a large number of sandbags and/or be underground in case of a solar flare as well as using EMP hardened electronics, of which the U.S. military has spent decades developing.

Also, Martian solar panels are dumb. Poor output, expensive as hell, unreliable due to dust, etc. Chemical, nuclear, and radioisotope power sources are simply better options for anything using a significant amonut of electricity.

Humans tend to have problems when you turn of the lifesupport for prolonged amounts of time.

And yeah, a meter or 2 below ground should solve most problems. It's space stations that have to worry about flares.

((I wonder why you bring them up again. Last time they're were mentioned it was as part of a list of semiapocalyptic events))

[Morrigi]

Solar flares generally don't last much longer than a couple of hours. Reserve air tanks could easily last that long. And I brought it up again because they're... not semi-apocalyptic, just something to prepare for, like everything else when you send anyone on an exploration or research mission anywhere.

[10ebbor10]

Solar flares generally don't last much longer than a couple of hours. Reserve air tanks could easily last that long. And I brought it up again because they're... not semi-apocalyptic, just something to prepare for, like everything else when you send anyone on an exploration or research mission anywhere.

The Carington flare was/could've been , and a geomagnetic storm can last for a few days. Not much of a problem, but you do have to watch out.