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Hell yes!

Yes!

No.

Hell no.

[CaptainArchmage]

You arent thinking like a civil engineer.  The population of the colony will not be static, and the load on the seperator will not be static either.

As population goes up, local resource extraction will go up, number of horticultural labs will have to increase, and rate of nitrogen consumption will rise.

You have to plan for future capacity, not just immediate capacity. You also have to plan equipment service lifecycles, and other things in.

Actually it was factored in, but not part of the point responded to; resource availability would be an issue with mining nitrates but if the original system works, but with extracting nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere if the technology works it isn't too much of an issue unless the agriculture is running to a sufficient level to actually deplete the Martian atmosphere of nitrogen. Which would be an achievement. It's much like the extraction of oxygen from the Earth's atmosphere in the open; unless there's a great deal of pollution in an area it is a non-issue.

The growth labs in this case can be considered to have the atmospheric processing equipment added on, so adding more would naturally require more, just as more colonists will require life support. The question addressed was only whether per lab it would work; in this case the matter of scaling is addressed as long as you can bring or build and power both the farms and nitrogen generators. That is a different matter. However, the Martian atmosphere is available pretty much anywhere on Mars except on the higher elevations. If it were a matter of mining nitrogen, though, that would be different.

Apparently, nitrates are rather hard to detect, and might actually be underground beyond the reach of current probes. This isn't necessarily "too far underground".

If the atmospheric extraction of nitrogen works the scale would need to take into account the expected colony size with a margin for error, as well as the demand for food.

This is also a non-issue in the cases of the experiment, as long as the technology works (and even if it does not, because of the backup nitrous oxide system), as the experiment is expected to run for a relatively short period of time.

Edit: For Mars One, they will go for the nitrogen from the atmosphere method. This is probably the best for the reasons given. Yes, the power availability may be limited, but the system will be run unmanned long before humans get there. Having a system to extract nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere on a greenhouse experiment, even if it only provides a small amount of the total, is an important step to getting that to work. http://www.mars-one.com/technology/life-support-unit

They'll need a sufficient number of solar panels. Then, solar panels worked for the robots equipped with them; robots have formed most of the Martian population so far. The solar-powered Opportunity rover is still roving nearly 11 Earth-years on despite only being intended to last 90 Martian days.

[~Neri]

I have a lil paranoia about food grown on mars due to that doctor who episode.

[CaptainArchmage]

I have a lil paranoia about food grown on mars due to that doctor who episode.

Alright, now this one's really important, because it deals with "back contamination". The experiment deals with "forward contamination" because it uses HEPA filters for the air intakes and outlets, which prevent most bacteria and viruses from getting out. The same filters would have a similar effectiveness preventing biological material from Mars getting inside, unless the Martian biological material happened to be smaller in size.

The mission doesn't use water from Mars - this is just imported, for the sake of reducing risks of things going wrong. However, there are other experiments on this lander intended to extract water and it is possible an arrangement could be made after payload selection to send some water to this payload. It would be expected this water would undergo the same kind of filtering.

[FearfulJesuit]

The real problem with Mars isn't resources; it's energy. Workable fusion reactors would render many of these problems moot.

As for nitrogen, some of it can be imported. It might be worth our time to try and colonize one of the Jovian moons instead. You need nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and carbon to get an ecosystem going, plus a bit of phosphorous and sulfur; Ganymede and Europa have plenty of water, dry ice is everywhere on Callisto, ammonia ice is fairly common, sulfur is found on most of Jupiter's moons (Io especially), and phosphorous is usually relatively easy to get from rocks. It's much easier to zip from moon to moon than from Mars to the rest of the solar system, too, because they have weak gravity wells, and you can use other moons or even Jupiter for a gravity assist.

Don't forget radiation, either. Mars is a walking cancer factory, but the background radiation on Callisto is only a seventh that of Earth's, and would be a non-issue. Europa has about eight thousand times Earth's background radiation-not good- while Ganymede isn't pleasant either.

Again, all of this requires huge amounts of energy, but once you have workable fusion, that's really moot. The real question is: what is there on Mars, or on the Jovian moons, or Titan, or anywhere, that's economically viable?

[wierd]

A shallow gravity well, access to a terrestrial surface rich in useful metals and fuel sources in one spot,  and an uncomplicated local orbital neighborhood.

[CaptainArchmage]

A shallow gravity well, access to a terrestrial surface rich in useful metals and fuel sources in one spot,  and an uncomplicated local orbital neighborhood.

This. Actually the Martian moons would be interesting places to be too. There's also: A new place to live, that's an asset in itself.

Before you consider importing a large amount of air, consider how much you will end up from terraforming and how much is available on the site. Nitrates underneath the northern plains for example - more science needs to be done to determine how deep they are. "Beyond the reach of existing probes" could mean a meter or two if no probes have dug that deep.

Thus far: 57.1% of people said "Hell Yes!" to eating Martian food.

[wierd]

Why not? As long as the constituent atoms are not radioactive, there cannot possibly be any sensible reason to not eat the food. It would be identical to food grown on earth.

[CaptainArchmage]

Why not? As long as the constituent atoms are not radioactive, there cannot possibly be any sensible reason to not eat the food. It would be identical to food grown on earth.

Based on the comments, I believe some might have been concerned the lettuce would be contaminated with Martian life. This should be dealt with using the filters.

If Martian life were identified inside the water supply you'd probably want to do some science too.

Edit: And Happy New Year to Bay12!

[wierd]

More than likely, the environment inside the growth chamber would be so hot (to what the native flora are evolved for) that it would kill them quite effectively as is.  Then you have the difference in metabolites the native flora would be expecting (Hint, it isn't glucose and elemental oxygen) and then on top of that, if you are worried that they survived sustained time in the horticultural system, there's this complex biosphere inside the human GI tract just roiling in the toxic excretions of other, far more biologically active and far more adapted mcrobes, along with an active immune system sustained by the host organism (humans), for them to contend with.

They would be better off in the 1% pressure rarified CO2 atmosphere with the UV light.  They are adapted to survival out there.
(assuming they exist anyway)

[~Neri]

Technically any alien life would be either extremely toxic or do literally nothing whatsoever. You need to evolve alongside it to have any real interactivity.

[CaptainArchmage]

More than likely, the environment inside the growth chamber would be so hot (to what the native flora are evolved for) that it would kill them quite effectively as is.  Then you have the difference in metabolites the native flora would be expecting (Hint, it isn't glucose and elemental oxygen) and then on top of that, if you are worried that they survived sustained time in the horticultural system, there's this complex biosphere inside the human GI tract just roiling in the toxic excretions of other, far more biologically active and far more adapted mcrobes, along with an active immune system sustained by the host organism (humans), for them to contend with.

They would be better off in the 1% pressure rarified CO2 atmosphere with the UV light.  They are adapted to survival out there.
(assuming they exist anyway)

Well there's the possibility life on the surface, then there may not be. There's potentially life underground.......

Technically any alien life would be either extremely toxic or do literally nothing whatsoever. You need to evolve alongside it to have any real interactivity.

There's also the possibility that life originated on Mars (or elsewhere) and came to Earth....... or it was the other way around. In that case, there would be some links.

[~Neri]

Several million years of evolutionary divergence means that any links would be irrelevant. The previous statement applies.

[wierd]

Exactly,  The microbes would have just as difficult a time inside the horticultural hotlab as the lettuce inside would have on the surface.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[10ebbor10]

Didn't MIT run the numbers and discover that te entire crew would die within 120 days?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/243260899/MIT-Mars-One-Study#scribd