Walking on Mars.

[dstebbins]

I was just watching a documentary on the Science Channel about how the benifits of colonizing Mars were arguable. Some say it's too far, dangerous, and expensive to walk on Mars as we did on the Moon in 69. I swear, I'd like to meet these people, so I can kick their ass.

 

It makes all the sense in the world to walk on Mars! It could be the answer to our natural resources problem. It could answer once and for all if there is life out there. It could give us an entire planet's worth of land to colonize, greatly reducing our population density crisis. There's a million trillion reasons to walk on and colonize Mars.

 

Seriously, how can the benifits of human exploration of Mars be arguable? Sure it's dangerous, but think of what it can mean if we pull it off.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Because it might be an entire planet worth of land, but it has an atmosphere of 95% CO₂, and it isn't exactly Florida for climate or anything.

[theCPE]

What natural resource crisis are we currently in that mars can solve?

 

We can observ whether or not life exists on a planet without colonizing.

 

It would make much more sense to build 'space stations' and live in space than to try to colonize planets with our current travel limitations.

[geoguy]

According to the UN, the Earth's population increases by 40,000 a day. There may be reasons for going to Mars but anything to do with easing population pressures is not one of them.

[dstebbins]

Because it might be an entire planet worth of land, but it has an atmosphere of 95% CO₂, and it isn't exactly Florida for climate or anything.

 

That can be solved fairly easily (at least on paper).

 

Every day we expell tons of greenhouse gases into the earth's atmosphere, causing global warming. This is a bad thing on Earth, because the earth is already a comfortable temperature, but it might actually be useful on a planet as cold as mars. By increasing the greenhouse gases in the Martian atmosphere, Mars will retain the heat it gets from the Sun that would otherwise escape into space. With this new greenhouse effect going on, the polar ice caps would melt, causing liquid water to flow. It would also mean that the forzen carbon dioxide would evaporate, speeding up the warming of the planet. With water on the ground and CO2 in the air, producing organisms can be introduced into the environment, providing Oxygen. In the meantime, until oxygen can be made naturally, we can get oxygen from the iron oxyde in the soil, and then have more iron that we could use to build with.

 

Mars has all the natural necessities to support us; water, carbon, oxygen, CO2, a 24-hour day, a gravity similar to Earth. It's just a matter of us asking "Are we willing to pursue it?"

 

And for that question, I say "I do hope that's a rhetorical question." Sure it will be difficult, but at the same time, John Kennedy once said we should walk on the Moon, "Not because it is easy, but because it is hard," and viola, we walked on the moon that very same decade.

[MolotovCocktail]

Another difficulty with colonizing Mars is the amount of radiation that bombards the surface every day. Unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have an ozone layer to block out the UV radiation nor does it have a magnetic field to block out the cosmic rays.

 

I think its possible to colonize Mars, but its going to take a lot of resources and research before we can establish an actual colony. It would be more useful to put research stations first.

[Sayonara]

Mars colonisation tends to create problems, not solve them. See here for more detail:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25639

[Martin]

people should keep in mind the possible superiority of Jupiter moons like e.g. Callisto

 

because if you have a mile of water ice to tunnel into you don't have to worry so much about pressure containment or shielding

 

and you have water and oxygen

 

and under some of that ice there is liquid water, which means a 100 kelvin temperature difference between two large heat reservoirs

essentially geothermal heat that you can use to generate electricity

 

and there is rocky material mixed in the ice

 

ice tunnel housing if you had plenty of electricity might not be so bad

[grifter]

ice tunnel housing if you had plenty of electricity might not be so bad

 

hmm allot of energy, energy that you could harness from the huge temperature difference, sounds like home to me

[MolotovCocktail]

What about Saturn's moon Titan? That moon has a thick atmosphere and is filled with organic chemicals and ice.