Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

> Then, you're going to have to deal with boredom and cabin fever. Mars seems cool in the abstract--"explore another world!"--but its just a big, completely dead desert. I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there.

Have you ever been backpacking in a desert, mountains, wilderness? It continues to be amazing for days. Anything that new and different definitely induces novelty more than an hour tops.

Also, have you seen the data returned by the rovers? There's stuff to explore and discover everywhere. Mars may have less biome variation (on a scale that can be sensed by unprotected humans, and for whatever the 'bio' of 'biome' means on a lifeless world) than Earth, but it's not featureless.

> a different day-night cycle

The duration is very close to Earth's. I don't think it will be an issue.

And since Mars is several light minutes away, and hence out of range for real-time dialogue, going out of sync with Earth's cycle will not be a huge issue either. You'll be talking via email anyway.

> reduced gravity

Yeah, that's a bigger issue.

> boredom and cabin fever

Could be an issue, yes. But if you're a scientist, you could work yourself to death in that new environment. So much to study, so little time.

> It'll be extremely expensive, really depressing, and probably pointless.

Climbing down from trees seemed the same at first.

Moving out of caves, into hand-built dwellings seemed the same at first.

Etc.

The point being, it's easy to overstate both the glamorous and the depressing aspects of something we are not familiar with.

>As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there, and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different.

We don't have to wonder. We do it now. Its called jail.

One thing to note is humans can entrain to a 24.65 hour (Mars sol) circadian rhythm [1]. This does not significantly detract from your point, however.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934931/

I am someone who has wanted to go to Mars for many years now. I first thought about it when I was about 8 years old -- 30 years ago. I'm still enthusiastic about it, although I doubt I'd have the skill sets or youth to participate given the current timeline.

I expect Mars would be too much the opposite of boring. We'd be trying to live in an environment that, as far as we know, doesn't support any life at all. It is extremely hostile. The conditions are more difficult than Antarctica. The planet will be trying to kill you in all kinds of ways, some of which we haven't imagined yet. Early colonists will have their hands full solving one life-threatening issue after another, and without the massive manufacturing and diagnostics and natural resources of Earth at hand.

There is a great deal of science to be done there and that would likely be a major impetus for going and one of the selection criteria for early colonists. Even when the planet isn't trying to kill them, they'd have work to do -- mapping, soil samples, ongoing human health research, materials research, agriculture and biology.

Martian colonists would also not be entirely isolated. There's no reason in principle why you wouldn't be able to email people on Earth on a semi-regular basis, or receive the latest books and movies and games -- to the extent that you'd really have time for any of that.

There are people who are attracted to the idea of living in a smaller community in a completely alien environment. They tend to get dismissed out-of-hand, but it's not really all that unusual. Humans are tribal, there are isolated research facilities in remote parts of the world, even a cramped little space station now.

I seriously doubt it will turn out to be pointless. Colonization has usually moved the larger human society forward a little, with new forms of governance, new materials, new technologies or techniques for daily life. We have no way of knowing now what kind of returns we'd get back from a long-term Martian colony, but I don't think the answer is "none".

It seems like gravity is the biggest factor that the pie in the sky posts always seem to gloss over. As you said, living in the low of gravity, for the rest of your life, has to have untold issues on bodies that evolved here. It would also add another layer of complexity to everything you do.

So many people act like it's just a cool destination spot for Sheldon-types. I have no doubt there'd be no shortage of people wanting to sign up, but it does seem very sad to me. Like people willing to get facial tattoos sad. They should focus on finding ways to create a VR experience that would allow everyone to experience it safely.

Whenever I hear this point made I think of the movie Master and Commander.

In the 1800s, being on a European wooden sailing vessel in the Pacific was, relatively speaking, very similar to being on another planet: - Takes months or years to get there: check - Fire could kill everyone on your vessel: check - "Nature" could kill you in innumerable ways: check - Some life sustaining and necessary items could be found along the way but many had to be brought with you: check

This was the most annoying thing about the film The Martian for me.

Everyone crows about the science, but I've not heard anything about the psychological trauma someone marooned and isolated on an alien planet for several months would go through.

I imagine it would be something on a par with the Dancing plagues of Strasbourg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518

But without the cheesy disco music.

> As the years go on, loneliness and despair will set in. Those first colonists will likely spend the rest of their lives pretty much with who they landed with. Their lives won't change much at all over the decades they're there,...

They may suffer from an acute version of what is known as prairie madness[1], which American colonists suffered from in the nineteenth century.

> ...and they'll have no hope for things to ever be different.

They will have hope : to go back to Earth.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_madness

I am often thinking about food, it will likely be incredibly bland and not very varied. Plus you'll spend probably most of your time indoors. You won't ever lay on a beach listening to the sounds of the wave, or walk on dry leaves in a forest anymore.

This is way off, and reflective of a view of space exploration of the Apollo style rather than actual colonization like what will happen on Mars.

The first people to go to Mars may be scientists and explorers, but the second wave will be a very different kind of people. That group will have the job of building a technologically advanced, industrialized, self-sufficient civilization on Mars. That is no small task, nor is it one we have a simple template for. The people who will be drawn to it won't be the "science is f'ing cool!" spectators, nor will they even be hardcore research scientists. They'll be hyper-competent workaholics and overachievers. They'll be people with broad expertise in multiple subjects who just enjoy getting stuff done. The sheer amount of work ahead of them will be mind-boggling. But by the same token, the amount that they can get done, what they will be able to achieve will be equally mind-boggling.

Every single day they'll wake up and they'll have a hundred lifetimes of truly challenging work ahead of them. And every single night they'll go to bed having made real, material, significant progress on advancing Martian colonization and making human civilization multi-planetary. Most days they'll do something that was never done on Mars before. They'll build something that will have a tangible impact on what is possible in the future on Mars, and on many other people's lives. They won't just be spending their days reading facebook and occasionally making a git pull-request, they'll be building greenhouses, they'll be farming, they'll be making habitats, and they'll be building up all of the industrial infrastructure to do that. They'll be mining ice, and iron ore, and sand, etc. They'll be figuring out how to setup iron smelting operations. How to make plastic out of methane. How to make concrete on Mars. How to build habitats with the maximal contribution of Martian resources that are safe and robust. They'll be min/maxing like crazy, and innovating like crazy. They'll be spending a crap-ton of time in shops using machine tools. And they will constantly see the fruits of their labor, day by day, hour by hour.

They'll be able to look around at their growing colony and think to themselves "I built this". It will be like the ultimate start-up experience on steroids. Some of them might find it overwhelming, but I doubt many of them will find it boring, they won't have time.

I found this (mental health issues of colonization) to be one of the most interesting parts of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It drags on a bit but plenty of folks go batshit, so that lends a tinge of realism.

It's doubtful we'd send people to Mars as a one-way trip (though some regard that as a reasonable cost-cutting measure). The day-night cycle is almost the same. We don't know what extended time in ~40% gravity would be like, but people have lived for an extended time in zero G, which is a much more extreme change. Sailors on submarines have survived in tight quarters without natural sunlight or wide-open spaces for extended periods of time.

I think you're thinking of a trip to Mars in the most pessimistic terms possible: a small team of explorers with no return trip and they live out the rest of their days in a tiny RV buried under the Martian soil and totally dependent on Earth for supplies and entertainment and no possibility of meeting anyone new.

Consider a different possibility: a smallish community growing into a large community by periodic waves of immigration and shipments of equipment needed to establish self-sufficient infrastructure. Ships travel back and forth, so trips are possible. Living and working spaces are small at first, but are constantly being expanded by continuous construction. You can live and work with interesting people on an ambitious project to establish a permanent human presence in a hostile environment.

We don't really know which of these alternatives is going to be a more accurate description of the situation presenting itself to the first Martian settlers, but we'll have a good idea which it's going to be before sending anyone. And if it looks like it's going to be a miserable experience and way too expensive, well, we can wait another decade or so and let the technology mature.

It will be pretty miserable for the first colonists. But that's true of any endeavor like this. Some goals are worth suffering for, even if the individual will never see the payoff.

And I don't like to begrudge people for their optimism. Optimism, well-grounded in a long-term vision, can be incredibly helpful in overcoming adversity on the way to audacious goals. In other words: fake it til you make it.

Busy people rarely get bored. We won't go to Mars for vacations, we'll go to establish a colony. Which means there are a myriad tasks that have to be accomplished on any given day. They'll have to make sure their equipment works in stellar condition otherwise they'll die, build new things, explore, grow plants and taste their food, run experiments, fix things, take notes of everything and report back to Earth, and the list goes on. And once they get there we'll keep sending them new stuff, and probably other people too, quite frequently. Mars is indeed a barren place but imagine being a geologist, it's like Christmas, you have a new world all to yourself to explore and learn new shit. That could keep you busy for a lifetime.

Sure, in the long term they might get depressed assuming a trip back to Earth would be impossible. And that's why we'll send mosty scientists. We want people who are dedicated and passionate about exploration and learning.

> First, you have to deal with a different day-night cycle and the reduced gravity.

There's more difference between Alaska and the Equator than the extra 40 minutes Mars introduces, and there don't seem to be significant mental health issues from zero gravity on the ISS. Bone density, sure.

> I'm betting the novelty of it will wear of in an hour (tops) of landing there.

I know a geologist who's still getting super-excited over rocks ten years later.

Yeah, I wouldn't do it.

But I bet that any substantial (more than a few dozen) effort would build some pretty huge indoor spaces.

Everything in your comment presupposes a one way trip, which it doesn't have to be.

Furthermore, the idea isn't just to get there and whittle on your rocking chair until you die. There will be a plan to start building out facilities which is an endless task that will keep colonists busy.

VR games/interaction will fill that void IMO. Especially if you grow up with that being the norm.

The mars day isn't all that much longer than the earth one.

Isn't this essentially what the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is doing? Albeit they're only isolated for 9 months at a time, not years, but still:

1. They have a small group of 50 people. Issues with crew psychology and relationships are mostly covered.

2. They live entirely indoors in small, manmade habitats. They're actually under the snow in much the same way that Martian hab units would be under regolith.

3. They are autonomous. It's completely up to them to survive the winter.

Yes, they're not doing the full biosphere thing - they're surviving on rations brought in by airplane, and breathing the outside air after just heating it - but that's pretty close.

I also think of people on strategic submarine ballistic missile nuclear boomers. They're shockingly big boats, but the crews are in a limited space with a limited air supply and no views of the outside for 70 days at a time. I would be unsurprised if the public information on their maximum deployment times for crews (said to rotate out every 10 weeks) has been exceeded, and I'm sure the navy has studies on it. Also living off rations, but similar.

It's probably more conceivable and informative to try to grow rations in a lab using the constraints that would be placed on martian astronauts than to convince a crew to do the Amundsen-Scott experience or SSBN experience, but with also growing your own food.

Though I imagine after 8 months of Antarctic winter, a salad would sound pretty good...

Also, it would be nice if we could make a self-contained ecosystem work on Earth before sending one into space. People seem to think this is a solved problem, but actually all attempts so far have lost their equilibrium pretty quickly, most notably Biosphere 2.

Or try an other biosphere experiment[1]. The problem is, it would cost almost as much as a real mars mission. So it's not sure it'd be worth it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

The Antarctic is a poor analogue, since it has abundant water and food. The Atacama desert might be a better one.

There's no earthly reason to make people live in the Atacama, but then again, there's no reason to send people to Mars, either.

The Mars Society has been doing a reduced version of this for several years now with different groups of volunteers. I think they use two different locations, with one being in a Antarctic like location.

Semiconductors are one of few products that are so value dense ($/kg) that you can ship them from Earth for a reasonable marginal price. It's everything else with a long production chain (or very large upfront costs, like mining) that's infeasible to do on Mars without 1M+ people.

Nobody actually knows what an extended period living in 38% of Earth-normal gravity will do to a person. It seems probable that there will be bone density problems that might not be correctable with any existing drug or exercise regimen, but there's no evidence it will be as systematically debilitating as living for an extended period in microgravity.

> Venus cloud cities

I want to know where the fuck are our Earth based cloud cities.

Surly there's a market and it'd be (I'd guess) 3 orders of magnitude easier than Venus.

for spring break or year round?

Technically the sole inhabitants of Mars are robots so you're not too far off.

You can, but static electricity tends to be very high voltage but lot wattage. You typically cannot collect any meaningful amount of power.

It wouldn't really impact devices, it would impact buildings.

(for household service, ground and neutral are bonded at the service panel, grounding is a safety issue, not something electrical devices depend on to function)

Or dig out underground rooms, and live dwarffortress style.

Lava tubes seem like they would be ideal, if we can find them in places that would be good for settlement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_lava_tube

No need:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_lava_tube

I think we need biologically inspired robots. Have you seen a ground digger wasp (Eastern Cicada Killer)? They can mine many times their body weight in hard soil each day.

Landing pods on the surface and then covering them in regolith is going to call for heavy machinery. A boring machine is also heavy machinery. These cost an enormous amount to get to Mars. But insect-like robots over a large timescale could do the work at a lower cost.