Hacker News Reader

Is the radiation on Mars excessive? Quick googling suggests 10-20 rem per year, or about half that of the ISS. As far as I know plants do grow on the ISS.

Plants are pretty tolerant of solar radiation. Far more so than humans.

In any event, what you'd probably do is use reflected light to filter out high energy particles.

Background radiation in Mars is way lower than would be necessary to kill plants and, like, it might increase cancer rates in animals, but the kind of animals we'd want to breed there have short lifespans and we don't care if they get a few tumors.

Even before it kills them, it definitely ruins their reproductive capacity, which is going to be critical offworld.

We could have a breeding population in an expensive shielded environment, and take most of their young to grow in a cheap, more radioactive environment.

Now that’s a really interesting idea! Add in a bank of shielded frozen embryos and sperm and yes, I can see your point.