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Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

These stories about the logistics at Amundsen-Scott are a fascinating glimpse at the level of logistical complexity that'd be required for an off-planet (Moon, Mars...) base.

Every time I see people get excited about Martian human habitation, I note a lack of discussion of the essential intermediate step: a fully self-sustaining base in the most inhospitable parts of Earth.

Where are the Biosphere++ projects?

And Amundsen-Scott has it easy: pressure, oxygen levels, and dust aren't a problem! (granted: Martian equator has easier temperatures).

Also, I've long wondered what is the comparable level of yearly insolation (for sustainable power) in the South Pole compares to Mars' equator?

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Martian equator has milder temperatures, more sunlight (no polar night), but has worse access to water, and none to breathable air.

I'm certain that a self-contained habitation for a year is a solvable problem; nuclear submarines can be away in the ocean for a comparable time.

A habitat self-sustained for potentially indefinite time (at least half century), while producing its own food and oxygen, is a much taller order.

Unlike Amundsen's, such a station can have a nuclear reactor, with decades worth of fuel.

> Unlike Amundsen's, such a station can have a nuclear reactor, with decades worth of fuel.

Tangentially, McMurdo (the coastal Antarctica base) did have a nuclear reactor for a bit. It didn't go great.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/

An unfortunate early design. Hopefully the engineering knowledge and access to far better design tools that have developed in the interleaving ~50 years would allow for a much better design today.

Though my hopes must be tempered by the prospect of greed. It would be better if the government(s) created an open design which could reuse off the shelf or components that any corporation could compete to create.

Eh, no.. a failed concept, to grasp the techological deep roots needed to supply something with specialists and machinery at all times, at a location that is 9 months off limits.

DARPA and NASA are currently developing designs to do exactly that under Kilopower, Megapower, and similar programs. Enabling long duration unmanned deep space missions is explicitly one of NASA's goals with this.

And then the helium and hydrogen, turned the containement vessel into a sieve over the long run, pushing the vessel of course. The end.

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

Don’t nuclear subs make their oxygen by electrolyzing seawater? Mars habitat would be a whole different problem from subs.

I'm no nuclear engineer, but my anecdotal experience has been that nuclear plants need access to large amounts of water for cooling.

I'm assuming a Martian reactor would need some other approach give the relative scarcity of water? Sure ambient temperatures are lower, but equally the atmosphere is not very dense.

Thinking about it, burning diesel is also not attractive (lack of oxygen) and solar is weaker than earth. But I'm not seeing a lot of alternatives to solar...

Primary cooling could be molten salt or liquid metal but unless you take the power out through the Seebeck effect like RTG’s on space probes, you still need water to make steam for turbines, I guess.

Mars does have water, mostly in form of ice. But it takes some digging.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars

Annual DNI or GTI at the south pole is surprisingly high. About 5-6kWh/m^2 which is pretty close to somewhere like california or western Australia.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334411420_Estimatio...

GHI is quite low (your array needs to be very spread out) and seasonality is 1/0, but if seasonal storage were available then a solar array in antarctica is fine.

Mars GHI is about 550W/m^2, but there are no clouds. An array there would perform about as well as france or spain.

Thanks so much! I've been looking for this sort of information for years! (and didn't have the competence to calculate myself)

Don't forget protection from solar and other radiation. (Disclaimer: I am one of those that aspire taking humanity to Mars.)

> Every time I see people get excited about Martian human habitation, I note a lack of discussion of the essential intermediate step: a fully self-sustaining base in the most inhospitable parts of Earth.

I remember a pretty popular book and a Hollywood starring Matt Damon which primarily focused on this exact problem.

Unless you're talking about an entirely different story with the same title, it's about an individual person trying to survive alone somewhere with very limited resources. At no point is his situation sustainable, and he only barely just survives to be rescued.

It really has nothing at all to do with developing a sustainable base on any planet. It's about some clever survival strategies, all of which are considered temporary at best.

> Where are the Biosphere++ projects?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500

No, that was more of a psychological/social experiment that didn't seem to have closed life-support systems.

The first people on mars will be self replicating robots. Due to the way the exponential function works - I think enough terraforming could be done really fast.

We don’t have self replicating robots on Earth. The first people on Mars will be like the first people on the moon: very vulnerable human tourists.

But will humans be welcome afterwards?

Not if they load the robots with Bing chat

Bing chat 2.0, now with some of asimov's laws!

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