Supply runs to Mars will be in the range of 10000x as expensive, possibly even higher. Something that costs $100 to get to Antarctica will cost $1million to get to Mars. Permanent Mars settlement will entail a level of self-sufficiency that we haven't proven on a place that is comparitively balmy and has the benefit of a breathable atmosphere and abundant water (Antarctica). Not to mention radiation...
Don't hold your breath. I'm as much a fan of space colonization of as the next nerd, but it's premature.
None of those are self sustaining.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day
I'd keep the Moonraker film in mind as a metric for self sustaining colonies created by billionaires. They can't be trusted unless they are also working to fix what we already have.
No it doesn't. "Permanent settlement" just means it's not temporary, only intended for a short-term mission.
You don't want to be there? Almost every other place on earth is better. So you send a skeleton crew along with what they need.
If it is to test an actual community living isolated, sure. But I think it'll always be different because you know that help is at most a few months away and probably a lot less. I don't think you can fake that, unless you're never told you're not alone
When you are sending people to space on an experimental rocket, with experimental supply for an experimental habitat, all of that shit better be engineered to a huge safety factor, because its not a matter of if things will go wrong, its how often will they go wrong and what the impact will be. To deal with that kind of unknown requires a level of technology that should make it possible to live in Antarctica for extended period of time without any external shipments coming in to resupply. That means heating, oxygen generation, food resources, air filtration, full medical bay capable of advanced surgery, and a bunch of other smaller things that all matter in the end.
If we don't have the experience of buildings stuff on earth where we can test things, we sure as shit not gonna be able to do it on Mars.
(eg any place on Earth is infinitely better than any place on Mars, maybe a couple of scientists are ready to endure Mars for a couple of months at a time, but beyond that? It will be like living in a labour camp in (frozen) hell.
We are better off at this stage of human civilization to look at building resiliency and redundancy at home. Settling margins of Earth in places like Antarctica, underground, under water is many orders of magnitude simpler than Mars, provides useful models for distant future space colonization, and also provides us with some of the civilizational redundancy and resiliency many space-colony-enthusiasts are looking for.
Life on Earth is about 3/4 of the way through its existence…
According to whom exactly? For me, permanent means "permanently without breaks".
The ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2, 2000. But it was not, in fact, expected by anyone to be a permanent station; It is made of non-replaceable parts that age and fail (decade scale), it only has very limited life support supplies on board (month scale).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#:~...
> It is made of non-replaceable parts
Every part of the ISS is replaceable if you want to.
> it only has very limited life support supplies on board (month scale)
I still don't see why self-sustainability is a part of being "permanent".
Since the ISS end of life is scheduled for 2030 - just four years from now - I really would not call it "permanent". Even if gets a few years reprieve, that's quite temporary.
> Every part of the ISS is replaceable if you want to.
There comes a point with buildings and with space stations where tearing down and completely replacing them is a better and cheaper option than repairing or extending them. The ISS is nearing that point.
Or can we at least agree that it was permanent at some point of its life?
> There comes a point with buildings and with space stations where tearing down and completely replacing them is a better and cheaper option than repairing or extending them. The ISS is nearing that point.
Sure, but that's the case for everything, including permanent things. My house won't be around forever, I would still call it a permanent housing.
No, the ISS never was permanent. It had a limited lifespan from the outset. It's actually beyond the original 15-year life. But it is not indefinite.
> The ISS was originally intended for a 15-year mission, but the mission has been repeatedly extended due to its success and support
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#En...
> My house won't be around forever, I would still call it a permanent
That's true, in the sense that "A word means whatever I choose it to mean". If you were in a flat in an apartment building scheduled for demolition in 2030, would you call that "permanent housing" ?
I’m not sure the bases in Antarctica all have a set lifetime so it doesn’t really matter for the original point.
There are skeptical arguments against Mars settlement but the Antarctica thing is kind of a weak one.
To point out one more problem with it: there’s legal and treaty restrictions in play for that continent. You can’t just go. That’s another limiting factor.
However put a reason to go to Mars, i.e. alien shipwreck and there is going to be multiple cities within end of the decade.
It would likely cost bare minimum 10-100 billion dollars to put a few boots on the ground on Mars, how could we possibly build cities there within the end of the decade?