All this is beautiful but what I don't understand, we got plenty of desert regions on earth that are very similar to average Mars condition, but no one try to create a base there. If humans cannot create a village in the middle of the Sahara, where they can experiment without fear of oxygen problems and still on earth, saving money. If musk is serious about this, he should build bases in every cold,hot deserts on earth, even Antarctica to simulate all Mars.
Anyone did the math on the amount of energy, materials, and labor required to transfer all that material from earth to Mars, and operate it there? I'm curious about the cost. Even if spaceX builds rockets to get to Mars and back, I don't think they have the money to build anything close to this. This project is all cost with ZERO profit. Projects this big, right here on Earth, cost billions but are viable because they are profitable, directly or indirectly like infrastructure in 20 to 30 years. This concept has ZERO profitability, only an extreme expense to build and likely even more expensive to maintain. This it will never exist, other than as a temporary and failed "art project" by a billionaire who will lose his shirt and lots of dead people trying.
@@Metal0sopher Have you heard of 3D printing? Am not saying that 3D printing is read at that scale but things are evolving rapidly. For example, mental 3D and printed circuit board is advanced now. Once robots can be autonomous on Mars and divers 3D printers available, we wouldn't need to be worried about transporting materials, but I still think it will take at least 50 years before we even started.
Predominantly underground is feasible. bubble domes can super radiation & thermal tint, even crops plants/trees can be photosynthesis transfer from external solar 🔋 to internal halogen lamp🔦 , sustaining naturally o2 & vapor recycle♻️ H20. Elon is correct in nuking, (more like erupting lava & ice really) to tarriform...BUT! The magnetospher will *not hold the atmosphere* for long, The Earth spews 2%+ annually out to space, the core multiplictis it more than its *efficient size* core compress energy it bares to cycle life. Gravity is a issue to your third generation on Mars/moon. Morph body form, likely hunch-back/tail & giant able growth versus low *grip* ratio mass mobility. ( The way Earth was at one time of its eons of reincarnation form. 🦕👀?!).
Frankly, I like Mars the way it is on the surface. I wouldn't terraform it. If you are going to go cave, then I strongly suggest ice caves in the massive tropical glaciers (2+ kilometers deep). You need an airlock on the surface and can otherwise melt out as big a city as you like. It would keep pressure and reasonable room temperatures. Using an insulative membrane, you could increase the temperature for grow rooms that want even warmer temperatures for the best productivity. You could also use an insulative membrane to build a heating indoor swimming pool. You can sculpt stairs, statues, tables, chairs, beds, sofas, plates, and cups from ice. Since these glaciers are huge and not longer moving, they'd be extremely stable and safe.
It isn't necessary to dwell in caves, bubble domes can be super radiation & thermal tinted, even crops plants/trees can be photosynthesis transfer from external solar to internal halogen lamps, sustaining naturally o2 & vapor of H20. Gravity is a issue to your third generation. Morph body form likely hunch-back/tail & giant able growth vs low *grip* mass. ( The way Earth was at one time of its eons of reincarnation form 🦕👀).
Would totally live in an underground city on Mars . I've designed many in my spare time. But was impressed by the the underground city on Ceres in the Expanse.
@blaumax1910 This idea has been around for quite some time. With only windows in the dome, I do not see it being any better than being underground except with less protection. It would be easy to have monitors as windows displaying whatever scenery desired to give the illusion of being above ground.
@@alengrm7488 Am not sure those hidden civilizations appreciate home invasion by humans drilling down from their roof 😂. The first encounter might be the last encounter very quickly.
If that is the case, we must ask would that in turn make us the alien invaders. More to the point, would that put us in a completely reverse of War of the Worlds? Alot of ethical quandries to consider and moreover to ask are we better than out ancestors and potentially seek cooperation with the natives, or will we be no better than the European settlers and displace their population. More to the point, what diseases would be swapped around? Would we develop an immunity to said disease or would it be mutually assured death by cross contamination.
Keeping that dust at bay is an under-rated issue! :) The problem with glass domes, is that you need to build your landing pads miles away, or behind a ridge, to protect the dome.. There is a short list of things humans need surface access for, mostly working, surface travel, and arriving/leaving via landing pads... Time spent on the surface is like time spent getting X-rayed or flying long haul, you would need to track your radiation exposure.
For me, a good place to reside is in the western end of Valles Marineris, in the canyon, at the base of one of the walls where it will have relative abundance of atmosphere above it and good protection from meteorites and cosmic rays. Additionally, we could bore into the cliffs and have part of our infrastructure in the ground in that manner. All good wishes.
I'm pulling for both habitats... Here's why. Underground cities will help to stabilize growth for our species, however, eventually we're going to need to develop not only hard shielding, but energy based shielding to expand onto the surface of Mars. Having many eyes and ears above ground on a daily basis will help us to keep tabs on the "Pulse" of the planet and foresee any dangers we're currently not seeing from our satellites, rovers, and probes. I truly, absolutely envy those who get to go and colonize Mars first.... I'm too old to physically make it off the planet now to go there, unless we come up with a ant-gravity way of leaving our surface here... it's physically too demanding, however, I've dreamed of going into space and reaching for the stars for literal decades. Maybe one of my grandchildren will go there. Now THAT would be exciting!
A combination of both would be needed. The caves for most things and domes for food production. Domes do not have to be big and could have covers that could go over them for major events to protect them. The main problem is going to be the dust. The caves could house tubes that would be like structures that were built in Greenland during the Cold War. They could have airlocks for going outside into the caves so the caves themselves would not need to be air tight. Insulating the structures inside the caves would be easier than insulating the whole cave.
@@marktwain2053 I never understood why hydroponics or aquaponics are not considered as a reliable source of food. Once, just for laughs I grew a chilli plant and some tomatoes using some $20 expensive high grade plant food. The chilli plant was ridiculous, some much yield. The tomatoes were the same, thirsty but they just super fast and super big. I only had a single 600w light too.
The Moon has large caverns and is in a more suitable location...days to get there rather than months. The Moon gets more sunlight than Mars also because of its location. Strangely, temperatures in the openings into the caves have been measured around 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The Moon is a much better location as a base for asteroid mining as well as source for water and metals and would be a great place for manufacturing. The caverns there would make great places for green houses with grow lights and fiber optics providing light. We should not overreach and bypass the Moon.
The moon has the problem of low gravity. Not great for humans long term. Twenty eight day days and stronger solar radiation . Mars is more suitable for a long term human habitation but the moon will be the gateway for much space travel. 🚀💫
@@malcolmrickarby2313 I think that we will use a spinning doughnut shaped habitat attached to Starship that will act as a filling station for vehicles going to the surface or back into space. Periodic visits for enough time to regenerate various cells in the body.
@@malcolmrickarby2313 having a 10 meter running circuit will be able to provide 0.5g to 1g while you exercise. That is is likely to be enough although the 1/6 g of the moon is likely to be enough too.
It makes sense, using existing lava tubes that you only have to seal from the hostile surface any point it is exposed. Obviously you would want to line the walls to strengthen them and prevent future breaches. Much more practical than a domed city. As for getting views of the surface they have this neat new invention called closed circuit video. Much less risky than a window or a dome. As for food it could start with sprouts for vitamins and adding protein, fiber and starch to fill them up. By sending up fish fry like say talapia could be a great start to farming protein assuming you can find a source of water. Imagine a pond running down the length of the tunnel middle not only provides you with a lovely view, but also holds fish to eat. Like one long huge aquarium. As you expand you can add other fry like catfish, trout, grouper, clams, muscles etc ... and all of them pooping out fertilizer for the plants that keep their water clean, and yes even feed them too. The water can be filtered through aquafarms that would grow vegetables to expand their diets. And the roots stems and leaves not eaten could be used to make a mulch that could amend the dirt to grow larger or other plants. You could send chicken chicks up too, to create a supply of eggs and meat. Ducklings and goslings are another expansion to the protein source. With human and animal sewage there is a steady source of fertilizer that could be added to processed soils to expand to other plants that filter the air and provide them greenery to live around. Power could come from a network of surface or near surface micro reactors and thermal electric generators that not only power to run the colony but also heat to warm it. And if you ran them at say 70% capacity then if one ever did go down or need maintenance then the others could take up the slack until it is repaired or replaced. Also several smaller reactors is much less vulnerable to a single disaster than is one large reactor. Come to think of it we could even start doing alot of these things here on earth too, just to practice and get the process down. Of course we would have to put up with decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels a time bit, and possibly making food more plentiful and cheaper to buy a tiny bit. Maybe even lowering the polution levels a smig. But I'm sure we could suffer through that burden. Don't you?
I would think 90% underground and 10% above ground (shielded from radiation by regolith or water) would be best. Underground habitats need to be expansively large to contain enough breathable air that a breach can be sealed before oxygen levels get dangerously low. Plants and trees, even forests and parks in all underground living areas will be needed to produce oxygen and ensure the mental health of the inhabitants. The choice between living in a concrete and steel bunker vs a large natural looking environment should be an obvious one. Cabin fever would be the outcome for the former.
The problem is that plants don't tend to grow underground particulary well and arificial lighting can only go so far. There'll, probably, be needed some genetically modified to adapt to the new conditions. Also creating an artificial day-night cycle will be a challenge.
One last problem nobody ever seems to talk about when it comes to colonizing Mars is the effect of low gravity on the human skeletal system, which then has catastrophic effects on almost every other system in the body. Zero gravity accelerates this, like on the space station, but these colonists will be required to stay for years at about 40% gravity of earth - that will not end well after just a few years. Unless we can build centrifugal cities that create artificial gravity, there is no way can ever colonize mars.
Caves for sure! Surface domes are too vulnerable. In KSR Mars trilogy, humans start by putting containers in the ground as make-shift habitats. Later habitats are build below the surface. Above surface can be done later. Would be nice to have a magnetosphere around Mars though.
I think mass-producing stainless steel sheet metal will be practical, on Mars. Also, mass-producing PVC could also be practical, given enough energy. You could build stainless steel buildings using cold-welding (pushing steel together in the absence of oxygen, causes a bonding like pushing clay together). Pure PVC is highly insulative, fire-resistant, and transparent with a slight blue tint. Anyway, I'd build villages skinned with sheet metal, and structured with corrugated or bent sheet metal. I'd build the roof to overhang a big, cover the top with up to a meter of regolith, use blown glass bricks for windows, and coat the interior with a PVC membrane. This would be buildable with all materials and energy from Mars and be very safe. It would protect from small meteors, retain warmth, allow sunlight in, and hold air in really well. So smelting iron and nickel (very abundant on the surface) can be done with a lightweight titanium crucible and a solar concentrator (for heat). Purification during smelting (normally done with things like borax) can be done by injection of pure oxygen. Pickling and cold rolling to make highly impact-resistant and malleable stainless steel also shouldn't require too much equipment. PVC can be made using the abundant salts in the ground (for chlorine), CO2 in the air, and steam -- using the pressurized steam method. 1 meter of regolith is enough to block the cosmic rays to more than safe levels and also will catch small meteors that are most typical. Larger impacts blowing debris laterally should also not be too damaging, as cold rolled steel is hightly impact-resistant. A PVC member is very insulative and abrasion resistant, however, if the habitat is separated a bit from the ground, heat dissipation should be very slow. This is because the atmosphere is so thin. Although very cold, transference of heat outward should be substantially slowed due to the distance between molecules in the atmosphere. That said, I do also like the idea of lava tubes. I drew up designs for an inflatable wall with airlock to seal off two ends of the tube. Smoother lava tubes tend to be sealed somewhat air tight due to the melted nature of the walls. However, this would not be sufficient because one leak is too many. I'd spray it down with a hot PVC membrane. The problem is that Martian lava tubes are far larger, on average, than Earth ones. I visited a lava tube in Cheju-do island, Korea. It was about 10 meters wide. The lava tubes on Mars are vastly larger due to the lower gravity and double the metals content in the basalt. So that's great if you can seal it but much harder to seal. Another idea is to melt out a city in one of Mars' large tropical glaciers. You'd need to build a surface airlock but it would be vastly faster and easier to melt out large spaces in which to live. Inside an ice cave, you can create comfortable room temperatures because the vast ice behind the walls helps prevent melting. Also for higher temperatures, such as for growing tomatoes, you could use an insulative membrane in the grow rooms. Obviously, you will be using LED grow lights. You can make tables, chairs, beds, sofas, from ice and just need to cover them with an insulated fabric.... You could even make plates and cups from ice. Throw an insulated membrane in, and you could make a heated swimming pool. This is clearly the fastest and cheapest way to build a city but I'd put airlocks at various points to compartmentalize, just incase of a catastrophic break.... although that is only going to happen if you build too large or too close to the surface. With the low gravity, you could build some pretty large rooms.... maybe a football field or such, safely. You didn't mention energy. While I think nuclear would be awesome, I think the best thing you can do in situ is wind turbines. Solar panels only last about 30 years or so and not at all during the night or the months long summer dust storms. A machine shop should be able to build the generators easy enough and the blades will need to be big but there is a steady 15 mph wind day and night, even better in dust storms.
@@MrSatyre1 To be safe from meteors or asteroids, but those threaten us here on earth as well and we seem to cope. It's the meteroids that are the big deal, cause those hit earth all day every day but burn up quick and never pose a threat. Those would be an issue on mars, but that could be mitigated by going a little ways under ground
Underground colonies is probably how we started civilization here. And we probably only did that to terra form the planet to the suiting of the species that sent us here who probably spend a several millennia napping so for them the process is a blink. Let’s just hope we finish before they get here. Probably don’t wanna face them
I would not want to live in a cave. I like fresh air and feeling of the sun on my skin. I like seeing green plants and trees. I like watching the rain and snow. Hearing the owls and coyotes singing.
Living on the surface of mars would be the same or even worse than underground. This is what living in a hostile environment is like. Elon Musk is overhyping our current technological advances, a "colony" on mars will look much more like a research base on Antartica.
Y’all are talking about how hostile it is but some people which aren’t you may like living and having that lifestyle. Those will be the first colonizers before it’s terraformed
Mining on Mars where the robots mine out the inside of the crater wall. Then people can have a place to build out later. With mining out areas you can know exactly what you need for build outs, less waist. You could launch the boring machines from inside the excavated areas. You can plan out window systems and shutters to stop the cold/storms etc.
I will agree on underground cities. Far less resource management, easy to seal off with the right knowledge and can be kept well maintained. After all, terraforming Mars would take several millenia or more, if at all.
Living on Mars is a ridiculous idea! Living underground would be very depressing! Walking about topside in a spacesuit would be very inconvenient and no beautiful scenery and no trees. Why would anyone want to live there? We need to take better care of our home planet! ❤😊
We absolutely have to live underground. Pressure/radiation/dust storms make living on the surface impossibly expensive. Find a 2 mile long by 1/2 mile wide lava tube and put large pressure doors at each entrance. Pressurize the tunnel, add buildings, lots of water/trees/plants, create a very earth-like small city. The bigger the happier the people. At the same time build hundreds of factories with robots up on the surface to spew greenhouse gases to thicken the atmosphere and start terraforming. Experiment with super gases like Methane and others to speed up the process. Introduce bacteria into the soil that will take out the Percolates and introduce Nitrogen producing bacteria. After 50, 100, 500 years once we get the atmosphere thick enough, that will increase the surface pressure and allow liquid water at the surface. Then just plant massive amounts of trees and plants to pull Carbon dioxide out of the air and start putting in oxygen. Then theoretically we might be able to take off the space suit on the surface.....
I understand Mars gravity is around 38% of Earth's. That alone makes for huge biological challenges for which we do not have a full understanding and of course no means to counteract. We know lower gravity has significant effects on bone density, healing, plant growth and even affects how medicine works in our bodies. On top of these huge challenges, even if we can manage to sustain a colony on Mars, the populations will most likely never return to Earth so the newborns are likely to be a very different version of humans.
7:50 The distance from the sun is pretty insignificant in terms of how fast a planet cools, unless aignificant tidal effects occur i guess... it has to do with surface area to mass. Larger planets have more mass to surface area.
I've still never heard of any ideas of how to make a self sustained echo system on Mars when we can't even do it on earth. Also, If the caves don't collapse from the change in temperature (rock expansion). Then heating may not be as big a deal. All the equipment they use will creates heat. As time go on the heat will penetrate the rock deeper and deeper stabilizing the heat. Much the same way medieval castles worked. In fact they may end up with a cooling problem and have to move some of the equipment outside.
Lucid - correct. We can't even make a self-sustaining colony on Antarctica, which already has radiation shielding (the atmosphere and Van Allen belt); breathable atmosphere at correct content & pressure; abundant water ice/snow; much cheaper shipping FOB Cape Canaveral.
Predominantly underground is feasible. bubble domes can be super radiation & thermal tinted, even crops plants/trees can be photosynthesis transfer from external solar 🔋 to internal halogen lamp🔦 , sustaining naturally o2 & vapor recycle♻️ H20. Elon is correct in nuking, (more like erupting lava & ice really) to tarriform, BUT! The magnetospher will *not hold the atmosphere* for long, The Earth spews 2%+ annually out to space, the core multiplictis it more than its *efficient size* core compress energy it bares to cycle life. Gravity is a issue to your third generation on Mars/moon. Morph body form, likely hunch-back/tail & giant able growth versus low *grip* ratio mass mobility. ( The way Earth was at one time of its eons of reincarnation form. 🦕👀?!).
Don't know where you guys got the idea that we would need to be self-sustained ecosystems. The whole idea is to mine the resources outside the habitat on the Moon or deeper into the caverns. There are measurements of 60-to-70-degree F temperatures in some of the openings into the Lava Tubes on the Moon for some unknown reason. Also, there may be gases like oxygen and CO2 and fluid water deeper in the caverns. Atmosphere could be contained with inflatable tents with some variety of concrete composed of regolith stuck together with some type of cement to construct an inner skeleton or outer protective shell. Tubes could be used to move the air through some kind of heat exchanger to cool the atmosphere. Maybe something like gunite, a mixture of cement, sand, and water applied through a pressure hose, producing a dense hard layer of concrete used in building for lining tunnels and structural repairs, could be a useful material, to strengthen the walls and floor.
Colonists could just wear space suits that are heavy enough to compensate for the reduced Martian gravitational force. The total weight of the suits worn by the colonists on Mars would negate the reduced gravitational effect and make their weight proportional to the weight of said colonists if they were standing on the surface of the Earth.
Almost every plan to have humans live on Mars can be done on earth’s Moon. For instance the idea of an underground colony has also been proposed for the Moon. There are several articles on the internet about underground Moon colony proposals.
Moon could be used as a space factory for spaceships. It would take less energy and fuel to produce and lunch them which would also allow us to make them bigger and more complex
@@alengrm7488 ; yes the Moon can be used for manufacturing. It can also be used for science. People could live there as they live in Antarctica today. And people could live on the Moon long term. The ways to do all of that have been thought out and there are plans to make it happen.
@@eyecomeinpeace2707 ; both Mars and the Moon have low gravity which has harmful side effects on the body. Mars is about 1/3 the gravity of earth. The Moon is about 1/6 the gravity of earth. * The advantages of dealing with this on the Moon over Mars. 1. Travel time between the Moon and the earth is 3 days. And the launch window, weather permitting, between the earth and the Moon can happen every week. - So, if people on the Moon need earth’s gravity for heath reasons, they can easily be sent back to earth to get it. - Travel time between the earth and Mars is 7 months. The Mars/earth launch window can only happen every 26 months or about every 2 years. - So, if someone on Mars needs earth gravity for health reasons, they cannot easily get it and will suffer more physical damage. 2. What about a long term tech solution which can be done many years from now to create artificial gravity with living on Mars and the Moon. - One idea is to have a rotating circular, centrifuge, living quarters for at least during sleep to simulate earth level gravity. - But when it is possible to build large structures off of the earth, such as centrifuge living quarters, it will be much easier to do that on the Moon compared with Mars. That again is due to the much shorter travel time to the Moon and the easy to obtain launch window as I explained above.
@@bb1111116 Yes they are all valid reasons for sure. I suppose I was just thinking how mankind likes to go deeper and beyond the safe tethers of home. I often think of all the European seafarers and explorers in the past that pushed to the limit especially with their beliefs of the Earth being flat and all. They had to put up with a lot of adversity in the New World but persevered and overcame and hence, here we are in this New World typing to each other here with vast cities and civilizations in both American continents. The human spirit is strong.
Ideally a hybrid of underground tunnel networks and caverns. Apartments underground and other industrial capacity. People would need access to the openings (akin to Central Park in NY) where large domes would allow sunlight and greenery. Living spaces should be kept at 65 degrees and open areas would be warmer. Use underground nuclear power plants to maintain life support.
i like your content btw... BUT... you did gloss over Venus not mentioning cloud-city scenario with similar gravity and livable temp in the atmosphere... and less travel time to get there
A domed location is a great start. From there, you can go on cave hunting excursions. SpaceX needs to send more materials than people, repeatedly, until there's some equipment to work with for Geothermals, Investigations, and Health maintenance. It'll be "send us and , so we can do ". All currently still TBD.
Finally someone who gives a sensible timeframe. I'm so sick of fools thinking all this stuff is gonna happen in like the next 10-20 years. Mars is literally a different world, with no air, massive radiation, less gravity, and is literally 1,000 times further away than the Moon. All of these things will take time, lots of time, to come to fruition. Within say 50-100 years hopefully we'll be able to get some good Moon bases going and start having humans live there in like 6 month durations like in Antarctica, and then within 100-200 years get Mars going, and over the course of a thousand years, hopefully we can have the entire solar system colonized.
@@matthewviramontes3131 Starship if it can live uptoo Elon's expectations, will make it possible in 20-30 years. It is going to revolutionise space travel as big of an impact as the first plane, or in the internet.
Love reading the borderline insane ideas and delusional comments here. They believe everything Elon Musk says too, doesn't matter how borderline retarded it is and most of his ideas will never work. Nothing 'groundbreaking' is going to happen for over a century or two.
@@alexbaty1814yikes it makes u wonder how many plane crashes happened in the first 20 years to realize how many space ships will between here and there
I remember reading the stories from Heinlein, Clarke, and Norton about this subject. They were thinking along much the same lines back then. As to living in the caves or dome cities, no thank you. I'm happy right here on my home planet.
Makes sense to start with caves, then as more people settle there and more infrastructure is available, progression onto the surface could become possible.
Hmm, I would prefer the caves to start. Having serface towns could then be built to support activities outside. Maybe not as permanent but really handy.
I believe if we are to find evidence of alien life, we will have the best chance of finding it within our solar system vs searching for it in other star systems.
Yea my best guess would be on Titan, Enceladus, Europa, or some other moon in the solar system. And mayyyyyyyybe life on Venus either underground, in the atmosphere, or perhaps near the poles.
@@matthewviramontes3131 And maybe evidence of past alien life as well. There might even be an ancient alien probe on the dark side of the Moon for all we know.
I think this would be a major development - also, in terms of humanity in general, it wouldn't be the first time we have sought out caves a s a habitat!
A colony on mars will definitely find lots of archeology, it's been seen too many times for it not to exist. At a stretch I'd say they might find valuable artifacts from ancient civilisations. If a mars colony came into contact with one or more alien civilisations trade relations and passing of knowledge could see those colonies becoming independent.
@@justwannabehappy6735 not really, if some certain people don't allow us to see it we wont, but a colony they can only control that information for so long before the colonists tell everyone they're in contact with on earth. Earths ruling classes might one day have to accept an independent mars colony.
@@justwannabehappy6735 To play a little bit of "Devil's advocate" here: Scientists have only recently, and some very reluctantly agreeing with, the acknowledgment of liquid water on Mars at certain underground locations such as at the poles. And Mars has been studied and photographed in great detail for decades now and the liquid water debate is just now being discovered to be true. Millions of years ago, Mars was very different than what it is today. It had more of an atmosphere, warmer climate, running water on the surface; the necessary factors for life to exist and grow. Then a planetary catastrophe happened and the atmosphere was ripped away and Mars died. Over the millions of years since then, any surface evidence of sentient life would have been been erased. So, to say that ......"we would have seen signs of it ( past civilization) by now", is not necessarily true. We are just going to have to go there in person and do a lot of exploring to say definitely one way or the other.
We should be doing this on Earth also. We don't need to do this immediately, but we should be experimenting. Global warming started between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago. At that time there were about 1 million people, our only technology was fire. We are now over 7.5 Billion people. Even if we reduced out carbon foot print back to that of 1million people, Global Warming had already started. So we need to reduce it lower than that. If housing underground, we could still have parks on the surface with skylights that deliver sunlight to the homes and other buildings underground. Underground would protect us from the heat, nuclear weapons, even allergens. Yes, this will cost more money, so we would need to start with natural caves. I don't actually see this happening until we are forced to. But that will be too late.
great video, I would choose dome city or slim city, because we have a better chance of surviving mars in domes then we do underground, vote for me to go to mars, am willing to work and put in the time to build a settlement, I am a man of many talents...
By the time we send humans to Mars, I will probably be an old man or long gone. Unless we figure out 3D Printing in Space and can have a robot army build the settlement for us first, and Fast. I am not going to get excited about another planet any time soon. I badly want to see humanity succeed and become a multi-planetary species, I just don't have faith in Humanity. There are not enough Elon Musks in the world. Seems we always have greedy selfish jealous people running our government(US). I wish we could fast-track all of Elon's ideas to fruition to speed up this man's Dream of bettering humanity. Oh and boring tunnels is the best bet with radiation being a problem on the surface and very weak atmosphere not great for blocking/burning up space debris. Same as a base on the Moon, will need underground facilities for sure.
Ever since I heard about the Boring Company, I've been a fan of caves on Mars. We can start with looking for caves, and by the time we get serious about settlement, I expect we'll have located some that are excellent. As for the Moon, it's even more idea for underground digging to half half the gravity of Mars. On Earth we'll likely have to go with above ground domes for urban areas and growing food and other necessary vegetation. We'll need a lot of vegetation to scrub the atmosphere of carbon dioxide here and in space, including the Moon and Mars.
@@mlt6322 right. It's in our atmosphere. In high concentrations it caused drowsiness. The ISS has had it figured outfor over 20 years. Inefficient converters make oxygen and carbon monoxide. SpaceX wants to combine carbon dioxide with water, and make methane and oxygen. That's what they'll use for rocket fuel. Oxygen on Mars will mostly come processing rock. On the Moon they'll make it from water until they get to processing rock.
@@mlt6322 The atmosphere of Mars contains 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, a little oxygen, water vapor and methane, with an average molecular weight of 43.34.
Lava tubes are unstable, so you can't build a settlement there. They would need to be supported, but it's easier to support tunnels made by a drilling machine because of their more perfectly rounded shape. So it wouldn't be a viable solution to use lava tubes.
I definitely believe that living in a cave is the best option, it has way more pluses. And it would be cool to actually step on Marshin soil, with no radiation, that soil actually has the best chance of growing food as well.
What I think best would be to find a water well near a cliff face ( sandstone would be ideal ) Then start drilling sideways into the face . drill out a lot of space for living in . Drill up to near the surface for greenhouse area drill a number of different levels coat the inside with something air--proof , make doors and windows in the cliff with a big door at lower ground level Viola !!!!
Olympus Mons is the biggest mountain in the solar system and an extinct volcano and as such may be riddled with lava caves ready made for the human habitation you are talking about.
Sealing a tunnel underground on Mars is one hell of a leap. If the same sort of tunnels exist on Earth, the first step would be to practice right here first. Once all the bugs are worked out, then take it to the Moon. Once you work a underground planetary habitat is up and working then take it to Mars. Personally, I would have entirely different missions. We need to hit the grocery store before camping and that means we need asteroids latent with frozen H2O, O2 processable minerals, and more. We have all the building blocks for a massive space station. Maybe that should be considered before Mars as well.
I'm curious about soil and rock compaction. Thanks to Mars' lower gravity, everything is less packed than here on Earth. How will that affect construction of above and below ground structures?
It should be a mixture of tunnels and domes. The dome provides window for light and heat that can be directed to areas underground. Kind of like a skylight. The dome or window filters out the excess radiation, while allowing heat to build up for the underground habitations and food farms. We could also send AI rocket cranes to the astroid belts to collect rocks that have frozen water on them. Then when put in orbit around mars harvest the water and send it underground.
When the video was talking about underground water on Mars, I thought about the great books by Frank Herbert, 'Dune', where the only water on the desert planet was underground.
I can easily see an underground habitat being acceptable. If there were some central area with access to natural light, like a solarium in a roman villa, it could even be illuminated via glassfiber optical tubes. That would be a great place for gardens to be.
That idear of cities on Mars under ground is what i call a obvious answer . For me I would live anywhere on Mars as long as I have all the necessary facilities to live with.
According to some old books I read it shows three different civilizations already built underground on Mars.. Those pictures of Mars right next to the actual blueprint of our universe They're very old.. 1 areas for storage the other area is for living in another area is for growing crops underground According to the book The each one of the sites has water 🌊👌
Why live on Mars? The wealth/resources are in the Asteroid Belt, literally quintillions of dollars of rare earths, and precious metal. Enough Nickel/Iron to construct Oneil Cylinders. Fuel consuming Lifting off of and Heat issue, re-entry onto the surface of Mars, vs micro-Gravity docking with an Oneil Cylinder will allow for less complex, more efficient, faster, nonchemical combustion, space transportation too.
The first 100 people to use code SPACE at the link below will get 20% off of Incogni: incogni.com/space
Habitats underneath the Marsian surface sound like a much more reasonable plan than these fancy glass domes.
All this is beautiful but what I don't understand, we got plenty of desert regions on earth that are very similar to average Mars condition, but no one try to create a base there.
If humans cannot create a village in the middle of the Sahara, where they can experiment without fear of oxygen problems and still on earth, saving money.
If musk is serious about this, he should build bases in every cold,hot deserts on earth, even Antarctica to simulate all Mars.
Anyone did the math on the amount of energy, materials, and labor required to transfer all that material from earth to Mars, and operate it there? I'm curious about the cost. Even if spaceX builds rockets to get to Mars and back, I don't think they have the money to build anything close to this. This project is all cost with ZERO profit. Projects this big, right here on Earth, cost billions but are viable because they are profitable, directly or indirectly like infrastructure in 20 to 30 years. This concept has ZERO profitability, only an extreme expense to build and likely even more expensive to maintain. This it will never exist, other than as a temporary and failed "art project" by a billionaire who will lose his shirt and lots of dead people trying.
@@Metal0sopher Have you heard of 3D printing?
Am not saying that 3D printing is read at that scale but things are evolving rapidly.
For example, mental 3D and printed circuit board is advanced now.
Once robots can be autonomous on Mars and divers 3D printers available, we wouldn't need to be worried about transporting materials, but I still think it will take at least 50 years before we even started.
Predominantly underground is feasible. bubble domes can super radiation & thermal tint, even crops plants/trees can be photosynthesis transfer from external solar 🔋 to internal halogen lamp🔦 , sustaining naturally o2 & vapor recycle♻️ H20.
Elon is correct in nuking, (more like erupting lava & ice really) to tarriform...BUT! The magnetospher will *not hold the atmosphere* for long, The Earth spews 2%+ annually out to space, the core multiplictis it more than its *efficient size* core compress energy it bares to cycle life.
Gravity is a issue to your third generation on Mars/moon. Morph body form, likely hunch-back/tail & giant able growth versus low *grip* ratio mass mobility. ( The way Earth was at one time of its eons of reincarnation form. 🦕👀?!).
The cave idea overall is probably the best bet. All of the conditions above surface will take along time to make habitable.
He comments about using the caves and then mentions meteors punching thru into them :(
Frankly, I like Mars the way it is on the surface. I wouldn't terraform it. If you are going to go cave, then I strongly suggest ice caves in the massive tropical glaciers (2+ kilometers deep). You need an airlock on the surface and can otherwise melt out as big a city as you like. It would keep pressure and reasonable room temperatures. Using an insulative membrane, you could increase the temperature for grow rooms that want even warmer temperatures for the best productivity. You could also use an insulative membrane to build a heating indoor swimming pool. You can sculpt stairs, statues, tables, chairs, beds, sofas, plates, and cups from ice. Since these glaciers are huge and not longer moving, they'd be extremely stable and safe.
It isn't necessary to dwell in caves, bubble domes can be super radiation & thermal tinted, even crops plants/trees can be photosynthesis transfer from external solar to internal halogen lamps, sustaining naturally o2 & vapor of H20. Gravity is a issue to your third generation. Morph body form likely hunch-back/tail & giant able growth vs low *grip* mass. ( The way Earth was at one time of its eons of reincarnation form 🦕👀).
Can they create an atmosphere dense enough for us with what’s available to them.
very long time or Never.
Lava tubes are something I have been advocating for from the start. It makes the most sense, along with Small Modular Nuclear power Plants.
Lava tubes are good but will take a bit to enter and prepare. Simply melting a palace out for your colony in a glacier would be faster and easier.
@@solifugus interesting, never considered that approach.
I agree, absolute top option!
Yes definitely, small modular nuclear powerplants for power for the colony! Scale up and expand and add power capacity as needed as the colony grows!
Martians already have power stations there. From what I can see they are bring power to the surface using Crescent Moon shaped structures.
Decades ago remote viewers declared they were already being used. 👽
Would totally live in an underground city on Mars .
I've designed many in my spare time. But was impressed by the the underground city on Ceres in the Expanse.
Can’t wait for you to go! Leave now!
Why though? That could be built anywhere on Earth and be much closer to help if needed. It also wouldn;t be as lethal to life as Mars.
Oye beltaloda
It's not the earth that's the problem, it's the world 🌍
@blaumax1910 This idea has been around for quite some time. With only windows in the dome, I do not see it being any better than being underground except with less protection. It would be easy to have monitors as windows displaying whatever scenery desired to give the illusion of being above ground.
Let's hope these caves are empty and don't have any little critters to mess us up.
Maybe even a whole civilization
Lol
@@alengrm7488 Am not sure those hidden civilizations appreciate home invasion by humans drilling down from their roof 😂.
The first encounter might be the last encounter very quickly.
Lets hope they have something alive
If that is the case, we must ask would that in turn make us the alien invaders. More to the point, would that put us in a completely reverse of War of the Worlds? Alot of ethical quandries to consider and moreover to ask are we better than out ancestors and potentially seek cooperation with the natives, or will we be no better than the European settlers and displace their population. More to the point, what diseases would be swapped around? Would we develop an immunity to said disease or would it be mutually assured death by cross contamination.
Keeping that dust at bay is an under-rated issue! :)
The problem with glass domes, is that you need to build your landing pads miles away, or behind a ridge, to protect the dome..
There is a short list of things humans need surface access for, mostly working, surface travel, and arriving/leaving via landing pads...
Time spent on the surface is like time spent getting X-rayed or flying long haul, you would need to track your radiation exposure.
My Own Creations: Agreed. Another issue with the glass domes will be the same as it has been with all our Rovers on Mars: keeping them clean!
How about just build an underwater city here on Earth? It would cost way less and also more practical too.
😂 why wouldn’t they just build underground here? Building an underwater city is no where near practical
For me, a good place to reside is in the western end of Valles Marineris, in the canyon, at the base of one of the walls where it will have relative abundance of atmosphere above it and good protection from meteorites and cosmic rays. Additionally, we could bore into the cliffs and have part of our infrastructure in the ground in that manner. All good wishes.
We can't afford to bury power lines underground here, infrastructure on Mars is pipedream.
I like your thoughts. Plus, the ground is surely a better thermal inulator than some city of glass or a space baloon would be!
That region has a network of deep canions that may have still some water close to the surface, judging by recent reports.
I'm pulling for both habitats... Here's why. Underground cities will help to stabilize growth for our species, however, eventually we're going to need to develop not only hard shielding, but energy based shielding to expand onto the surface of Mars. Having many eyes and ears above ground on a daily basis will help us to keep tabs on the "Pulse" of the planet and foresee any dangers we're currently not seeing from our satellites, rovers, and probes. I truly, absolutely envy those who get to go and colonize Mars first.... I'm too old to physically make it off the planet now to go there, unless we come up with a ant-gravity way of leaving our surface here... it's physically too demanding, however, I've dreamed of going into space and reaching for the stars for literal decades. Maybe one of my grandchildren will go there. Now THAT would be exciting!
Do the caves! Surface domes are too fragile, and martian lava tubes can be huge!
Lmao that shot of the eyes exploding from total recall is a major classic lmao It always makes me laugh so hard!
A combination of both would be needed. The caves for most things and domes for food production. Domes do not have to be big and could have covers that could go over them for major events to protect them. The main problem is going to be the dust. The caves could house tubes that would be like structures that were built in Greenland during the Cold War. They could have airlocks for going outside into the caves so the caves themselves would not need to be air tight. Insulating the structures inside the caves would be easier than insulating the whole cave.
Ever heard of grow lights?
@@marktwain2053 I never understood why hydroponics or aquaponics are not considered as a reliable source of food. Once, just for laughs I grew a chilli plant and some tomatoes using some $20 expensive high grade plant food. The chilli plant was ridiculous, some much yield. The tomatoes were the same, thirsty but they just super fast and super big. I only had a single 600w light too.
The Moon has large caverns and is in a more suitable location...days to get there rather than months. The Moon gets more sunlight than Mars also because of its location. Strangely, temperatures in the openings into the caves have been measured around 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The Moon is a much better location as a base for asteroid mining as well as source for water and metals and would be a great place for manufacturing. The caverns there would make great places for green houses with grow lights and fiber optics providing light. We should not overreach and bypass the Moon.
You win 🏆
The moon has the problem of low gravity. Not great for humans long term. Twenty eight day days and stronger solar radiation . Mars is more suitable for a long term human habitation but the moon will be the gateway for much space travel. 🚀💫
@@malcolmrickarby2313 I think that we will use a spinning doughnut shaped habitat attached to Starship that will act as a filling station for vehicles going to the surface or back into space. Periodic visits for enough time to regenerate various cells in the body.
@@malcolmrickarby2313 having a 10 meter running circuit will be able to provide 0.5g to 1g while you exercise. That is is likely to be enough although the 1/6 g of the moon is likely to be enough too.
Why not both places? We can have bases on the Moon, *and* on Mars.
It makes sense, using existing lava tubes that you only have to seal from the hostile surface any point it is exposed. Obviously you would want to line the walls to strengthen them and prevent future breaches. Much more practical than a domed city.
As for getting views of the surface they have this neat new invention called closed circuit video. Much less risky than a window or a dome.
As for food it could start with sprouts for vitamins and adding protein, fiber and starch to fill them up.
By sending up fish fry like say talapia could be a great start to farming protein assuming you can find a source of water. Imagine a pond running down the length of the
tunnel middle not only provides you with a lovely view, but also holds fish to eat. Like one long huge aquarium. As you expand you can add other fry like catfish, trout, grouper, clams, muscles etc ... and all of them pooping out fertilizer for the plants that keep their water clean, and yes even feed them too.
The water can be filtered through aquafarms that would grow vegetables to expand their diets. And the roots stems and leaves not eaten could be used to make a mulch that could amend the dirt to grow larger or other plants.
You could send chicken chicks up too, to create a supply of eggs and meat. Ducklings and goslings are another expansion to the protein source.
With human and animal sewage there is a steady source of fertilizer that could be added to processed soils to expand to other plants that filter the air and provide them greenery to live around.
Power could come from a network of surface or near surface micro reactors and thermal electric generators that not only power to run the colony but also heat to warm it. And if you ran them at say 70% capacity then if one ever did go down or need maintenance then the others could take up the slack until it is repaired or replaced. Also several smaller reactors is much less vulnerable to a single disaster than is one large reactor.
Come to think of it we could even start doing alot of these things here on earth too, just to practice and get the process down. Of course we would have to put up with decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels a time bit, and possibly making food more plentiful and cheaper to buy a tiny bit. Maybe even lowering the polution levels a smig. But I'm sure we could suffer through that burden. Don't you?
I would think 90% underground and 10% above ground (shielded from radiation by regolith or water) would be best. Underground habitats need to be expansively large to contain enough breathable air that a breach can be sealed before oxygen levels get dangerously low. Plants and trees, even forests and parks in all underground living areas will be needed to produce oxygen and ensure the mental health of the inhabitants. The choice between living in a concrete and steel bunker vs a large natural looking environment should be an obvious one. Cabin fever would be the outcome for the former.
The problem is that plants don't tend to grow underground particulary well and arificial lighting can only go so far.
There'll, probably, be needed some genetically modified to adapt to the new conditions.
Also creating an artificial day-night cycle will be a challenge.
Existing lava tubes and caves are the best first option...then send in the Boring Company to connect everything
One last problem nobody ever seems to talk about when it comes to colonizing Mars is the effect of low gravity on the human skeletal system, which then has catastrophic effects on almost every other system in the body. Zero gravity accelerates this, like on the space station, but these colonists will be required to stay for years at about 40% gravity of earth - that will not end well after just a few years. Unless we can build centrifugal cities that create artificial gravity, there is no way can ever colonize mars.
Caves for sure! Surface domes are too vulnerable. In KSR Mars trilogy, humans start by putting containers in the ground as make-shift habitats. Later habitats are build below the surface. Above surface can be done later. Would be nice to have a magnetosphere around Mars though.
I think mass-producing stainless steel sheet metal will be practical, on Mars. Also, mass-producing PVC could also be practical, given enough energy. You could build stainless steel buildings using cold-welding (pushing steel together in the absence of oxygen, causes a bonding like pushing clay together). Pure PVC is highly insulative, fire-resistant, and transparent with a slight blue tint. Anyway, I'd build villages skinned with sheet metal, and structured with corrugated or bent sheet metal. I'd build the roof to overhang a big, cover the top with up to a meter of regolith, use blown glass bricks for windows, and coat the interior with a PVC membrane. This would be buildable with all materials and energy from Mars and be very safe. It would protect from small meteors, retain warmth, allow sunlight in, and hold air in really well.
So smelting iron and nickel (very abundant on the surface) can be done with a lightweight titanium crucible and a solar concentrator (for heat). Purification during smelting (normally done with things like borax) can be done by injection of pure oxygen. Pickling and cold rolling to make highly impact-resistant and malleable stainless steel also shouldn't require too much equipment. PVC can be made using the abundant salts in the ground (for chlorine), CO2 in the air, and steam -- using the pressurized steam method. 1 meter of regolith is enough to block the cosmic rays to more than safe levels and also will catch small meteors that are most typical. Larger impacts blowing debris laterally should also not be too damaging, as cold rolled steel is hightly impact-resistant.
A PVC member is very insulative and abrasion resistant, however, if the habitat is separated a bit from the ground, heat dissipation should be very slow. This is because the atmosphere is so thin. Although very cold, transference of heat outward should be substantially slowed due to the distance between molecules in the atmosphere.
That said, I do also like the idea of lava tubes. I drew up designs for an inflatable wall with airlock to seal off two ends of the tube. Smoother lava tubes tend to be sealed somewhat air tight due to the melted nature of the walls. However, this would not be sufficient because one leak is too many. I'd spray it down with a hot PVC membrane. The problem is that Martian lava tubes are far larger, on average, than Earth ones. I visited a lava tube in Cheju-do island, Korea. It was about 10 meters wide. The lava tubes on Mars are vastly larger due to the lower gravity and double the metals content in the basalt. So that's great if you can seal it but much harder to seal.
Another idea is to melt out a city in one of Mars' large tropical glaciers. You'd need to build a surface airlock but it would be vastly faster and easier to melt out large spaces in which to live. Inside an ice cave, you can create comfortable room temperatures because the vast ice behind the walls helps prevent melting. Also for higher temperatures, such as for growing tomatoes, you could use an insulative membrane in the grow rooms. Obviously, you will be using LED grow lights. You can make tables, chairs, beds, sofas, from ice and just need to cover them with an insulated fabric.... You could even make plates and cups from ice. Throw an insulated membrane in, and you could make a heated swimming pool. This is clearly the fastest and cheapest way to build a city but I'd put airlocks at various points to compartmentalize, just incase of a catastrophic break.... although that is only going to happen if you build too large or too close to the surface. With the low gravity, you could build some pretty large rooms.... maybe a football field or such, safely.
You didn't mention energy. While I think nuclear would be awesome, I think the best thing you can do in situ is wind turbines. Solar panels only last about 30 years or so and not at all during the night or the months long summer dust storms. A machine shop should be able to build the generators easy enough and the blades will need to be big but there is a steady 15 mph wind day and night, even better in dust storms.
Wind turbines in a virtual vacuum (0.8% the atmospheric pressure of Earth's) you seriously need to rethink this.
Great comment! Very detailed and technically competent.
The caves are our best option. No matter what we do to make a habitable surface colony, one meteor hit and it’s over
You'd have to go pretty far down to be impervious to meteors. Might be better to dig horizontally into a mountain or extinct volcano base.
@@MrSatyre1 To be safe from meteors or asteroids, but those threaten us here on earth as well and we seem to cope.
It's the meteroids that are the big deal, cause those hit earth all day every day but burn up quick and never pose a threat. Those would be an issue on mars, but that could be mitigated by going a little ways under ground
Mars Colony One/Six is an entertaining series of books from Geral M. Kirby I really enjoyed that has caverns in it.
Underground colonies is probably how we started civilization here. And we probably only did that to terra form the planet to the suiting of the species that sent us here who probably spend a several millennia napping so for them the process is a blink. Let’s just hope we finish before they get here. Probably don’t wanna face them
Agreed. Skilled spelunking astronauts will be prime candidates for a future Mars colony
I would not want to live in a cave. I like fresh air and feeling of the sun on my skin. I like seeing green plants and trees. I like watching the rain and snow. Hearing the owls and coyotes singing.
Who asked bro??
Good for you
Living on the surface of mars would be the same or even worse than underground. This is what living in a hostile environment is like. Elon Musk is overhyping our current technological advances, a "colony" on mars will look much more like a research base on Antartica.
Y’all are talking about how hostile it is but some people which aren’t you may like living and having that lifestyle. Those will be the first colonizers before it’s terraformed
Better go into the woods and never come out 🤫😆😁😆😁💯
I would do both, the domes and underground homes
good bet would probably be the giant canyon walls too. radiation protection, less digging, probably has water, et al.
And maybe the air pressure would be higher as well deep in those canyons.
Mining on Mars where the robots mine out the inside of the crater wall. Then people can have a place to build out later. With mining out areas you can know exactly what you need for build outs, less waist. You could launch the boring machines from inside the excavated areas. You can plan out window systems and shutters to stop the cold/storms etc.
It's Already Build!!
I will agree on underground cities. Far less resource management, easy to seal off with the right knowledge and can be kept well maintained. After all, terraforming Mars would take several millenia or more, if at all.
Yes, bring on the underground habitats.
Living on Mars is a ridiculous idea! Living underground would be very depressing!
Walking about topside in a spacesuit would be very inconvenient and no beautiful scenery and no trees. Why would anyone want to live there? We need to take better care of our home planet! ❤😊
We absolutely have to live underground. Pressure/radiation/dust storms make living on the surface impossibly expensive. Find a 2 mile long by 1/2 mile wide lava tube and put large pressure doors at each entrance. Pressurize the tunnel, add buildings, lots of water/trees/plants, create a very earth-like small city. The bigger the happier the people. At the same time build hundreds of factories with robots up on the surface to spew greenhouse gases to thicken the atmosphere and start terraforming. Experiment with super gases like Methane and others to speed up the process. Introduce bacteria into the soil that will take out the Percolates and introduce Nitrogen producing bacteria. After 50, 100, 500 years once we get the atmosphere thick enough, that will increase the surface pressure and allow liquid water at the surface. Then just plant massive amounts of trees and plants to pull Carbon dioxide out of the air and start putting in oxygen. Then theoretically we might be able to take off the space suit on the surface.....
I would rather go to Tahiti.
I understand Mars gravity is around 38% of Earth's. That alone makes for huge biological challenges for which we do not have a full understanding and of course no means to counteract. We know lower gravity has significant effects on bone density, healing, plant growth and even affects how medicine works in our bodies. On top of these huge challenges, even if we can manage to sustain a colony on Mars, the populations will most likely never return to Earth so the newborns are likely to be a very different version of humans.
7:50
The distance from the sun is pretty insignificant in terms of how fast a planet cools, unless aignificant tidal effects occur i guess... it has to do with surface area to mass. Larger planets have more mass to surface area.
Great video. I always kind of pictured the underground city would look like and feel like a mall.
me too ..
But with this mall, you go outside and it's curtains
I've still never heard of any ideas of how to make a self sustained echo system on Mars when we can't even do it on earth.
Also, If the caves don't collapse from the change in temperature (rock expansion). Then heating may not be as big a deal. All the equipment they use will creates heat. As time go on the heat will penetrate the rock deeper and deeper stabilizing the heat. Much the same way medieval castles worked. In fact they may end up with a cooling problem and have to move some of the equipment outside.
ecosystem, earth does that on its own, caves make sense, no ecosystem on Mars
Lucid - correct. We can't even make a self-sustaining colony on Antarctica, which already has radiation shielding (the atmosphere and Van Allen belt); breathable atmosphere at correct content & pressure; abundant water ice/snow; much cheaper shipping FOB Cape Canaveral.
Predominantly underground is feasible. bubble domes can be super radiation & thermal tinted, even crops plants/trees can be photosynthesis transfer from external solar 🔋 to internal halogen lamp🔦 , sustaining naturally o2 & vapor recycle♻️ H20.
Elon is correct in nuking, (more like erupting lava & ice really) to tarriform, BUT! The magnetospher will *not hold the atmosphere* for long, The Earth spews 2%+ annually out to space, the core multiplictis it more than its *efficient size* core compress energy it bares to cycle life.
Gravity is a issue to your third generation on Mars/moon. Morph body form, likely hunch-back/tail & giant able growth versus low *grip* ratio mass mobility. ( The way Earth was at one time of its eons of reincarnation form. 🦕👀?!).
Don't know where you guys got the idea that we would need to be self-sustained ecosystems. The whole idea is to mine the resources outside the habitat on the Moon or deeper into the caverns. There are measurements of 60-to-70-degree F temperatures in some of the openings into the Lava Tubes on the Moon for some unknown reason. Also, there may be gases like oxygen and CO2 and fluid water deeper in the caverns. Atmosphere could be contained with inflatable tents with some variety of concrete composed of regolith stuck together with some type of cement to construct an inner skeleton or outer protective shell. Tubes could be used to move the air through some kind of heat exchanger to cool the atmosphere. Maybe something like gunite, a mixture of cement, sand, and water applied through a pressure hose, producing a dense hard layer of concrete used in building for lining tunnels and structural repairs, could be a useful material, to strengthen the walls and floor.
@@jameswest4819 Would love to see them show off that vaporware tech down at the south pole, where shipping costs are a lot lower.
100% right mars underground civilization more advanced
This video is so good.
Real winner for me.
:D
Sounds great...BUT...BUT...BUT.... The low gravity situation is a killer.
Colonists could just wear space suits that are heavy enough to compensate for the reduced Martian gravitational force. The total weight of the suits worn by the colonists on Mars would negate the reduced gravitational effect and make their weight proportional to the weight of said colonists if they were standing on the surface of the Earth.
Almost every plan to have humans live on Mars can be done on earth’s Moon.
For instance the idea of an underground colony has also been proposed for the Moon.
There are several articles on the internet about underground Moon colony proposals.
Moon could be used as a space factory for spaceships. It would take less energy and fuel to produce and lunch them which would also allow us to make them bigger and more complex
@@alengrm7488 ; yes the Moon can be used for manufacturing. It can also be used for science. People could live there as they live in Antarctica today. And people could live on the Moon long term.
The ways to do all of that have been thought out and there are plans to make it happen.
But the Moon has very low gravity compared to Mars and it will create a lot of physiologic dyscrasias in blood and bone over time etc.
@@eyecomeinpeace2707 ; both Mars and the Moon have low gravity which has harmful side effects on the body.
Mars is about 1/3 the gravity of earth.
The Moon is about 1/6 the gravity of earth.
* The advantages of dealing with this on the Moon over Mars.
1. Travel time between the Moon and the earth is 3 days.
And the launch window, weather permitting, between the earth and the Moon can happen every week.
- So, if people on the Moon need earth’s gravity for heath reasons, they can easily be sent back to earth to get it.
- Travel time between the earth and Mars is 7 months.
The Mars/earth launch window can only happen every 26 months or about every 2 years.
- So, if someone on Mars needs earth gravity for health reasons, they cannot easily get it and will suffer more physical damage.
2. What about a long term tech solution which can be done many years from now to create artificial gravity with living on Mars and the Moon.
- One idea is to have a rotating circular, centrifuge, living quarters for at least during sleep to simulate earth level gravity.
- But when it is possible to build large structures off of the earth, such as centrifuge living quarters, it will be much easier to do that on the Moon compared with Mars.
That again is due to the much shorter travel time to the Moon and the easy to obtain launch window as I explained above.
@@bb1111116 Yes they are all valid reasons for sure. I suppose I was just thinking how mankind likes to go deeper and beyond the safe tethers of home. I often think of all the European seafarers and explorers in the past that pushed to the limit especially with their beliefs of the Earth being flat and all. They had to put up with a lot of adversity in the New World but persevered and overcame and hence, here we are in this New World typing to each other here with vast cities and civilizations in both American continents. The human spirit is strong.
Thank you for not playing dramatic loud music in your videos... We can actually understand your dialogue... Thank you!
Ideally a hybrid of underground tunnel networks and caverns. Apartments underground and other industrial capacity. People would need access to the openings (akin to Central Park in NY) where large domes would allow sunlight and greenery. Living spaces should be kept at 65 degrees and open areas would be warmer. Use underground nuclear power plants to maintain life support.
thats damn cold lol i need 299k+
...a new earth...there is no more sea! I prefer both dome & underground! Godspeed!
Into the stars... Is interesting. Gonna need SPF 18 million
i loveyour content, saw this, umm yesss.
Caves would be ok as long as there were also some domes where we could go for a less claustrophobic view.
i like your content btw... BUT... you did gloss over Venus not mentioning cloud-city scenario with similar gravity and livable temp in the atmosphere... and less travel time to get there
I loved the Martian Chronicles series.
A domed location is a great start. From there, you can go on cave hunting excursions. SpaceX needs to send more materials than people, repeatedly, until there's some equipment to work with for Geothermals, Investigations, and Health maintenance. It'll be "send us and , so we can do ". All currently still TBD.
Am I losing my mind or did you guys already cover this topic?
He always covers this topic, just says different things
Engagement farming.
I think it's likely we would have a sustainable outpost in 175 years from now
Finally someone who gives a sensible timeframe. I'm so sick of fools thinking all this stuff is gonna happen in like the next 10-20 years. Mars is literally a different world, with no air, massive radiation, less gravity, and is literally 1,000 times further away than the Moon. All of these things will take time, lots of time, to come to fruition. Within say 50-100 years hopefully we'll be able to get some good Moon bases going and start having humans live there in like 6 month durations like in Antarctica, and then within 100-200 years get Mars going, and over the course of a thousand years, hopefully we can have the entire solar system colonized.
@@matthewviramontes3131 Starship if it can live uptoo Elon's expectations, will make it possible in 20-30 years. It is going to revolutionise space travel as big of an impact as the first plane, or in the internet.
@Get to the Choppaa what do you consider in this case "a long time"?
Love reading the borderline insane ideas and delusional comments here. They believe everything Elon Musk says too, doesn't matter how borderline retarded it is and most of his ideas will never work. Nothing 'groundbreaking' is going to happen for over a century or two.
@@alexbaty1814yikes it makes u wonder how many plane crashes happened in the first 20 years to realize how many space ships will between here and there
I remember reading the stories from Heinlein, Clarke, and Norton about this subject. They were thinking along much the same lines back then. As to living in the caves or dome cities, no thank you. I'm happy right here on my home planet.
Makes sense to start with caves, then as more people settle there and more infrastructure is available, progression onto the surface could become possible.
Hmm, I would prefer the caves to start. Having serface towns could then be built to support activities outside. Maybe not as permanent but really handy.
surface
Build it on the moon first it's closer, less expensive, there are lava tubes and caves ready to use.
I believe if we are to find evidence of alien life, we will have the best chance of finding it within our solar system vs searching for it in other star systems.
Why ? Mars has no magnetosphere
@@justwannabehappy6735 Mars is not the only planet/body in the solar system
Yea my best guess would be on Titan, Enceladus, Europa, or some other moon in the solar system. And mayyyyyyyybe life on Venus either underground, in the atmosphere, or perhaps near the poles.
@@matthewviramontes3131 And maybe evidence of past alien life as well. There might even be an ancient alien probe on the dark side of the Moon for all we know.
Kudos to the engineers who designed his habit It look cozy and relaxing.
"You got what you want Cohaagen, give these people air."
"see you at the party Rictor..."
I think this would be a major development - also, in terms of humanity in general, it wouldn't be the first time we have sought out caves a s a habitat!
A colony on mars will definitely find lots of archeology, it's been seen too many times for it not to exist. At a stretch I'd say they might find valuable artifacts from ancient civilisations. If a mars colony came into contact with one or more alien civilisations trade relations and passing of knowledge could see those colonies becoming independent.
... sorry bud, but there isn't any civilization on Mars. Otherwise we would have seen signs of it by now.
@@justwannabehappy6735 not really, if some certain people don't allow us to see it we wont, but a colony they can only control that information for so long before the colonists tell everyone they're in contact with on earth. Earths ruling classes might one day have to accept an independent mars colony.
@@justwannabehappy6735 To play a little bit of "Devil's advocate" here: Scientists have only recently, and some very reluctantly agreeing with, the acknowledgment of liquid water on Mars at certain underground locations such as at the poles. And Mars has been studied and photographed in great detail for decades now and the liquid water debate is just now being discovered to be true.
Millions of years ago, Mars was very different than what it is today. It had more of an atmosphere, warmer climate, running water on the surface; the necessary factors for life to exist and grow. Then a planetary catastrophe happened and the atmosphere was ripped away and Mars died. Over the millions of years since then, any surface evidence of sentient life would have been been erased.
So, to say that ......"we would have seen signs of it ( past civilization) by now", is not necessarily true. We are just going to have to go there in person and do a lot of exploring to say definitely one way or the other.
Everything is possible, according too Elon Musk. Even our own delusions. Lol.
@@justwannabehappy6735not if they’re completely underground.
We should be doing this on Earth also. We don't need to do this immediately, but we should be experimenting. Global warming started between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago. At that time there were about 1 million people, our only technology was fire. We are now over 7.5 Billion people. Even if we reduced out carbon foot print back to that of 1million people, Global Warming had already started. So we need to reduce it lower than that. If housing underground, we could still have parks on the surface with skylights that deliver sunlight to the homes and other buildings underground. Underground would protect us from the heat, nuclear weapons, even allergens. Yes, this will cost more money, so we would need to start with natural caves. I don't actually see this happening until we are forced to. But that will be too late.
great video, I would choose dome city or slim city, because we have a better chance of surviving mars in domes then we do underground, vote for me to go to mars, am willing to work and put in the time to build a settlement, I am a man of many talents...
A cave city seems great. CCTV can provide "windows" with outside views, if wanted.
By the time we send humans to Mars, I will probably be an old man or long gone. Unless we figure out 3D Printing in Space and can have a robot army build the settlement for us first, and Fast. I am not going to get excited about another planet any time soon. I badly want to see humanity succeed and become a multi-planetary species, I just don't have faith in Humanity. There are not enough Elon Musks in the world. Seems we always have greedy selfish jealous people running our government(US). I wish we could fast-track all of Elon's ideas to fruition to speed up this man's Dream of bettering humanity. Oh and boring tunnels is the best bet with radiation being a problem on the surface and very weak atmosphere not great for blocking/burning up space debris. Same as a base on the Moon, will need underground facilities for sure.
Ever since I heard about the Boring Company, I've been a fan of caves on Mars. We can start with looking for caves, and by the time we get serious about settlement, I expect we'll have located some that are excellent. As for the Moon, it's even more idea for underground digging to half half the gravity of Mars. On Earth we'll likely have to go with above ground domes for urban areas and growing food and other necessary vegetation. We'll need a lot of vegetation to scrub the atmosphere of carbon dioxide here and in space, including the Moon and Mars.
It's carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide is what's in the soda you drink and it's harmless.
@@mlt6322 right. It's in our atmosphere. In high concentrations it caused drowsiness. The ISS has had it figured outfor over 20 years. Inefficient converters make oxygen and carbon monoxide. SpaceX wants to combine carbon dioxide with water, and make methane and oxygen. That's what they'll use for rocket fuel. Oxygen on Mars will mostly come processing rock. On the Moon they'll make it from water until they get to processing rock.
@@mlt6322 The atmosphere of Mars contains 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, a little oxygen, water vapor and methane, with an average molecular weight of 43.34.
Lava tubes are unstable, so you can't build a settlement there. They would need to be supported, but it's easier to support tunnels made by a drilling machine because of their more perfectly rounded shape. So it wouldn't be a viable solution to use lava tubes.
I definitely believe that living in a cave is the best option, it has way more pluses. And it would be cool to actually step on Marshin soil, with no radiation, that soil actually has the best chance of growing food as well.
No matter what, the dust storms that last for months is going to be the one thing that can't be controlled.
What I think best would be to find a water well near a cliff face ( sandstone would be ideal ) Then start drilling sideways into the face . drill out a lot of space for living in . Drill up to near the surface for greenhouse area drill a number of different levels coat the inside with something air--proof , make doors and windows in the cliff with a big door at lower ground level Viola !!!!
Olympus Mons is the biggest mountain in the solar system and an extinct volcano and as such may be riddled with lava caves ready made for the human habitation you are talking about.
Sealing a tunnel underground on Mars is one hell of a leap. If the same sort of tunnels exist on Earth, the first step would be to practice right here first. Once all the bugs are worked out, then take it to the Moon. Once you work a underground planetary habitat is up and working then take it to Mars. Personally, I would have entirely different missions. We need to hit the grocery store before camping and that means we need asteroids latent with frozen H2O, O2 processable minerals, and more. We have all the building blocks for a massive space station. Maybe that should be considered before Mars as well.
It is amazing how information keeps accumulating - The Insight lander suggests the Martian core is molten , but of light elements.
I think caves are a good solution but I would perfect the techniques on the Moon first.
I'm curious about soil and rock compaction. Thanks to Mars' lower gravity, everything is less packed than here on Earth. How will that affect construction of above and below ground structures?
Nice video, thanks for sharing & Godspeed!
It should be a mixture of tunnels and domes. The dome provides window for light and heat that can be directed to areas underground. Kind of like a skylight. The dome or window filters out the excess radiation, while allowing heat to build up for the underground habitations and food farms. We could also send AI rocket cranes to the astroid belts to collect rocks that have frozen water on them. Then when put in orbit around mars harvest the water and send it underground.
When the video was talking about underground water on Mars, I thought about the great books by Frank Herbert, 'Dune', where the only water on the desert planet was underground.
Cave for a good start is more than safe start requirement. Tnank you !
I keep picturing huge open spaces like The Dwarf mines and cities. But full of technology and taller native born Martians.
I can easily see an underground habitat being acceptable. If there were some central area with access to natural light, like a solarium in a roman villa, it could even be illuminated via glassfiber optical tubes. That would be a great place for gardens to be.
The original total recall makes so much more sense now
The dome city looks cooler, however the underground seems like it could be easier and possibly safer!
That idear of cities on Mars under ground is what i call a obvious answer . For me I would live anywhere on Mars as long as I have all the necessary facilities to live with.
Would you be willing to have a child there, especially knowing they could turn out way different?
Why is our circadian rhythm almost the same as the Martin Sol, or day? Did we come from their?
Mar's core did not cool and solidify, as per recent reports. It is still molten.
i hate that humanity just took 50 years off from space exploration. :(
Wish i was a young fellow. I know what I would be studying.
Thanks for a good speculation.
Go underground below Olympus Mons. The mountain is an indicator on how much empty caverns are below.
Nobody ever talks about colonizing space itself. That's the future.
an underground space ship factory would be a good industry to have on Mars.
The plan is to set up a Human home on Mars. Then to return to earth. When Human extinction. Has ended. That's it.
Had a successful Falcon 9 launch, 1 step closer🤙🏿
Can’t wait to go to mars 🚀🛸
According to some old books I read it shows three different civilizations already built underground on Mars..
Those pictures of Mars right next to the actual blueprint of our universe
They're very old..
1 areas for storage the other area is for living in another area is for growing crops underground
According to the book The each one of the sites has water 🌊👌
use a boring machine like they build sudways with to borer under ground on mars !
For me, the best place to reside is on a beach in San Diego. Let me know when y'all get this Mars thing worked out.
If Earth has a very dense atmosphere, what do you call Venus and the gas planets; Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus?
I think underground is a lot safer then a glas dome above ground.
Why live on Mars? The wealth/resources are in the Asteroid Belt, literally quintillions of dollars of rare earths, and precious metal. Enough Nickel/Iron to construct Oneil Cylinders. Fuel consuming Lifting off of and Heat issue, re-entry onto the surface of Mars, vs micro-Gravity docking with an Oneil Cylinder will allow for less complex, more efficient, faster, nonchemical combustion, space transportation too.
The O'Neil colonies would be raped by their earthbound sponsors, just like the American colonies by their European sponsors.
@@normrath2912 Eventually, the, "Sponsors", lost their investments and forged The Republic.