START A NEW LIFE, IN THE OFF-WORLD COLONIES
February 22, 2018 2:04 PM Subscribe
One of the many (many, many) challenges to long-term human habitation of Mars is the lack of an atmosphere, which was stripped away over millions of years due to Mars' lack of a magnetosphere. How to kick off a little climate change? How To Give Mars An Atmosphere, Maybe
NASA's Mars InSight lander is planned for a May 2018 launch to study the deep geology of Mars.
Forget Mars. Here’s Where We Should Build Our First Off-World Colonies
NASA's Mars InSight lander is planned for a May 2018 launch to study the deep geology of Mars.
Forget Mars. Here’s Where We Should Build Our First Off-World Colonies
I’ll let y’all know what I figure out once Surviving Mars is released next month.
Pepsi Red?
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:35 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
Pepsi Red?
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:35 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
Thanks for mentioning the magnetosphere problem. So many discussions of planets that can sustain life omit the need for one unless you're ok with at atmosphere solely composed of heavy elements that the solar wind can't strip away.
posted by benzenedream at 3:56 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 3:56 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
Could the constructed dipole possibly run on the solar energy it could gather in place?
posted by clew at 4:42 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 4:42 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
From the last link:
off-world colonies would improve the chances of human civilization surviving in the event of a planetary disaster on Earth.
But is this really true? What's an existential risk for which an off-world colony is the best solution?
—If we can't survive our self-destructive tendencies on the incredibly forgiving Earth, we won't be able to do it on an incredibly hostile planet (and I would argue that a species that can't stop itself from destroying its home world has no business inflicting itself on the rest of the universe, but maybe that's another discussion).
—Geoengineering against natural disasters and deflecting asteroids will be a lot easier than terraforming.
—Gamma-ray bursts, genocidal alien invasions, and other exotic cosmic events will wipe the whole solar system clean.
I'm not against extraterrestrial colonies—quite the opposite. But I don't think this is a very good reason for them, and I don't think they're the crash priority that they're sometimes made out to be.
Am I missing something? Honest question.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 5:16 PM on February 22, 2018 [8 favorites]
off-world colonies would improve the chances of human civilization surviving in the event of a planetary disaster on Earth.
But is this really true? What's an existential risk for which an off-world colony is the best solution?
—If we can't survive our self-destructive tendencies on the incredibly forgiving Earth, we won't be able to do it on an incredibly hostile planet (and I would argue that a species that can't stop itself from destroying its home world has no business inflicting itself on the rest of the universe, but maybe that's another discussion).
—Geoengineering against natural disasters and deflecting asteroids will be a lot easier than terraforming.
—Gamma-ray bursts, genocidal alien invasions, and other exotic cosmic events will wipe the whole solar system clean.
I'm not against extraterrestrial colonies—quite the opposite. But I don't think this is a very good reason for them, and I don't think they're the crash priority that they're sometimes made out to be.
Am I missing something? Honest question.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 5:16 PM on February 22, 2018 [8 favorites]
If we can't survive our self-destructive tendencies on the incredibly forgiving Earth, we won't be able to do it on an incredibly hostile planet
To survive on a hostile planet humans would have to be less self-destructive. A "polder society", but more so.
Maybe, out of a couple of extraplanetary colonies, one would manage to *evolve* into a more foresightful, less wasteful species, and replace H sap v 1. There's systematic reason to expect species in predictable, especially predictably rich, environments to be solitary and competitive and uncooperative, and species depending on sparse (space or time) resources to be cooperative. My favorite example is among the underground rodents: there are a few dozen lineages of underground rodents, many of which evolved independently when global climate began to favor grasslands. Pocket gophers, common in rich environments like US prairies, are about as solitary as a mammal can be. Naked mole rats, dependent on finding dispersed tubers and storage roots, are far more eusocial than any other mammal.
At this point I mentally recast _Star Trek_, or Banks' Culture books, with ageless humans who look like naked mole rats.
posted by clew at 6:24 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
To survive on a hostile planet humans would have to be less self-destructive. A "polder society", but more so.
Maybe, out of a couple of extraplanetary colonies, one would manage to *evolve* into a more foresightful, less wasteful species, and replace H sap v 1. There's systematic reason to expect species in predictable, especially predictably rich, environments to be solitary and competitive and uncooperative, and species depending on sparse (space or time) resources to be cooperative. My favorite example is among the underground rodents: there are a few dozen lineages of underground rodents, many of which evolved independently when global climate began to favor grasslands. Pocket gophers, common in rich environments like US prairies, are about as solitary as a mammal can be. Naked mole rats, dependent on finding dispersed tubers and storage roots, are far more eusocial than any other mammal.
At this point I mentally recast _Star Trek_, or Banks' Culture books, with ageless humans who look like naked mole rats.
posted by clew at 6:24 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
Maybe, out of a couple of extraplanetary colonies, one would manage to *evolve* into a more foresightful, less wasteful species, and replace H sap v 1.
One reason I'm generally in favor of space colonization in the long term is, indeed, to increase human/sapient diversity. But I don't think we have quite that much time to put off learning to live like adults.
And if you literally mean "evolve," genetic engineering will probably be a lot faster, for better or worse. I'd go so far as to guess we'll probably end up adapting people to live on other planets and/or space itself (Last and First Men/Mars Plus style) rather than terraforming, but I admit that's just a guess.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 6:48 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
One reason I'm generally in favor of space colonization in the long term is, indeed, to increase human/sapient diversity. But I don't think we have quite that much time to put off learning to live like adults.
And if you literally mean "evolve," genetic engineering will probably be a lot faster, for better or worse. I'd go so far as to guess we'll probably end up adapting people to live on other planets and/or space itself (Last and First Men/Mars Plus style) rather than terraforming, but I admit that's just a guess.
posted by doubtfulpalace at 6:48 PM on February 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
Could the constructed dipole possibly run on the solar energy it could gather in place?
Wikipedia says the sun emits about 1 billion kg/s of solar wind particles on average, and that they travel at something like 500m/s. Mars is 230 million km from the sun and has a radius of 3390 km, so it should intercept 1e9 * (3390^2 * pi) / (2.3e8^2 * pi * 4) =~ 0.05kg/s of solar wind particles in normal space weather. That seems low, but I'll just carry on as if it's correct. The planet would be about 2 million km from the magnetic shield intervention site, and we want to divert particles by one Mars radius over that distance to clear a nice space around it. So that would mean imparting 3390000 m * ( 2.0e9 m / 5.0e5 m/s ) = 847.5 m/s of velocity to the incoming particles. 1/2 847.5^2 * 0.05 =~ 18000 m^2 * kg / s^2, so I figure it's a mere 18 kilowatts to divert the solar wind around mars in calm space weather conditions.
During a big coronal mass ejection, going by this one for example, it looks like something on the order of 100 times that much power would be required to shield the planet. Possibly a lot more depending on the velocity of the additional incoming particles.
Superconducting magnets are reasonably efficient, so I think you'd be pretty safe with a 100kW system with capacitor-powered surge capacity somewhere in the low megawatts. No problem at all really, compared to the difficulty of putting together a planet-sized array of superconducting magnets at Mars L1.
posted by sfenders at 9:02 PM on February 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
Wikipedia says the sun emits about 1 billion kg/s of solar wind particles on average, and that they travel at something like 500m/s. Mars is 230 million km from the sun and has a radius of 3390 km, so it should intercept 1e9 * (3390^2 * pi) / (2.3e8^2 * pi * 4) =~ 0.05kg/s of solar wind particles in normal space weather. That seems low, but I'll just carry on as if it's correct. The planet would be about 2 million km from the magnetic shield intervention site, and we want to divert particles by one Mars radius over that distance to clear a nice space around it. So that would mean imparting 3390000 m * ( 2.0e9 m / 5.0e5 m/s ) = 847.5 m/s of velocity to the incoming particles. 1/2 847.5^2 * 0.05 =~ 18000 m^2 * kg / s^2, so I figure it's a mere 18 kilowatts to divert the solar wind around mars in calm space weather conditions.
During a big coronal mass ejection, going by this one for example, it looks like something on the order of 100 times that much power would be required to shield the planet. Possibly a lot more depending on the velocity of the additional incoming particles.
Superconducting magnets are reasonably efficient, so I think you'd be pretty safe with a 100kW system with capacitor-powered surge capacity somewhere in the low megawatts. No problem at all really, compared to the difficulty of putting together a planet-sized array of superconducting magnets at Mars L1.
posted by sfenders at 9:02 PM on February 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
At this point I mentally recast _Star Trek_, or Banks' Culture books, with ageless humans who look like naked mole rats.
posted by clew
There is a Philip K. Dick short story with this exact premise but I can't remember what it's called. I think it's in The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 5:15 AM on February 23, 2018
posted by clew
There is a Philip K. Dick short story with this exact premise but I can't remember what it's called. I think it's in The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 5:15 AM on February 23, 2018
Another, even nearer option would be free space colonies...located in the Earth-moon system at sites that are gravitationally advantageous, known as Lagrangian points.
The Lagrangian points , except for L1 -- which he doesn't mean specifically or else he wouldn't use the plural of "point" -- are either the same distance as the Moon or further away. He's not thought this through.
posted by Quindar Beep at 7:47 AM on February 23, 2018
The Lagrangian points , except for L1 -- which he doesn't mean specifically or else he wouldn't use the plural of "point" -- are either the same distance as the Moon or further away. He's not thought this through.
posted by Quindar Beep at 7:47 AM on February 23, 2018
we can't manage ecosystem sustainability on earth, can't create it artificially yet elsewhere. Rockets and radiation are not the barriers: biology and ecology are. Also we're dead from climate crisis long before we can build a mars colony.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 9:27 PM on February 23, 2018
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 9:27 PM on February 23, 2018
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posted by tobascodagama at 2:06 PM on February 22, 2018 [2 favorites]