I'd like to die

    • mr_world [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago
      1. Mars has a very thin atmosphere that wanes and increases with release of gasses from the ice cores on its poles. Even at maximum PPM, it's not breathable. It's also mostly CO2, and Mars indeed has a global warming issue from it. Mars would be colder if its atmosphere were nitrogen and oxygen instead. Mars can't hold an atmosphere if you were to somehow add one. It doesn't have enough gravity to sustain it on a geologic scale. You would have to replenish it ever so often. Now, is that a problem on a human lifespan? No. It's a problem on a "this is where people are going to live from now on" scale though.

      2. Mars has cooled off too much under the crust. There's probably no active core or one not as active as ours. I think one of the recent rovers detected earthquakes, but this is from the planet cooling down more than active tectonic boundaries. So the core not moving fast enough means no magnetosphere, which means the surface is bathed in radiation. Living underground is a lot easier than hauling heavier building materials out of our atmosphere. So that means you have to do a lot of digging and it turns out that equipment is heavy too.

      3. Mars probably has liquid water but it's very rare and concentrated at the poles in the form of ice. Water ice under CO2 ice, and I think a little bit of ammonia ice. So that's an issue.

      4. Weird launch schedule built around orbits

      Mars has lots of problems that aren't just solved because of fuck yeah science. Some of these problems could be helped by first doing them on earth and then trying to apply it elsewhere. But it's not economical to apply it on Earth. We're about to see that tested with climate change. If they can't get it together on Earth then why would they on Mars, an even more inhospitable place?

      • KasDapital [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Not to mention there's no good power source. Solar won't work as well because you're further than the sun. Even with evidence of past life there probably isn't any amount of fossil fuel reserves. No or limited geothermal because the core is "dead". As soon as you run out of imported energy you're dead.

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Your only shot is nuclear and mining asteroids, but entering and leaving the gravity well requires rocket fuel. You could make it from the ice at the poles, but that also requires tons of energy and dangerous industrial processes in an already inhospitable atmosphere.

          Mars is maybe good as a small research base or stopping point for sending larger missions to other planets. I don't think it'll ever be profitable to do space stuff and any of this will need to be a collective societal drive that we all work for without an expectation of profit.

      • carbohydra [des/pair]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Elon fandom never fails to impress me with their stupidity even at the core premises

      • Kanna [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        It's incredible how bad of an idea living on Mars is