[espadrine]

I love the idea BUT…

If we can't terraform Earth's deserts, do we really stand a chance with Mars?

I might be mistaken in my analysis. Still, the only way a colony might survive seems to be by sending tremendous amounts of resources to Mars yearly. They can never hope to be self-sustaining until either astronomically large amounts of time or astronomically large amounts of energy are spent.

[sillysaurus3]

Not a high chance. Earth has a molten core, which generates a magnetic field that shields us from harmful cosmic rays. It's been like this for so long that we've evolved to require this shielding.

Mars has less of a molten core, and a very weak magnetosphere. Therefore outdoor terraforming seems unlikely. We may have to walk around on Mars inside shielded colonies only, along with whatever other life we bring: plants, animals, everything.

More on this:

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Earth-have-an-active-core-whi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031891439...

Water seems to be a fairly decent shield, so it's tempting to imagine a human-made aquatic ecosystem. Fish would probably survive without any extra shielding besides water, so that's one natural resource we could start generating, assuming we could transport massive quantities of water to Mars. Unfortunately, the water would just evaporate or freeze, so we'd need shielding for that too.

[the_duke]

There is plenty of water on mars, in the form of ice.

I agree though that mars colonies would be underground for a long, long time.

This article covers some problems with terraforming Mars: http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/trouble_with_terraf...

[harperlee]

So could we engineer ourselves to be able to withstand more radiation? Perhaps with advances in cancer treatment and CRISPR-style modifications on the most fragile parts of the genome we can make us more resilient so we can become a multiplanetary species...

On the other hand, sending life to Mars, due to that radiation, would make it evolve much faster, right? Perhaps we can start terraforming it and study the evolutions of plants and animals there to gain insight in how to overcome our frailties.

[lsaferite]

I just read they sequenced the Tardigrade DNA and have found a protein that protects against X-ray related DNA damage.

> Using human cultured cells, we demonstrate that a tardigrade-unique DNA-associating protein suppresses X-ray-induced DNA damage by ~40% and improves radiotolerance. These findings indicate the relevance of tardigrade-unique proteins to tolerability and tardigrades could be a bountiful source of new protection genes and mechanisms.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160920/ncomms12808/full/nc...

[DanielBMarkham]

I'm not sure of the exact amount, but water can be used for shielding.

So maybe we end up with huge domes made of tanks with 20' of water in them.

Also, since Mars has CO2, I'm guessing once a dome is up, we simply pressurize it with the surrounding atmosphere? Once pressurized we could use O2 tanks and cannulas, or add plants?

I fear that there is going to be a huge political debate first -- a lot of folks are going to say that man isn't worthy/able/competent/etc to colonize another planet.

[ema]

> On the other hand, sending life to Mars, due to that radiation, would make it evolve much faster, right?

The bottleneck in evolution isn't mutations but selection events (~= number of organisms).

[harperlee]

Oh, I didn't know that. But wouldn't a larger mutation probability result in more variability and hence quicker findings of improvement paths? (plus avoiding local maxima)

[ema]

Sure more variability means stronger selection, but bigger mutations are less likely to be positive mutations so more selection events need to be spend to get them out of the gene pool again.

[jonnycowboy]

Not anymore, at least with CRISPR.

[otempomores]

You would have to modify the psyche extremly to adapt it ti the social circumstances of space

[lmm]

> If we can't terraform Earth's deserts, do we really stand a chance with Mars?

It's not that we couldn't, it's that we don't care to - partly because the reward isn't there, and partly because there are opposing interests. Humans absolutely have had (and are having) large-scale impact on the Earth's climate, and that's while mostly trying not to.

[espadrine]

It is easy to have an effect on something, and much harder to have a positive one.

Building a house takes months, but in a day, it can be burnt. Fighting entropy 101.

[TeMPOraL]

Now imagine building that house together with 20 people who all try to scream at, sue or shoot each other over trivial and irrelevant details. That's generally how all international affairs look like. In terms of lowering entropy, we're not even trying.

[namaemuta]

That's why I want SpaceX to success. If they manage to get some profits or find something interesting out there, the race for the colonization would be even bigger than the space race during the cold war.

[grondilu]

> If we can't terraform Earth's deserts, do we really stand a chance with Mars?

To be fair, it can be done and it is slowly being done in some countries. It's still very difficult and expensive, though. That being said, indeed doing it on mars would be orders of magnitude more difficult.

[arethuza]

"They can never hope to be self-sustaining until either astronomically large amounts of time or astronomically large amounts of energy are spent."

That might be true, but if we could divert even a small part of the global arms industry to something as constructive as colonizing a new world then I suspect we might help things here as well as achieving something wonderful.

Edit: "Oh yes. Fuck yes. All my yesses"

Can I second this. I remember reading Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" and getting quite enthusiastic about actually being a Martian colonist :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars

[fractal618]

We could do the impossible if we stopped fighting each other.

[robryk]

Pesky Nash equilibria.