Mars colony and more problems identified for a permanent habitat?

phys.org...

Martian dust could pose health hazards because of the difficulty of removing it from space suits and boots. NASA learned during the Apollo space missions that moon dust was a much bigger problem than had been anticipated. They have reported in the past on the large amounts of dust that stuck to astronaut suits and boots. Fine grains stick to materials because of static electricity, and on Mars would likely be sucked into a controlled environment by an air-lock. Over time, health specialists fear the dust would build up in air filters and living quarters, adding yet another life threatening element to the list of other known hazards (traveling and landing safely, exposure to radiation and cosmic rays, etc.) for the people who seek to colonize the planet.

Good grief! Enter an enclosure that has pressurized Martian atmosphere in a big compressor and blow the heck out of the suit; have big fans sucking the particles back outside. Have a brush with an air nozzle for touch up. Move to next enclosure which is interconnected and do the process all over again ...Then move to the airlock for removing the suit!

OK if harder than that to figure out, then figure it out! JEEZ!

On the other hand the article did say there were 78,000 who had signed up for the one way trip to Mars...I read someplace it was 80,000 but from another source.

reply to post by 727Sky


Is it just speculation, or is it already known that Martian dust contains some sort of property which causes it to be far more hazardous than Earthly dirt/dust?

reply to post by BrokenCircles

Reports given by experts in the space-health field suggest it might take longer for humans to build a colony on Mars than has been expected. Such experts speaking to attendees at the recent "Humans 2 Mars Summit" in Washington D.C. expressed concern about the dangers of Martian dust. They believe the health hazards posed by the Martian regolith could prevent humans from colonizing the planet anytime soon.

With the rovers and satellite observations would be my guess.... for the article assumed it was already known by those in attendance IMO.

i still don't understand why anyone would want to live on mars with such a tiny population. seems like everyone would get sick of each other or become insane from being in the same place. you'd have to be a moron to live on mars.

Originally posted by 727Sky

.....might take longer for humans to build a colony on Mars than has been expected......

At first, I was just thinking that there would be a few methods that could be used to minimize the amount getting inside. Such as some sort of fan system, similar to what you mentioned.

I wasn't thinking about the beginning stages. Obviously, it would have to be built first.



eta: Some of the simplest tasks, can probably be quite difficult and time consuming when you're attempting them while wearing a space suit.

I'm pretty sure that this will be engineered around. Please, like some dust is going to stop us? lol


cmon now!

ummm. make suits water proof and rinse them off.

Ummm... some how charge the exterior of the suit to repel dust from clinging to it.

Umm... lol

reply to post by 727Sky


Instead of wasting precious, and very limited, air or water supplies for cleaning suits. There is a much simpler solution. Leave the suits outside.

Some of the early concepts for NASA's constellation program had suits that attached to the outside of the rover and you could enter and exit the suit through a built in 'hatch' in the back. For a Mars outpost, just have an unpressurized shelter to protect the suits while not in use.

www.nasa.gov...

Its all bunkum. We aren't going to Mars because the politicians don't want to. Its that simple.

We could engineer around all the other problems if we had sufficient motivation to do so.

People living on Mars would be exceptional individuals bound together by a common desire to be there exploring and pioneering. Its not like its going to be Joe Sixpack watching dancing with the stars reruns and moaning he cant pop down to Walmart. I don't see that being an insurmountable problem either.

Dust could easily be collected by filters and what not...Then compressed into mars bricks for building new homes.I hope the Mars crew sends back yt videos.

I believe in the Ancient Mars theory...we colonized Mars before, and we will do it again.

reply to post by jra


I remember that and makes allot of sense. You still have to get from the rover to the airlock...The whole bit about the dust just seems to be a rather mundane excuse and should not be that difficult to over come IMO.

reply to post by 727Sky


I AM ONE WHO WOULD LOVE TO GO!

With that said, I agree that this problem shouldn't be "that hard" to counter. Then again, what do I know? I have no successfully built many Mars habitats for humans. Sure I built a few...but they never really worked that well.

Then again I built them out of popsicle sticks and glue.

We work with the tools we have.

Thanks for posting this. S&F-and-Hugs.

MM

Wrap everything in a sieve and when you de-compress just remove the outer mesh for dust collection.

Like how we put screens on windows to keep out bugs etc.. just have a tight mesh that can collect dust

reply to post by 727Sky


Lets compare colonists to the New World and those to A New World...

Early colonists to North America were unprepared for what life was going to be. But even so, they could plant certain foods and expect to have materials for building from the native flora. And while some dismiss that the native Americans ever helped these colonists, the history is there that they did. The result was that while many died... many did also survive.

Now, on Mars...

You land and right away, you can't go outside and plant food, you can't cut trees for shelter... and water is a luxury because even ice in the Martian soil will have to be extracted, filtered, examined and then processed.

Okay, now what happens if something breaks down?

You would probably come with enough back-up equipment to cover some of this but, eventually, that would run out unless there was a steady supply coming from Earth or... you opened iron mines, copper mines, silver mines, etc. and were able to then build plants to process this material and labs to then apply it.

In sum... there are no natives to help with food, no industry to process raw material into usable material for labs to turn into modern technology.

Any Mars colony will be entirely reliant on old planet Earth for survival.

Sorry.

reply to post by redoubt


I agree with many of your points yet there are a few who have worked most of that out by sending unmanned habitats and supplies to Mars before man ever sets foot their himself. Dr. Robert Zubrin @ the Mars Society has been working tirelessly for many years on what is called Mars Direct project.

sites.google.com...

Mars Direct is a sustained humans-to-Mars plan developed by Dr. Robert Zubrin that advocates a minimalist, live-off-the-land approach to exploring the planet Mars, allowing for maximum results with minimum investment. Using existing launch technology and making use of the Martian atmosphere to generate rocket fuel, extracting water from the Martian soil and eventually using the abundant mineral resources of the Red Planet for construction purposes, the plan drastically lowers the amount of material which must be launched from Earth to Mars, thus sidestepping the primary stumbling block to space exploration and rapidly accelerating the timetable for human exploration of the solar system.

The general outline of Mars Direct is simple. In the first year of implementation, an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) is launched to Mars, arriving six months later. Upon landing on the surface, a rover is deployed that contains the nuclear reactors necessary to generate rocket fuel for the return trip. After 13 months, a fully-fueled ERV will be sitting on the surface of Mars.

During the next launch window, 26 months after the ERV was launched, two ore craft are sent up: a second ERV and a habitat module (hab), the astronauts’ ship. This time the ERV is sent on a low-power trajectory, designed to arrive at Mars in eight months – so that it can land at the same site as the hab if the first ERV experiences any problems. Assuming that the first ERV works as planned, the second ERV is landed at a different site, thus opening up another area of Mars for exploration by the next crew.

reply to post by redoubt


Just a random thought but if we're technologically proficient enough at that point to mine asteroids using autonomous robotics, there is an asteroid belt just behind Mars that we could extract minerals and potentially water as well.

We would need self guided supply systems though running essentially 24/7.

Or maybe we could learn about how to extract useful things from the Gas giants.

Originally posted by yourmaker
reply to post by redoubt

 

Just a random thought but if we're technologically proficient enough at that point to mine asteroids using autonomous robotics, there is an asteroid belt just behind Mars that we could extract minerals and potentially water as well.

We would need self guided supply systems though running essentially 24/7.

Or maybe we could learn about how to extract useful things from the Gas giants.

There are a lot of possibilities in the long tern, no doubt. But this one... where people move to Mars depending today's technology and space programs that are flighty at best?

I admire the spirit here but I question the logic.

Of course, sometimes it takes those who run where angels fear to tread is what is needed to spur what follows.

Originally posted by retirednature
I'm pretty sure that this will be engineered around. Please, like some dust is going to stop us? lol


cmon now!

ummm. make suits water proof and rinse them off.

Ummm... some how charge the exterior of the suit to repel dust from clinging to it.

Umm... lol

edit on 10-5-2013 by retirednature because: (no reason given)

Boy this is embarrassing to bring up but... I'm from NASA and we hadn't thought of that. Would you like to come work for us? We could use your outside the box approach...

You bring up to very plausible solutions, I think they are getting jittery about private ventures possibly getting there first so they are coming up with ways to deter the public opinion of settling mars. I say full speed ahead scotty