[SpaceProgram] Challenges of Building A House on Mars

[Ian Eyberg]

Mars is the best candidate for life that is easily reachable. Yes, Titan
and Europa are good candidates as well but pretty much every month NASA
comes out with more and more evidence of life there and it has recently
changed from -- we found some fossils from long ago -- to -- oh shit --
looks like there was some snow melt in the past couple of months.

I don't think we are going to find any ETs but it's almost a certainity
that once humans arrive there, microbial life will be found -- not too
much to people like us but it's that sort of thing that will change the
world's perception about space exploration and will probably give it the
shot in the arm it needs.

I mean seriously -- when you have companies like DropBox and AirBnB
worth over a billion dollars why aren't we out there yet? It's not a
lack of money when one asteroid can produce more material than what has
been mined in all of human history to date.

It's a lack of promise.

- Ian

On 08:11 Tue 10 Jan     , cole santos wrote:
> I think the easiest way to build a large habitat on a rocky planet is
> a tunneling device. If its autonomous it could build tunnels for years
> before anyone gets there. Then astronauts would simply inflate some
> high strength inflatables, like a bouncy castle and wala underground
> city (would be even nicer to fuse the walls with a high power CO2
> laser). If you drill the hole at an incline and go super deep, the
> bottom of the hole would have higher pressure than at the
> surface...Tunnelers are already common in mining operations. There is
> even a small town that was built in an old mine shaft system. A small
> mobile nuclear power plant could provide power for the drill and
> fusing laser.
> 
> But like I said in the past, why go to mars? What is there that you
> need? Real Estate, Dust, Gravity, Iron Oxide?
> 
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 10:20 PM, Alex Cureton-Griffiths
> <alexcg at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Interesting article about NASA's quest for a Mars habitat:
> > http://www.txchnologist.com/2012/be-it-ever-so-humble-the-challenges-of-building-a-house-on-mars
> >
> > Interesting points that could be good project fodder:
> > * NASA is investigating ways to build an electrostatic radiation
> > shield to protect astronauts
> > * NASA is also looking at ways to repurpose discarded supplies and
> > packaging to build up the habitat wall over time.
> > * building a Martian or Lunar habitat involves a lot of thought about
> > how to keep bad things out, including dirt
> > * standard of living for astronauts.
> > * "On a first trip to Mars it would be impossible to build from
> > materials found on the planet. Every component of the habitat will
> > either have to be preplaced or arrive with the astronauts" - what
> > methods could we use to change this? autonomous mining and
> > construction robots sent up before humans?
> > _______________________________________________
> > SpaceProgram mailing list
> > SpaceProgram at lists.hackerspaces.org
> > http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceprogram
> _______________________________________________
> SpaceProgram mailing list
> SpaceProgram at lists.hackerspaces.org
> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/spaceprogram

-- 
web: https://flirtrs.com
email: ian at flirtrs.com
phone: 573.219.0658
skype: ian.eyberg