Colonization of Mars

I hope nobody thought building a self-sustaining colony on Mars would be cheap.
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Or a pleasant place to live. Huge daily temperature swings with extremely low overnight temperatures, micrometer size dust particles to infiltrate machinery and human lungs, high levels of surface radiation with spikes during solar proton events. The atmosphere is too thin and composition not suited for human life, no readily available water, negligible soil organics and no complex soil microbiome that supports plant growth on earth and unknown effects of long term, low (~1/3rd G) surface gravity on humans.

Antartica is a much more benign environment.
 
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TJDougherty01 said:
Or a pleasant place to live. Huge daily temperature swings with extremely low overnight temperatures, micrometer size dust particles to infiltrate machinery and human lungs, high levels of surface radiation with spikes during solar proton events. The atmosphere is too thin and composition not suited for human life, no readily available water, negligible soil organics and no complex soil microbiome that supports plant growth on earth and unknown effects of long term, low (~1/3rd G) surface gravity on humans.

Antartica is a much more benign environment.
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How many people died in the 1600s when they came to North America?
 
Yes the CGI is amazing - gorgeous. Let's give that to SpaceX. I'm still thinking Mars lava tubes would be a better bargain than digging everything at insane cost and risk and difficulty.
I have a science paper somewhere on my HD which notes that, while Earth largest lava tubes cannot go wider than 30 meters, because of strong gravity... Mars 0.38 and the Moon 0.16 Earth gravity allowed lava tubes to grow to mind blowing sizes : 300 m wide for Mars, 3 km for the Moon.

To me it is a game-changing godsend, for many reasons.

First, no need to carve underground bases : mother nature has already done the job a billion years ago, for free, and at stupendous scale.

Second reason : lava tubes and caves are everywhere: Moon, Mars, asteroids... once you master the art of polishing the tubes, that experience is useful across the entire solar system's large rocky bodies.

Plus they radically solve the dust, radiation and temperature issues: their own unique way.
 
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TJDougherty01 said:
Here's an interesting analysis of the economics of SpaceX, and calculations as to the financial costs involved. Also, a sobering view of Starship economics.
Space Review SpaceX Analysis
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Archibald posted that previously, and I wouldn’t call it sobering, because his central premise - that nobody outside SpaceX knows its financials - renders his entire article meaningless. It would have been more honest for him to say, “I wanted this conclusion, so I made these numbers up to fit it,” in the places he does actually use numbers. Yes, sometimes he quotes others’ work, but too often he just assumes a number that sounds good without reflecting if it *is* good.
TJDougherty01 said:
Or a pleasant place to live. Huge daily temperature swings with extremely low overnight temperatures, micrometer size dust particles to infiltrate machinery and human lungs, high levels of surface radiation with spikes during solar proton events. The atmosphere is too thin and composition not suited for human life, no readily available water, negligible soil organics and no complex soil microbiome that supports plant growth on earth and unknown effects of long term, low (~1/3rd G) surface gravity on humans.

Antartica is a much more benign environment.
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The only real issue with Mars that we can’t fairly readily solve is the gravity. Everything else - temperature swings, atmosphere, water, and such - is an engineering problem with a reasonable solution.

Antarctica is a terrible choice compared to Mars for multiple reasons, among them: it’s legally off-limits to settlement; its solar flux is terrible (worse than Mars); it does not permit the distance necessary to create truly new societies that can experiment socially and politically. If we wanted to settle new areas on Earth, it would be more reasonable to create seasteads than colonize Antarctica.
TJDougherty01 said:
Many!
But not of radiation poisoning or lack of breathable air. And when they arrived, they could grow crops and raise animals...
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Still an engineering challenge and not a dealbreaker. Much of Earth is habitable to us only through advanced technology. Mars would be the same even if it were otherwise more Earthlike.
NMaude said:
Also the Martian regolith is loaded with perchlorate which would need to be neutralised in any of it being used to make soil (Which would also require the introduction of benign microbes imported from Earth).
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Easily remedied by washing the soil. Perchlorates are a problem, but a well-understood one.
 
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TJDougherty01 said:
Many!
But not of radiation poisoning or lack of breathable air. And when they arrived, they could grow crops and raise animals...
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Yes, many. And then they learned to live in their new home.

I don't get the hate for Mars. It was all the rage until fifteen minutes ago. If you don't want to live on Mars, don't move there. Pretty simple.
 
I think it is because, for a long time, the Moon was seen as a poor relation to Mars in regard as to space program priorities, even though money spent on the former would have contributed to the latter in the long term. Attempts by some of the more ah, more strident Mars advocates in the last 20yrs or so have the Moon totally bypassed by space efforts, manned and otherwise, in favour of Mars may have ended up severely backfiring in the present day.
 
Grey Havoc said:
I think it is because, for a long time, the Moon was seen as a poor relation to Mars in regard as to space program priorities, even though money spent on the former would have contributed to the latter in the long term. Attempts by some of the more ah, more strident Mars advocates in the last 20yrs or so have the Moon totally bypassed by space efforts, manned and otherwise, in favour of Mars may have ended up severely backfiring in the present day.
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Or not. People seem to think a fully, rapidly reusable rocket, with over twice the liftoff thrust of a Saturn V, would be a walk in the park. When it runs into a rough patch, they lose their minds, and suddenly the sky is falling. Anybody who knows anything about development recognizes it for what it is: part of the learning process. Of course, in the West, not quitting at the first sign of difficulty is an alien concept but pushing through it is the only way to success.
 
don't get the hate for Mars.
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No hate intended,
I am all for exploration and small settlements to scope out exactly what is available (in terms of resources) on Mars. So far, rovers and satellites are the only source of information on conditions and minerals available. As BlueAbyssmal says, there are technical solutions, but are they workable and sustainable on Mars on a large scale? The question is, will Mars grow past an outpost or will there be enough Martian resources to successfully sustain a larger population (such as Elon's 1 million inhabitants) without significant support from earth for missing resources. Time will tell.
 
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People seem to think a fully, rapidly reusable rocket, with over twice the liftoff thrust of a Saturn V, would be a walk in the park. When it runs into a rough patch, they lose their minds, and suddenly the sky is falling.
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Yes, and the SpaceX approach is different than in the past large rocket programs. In their case, they concede that things will go awry, and as long as they learn from each launch and correct problems, it will continue. It's an evolutionary process. And they have set up a continuous production capacity for the Starship and booster. Most importantly, the plan calls for recovery and reuse, rather than dumping the components into the water. The success of that model has been amply demonstrated by their Falcon 9.
 
TJDougherty01 said:
No hate intended,
I am all for exploration and small settlements to scope out exactly what is available (in terms of resources) on Mars. So far, rovers and satellites are the only source of information on conditions and minerals available. As BlueAbyssmal says, there are technical solutions, but are they workable and sustainable on Mars on a large scale?
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What does ‘workable and sustainable’ mean in this context? We know there are ample sources of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, three of the most important elements to sustain life, on Mars. Martian dirt is rich in iron. Martian water is rich in deuterium. And so on. There are few good reasons to assume that we can’t scale manufacturing on Mars, given that the primary difference in design is gravity, and not everything is gravity-dependent in operation.
TJDougherty01 said:
The question is, will Mars grow past an outpost or will there be enough Martian resources to successfully sustain a larger population (such as Elon's 1 million inhabitants) without significant support from earth for missing resources. Time will tell.
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Resources are a product of the human imagination, not something that already exists. That’s why it’s so common to be able to substitute one raw material for other to accomplish a particular goal - take something as simple as electrical wiring. The raw materials are there. In this case, the challenges are finding them and accessing them cost-effectively, but Martians will have a significant advantage in that there haven’t been thousands of years of mining already ongoing. As far as support from Earth, I do not know of anyone who expects Mars to be completely autarkic any time soon. Self sufficient in many basic goods, perhaps, by the time a million people live on Mars, but most nations on Earth aren’t autarkic either. There’s been plenty of planning on this subject already though - from the Mars Society and beyond. Nexus Aurora has put a lot of thought into an initial colony, as have people such as Casey Handmer (who is presently running a company whose mission applies pretty well to Mars - hydrocarbon synthesis).
 
What does ‘workable and sustainable’ mean in this context? We know there are ample sources of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, three of the most important elements to sustain life, on Mars. Martian dirt is rich in iron. Martian water is rich in deuterium. And so on.
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The initial question to be answered by early exploration is how much of those resources are readily available, how much energy will it take to extract and process them, and what percentage of necessary minerals are present. As a specific example, nitrogen content of the atmosphere is much lower than on Earth, and the atmosphere much thinner. Soil nitrogen is much lower. Nitrogen will be necessary for plant growth. So it's there, but how much work will it take to extract in large quantities for plants? These are open question, along with many others.

It's not that there aren't technical solutions, it's a question of scale and ready accessibility of materials. Experimentation and planning on Earth for Mars habitation is fine, but, at least to me, initial expeditions to explore various regions on Mars are necessary to answer some fundamnetals. So any timeline for permanent, large scale inhabitation of Mars is probably on a much longer order than a few decades from now.
 
If we can find silicates and chondrites, both of which should be common in Mars, we can find nitrogen in abundance. NASA published findings as far back as 2015 noting that nitrates are likely widespread across Mars - Curiosity found useful nitrogen without significant effort. I do agree that we should do plenty of exploration to find useful raw materials, but the temptation to justify delays for just a little bit more certainty should be resisted. Any effort which can make settling Mars possible at all will mean we have substantial lift capacity available, and unless we are very stupid in our planning, we can send along sufficient supplies for multiple transfer windows of operation, and continue sending more supplies as each new window opens.

Technical questions are invariably not the biggest challenge when it comes to space. Foremost is politics (or will), and second is finances. I think we will have people permanently living on Mars before a few decades from now - probably not within ten years, but certainly within twenty.
 
Orionblamblam said:
All of them. Including the ones who stayed behind.
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That is the correct answer.

Politics is a bigger hurdle than finances.
Whether it is flags/footprints, a year long expedition, colonization---there are those who not only want us Earthbound, but back in caves.

I see legal animism as the single biggest threat--and I can see the Greens wanting all space exploration to answer to something out of the Hague.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Look, we all want to be like GerMars, but do we really have the pure strength of will?!"



Making Mars a livable place would likely include such fun activities as orbital mirrors hundreds or thousands of KM in diameter; liberal use of Project Plowshare nukes to make channels and such; orbital bombardment with comets and asteroids; genetic engineering of invasive species of bacteria, algae and plants; the construction of vast industrial facilities whose main output is staggering quantities of greenhouse gases. Now... do any of those sound like they'd be allowed for terraforming Antarctica?
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It is not possible to terraform Antarctica without causing enormous damage to the rest of the planet.

It would not be difficult to heat its surface by spraying it with coal dust and illuminating it with orbital mirrors.

The problem is that the detachment of the banquise ice when thawing would create a tsunami of bad movies from the sixties.

And the loss of the circumpolar current could change the climate in ways that no one is able to predict.

I'm not talking about the nonsense of green 'propaganda', I'm talking about something serious and long-term.

As for the terraforming of Mars, I don't think there's enough money in the world over the next two hundred years to pay for that madness.

Heating by orbital mirrors is possible, but it would be cheaper to use methane and water vapor from captured asteroids. Maybe in the future scientists will find a way to remove toxic substances from the surface to allow some kind of agriculture, but I can't imagine the effort needed to keep the colony active by sending it from the Earth... from a sewing needle to a spare epicyclic gear.

Unknown diseases, bone and circulatory problems caused by low gravity... Problems with the growth of babies, the appearance of new viruses and random mutations caused by radiation.

Anyone who lives for a time in that gravity pit will no longer be able to get out of it and will be condemned to evolve or die, far from any outside help.

And if the experiment goes well, after an unimaginable investment, perhaps the new Martians will start with the political nonsense of independence and decide to impose immigration fees, taxes and tariffs on Earth visitors... is it worth it?
 
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Orionblamblam said:
That's loser thinking right there, buddy! Sure, a temperate Antarctica will mean the oceans die and the forests burn, but that's a small price to pay for warm, toasty thawed shoggoths.


That's why most of the money will come from off world.



Why not both?


To have a new branch not just of mankind, but of pine trees, cats and bunnies? Yer gotdammed right it is.

The effort required to make a sustainable biosphere on Mars would be immense. But once achieved, it'll be possible to replicate it a million times throughout the system, from Ganymede to the clouds of Venus to paraterraformed Saturn to bubbled asteroids to artificial habs made by the gigaton.
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Terraformation

I also dream of these ideas, if we had a good propulsion system, another much cheaper system to put large charges into orbit and an electromagnetic shield against hard radiation, we could do many things.

Imagine a rocky asteroid in polar orbit of Venus that gradually disintegrates into a ring of dust generated by robots from the surface, over time the ring would transform into a sphere filtering the solar radiation that Venus receives... a good start.

It is not a good idea to bombard the thin Martian atmosphere with comets launched in free fall from the Kuiper belt, it is also possible to tow them to a safe orbit around Mars and from there launch small amounts of ice at low speed towards the planet.

I don't like Sagan's idea of using algae and bacteria, no one knows what radiation can do to them in the medium term.

Mars needs a moon to stabilize the excessive rotational axis migration... why not steal one of the good ones from Jupiter??? It's just a propulsion problem.

The big question is how we could dig a pit on the surface of the outer moons to study what's beneath the ice, an interesting engineering problem.
 
Orionblamblam said:
That's why most of the money will come from off world.
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One may as well have asked where the money to build the infrastructure of the modern world, from the US, to Canada, Europe, China, Japan, and beyond, came from. Economic activity in every region paid for massive construction projects that would boggle the minds of our ancestors. It's a fairer question to ask how will the Martians start up an economy, but there are options there; supporting asteroid mining companies in the Belt; driving development of new technologies thanks to their unique pressures that Earth simply doesn't have; and ultimately, circulating goods and services on Mars itself, rather than relying on outside sources alone. Few (if any - I don't recall offhand) nations on Earth rely on trade for a majority of their economic growth.
 
Even though it is a longer trip--maybe Titan's hydrocarbons is what opens things up.
 
Orionblamblam said:
We'll still need plastics. And we might need to pump Titan dry for hydrocarbons to turn bare rocks into farms
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yes is true, if amount of hypercarbons are low on Mars, we need to import them from Titan or Asteroid belt
also for Nitrogene needed for Habitats on Mars
while Titan has some advances for Heavy Industry to work better efficiency do lower temperatures on Titan.

The first base and settlement are dig in Martian soil to protected them for Solar radiation
later Cities could be under gigantic greenhouse (Paraterraforming) with 3 km air space between soil and roof
what also protect from worst of Sun

There are technology to clean up Perchlorates
or the colonist could use it to make Solid rocket fuel or Lithium perchlorate candle that produce oxygen while burning.
 
Orionblamblam said:
All of them. Including the ones who stayed behind.
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Sferrin said:
How many people died in the 1600s when they came to North America?
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There were already people here in 1600. Indeed, there were people here before the Egyptians built the pyramids. Diseases brought by Europeans (also here, in North America, before the 1600s) killed large portions of the native population.

The first English settlement, Roanoke, disappeared. About half of the settlers in Jamestown and Plymouth died. Neither would have survived without supplies obtained, frequently with coercion (think armed robbery with violence) from the local peoples.

Also, I would never move to a colony established by somebody like Musk or Bezos. Company towns around the mines in Pennsylvania or West Virginia were bad enough, but they couldn't charge you for the air and didn't have the technology for 24/7 surveillance.
 
Dilandu said:
Frankly, I would prefer O'Neil type colony on the Earth-Moon L1.
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i have allot question on O'Niel cylinders:

Can they easy to build with Earth, Lunar, asteroids resources ?
how look with life span of cylinder decades, centuries ?
Can O'Niel cylinder and Stanford Torus can have stable ecology ? ( i mean Life support and supplied)
what about corrosion ? externally (sun radiation, atomic oxygen) and Internal (water rust decaying structure)
 
Michel Van said:
i have allot question on O'Niel cylinders:

Can they easy to build with Earth, Lunar, asteroids resources ?
how look with life span of cylinder decades, centuries ?
Can O'Niel cylinder and Stanford Torus can have stable ecology ? ( i mean Life support and supplied)
what about corrosion ? externally (sun radiation, atomic oxygen) and Internal (water rust decaying structure)
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If there is a good reason for the first cylinder, more will be built and by doing so from the experience accumulated in space they will be more and more perfect.
 
Archibald said:
Nah, no need for them. Why bother building from scratch in deep space a cylinder 8 km wide and 32 km long; when some lunar lava tubes, while "only" 4 km in diameter, are 170 km long ? See this link https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071588#grl55400-tbl-0001
Plus you have gravity, even if a little weak.
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When the lava formed those tunnels millions of years ago no one explained to him that he should not do it again, this time the path would be made. The tunnels are the line of the least resistance for the advance of lava. That is the reason why it is forbidden to build on the banks of rivers.
 
Michel Van said:
yes is true, if amount of hypercarbons are low on Mars, we need to import them from Titan or Asteroid belt
also for Nitrogene needed for Habitats on Mars
while Titan has some advances for Heavy Industry to work better efficiency do lower temperatures on Titan.
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I'd argue that it's probably worth making hydrocarbons locally on Mars instead of trying to ship them in from Titan. Burning them for energy is a significant portion of their usage on Earth, and the Martians won't want to do that, preferring instead to save them for industrial or pharmaceutical use. To drill for hydrocarbons and ship them back to Mars means operating in Saturn's powerful radiation environment, and you'd want to do so as cheaply as possible, so you'd probably use solar sails or low-thrust electric propulsion - and that means many years between departure from Titan to arrival at Mars.
1635yankee said:
Also, I would never move to a colony established by somebody like Musk or Bezos. Company towns around the mines in Pennsylvania or West Virginia were bad enough, but they couldn't charge you for the air and didn't have the technology for 24/7 surveillance.
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I'll push back for this reason: I think offworld colonies will struggle to attract immigrants if they don't treat them well. Why move to BezosHabGamma if you'll be treated the same or worse as where you live now? Especially in the early years, labor will be too expensive for anyone to risk maltreatment (and making oxygen is pretty easy). Authoritarianism of the sort you postulate appears to me to be far more likely among settled societies with long histories, not young colonies working hard just to survive. Yes, it makes for good fiction, but few people would write - or read - a story about an orbital habitat that didn't have conflict, intrigue or the like.
Archibald said:
Nah, no need for them. Why bother building from scratch in deep space a cylinder 8 km wide and 32 km long; when some lunar lava tubes, while "only" 4 km in diameter, are 170 km long ? See this link https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071588#grl55400-tbl-0001
Plus you have gravity, even if a little weak.
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A) we don't know how much gravity we need to have healthy children, b) solar energy is far easier to access in free space, c) what if we don't want to live on the Moon? There's other reasons, but those are three of them.
 
www.earth.com

Astronauts can survive a trip to Mars, but one critical internal organ will likely fail

With evidence pointing to serious kidney challenges, careful planning will be needed to keep crews healthy on space journeys to Mars.
www.earth.com www.earth.com

newatlas.com

Kidneys in space: Why a trip to Mars could end in dialysis

A lengthy trip to Mars, which exposes astronauts to a combination of cosmic radiation and weightlessness, could result in permanent kidney damage, according to a new study. It's the largest analysis to date on how spaceflight affects kidney health.
newatlas.com newatlas.com

www.syfy.com

A Mission to Mars Could Destroy Astronauts’ Kidneys

Is Mars safe for astronauts? A new study found that mice exposed to a simulated Mars mission experienced kidney failure from cosmic radiation and microgravity.
www.syfy.com www.syfy.com

Millions of years to get us to a point whereas we can exist on earth, don't think we have the time left to start again.

Regards,
 
Archibald said:
Nah, no need for them. Why bother building from scratch in deep space a cylinder 8 km wide and 32 km long; when some lunar lava tubes, while "only" 4 km in diameter, are 170 km long ? See this link https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL071588#grl55400-tbl-0001
Plus you have gravity, even if a little weak.
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Mainly because in O'Neil colony you could have 1 g gravity, and perfect Earth-like conditions - any one you wish.

Michel Van said:
Can they easy to build with Earth, Lunar, asteroids resources ?
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Basically this was the whole idea - the giant construction build from very simple, basic components (flat plates) that could be easily produced from Lunar materials, delivered by mass drivers, using only solar energy.

Michel Van said:
how look with life span of cylinder decades, centuries ?
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Centuries likely. Millenias, if overhauled periodically.

Michel Van said:
Can O'Niel cylinder and Stanford Torus can have stable ecology ? ( i mean Life support and supplied)
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That's the idea. They are big enough, that any ecological problem could be identified and corrected with large safety margin.
 
TomS said:
They did not, despite the best efforts of the European colonists.
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I think Orionblamblam meant that absolutely every human who lived in 1600s eventually died) No matter did he migrate to America, or stayed in Europe, or lived in Japan and knew nothing about America or Europe)
 
Dilandu said:
That's the idea. They are big enough, that any ecological problem could be identified and corrected with large safety margin.
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that Biosphere 2 experiment show how difficult that is
the site had close ecosystem to support crew of eight person from 1991 to 1993
the experiment had serious issue like collapse of part the installed ecosystem, Ant infestation (became dominant species in Biosphere 2)
Dropping oxygen level do it absorption by concrete and outgassing CO2
during first year the crew experience hunger do issue of farming but solve the issue.

en.wikipedia.org

Biosphere 2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Michel Van said:
that Biosphere 2 experiment show how difficult that is
the site had close ecosystem to support crew of eight person from 1991 to 1993
the experiment had serious issue like collapse of part the installed ecosystem, Ant infestation (became dominant species in Biosphere 2)
Dropping oxygen level do it absorption by concrete and outgassing CO2
during first year the crew experience hunger do issue of farming but solve the issue.

en.wikipedia.org

Biosphere 2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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In space the situation must be even more dangerous because of the radiation accumulated in the airframe. The Russians have already had problems with the proliferation of bacteria inside their space station. Imagine the mutations that can emerge in a few years. But at some point, humanity will have to launch itself into space and knowing what people are like, it cannot be in a far-sighted and premeditated way, but because of something terrible. Imagine an environmental theocracy... brrrr.
 

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