@ 8:00 Let's imagine for a second what it would take, to take apart say a full size Excavator to Mars… Like a CAT 336… That thing is hard to move around on earth…. I mean, you'd need it, to build underground…. and you'd need it to basically "cover" your base after you built it…..
Most have this obsession of living on a surface of a planet so a lot of sci-fi seems to focus on this. You just avoid so many problems by just digging holes instead.
I'm really only interested in colonizing planets after we master geoengineering on earth. We haven't even made a successful isolated climate on earth. Both bio domes were failures beyond the use for rudimentary research.
I'd imagine a base would be made with prefabricated parts & probably in a crater which is already half way to being underground, then later dig into the sides one you've got your initial setup settled. Saves having to dig just to get your first base set up.
To put the whole building underground would mean digging pretty deep, which is hard without some really heavy machinery, and you will probably hit solid rock slab a few cm deep… Covering the building with ice and dirt don't require you to dig deep, only to gather dirt on the surface on a larger area, much more feasible by a small sized loader
We can't even manage to maintain a habitable environment and biosphere on a planet that HAS life and an atmosphere. And people talk about settling on mars. That's ridiculous. And of course idiots such as elon have proven again and again that they're incapable of even landing on the moon, let alone bring a colony to mars. In fact they didn't even know that their rocket blew up after 8 minutes for nearly 5 minutes in their latest launch. But apparently they got great telemetry from the debris field or something. Meanwhile we had nearly a dozen nearly perfect moon missions with reliable and redundant systems 50 years ago. Because if the moon lander didn't take off again, they'd be dead. Meanwhile elon wants to relight his engines 3 times when he can't even manage to light them reliable once and on the ground.
Somewhere in this process some nation or corporation will deploy a thermonuclear rocket, which will cut travel time and open the transit window. We have already built such rockets, so it is just a matter of getting one built in orbit and building a ship around it. Then it would boost back and forth between earth and mars, spending a little time at each end in orbit while it is unloaded and reloaded and people get transferred to and from the surface. Most cargo will be left in orbit and most of the new cargo will already be in orbit. What can't be in orbit or left in orbit is people and other cargos that are sensitive to radiation – this is because of the radiation in space more so than radiation from the thermonuclear rocket.
5:13 I think the implication is that it is not an actual reactor but a simple RTG. Less maintenance, less moving parts, already proven to work reliably on Mars. With the different gravity the reactor design would need some modifications and fluid dynamics might not be the same as on earth. Then again this is a hypothetical scenario so perhaps a reactor was already designed to be usable in microgravity or mars gravity. Carry on.
I agree with their conclusion. It is going to be difficult and there are going to have to be sacrifices made to achieve a colony on Mars, but it will be worth it. I think the first step we need to take though is getting it together here on Earth. We need to start being one unified species and stop with all the nationalism and racism and other bullshit dividing us.
The constant promotion for nuclear on this channel is leaving marks in my brain. Repeated messages work wonders for people who are on the border between liking or disliking.
1) "water won't really be an issue if you build at the poles" Or anywhere, really. Martian regolith is 5-14% water by mass, whereas moist soil on Earth is 40%. So you would only need to freeze dry 1.5-7 times the soil volume depending on where you were to get it up to that level. And this would be easy, as the outside temperature and pressure are already near the correct level.
2) "the soil is alkaline" "there isn't any nitrogen in the soil" those two issues solve each other. Nitric acid can be made by setting off a spark in a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen (nitrogen and CO2 are the main components of the atmosphere) to make Nitrous oxide (whoch also exists in the air in small amounts, probably due to lightning), letting it react with more oxygen to make NO2, and reacting that with water. When that mixes with an alkeline substance, like the soil, it will make nitrate salts.
3) various radiation and low gravity issues.
Didn't you start this with the assumption that we had a moon base for support? Both issues would be worse on Luna, so we would likely have at least partially solved both of them by then.
4) "the soil is toxic"
Mostly due to perchlorates, which are water soluable and decay into cloride salts and oxygen when baked, thus helping you make some of your initial oxygen. Except for ammonium perclorate, which decays into nitrogen, oxygen, and chlorine, thus also making nitrogen for nitric acid production or atmospherics.
5) "with no communication with the outside world"
Do satelites not exist? There is no reason we can't launch a few cubesats in orbit to relay messages to a few more powerful ones that can get messages to Earth. Sure, there is an 8-30 minute delay on the signal getting there, but email is low bandwidth and even sending video might be possible with a good enough signal.
So, in conclusion, air, water, and growing crops arent major issues, communications can be handled by a descent satellite, and energy issues can be fixed by nuclear.
If we actually moved real nuclear tech into space, the 2yr travel window/time goes down to like 6mo on average iirc, because we dont need to worry about transfer windows we can just steam there.
Even on Earth, it's often cheaper to bury a small structure rather than construct it underground. The initial phase of tunneling is digging that isn't benefiting your subsurface structure, so the length of tunnel defines the tradeoff where initial cost of angled digging outweighs the cost of digging vertically until the structure becomes large enough. Nobody ever uses a tunnel boring machine (TBM) to bury a storage tank here on earth, they always dig straight down and then bury it. And that's going to be roughly the size of a Mars structure for several generations. There's also the issue of getting equipment to Mars. A TBM is a lot harder to transport in pieces to Mars than a tracked excavator. And with the lower gravity, the work of excavating is lower while the work of digging horizontally is almost the same.
The only way it would make sense to tunnel on Mars is if you expand civilization there enough to need a subway, or if you develop high-duration autonomous tunnel boring machines. We're certainly working on the latter, but let's just say the Mars colony is closer to reality right now.
But first we need to crawl by creating a moon base, and orbital industry. Right now, all we have is ISS, a small scientific outpost barely outside the atmosphere. The moon base is probably easier than orbital industries.
I don't see humans becoming a multiplanetary species any time soon. We have far too much petty BS and self interest going on to overcome the challenges for now. :
Second work shift has ended. Miners, return to barracks.
@ 4:33 I agree with you… Even let's say an "office building" sized outpost??? One small reactor would run that for many years…..
@ 8:00 Let's imagine for a second what it would take, to take apart say a full size Excavator to Mars… Like a CAT 336… That thing is hard to move around on earth…. I mean, you'd need it, to build underground…. and you'd need it to basically "cover" your base after you built it…..
Most have this obsession of living on a surface of a planet so a lot of sci-fi seems to focus on this. You just avoid so many problems by just digging holes instead.
I'm really only interested in colonizing planets after we master geoengineering on earth. We haven't even made a successful isolated climate on earth. Both bio domes were failures beyond the use for rudimentary research.
Okay, my comments aside, great job on this video.
Colonizing America was no picnic…. Trying to go to the North Pole was no picnic…. Lotta people died, trying to do that….
Thanks so much for watching! If you want to see my reaction to a terraforming Mars video, please check out: https://youtu.be/AK1cPaQp0n8?si=KHlnDdr5GyKJ_rPG
I'd imagine a base would be made with prefabricated parts & probably in a crater which is already half way to being underground, then later dig into the sides one you've got your initial setup settled. Saves having to dig just to get your first base set up.
To put the whole building underground would mean digging pretty deep, which is hard without some really heavy machinery, and you will probably hit solid rock slab a few cm deep…
Covering the building with ice and dirt don't require you to dig deep, only to gather dirt on the surface on a larger area, much more feasible by a small sized loader
We can't even manage to maintain a habitable environment and biosphere on a planet that HAS life and an atmosphere. And people talk about settling on mars. That's ridiculous. And of course idiots such as elon have proven again and again that they're incapable of even landing on the moon, let alone bring a colony to mars. In fact they didn't even know that their rocket blew up after 8 minutes for nearly 5 minutes in their latest launch. But apparently they got great telemetry from the debris field or something. Meanwhile we had nearly a dozen nearly perfect moon missions with reliable and redundant systems 50 years ago. Because if the moon lander didn't take off again, they'd be dead. Meanwhile elon wants to relight his engines 3 times when he can't even manage to light them reliable once and on the ground.
I have seen martion to many times
I don't see the "benefit for us all". Mars is a wasteland that has nothing to offer.
Somewhere in this process some nation or corporation will deploy a thermonuclear rocket, which will cut travel time and open the transit window. We have already built such rockets, so it is just a matter of getting one built in orbit and building a ship around it. Then it would boost back and forth between earth and mars, spending a little time at each end in orbit while it is unloaded and reloaded and people get transferred to and from the surface. Most cargo will be left in orbit and most of the new cargo will already be in orbit. What can't be in orbit or left in orbit is people and other cargos that are sensitive to radiation – this is because of the radiation in space more so than radiation from the thermonuclear rocket.
5:13 I think the implication is that it is not an actual reactor but a simple RTG. Less maintenance, less moving parts, already proven to work reliably on Mars. With the different gravity the reactor design would need some modifications and fluid dynamics might not be the same as on earth.
Then again this is a hypothetical scenario so perhaps a reactor was already designed to be usable in microgravity or mars gravity. Carry on.
It is, because Mars has no dynamo, which means Total Recall all become mutants…and die.
You should check out Smarter Every Day’s video series about living on a submarine
I agree with their conclusion. It is going to be difficult and there are going to have to be sacrifices made to achieve a colony on Mars, but it will be worth it.
I think the first step we need to take though is getting it together here on Earth. We need to start being one unified species and stop with all the nationalism and racism and other bullshit dividing us.
The constant promotion for nuclear on this channel is leaving marks in my brain. Repeated messages work wonders for people who are on the border between liking or disliking.
Let me correct a few issues he raised:
1) "water won't really be an issue if you build at the poles"
Or anywhere, really. Martian regolith is 5-14% water by mass, whereas moist soil on Earth is 40%. So you would only need to freeze dry 1.5-7 times the soil volume depending on where you were to get it up to that level. And this would be easy, as the outside temperature and pressure are already near the correct level.
2) "the soil is alkaline" "there isn't any nitrogen in the soil"
those two issues solve each other. Nitric acid can be made by setting off a spark in a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen (nitrogen and CO2 are the main components of the atmosphere) to make Nitrous oxide (whoch also exists in the air in small amounts, probably due to lightning), letting it react with more oxygen to make NO2, and reacting that with water. When that mixes with an alkeline substance, like the soil, it will make nitrate salts.
3) various radiation and low gravity issues.
Didn't you start this with the assumption that we had a moon base for support? Both issues would be worse on Luna, so we would likely have at least partially solved both of them by then.
4) "the soil is toxic"
Mostly due to perchlorates, which are water soluable and decay into cloride salts and oxygen when baked, thus helping you make some of your initial oxygen. Except for ammonium perclorate, which decays into nitrogen, oxygen, and chlorine, thus also making nitrogen for nitric acid production or atmospherics.
5) "with no communication with the outside world"
Do satelites not exist? There is no reason we can't launch a few cubesats in orbit to relay messages to a few more powerful ones that can get messages to Earth. Sure, there is an 8-30 minute delay on the signal getting there, but email is low bandwidth and even sending video might be possible with a good enough signal.
So, in conclusion, air, water, and growing crops arent major issues, communications can be handled by a descent satellite, and energy issues can be fixed by nuclear.
If we actually moved real nuclear tech into space, the 2yr travel window/time goes down to like 6mo on average iirc, because we dont need to worry about transfer windows we can just steam there.
We can probably obtain nuclear fuel for reactors from mining asteroids.
Even on Earth, it's often cheaper to bury a small structure rather than construct it underground. The initial phase of tunneling is digging that isn't benefiting your subsurface structure, so the length of tunnel defines the tradeoff where initial cost of angled digging outweighs the cost of digging vertically until the structure becomes large enough. Nobody ever uses a tunnel boring machine (TBM) to bury a storage tank here on earth, they always dig straight down and then bury it. And that's going to be roughly the size of a Mars structure for several generations. There's also the issue of getting equipment to Mars. A TBM is a lot harder to transport in pieces to Mars than a tracked excavator. And with the lower gravity, the work of excavating is lower while the work of digging horizontally is almost the same.
The only way it would make sense to tunnel on Mars is if you expand civilization there enough to need a subway, or if you develop high-duration autonomous tunnel boring machines. We're certainly working on the latter, but let's just say the Mars colony is closer to reality right now.
Looks easier to terraform our own planet first!
But first we need to crawl by creating a moon base, and orbital industry. Right now, all we have is ISS, a small scientific outpost barely outside the atmosphere. The moon base is probably easier than orbital industries.
And that's why we should stay on the earth, and stop dreaming and wasting money on space.
We were really meant to only live on this planet.
I don't see humans becoming a multiplanetary species any time soon. We have far too much petty BS and self interest going on to overcome the challenges for now. :
Don't forget to clean the airlock with a wet piece of cloth before closing because Mars dust will prevent a good seal.