People are saying things like ‘we’ll visit mars in the next few decades’ but if this was the case how would we survive, what would they do about food, water, oxygen ect…
People are saying things like ‘we’ll visit mars in the next few decades’ but if this was the case how would we survive, what would they do about food, water, oxygen ect…
What ever you do, you can not change the gravity of Mars. Adults can reduce the debilitating effects of low gravity with exercise and medications but it’s probable that children would have serious development issues. It would be far better to colonize O’Neill Cylinders, Bernal Spheres and Stanford Torus’s.
However, it would be possible to have extended stays on Mars. Obviously pressurized habitats would be needed but Mars is subjected to both radiation and micrometeorites as it only has limited protection from it’s thin atmosphere therefore the habitat would be buried with Martian soil. About 4.5 meters of packed soil would duplicate the shielding of Earth’s atmosphere. Power could be from solar panels and or nuclear sources. Plants can provide food and oxygen supplemented by algae growing in bio-reactors. Excess oxygen would be compressed and stored till needed and excess CO2 would be chemically or cryogenically absorbed and released outside the habitat. As a backup, martian soil is 40% oxygen and the oxygen can be released with sufficient energy use or from the water. Water would be recycled whenever possible and supplemented with water from the Martian permafrost which Phoenix discovered to exist. Water can also be extracted from various minerals with enough energy. Excess water would of course be stored. Meats would be cells grown in a bio-reactor and printed out in a 3D inkjet printer into the desired shape with appropriate flavoring to approximate various meats, the replication may not even be with cells but with various vegetable products instead, milk would either be produced by small mammals or produced by genetically engineered bacteria in bioreactors.
Surface vehicles may use nuclear power sources or engines running on silane as the silicone equivalent of methane burns with CO2. Silane can be manufactured from the water in the permfrost of Mars and the martian rocks and soil. The surface vehicles would be more like RV’s as they would be complete habitats themselves with the supplies, wastes and instrumentation acting as shielding for the crew, the hull would have a viscous layer to seal any holes from micro-meteorites. The vehicle will include small rovers that would scout the ground ahead with ground sensing radar so the main vehicle is never with uncertain footing. The vehicles would not travel quickly as safety would be far more important.
Stays in the surface habitats would be temporary, perhaps for months but visits could also be done virtually by telepresence control of an android avatar while safe in a nearby space habitat such as a Stanford Torus in orbit.
The main purpose of such a base camp would be research and mining resources for the space habitats.
Terraforming, it is basically creating an artificial atmosphere. I’m not too sure but it would begin with water then trees and bushes which would slowly start building an atmosphere. If you want to know more google "terraforming mars"
At the moment scientists havn’t discovered water in Mars so it’s impossible to survive in Mars.
In an alien space suit
Terraforming a cold, magnetically dead planet is not possible with the Physics as we understand it.
Getting living huimans to Mars, down to the surface, back up to space and back to Earth is effectively not possible – radiation poisoning.
Mars has a lot in common with earth, it has similar gravity and it has water but only frozen because mars is colder than earth(but not too much). I dont know if mars is suitable though because it has a weak magnetic field which caused the planet to lose a lot of its atmosphere ages ago because the solar wind blew it away.