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The Challenges of Building a Mars Base
ambermichelle writes with an excerpt from an article in Txchnologist: "Going to Mars? Expect to stay a while. Because of the relative motions of Earth and Mars, the pioneering astronauts who touch down on the Martian surface will have to remain there for a year and a half. For this reason, NASA has already started experimenting with a habitat fit for the long-term exploration of Mars. Last year, students at the University of Wisconsin won the XHab competition to design and build an inflatable loft addition to a habitat shell that NASA had already constructed. The final structure now serves as a working model that is being tested in the Arizona desert. Like any home, it's a sacred bulwark against the elements; but not just the cold, heat, and pests of Arizona. A Mars habitat will have to protect astronauts from cosmic rays, solar flares, and unknown soil compositions all while keeping inhabitants happy and comfortable."
To even consider going to Mars we first need to send at least 5 rockets full of supplies and land them literally next to each other. We also need to park another 2 or 3 in orbit to hold fuel for Mars Orbit Docking in order to dock and go home within a reasonable time frame. Aldrin's free transfer trajectory is great but unsuitable for human passage.
Get the supplies and contingency machines in place, then think about it. But first figure out how to drop 5 tonnes safely to a very particular spot on the surface. Now do it repeatedly. Because that's what landing on Mars requires.
Why would it be nice?
Given our current understanding of physics and biology, you would be spending far longer than presently-recorded history traveling in an interstellar "generational" ship to reach the closest stars; there is no guarantee that ANY of them will have earth-like conditions that would be suitable for human life.
We are not going to construct colonies - either floating, or planet-bound, that are of sufficient scale & size to provide any hedge against extinction. The materials, the cost, the risk, and the energy requirements are simply too high.
If you're talking a legitimate hedge against extinction, then you need to:
1) Find another planet that is close enough to earth conditions that it would be suitable for human life.
2) Build a space ship capable of surviving the time required to travel there;
3) Provision a space ship capable of surviving and supporting human life for thousands of years;
4) Build a large enough ship & colonization group that you wouldn't end up with hundreds of generations of inbreeding and genetic defects at the end of the trip;
5) Find a bunch of people who don't mind dooming hundreds of generations of their descendants to life in a tin can hurtling through space, and that they will never, ever see or hear from Earth in any practical manner again;
6) Ensure that no critical part, anywhere, at any point on the trip, goes bad;
7) Figure out a way to land the ship on the far end with all that cargo;
8) Realize that a small gene pool, after thousands of years of travel and introduction to a completely new habitat, may very well diverge from "human" evolution in significant ways such that calling the people landing on the far side of that trip may not be particularly "human" in any appreciable sense anyway.
9) As an alternative to all that, develop faster than light travel or some sort of fool-proof suspended animation, as well as a computer system capable of self-healing and adaption on an unprecedented level, and find a way to power it for thousands of years without error or failure.
In light of all of those limitations, I'd suggest that in the long run, learning to behave like civilized fucking human beings and get along with one another without shitting all over the blankets might just be the easier and more practical way to survive as a species.