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Elon Musk's Mars Colony Would Have a Horde of Mining Robots (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report: If it wasn't already clear that Elon Musk has considered virtually every aspect of what it would take to colonize Mars, it is now. As part of his Reddit AMA session, the SpaceX founder has revealed that his vision of a permanent colony would entail a huge number of "miner/tunneling droids." The robots would build large volumes of underground pressurized space for industrial activity, leaving geodesic domes (made of carbon fiber and glass) for everyday living. As a resident, you might never see the 'ugly' side of settling the Red Planet. Musk also explained how his colony would get to the point where it can reliably refuel spacecraft all by itself. Dragon capsules would serve as scouts, helping find the "best way" to extract water for fuel reactions. An unmanned Heart of Gold spaceship would then deliver the basics for a propellant plant, while the first crewed mission would finish that plant. After that, SpaceX would double the number of flights between each ideal Earth-Mars rendezvous (every 26 months) until the colony can reliably produce fuel by itself. Oh, and don't worry about today's Falcon 9 rockets being consigned to the history books. Although the main booster for interplanetary travel will "have an easier time of things," Musk believes that the final iteration of Falcon 9 (Block 5) could be used "almost indefinitely" if properly maintained. Production on Block 5 should fly in the next 6 to 8 months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You would think some who read slashdot would know about Bertha in Seattle.
The rest is just AI similar to self driving software.
If we send 1000 people to Mars how exactly are we going to feed them?
It will be a substantial challenge but hardly the only one. Early explorers will be supplied from Earth but they'll have to develop some self sustaining exo-farming technology. This is not a trivial problem. And manufacturing will have even bigger problems. You basically have to develop an entire self contained supply chain from scratch which except for life support issues is probably the biggest show stopper problem with colonizing another planet. Need some tungsten? You have to either ship it from Earth at tremendous cost or you have to figure out how to mine it and refine it locally on Mars. Either way it's a tough challenge.
Has anybody done some thinking on the steaks and the veggies?
Yes though such research has a looooong way to go.
Mars doesn't have dirt- it has regolith, an abiotic rock dust that can't support most plant life, even if it weren't full of volatile poisons
Other than nitrogen, plants don't derive their nutrients from the soil; it's not relevant that the soil is "abiotic". You will have to either supply nitrogen, or else grow plants that incorporate nitrogen-fixing bacteria (e.g., legumes, alfalfa).
By "volatile poisons" I assume you are referring to perchlorates (which aren't actually all that volatile). These can be washed out of the soil. (You'd probably want to do this to reduce the level of salts in the soil anyway).
Growing plants is a technology that is pretty well understood. Soil is unlikely to be the bottleneck. Frankly, the hardest problem isn't going to be the soil; it's going to be the power supply to keep the greenhouses above freezing at night. (Presumably waste heat from a nuclear reactor).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com