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Colonization of Mars
The colonization of Mars, although technically definitely
feasible, seems to be economically unatractive to most. But this is only
so if you look at Mars as nothing but a vast amount of worthless wilderness
as the Spanish did with North America in the 17th century.
Mars, like North America has products to export as we
will see later. By exporting products, Mars will get other goods in exchange.
This is an important point in colonization, because a place that has no
interesting goods has no interest in being colonized.
Eventhough the technical problems of the colonization
of Mars differ a lot from the colonization of America, the principle is
the same.
Mars is the only place in the solar system where plants
can grow with no artificial illumination and no massive radiation shielding.
The moon is very different from Mars in this point. The day radiation is
to high for plants to support, and even with massive shielding, the greenhouse
would be far too hot for plants to live.
The night is too long for plants, and so they have to
be illuminated artificially, which requires enormous amounts of energy,
1000MW for only 1 square kilometer (power load equivalent to a 1 million
people city).
Artificial illumination is not needed on Mars, and massive
shielding either.
This is what makes Mars unique. There is no other place
except for Earth where this is possible.
Mars also has large quantities of water (if Mars was
flat and all ice melted and was on the surface, there would be a 100m deep
ocean on the whole surface of Mars), which will help for exploration, base-building,
settlement and, of course, terraforming.
Because it is not necessary to have massive radiation
shielding on Mars, it is not necessary to hide underground or in a big
rock.
Instead, we could build transparent domes, in which plants
could grow or humans could live in a shirt-sleeve environment. These domes
would be made out of a hard plastic like Kevlar and they would have a plexiglas
radiation shielding. A dome in which humans could live with a diameter
of 50 meters would way about 4 tones. If they were build to big, they'd
pop because of the weak pressure on the open surface.
Plant-domes could be bigger, because plants only require
a pressure 5 times weaker and so the pressure difference is weaker.
Here is a graph where you can see how much a dome with
a given diameter would way.
The higher the atmospheric pressure, the bigger the domes
that are possible to build. Once the atmospheric pressure is much higher
than now, a sufficient radiation protection will be available and no extra
plexiglas will be necessary, but that does'nt change much.
Eventhough the masses might seem enormous, remember that
Mars has only a gravity of 0,38g, which will be an advantage in building
such domes.
After only a little terraforming (e.g. the melting of
the southern polar icecap and a bit more heating for a pressure of, say,
200mbars) enormous domes could be built for plants to live and to produce
food that could be exported to earth or other colonies in the solar system
in exchange of other goods that are more difficult to produce on Mars.
This is the idea of the Interplanetary commerce.
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