The need for a fully sealed environment with self-sustaining resource production (food, air, water, fuel, etc…) while protecting against insufficient atmosphere and too much radiation - Mars’s atmosphere is too thin to filter out enough radiation for safety, and it has no magnetic field to help with that.
The reduced gravity producing long term health issues, and
What little gravity well there is making it hard to ship needed/wanted trade goods in and out - just enough gravity to be annoying to get out, and not quite enough atmosphere to make parachutes practical for landing.
The problems with an orbital colony are only the first two of those, in pretty much exactly the same way. Any technology that will work on solving those problems for a Mars colony would work better on an orbital colony, and the low gravity issue is actually easier to solve by spinning the whole colony (can’t do that as easily on the ground).
We are far better off making orbital colonies than Mars colonies, even as a “what if earth gets hit by a comet” type scenarios. (Provided that it’s a solar orbit, not an earth orbit.)
Mars is good for mining, and even then only when the asteroid belt has been tapped to the point where it’s no longer feasible.
One tech malfunction away from death at all times. Not the most comforting thought to have as you ingest your protein paste ration, gazing at the endless desert of barren rock.
Well at least some of the life support systems could be handled centrally, just as electricity, water, and sewage are for most urban areas on Earth. (although air being less dense than water that is going to be less efficient)
I mean, we didn’t get it to work on the first or second try, but that’s the whole point of an experiment. It doesn’t disprove the concept, it simply indicates where further research and development is required.
To @the_borderer 's point about a self-sustaining colony on Antarctica, have we attempted that? It seems like that has never been a goal for any of the research down there.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of that - I lived on a ship for goodness sake. But yes, when you look at it that way, it is terribly inefficient. Think of the arctic communities that use above ground steam pipes (and all the universities and business complexes that use underground ones) - for many things, centralized is just better.
the waste of resources would be overwhelming and unconscionable
Here on Team Human we don’t let petty concerns like that bother us at all. Trains were fine to move cargo, but gosh darnit people like driving so we built the Interstate Highway System. Apartments and row houses were perfectly adequate ways to live, but by golly Jim and Barbara wanted a big back yard so we turned forests into suburbs. Glass and metal last a long time and are recyclable, but they cost and weigh more than plastic, so we made a few peta-tons of the latter instead.
Whether we wanted it or not, we’ve stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars. So let’s get to taking out their command, one by one. Valus Ta’aurc. From what I can gather he commands the Siege Dancers from an Imperial Land Tank outside of Rubicon. He’s well protected, but with the right team, we can punch through those defenses, take this beast out, and break their grip on Freehold.
And until we’ve done that R&D and created several successful proofs-of-concept then we have no reason to think we’re anywhere NEAR ready to colonize Mars.
I’ve noticed that almost everyone who thinks humanity is ready for a long-term presence on Mars (i.e. Musk) has been framing it as primarily a challenge of engineering rather than a challenge of biology. And that’s fine—as long as all your colonists are robots.
If you’re implying wastefulness isn’t a consideration that is likely to kill pipe-dreams of building cities on Mars, I fear you could be right.
Still, I hold out some hope that the mind-boggling cost of such a foolish venture will snap enough people back to reality.
In any case, I think it’s going to be a moot point for a good long while. Not even one human has set foot on Mars, so talk of million-person autonomous colonies is still somewhere in the same fantasyland as warp drive and teleporters. Not gonna come anywhere near happening in the lifetime of anyone alive today, IMO.
I think you failed to grasp it’s a matter of resources. We could do allot of LEO construction and exploration all throughout the solar system (and even beyond) for the price of one Martian colony.A small outpost for initial exploration sure. A full blow colony? No way. As experts have noted, any colony would be heavily dependent on resources from earth for many many years and getting this supplies there is a massive expense in time, effort and resources that would be more efficiently used elsewhere.
I’ve seen at least a few serious efforts in recent years to study and address the psychological/sociological challenges of a long-term Mars mission, of not a permanent colony.
If there has been any serious research into developing a self-contained biome since the Biosphere 2 project ended in the early 90s then I haven’t heard about it.
The lack of a magnetosphere and an atmosphere means that every living thing anywhere in the galaxy would be toast, unless there are massive amounts of radiation shielding, and if that is the route taken, why bother? Exploration should be done by intelligent robots. See the book We Are Legion: We are Bob.
