wdym? we should never colonize mars to begin with. makes no sense.
Discussion
Makes lots of sense. Without another colony you have all your eggs in one basket and it’s game over.
no. we can't spend more than a few weeks there without serious consequences. making or raising babies there is out of question.
you can live in mars orbit, but why would you choose that over venus which is a lot more energy rich?
venus also has habitable zones in it's atmosphere where you could enjoy natural gravity close to our own. floating cities are not out of the question. but honestly orbital settlements make more sense in the short term.
once you manage to put that mass in machinery and superstructure in orbit, it can just stay out of the gravity well. more useful for interplanetary travel and commerce.
Few weeks? You do realize astronauts spend a year in the ISS in some cases with zero gravity? Why would we only be able to stay for 2 weeks? You get muscle atrophy but at a slower pace than the ISS - which can also be offset with exercise.
We can also probably generate artificial gravity eventually so that’s not even the biggest challenge compared to the others I outlined.
Not sure about Venus, don’t know much about it. I thought it was much hotter though? Last time a probe was sent it melted in seconds … why would we want to subject ourselves to these temperatures when mars temps are much more favorable?
your entire biology gets screwed up over time. but that's for adults. it's much worse for babies and kids.
"We can also probably generate artificial gravity eventually"
that would be a total game changer ofc. but it is complete science fiction as of now. rn we only have spin gravity which is only viable in space. can't imagine how dangerous it would be on the surface and what it would take to spin a city in a gravity well.
"Not sure about Venus, don’t know much about it. I thought it was much hotter though?"
yeah on the surface it's horrible, but it has habitable zones and possibly even life in it's atmosphere. it's closer to the sun so solar energy is abundant in orbit. you should read up on it, venus is much more likely to work out for us for a colony.
Yeah but better some gravity than none … and we might be able to created it artificially. It could be the case where you get into artificial gravity environment only for a portion of the day and not have to spend your entire day in it.
In any case, it’s all super challenging and doesn’t feel long term sustainable without some sort of bio engineering
it's why i like the idea of orbital settlements so much. in the near term they only have advantages. once you are there, you have less than 100ms latency so you can operate machinery or surrogate bodies from orbit no problem. we are already starting to use drones here on earth. why would you go down, unless you absolutely have to? or maybe for leisure, but go back to normal G before it starts to hurt.