- cross-posted to:
- space@kbin.social
- cross-posted to:
- space@kbin.social
A book review on the latest Weinersmith creation. It’s true, there is so much we don’t know.
Just throwing this out there on this forum because missing technology is the problem that kills the dream of Mars, according to the authors.
These would be the problems that are currently being worked on prior to manned Mars (and to a lesser extent, lunar) missions.
We absolutely will not be shipping containers of food to Mars. That’s absurd.
We absolutely will be. You have no concept of the amount of energy and resources needed to feed a single human being on Earth for one meal, let alone a whole colony on another world without a breathable atmosphere and possibly toxic dirt for an indeterminate time. Farming under the best of conditions is extremely energy consuming, then there’s the need to either import hardware from Earth that is specially made for Mars or go old fashion and do a lot of it by hand. There is no where else in the solar system where you can just throw seeds at the ground in large enough quantities and feed whole cities. I do homesteading, my dad tried to be totally self sufficient foodwise when I was a teen. Guess what? Turns out that’s really, really hard to do. And that’s under the ideal conditions of Earth.
But you didn’t have NASA level technology. There is a lot you can do to increase food production using less space if you’re willing to pay the upfront and energy costs.
Lol no wonder you know so little about this
This is one of those things that will need baby steps.
— using local water and dirt are probably a minimum for any non-trivial stay
— yes we really need to be able to grow our own food, at least if we want to scale up from a temporary base for a handful to something larger or more permanent. Again, this is one of the things we probably need to go there to find out: is it possible to grow a lot of our own food?