Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Post by Mike on Jun 22, 2017 17:55:22 GMT
An ambitious goal, but I think we should focus on smaller, shorter experiments involving infrastructure, and logistics, first. For example, by establishing hydroponic farm, and evaluate, how many plants would be needed to feed one human (or whole colony) during whole year, and more importantly, how many plants will be needed to completely fulfill oxygen needs for Colony (so also for water production, etc.).
What I'm interested currently, is no psychological aspect of travel/colony, but physical one. When I took Surviving Mars course, few months ago, there was aspect about potatoes energetic value, and researcher said, that women generally will need less energy, than men. So that made me thinking - considering amount of food, water and oxygen is finite in such closed space, shouldn't we first evaluate best body mass for colonists? Are smaller people use less oxygen, and food, and does that savings accumulate to something substantial?
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Post by guzlomi on Jun 23, 2017 0:05:30 GMT
An ambitious goal, but I think we should focus on smaller, shorter experiments involving infrastructure, and logistics, first. For example, by establishing hydroponic farm, and evaluate, how many plants would be needed to feed one human (or whole colony) during whole year, and more importantly, how many plants will be needed to completely fulfill oxygen needs for Colony (so also for water production, etc.). What I'm interested currently, is no psychological aspect of travel/colony, but physical one. When I took Surviving Mars course, few months ago, there was aspect about potatoes energetic value, and researcher said, that women generally will need less energy, than men. So that made me thinking - considering amount of food, water and oxygen is finite in such closed space, shouldn't we first evaluate best body mass for colonists? Are smaller people use less oxygen, and food, and does that savings accumulate to something substantial? Interesting. Of course, the project will be as ambitious as people's support allow. People will have the final say about all of this. There are many fields to cover, and physical aspect is an obvious one. I can open a thread about that point so you can explain us your thoughts and knowdledge about that field. By the way, what is "Surviving Mars course"?
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Post by Mike on Jun 23, 2017 12:37:06 GMT
I can open a thread about that point so you can explain us your thoughts and knowdledge about that field. By the way, what is "Surviving Mars course"? There is rising trend in online courses, and some of them are free. One of them, few months ago was about Mars Colonization: www.futurelearn.com/courses/survive-mars/1Quite basic, but I learned, that you can not grow plants in pure regolith. And despite, what Musk claims, there is no readily available water on Mars surface. It is on poles, but with below -100 degrees, that ice have consistency of rock, and in winter even CO2 gets solid, and falls down as snow. The other interesting course there is "Moons", about moons of whole Solar System. It seems Enceladus is better suited for colonization, than Europa, because water plumes are constant, while at Europa we could observe them only in 2 cases, out of 10. I actually asked question about body mass at the course, it seems NASA actually concluded, that women are better suited for Space Exploration, but difference in oxygen usage is insignificant. But if we are talking about years of missions, and dozens of colonists, that difference could be huge, and we can check that here, on Earth already.
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petrv
Space Pioneer
Posts: 93
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Post by petrv on Jun 24, 2017 19:37:13 GMT
IMO body mass is not the only indication here, you have to take into account also overall metabolic "effectivity" of every single colonist.
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Post by Mike on Jun 26, 2017 12:54:54 GMT
IMO body mass is not the only indication here, you have to take into account also overall metabolic "effectivity" of every single colonist. Agree, that is why we must make experiments with all possible configurations, to find best possible physical attributes for Colonists.
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petrv
Space Pioneer
Posts: 93
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Post by petrv on Jun 26, 2017 22:22:04 GMT
from this perpective cyborgs are the best! )
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Mike
Space Pioneer
Posts: 82
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Post by Mike on Jun 27, 2017 12:15:36 GMT
Dude! We have only lame dancing robots so far! Although, I think, that initial Colony should be constructed by Robots, while humans will be operating them from Orbit (for shorter signal time travel).
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