this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Technology

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A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 years ago by meyotch@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
89 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

Infrastructure for distributing the air once it gets to the settlement is one thing. At least for now, though, Earth is the only place to get oxygen in life-sustaining quantities, which is the single source they're talking about.

Maybe you can posit harvesting oxygen from mineral oxides, hydrolyzing water if you can find it, or capturing an ice asteroid. Whether you split every atom of oxygen you breathe out of rust or lift them out of earth's gravity, let alone doing both for redundancy, it's orders of magnitude more energy and complexity than growing potatoes in Antarctica.