A reason to go to Mars

Since I prefer a Red Mars, I would be totally against any attempt to
terraform this natural wonder.

Mars is a good place to house people associated with the mining of
resources from the moons of Mars and the safe importation and
processing of small asteroids. Its also a good place to cheaply test
the possibility of human survival totally independent of the Earth's
resources. But I would doubt if more than a few million people would
ever want to live permanently on the Martian surface.

Marcel F. Williams

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike" wrote:
>
> From: sailor.barsoom
>
> > I find it interesting that 0.1% of Phobos could build ten
> > Island Threes. That's enough to house one hundred million
> > people in comfort, and at any gravity level from zero-G to
> > one G (including Martian gravity, if desired).
>
> And also Earthly levels of sunlight. They would simply make their
mirrors somewhat bigger, and slightly concave, to concentrate solar
energy to the levels we're used to. This is a solution that won't
work for surface colonies because of the impracticality of such flimsy
mirrors in the presence of gravity and weather.
>
> > So a full percent of Phobos would be enough to house a
> > billion. Seven percent and you've got room for more
> > people to live in comfort and affluence than currently
> > live on Earth, in conditions ranging from squalor to
> > splendor. Seven hundred Island Threes, at any gravity.
> >
> > OK Mars advocates, how long until there are one hundred
> > million (or a billion, or seven billion) people on the
> > surface of Mars?
>
> I go through some simple calculations like this in one of my
articles (http://writings.mike-combs.com/case_spc.htm):
>
> A completely terraformed Mars would give us approximately the land
area of the Earth. Earth is much bigger, but is mostly covered with
oceans. If oceans are desired on Mars (or if they turn out to be
necessary to sustain an Earth-like global climate), then deduct
accordingly.
>
> We earlier stated that only an orbital settlement construction
program which resulted in new land area equal to that offered by Mars
should be compared to a Mars terraforming project. Is it really
possible to build this many space communities? Can they be built on a
time scale competitive with terraforming?
>
> Let's do some simple calculations. The 1975 NASA-Ames study resulted
in a space habitat design known as the Stanford Torus. It was designed
to provide 670,000 square meters of living space. The surface area of
Mars is around 145 million square kilometers. Let's assume no Martian
oceans, and ignore the fact that even on a totally Earth-like Mars the
polar regions would certainly remain inhospitable. In this comparison,
Mars roughly equals 216 million Stanford Toruses.
>
> NASA's study indicated that the first independent orbital habitat
could be completed 22 years after initiation of the program, and that
a habitat could build a duplicate habitat in 2 years. Let's
conservatively assume it'll take 50 years to build the first one, and
assign 5 years to the doubling time. We'll also ignore the possibility
that the more space communities we build, the better (and faster) at
it we'll get, as well as the efficiencies which might be later gained
by building smaller numbers of larger habitats with greater land area.
>
> By the time we had achieved 28 doublings, we would have begun to
exceed the total land area of Mars. By the pessimistic timetable
above, this would take 190 years. (Please note it's not being
predicted that this will indeed be the actual growth rate seen, merely
that this is the maximum rate allowed by technological constraints.)
It's the rare terraforming proposal that's optimistic enough to
promise a Mars made over in Earth's image in less than two centuries.
Another important point is that near the beginning of the O'Neill
settlement construction program, the workforce begins enjoying living
conditions that may be even more Earth-like than those possible on
Mars only at the very end of the terraforming effort.
>
> Lest it be argued there's not enough raw material available to build
this many orbital settlements, the resources of the asteroid Ceres
alone would allow us to do this five hundred times over. Space
habitats represent an incredible economy of mass in comparison to planets.
>
> O'Neill was interested in shattering the limits to growth which were
widely (if somewhat incorrectly) perceived in the 1960's. He once
calculated that even if we limited ourselves to the resources of the
asteroid belt (merely the most convenient source of materials, and not
the only one), we could still build, in the form of orbital habitats,
over 3,000 times the livable surface area of the Earth.
>
> Thus, Mars holds out the promise of becoming home to a planetary
civilization which might rival that of Earth. Orbital colonies can
form a space-based civilization that far surpasses Earth's in both
size and diversity.