Space travel

Lou

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I was only slightly surprised to find that we don't have a thread on Space Travel.


which should be a lesson to Earth - my honey wants to know how you would milk a cow in a space suit... lol

Emma JC
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which should be a lesson to Earth - my honey wants to know how you would milk a cow in a space suit... lol

Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com
Tell your honey that here on Earth we have machines to milk cows. So I would suppose martian cows would be milked the same way.
Also there wouldn't be any space suits involved. People and animals would live underground or in domes or something with a pressurized atmosphere and heat.
But according to Musk there wouldn't be any cows on Mars anyway. I think the rationale is that animals are pretty inefficient and on Mars all resources including air, heat, and oxygen would be scarce and you would need to utilize only the most efficient agriculture processes. Like growing bacteria and algae in vats, hydroponics. I'd expect a potato farm to show up.
 
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Also there wouldn't be any space suits involved. People and animals would live underground or in domes or something with a pressurized atmosphere and heat.
But according to Musk there wouldn't be any cows on Mars anyway. I think the rationale is that animals are pretty inefficient and on Mars all resources including air, heat, and oxygen would be scarce and you would need to utilize only the most efficient agriculture processes. Like growing bacteria and algae in vats, hydroponics. I'd expect a potato farm to show up.

I've heard/read that too. I fantasize about this a bit too much, even though it's unlikely I'll live long enough (or be rich enough) to emigrate there. I might live long enough to see the first manned mission to Mars though.

I can picture myself often hanging out in the agricultural domes with friends/family in my spare time, or going for a vigorous stroll/jog outside in a suit- I usually prefer brisk walking to running, but with the low gravity, bounding along could be fun!

Mars has another problem for living things: its lack of a strong magnetic field, in addition to its thin atmosphere, means it has a higher background radiation level than Earth does. So the colonists would have to spend much of their time underground. I guess I could live with that.
 
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So the colonists would have to spend much of their time underground. I guess I could live with that.
That is usually the case in the Sci fi books I have read. Probably easier to drill or create underground habitats than construct domes.
 
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Another thing about farming under domes on Mars: there wouldn't be any insects (unless humans introduced them to the horticultural areas)- so there wold be no need for pest control. Of course that might mean that one of the Martian farming chores would be to pollinate the plants, but I don't think I'd mind that. Even apple and orange trees don't get that big- although oranges don't tolerate cold well at all, and that would mean they'd need more supplemental heat during the Martian night (and especially the winter). Speaking of which... there would have to be movable insulation to protect the agricultural modules at night. Mars does have seasons, but I figure only the equator would be suitable for colonization.
 
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Another thing about farming under domes on Mars: there wouldn't be any insects (unless humans introduced them to the horticultural areas)- so there wold be no need for pest control. Of course that might mean that one of the Martian farming chores would be to pollinate the plants, but I don't think I'd mind that. Even apple and orange trees don't get that big- although oranges don't tolerate cold well at all, and that would mean they'd need more supplemental heat during the Martian night (and especially the winter). Speaking of which... there would have to be movable insulation to protect the agricultural modules at night. Mars does have seasons, but I figure only the equator would be suitable for colonization.
Yeah. and it might be better just to grow the plants underground too. In most of the mars colonies in Fiction - energy isn't scarce. they probably have their own fusion plants or something. so it is just easier to provide electric lights than heat.

A lot of our most common pollinators don't eat the plants so you could probably bring some of those up from earth.