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[discuss] essential elements for survival on mars
(lemmy.world)
Hi there, I'd like to connect with people to discuss technical aspects of settlement of mars.
I'd look at a house on earth and ask: what things have to be supplied from the outside; what things can be produced inside the house? Houses on earth have piping for water, and cabling for electricity.
Plants can be grown in a green-house using these two ingredients, and the people can sleep in a spaceship.
Comment whatever comes to your mind.
Also need to factor in waste management as well. With sufficient bacteria and time, the effluents can be converted to compost. It will take a ton of algae bioreactors to prevent the CO2 generated from becoming toxic. Packaging can be buried, but I think it would be better if it was compostable as well.
We also need to consider fire suppression. A fire in a low gravity and/or high oxygen environment is going to be dangerous quickly and could harm critical systems. The fire suppression material itself could also imbalance the environment and , at minimum, could be a big hassle to clean up.
In regards to food growth, aeroponics can be fine tuned and automated, but this works best for leafy vegetables. Keep in mind that Mars doesn’t have the inert Nitrogen atmosphere that Earth does, so nitrogen fixing doesn’t work to our benefit, which means we’ll need to acquire sources of bio available nitrogen.
Phosphorous may also be a problem, since our best stores of that currently come from bird and bat guano.