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Why not build the settlement in advance of the first landing? (piefed.social)
submitted 1 month ago* by to c/mars@discuss.tchncs.de
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Sending people to Mars, keeping them alive there, and bringing them back (optional) is hard.

Sending robots to Mars is easier. It's been done in 1997 and artificial intelligence and robotics have made major strides since.

A semi-autonomous* settlement with life support should be built before we send people there. This will save a lot of time and make the mission far more likely to succeed than if we treat it like a camping trip and make astronauts set their own "tents" up.

* with high-level operations being managed remotely, but real-time operations requiring automation due to the unavoidably high ping between Earth and Mars

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[–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

Can you clarify? I can only think of three kinds:

  1. people trying to hitch a ride on the unmanned launches to Mars - good luck lmao, they probably won't even make it past the launch alive
  2. another space agency taking advantage of the infrastructure without approval - could be an issue, but hardly an unsolvable one, with solutions ranging from sanctions to orbital and on-ground defenses
  3. somehow previously undiscovered Martian lifeforms, in which case we'd be too excited about life on Mars to be upset about infrastructure loss
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