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Why not build the settlement in advance of the first landing? (piefed.social)
submitted 1 day 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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[–] 1 point 22 hours ago

It can be solved in space, sure. Just spin the craft at the right speed. You can't be strapped into a centrifuge all the time planetside, and be very productive.

I'm pretty sure we need the gravity to be close to 1 G because we have had issues bringing astronauts back from the ISS, and no one has been on the ISS for as long as a round trip to Mars would currently take. It also does weird things to fetuses, so you couldn't have a self sustaining colony.

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