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Originally Posted by **********
I think it is a really interesting idea, but unfortunately I think its doomed to fail for several reasons.
#1. They will be forced to live inside, and will not be able to survive outside. No air, no water, too cold, etc.
#2. They can't bring enough food and water to live very long. There are not enough resources on Mars to live on, and there is not enough time or resources to create / grow / resources to live on.
#3. If the flight itself doesn't kill them by exposure to radiation, they might just end up going insane being cooped up together for so long. If the scientists make a mistake on the psychiatric evaluation on one or more of the astronauts, it will mean disaster for the entire crew even before they arrive.
And what happens when they get there? Only more cramped living space.
It would be wonderful and beautiful to step onto the ground of Mars and explore but their time to do this would be so limited.
Even worse, there's no real reason to send these humans to Mars right now. If we wait a while, new engines will take people there much faster, and do so with a return trip plan too. Imagine going to Mars knowing that if you just wait 10 years or so, you could go, do much more, and come back to Earth.
The thought of finally getting there only to live in a bubble and know that death is coming for you in months instead of years will driving anyone crazy. If they have live cams for the event, it will be the most watched, saddest and most tragic reality show in history.
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While I agree with much of what you said, doing it creates reason to build the better technology because there is actual need vs wanting to create a better rocket engine for example.
Look how long we have for the most part just depended on launching a satellite and letting it float at that speed in which it was first projected never going faster or slower until it sling shots off another planet or hits it's final orbit.
There is no great need to develop anything fast, so resources go to other things. Start sending people to Mars and then there will be a need to speed up the process, so resources will be use to do just that.
As far as growing food or water, most of the ways around that have been tested already. It just needs to be refined.
Water can be squeezed at high compression out of the dirt on both the moon and on Mars. This has been tested and that is how they would likely get their water. To do that they would send the system to Mars ahead of time to make sure it was ready and working before people showed up.
As far as food, they would likely have to use some sort of green houses, which would also sent ahead of time, allowing them to start growing and producing food well before the people get there. There is no way around not producing their own food & water if they intend to colonize.
Who knows if dirt there would be good enough to grow with, but long as they had the water supply going, the most logical solution would be hydroponics.
Eventually technology would get there to build structures using 3d printing and the dirt on Mars, so they could start developing better infrastructure and have more room, that or start digging and building underground..