Elon Musk Says Settlers Will Likely Die on Mars (popularmechanics.com) 214
"But is that such a bad thing?" asks Popular Mechanics:
Earlier this week, Elon Musk said there's a "good chance" settlers in the first Mars missions will die. And while that's easy to imagine, he and others are working hard to plan and minimize the risk of death by hardship or accident. In fact, the goal is to have people comfortably die on Mars after a long life of work and play that, we hope, looks at least a little like life on Earth...
[T]he trip itself will take a year based on current estimates, and applicants to settlement programs are told to expect this trip to be one way. It follows, statistically, that there's an almost certain "chance" these settlers will die on Mars, because their lives will continue there until they naturally end. Musk is referring to accidental death in tough conditions, but people are likely to stay on Mars for the duration either way.
When Mars One opened applications in 2013, people flocked to audition to die on Mars after a one-way trip and a lifetime of settlement. As chemist and applicant Taylor Rose Nations said in a 2014 podcast episode: "If I can go to Mars and be a human guinea pig, I'm willing to sort of donate my body to science...."
Musks exact words: "I want to emphasize that this is a very hard and dangerous, difficult thing, not for the faint of heart. Good chance you'll die, it's going to be tough going, but it will be pretty glorious if it works out."
[T]he trip itself will take a year based on current estimates, and applicants to settlement programs are told to expect this trip to be one way. It follows, statistically, that there's an almost certain "chance" these settlers will die on Mars, because their lives will continue there until they naturally end. Musk is referring to accidental death in tough conditions, but people are likely to stay on Mars for the duration either way.
When Mars One opened applications in 2013, people flocked to audition to die on Mars after a one-way trip and a lifetime of settlement. As chemist and applicant Taylor Rose Nations said in a 2014 podcast episode: "If I can go to Mars and be a human guinea pig, I'm willing to sort of donate my body to science...."
Musks exact words: "I want to emphasize that this is a very hard and dangerous, difficult thing, not for the faint of heart. Good chance you'll die, it's going to be tough going, but it will be pretty glorious if it works out."
Away (Score:3, Funny)
Musk is just channelling Ernest Shackleton (Score:2, Insightful)
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.”
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's been the case with every new venture. Do you think the Polynesians would have discovered Hawaii if they didn't take these kind of risks? We have to allow people to take risks. It's their choice. There's a whole line of people willing to take the risk of going to Mars. You can't blame them, given the shit that happens on Earth. We wouldn't have airplanes or even cars if we didn't allow people to take risks.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Two Worlds (Score:2)
It just turns out that people quite invariably expect to be bailed out if the result isn't what they envisioned.
I really doubt that is true of anyone signing on to go to Mars. They would expect some effort if things go wrong, but know that some things may just go terribly wrong.
I think the real deal about Mars is that there are many people who literally cannot envision that a human would go to Mars fully expecting to die, just to advance exploration and the reach of humanity. Some people cannot comprehend
So he's not giving you the full story. (Score:4, Interesting)
The full story is that all settlers on Mars will die if you send them with the technologies we have and can see today. And they will die in unpleasant and rather quick ways.
Re: (Score:2)
The full story is that all settlers on Mars will die if you send them with the technologies we have and can see today. And they will die in unpleasant and rather quick ways.
The full story is that all also happens here, on Earth. Why is this a bigger issue because "Mars"? Sure, some may die sooner there rather than later here, but there's no guarantee of a longer life here. For example, you're way more likely to die in an auto accident on Earth than Mars ... Everyone dies sooner or later, it's just a matter of how, when and where. (Speaking as a guy whose wife died 14 years ago of a brain tumor just seven weeks after diagnosis.)
Re:So he's not giving you the full story. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it doesn't happen "here on Earth". There are very few enterprises that start with a guaranteed early lethal outcome of every participant, sorry.
Re: (Score:2)
Guaranteed? That would be putting them in orbit and then opening the hatch. A high likelihood of danger doesn't equate to a guaranteed failure and early death. Riding on submarines has the potential to be very dangerous and lethal to the entire crew in a mishap, but there doesn't appear to be an shortage of submariners.
I suspect there will be no shortage of highly qualified applicants for an eventual human voyage to Mars either.
Re: (Score:2)
A high likelihood of danger doesn't equate to a guaranteed failure and early death.
It depends on the probability. High risk is usually defined as probability of an unfortunate event being between 1 in 10 to 1 in 100, and is considered unacceptable risk in peace time.
Riding on submarines has the potential to be very dangerous and lethal to the entire crew in a mishap, but there doesn't appear to be an shortage of submariners.
Riding a submarine is restricted to military staff with special training, the topic here is "settlers", people who want to get their ass to Mars and have a life there.
I suspect there will be no shortage of highly qualified applicants for an eventual human voyage to Mars either.
Depends on your definition of "qualified". It is quite unlikely that people qualified to estimate risks will go without a significant compensation that can offse
Re: (Score:2)
No, it doesn't happen "here on Earth". There are very few enterprises that start with a guaranteed early lethal outcome of every participant, sorry.
He obviously never played Oregon trail.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it doesn't happen "here on Earth". There are very few enterprises that start with a guaranteed early lethal outcome of every participant, sorry.
He obviously never played Oregon trail.
He needs to experiment with dysentery.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe not in the modern era, probably because we're all too comfortable in our lives and lost our taste for real adventure, but for a large portion of human history, there were many enterprises that started with a high lethal risk to everyone involved.
Re: (Score:2)
Every on Earth is at least guaranteed air and more or less survivable temperatures, most missions are guaranteed food and water, and many even a way back -- all of that with local resources that you don't have to carry on your back from your destination.
None of that is available for the imaginary stay on Mars, and then you have the road there, which is even worse.
everyone dies (Score:5, Insightful)
basically this. I'm mot going to live forever. And if things stay on track for me, I don't think I'm scheduled to make any serious contributions to the future before I go to ground. So if helping with the eventual colonization of Mars shaves a few years off my life, I'd be totally OK with helping in the effort.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be a risk I'd be willing to take. If you look back over history, human exploration into the unknown always had a component of risk. Think of all the early Arctic explorers and those searching for the Northwest Passage. These trips were rife with casualties, and sometimes whole expeditions were lost... but the knowledge and experience gained from these trips was priceless, even in those that didn't reach the goal they were seeking.
If going to Mars to pave the way for future explorers meant risking
Re: (Score:2)
That may be a risk you'd be willing to take, but who's going to pay for your passage? Who will spend a metric ton of money in EUR500 bills to send a corpse to Mars? Do you think you can afford it, and not find better use for it?
Going to the Arctic was neither as expensive, nor as certainly deadly as an attempt to go to Mars today, or in a decade or two.
Re: (Score:2)
> Everyone dies sooner or later, it's just a matter of how, when and where.
Also why, and what was accomplished with it. Which on Earth tend to be answered with "because I couldn't afford to delay it anymore" and "nothing".
Re: (Score:2)
You make it sound like Klendathu.
Re:So he's not giving you the full story. (Score:5, Informative)
It is a lot worse than the movie version at least. You could comfortably live on Klendathu until slaughtered by a bug. On Mars, you don't need bugs - there is nothing to breathe, it is significantly colder than the coldest place on Earth, and there is a constant stream of charged protons from the solar wind, which creates a mild neutron flux in addition to the 4-500 mSv you got getting there if you were very lucky, and let me know which place on Earth is worse.
The Red forest in Chernobyl in winter is a very cosy, healthy and comfortable place in comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They could start by making a realistic spaceship simulator and stuffing a bunch of settlers with an avatar of Elon Musk for 6 months.
See if anything comes out alive and sane.
Re: (Score:2)
They should require each and every pioneer to spend a full 2 years in the most possible realistic simulation of Mars before being allowed to embark on the trip. This would not only be fair to them but would reduce the chances of problems down the road.
That would be an interesting story arc in a Mars colonization novel. Oh wait...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Rockets that can travel there.
Nuclear reactors that are capable of going there. Solar and geothermal energy are both possible there.
Bigelow with their large number of habitats. Systems for recycling water, air, etc.
3D printers that work with plastic, metals, even make small circuit boards.
Medical robotics for working on ppl, as well as working science remotely.
We actually have most everything needed.What is not done is put together and fully tested all around. Doing it at South Pol
Re: (Score:2)
Why the south pole rather than the north? The north has far more water ice and a higher atmospheric pressure thanks to the lower altitude.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh? What vital technology is missing?
We've already proven we can keep people alive for years in the far harsher environment in orbit, and while numerous health problems develop we have reason to be optimistic that they would be minimal to nonexistent on Mars (though only manned missions will find out for sure)
We've already got the technology to extract water and oxygen from the Martian air - though mining water from ice caps will be necessary for rapid growth. It hasn't been field tested yet, but the atmo
Re: (Score:2)
Oh? What vital technology is missing?
All of them. Most importantly nothing that can ensure local supply of power, air, water and food, sufficient for a colony.
We've already proven we can keep people alive for years in the far harsher environment in orbit,
LOL, no. Radiation environment on Mars is harsher than "in orbit", and we have scheduled supply missions, which take just a few hours to get there, and are so expensive that even the richest nations cannot afford them for long. Moreover, we only keep a handful of carefully trained, highly paid individuals basically for show.
Show me how this is relevant to a Martian settlement that can ex
Re: (Score:2)
You're not going to create a settlement until the initial outpost has established enough of an ecological base to support it. And the initial outpost will almost certainly have enough food stores from Earth to last for years while bioreactors and agriculture are established.
Mars has cheap, convenient radiation shielding easily available everywhere (aka sand). There is absolutely no reason to have a harsher radiation environment within a Mars habitat than in the ISS. Heck, with just a little more effort t
Re: (Score:2)
The Polynesians pitch: Hey there's probably awesome fish over there and these asshole warlords won't follow us.
Elon's pitch: A few of of you will have descendants with low bone density that will work harder to grow crops and likely be slaves for water and oxygen rations.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: So? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
By what metric is perpetrating genocide and enslavement an improvement over ritual sacrifice and enslavement?
Re: So? (Score:3)
Hawaii has food growing on it. Mars doesnâ(TM)t.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The most difficult part in Musk's Mars plan in my opinion is making methane on Mars to refuel the first mission. That sounds quite risky to me. It's a pain in the ass to mine stuff on Earth, they are going to have to develop a lot of robotics tech to find, mine, and process CO2/water on the red planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I like Bezos' plan better. (Score:3)
Tunnel borers that are self-contained chemical refineries. Starships made of stainless steel that readily convert to silo tanks. Seems like the thinking is already there.
Re: (Score:2)
They've already found water and CO2 on Mars - in addition to an ever-growing list of underground deposits, the Northern icecap contains about 1.6 million cubic kilometers of water ice, while the atmosphere provides nearly pure CO2 wherever you are.
Meanwhile the risk is minimal except to the timeline, since the plan is not to send people until fuel production is well established.
Re: (Score:2)
O'Neill cylinders have incredible long-term potential - but they're also far beyond our current ability to build. And they face the problem that entropy is constantly trying to destroy them, while it's holding planets together. And you'll always eventually lose a war against entropy.
Spectacular! (Score:2)
Catch 22 (Score:4, Insightful)
"If I can go to Mars and be a human guinea pig, I'm willing to sort of donate my body to science...."
Same way as Groucho refused to join any club that would have him as a member, I'd suppose that any real one-way expedition to Mars would have to reject anybody that wanted to go in it.
Re: (Score:2)
This is part of the plot of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Without giving too much away, part of the selection criteria is finding people crazy enough to want to go on an almost certainly one-way mission which may well kill them in short order, but sane enough to do useful work there, and also well-educated enough to do that work. That's a tall order both in fiction and in the real world, but with billions of people on the planet it's not impossible to fill, only very difficult.
While it does plenty of han
Can't say you weren't warned (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of the Demotivational poster about mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
https://despair.com/products/m... [despair.com]
Die after how long. (Score:2)
Volunteers for Mars accept they'll die on Mars, the question is how long they'll live. If they will die during reentry they'll say thanks but no. They'll want to survive at least a few years. They will want an environment which is good enough at recycling and harvesting to last them years. Getting to that level is already a major challenge.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not reentry, as they will have never been in _that_ atmosphere, it's just entry.
Re: (Score:2)
That is correct but also boring. Give me something interesting :)
Canceling trip (Score:2)
Isn't that the case for all settlers? (Score:2)
After all, everybody dies.
"Glorious" (Score:2)
"it will be pretty glorious if it works out."
I sure hope Elon chooses to be part of that glory first-hand, as that would convince me that at least he believed what he was saying. I suspect, however, that that is not the case.
Go into training (Score:2)
Please, can Elon Musk & his fellow "settlers" go into training for his mission to Mars now? You know, so that they're well prepared for living in isolation, with poor communication (long delays between sending & receiving transmissions), under arduous environmental conditions, living on monotonous, bland food, etc.. Can we stick them in a "simulator" somewhere remote where they can give press conferences & tweets to a simulated* audience?
*The simulated part is very important. It won't be authent
Re: (Score:2)
Antarctica comes to mind, with deliberately delayed communications. You can't grow any veg in Antarctica, as far as I know, except under indoor conditions. I do not know if anybody has tried rearing food animals, birds, or seafood in Antarctica. I think the settlements there are totally dependent on external supplies, which would not work on Mars.
And if you think the atmosphere is breathable in Antarctica, then I can refer you to a Russian friend, who worked at a nuclear power station in central Russia. The
the don't-say-it-out-loud part... (Score:2)
...is "Go kill yourselves creating a colony for me so that my descendants can own yours. I'm so looking forward to levying that oxygen tax!"
Re: (Score:2)
Some of you have watched Total Recall just a few too many times. :P
Attracting the wrong candidates (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly! Is he looking for explorers and people willing to expand the envelope, or is he looking for the equivalent of arrow-fodder?
Re: (Score:2)
I can't speak for the hundreds of thousands of historical explorers that braved new and dangerous lands for...well, mostly money and power...but I'm pretty sure they didn't answer an ad like he's offering.
They absolutely did, with the exception being that Musk is probably being much more honest than most of them. Every long sea voyage undertaken at the time of historical exploration was a potential chance to die, even before you got to the other end of the trip and encountered the natives... who themselves generally risked their lives on unknown journeys to get there before you, in even more marginal conditions.
sounds like Zapp Brannigan (Score:2)
Apparently Elon is willing to send wave after wave of his own men...
Where have I heard this before?
Now you gotta ask yourself... (Score:3)
What Is The Cost of An Off Earth Habitat? (Score:2)
Discussions of "colonizing Mars" involve a great deal of distraction from the real fundamental problem - what is our experience (or lack of it) in operating a biosphere in a near vacuum far from Earth?
The date the largest and longest running experiment of this kind has been the International Space Station (ISS) - which normally houses six people long term. The cost of keeping one person on the ISS is roughly, in round numbers, about a billion dollars a year. It it the full time job of at least two people (w
Why not give your life settling the water planet c (Score:2)
Still a lot of useful work to be done settling earth? Want to extend and protect humanities chance to become staa Star voyaging species? Use your engineering skills to make life on earth more robust and durable.
People die everywhere they go (Score:2)
So what Musk said is expected and shouldn't be controversial.
Here's a more interesting prediction: people will hate living on Mars. They'll get there, spend one week ooh-ing and aah-ing over their accomplishment, and then it will hit them they are now living in the most backwards middle-of-nowhere nothing-to-do BFE hick town in all human history, and they can't even go outside without spending several hours suiting up first, and at considerable peril and expense even then. Within 6 months there won't be
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Apart from the fact that countless people are perfectly happy on plant-based diets, there's no reason that Mars has to be plant-only. Though they can be a pain in transport and may pose air quality issues, small animals can provide a useful service in eating the parts of plants that humans don't (or in the case of some fish, even human waste), and using the energy therein to produce products which humans can eat. Most animals can be brought in the form of the female young of dwarf breeds, and backbred as desired using frozen embryos. Most fish eggs cannot be frozen, but as a general rule, fingerlings grow very slowly at low temperatures and low feed rates, and large numbers could be transported to Mars or Venus in a couple litres of water. Bees (now this sounds like the plot of a sci-fi horror film ;) ) are also amenable to transport, as their natural reaction to cold is to stop breeding and form a winter cluster that spends its time inside its hive eating honey - and can be sustained in that manner for long periods so long as they have enough food resources on-hand.
As for birds and mammals, milk and eggs generally gets you better conversion efficiencies than meat - but of course, after they die (naturally or terminated when their productivity drops) - you get (some limited) quantity of meat. Milk production is normally induced by pregnancy, but can also be induced hormonally.
Eggs: chickens and ducks offer the highest conversion efficiencies. Hens are a bit more optimized than ducks, but ducks can be better producers a higher amount of greenery (e.g. waste plant matter) in their diet, are better behaved, and produce more nutritious eggs. Something like bantam leghorns for hens or Khaki Campbels for ducks. Quail are very small, and good layers relative to their size, but require a high-grain diet. Geese are not as optimized for laying as ducks, but produce similar nutritional quality (but much larger) eggs. Guinea fowl like more protein in their diet, and their behavior is suboptimal. Turkeys are poor layers and their eggs are not as nutrient-rich. Partridge are poor layers. We will not speak of ostriches and emus. ;)
Milk: Nigerian dwarf goats are almost perfect for the role, being small, relatively well behaved (often appreciated as pets), certain varieties having very good productivity for their size, good conversion efficiencies, and producing a protein rich milk which is not as "goaty" in scent as with many breeds (though unfortunately goat milk is low in B12; also, male goats have a foul smell). The smallest sheep breeds like the Ouessant are not milk breeds, but milk breeds could be backbred; sheep are reasonably productive and efficient, and sheep milk is B12-rich and good for cheese production. Most cattle are huge, although some varieties get down to mature sizes of around 150kg, and some dwarf breeds are good milk producers; cattle offer good conversion efficiencies and a moderate nutritional quality milk. Water buffalo are somewhat inferior to cattle. Miniature horses like Falabellas can get quite small indeed (usually about 25kg as adults) and be backbred, but horse milk is produced in insufficient quantities and is relatively nutrient poor (donkeys are even worse producers). The smallest camelids from which other camelids could be backbred is the (rarely kept) vicuña, at ~50kg; while some camelids offer advantages in their milk (alpaca = high protein; camels = vitamin C), these do not justify their size or behavior. Reindeer and moose have extremely energy-dense milk, but produce little, and do not in any way justify their size. Yak are also uninteresting from size, productivity, and conversion efficiency standpoints.
Fish: in general you're looking at herbivores or detritivores (e.g. not, say, salmon) - and an obvious standout candidate is tilapia, as it's been heavily bred for aquaculture. In addition to waste, they can be fed on algae, which most humans find to be a disgusting meal, but which can be produced rapidly and efficiently
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Aquaculture and chickens make a lot more sense than grazing animals.
But the first step is mushrooms. Don't tell the vegans, but fungi is much closer related to humans than it is to plants. And it adds a lot of flavour to plant-based meals.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not tell the vegans? There are no sustainability issues with fungi and they have no nervous system. Vegans aren't making decisions on the basis of the cell membrane composition.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
A possible side benefit of aquaculture - although it depends on the approach - is it might also get you a (very fishy) pool ;) It depends on whether you're for dense or sparse aquaculture, and what they're being fed. Normally aquaculture is done dense, with external food supplies (in this case, plant waste, animal waste, or algae/aquatic plants). Contrarily, you can do low density aquaculture, growing the algae or aquatic plants that they eat in the same tank as the fish**, but at far lower density. With low-density aquaculture, and if no animal waste is used in the water, and with sufficient water-quality monitoring, I see no reason why humans couldn't use it as a pool - akin to swimming in a pond.
** There are some constraints, including needing refuge spaces for the algae/aquatic plants, and light penetration in the water being used to cultivate algae is limited, so submerged LED grow lighting at regular intervals would be the logical approach (simultaneously warming the water and cooling the lights). Contrarily, high-density aquaculture requires a lot more work in terms of oxygenating the water and managing water quality, and short-term system outages can be deadly to the fish; low-density aquaculture is more passively stable
Fungi are indeed an obvious option for waste. Just have to take proper air filtration steps to prevent mushroom worker's lung. :) Not the same nutritional profile as animal products, though.
(To be fair, the only nutrient that's almost impossible to get in sufficient quantities on a purely vegan diet with no food fortification is B12. But the body only needs vanishingly small quantities of it (e.g.: easy import), can store it for years, and it can be produced synthetically by growing B12-producing bacteria.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There's some references and tables linked in the food section here [venuslabs.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Milk production is normally induced by pregnancy, but can also be induced hormonally.
. . . so we should be sending large-breasted female human astronauts to Mars . . . ?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
During the Middle Ages it was not uncommon for besiegers of a city to be more poorly fed than those sheltering within, since they had to rely on foraging. During one particularly extended siege the residents of one Italian city taunted their besiegers by tossing them cheese made of human breast milk.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because they are messy as hell to keep (and loud) compared to chickens and they need lots of water, the meat is also dark and more greasy than chicken. Because they need a pool or body of water to swim in that makes them poor choices for small backyards when you could pack in 2/3x the amount of chickens in the same space. I like them, but they do have their downsides....
Duck poop (Score:2)
Compared to chicken poop, duck poop is conspicuously noxious. I wouldn't want to be stuck in a confined space with little to no ventilation with a bunch of chickens. Ducks? Forget about it.
In either case, your respiratory system will be trashed.
Re: (Score:2)
Gigantic pools of shit, that's one reason. While they might be less picky eaters than chickens (although not by much, ours eat almost everything except wisteria trimmings), they waste a larger percentage of the food because it goes through their digestive system so fast.
Re: In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
They haven't been as heavily selected in breeding. In theory, ducks should be able to lay more eggs than chickens, as ducks lay at the same time each day, being able to mature an egg in under 24 hours (but not laying every day), while it takes a hen over 24 hours to mature an egg (but the industrial breeds have been highly optimized to keep doing so without delay). Indeed, a Khaki Campbell duck holds the record for the greatest number of eggs laid by a domestic bird in a year - 365 (one per day). But most ducks aren't anywhere near that consistent.
Duck eggs are however more nutritious than chicken eggs, and ducks can better digest waste greenery. So they're a very appealing option. But you're right that - for any random hen vs. any random duck, of optimal egg-laying breeds, each fed their optimal diet, the hen will get better conversion and produce more egg mass for their size. But it's not a blowout comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They are fattier than chicken, which makes them a far superior food to chicken.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought ducks/geese were fattier than chicken and therefore NOT as good a food as chicken?
Occasional fat is good. And as the ducks primary roles are egg laying they will not be eaten often.
Re: (Score:2)
By the time Mars is settled, they will be eating lab-grown meat. Even at today's high costs, lab-grown would be more economical than hauling food animals up there and maintaining them.
Re: (Score:2)
There is another reason why LONG term, we really need other animals and that would be evolution.
Re: (Score:2)
Fish will work, yes. I was thinking of cattle.
Re: (Score:2)
One of the great advantages of plant based foods when you are going exploring is the durability of the seeds. They can be viable for years, and survive severe environmental stress, such as drought and forest fires. I do not know of any bird's egg or fish egg that could do that.
Being a long term vegetarian, I do not know why our Mars explorers should expect to eat meat, as so many vegetable foods have been shown to be sufficient for good health.
As for the Mars explorers dying there, and not coming back to Ea
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a vegetarian, too. But the facts are what they are: livestock can eat resources that humans can't or won't, and use that to produce things that humans can and will eat. And they do so in a rather compact package relative to the size of a greenhouse.
There's certainly no logic to, say, growing grain on Mars, and then using that to feed livestock. But feeding animals your plant waste, human waste, easily-grown algae, things like that? Yeah, there's a real logic to that.
Re: (Score:3)
Not just logic: necessity. Here on earth we can just take organic material and toss it in a ditch and it will get scavenged and decay. Anywhere without oxygen it will just sit there for a really long time. You most likely won't be burning stuff, as O2 will be a critical resource.
We're going to have to do something with our food waste. It's either going to have to run through a bioreactor or something else to break it down into base components or change it into something useful. Given the cost to get anythin
Re: (Score:2)
Ever grown your own food? Generally most of the plant is not edible by humans (with a few exceptions like beets). Guinea pigs on the other hand make very good fertilizer out of it in no time, are delicious, and are incredibly easy to raise.
Re: (Score:3)
Guinea pigs ... are delicious,
Well, Guinea pigs certainly seem to think so.
Re: (Score:2)
I was surprised the other day. Had a conversation with some friends and ISS/microG came up. One of the women asked about menstrual cycles and the period . She thought the period was gravity based for flow and not based on the muscle.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there a reason you mostly neglected small game in favor of dwarf animals? It will after all probably be centuries before large animals are desireable, and they can be brought over then, when the shipping costs are much lower. Small game has the advantage of much shorter life cycles and maturation periods, meaning your "herd" size can be adjusted very quickly. Rabbits are a popular one that've been domesticated into high-yield animals, and rabbit skins could be a more useful byproduct than feathers (tho
Re: (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I know plenty stories that had a different outcome..
You made my day !!!
Indirectly as fertilizer (Score:2)
Waste not want not, You of course would eat the recently dead. lots of meat there.
Not directly. They would be used as fertilizer, recycled as it were, then eaten. So yeah, nothing is wasted.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you can do that instead if you like, but it's a waste of perfectly good meat.
Socially acceptable cannibalism can be a sign of a deeply civilized society - how many people would you trust your back to with the price of beef being what it is?
Re: (Score:3)
Quite aside from the moral and psychological questions, what you're proposing may not be healthy. Humans carry human diseases, it's just not a good idea. Exactly what funerary customs will be observed for Martian colonists is unknown, but I'm pretty sure outright cannibalism as a funeral practice shouldn't be practiced.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you volunteering to be the first to die on Mars?
Re: (Score:2)
He many not be the first to die on Mars, but he may be the first to be ridden-on-a-rocket out of town.
Re: (Score:2)
Works either way.
Re: (Score:2)