A Mars City

I believe that countries today are taking their time in getting back to the Moon (2018) and making the first trip to Mars (2030). I am very interested in the clean-slate city-state idea. But I am much more interested in a Mars city. Unfortunately, I do not know where to start. I am currently in High School, so I am not sure what type of education I should be going for. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

have you checked www.Newmars.com/forums? That would probably be a better place for this, but who knows. Mike? lkm? Locksley?

Firstly, I think Ares is rapibly turning into a dog, an old blind three legged dog that smells real bad and is going to have to be taken out back and shot with one hand over your nose while you look the other way by the next President and NASA Administrator. That's an image for you.
So if you actually want to go to mars you might think about learning Chinese, as they'll probably be there first. Being strong on sciences is probably a must too, a good exogeologist and exobiologist will probably be a shoe in for a mars colony, and if the exobiologist finds a little grey man there they'll need an exolinguist as well. However seats will be tight so is you can combine this with a degree in emergency medical practice you'll be a step ahead of the otheres in cross training. Undoubtably there'll also some guy who landed fighter jets on a carrier for the navy and a small squirmy roboticist guy who can fix anything, computer, machine robot, he don't care cause he's the man who saves the day. Or goes mad and kills everybody, depends on the film.
Something like that. check out nasaspaceflight.com and find a thread discussing mars mission crew numbers, and who is is essential, and try your damnedest to be that guy. You certainly have a cool astronaut name picked already.

Lots of questions.
1. Where to build? The poles have SOME water, but the equator is warmer
2. What raw materials are available for use, and which are the most feasible to process?
3. What will we have to bring from Earth?

I think that establishing a self-sustaining presence on Mars is an imperative for the survival of the human race. If something does happen to the Earth it would be all over unless a Mars colony would give us a second chance.

I think before Mars we should consider building up to it, in terms of colonies. Moon, then Phobos, then Ceres, then Mars. The technical requirements for long term survival on the first three really are far more related than they are for Mars. There is far more than can be reused and codeveloped. Phobos can be used as a staging area for Mars, Ceres for the asteroid belt.

lkm wrote:

I think before Mars we should consider building up to it, in terms of colonies. Moon, then Phobos, then Ceres, then Mars. The technical requirements for long term survival on the first three really are far more related than they are for Mars. There is far more than can be reused and codeveloped. Phobos can be used as a staging area for Mars, Ceres for the asteroid belt.

I think the moon is a great stepping stone. Establish a base there that could be a place to learn what works and what doesn't and take the experience on to Mars. Also the moon could act as a staging area to Mars as well.

Phobos (and Deimos) would be an excellent staging area for Mars.

I consider Shoemaker-Levy 9 to be Humanity's wake up call. There is a very real danger of Earth becoming uninhabitable due to numerous dangers, asteroids and comets being only two.

I have a four tier plan to give Humanity a fighting chance.

1. Build a fleet of interceptor missiles to deflect the trajectories of incoming asteroids and comets. This would do nothing for geological biological, or nuclear catastrophes, or for a massive solar flare, but I'll let someone else figure that out!

2. Establish an orbiting space station that can support life for an extended period of time, say a year. There would be a large crew and a large supply of embryos so that if the Earth becomes habitable again within that year there would be enough genetic material to form a viable gene pool.

3. Establish a moon base that can support life hopefully indefinitely, but let's say, at least five years. This base would have all the same materials that the space station would have but on a grander scale.

4. Establish a colony on Mars that was completely self sufficient and could perpetuate the Human Race if if Earth were made comletely uninhabitable.

Ceres would make a great stepping stone and staging area for the outer planets. From there establish colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

Just a thought, but would it be absolutely crazy to try and crash Ceres into Mars? A major impact would significantly heat up the marsian surface and Ceres would add more water than earth has. Seems to me that it would be pretty effective teraforming. Or is that just evil scientist mad?

Back of the envelope, stick 5,000 NTR's into ceres that use its ice as remass and you could get it there in 5 years. It would certainly bring down the price of a decent nuclear rocket.

Crash my planet into Mars? *shocked* Why not use the smaller bodies? No need to wreck the decent sized ones.

It's convenient, largely water, big enough that you'd never need to do it again, not good for much on its own, plus would be massively spectacular. How about a compromise, we aerobrake Ceres into a low orbit and just keep diping it into the atmosphere to vapourize the water then you can keep the core as a personal moon.

Assuming an ice depth of 60km each NTR rocket would only need a diameter of 60m to be able to melt and vapourize enough mass to get to Mars. Just worked it out out. You'd fire these giant rockets into the ground with a giant melty drilly nose that digs into the ice, churns it up and feeds it into the reactor, as the rocket fires it sinks further into the ground, drilling out more fuel and sending it back.

http://www.transhumanist.com/volume4/space.htm
I found this and thought of this discussion.

I prefer the idea of using Ceres as a tidal flex partner.

But, before placing it in Mars orbit, pass it near Venus to speed up it's rotation.

Hmmm,,,, I wonder if Venus and Mars could be moved closer to Earth without disrupting it.

Just watched "The Universe" on History Channel and they were talking about disasters in space and it occurred to me that given the hazards that can occur on Mars, a subterranean city might be the way to go. Not necessarily digging down, but instead dig horizontally into a mountain. This would protect the colony from meteor collision as well as solar flares. If we were to dig down as well there might also be a source of subterranean heat from the core of the planet.

No need to dig in; there are bound to be long lava tubes in the flanks of the great basaltic shield volcanoes of the Tharsis Plateau. These could be made livable, and would provide adequate protection, at least, against the most likely dangers faced by early settlers--cosmic rays, differences in air pressure, and meteorites.