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We have had a rather interesting thread of corporate government .
I was thinking of dependent colonies, either from private corporations or other countries, being in practice somewhat autonomous, in practice much like the former British Empire/current Commonwealth.
The Electoral College is designed such that each state gets the same number of electors as congressmen (except for DC, but that's another thing.). Indeed, all of the popular-vote loser years except 1876 resulted in trifectas for the President-elect's party. That's why I support the National Popular Vote, as an extra check and balance to make the President more likely to be at odds with Congress.
I always wondered what phone numbers and telecommunications would be like on Mars. Being rather americentric, I always imagined that Mars would use the North American Numbering Plan with a currently unused area code (maybe 627 for "MARs", which was used briefly to overlay 707 in NorCal but has been dormant since). I do assume that Martians would largely keep their current phone numbers, but depending on how many countries are represented that might be an issue, so maybe a special international calling code may apply (not to mention the charges that an interplanetary call may incur).
For technology I think IPv6 would be the sole version of IP allowed on Mars, since IPv4 is not compatible with it and in any case is essentially exhausted on Earth.
EDIT: I don't think dial-up would be of much use on Mars, but here's a cool video explaining the sounds you hear from the modems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp47x1EabqI.
From my rather basic knowledge of radiation I think there should be a IR-reflecting sheet on the inside surface of the glass that would bounce the IR, and thus heat, back into the greenhouse and amplify the greenhouse effect. (It would also technically reflect the IR from the incoming solar radiation, but that's a small amount of the total incoming shortwave radiation.) I'm not sure how high an albedo would be necessary and at what costs of reflecting the other parts of the spectrum (particularly the shorter-wave ones, which I'd rather not have).
A child becoming a person (legally speaking) isn't a particularly new idea, either. The common law held that a child became a person upon taking his/her first breath, something that was presumably done to counter stillbirths. (On the other hand, abortion was illegal in all 50 states prior to Roe v. Wade, but at least some of the pro-choice talking points have some history.) I've also noticed that opposition to abortion and opposition to contraception tend to go hand in hand (I'm not saying anything about any particular people's opinion of the latter), and I feel that a world without either seems too Handmaid's Tale-y.
I'd be somewhat wary of herbal remedies and also bring along the WHO's List of Essential Medicines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model … _Medicines. That said, Chamomile does sound good for a cold or so, and aspirin can be derived from willow bark.
Things do not look too good for Brazil as Brazil elects Bolsonaro for President.
There's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model … _Medicines
I think vaccinations should be mandatory in the absence of medical contraindications for travel to Mars.
I believe it would be essential as it is on Earth (i.e., for stuff like increased yield, etc.), but I'm not entirely sure that it would be of particular use on Mars. The main difference from a plant standpoint is radiation, and ignoring the fact that plants are much more radiation-resistant than animals any attempts to make them more so might be compromised by radiation affecting the DNA. You could try to increase the primary productivity per flux density, or try to make C3 plants into C4 plants.
I guess diversity of crops would be essential. If we grew only potatoes, for example, a potato blight's effect on the local diet would be compounded. While I believe that all of the affected stock would have to be destroyed I doubt that most plant pathogens can be transmitted to humans, fortunately enough.
Welcome to NewMars Big_Al! I do agree that food variety would be good, but I do believe, as does RobertDyck and I think most everyone here, that the early Mars colonists will be vegan out of necessity. That said, I have done livestock threads for Chicken, Cattle, Swine, and even Insects, while Oldfart1939 has done a thread on Tilapia, and I think that livestock might be viable within a few generations.
As for on-site agriculture, I do think it might be somewhat important both for food and to facilitate Terraformation. However, nitrogen-fixing bacteria would not work since the Nitrogen would still have to come from somewhere. (Although a paper did come out fairly recently about indigenous Nitrates and Phosphates in Martian regolith, so I could be wrong). Fungi are heterotrophs ("consumers" in the food chain) and need existing organic material to live and grow, so aren't as good as plants as a first-generation food source, but can be introduced along with or just before the earliest livestock.
Composting dead colonists (I always did wonder what the funerary practices of Martians would be) is somewhat unsettling but does work and is ultimately what happens to the uncremated dead on Earth anyway, although we'd have to introduce bacteria/fungi to induce decomposition. As for drying and then burning, that could also work for production of electricity and be coupled with cremation, though I guess the colony would have to decide which would be more energetically-favorable case by case.
Those "anarchists/socialists from the left" do exist, and I live among them. Having lived in Chicago all of my 21 years on Earth, I've been exposed to far more left-wing BS than right-wing BS, and have had the misfortune of being in close contact with far-left and other such ideas ("Life's too short to argue with a communist who lives in the first world" is a good aphorism for me), especially with some people who want to abolish the U.S. Senate and enact hate speech laws, for example. (Many of them are my friends, and I can't say I'm not somewhat left-leaning myself, but I still think that their politics are quite obnoxious.)
However, I can thankfully say that such people are a slim minority even within the Democratic Party (and those of the violent type are even slimmer; even outright tankies I know have yet to legitimately call for violence), and given the current circumstances once I turn social media off I believe that it's the right-wing BS that is currently the main threat to "liberalism" (as opposed to communism or fascism, not necessarily as opposed to leftism or conservatism) for much the same reasons as GW said. To be fair, I do realize that the pipe-bomb mailer and his/her ilk are probably likewise a slim minority in the GOP, but as much as I loathe and despise the increasing partisanship and no-platforming among the left I realize that it's the right that has been pioneering such disruptive and bitter tactics for the past couple decades. That's a lot of why I first the first time in my life voted blue down the line this election, after having voted for Kasich in the 2016 primary and Johnson in the 2016 general.
A PhD and other post-grad work is by its very nature depth rather than breadth. I do think that there should be some PhDs on a Mars settlement, but I think a Bachelor's or even Associate's degree would work just fine for the bulk of colonists.
I think RobertDyck is on to something with privilege and class being a larger determiner for the composition of a Martian settlement than what any of us would like. Any application process, if existent, to a Martian settlement ought to take it into account, but to what extent affirmative action should be used and for what parameters (race, sex, education, etc.) is up for debate. Even assuming there is some intrinsic intelligence, louis brings up a great point in that culture determines what type of testing is the best to determine it. At the end of the day, however, I do agree with the main point that Martians will tend to be at the very least more motivated than the average person.
Sorry to hear about your cat, Robert.
While we are going through our tensest times since the '60s, I doubt that we are anywhere near what we were during the antebellum, or that we're anywhere near a new Civil War, thank God.
Lichens are essentially "fungi that have discovered agriculture", being a colony of fungi and cyanobacteria or algae. As such, I think they should be avoided at first since some of the organic material might be wasted on the fungal part. However, cyanobacteria, algae, and land plants (embryophytes) all have roughly similar photosynthetic efficiency, so it doesn't quite matter which ones we use for organic material, although I would think cyanobacteria and algae are more resilient towards the cold.
With regards to the OP, I do agree that "Mars for the common man" is the (or at least an) ultimate goal, with theoretically anyone who can pony up the fare can go (similar to RobertDyck's statements in his Corporate Government thread; perhaps subject to some certain background checks but nothing more intensive than travelling between, for example, the US and the Schengen area), even if they have no background in space science or really any science. However, I realize that the forces of economics and capitalism that even with completely open borders (at the individual/household level, regardless of what happens w/ settlements and municipalities) prices would be too high for literally every single person to be able to afford it, and trying to make it otherwise would be economically unviable, with the best we can hope for is for technology to bring it within the reach of the middle class. (Perhaps there could be a merit-based system of financial aid for prospective Martians, especially in the earlier years, akin to colleges in the US, though I'm getting ahead of myself.)
(Also, for the record, I am not the same Ian in the OP. Looking at the date it turns out I was 8(!) when it was posted.)
I have family, and quite a family history, out west in Utah, San Diego, and formerly Grand Junction as well. I developed a keen interest in the Wild West from my experiences visiting them, and that interest essentially translated to Mars.
Regarding the topic of atmospheric retention, an important parameter is the so-called Jeans Escape Parameter, defined as GMm/kRT and calculated with respect to the exobase (essentially the point where a molecule does not on average collide with anything before escaping), with m as the molecule's mass, M as the planet's mass, G as the gravitational constant, T is temperature, R is the gas constant, and k is the Boltzmann constant. Generally if it's ~10 or higher, so-called Jeans escape occurs and escape happens slowly, molecule by molecule (this is the regimen that occurs on Earth for things heavier than H and He). If it's less than ~4 so-called Hydrodynamic escape occurs, which is fairly rapid and requires a lot of energy input. (It's unclear what happens when it's in between those values.)
The reaction that the LiveScience article you provided seems to imply this overall reaction for perchlorates:
3ClO4- + S2^2- --> 2SO4^2- + 3Cl- + 2O2
There's plenty of sulfate in the Martian regolith as is, and the article states that sulfate is also used as a fuel, so that might be a bonus. I don't see any carbon in this equation so it might not quite be the best for food supply (although sufficient nutrients might be previously in place so that the colony can grow), although they might seem to also be a good source of Oxygen despite being anaerobic.
Now that you mention it, I was thinking about oxidizing the Carbon present in Acetic and Propionic Acid into sugar (coupled with the reduction of the sulfates in regolith into elemental sulfur) that would then be fermented into CO2 as a terraformation method. The reactions, and net overall reaction, with Acetic (EDIT:Propionic) Acid would be:
SO4^2-(s) + 4C2H5COOH(l) -> 2C6H12O6(s) + S(s) (Chemosynthesis courtesy of Sulfate-reducing bacteria)
C6H12O6(s) -> 2CO2(g) + 2C2H5OH(l) (Fermentation, courtesy probably of yeast)
SO4^2-(s) + 4C2H5COOH(l) -> 4CO2(g) + 4C2H5OH(l) + S(s) (Overall reaction)
I did some calculations, and assuming that this solution penetrates the regolith 1 cm deep about 9.105*10^11 m^2 or 351,540 sq mi. (half the size of Alaska but twice the size of California) would be needed to create a pressure value of CO2 comparable to Earth (neglecting the polar ice caps full of CO2). However, it would work only as a supplemental terraformation method, since thus treating the entire planetary surface would produce CO2 much less than the Armstrong limit (Even with the polar ice caps).
(This paper describes Sulfate-reducing bacteria that can oxidize Acetate directly into CO2, but the downside is that it reduces sulfate into Hydrogen Sulfide, a harmful byproduct that is among other things responsible for the smell of rotten eggs.)
Perhaps such a system (or at least the first reaction), with acetic acid (or any acetate) and sulfate in the regolith, could in addition be used for the base of your chemosynthetic food chain. Life is essentially a series of redox reactions. The carbon in glucose has an oxidation state of zero, and plants (and cyanobacteria) get it from reducing the Carbon in CO2 (coupled specifically with the oxidation of water into O2), while the sulfate reducers are essentially doing a bit of the opposite, oxidizing the Carbon from Acetate and Propionate into sugars. The carbon source would have to be imported from Earth, but it is inorganic and can thus be used to kickstart the whole process. The main question is whether anybody's ever done a study on the edibility of such chemosynthesizers (as well as their nutrition for such things as fat and protein), which I think somebody should certainly do. Another drawback is that oxygenic photosynthesis is much more energetically rewarding on Earth (which is why it is the predominant form of autotrophy today), although the limited CO2 in the atmosphere and much lower sunlight could change that.
I agree that most people will live in the Northern Hemisphere, but for if anything the opposite reason as on Earth. On Earth, most people live in the Northern Hemisphere largely because that's where most of the land is. On Mars, however, most of the land would be in the Southern Hemisphere highlands, but post-terraformation (and even pre-terraformation) the Ocean and water would be concentrated in the North, which is thus where most people would be.
Going even higher with population densities on the planet:
-Macau (Current densest country/dependency): 3,090,033,880,000 people
-Manhattan at its peak population, 1910: 5,709,877,910,000 people
-Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, 1987 (Highest human population density on record, at 3.25 million/sq mi. or 1.255 million/km^2): 181,707,500,000,000 people (about 18,000 times the number of people who have ever lived)
I think your last paragraph sums it up nicely. A colony of 12 sited on one acre (~4,000 m^2) would be 7,680 people a square mile, comparable to American suburbia. That same acre would have to house 113 colonists to have Manhattan-level density, which may or may not be feasible depending on how everything is organized and arranged, and 5,079 colonists for Kowloon density, ditto.
Mushrooms can be grown much like plants in a garden, and can be considered a crop for land use purposes. The main difference for our purposes is that fungi are heterotrophs, which means that unlike plants they are unable to produce their own organic material and must get it from somewhere else. However, as discussed before this organic material can be as simple as sawdust, and fungi have been known to grow on CDs. I was thinking about growing mushrooms in human feces, and this does seem to be viable according to https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articl … ient-loop/, although another use of human waste would be to put methanogens in it to produce methane for the colony, which I guess would be more energy efficient.
Speaking of efficiency, animals tend to only absorb about 10% of the biomass of what they eat, so herbivores tend to absorb 10% of the biomass of the plants they eat, carnivores tend to absorb about 10% of the herbivores they eat, and so on. According to https://www.ecologycenter.us/species-ri … hways.html, creating an analog of such a figure for bacteria and fungi is difficult since they don't defecate, though we can assume an efficiency of ~100%, meaning that the fungi can in theory absorb all of the organic material it eats, although much of that is lost to respiration. In any case I think fungi are far more efficient than animals and should be used by an early colony for food and for other things as said in this thread.