Martian Gravity

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-26 23:54:44

Someday people will leave Earth forever and live the rest of their lives on Mars. Unlike a change of address to some other part of the world, where life can go on as usual, after the move to Mars, colonists will be constantly reminded that their on another planet every time they get up, every time they drop something or pick something up, and every time they walk around. In a domed environment, you could theoretically make a neighborhood look just like a place on Earth as in a particular episode of the Martian Chronicals, but the one thing you can't disguise is the gravity.

Suppose one is a bit eccentric and wanted the Mars colony to look like a place on Earth, so he camouflages the dome from the inside to look like blue sky with clouds holographically projected on its inside and with natural levels of sunlight where appropriate and a hidden ceiling sprinkler system to simulate rain when clouds are projected over head. With sufficient trickery and wind generators with sound absorbing walls, you could produce a neighborhood that looks just like a community on Earth with roads, houses, and garages with cars in them, but the one thing you would always come back to is the gravity. the gravity would never seem right. People would be bouncing arouns too much and things and people would seem to fall too slowly.

Now the sun shines through someones window in the morning, the bees are buzzing and the birds are chirping in the trees, and the husband gets out of bed and stumbles around clumsily under the low gravity, he hops around and bumps his head against the ceiling cursing loudly when he does so, waking up the wife. The children are already watching cartoons in the living room. Breakfast is served in the kitchen, and the husband is busy putting on his spacesuit for the trip to work. Unfortunately his spacesuits are thick and bulky and he can fit too many in his closet, so he wears the same one he wore yesterday this morning. Just before he seals his helmet on, he asks his wife to go pick up his other suit at the cleaners today. So he climbs into his car and grabs onto the steering wheel with his thick gloved hands and the garage opens and he pulls the car out. The car hits a speed bumb as it heads towards the domes outer airlock, and it goes flying into the air. The car thuds back onto the asphalt some distance away, he drives into the airlock and the inner door closes, the chamber depressurizes and the outer door opens revealing a pink sky and a barren ruddy landscape with a lonely road leading out toward the horizon. There is another car out ahead, and another car follows his out through the community airlock. There is a line of traffic pulling out of the community for it is rush hour. the man drives his car and the road splits in several directions and other domed communities are seen in the distance, he passes a number of road signs, one showing the speed limit, some billboards with advertisements, and finally the dome of the big city where he works. A line of cars drive into a long tunnel that goes underneath the big dome, and then stop. the light turns red on top and the outer door of the municiple airlock closes. A line of cars waits for a time outside, and then the door opens to reveal an empty tunnel, and the cars waiting outside drive in and then stop when the tunnel is full. The man drives through the inner door of the airlock when it opens and out onto the city street which is filled with cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, and horse drawn carriages. Cops watch carefully from their little tiny vehicles to make sure no one parks in the wrong spot. there are bus stations, fire hydrants all all sorts of reserved spaces where parking is not allowed, and their are parking meters that are only in effect certain times during the day, and at other times, parking is not allowed to make way fro garbage pickups and the like. The man drives into a parking garage and pays twenty martian dollars to the parking attendent to park his car. He opens the door and bumps his head on the doorframe as he attempts to trise out of the car. Two people skip and hop down the corridors of the office building colliding with one another and knocking each other silly.

SpaceNut · 2006-09-27 07:47:52

One could put velcro onto the floors and that would provide the resistance against one floating off when getting up to quickly.

RobS · 2006-11-02 20:14:41

I suspect people would get used to the gravity in a month or two and wouldn't bump into things. You would adjust so that your speed doing things is appropriate, just as you do in the winter on snowy and slippery sidewalks (which are probably equivalent to a lower-g environment than Mars, in terms of friction and horizontal movement).

Your scenario above makes Mars into a gigantic US-style suburb. But there is no reason to separate developments by long stretches of desert; you'd want to have continuous development. And because the cost of pressurization is high, land will be as expensive as it is in Manhattan or Tokyo. Not many people in those places have cars. High population densities are perfect for mass transit, and mass transit will save a lot of money, plus being safer (it'll usually be underground in tunnels). I also doubt cops will be watching in cars. Because it is expensive for people to get to Mars, labor costs will be incredibly high. A lot of security will rely on computers monitoring video cameras and flagging questionable things for humans, sitting in windowless rooms, to scrutinize. For example, Martian stores will probably have self-checkout and credit card payment for everything. If you want to know where something is in the store, you'll ask a computer, which might very well have the latest inventory map in it thanks to cheap software engineers in India (or wherever the computer programs are cheap at that time; maybe it'll be Eritrea). A Walmart-style store, if there are ever any on Mars, might be run by three people who are running three other stores at the same time, either from a windowless room a thousand kilometers away or, better, from a central location at the center of the Mall, where they can walk to trouble spots if they have to.

In my novel about Mars, by the time there were ten thousand people on Mars, there were robotic golf-cart like taxis in the largest outpost, which was almost two kilometers long (a 30-minute walk otherwise). Restaurants had robotic cooks helpers. One ordered food from a website accessible at one's table. The cook put the food on a robotic cart that rolled to your table and you had to unload the food yourself. The robotic carts could make deliveries, too.

-- RobS

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-02 22:20:36

I suspect people would get used to the gravity in a month or two and wouldn't bump into things. You would adjust so that your speed doing things is appropriate, just as you do in the winter on snowy and slippery sidewalks (which are probably equivalent to a lower-g environment than Mars, in terms of friction and horizontal movement).
Your scenario above makes Mars into a gigantic US-style suburb. But there is no reason to separate developments by long stretches of desert;

How about the fact that not everyone will want to live in one spot
The way I envision your Mars would be something like this, One big desolate planet with a lot of remote control robots teleoperated by satellites and one great big city of ten million people, all packed into a sphere 2.5 miles in diameter nesteled in a crater. Most people live in multilevel cubicals without windows under artificial lighting. The hallways are always filled with people who take the express elevator to work passing other crowds of people returning home from the last shift. Most people never seen the outside except via monitor screens that control most of the robots that roam most of the planet. People jostle each other push and shove to get into each elevator or tramway. Some people hit the ceiling when they jump up too high because the ceilings are low to afford maximum space usage, and people travel millions of miles to live in this? Never to set foot on Mars, and only to jostle around in seeimingly endless crowded corridors that are no better than what they left on Earth?

Commodore · 2006-11-02 23:01:57

For all we know, the human body can adapt to progessively higher gravities particularly with a 3-4 month trip to adapt in. That should cover us for the forseeable future.

citizen_142002 · 2006-11-19 14:36:43

As I understand it, a human being born on Mars will grow taller than a human being born on Earth. At approximately 1/3 the gravity, I have a feeling human beings will develop differently than they would on Earth. Obviously I'm not saying that a five foot person on Earth would be 15 feet on Mars, but they would develop differently.

Someone on Earth also needs to be more heavily muscled than a Mars dweller. Since a person on Mars will need only to cope with their relative mass on Mars, they will grow proportionately weaker, which is good. A person on Mars probably won't be as strong as an Earth dweller, unless they intentionally condition themselves that way. I mean they will still have the genetic potential to be as strong as a Terrestrial person, but likely the human body will pair itself down to meet the lessened demands.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-11-22 01:34:45

On the otherhand their are insects on Earth that can carry multiple times their own weight, being small simulates the effects of lesser gravity, but insects typically are stronger than they need to be just to carry themselves. On Mars, you could have one human standing on the shoulders of another human who is standing on the shoulders of yet another human and the person on the bottom will feel like he is carrying just his own weight. Whatever he can carry in addition to those two extra humans would be what he could carry on Earth times three!

JoshNH4H · 2008-02-02 13:54:03

Someday people will leave Earth forever and live the rest of their lives on Mars. Unlike a change of address to some other part of the world, where life can go on as usual, after the move to Mars, colonists will be constantly reminded that their on another planet every time they get up, every time they drop something or pick something up, and every time they walk around. In a domed environment, you could theoretically make a neighborhood look just like a place on Earth as in a particular episode of the Martian Chronicals, but the one thing you can't disguise is the gravity.
Suppose one is a bit eccentric and wanted the Mars colony to look like a place on Earth, so he camouflages the dome from the inside to look like blue sky with clouds holographically projected on its inside and with natural levels of sunlight where appropriate and a hidden ceiling sprinkler system to simulate rain when clouds are projected over head. With sufficient trickery and wind generators with sound absorbing walls, you could produce a neighborhood that looks just like a community on Earth with roads, houses, and garages with cars in them, but the one thing you would always come back to is the gravity. the gravity would never seem right. People would be bouncing arouns too much and things and people would seem to fall too slowly.
Now the sun shines through someones window in the morning, the bees are buzzing and the birds are chirping in the trees, and the husband gets out of bed and stumbles around clumsily under the low gravity, he hops around and bumps his head against the ceiling cursing loudly when he does so, waking up the wife. The children are already watching cartoons in the living room. Breakfast is served in the kitchen, and the husband is busy putting on his spacesuit for the trip to work. Unfortunately his spacesuits are thick and bulky and he can fit too many in his closet, so he wears the same one he wore yesterday this morning. Just before he seals his helmet on, he asks his wife to go pick up his other suit at the cleaners today. So he climbs into his car and grabs onto the steering wheel with his thick gloved hands and the garage opens and he pulls the car out. The car hits a speed bumb as it heads towards the domes outer airlock, and it goes flying into the air. The car thuds back onto the asphalt some distance away, he drives into the airlock and the inner door closes, the chamber depressurizes and the outer door opens revealing a pink sky and a barren ruddy landscape with a lonely road leading out toward the horizon. There is another car out ahead, and another car follows his out through the community airlock. There is a line of traffic pulling out of the community for it is rush hour. the man drives his car and the road splits in several directions and other domed communities are seen in the distance, he passes a number of road signs, one showing the speed limit, some billboards with advertisements, and finally the dome of the big city where he works. A line of cars drive into a long tunnel that goes underneath the big dome, and then stop. the light turns red on top and the outer door of the municiple airlock closes. A line of cars waits for a time outside, and then the door opens to reveal an empty tunnel, and the cars waiting outside drive in and then stop when the tunnel is full. The man drives through the inner door of the airlock when it opens and out onto the city street which is filled with cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, and horse drawn carriages. Cops watch carefully from their little tiny vehicles to make sure no one parks in the wrong spot. there are bus stations, fire hydrants all all sorts of reserved spaces where parking is not allowed, and their are parking meters that are only in effect certain times during the day, and at other times, parking is not allowed to make way fro garbage pickups and the like. The man drives into a parking garage and pays twenty martian dollars to the parking attendent to park his car. He opens the door and bumps his head on the doorframe as he attempts to trise out of the car. Two people skip and hop down the corridors of the office building colliding with one another and knocking each other silly.

How utterly horrible...

I wouldn't go to mars at all if it was like that.

Terraformer · 2008-02-02 16:40:14

Just like nearly everyone. The point of going to Mars is to get away from things like that. Not repeat them.

KaoticMoon · 2008-04-06 19:05:27

firstly Mars has 1/3 gravity of earth, not 1/10 like the moon. that would be considered more doable amount of gravity. If someone wanted to be as heavy as on earth perhaps one would wear a suit that make him three times heavier therby keeping up earth like strength.

JoshNH4H · 2008-04-06 19:40:21

exactly .37 g's, or almost 2/5. The moon is 1/6, but yes, it won't be a big problem.

hannah · 2012-01-14 11:45:27

Kalfbus wrote:

Your scenario above makes Mars into a gigantic US-style suburb

....in the 1960s.... lol ! Obviously everyone has to have two gasoline cars in the garage. But wait!! There is no country to invade in order to get oil from. And everyone got too expensive houses that they couldn't pay off... So they stuff themselves with food and becomes the fattest planet in the milky way... The budding martian civilisation fails

I didn't think there was any info about gravity in that post, a bit disappointing.
I am curious about what it might be like to move around in Martian gravity.

JoshNH4H · 2012-01-14 23:35:25

hannah-

Firstoff, welcome to Newmars!

Secondly, I imagine that it would be a whole lot easier to do a whole bunch of things. Up until I went to college, I was a gymnast; While it was common to see things like double backs and (somewhat more rarely) double fronts, beyond that was quite uncommon; I only ever competed in a meet where anyone did a triple back twice, and more than that is the stuff of legend. In Mars' significantly reduced gravity, I would imagine that it would be a lot easier for people to become gymnasts, though I imagine that the lower gravity might affect the way gymnastics is performed in some respects, because it would be more difficult to build up kinetic energy.

On the other hand, imagine the vaults; this (known as a handspring double front, e.g. a handspring followed by two flips) can be done under Earth gravity; what could be done on Mars? If gymnastics takes off there, given the reduced gravity I would be surprised if people weren't trying quintuples or sextuples within a few years. These have never even been attempted on Earth. Likewise, (speaking of men's gymnastics because I know it best) some pretty fantastic release moves and dismounts would probably be done on high bar and P-bars (I believe "the Book" put out by FIG calls them the Horizontal Bar and Parallel Bars). Some amazing strength moves would be done on rings; in fact the event could probably be reinvented with all sorts of crazy low-g tricks. Floor and vault would be completely revolutionized, and the slower pace of the pommel horse would enable some truly fantastic spindles to be added to nearly every move, as well as making it easier and somewhat more leisurely; possibly enabling flips and such. It would also make it easier, which would be a good thing seeing as pommels is commonly agreed to be the hardest event.

I would imagine that other sports would be similarly revolutionized.

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