New Mars Forums

Calliban,

If you are expecting an honest intellectual interaction with leftists who use personal bias filtering logic and faulty methods to gather and evaluate data to support their beliefs about the data, then you are going to be very disappointed with them.

Leftists don't typically apply much point-vs-counter-point reasoning to what they believe, they simply look for anything which supports their beliefs whilst ignoring all other "minor details" which frequently add up to a "major disconnect" between snippets of supporting data and totality of circumstances, which always presents the clearest picture of objective reality.

I'll provide a more concrete example from my personal life:

While we lived in a house in a gated subdivision a few miles from where we currently live, someone broke into my wife's Cadillac XT5, rummaged through the car for a short while, found nothing to steal, and then hopped back over the fence.  We have this person on video and the Police woman who showed up actually took fingerprints and DNA off my wife's XT5.  This guy did thousands of dollars worth of damage, but ultimately took nothing because we don't keep anything of value in our vehicles.

My nextdoor neighbor found out about it when she saw the Police cruiser in our driveway, and then she asked to come over to watch the video.  She was a black woman and a "proud Texas Democrat" (this is how she "self-identifies"), a first generation legal immigrant like my wife, though from our various interactions with her and her family, not a radical leftist, thankfully.  Her grandson was friends with my daughter for awhile, and they played together when his mother or grandmother brought him over, but ultimately he went to a private school while we've always had our children in public schools, so they drifted apart.  I counted her husband as a friend of mine, and he was previously in the military, as I was.  He worked on radios and some early computer equipment, just as I did, but for the US Army, during the Viet Nam War.  I don't think he actually went to Viet Nam, though.  He was stationed in Germany.  He's since died (not from COVID), but his widow still lives there.

Her first questions to me, before even watching the video with my wife, were:
Q1. Is he black?
Q2. You're a Republican.  You have guns.  Why didn't you shoot him?

A1. He did have a darker skin tone, but it ultimately turned out that he was NOT black.  He wasn't even an American.  His fingerprints weren't even in the system because he was an illegal alien.  He was later caught while trying to steal a car more than a year after that, which I only learned when the Police woman who took his prints and filed our report relayed that update to me when she saw me working in our yard over a year later.  He was tried in court and was deported, but the crime he was convicted of did NOT include his break-in of my wife's vehicle, despite the fingerprint and DNA evidence collected at the scene.  That means he committed at least 2 separate felony crimes that I know of, but the crime against us did not "count" towards the total.  Unfortunately for me, and possibly the second victim, that didn't mean I wasn't still required to pay for the damages he caused.  It would be completely absurd to think he committed zero crimes between the time he broke into my wife's vehicle and his arrest.  It would be equally absurd to think my wife's vehicle was the very first one he ever broke into.

A2. I didn't "shoot him" because this happened around 4AM in the morning while I was asleep because I had to work the next day like every other law abiding citizen, and he never tried to break into our house.  He didn't do anything to put my family in danger, so he was never worth the cost of the ammo, much less the legal fees for the subsequent court case.  You can legally shoot someone who is committing a major crime here in Texas, but you cannot avoid the (rightful and lawful, IMO) trier-of-fact scrutiny following the decision to do so.  I don't go out looking for trouble, either, because I'm not a criminal and have no desire to interact with criminals if there's any choice in the matter.  I would much prefer to have the Police do what they're tasked with doing.

What did I learn from that interaction and others with my Democrat neighbor?

She was so certain that the perpetrator belonged to a specific racial group that she ignored other possibilities.

Why did she think that?

It was her personally prejudiced beliefs, plain and simple.  In a follow-on conversation with her weeks later, she admitted this to me.  She was previously the victim of a home invasion, and the perpetrator was a black man.  She made the logical leap to "the perpetrator of this crime must also be black because someone who was black perpetrated a crime against me" vs "let's watch the video so we know who this is if we seem him again and then let the Police and courts do their job".  After the courtroom results, then we can make some semi-informed judgements about what actually happened.  Leftists, and more than a few rightists, really don't like this "wait and see" method of evaluating reality.  Even after my neighbor saw the video, she still insisted that he was black.  I was much "less sure" that her assumption was correct, because he looked a lot like various people I've seen from South American countries.  I can't remember if he was identified as being from El Salvador or Guatemala (I don't have "total recall" of all details 9 years after the fact), but I do remember that he was deported after his trial.  For all I know, he came right back due to the refusal of President Biden's administration to enforce our immigration laws.  I happen to think two major crimes are enough.  I also think both crimes should count towards the total, not simply the one he was convicted of.  I further think he would not be in America if we were enforcing our immigration laws.  I can only wonder about how many crimes he actually committed because our government decided protecting their own people was not their first and most important duty.

Democrats, and leftists especially, tend to substitute their prejudiced personal beliefs and learned biases for a "totality of circumstances" view of objective reality.  There are more than a few Republicans I've met who hold similar views for what I presume to be similar reasons, but I also find they are at least willing to consider alternative explanations that disagree with the assumptions they've made because most of them are still more interested in "what is true" vs "my beliefs were validated".  Regardless, people who do this tend to make "big picture"-deficient assumptions and worse decisions as a result.  Sometimes it works in their favor, but most of the time it leaves the person who holds such beliefs with a very contorted perception of reality.  If you ever provide a perfectly valid counter-point or pertinent bit of data that doesn't support their belief system, they don't even consider altering their beliefs accordingly, they immediately try to find some way to discredit the new information presented to them.  It's a "bias-based information rejection" vs "information assimilation" belief system.  It's quite common, but a terrible way to both evaluate new information and make major decisions.

What does all of this "add up to" as it relates to my interactions with leftists?

Whether my interaction was in-person or through back-and-forth over the internet, the majority of leftists care more about finding ways to feel morally or intellectually superior to others by having their belief system validated than they do about whether or not they're actually helping anyone but themselves.  This system of interacting with the world produces horrific results when applied to public policy.

There is nothing "uniquely bad" about muslims, relative to any other immigrant population.  That said, people who are perfectly willing to knowingly break the law to obtain something they want from someone else are most likely to repeat that pattern of behavior because doing so worked for them in the past.  Why would they deviate from the behavior that obtained what they wanted?  This sort of information may be obtained by attending Psychology 101 in college.

None of the adult muslim immigrants who enter the UK illegally are "unaware" that what they are doing is illegal, because it's also illegal in their nation of origin, as well as all other nations.  There are no nations on Earth where it is "legal" to rape, rob, or murder someone, either.  That means certain behaviors are universally adjudicated as "criminal behaviors", and therefore do not change merely because you entered into another nation.  Similarly, there are no nations on Earth where it is legal to cross national borders without permission from their respective governments.  You may be able to "get away with it" in certain places where there is little to no effective law enforcement present, but those examples are universally crimes that carry significant prison sentences, if not capital punishment as well in the case of rape and murder.

Consistent enforcement of laws that does not make allowances for any superficial physical characteristics is the only valid way to maintain a civil society.  Any other policy will result in an increasingly uncivil society that denigrates its own citizens and foreigners alike.  This should not be what we advocate for nor permit to continue by electing people who value consistency over appearances and emotions.  There cannot be special classes of people subject to special application of the law in a civil society.

Void,

So, even the average "modern" robotic woman treats men horribly?

I guess it wouldn't be a "real" female robot without exhibiting real female behavior.

If you find one that doesn't look like a beached whale and isn't more venomous than a cobra, do let us know.  I always love reading about unicorns.  My brain knows they aren't real, but my heart still loves a good story.

If her robot hitman boyfriend murders you, consider it a reprieve.  You could've spent the rest of your life with someone, or "something", which is miserable and ugly to its core.

RobertDyck,

I'm sure you think you're being funny, but your behavior indicates how the policies of people who think the way you do encourages victimization of illegals as well.  It's actually repulsive how little regard you have for the lives of the very people you think you're defending.

Most people who are victims of violent crimes are victimized by someone they know and interact with on a daily basis.  Since we're talking about illegals here, that would mean other illegals living in America.  Multiply your stats for the illegals by about a factor of 10 and that's pretty close to reality.  Most of them simply don't report crimes because they don't want to get deported.

If you're an illegal, then you cannot legally obtain a driver's license in the states that follow federal law, and you're definitely not sticking around to file police reports if you run into someone else, so that would be why they have fewer traffic violations.  The actual number should be zero because they shouldn't be able to obtain a driver's license.

Fear and Silence: 2025 Insights from Advocates for Immigrant Survivors

Precise numbers on crimes committed by undocumented immigrants against other undocumented immigrants are not officially tracked, largely because a high percentage of these crimes go unreported to law enforcement. Studies and surveys suggest that undocumented immigrants are often reluctant to report crimes due to fear of deportation, resulting in high rates of unreported victimization, particularly in domestic violence and sexual assault cases.

Based on analysis of crime surveys and reports, here is the available data regarding this issue:

Extensive Underreporting: Researchers estimate that only about 11% of crimes committed against undocumented immigrants are reported to the police.

Fear of Deportation: A 2025 survey of immigrant advocates found that 76% reported their clients feared calling the police due to potential deportation, with many choosing to drop cases.

Victimization by Known Offenders: Undocumented immigrants are more likely to be victimized by someone they know, often another undocumented person, which increases the likelihood of silence due to fear of retribution or fear of legal exposure for both parties.

Underreporting Specific Crimes: Domestic violence, sexual assault, and gang violence are consistently cited as the least reported crimes, with studies indicating that up to two-thirds of these incidents may go unreported in these communities.

Survey Findings vs. Reality: While some analyses of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) suggest that, generally, non-citizens report crimes at rates similar to native-born citizens, this is often disputed by community-level studies showing deep mistrust of law enforcement among the undocumented population.

Key Factors for Non-Reporting:
Fear of Retaliation: 42% of unreported crime victims surveyed (general population) cited fear of reprisal.

Lack of Trust: 70% of undocumented immigrants in a 2013 study reported they were less likely to contact police, even if victims of a crime.

Fear of Discovery: 30% of undocumented immigrants identified fear of deportation as the primary reason for not reporting crimes.

Does it make any sense at all that a nation as economically powerful as China can produce billions of tons of steel and concrete per year, plastics of every description, photovoltaic panels, electric power transformers, LED lights, but they still don't grow enough food to actually feed all of their people without massive food imports?

That's precisely what "globalism" has done to the people living in China- incentivized abhorrently irresponsible behavior between governments that is facially absurd, yet somehow justified to everyone on the basis of "price points".  The most obvious issue is that the entire system is completely artificial because it's simply not necessary with modern technology.  Prior to industrialization, no such absurdity was ever implemented, because it was unsustainably expensive in every sense of the word.  Ships carried luxury goods from far off lands- tea, spices, precious metals, furs, articles of clothing, etc.  This was profitable because it was something unobtainable locally and the ships carried people as well as goods.  Food was provided for a ship's complement while in transit.  Whenever you arrived at your destination, you ate and drank whatever was locally available.  We never attempted to send the bulk of an agricultural harvest from one nation on one side of the world to another nation on the other side.  Ships carried seeds so that food crops could be planted at the destination.

China imported almost 158 million metric tons of grain in 2024.  At ~75,000t worth of grain for ships that can actually transit through canals and such, 2,093 ship loads had to be sent half-way around the world.  6 grain ships need to drop their cargo off in a port somewhere in China every single day, or people begin to starve to death.  To maintain this sort of foodstuffs rate of delivery, I estimate that no fewer than 132 bulk carriers are required, each one burning at least a couple of tanker cars worth of bunker fuel per day.  There is no possible way that makes economic sense from an energy and materials inputs perspective.  It's certainly not pragmatic.

This simple example isn't even the tip of the iceberg, merely a microscopic ice crystal attached to it.  We've engaged in this sort of lunacy on a grand scale.  Everyone has voluntarily participated in this Chinese fire drill since WWII ended.  It's why our energy consumption never goes down, regardless of how efficient we become at making and distributing things.  You cannot send billions of tons of goods here, there, and everywhere without paying the unavoidable energy and transport system cost.  Before large scale greenhouses existed, perhaps that was the only realistic option for certain foodstuffs, but that time has long since past.  For metal ores and concrete, it makes no sense at all.  Nothing is actually being "saved" by conducting business this way.  The "proof" of the system's inefficiency is our ever-increasing energy consumption.  That is one real reason why we, The United States of America, now want everyone to earnestly work on reestablishing their own self-sufficiency.  It will be painful in the short term, as every major transition has been.  In the mid to long term, domestic security and prosperity associated with living wages by owning and operating the means of production will be reestablished.

When you have your own energy supplies, foodstuffs and fresh water, mines and smelters, your own factories to make the things you need, you don't need to participate in the fire drill to nearly the same degree, except by choice.  Certain nations will still need to move certain goods by ship, but there will be a lot less of that after domestic production of the essentials has been rebuilt.  It's not as if all international trade will cease to exist, either.  The bottle of Chanel No 5 you bought for your wife or girlfriend will still come from France.  The steel in your car will come from your own nation or perhaps a closely allied nation, definitely not Russia or China, and the hands that made your car will belong to your neighbors and relatives.  The food in your shopping cart will come from the next county over.

Australia has some of the largest Iron ore and coal mines in the world.  Rather than build their own smelters to make steel, there's a conga line of bunker fuel burning ships that transport the ore and coal to China, followed by another conga line of ships to take the steel for another trip around the world.  Australian Iron ore is perhaps 60% Iron, so 40% of the tonnage shipped to China is Oxygen and other impurities.  At least 50% of the energy and transport cost is tied to shipping materials that are not even saleable products of any kind.

This is a stupid shell game that trades labor costs for materials and energy costs.  Nearly all of us win stupid prizes by continuing to play the game.  It's not making all of us richer, it's making a literal handful of people richer while everyone else gets poorer in real terms.

Apart from the obvious benefits associated with not shipping things here, there, and everywhere, achieving higher recycling rates for key materials would have a monumental impact on self-sufficiency:

If we recycled all major metals at 95% or better, then we'd also have almost no requirement to mine virgin metal to sustain the American economy.  We'd still mine some metal to maintain a domestic supply, but there'd be no economic advantage to importing massive quantities of the stuff on bulk carriers when so much of what we consume can be provided by improved domestic recycling programs.  The overriding point is that the level of energy input and materials input could be drastically lower with no drop in economic activity.

Here's a real overview of President Trump's economic policy for anyone interested in insight vs ignorant leftist rhetoric:
Hillsdale College - Can We Escape the Debt Trap? | MAGA Economics | James Rickards

RobertDyck,

You want your emotions validated.  You came to the wrong place for that.  Other people are allowed to have opinions which do not reflect your own.  That doesn't make them "totally wrong" and you "totally right".

President Trump is Bill Clinton 2.0.  He's a 1990s Democrat who has adopted or co-opted "good for the goose, good for the gander" policies that are anathema to people who want special treatment.

Take the medicine and quit complaining about the taste.

Do you think I care about what RT News thinks of President Trump?

You clearly do, so tell us why that is.

Leftists don't care about children and never have, unless they can find some way to exploit them for political gain.  If there was any tangential evidence of criminality on President Trump's part, every Democrat in America would've used it against him already.  To quote one of my favorite leftist FBI Agents, "There's no there there."

Nobody on the left is ever going to do that.  That's a major part of why we President Trump was re-elected.  Every opportunity was presented to stop doubling and tripling down on pure insanity, but they refused to stop.  Once Democrats become entranced with their latest bad idea, they never let go of it until long after it's apparent to everyone else that the idea is a failure.

The only personalities involved in left wing politics at this point are activists, community organizers, and self-loathing academics who have been lost in their luxury communism beliefs for so long that they forgot what kitchen table economics is like for the other 90% of the people living in America.  The Democrats who do get elected are "give us all of your money so we can redistribute it to ourselves" shysters who never fail to make life worse for the people they don't feel they serve, because they're too busy serving themselves.

Damage correction means different things to different people.

Both President Trump and Vice President Vance were Democrats who became disillusioned with the wholesale destruction of the American economy and family that Democrats inflicted upon the people they no longer serve.

When Democrats in President Biden's administration were rolling out the red carpet for illegal alien rapists and murderers, you were completely silent on the matter.  Your credibility with anyone who is not a leftist, on matters pertaining to the law, is starting at zero.

If you expect me to hear you out, then you'd best get on with the process of posting one of your typical whiny rants about all the illegal and destructive things the Democrat Party has done to Americans in pursuit of their luxury communism dystopia.  I'm going to respond to it like any typical liberal, meaning I'm going to respond the way you do, so I'm going to call you every name I can think of, I'm going to make emotional bad faith non-arguments that don't address your arguments, utterly refuse to acknowledge facts the way you do, and then tell you how wrong you are.

Alternatively, make a good faith argument supported by data, rather than your personal beliefs about the data, and we'll go from there.

I think we've beaten the radiation problem to death.

There's a 6 month transit period where GCR exposure will be high, for the reason GW already mentioned.  The maximum exposure is on-par with the annual radiation dose experienced by residents of Ramsar, Iran, over their entire lifetime, although the doses are not precisely equivalent because GCR is more energetic, and therefore more damaging, relativistic nuclei, mostly Protons with some heavier nuclei up to the weight of Iron or so.  Once we get to the surface of Mars, regolith shielded structures provide adequate mitigation of all forms of radiation exposure.  The same is true of lunar regolith.  SPE / CME from the Sun, as GW also noted, absolutely can be a lethal event within minutes to hours of exposure.  Fortunately, SPE / CME radiation is also very easy to shield against.  Water or plastic works best for SPE / CME shielding, although any material containing Hydrogen has roughly the same molecular weight as the stream of Protons from the Sun or most GCR for that matter, thus elastic collisions between the Protons and Hydrogen-rich material can absorb all or most of the radiation dose.

SPE / CME / GCR exposure on the surface of Mars is significantly reduced because the planet itself blocks half of the potential dose.  The Martian atmosphere, thin as it is, also provides substantial protection unless the SPE / CME / GCR Proton stream is almost directly overhead, which is where most of a habitation structure's regolith shielding needs to be to absorb the dose.  If you build a structure in a natural depression or one created through excavation, then regolith is only required for overhead shielding.

In their own words, these fanatical and violent leftists view federal law enforcement agents arresting illegal alien child rapists and murderers as "literal nazi gunmen".  They call their home state of Minnesota a "battlefield".  They claim that they are "at war" with our federal government.  At least they now believe in our Second Amendment, which is "progressive" for them, I guess, except that they still don't accept the results of the last election, which was the American electorate collectively exercising their First Amendment rights.  That means they still don't believe in "our democracy".

The Mirror: Critically Reflecting the Left - To My Leftist Friends: Would You Die for a Lie? [I.C.E, the Left and Manufactured Martyrs]

Most of these goobers are delusional "larpers" (live-action role players) who seem to think only their beliefs are "morally correct".  In actual practice, they're cannon fodder for our home-grown communist revolutionary wannabes.  To be perfectly clear with my leftist Americans, I know how important "larping" is to all of you.  I know that dressing up in costumes and pretending to be someone else is an important part of your core identity.  As a personal entertainment practice, I take no issue with this.  However, if you "play dress up" as a soldier and then engage in violence against federal law enforcement agents, I can tell you as someone who has worn our nation's uniform that you will then be treated as "the enemy", because that is how you have chosen to present yourself to the rest of society.  After you publicly state that is what you are, do not whine about being treated as what you claim you are.

Since none of y'all have ever picked up a real history book to know where "your socialist movement" (your brain-bowel movements to people who have studied history or lived in communist countries), you should know that the very first groups of people that the Russian and Chinese communists imprisoned and murdered after they seized power were the artists, actors, and other assorted misfits within their societies.  That means the communists convincing you to toss yourselves into a meat grinder today will make you disappear soon after they seize power, because if you were successful in your revolution, then you're a threat to their power.

The leftist propagandists have already used mass media extensively to portray Alex Pretti, a violent street thug, as a self-sacrificing ICU nurse.  They've even used AI-manipulated videos with ICE agents who had no heads to manipulate public perception of what happened.

I stopped counting after seeing 2 dozen different styles of T-shirts making references to Alex Pretti and Renee Good.  My personal favorites were "Be Good - Be Pretti" by Tee Public, and "I am Good and Pretti" from a store on Etsy.  All the iconography seems to be saying, "be someone who assaults law enforcement officers".  The unspoken part is that you're also choosing to be someone who gets shot in the streets after larping as a communist revolutionary foot soldier who has no clue or care that they're being manipulated like "meat puppets" by their leftist politicians- essentially, cannon fodder for their communist cause.

NPR - Bruce Springsteen releases anti-ICE protest song 'Streets of Minneapolis'

LarryLongTroubadour - Ballad of Alex Pretti by Larry Long

Not One More - A Song for Alex Pretti | The Midnight Republic

The leftist mass media, leftist political office holders, and the rank and file leftists have all used the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti as justification for further violence, but that justification process began long before either of those two cretins met their ends.  The moment the massive fraud scheme was revealed to the public, it was necessary for Minnesota Democrats to avert attention away from their criminal enterprise by using violence against federal law enforcement.

clark,

Here's a video showing the behavior of your perfect little angel towards ICE a few days before he was shot:
Associated Press - New video shows Alex Pretti in scuffle with federal officers days before his death

These two goobers were caught using Signal Chat to provide real time locations of ICE agents to street thugs like Alex Pretti:

Goober #1:

Goober #2:

SpaceNut,

The figures I quoted for the life support equipment were provided on the basis of 4 permanent crew members.  If there's something they neglected to include, then I don't know about it and would need to reassess, but my assumption is that what NASA choose to make public is "totality of testing results".  Broadly speaking, each new life support system they field is a clear generational improvement upon what it replaces or augments.  The CAMRAS and IWP systems tested aboard ISS were, in point of fact, sized to support 4 crew members per system, quite possibly because they were ultimately developed to be used aboard Orion, which was designed to support extended duration lunar missions with 4 crew members, and it even said that in the documentation provided by NASA.

Do they have some excess capacity built into them?

Yes, by deliberate design, but the performance margins are meager.  However, they were intended to provide long duration life support to 4 physically active crew members.  If there are 2 children and 1 woman per physically "more active" man, then performance margins are adequate.  Women and children typically consume less oxygen and drinking water than a full grown man because their body mass is less than that of a full grown man.  We would not expect them to perform dangerous and arduous EVA construction type activities as a general rule, either.

Starship V1 304L Major Component Masses
3 Bulkheads: 9939kg
19 full rings: 30799kg
1.42m tall bottom ring (77.64%): 1258.5kg
LOX Header tank: 632.6kg
Fairing: 8974kg
51,603kg - Starship V1 primary structure 304L stainless steel to work with

Starship V3 will provide modestly more metal than that, but we'll consider the excess "kerf"- lost to the fabrication processes.

37,050m of 30mm OD / 2mm wall thickness 304L tubing per Starship primary structure.
10 Starships provide 370,500m of tubing to work with.

Let's set the interior volume at 250,000m^3.  I'm not going to worry about the individual housing idea for now.  That was someone else's idea, so they can figure out the material and other requirements if they're truly interested in pursuing it.

The third figure / image in this Math Stack Exchange is the vessel shape I had in mind:
Why the principal curvature lines intersect in the sphere?

If you click on each image, you can see them in your browser's address bar, and the image file name I'm referring to is "rEMGS.gif".

For a "double toroid" 250,000m^3 interior volume structure, we shall approximate the structure as a pair of inflatable tori with an inner radius of 50m and an outer radius of 70.50385m, which provides an interior volume of 125,000.430m^3 and surface area of 24,385.748m^2 per torus.  This is being done purely to determine, roughly speaking, how closely-space the external 304L tubular support structure can be.

Suppose we will use two layers of 300g/m^2 Vectran fabric, which we will fill with finely pulverized regolith- sort of like an enormous Hesco barrier, and the external stainless tubing will support the mass of this toroidal Hesco-type structure.  We'll use the basalt tiles later after we figure out how to make those and where to source the material from.  For now, this structure will be regolith scooped off the surface of the planet and poured into silicone-impregnated Vectran bags, and supported externally by stainless steel tubing to absorb the tensile loads from internal pressurization.  The 304L tubing will be threaded through loops sewn into the exterior of the bags.  This is a steel and regolith bag reinforced "pup tent" structure, for all intents and purposes.

48,771.496m^2 * 0.3kg/m^2 = 14,631kg of Vectran

We could bring 100,000kg of Vectran, if so required.  The bottom line is that if all we need to do to obtain building materials is to scoop it off the ground, and possibly grind it up or remove the large rocks, we can manage to do that.

Martian regolith is 1,500-2,000kg/m^3.

Chris Stelter's article over at Selenian boondocks points out something that should be obvious about radiation protection on Mars, but isn't.  The incident angle at which any SPE / CME / GCR radiation particles are received matters quite a lot, as it relates to how much shielding the atmosphere provides.  Most of the required regolith protection is only spread across a 70 degree overhead arc for your habitat module, because the Martian atmosphere, thin as it is, dramatically reduces the required shielding thickness of the walls.  The total dose per year is still substantial, in the range of 8 to 33 REM, and needs to be reduced to 5 REM per year.

If the habitat was located at the bottom of the Hellas Basin, then substantial additional shielding would be provided by both the walls of the crater and thicker atmosphere due to depth below MSL.  Unfortunately, safe touchdown there is dubious at best.  The radiation protection advantage is unlikely to offset the considerable danger to colonists associated with merely trying to land in terrain so rugged, plus the potential difficulties with site prep due to terrain features and the potential requirement to dig to considerable depth to reach the buried ice deposits there.  It's tempting, but landing to the south of the rim of Korolev crater is likely to be much more conducive to a safe arrival, and there's an enormous ice deposit both in and surrounding that crater.

I agree with your AI that to make this colony truly productive, rather than a survival bunker, lots of additional power and equipment will be required.  I'd like to keep the initial design work focused on building a habitat module for 1,000 colonists.  Keeping 1,000 people alive and healthy on another planet is a monumental achievement unto itself.

tahanson43206,

I think we could do something like that.  We may or may not need extra materials.  I don't know yet.  So long as we don't attempt to create something for which there are gross material requirements far in excess of what we could reasonably bring with us or source locally, we can modify or amend this idea as-required.  I'm not fixated on any particular idea or plan.  As long as we don't try to take this concept and transform it into something unworkable, then it can go wherever the group thinks works best.  If that means some sort of central structure with separate personal living spaces for the colonists, that's fine with me.

tahanson43206,

Is the meeting up and running?  I'm in the waiting room.

There's no new manufacturing I'm aware of, but one single redevelopment project for the Sea Coast Landing is half a billion dollars, so it's not as if nobody is investing new money into New Hampshire in 2025.  Apparently part of that project or some other "Seacoast" project will include new industrial spaces, at 100 New Hampshire Avenue in Portsmouth, which I presume will be used for local industrial projects.  The businesses coming back or expanding in New Hampshire appear to be mostly retail and family oriented stuff, but a new job is still a job.

How difficult, relatively speaking, is it to move large quantities of people and materials in and out of New Hampshire?

How big is the workforce there?