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Comment by fosk | Hacker News Reader

I would assume that a colony on Mars will have to rely on materials found on Mars for construction in order to be viable. Therefore after the few initial buildings built with materials shipped from Earth, there will need to be a great push to find new materials on Mars and perhaps new construction techniques to grow the colony.

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> Therefore after the few initial buildings built with materials shipped from Earth, there will need to be a great push to find new materials on Mars and perhaps new construction techniques to grow the colony.

I suspect that the development will occur before the initial buildings. The political/social/economic risk environment just doesn't include the option of sending mavericks up to see if they can figure out something that works.

The rovers we have now and the rovers we are building/will build are pretty good at identifying what we have to work with, and it's comparatively easy to test a material process or construction technique on Earth before trying it while wearing a spacesuit.

At the very least, I expect we'll have a viable base of initial buildings and a fuel/oxidizer depot set up before the first astronauts arrive.

I would like to see more prototyping of techniques that could be used on Mars to create materials. It seems there is a lot of handwaving but not much real-world engineering. Before we haven't run a long-term trial for surviving in some desert on earth it would be irresponsible to fly to Mars.

There is some prototyping, but not nearly enough IMO, and it doesn't hit the news that much.

I agree about desert trials (or better yet, somewhere dry and cold near the pole). I'm not sure why this isn't done - whether it's just a money issue, or there's less benefit to be had from such test than we think?

" whether it's just a money issue, or there's less benefit to be had from such test than we think? "

I think NASA will do them but their dates for such a mission are decades away. Others who want to do this earlier are probably just not serious. With current tech this would be a suicide mission. Any little problem will kill the settlers.

On Earth, you can always airlift people at the earliest sign of trouble, so I don't think the risk is that big. And even semi-serious attempts could give wealth of data useful for actual mission.

Should have phrased this more precise: I meant on Mars every little problem will kill you. On Earth you can rescue people, no problem.

Right. Just that the part you quoted in the original reply was about Earth. Mars mission, that's almost a given. I wonder why we aren't already having larger-scale trials on deserts or near the poles.

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