Because of the War in Gaza, there have been a few discussions in different social media groups about the possibility of sending war refugees to Mars once it is up and running. After all, Mars will need them, and if Musk is correct on price, a ticket there would be less than the ongoing cost of maintaining a refugee in many countries. So why not send them?
Let’s start with many refugees are families and you can’t send kids.
It will take at least a decade and likey much longer of raising animals such as dogs, goats, and pigs there before we understand how to do it safely and get the right bone and muscle development in a growing animal for a healthy life.
As for the adults, the objection that they do not have the education for it is nonsense, in my opinion. They are just as educated as any general population of any urban center. Mars, just like earth cities, will have jobs for any normal city level education. The demand for employees would be high enough that almost any person can get a job that stays healthy.
And there is the real problem. To say healthy on Mars, it is going to require a dedication to working out seldom seen outside of professional sport. At a guess, 80 % of the general population won’t stick to it to the level needed and develop health problems in one Martian year and be sent home. For refugees that are only there because they were kicked out of their home, that will be near 100%. They get sent right back to earth, and not only are they still refugees, but they also now have health problems that those that sent them have to pay for.
No. Mars isn’t going to become the new homeland for any group of refugee.
Part of my ongoing fiction, Donald of Mars deals with most of the population, only lasting one tour on Mars and trying to keep people motivated to do the workouts. It is available on Kindle Vella and Ream
Man in a space suit standing on the red planet Mars. Spaceman conquer a new planet. Concept of the space
This ongoing story, and many of my other works are now available on Ream and have more content I am constantly adding. https://reamstories.com/jamesrsteinhaus.
With the Story Donald of Mars, I have used fiction to try to give people a more realistic idea of what living on Mars would be like. I hope you will read that and my other works there.
What things will people on Mars do for money? The short answer is anything that they can make a profit doing. The economic activities that people will take part in on Mars will vary as much, if not more so, than any city of comparable size on earth. If people can buy supplies, make a product, and then sell it for more than it costs to produce, people will. Eateries, as found in much of Asia, are likely to be common. You had better design the halls wide enough to set up in. People are going to set up in them whether you design for it or not.
It won’t be just people selling food that will set up. People selling goods they have made will also be setting up to sell. Even people offering services part time will set up in those halls. It won’t take long before the busiest halls look like the market of old, or what is still found in much of Asia, Africa and South America. There are things you can do to mitigate it and keep it from impeding traffic, but only if you design for it instead of trying to outlaw it. They will set up where they can make the most sale, not where you want them, unless it has good advantages. That is how human nature works, so you need to design for it, not rely on rules to override it.
Setting up something like “market malls” off to the side somewhere would most likely fail. Modern malls require enormous infrastructure, and are costly to run, requiring enormous mark up by the retailers. Nor is the western flea market a possibility. There are no low-cost low maintenance locations on mars. Nor is there a field or unused warehouses that can be used as free or low-cost places to put them. They are only going to set up places that are cheap as their markup is tiny, or it doesn’t sell. It must be a place where the people they want to sell to are.
The colony may be able to keep venders out of the smaller halls, but only by not harassing them for setting up in the larger, well-traveled ones. Ignoring that problem, as most designers do, is like ignoring the need to travel. This type of vending is as old as cities and will continue there. Some say they can do it online. That will take place. But those who are desperate for more money, and that will be most, will do better selling both online and in the halls. They will not forego that extra money.
That is at least what I think. Thanks for reading. I have a fiction I have started dealing with many of the problems a colonist might face setting up on Mars called Donald of Mars on Kindle Vella and Patron, for those outside the United States.
Once again, the idea that space is going to be Vegetarian, is making the rounds of social media. There is close to no chance of that happening. If people can live there, they can make a profit raising meat there, and will. Only violence against those that want to do it can prevent it. That level of violence is costly, has little chance of succeeding and would most likely see the project ended. Meat will be available to anyone willing to pay the extra price, just like everywhere else man lives. Only what that price is and which meats will be available is in question.
All of the following assumes that these can reproduce on Mars, something not yet verified. If they can’t then there are sufficient biological problems with living in that environment that it will never be colonized, but that would be a different topic.
Fish
A wide variety of fish is likely to be the most common and least expensive meats there. Aquaponics is likely to be responsible for a large part of crop growth. It would not surprise me that the very first mission there will bring some fish and set up a small system testing that for viability. The ecological balance these systems require, contains the needed bio-reduction organisms needed for waste processing. Just having thriving aquaponics systems in the same macro system that is a habitat, will increase the efficiency of waste processing and might in fact be part of it.
It has drawbacks. You must turn somewhere between twenty and sixty percent of all plant raised into fish feed. This, plus time spent, plus capital startup cost, sets the market value that fish can be sold for. That puts fish in the neighborhood of three times the price for common vegetables as initial minimal selling price. This is somewhat higher than earth. Supply and demand is likely to push it higher. Higher prices means, it is profitable to invest there. People will continue investing in it until sufficient have invested in aquaponics to bring it down to this minimum. Fish will become readily available, though cost more than on earth.
Chicken
The chicken presents more problems. The first one is they have no tolerance of free fall due to needing gravity to eat. Transporting them as far as Mars or the moon will require centrifuge cages and more work on the crews transporting them, than fish. They require more work and space on Mars. But investors are likely to pay that cost by the second or third colony trip. The market forces for egg, meat, and feathers make it an excellent investment. The system for processing chicken waste for the plants instead of fish waste is only slightly more complicated, so operation cost will only increase slightly. Egg production, if left to the market, will rise until they retail somewhere between two and three times what common vegetables do and wholesale for twice vegetable prices, making them the cheapest and most common form of animal protein on Mars. Feathers can be reduced to fiber. It is unlikely that enough can be produced to make any significant dent in Mars’ need of fibers for manufacturing. That means the bottom rate for feathers will be equal to that of vegetable fibers.
That leaves the meat. In my opinion, cost and market demand mean people keep investing in raising more chickens until the price falls to around ten percent higher than fish.
Guinea Pig and Rabbit.
Guinea and Rabbit are likely to be in production as soon or sooner than chickens despite being less efficient and less popular to eat than chicken. People have raised these as meat profitably in cages for centuries and still do. With fewer meat options on the market on Mars, the profitability will be higher. Nor will meat be the sole product. Fur, teeth, and bone all have vital manufacturing uses so certain manufacturers will be eager to buy any a Mars’ colonist has for sale.
It is just my opinion but, the production of these will never be enough to bring market price much below twice what fish sell for, despite the ease at cage raising them.
Goats
Not as early as the other meat mentioned so far, but still within the first ten to twenty years of setting up, people will invest in having goats. The market of real dairy, even if it is goat instead of cow milk, will make investing in it well worthwhile. They will invest money in it just as man has invested in bringing dairy, in one form or another, everywhere he has gone.
Wool will also be a major driver. It will be centuries before the need for local fiber production is being met. Wool fibers are among the highest quality, cost effective, organic fibers available and will command a price of three times plant fibers.
These two make goats profitable, not so much the meat. But if raising them for these there, some will be on the market. At a guess, goat will go for four times what fish goes for, but that is only guessing.
Pigs
Pigs will probably arrive on Mars at the same time as goats. They are far easier to raise indoors than goats. Their growth rates are on power with chicken production as far as cost goes. This makes them a wise investment. Early on pork prices will be four times that for fish, but investors will continue to invest in pork production until the market drops that price to roughly twice what fish sell for.
What is available is determined by the market. Unless violence is used, the market always determines what people invest in and make available. Many people oppose meat production as a waste of resources. But in most cases, that means less investment in colonizing Mars and far less resources available overall, not more resources for other things. The more that people invest in meat production, the greater the amount of infrastructure investment occurs. The more infrastructure investment, the larger and more prosperous the Mars colony becomes. Without meat production it is entirely possible that there will not be sufficient infrastructure investment for a Mars colony.
All of this means that it is very unlikely a successful Mars colony will be vegetarian.
If you are interested, I have a fiction story Donald of Mars, I started dealing with the problems of getting started on Mars available on Kindle Vella or Patreon.
Despite how the movies and others popularize cities inside domed colonies on Mars, those are unlikely to be constructed. More likely it will be buildings buried under ten meters and more sand. There will be cases where having a ten or twenty-story building sticking up out of the sand makes sense, but those will be few. The overwhelming majority will be buried under more than 10 tons of sand per square meter. This is a safety and engineering matter, not a personal preference matter. Not only does this provide superior radiation protection, but provides the counter pressure on the walls to balance the internal pressure.
Pressurized tunnels buried just as deep will connect them. This creates a short sleeve environment, allowing people to move with ease and safety from building to building without cumbersome pressure-suits. A barrel vault tunnel of close to 20 meters wide and 15 high is one possible design. Such tunnels allow the use of small electric vehicles to transport freight, personnel, and produce, from building to building.
These large interconnected tunnels will be the main thoroughfares where most businesses are located. Companies that build these tunnels can recoup the costs of construction and make a profit selling the right to build next to them and attached to them.
Much smaller 3-meter wide side tunnels, restricted to foot traffic, personal mobility devices, and delivery robots will be built attached to these. Most private homes will be here, as these tunnels are cheaper to construct and maintain. The developers of many of these will likely zone them as residential only. This would be a selling point. These tunnels make it easy to create “gated communities” with electronic doors that only allow the residents of a tunnel, in that tunnel, as additional selling points.
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These developers-construction firms, and who they manage to sell buildings to, and the type of building being bought are going to be the ones shaping how a Mars colony looks. The construction companies and the people having buildings built will come from every country on Earth. This will result in a more organic design and growth rather than a centralized planned colony.
Many things will need to be worked out between the companies offering building and their customers. How interconnected will the tunnels be? What guarantee can be made to keep substandard tunnels and buildings from being attached and endangering others? Who takes care of maintenance and keeping the tunnel clean? Who pays for the lighting and air circulation?
Different tunnels offered by different companies are likely to have different answers to how they solve many such questions. Nor will every tunnel be connected to every other. You will end up with separate groupings of tunnels that operate with different standards. Travel between such groupings will require travel on the surface in either a pressure-suit or pressurized vehicle.
Such tunnel complexes will be similar to the township in many cases. Some may even have ruling town councils setting rules for them. Others will have such taken care of via contract with the developer. Still, others may try other forms. In some ways, living there is going to be like having a home in a small town with its own building codes and rules of conduct.
One code that will likely be nearly universal is all buildings must be able to recycle their own air, water, and sewage. This will affect, building design, tunnel design, general layout, and other rules. This will result in the Martian colonist being more mindful of how much waste they are creating than your Earth resident.
The big dome where the government or company provides air, food, water, and housing for tens of thousands is not likely to happen on Mars. A dozen, then hundreds, then thousands of tunnels growing according to need an investment level where each provides for its own life support is more probable. Centralization is likely to be confined to the energy production and distribution and even there it is likely to be nodal with overlap.
Most people will live and work in the same “township” only leaving it on rare occasions. Each will reflect the culture and ideology of those that build or fund them. No large monolithic culture will be there, but a highly diverse group of different cultures.
There are scores upon scores of things to still be worked out. This is just the starting point. The Dome concept is dependent on the government forcing people to invest, the tunnel is dependent on enticing them into buying buildings. Tunnels offer a far wider range of opportunities for people also. It is this ability to offer different options to different investment groups in a cost-effective manner than puts it at the top of most likely to be done.
Algae tanks are often considered for use when designing the air recycling of Lunar bases, Mars colonies, and rotating space stations. Such are most common in highly centralized air and food production system designs. Such are unforgiving of mistakes, easily contaminated and create additional failure points. Decentralizing such systems isn’t an option either; bubbling algae tanks in every room are too fragile. They require precise PH, temperature, nutrient, and mineral control. Contamination can quickly wreck them. Even unfiltered air can upset them. An alternative to having an algae tank bubbling in every room is to have well-planted aquariums in each room of the living sections.
What small efficiency is lost in the decentralization of big bubbling vats of algae into a room by room of planted aquariums is more than made up in durability and robustness of the system. The aquatic plants available come close to being as effective as algae while at the same time being evolved to tolerate a far wider range of conditions and be better suited to surviving contamination. A properly set up large planted aquarium can process all the CO2 a couple of people produce. If one becomes less efficient it has little effect on the others.
Unlike Algae tanks, such a setup is also effective at air filtration. Aquariums make these rooms fresher, and more alive creating a far healthier environment for the people living there. Both must be harvested almost daily. Algae produces algae proteins, sugars, and enzymes. The plant, insects and small fish harvested from aquariums produce those and a wide range of other proteins, sugars, enzymes, and fats that the enclosed biosphere needs.
Then there is the psychological benefit of having numerous aquariums. Many studies have demonstrated how having aquariums in rooms increase mental stability. The effect can be seen in rural environments and is far more pronounced in urban homes and offices. Away from Earth, with no easy access to outside, this helpful stabilizing effect should not be left out.
Artistic planted aquarium
Algae only works in centralized systems, and is problematic there. Centralized systems may work for ships where mass and volume constraints are ultra-critical concerns. On colonies, bases, and stations decentralized room by room systems are better for many different reasons. It is more robust. So robust in fact that it is close to impossible to damage a significant amount of it at once. Another important factor is; if each apartment, office, hall, business, and home is taking care of its own air recycling, then no company or government gets to say you must pay us if you want to continue to have fresh air.
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Any of these reasons are sufficient to favor decentralized planted aquariums optimized for O2 production, over large central algae vats. Done correctly this system will require supplement CO2 from other sources than just the people breathing in those rooms to maintain peek performance unless you routinely overcrowd them or have too few.
Aquariums everywhere many be the way the future Lunar base, Mars colony looks.
There are no petrochemicals on Mars. There will never be a petrochemical industry there. Modern civilization is dependent on the existence of the petrochemical industry. You would be hard-pressed to find homes or businesses not dependent of it to function now. A substitute must be found to have any chance of having a viable colony instead of just an outpost on Mars. No single product can replace all petrochemical products, but soya bean, and the oil that is harvested from it, comes the closest.
Before the petrochemical industry came about, vegetable oils, plant extracts and animal products supplied many of the things supplied by petrochemicals today. Soya oil can do many of those, including making a large variety of industrial lubrications, fluids and oils. Much of the heavy equipment that will be taken to Mars requires such. And while it will be supplied with it to start with, you either supply it for maintenance and repair locally, or you use up valuable capital that could have gone into expanding the colony on maintenance supplies from Earth. You can also make a large array of plastics from soya oil.
All of these are not only must have, but must have in quantity. Then there is soap, wax and all the other things people have made from vegetable oils for centuries. The need could be into the tens of kilograms of soya, per person per month to supply the thousand different things required by the colonists every month. To be a colony instead an limited outpost, Mars will need to grow a lot of soya.
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Will they?
In my opinion, yes.
The investment opportunity for growing soya there is higher than many other possible investments, and it is a safer investment than most. The demand for soya based products is going to be high. As long as anyone is there, they either buy your products, or pay more and bring them from Earth. That guarantees a steady, long-term, return on any large investment in growing it. Large, kilometer-long underground tunnels, filled with aquaponics soya production, are quite likely to be the most common non-residence building being invested in. Selling soya oil, soya meal, and fish to keep the colony running will pay back the investment for building those tunnels and putting in the needed hardware to do so making it the safest mars investment going.
Fish feeds made with mealSmall scale aquaponics setup
One reason for aquaponics is fermented soya meal can be a mainstay of many species of fish’s diet. These farms will produce all the soya meal needed to feed the fish that fertilize the soya and more. While some soya meal can be sold to make things for human consumption, a more likely market will be as fish and animal feeds. Other aquaponics set ups optimized for things other than soya will need to buy that feed from others.
With feeds available in quantity, chickens and rabbit production are highly likely early on, with goat an pig not far behind. The demand for soya oil, and soya meal will stay high enough that it will along time before that market is saturated. Yet even when and if the soya market becomes saturated the tunnels and set up can be converted to other crops making the investment in such production tunnels and equipment one of the safest long term investment possible on Mars. Soya is big business on earth, and will be even bigger business on Mars and one of the dominant investors there.
Indoor Egg and chicken production
The only close competitor to Soya production to meet this demand is algae tanks. In my opinion, soya oil and meal is superior in most ways to algae oil and meal; the soya plants and fish more tolerant of mistakes and conditions. More commercial investors will be interested in soya production over algae production by a substantial margin. Both however will attract some investors and supply critically needed products.
Agro-business is going to be the largest employer on Mars, and the place that is safest to invest for decades to come once large rockets start going there. Soya business is likely to be the largest block of that and a factor in making all the other agro-businesses more viable. If you want to invest in, or work on Mars, indoor Soya production might be the way to go.
The smallest of these countries has dozens of people in it who possess sufficient money and have an interest in owning buildings on Mars, and the largest countries have tens of thousands of such people. That is, if these buildings are cheap enough, and are safe. A basic law of economics is, the lower the price of them the larger the percentage of people will decide to buy such.
How inexpensively safe buildings can be built will be one of the main determining factors on how many are built, and how much money is invested in building a Mars colony. Who, and how much money determines many factors on how it is done.
It isn’t just NASA, ESA, Russia, and China looking at how to build there, though each of them has large publicity organizations making sure everyone is well aware of their efforts. Every single country also has companies looking into the possibility of being one of the ones doing construction there the moment reliable transportation is available. Without government support, these companies must look for the most cost-effective approach, not the showiest. In the long run, this will give them the better chance at having designed in the price range those people will be willing to pay for.
The designs being researched are wide and varied. Many will prove to be unacceptable for one reason or another. Lack of safety, durability, and cost to maintain will rule most designs under consideration out. Even so this still leaves many possible designs and many different approaches to construction available.
One thing that most will have in common is that they are either built underground or buried under three to ten meters of sand, dirt, and rock afterwards. This is an engineering and safety constraint. Many are designing inflatables. These have some very strong advantages. As the internal pressure is how they hold their shape, they can be used in as little as three meters deep. They will be one of the quickest to stet up. Simply set them out, attach the airlock, fill with air, then bury.
Artist concept of Moon version of buried inflatable
They have their drawbacks. The Kevlar and similar fabrics are expensive and need to be several centimeters thick. Nor is modification possible after construction. The Internal pressure is lost if it is damaged, and if internal pressure is lost, it will collapse. Even modification during construction is problematic. Then there is the thirty years life on the material and the fact that some activities shorten this. But when getting set up fast is of the top most importance, the inflatable is hard to beat. Dozens of companies in dozens of countries are looking at the possibility of selling these.
Another possibility is sectional walls. In a limited respect, these are similar to those used by the militaries of many countries. These are thicker, with a greater durability. They are unpacked, bolted together, most likely using remotes, then the building gets buried under ten meters of rock and sand. Plumbing and electric is installed, a sealer applied and then it gets pressurized. It is necessary to bury them this deep so the mass of sand pushing down equals the pressure of air trying to blow them apart.
While slower to do than an inflatable, these are cheaper, more versatile and can be modified to an extensive degree after the fact. They are also more easily damaged but simpler to repair. With proper maintenance, they can last decades. Like the inflatable, every piece of them must be fabricated on earth then assembled on Mars.
Another option is to build the walls of them from bricks made on Mars. This requires shipping in equipment not required for the inflatable, or the metal walls, versions. The same excavation loader used to bury the other two can also be used to gather sand and regolith for brick making. Other equipment such as rock grinders, sifting machines, hydraulic brick presses, bricklaying robots, and more are also needed. Like the steel walls, they require burying under ten meters and the addition of the plumbing, electric then sealing.
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One big advantage is the material for the walls themselves doesn’t have to be shipped from Earth. This allows for building much larger buildings, and a variety of different types for the same amount of money. This also allows for building tunnels to act as roads connecting them all cheap enough that it is far more doable than connecting inflatable or prefabricated metal walls.
Another one a few are considering is 3D printing the walls. This popular idea with NASA and ESA allows for more versatility than even the bricks. It has several problems. Aside from it requiring even more rock grinder sifting machines and such, there is as yet no slurry that can be made from the mars local ingredients that will work in those conditions. Nor have other equipment issues been solved. Many may need to be solved there not here.
Which companies and which construction methods are going to offer the most cost-effective buildings is still very much up in the air. If they can get the prices on roomy safe buildings low enough they will get orders by the thousands.
But are safe buildings even possible? The term could mean much more on Mars than Earth. Just being airtight and protected from radiation may not be enough to call them safe. They are going to need to be able to recycle their own air and waste. The waste, water, and air management system in each building is going to be far in advance of what current long-term bomb-shelters use here on Earth.
In many respects, a chain of bomb shelters, connected by tunnels, with plants in planters everywhere, may be a good description of what it will be like living there. The prices may be comparable to high-quality bomb shelters too with the low end being a few million dollars each. How many companies will be able to build them there, and how fast? Hundreds per year? In all likelihood, they could sell that many in the United States alone at a few million each.
Artist concept 3d printed Mars building
The higher the price the fewer people that can buy them and even fewer of those that will. There are absolute minimum standards that have to be achieved. No matter what, achieving them is going to be costly. Finding the cheapest way will make, or break, a company. Yet even so you are going to end up with a hundred different companies from a hundred different countries. Every one of the methods will be offered. Which companies and method dominate is going to be settle by what products are being offered at what prices. Mars is as unlikely to have only one method and only a couple of types of building as an earth city.
On a previous post, Why Bricks for a Mars Colony, I talked about a few reasons bricks make sense. On social media may people came back with the comment that it requires too much water to make bricks.
Not all brick-making requires water. The above video is an ad for a hydraulic brick press. It operates by adding enough tons pressure to turn loose materials in hard, solid bricks without water. There are hundreds of versions of the machine by hundreds of companies worldwide. Some very simple, and others far more complex and automated.
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Test done on earth with the same ingredients the lenders have found on Mars show such Bricks to have a hardness roughly equal to steel-reinforced concrete. This is because of the high iron oxide content in most of the regolith. Such bricks would have a very high durability.
Nor is water necessary for mortar. The above is stacked bricks without mortar. The technique is called Dry Stone construction. There are buildings and walls thousands of years old built with this technique.
Conserving water will be important on a Mars Colony. Brick construction, unlike the three-D printing technology being considered, can be done without water.
In almost all the space social media groups, when you start talking about how to do certain things on Mars or the Moon, someone says that the robots will do it. While telepresence remotes and robots will be in use to a degree greater than seen on Earth, they are going to be in short supply for at least the next century. There is so many things that need doing that there will not be enough robots to do them all.
There will be over a hundred different jobs that need doing for each and every robot sent up. Most have to have at least some degree of specialization to function efficiently, one design for laying bricks outside might be able to wash the dog but I wouldn’t count on it. Furthermore, for each robot working on one task is going to mean some other task is not getting done. People will need to decide which type of robots to invest in and which jobs they will have them doing. This will leave thousands of things undone that need doing.
This means that people will be doing them or they won’t get done. Many won’t get done, and most jobs will pay poorly compared to the cost of living there. Without the thousands-of-years-old massive infrastructure of Earth, productivity is going to be poor. It is going to cost nearly as much to make a bar of soap there as to ship one from Earth. Making them with the massive infrastructure, both mechanical and biological takes a lot of time and effort. A simple bar of soap could cost you between one and ten hours of labor. There are thousands of products that are the same way. You won’t have robots taking care of all this. Most people investing in robots will be doing it where the payoff is more guaranteed, construction.
Not only will the robots not do everything but the eighty-hour workweek will be more common than the forty-hour workweek. There is no avoiding that the cost of living is going to be extreme. Even if some of the more optimistic forecasts by people such as Elon Musk come true, the cost of living there is still going to be far higher than anywhere on Earth for a century. This means doing without a lot of things and working long hours to get others. Just because robots will be more common there than on Earth doesn’t mean people there can kick back and relax. Most of those are going to be colony builders and the ones keeping everyone alive. The idea that it will be a handful of people being catered to by an army of robots is as far from the truth as it gets.
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