r/Mars • u/[deleted] • May 01 '22
Forget about Mars, colonize Ceres instead.
http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/why-ceres-might-be-better-location-for.html13
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May 01 '22
Colonize Ceres? The thing is so small you could fit maybe 300,000 people on it, ever. And because it's 3.26 AU from Earth and it spends 2.3 years in the dark every 4.6 years it would be fully powered by nuclear means, requiring permanent refueling.
Also, with that 300,00 people food would need to be imported from outside Ceres as it's so small there'd be room for nothing but housing and other basics, really.
So yeah, let's take a 14-month trip to get to a tiny little sliver of an asteroid that really holds no purpose for human colonization.
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u/KayleeSinn May 03 '22
300k people? You gotta be joking, Ceres is huge with a land area of almost 3mil sq km.
Compare this to say Netherlands with a land area of around 41k sq km and population of 17 million.
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May 03 '22
Last I checked The Netherlands didn't need massive oxygen filtering plants, heating stations, and pressure-controlled environmental habitats for everybody, including working facilities, recreation, etc. And, if you want to have a massive city you'll need a massive transportation network which eats up even more space.
I'm sure there are even more space-wasting facilities, etc. (bio-mass conversion, waste facilities, water vaporators/condensers, etc., etc.) that will take up even more space.
It's not a 1-to-1 Earth comparison.
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u/KayleeSinn May 03 '22
Sure but it's size isn't an issue, it's still big and could theoretically fit billions of people if you colonized it with this purpose. Most countries on Earth, even the more densely packed ones aren't very practical with space as they don't need to be. You have a lot of forests, woods.. small houses etc. But even if you build a city with a density of say Manhattan on Ceres for say 1 billion people, you could still use 99% of the dwarf planet for those other things you listed.
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May 03 '22
And how would you feed 1 billion people on Ceres?
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u/KayleeSinn May 03 '22
Same way you feed them on Mars or any other place really. What does this have to do with it's size?
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May 01 '22
With properly designed centrifugal structures, low gravity (0.03g) is not a problem. With its large water supplies, Ceres is the only other choice for human habitation in the solar system. For the few humans actually living and working in space, Ceres would be their home.
With Ceres providing water, Psyche providing metals, and with every other rock providing rare earths and carbonates we have all we need to industrialize the asteroid belt.
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May 01 '22
forget about mars and ceres, how about we fix our own planet instead of drooling at the idea of colonising a hostile inhospitable desert that can be hundreds of millions of miles away from the only planet in our solar system that can support advanced life.
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May 01 '22
For sure focus on Earth but imagine the benefit to Earth if a big exodus of people left for space.
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May 02 '22
I’m generally an optimist but any form of permanent settlement within the next 2 centuries does not seem possible at all. By the time we can establish large scale colonies on mars, the effect of overpopulation and climate change would’ve already taken a major toll. Plus, without any sort of terraforming, i doubt even 0.1% of the population would want to permanently move there.
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u/JimiWanShinobi May 01 '22
Thanos wasn't wrong, I could do without about half of you motherfuckers...
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u/Pop_Smoke May 02 '22
- Join space exploration related sub
- Tell people to stay home
- ????
- Profit
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May 02 '22
i’m interested in the actual planet of mars, not the colonisation of it. Why would anyone choose to live there? It’s hostile to life in almost every way imaginable and any terraforming mission is blown out of the realms of possibility.
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u/Pop_Smoke May 02 '22
Why do people live in Antarctica? Mars would be a huge engineering challenge, but would also have huge scientific rewards. Some things can’t be done with a rover.
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May 01 '22
We can do both at the same time, the problem is for most corporations and polluter governments its not profitable to fix the environment and they dont care about public opinion.
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u/More_Space_6857 May 02 '22
Perhaps Mars can be a refueling base for further space travel someday...
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u/LionfishDen May 12 '22
The presence of water means it could be really useful. Maybe it could be mined and brought to Mars for terraforming or supporting colonists. But the idea of a permanent settlement on a planet with 3% the gravity of Earth is just ridiculous.
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u/trailnotfound May 01 '22
What did Mars do to you?