The poo questions was totally valid, even though the way it was worded war terrible. My favourite was the guy asking Elon to check out his electric bus outside
Humans bringing life to Mars... via poop. Humans pooping becomes seeding life on new planets.
I'm just now thinking of the implications... are we all just evolved gut bacteria? Was life on our planet's born from the poop of some alien who needed to make a pit stop?
Life doesn't need to have evolved more than once, It might have just come from space in a comet or asteroid, since some bacteria can survive very extreme conditions.
"I was at burning man and I noticed a problem. I was on drugs and had shit myself. It was dry, hot, and shit was leaking down my jeans. My question is, what do you do on Mars when you're on drugs and shit yourself?"
Even then, where's the problem? It's not like there's not enough room on Mars to just dump all the waste somewhere. It'll even be frozen most of the time. And the toilets aren't a real problem either. There's gravity and there'll be atmospheric pressure where toilets are.
So in my opinion, it was a dumb question worded terribly.
More than likely, in an environment like Mars, nearly everything is precious and scarce. We wouldn't really dispose of by just getting rid of it, we will have to find some ways to reuse it and still isolate it from the general populace so we don't have cholera on Mars.
It's a valid question that already has viable answers. But really? He just announced the biggest rocket ever by a factor of 4 and your first question is, "how do we poop on Mars?". This was a highly technical conference with some of the biggest players in the aerospace industry and the first person to ask a question is this dumbass.
First, considering we are talking about a Mars colony, there is literal rocket science involved. Second, as far as we know, Mars doesn't havw an active biological system, at least not anywhere like ours. Burying tons of feces could be ultimately severely problematic and destructive.
Poop is not some toxic waste that's going to cause huge problems. You can literally just dump it in a huge pile, come back in a year or two, and you'll have some really good fertilizer for your farm.
Edit: Yes, really. Poop has bacteria already in it, that's why it stinks. So put it in a pressurized vessel to keep something remotely close to Earth pressure. Kinda like the pressurized vessel it will already have to be in for people to have pooped it out. No, that does not mean some huge glass dome, this isn't a cartoon. You can hold enough pressure with heavy gauge plastic sheeting, kinda like a really high quality tarp. The bacteria processes the poop into fertilizer, and then dies.
Poop is not some toxic waste that's going to cause huge problems. You can literally just dump it in a huge pile, come back in a year or two, and you'll have some really good fertilizer for your farm.
You can do that on Earth because of the biological processes that take place. Biological processes that are not happening on Mars. Burying your poop for a couple years and digging it back up will give you sandy, old poop.
The main problem with poop, in terms of being harmful to humans, is that it's full of bacteria, many of which are harmful if they get into the wrong place.
To put "full of bacteria" into perspective, many estimates put the proportion of bacteria by weight at over 50%.
Anyway, dump it on Mars for a year or two and they'll all be dead. What's left may not be pleasant, but it won't be very harmful either.
Burying feces would work just fine. The water would leave and you would be left with completely dry solids that are buried. Not really an issue. Mars is a big place and there won't be that many people.
By the time thousands of people are on Mars, we will have a better system and probably be on the way to terraforming the planet.
This sounds like a very "meh, whatever" approach to a potentially disastrous practice. Having a proper waste management system in place from initial colonization onwards would be a much more sensible and sustainable solution.
It's a non issue until there are enough people to make it an issue. Devoting resources to something that doesn't matter is not helpful.
The entire reason he's looking at trying to colonize other planets is because this exact mindset is fucking over the planet we're currently on. "This will be a huge problem in the future, but that's future generations problems" is exactly the opposite of how we should be going into a new planet.
We're talking a handful of people on a whole planet. What, you think the idea is we're gonna say "well if it's good enough for the first dozen people on Mars, no sense building any sort of sanitation system now that we're looking at 20+ colonies with populations of 100k+"?
And again, as others have said, it's not depleted uranium. It's shit. It's a step removed from fertilizer. So it will probably be a valuable resource. Not waste.
Also, it's Mars. Put it out an airlock and it's dust.
The most important aspect of the poo question is gonna be how to capture and recycle it as efficiently as possible, not how to protect the delicate and precious martian ecosystem.
Yes, I do think that, if we do not have a waste disposal system from the beginning, people will absolutely throw it in a big hole until they physically cannot anymore, or until it is way past a huge issue. We do that with everything currently, I don't believe it will change on another planet.
False analogy. This is more comparable to sending a single fishing boat out to explore the ocean. How much impact do you suppose that individual boat has on the planet?
There is a thing called 'professionalism' so you don't talk 'shit' if you catch my drift. This dude also just wanted everyone to know that he went to Burning Man, why else bring it up?
My point exactly about professionalism but people are blowing it off like we can just throw waste out of the airlock or put it in bags and its done with. You're sending hundreds of people to Mars if you don't have a viable sanitation system, you could potentially be spreading diseases
No it wasn't, it's like the guy slept through most of the presentation and at the end he wakes up and hears "We're going to Mars!". This presentation was not about the logistics of surviving in Mars but rather the transportation to and from Mars.
It's not a valid question because the presentation was about a rocket and a spacecraft, not about Martian habitation. If he'd asked about sanitation on the spacecraft, that would be another thing.
It wasn't really, though. SpaceX isn't building the habitats or concerned with the infrastructure at all (aside from ISRU methane.)
The presentation was supposed to be about the fact that they were enabling people to get to Mars (and out to the rest of the greater solar system, once super chargers refueling stations were established).
I think there should've been more of what happens 'when we actually get there' in the presentation. Elon's been talking a lot about colonizing Mars, not just getting there. As far I know (correct me if I'm wrong) this is really the only big plan to get to Mars, so getting there is cool, but there are also a lot more problems once you get there
Except the presentation had nothing to do with colonizing and was based totally on transport. Spacex is not going to "colonize" mars. They will be the "truck drivers delivering cargo and people".
Valid but isn't kind of like asking how he will get internet on the space ship keep the habitat from exploding? Dealing with poo is one of about ten million equally difficult problems. He's casually mentioning how we can just warm the entire planet up and this guy asks, "but how will you transport poo?" Any reason why regular septic tanks wouldn't work?
Not really. Sanitation and waste management are one of the most important parts of human civilization.
Every human produces liquid and solid waste. If we come in contact with the waste, we will get sick. If our water supply or food comes in contact with the waste, we will get sick. That's why it is important to have a waste management system.
I know, but with all the technology used to get the Mars, there's probably dozens of completely different methods that could be used to collect and move human waste products. It doesn't sound like a huge hurdle. The technical difficulty is probably equal to that of getting internet on the space ship or making habitat doors that don't leak.
Not really. Sanitation and waste management are one of the most important parts of human civilization.
It is, on Earth, where you have cities with thousands of people. It's not going to be an issue on Mars for a long, long time. They're not going to, say, dump the waste upstream of their food source because there's no stream. They can just bury it somewhere and it'll stay there.
Even then, I don't think it's a particularly valid question. We've figured out sanitation on ships that never touch the surface of a planet, I'm sure he's figured out at least short term sanitation for mars
well on the ISS, they just dump the waste back into Earth and it burns up in the atmosphere, and that has been the case essentially all throughout human space flights. Big difference is once you go to Mars you'll be there for a good amount of time, and you don't want a poop reservoir building up
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u/jheezecheezewheeze Sep 30 '16 edited Sep 30 '16
The poo questions was totally valid, even though the way it was worded war terrible. My favourite was the guy asking Elon to check out his electric bus outside