How well could this work?<p>On the plus side (for plants), the Martian atmosphere is about 95% CO2. Even though the total pressure of the atmosphere is much less than our own, the partial pressure of CO2 is still about 20 times higher (erring a bit on the generous side).<p>On the other hand, Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the sun, so the intensity of sunlight is less than half, and temperatures are correspondingly colder. Then again, if we're going to support human colonists, we probably need a nuclear power source anyway. So let's assume we rig up bright lighting to grow our plants.<p>There's some uncertainty about the soil, but at least some studies suggest that it could support life. There's probably frozen water there, so we'll use the spare heat from our nuclear reactor to melt some.<p>Humans need approximately 30g of Oxygen per hour, which is roughly 1 mole. A fast-photosynthesising plant can produce 30 umol/m2/s. Running the numbers, you'd need 9 square metres of leaf area photosynthesising at that rate per person - assuming it could carry on 24 hours a day. To supply food, you'd need rather more, because not all of the carbon fixed goes into edible parts.<p>This is actually a lot more feasible than I initially thought. You'd probably want to send robots ahead to construct the base and plant the plants, though. And you still have the problem of life support for the journey, which would be several months.
It's odd that any mention of Elon Musk colonizing Mars results in rapturous worship.<p>Other efforts, China in particular, seem to attract scorn. Especially in light of the fact that Elon Musk's original plan was to send a greenhouse with plants to Mars.<p>Perhaps I over-estimate the HN crowd.
> <i>"If we establish a party branch in space, it would also be the 'highest' of its kind in the world," Xinhua quoted Yang as saying.</i><p>Really, I love Chinese humor. It's underrated.
If China manages to do this, then we will have people on Mars in under 2 years.<p>Competition from china is the only thing I can see spurring the USA into action.
I hate to knee-jerk this one, but my first reaction to this is that it's probably propaganda. In the States a few years ago, there was an effort to create a self-contained ecosystem and it failed no matter how hard the engineers behind it tried. That China can suddenly say "Yo guys, we got it to work" out of the blue is suspicious at best.<p>Not to say they haven't got something half-functional. I'm just very skeptical that it's as great as they say it is.
Since soil samples on mars seem to be strongly oxidizing, even containing perchlorate, the vegetables are likely to catch fire upon touching martian soil.
I'm all for this, the current policy of "don't contaminate Mars with organic materials" brings us nowhere, let's put some life on there and see what happens!
It's a worthwhile goal but the preparing is a poor choice of words because it sounds like it's happening next week. You prepare yourself for work in the morning. You prepare for going to the supermarket. You prepare to take a dump by making sure toilet paper is present. You prepare for a trip. You research growing plants on Mars for many years and eventually stage operations on the Moon. Finally, when the day comes, you prepare for the first mission to Mars.
But this cannot be of much use, even if they can make an atmosphere somehow, they would need an active core for magnetic field to protect from solar particles/radiation.
There's a lot of thinking in the comments here which is good for what it is, but which lags far behind engineers and scientists who have thought about it for years.<p>Get your hands on this book and read.<p><a href="http://amzn.com/0684835509" rel="nofollow">http://amzn.com/0684835509</a>
These are very good news indeed. I started to wonder what good Elon Musk's colonists and tourists will do on Mars upon arrival. And it appears that they shall be able to buy some grocery! Isn't that wonderful?