NASA will pay $US5000 for your best ideas on what you'd need to survive on Mars

[microrobert]

NASA will pay $US5000 for your best ideas on what you'd need to survive on Mars

NASA’s mission to put humans on Mars now includes crowdsourcing ideas about how they could survive the 500-day resupply schedule while living on the Red Planet.

Today, the agency announced it would award three $US5000 prizes, asking members of the public to:

“…write down their ideas, in detail, for developing the elements of space pioneering necessary to establish a continuous human presence on the Red Planet.

This could include shelter, food, water, breathable air, communication, exercise, social interactions and medicine, but participants are encouraged to consider innovative and creative elements beyond these examples.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/na...on-mars-2015-5

[Anima Libera]

A mountain dew fountain to combat thirst.

Like a water fountain, but tighter.

[Petalpusher]

At an average of -60° it's not exactly thirst that you should be worried about

The key is being able to grow food, plants for oxygen and particles heavy shielded shelter/suits, now making it practical all in one in details is another story.

[Petalpusher]

If i had to imagine a complete solution, it would be domes with pressurized water all around to provide radiation shielding without feeling like rats, and other advantages to grow stuff.

[LightHouse89]

Thy better come up with it fast. white people need some refugee from the brownization of earth.

[StormBringer]

Slim Whitman's singles, lots of it.

[Rædwald]

There would have to be some fail-safe, being resupplied every 500 days. What if something happens to the supplies in transit? Sending food to mars isn't like ordering a pizza. Or at least a large overlap of supplies.

[Petalpusher]

There would have to be some fail-safe, being resupplied every 500 days. What if something happens to the supplies in transit? Sending food to mars isn't like ordering a pizza. Or at least a large overlap of supplies.

It would have to be almost entirely autonomous in the first decades. It all comes down to energy production in the end, to quickly get into some sort of "Mars iron age", there should be enough material on Mars actually, the planet had a meteorite bombardement like Earth. As for the source of energy alone, solar is out of question since Mars gets much less sunlight than Earth, you gonna experience a lot of sandstorms as well and very unpredictable (so windturbines are also dismissed), some for very long periods of time (weeks). No source of power for a month kinda get you screwed if you only rely on that. Geothermal, is hard to imagine efficiently. As usual the only really sustainable source is radioactive decay but we would have to import the material from Earth first.

[Rædwald]

It would have to be almost entirely autonomous in the first decades. It all comes down to energy production in the end, to quickly get into some sort of "Mars iron age", there should be enough material on Mars actually, the planet had a meteorite bombardement like Earth. As for the source of energy alone, solar is out of question since Mars gets much less sunlight than Earth, you gonna experience a lot of sandstorms as well and very unpredictable (so windturbines are also dismissed), some for very long periods of time (weeks). No source of power for a month kinda get you screwed if you only rely on that. Geothermal, is hard to imagine efficiently. As usual the only really sustainable source is radioactive decay but we would have to import the material from Earth first.

If a technology could be developed to harness Ambient Electromagnetic Radiation and convert it into energy, but so far no such system exists.

[Petalpusher]

If a technology could be developed to harness Ambient Electromagnetic Radiation and convert it into energy, but so far no such system exists.

It's interesting to look into this for small instruments though you are only sucking up energy that has already been produced by a greater source one way or another, if not by trying to soak some of the residual inner radiation of the planet and frictions caused by sandstorms. Small settlements should remain very simple in their structures and power distribution i suppose. There is probably several secondary ways to get power or improve efficiency in such an hostile environement, but we can't rely just on that in the first phases.