Mars dust is toxic. How will future astronauts deal with it?

17 pointsposted 4 hours ago
by speckx

25 Comments

metalman

3 minutes ago

the only realistic chance is to find a mega iceteroid than just happens to only need a nudge to get it to crash into mars, preferably going realy real fast and into one of the poles, that then releaes enough water and heat to react most of the nasty stuff and increase the atmospheric pressure. ion engine space tugs, huge ones, and for that matter, crash anything that is possible into the poles. Pro tip, aim for the fourth planet out, #4, red one, you dont want this happening to the planet you are standing on.

triceratops

2 hours ago

Reading idlewords' blog (specifically https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht...) has convinced me that human exploration of Mars is infeasible without drastic advances in space propulsion. If the journey takes over a month it's not happening.

m4rtink

an hour ago

Why is a flight longer than a month problem ? It will be much longer, more like half a year one way.

On the other hand, uninterrupted (orbital) spaceflight record now stands at 437 days, so we know humans can do it.

chuckadams

4 minutes ago

437 days in LEO that is, where they're still protected from like 90% of cosmic rays. Hauling enough shielding is going to take a lot of energy, and inadequate shielding is worse than none.

triceratops

an hour ago

The blogpost I linked makes a good case for why it's a problem.

A Mars mission with current technology will require supporting humans for 600-1000 days with no resupply or rescue possible. The current record is well short of that and they also had regular resupplies.

The communications round trip delay makes a big difference. Ground crews are able to handle a lot of routine system monitoring and maintenance for orbital and lunar spacecraft, freeing up astronauts' time and mental energy for critical tasks. A Mars mission takes away most of this useful help from the ground.

You might say "AI will do it" and this may be true 10 years from now. But software is notoriously hard to get perfect and on this mission there are no second chances.

mallory854

2 hours ago

Since the gravity is so different on Mars, I assume eventually born-Martians will evolve differently from earthlings. They'll be taller and thinner and require less oxygen. One day, when earthlings and Martians mate, there's going to be a new species. How cool is that?

ramses0

an hour ago

"The Expanse" (or: "Leviathan Wakes" by James S. A. Corey).

They talk about "living at the bottom of the well" within our solar system (gravity well, that is). Mars effectively "divorces" from Earth (no kings / 1776, plus they need to be 100% self-sufficient), casually called "Dusters" presumably due to the Martian dust.

People working on the asteroid-based bases (in our "Asteroid Belt") are called "Belters".

Then also read: "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein, where humanity colonizes "Luna" and have "Loonies" for relatively obvious reasons.

Both books delve a bit into the physiological changes but also the socio-political ramifications of humanity in space, and both are _excellent_ reads!

ncr100

an hour ago

"Eventually" might be several million years though, and a lot of death in between.

In evolutionary theory is there a term for plateaus of differentiation?

saulpw

19 minutes ago

Do you mean "punctuated equilibrium"?

altern8

2 hours ago

Why would anyone want to move to Mars?

It's like moving to a desert.

redeeman

an hour ago

yeah, we certainly have no examples of people moving to deserts on this planet, and even considering it a very attractive place to live :)

lapcat

31 minutes ago

Alternatively, Martians could go extinct, the fate of countless Earth species under much less harsh conditions.

bee_rider

4 hours ago

It sounds not as bad as Moon dust. Realistically the Mars is about as habitable as the Moon, not habitable. So it’ll be a one-off problem.

mrkeen

4 hours ago

Build MarsX and hope they can one day get over to Earth

amberjack

an hour ago

I do wish Elon would focus more on getting to Mars.

MulliMulli

an hour ago

I think it's already save enough. He should take the risk to be the first person.

ActorNightly

44 minutes ago

There is basically zero chance of that happening.

Not that this is impossible to do, but under Elons leadership it will never happen. Intelligence is non separable, you can't be smart in one area and be idiotic in another - if you are good at logical thinking, truth seeking, and problem solving this applies to everything you do in life.

And its pretty evident with Starship it has been a collosal failure so far. They have just barely gotten it to the same functionality as the Falcon, with engines that are equivalent of putting a turbo+nitrous system on a base spec Toyota Corolla. They still have to figure out not only staying in orbit without issues to refuel, but also multiple restart attempts.

With finances, it has been shown that Falcon launches are heavily subsidized, which is why they are cheap, and in reality, there is a lot of money spent fixing the vehicles for next launhch. Space X has no experience in multiple launches of the same vehicle without work. On Mars, you are not going to have a full factory with full engineering staff to basically fix up the Starship for next takeoff.

All of this is compounded by the talent pool of people still willing to work for Elon, with ever sinking stock price. There is enough inertia there to keep the Falcon program going, but the mindset of everyone involved in Starship is by far not conducive to make Mars happen.

mallory854

2 hours ago

Fascinating. I first heard of this terraform idea a few years ago. Question - how do we get the ice to melt enough to have something similar to oceans?

m4rtink

an hour ago

IIRC solar mirrors in orbit & artificial green house gases are often mentioned.

user

4 hours ago

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user

4 hours ago

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ButlerianJihad

3 hours ago

The question in my mind in 2026 is how astronauts will walk on two legs.

Look at astronauts who exited the Gemini capsules or even the Space Shuttle orbiter, and see how they could, more or less, walk around and deal with Earth gravity.

Now, compare the ISS expedition astronauts. They are carefully extracted by a team of strong people. They are immediately placed on medical gurneys for transport. Nobody from ISS stands upright or walks unassisted. They will suffer vertigo, no matter what.

Furthermore, NASA restricts their activities for months afterwards. No jogging. They will be re-learning how to shower and brush their teeth! Any task that was different in microgravity will challenge them anew.

Now a Mars journey is 6 months, one way. There will be no spinning the capsule and no constant 1G acceleration with actual technology. So without science fiction, in the real world, astronauts would face a debilitating environment of zero-G that would reduce them to toddler status at their destination.

That, not dust, is the chief reason why Mars will continue as the domain of robots and automatons. I, for one, welcome them!

vitiral

3 hours ago

Well, Mars has 1/3 of earth gravity so that helps.

So for spinning the capsule, you only need say 1/5 earth gravity to be reasonably capable of walking on Mars.

Does that help?

m4rtink

an hour ago

You can't really spin a small spacecraft to get rotation gravity - the rotation period would make it unworkable.

However, you can connect two parts of your space craft with long cables and then spin the resulting contraption around its now center of rotation & the rotation period will be manageable.

This concept has been nicely demonstrated & quite well popularized by the recent Project Hail Mary movie.

triceratops

an hour ago

> This concept has been nicely demonstrated

In a real spacecraft? With humans?