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photon · 03-31-2009, 06:08 PM

Mars has no magnetic field to speak of so there's no real protection from hard radiation, you'd have to dig underground or cover your habitat with regolith, just like an asteroid.

You can grow food on an asteroid, and if you pick the right ones you'll have more natural resources to work with than Mars too. Some asteroids are rich in hydrocarbons and you can process those into fertilizer and such.

I don't see what you can do on Mars that you couldn't do on an asteroid.. about the only real benefit is gravity, which I guess you can't understate since most of our engineering needs gravity.

Plus we can't land on Mars, the atmosphere is too thin to provide enough aerobraking or parachutes, but thick enough to foil a lunar style land on your rocket stack type landing.

03-31-2009, 06:08 PM	#16
photon The new goggles also do nothing. Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Calgary Exp:	Mars has no magnetic field to speak of so there's no real protection from hard radiation, you'd have to dig underground or cover your habitat with regolith, just like an asteroid. You can grow food on an asteroid, and if you pick the right ones you'll have more natural resources to work with than Mars too. Some asteroids are rich in hydrocarbons and you can process those into fertilizer and such. I don't see what you can do on Mars that you couldn't do on an asteroid.. about the only real benefit is gravity, which I guess you can't understate since most of our engineering needs gravity. Plus we can't land on Mars, the atmosphere is too thin to provide enough aerobraking or parachutes, but thick enough to foil a lunar style land on your rocket stack type landing. __________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.