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Old 18-December-2007, 02:12 AM
Mike_c130 Mike_c130 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Noclevername View Post
The level of effort needed to build a geodesic dome is not great. An inflated dome is even simpler. And any manned structure in space will require maintainance. I don't see it as nearly the challenge of deveolping a sustainable enclosed ecosystem for such colonies. And certainly far, far, FAR less of an engineering and ecological challenge than terraforming a planet!
As I understand it, many terrestrial plants can probably be grown at Mars surface pressures (or rather close to them), so an inflatable dome could be done "relatively" simply with essentially just enough pressure to hold the dome up, making fairly large scale agriculture more attractive (though tending would probably be done robotically).

Mike
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