Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2014

an area of 50 m 2 . The new estimates indi- cate that that area should be no less than 200 m 2 and that if the cultivations (le- gumes, lettuces, cereals, potatoes, etc.) will be as planned −and that’s something ex- tremely worrying− inside the living accom- modations, they will produce a quantity of oxygen above the safety threshold, beyond which the internal atmosphere breathed by the settlers can become toxic and flamma- ble. If this aspect of the mission is not re- viewed, the inhabitants of the Martian out- post could lose their life within a couple of months. In not being possible to contin- ually supply nitrogen to balance the ox- ygen surplus (except having large stocks expensively shipped from Earth), it will be necessary to devise a solution to remove it from the environment. On our planet there are already devices that fulfil this task, but also in this case they are totally unsuitable to operate on Mars. The only alternative is to reconsider the spatial arrangement of the crops by allocating them an exclusive space, but this would in- crease the costs of the set- tlement in an unsustain- able way. Might as well send all the food supplies directly from Earth; in the short term it would be far less costly, then we will see... At this point it is natural to ask what is the sense of installing a colony on Mars, spending quite a few tens of billions of dol- lars, when then its inhabi- tants must nearly entirely depend on the supplies of any kind that will come from mother Earth. n The location of food crops loca- tion proved however unfor- tunate, because the amount of oxygen released by the plants will surely en- danger the settlers’ lives. [Bryan Versteeg/ Mars One]