- cross-posted to:
- science_memes@mander.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- science_memes@mander.xyz
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Fun tidbit, 10yr old me misunderstood the expelled gasses learned in science class and felt I was doing my part by making sure I farted by a tree and not letting it go to waste.
seriously though, any serious attempt to live on mars would obviously use electrolysis of water to produce oxygen on mars, because to do so you only need electricity and water.
you need about 1 kg of water and 1 kWh of electricity per person per day.
source: my own math
you can calculate this if you consider that people need about 8 MJ of energy a day, and bread has around 15 MJ of energy per kg, so people need around 0.5 kg of bread a day, that’s approx. 0.5 kg of carbon atoms. since each carbon atom combines with 2 oxygen atoms, that makes twice as many oxygen atoms as carbon atoms. assuming they are the same mass (which they almost are), that’s about 1 kg of oxygen a day. 1 kg of water contains about 1 kg of oxygen atoms.
about how much energy you need: you can calculate this with Standard enthalpy of formation of water. (given in the sidebar here)
I’m just too lazy to do this rn, so you’re gonna have to believe me.
and about how to get electricity, see my post here
and about how to get water, see my post here and this article.
and then you could produce O2, which you’re gonna breathe in, and you’re gonna exhale CO2, which you then need to remove from the atmosphere, which you can do with a CO2 scrubber
There’s an interesting video of a guy that put together enough bioreactors making enough oxygen from him to breath from. It was WAY more than I certainly expected.
I’m currently reading this article: Biosphere 2
It discusses how a green-house (air-tightly enclosed) produced almost enough oxygen for 8 people (due to miscalculations, it actually was a bit less than that and they eventually had to supply additional oxygen from the outside after 16 (!) months.)
Thanks, your wiki article led me to this other good one: Spaceship Earth
You’re just gonna say that and not share a link?
Oxygen isn’t the real issue. The lack of atmosphere is a side effect of the real issue. No one will colonize Mars before Venus because the gravitational well issue is far harder to solve than pesky greenhouse gasses.
