Which require water and air in huge quantities, and ore, none of which you have on Mars.
> That's all part of the R&D work for off-world habitats and industrializing space.
You might as well say "magic" - it would be more plausible.
How much of what we did just the last 100 years was accurately anticipated and how much of it is down right magical?
In hind sight, how complicated an idea was it really to heat water, get it to expand and do work? I think execution was hard but the idea was kinda obvious.
Most stuff we build is made of stone/rocks? It seems we can dig caves, just ship the front door an we can start our usual hoarding :)
How much more of what we did failed but nobody died (somebody died, but not always) because those failure happened in a hospitable environment for life?
We didn't just "magically" progress, we failed 99% of the times to evolve the process until it succeeded.
Now imagine launching 100 projects on Mars, most of which could lead to an explosion, and predict that 99 of them will fail (and probably explode)
Would you still believe "everything's gonna be fine"?
The Martian is just a good SCI-FI movie.
> In hind sight, how complicated an idea was it really to heat water, get it to expand and do work?
steam engine was well known 2,300 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
It took > 2,000 years to perfect it.
And we have free water and oxygen on Earth but no water nor oxygen on Mars.
Well I'm just picking holes now, but in the Martian atmosphere is 95% CO2 - nothing will explode
> Would you still believe "everything's gonna be fine"?
Nobody said "everything's gonna be fine". The argument for sending people to Mars, at great peril, is that sitting _at home_ on Earth, and saying "everything's gonna be fine" is a bad idea.
This is so much our thing (perhaps culturally) that we build our entire civilization to endlessly progress or implode.
I wouldn't mind living in a cave, scavenging and hunting for food but that is not what we are doing atm, I didn't choose this formula nor do I have to like it but if this is what we are doing lets do it.
Some of us questioning the sanity of the project is also important. We might chose to do something else one day. Until that day we might as well be good at what we do.
The idea isn't that you'll <<just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors>>. But yes, the idea is to "3D print" furnaces to smelt metal (basic furnaces are prehistory-era tech) using heat provided from the solar, wind and/or nuclear power you arrived with. Then use that to mine more ore to smelt more metal to "3D print" more... and so on, and so on, adapting production processes to local environment piece by piece, until you eventually reach basic self-sustainability, and yes, eventually you may be able to build a clean room using entirely local resources and processes.
(Of course, there's the matter of whether people living on other planets will want to go for full self-sufficiency, and then if Earth even allows it. There's a potential for trade here, but the flip side of that is political power. E.g. as long as a Mars colony depends on Earth for complex organics or high-tech industry products, they're effectively under control / at the mercy of Earth.)
> Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion.
It didn't until recently, though. I imagine that between those older techniques from early-to-mid XX century, and modern advances in organic chemistry, you'd be able to eliminate some of the hydrocarbons used and synthesize others, without a need to dig dead plants/dinosaurs out of the ground.
> You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it.
That's all part of the R&D work for off-world habitats and industrializing space.