Human settlement of Mars in 2023
mars-one.comI hesitantly vote this up, not because I'm buying it, but because I love the topic, and would love to see HN talk about the concept of colonizing Mars. My understanding is that the biggest problem with terraforming it is the lack of magnetif field and the low gravity, yeah?
To be honest, I'd find it more interesting if it were a single, large, transparent container landed on Marsian soil, and then the inside was made (through means of repeatable large scale activity, not just pumping in air,) it was made into a green house. Then put a live web feed up.
A single room showing the potential of life on Mars is, to me, far more inspiring than people living in pods and having to use space suits to walk around.
I wonder if future generations of humans from the colony would become taller and heavier because of the lower gravitation.
The people in the space station have the odd problem of being a couple of centimeters taller and outgrowing their chairs when they go home after a few months. Described by Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers here:
http://blogs.esa.int/andre-kuipers/2012/05/15/ik-pas-nog-in-...