Would colonising Antarctica be a good test for colonising Mars?

Question

I've seen a lot of documentaries, articles, papers, etc which show people living in the desert or other deserted places to simulate living on Mars. However, it seems to me that a better way to really test the feasibility, isolation, and environmental hostility would be to try to create some sort of permanent, self-sustaining colony on the continent of Antarctica.

Of course, there are already permanent facilities there, but as far as I know they are all dependent on the outside world for everything. I'm wondering if it would be a good test run for equipment, people, policies, food production, etc as a sort of alpha test for colonising Mars.

Similar problems exist in both environments, but aside from the fact people can breathe outside and radio signals are essentially instantaneous, is there anything else really different? If it's not a better test run than a desert in North America or Australia, why not? Are there any similar ideas to approaching colonising Mars with test runs like this?

Answer 1

There are a number of problems with this idea. The top two I can see are:

• The Antarctic is an incredibly difficult place to work and live. While that might sound like an excellent test for Mars colonisation, most groups really do not want their test subjects to die because we couldn't get to them in an emergency. Deserts are actually much more forgiving in this respect.
• The Antarctic is protected under international treaty. The amount of impact man has already had there is considered by many to be too much - so to get agreement from all the relevant parties would be very difficult.

That said, there is extensive data from the various bases in the Antarctic on isolation and hostility, as well as scientific tests so this certainly feeds in to the planning for Mars.

Answer 2

When I think of (non-political) challenges when settling the Antarctic, two things come to my mind:

• Long winter nights
• Snow

Any self-sustained facility will probably be solar powered¹. The long winter nights make this much harder than it would be on Mars.

You probably want to go outside from time to time. Snow fall and blizzards create problems very different from the ones sand storms would cause on Mars.

You don't need to go far away to test self sustained facilities, you can just put it in your backyard and employ a no-cheating rule. The only exception is if you want to test for specific environmental conditions, but I think deserts are a better approximation of Mars than the Antarctic in that regard.

¹) although I wouldn't be surprised if some people out there think about searching for oil on Mars

Answer 3

I think such tests are pretty useless. However, the Mars Society successfully use them as public relations events to promote space travel.

Since gravity, temperature swings, dust, atmosphere, radiation, ground materials doesn't match at all between Mars or any place on Earth, the only potential thing to test is social psychology. But even there I see partly huge differences, partly stuff which has already been demonstrated many times.

You arrive at Mars after 6-9 months in a capsule. Submarines and space stations have already done that. We know that it isn't a problem.

Real Mars travelers would not be able to take off their helmet to breath air, as they can on the Antarctic. They can't go home if they get sick. If anything psychological is important, I think that those differences are among the most important. The very difference between a simulation and the real thing. Human psychology understands that difference and reacts differently. If at any single moment you get desperate and panic knowing there is no way out, you could go berserk and cause accidents.

In the general discussions of this I've seen, I think that there's far too much focus on people getting angry with each others. That's not the psychological problem. People realize that they don't have that luxury on a real mission. Mutinies on ships have been very rare inspite of year long journeys with unfair conditions between officers and other crew.

Actually, the Antarctic seems to be the worst place on Earth to simulate Mars environment. Because one of the very few things common between Mars and Earth is the length of day. Only on the poles is even that very different with months long days and nights. Unless you want to simulate a Mars polar landing, its axis tilt is the same as that of Earth.

Answer 4

Some parts of Antarctica apparently experience Mars-like temperatures occasionally; however, the environment there is quite different from Mars in many other respect, in particular the floor. An Antarctica base building must cope with being established on packed snow, which has its own engineering challenges that do not echo what would be experienced by Mars colonists. For instance, it is expected that dust will be a significant issue on Mars, and Antarctica is mostly dust-less.

Simulation of Mars colony has been done and is ongoing, but at the other pole, on Devon Island, which is part of the Canadian Arctic. The rocky ground makes it a closer match (not close, but closer nonetheless, and about as good as you can get on Earth). Also, as @Rory mentioned, human presence in Antarctica is regulated by international treaties which can make some operations a bit more complex. I may add that Devon Island can be reached for much less money, because it is quite closer to North American countries from which most of the equipment and people come, and also because it can be reached by boat (not year round, but often enough), whereas an inland Antarctica base requires air-lifting.

Among Martian conditions which are very hard to simulate anywhere on Earth, one may cite:

• Low gravity (about 1/3rd of Earth).
• Very low atmospheric pressure, requiring pressurized buildings.
• That pesky oxidized dust that is prone to infiltrate everywhere.
• Occasional dust storms which may last for weeks.
• Occasional very low temperatures.