alt Hacker NewsMars has toxic levels of perchlorates in the regolith. That will require that humans never come in contact with the regolith or things that touched it. Those space suits that dock to vehicles seem like a necessity.
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Calcium perchlorate is only slightly toxic. Not good for you, but living in an environment with background radiation levels 50x higher than on Earth may be your bigger worry...
Still, I'm pretty sure we have plenty of people who wouldn't mind giving it a try.
Personally, I suspect all anoxic environments will turn out to be unhealthy for humans. You'll have a bunch of reactive stuff about that on Earth would have been neutralized long ago.
> That will require that humans never come in contact with the regolith or things that touched it.
It’s really only a concern if you ingest it.
If this fact piques your interest, the book Delta-v by Daniel Suarez glances off this fact and uses it to justify exploring asteroid mining instead of a colony on Mars.
Or effective decontamination performed in the airlock. There was a recent demonstration of an electrostatic repulsion device reducing dust on suit fabric which might help with sticking. And an air shower like used for clean rooms does not seem too far out.
there's a great PBS Space Time for that (of course)
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TIL
Yeah, the ground on mars is literally toxic. Makes the concept of a Martian colony less appealing. Almost equal to a floating station on Venus. At least there you’d have the correct pressure. I seem to recall that the temperature on Venus at an altitude of one atmospheric pressure is manageable. It’s just also acidic. Possibility easier to deal with than perchlorates.