The Martian dresscode

Last week (13-20 April) you could say I got Caught Up On My Reading. I was housebound and didn't have full access to my nonwork computer. Two of these books dealt with exploration: The Wager and The New World on Mars. (We also got Das Schloß and Palestine 1936 in there. And God's Equation.) So. Um. Back to Zubrin. The secondhand store has The Case for Space (2019); New World (2024) heads back to the base-in-exile for Zoob's Society. I skipped that earlier one; for this one, I paid full freight. I still own How To Live On Mars (2008). There's duplication across books; what's changed in sixteen years?

We'll start with - clothing.

Among the more-appalling misses in 2008, Zoob didn't offer a section on textiles, like nylon. He recommended... stealing parachutes. (I'm serious.) That book also didn't mention doing the laundry. The 2024 book gives us both - at last!

Although - I still don't know that Zoob has quite got his head around the concept. He suggests (now) hanging out the dirties to the Martian elements. The radiation (especially daylight), temperature-swings, and poor atmosphere together will break apart lipids, that is grease. It's a antibacterial cleaner, all-natural, no detergent nor even water. This will still leave stains, but in 2008 this author didn't care; just wear rusty reddish camo bro.

I gotta posit here that the chicks won't dig it. Later Chapter 8 concerns social-customs. "Mars needs women," as the chapter (correctly) puts it. No woman is going to put up with stained ruddy clothes; probably clean, technically, but also possibly full of that mildly-toxic dust. And stained. When we're working in the kitchen (I'm not just talking about women, readers; unjerk those knees please), or at the surgeon's or even in the lab, we want clean whites - so we see stains from that, only, not from elsewhere. And going out in social events will assuredly require a dress-code. Expect red at all to be a faux-pas on this planet, like blue jeans or khakis at an Earth tuxedo ball.

Airing out (or vacuuming out) the dirties in the Martian outdoors will be for work clothes only.

Better news, perhaps, is that when clothes are washed, the laundry might be able to use concentrated liquid carbon-dioxide (especially overnight), giving at least that means to save precious water.