todofwar
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Everything posted by todofwar
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From the chemist perspective I can see why. Hydrogen? No problem. Hydrazine? I use it all the time. Hydroxylamine? Gentle as a lamb. But I can't even buy anhydrous peroxide for use as a reagent. I know they do work with it, but of the things you listed it's the most dangerous. A spec of iron or copper dust gets in your batch and the whole thing goes boom.
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I like the system, but seriously do we need 4 threads for this (5 if you count the perpetual SpaceX thread)?
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Not necessarily. And you don't need 40 km, there's some good data on variable wind speeds at different altitudes, a couple km will do fine. And you would wrap the cable in a long balloon of its own. The size of the habitat helps in this case, it works like a big anchor preventing the kite from accelerating the habitat to the point that your wind energy is useless. Solar can work, and we're not fat away from efficient organic solar cells, if this is near future they could conceivably use carbon from the atmosphere with hydrogen from the acid to make some voltaics. -
You have a very optimistic view of humans. Human nature doesn't change, I think superstitions and fear can creep in easily. Without necessarily compromising their ability to run the ship. Hell, at a certain point it will be more about knowing the intricacies of the ship, not the derivation of the laws of buoyancy.
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Mods in Stock
todofwar replied to Choctofliatrio2.0's topic in KSP1 Suggestions & Development Discussion
Kerbal alarm clock and Kerbal engineer. And maybe mechjeb -
Can we merge all these threads? And maybe make a separate Mars colony thread?
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For the sulfuric acid, you can probably use some kind of bacterial vat. Sulfates are the bioavailable form of sulfur, which is a micronutrient. So some enzyme somewhere is breaking it down. Or you can extract H2, you'll have to provide some kind of cation, but then you can take co2 to o2 and c and react the o2 with h2 to get water. H2so4 to 2h+ and so42-, H+ to h2, And so on.
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My two cents: forget mining. Not needed for your scenario. You won't be building new habitats unless that was your starting goal. But you can probably get by with as close to a closed loop as possible. The daily requirements for things like iron and calcium are incredibly low, a single block of iron will be good for your 100 people. So there's really nothing needed from the surface. For general repair they could use plastics, some conductive polymers have been developed that they could use for circuitry. As for energy, that's Venus's number one strength. You got thermal gradients and strong vertical wind shear, so drop a pipe and pour some water in to get a geothermal style system, and attach wind turbines to simultaneously get wind energy. I would say that you can't have a perfect closed loop, but that just adds to the tension as they watch their habitat slowly but inevitably crumble around them.
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At least it has the correct gravity. I see that as being a bigger problem. Also, already has the right atmosphere, just need to convert 20% (edit: some, 20% will be too much) of the CO2 to o2, and then trap the rest as coal and sulfates. The hard part is speeding up rotation, but I've heard a couple well placed mirrors might do the trick.
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Nope, terraforming won't be easy. Easier to terraform Venus.
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Colonizing Mars has no benefit for humans back on Earth, just a hard fact of life. That doesn't mean it's without merit, because it gives us one more home in case this one goes belly up. I think a Mars colony, Venus colony, and generation ship to proxima centari b are all great ideas and we absolutely should pursue them, but I also want my government to take care of about a thousand other things first, so until some billionaire worth five Elons decides he wants to give literally every penny he has to building a colony for a colony's sake, it won't happen. Well, there is one benefit. And that's the needed downsizing of our supply chains, which could have some benefits for Earth. For exampke, figuring out a quicker cheaper way to get high quality silicon. Farming in more efficient ways. Creating close to closed loop farms that don't waste their fertilizer. More efficient recycling and reuse methods.
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Venus vs Titan: which is more likely to support life?
todofwar replied to todofwar's topic in Science & Spaceflight
On the other hand, if it can be shown that life = water with a higher confidence interval, then the presence of water goes from one of many criteria to the strongest indicator. Further, if we do prove that bacteria can survive in vacuum and enter another planet and seed that planet, that has implications for Fermi because suddenly life appearing on one planet might mean the whole galaxy becomes seeded eventually, but if that process is faster than random chance producing life on it's own than proximity to the mother planet might be the criteria for who gets intelligent life first. -
The thought of this hinging on the kind of person willing to fly out a couple thousand people to Mars for the benefit of being in total power over them is kind of troubling, sounds like a high tech cult.
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Never said it was unskilled labor, but robotic components will be reserved for EVA type work. Anything indoors is likely to be done by hand. And this is all to kind of agree with your point, it won't be a nice place to live, even if we can get all the problems solved it will be a grueling existence, likely with low life expectancy, for probably a hundred years before life on Mars looks anything like the science fiction shows and movies inspiring people to think about it. Like you said, who would want to go?
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I didn't mean they'd have 1st century tech. More that's how they would live. No personal computers, no television, lots of manual labor. They would have advanced tech, but every scrap of it will be devoted to the whole keeping them alive part. Not allot of spare transistors for a Nintendo. Clothing will be synthetic fibers (though I wonder if sheep might be useful here, you get wool milk and some meat when it gets old, but then you have the headache of keeping sheep alive) but it will be hand woven and uncomfortable. Not allot of private space, and presumably an almost tribal government system revolving around authority of elders.
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To be fair, you can have a smaller supply chain that gives just the basics, no need for major infrastructure. Life would probably be more akin to 1st century rather than 21st, as all sophisticated things like computers will be extremely precious and solely devoted to life support. Medicine would also be limited (though some fungal vats for antibiotics would help). And this is one part that has financial return: developing this kind of small scale infrastructure would enable small countries to become more resource independent. So developing such a bare bones supply chain will have immediate applications. Honestly, if Elon is serious about colonization this is probably the area he needs to focus much more on than space travel. But that's getting of topic.
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I think in terms of mortality rate the age of discovery was much more dangerous
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An experimental prototype, maybe. The actual Mars mission? That's something else. I'd love to be proven wrong, though
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I hate being on the skeptic side of things, but after calming down from the initial awe I'm a little less impressed. It's almost like someone recorded a KSP flight and posted it here. So much of this is experimental, I anticipate we won't see anything launch until 2050. If anyone but Elon was saying it, I would throw it out as a possibility, but I suppose he's done enough homework to say it's plausible.
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Does this mean they've abandoned Falcon Heavy? Or is this scale even bigger than that?
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That video synchs very well with its a wonderful world followed by fly me to the moon, I found out accidentally.
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That depends really. Not sure of how much seawater you'd need to process to get iridium out in profitable quantities, but it would be alot. Space mining has high up front costs, like the telescope to find targets, the mining/refining craft, and the fuel and capsule for the initial run. But the operational costs could be low enough to yield a profit. The telescope could probably map enough targets to last 20 years of mining. The miner itself would need replacing after a while, but probably could be made to last long enough to pay back its construction costs. Granted, it would be a long time before you managed to pay back the startup costs.
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Yeah, but fuel is cheap, so just use a big dumb booster to send a years worth at a time. The main argument against BDBs is that the payload is too expensive to risk on a less reliable rocket. If you're just launching fuel, you can cut back reliability and go for cheap.
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If prospecting becomes a thing, it would become economical to have an orbital repair station. Hell, I would argue an orbital scrap yard to take all the inoperative satellites wouldn't be a bad idea. Plenty of the components still work, maybe a bit outdated. But you could rip em apart and reassemble the good parts into a new satellite or probe.
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I think the economics of such an enterprise will be very different from normal space exploration. You will want a refinery in space, to minimize material you're trying to bring back, and mining equipment. That's all very heavy, thus expensive to launch, but you only need to launch it once. Then you leave it up in outer space, going to different asteroids and gathering resources. Once it's done it comes back to earth orbit, maybe not even necessarily LEO, and shoots off a capsule that re-enters with the partially refined ore. You would then use big dumb boosters to send up more hydrogen or kerosene to refuel your ship (oxygen will be a primary byproduct of refining the ore) along with another capsule for re-entry of more material. Since the fuel is dirt cheap, and the capsule itself need not be very sophisticated (you could even shoot for a re-usable return capsule, its fuel tank becomes the payload bay and it uses engines for a short deorbit burn) you can get away with BDB because losing the occasional payload won't be a financial disaster. The crew would need to rotate in and out, and of course you'll want them on a better rocket, so they will likely end up being your largest expense overall.
