farmerben

The key thing will be to positively charge the area around the base so that dust does not fall there at night.

I do. The total solar eclipse was cool.

It takes a lot of teamwork to run an outpost on Mars. A city implies more than just an outpost. Which implies multiple teams of people pursuing multiple goals. New types of conflict are bound to arise.

It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.

A turbofan on a gas giant might need to carry oxidizer but no fuel, since there is hydrogen to suck up. On Titan there is methane.

A Mars settlement will have to run off donations in one form or another for quite some time. It does not have to be taxpayer funded, if you can find other ways of raising donations. Including lotteries, endowments from the deceased, and patron support for making videos, etc.

I think you underestimate the division of labor. Imagine YOU personally time travelled to ancient Rome. What could you do with simple blacksmith tools? Could you build a steam engine or a practical electric device? How much better could you do than a scientist from 1824? Suppose you get rich in ancient Rome and hire 100 skilled employees to help build your stuff, how much could you realistically do? I'd be happy to teach physics to the right motivated students and see what happens from there. I would not however rely on broad popular appeal. Progress was not a popular idea. Many ancients believed in cyclical time. Most stoics believed that time had gone on long enough for everything to be forgotten, and would go on long enough for their present to be forgotten. Aurelius remarked to that effect. Meanwhile the early Christians thought they were near the end of time, and God would soon destroy this world.

The longest span of the Key bridge was 366m. Current state of the art suspension bridges can go to 2000m. Make the pillars 5 times as far apart and then there is plenty of room to steer and to run aground before hitting a pillar.

Polynesian vessels with outriggers are inherently faster than European ships with ballast. They discovered Hawaii and Easter Island some time before 1200 AD. If they made it to the mainland, they did not leave evidence like introduced species.

Even if you already know it, this fact is fun

Special emergency dagger board. Shoot a pole downward.

It's almost always more efficient to carry heavier cargo than to make two trips. Until you stick a rig on it, and realize sails on a massive container ship do not work. The niche for smaller cargo vessels is limited mostly to island nations. It's not really fair to compare a vessel that uses fuel and one that doesn't. What's the problem with deck based PVs? Other than at 200W/m^2 you're not generating at a sufficient rate for propulsion. And you need batteries for short range maneuvering, docking, etc.

This one might go off paper. It will be interesting to see. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/65193472eadeb133523da70f/t/65d603737972197f559e6632/1708524406510/Cargo+Proa+Prototype.pdf

50-100 million $ for a panamax cargo ship https://gegcalculators.com/whats-the-cost-of-a-normal-cargo-ship/

Ramps are the best idea. To protect it with loose piled rock would require probably 1,000,000 tons, and a volume larger than the ship. That will affect the channel for sure. Mississippi river barges are 1500 tons, and draft 8 feet. When 30 of them are lashed together that's half the mass of the Dali. Protecting river bridges is even more challenging than harbors.

I just tested with 50 TWR vessel on Minimus. Going straight up uses 248 dV to escape the SOI. Changing to a near horizontal trajectory and burning in a straight line uses almost the same amount of dV. However, throttling down and taking a gradual spiral used 279 dV.

Insurance companies can usually borrow the money to pay off claims, then increase rates to cover the loan. Who benefits? The other insurance companies who can easily raise rates right now.

Lawyers or Insurance companies?

I can understand relying on a generator to power all ship systems. But critical systems should be on a battery.

You have to have some speed for the rudder to provide control. 8.5 knots is not very fast, though it probably would have been fine at half that speed. The ship also has a bow thruster for low speed maneuvering, but that probably failed along with everything else when the power went out. I'm still not clear on whether they dropped anchors before the collision. In such a scenario the anchors probably would not have dug in and done much, but it's one more thing to try.

The power lines have hexagonal protective structures around them. No such structure is visible around the bridge piers.

To quote the Simpsons, "Short answer, yes with an if. Long answer no with a but." The ship was travelling 8.5 knots and has a max speed of 22 knots. So it could have hit with about 7 times more energy than it actually did.

1000km is short range for space lasers. The divergence is more an issue at astronomical units.

The big problem in the atmosphere is that high power lasers super heat the air, turning air into a diverging lens. In space, lasers will be much more effective. You still face divergence no matter what.