darthgently

You should read Larry Correia’s Grimnoir series. I think you’d like Jake. First book is Hard Magic. Think Humphrey Bogart gumshoe in WWII era meets Harry Potter for grown ups. Alternate history obviously Given you stipulated his hair was normal it would be safe to assume his eyebrows and hair would be gone

See Megapower section near bottom. Apparently NASA wants something like this but doesn’t seem as fleshed out as Kilopower https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/01/kilopower-megapower-reactors-would-revolutionize-energy-safety-and-space-and-military-applications.html Grok Megapower dump:

Interesting possibilities

What we have is a dynamic situation apparently

Kerbals trying to help each other in low gravity

Please forgive this slight diversion that is so nearly on topic wrt to nuclear sakety. Just skip if diversion unwanted.

Given the success of Ingenuity that many thought was pointless, maybe wind might be something. But I doubt it. They’d likely grind themselves to scrap on the dust and would be high maintenance sweethearts for sure

It occurs to me that if there is to be a substantial Optimus bot workforce that will be a big electrical load on its own Does Mars have accessible fission material? Launching reactors with no fuel could be a lot less regulated Grok says “nope” to ISRU of Martian fissionables:

Astranis GEO F9 launch abort at T-0:01.

With the seasonal dust storms and the very high power requirements for life support and manufacturing ISRU, base expansion, compute, lighting, screens, etc. I think nuclear power will be an obvious necessity. If PVs and batteries can eventually be manufactured locally then solar could augment but being that far from the sun and the increased energy demands of harboring terrestrial life on an unforgiving world I don’t see any way around nuclear. Maybe geothermal eventually, especially if a huge attempt is made to tap that water 20km below the surface. Might a well tap the heat also, right?

This is very cool. Thanks for putting this up. It is fundamentally an artificial lava tube. The building of the arch from the arc of adjacent parallel melts makes for a very large range of sizes that could be fabricated

The trick would be what materials are the business end made of to withstand those temps without becoming one with the resultant glass. Maybe some kind of gas pressure gap that holds hell at bay until it cools enough or similar

For those who’ve wondered, no, the current iteration of LIGO could not detect aliens using an Alcubierre drive

Language barrier parsing issues. I thought he was talking about getting ammonia from water instead of air (as the OP described). But thanks for your studious attention. That nitrogen makes up the vast majority of our atmosphere is an amazing science fact for sure Yeah, sorry, was lost in parsing.

You’d still need a nitrogen source in addition to water unless ground water has a lot more nitrogen than I’m guessing. Ag runoff would probably have plenty of nitrogen

What bothers me about this approximation is it doesn’t appear to account for Mars atmosphere, thin as it may be, nor the earth’s magnetic field

Ok. I’m seeing 1 to 2 meters liquid water here and there on the net to get exposure levels at Mars surface same as Earth surface. Will keep exploring The 1 to 2 m may not be accounting for high energy cosmics. Will adjust my search parameters

Radiation and cosmic ray shielding is what I was referring to. Your methodology is interesting

Where does this number come from?

Apparently it would take 1 to 2 meters of water or ice to reduce Mars surface radiation levels to those of Earth. With certain soluble additives it might be reduced to a meter. Darn thick still. But since water needs to be stored anyway why not store it in a way that allows light into the dungeon? I’m not as enthusiastic about the dome though unless the 2m thickness is crystal clear ice with no liquid or vapor and supports itself mostly igloo style with perhaps assisting internal columns

Glasses-in balconies with glass-water-glass sandwich panes. I can’t get the water sandwich thing out of my head now

Smart move. Looks like they might be moving away from old space mind set (which iirc has been an issue in their budget handling)