AngelLestat

Buried radiators would no work, in fact in that case the correct thing to use is "water pipes" in U inside these deep holes of hundred of meters (that is called geothermal). Many houses use that with much lower thermal flux of course, in summer they extract the heat from the house and they exchange that with the ground, If in winter they dont reverse that process (extracting the heat from the soil to send it to the house), the next summer they will see their efficiency reduce, if they repeat that the third and four year, their efficiency will drop until the point where they can no inject more heat into the soil. This happens because ground is a very good insulator. Even if you have permafrost, would no help much, imagine that the different layer from the image, that is your permafrost). The heat is transferred to the soil, this can storage a good amount due its thermal mass, but each time that the heat moves 1 meter away from the pipe (heat source), you are adding 1 meter of insulator, so each time less heat flux achieves to pass. A nuclear reactor would reach that saturate step very fast. Another concern of nuclear energy on mars, is that its atmosphere has 204 times less mass than earth atmosphere, and there is no oceans and its surface area is lower. So a nuclear accident there would be much more risky than here. In low latitudes the only solution is Solar panels using hydrogen with fuel cell storage in case you need to face a global dust storm. The cost of the energy would be 3 or 3.5 times higher than earth (on equal industrial capacity). On the poles nuclear can be a good alternative.. the cost could be 1.5 times of the earth (just due extra precautions that you need to take and imported fuel). Something like this (the location of the turbine is not good, I know): But you dont need heat management to produce electricity, only you use my thermal idea with a steam airship, in which you have great heat management due wind and heat differences. You just need a bit of air cooling (just the habitat section, no the whole envelope), at 53km height at 50 degrees of latitude, the temperature is 45c, all dubai building face that all days with air cooling. If you go higher as Rakaydos said, you dont need cooling, but the pressure drops to 0.4 or 0.5 bar, and your envelope needs to be a 25% bigger. Mars also needs to fight against temperature.

cooling by radiation is one of the less efficient ways to cool something. In space is already difficult even when you can use very light surfaces and cool from both sides.. In mars on the other hand, you can only use 1 surface, you need to clean that from the dust which reduce your emissivity coefficient and it needs to be kinda strong to deal with wind storms (the pressure can be low, but the density depends on co2 and the dust in the air, the reynold number is low so the friction at higher wind speed rise.. then wind speed is what most matter in wind force, no the density). This just mean that your radiators will be at least 3 times less effective than in space (which already are low efficient compared to other cooling methods) Why we have trains, or airplanes, or even blenders (what if somebody put the hand inside?).. Because we need them and the risk is negligible. What is the risk of live in 0.38g? We don't need much experiments to have an idea of how at least muscles density and strength will react to low G (ignoring all the other factors). Is a lineal function.. 0g--> bad / 0.5g --> half bad / 1g --> good. I made this graphs some time ago:

I never had faith in a mars colony, because I always thought it needed to be in low latitudes. There you can no cool any nuclear reactor and it is also very dangerous due the low mass of mars atmosphere vs ours (204 times lower). It does no have oceans so any polluting will make a mess in mars. The cost of energy in those places can be as 3 or 4 times more expensive than earth. For your habitat you need to dig into the ground to escape the radiation, but in many places the soil is not solid or safe. You might have just water for consumption, but no enough for industrial process. But if we change of paradigm and we start to think on the poles, then it has more sense. Energy cost with nuclear can go down to half o less compared to the equator, it will need to be developed the thorium reactor and buried into the ice 50m at least, with extra tunnels and wells to be used as cold spot, in case you have a meltdown, the water and ice keep it isolated. There is no much dust in the poles, that dust is danger and very annoying. You can dig much more easier using heat, and the ice is a more safe structure material than dust and dirt. There is no need of sunlight, you can grow plants like this, it is much more efficient: http://www.gizmag.com/farmedhere-vertical-farm-west-louisville-foodport/41569/ That is just a cut, from above is radial and symmetric, two different artificial machine designs. At the begining, the ice will have a temperature of -70 Celsius approx. You need insulation panels attached to the ice walls to no melted and extra energy for heat. Meanwhile the heat travels more far from the tunnels to the ice which each times the heat flow is reduce because it need to pass more ice layers. So after some years it reach the point where you just need to heat from 0 degree (ice instead -70).

good point. No sure why Titan has a 1.5bar atmosphere with lower gravity than Io, however this lost all its atmosphere in its orbit and then is sucked by jupiter magnetic fields. But in any case, IO sulphur does not help, because combined with water reflect the light. (and there is no much water anyway). I guess is no possible to terraform any of the bodies of the solar system without import elements from different places (no just the asteroids). that is what I said.. or no?

A thick atmosphere will reduce the radiation problem, and you need a really thick (full of greenhouse gases) atmosphere to provide some surface heat. Water vapor is something that we can breath, but we need to prevent to form clouds or it will reflect the few sunlight we receive. We need to search other greenhouses to help in this matter in a way that will not be toxic. We can not solve the gravity problem, Io has the highest surface gravity, then the moon and other bodies. So the only way to solve the gravity is with spinning habitats tilted, like a train habitat with tilted rails, the small difference in gravity between these moons does no really matter unless it helps to keep the atmosphere. IO has internal heat that can be useful, no sure about its other resources.

Yeah I hate when that happen, but using chrome some of those accidents are avoided, like when the power go off. In some cases you may try control + z Here is the problem. you are imagine that you have an small floating base in venus and you want to mine and export right away trying to be economically viable from year one. I am analysing future potential of each location. This mean evaluate how it will behave a developed community with all its infrastructure on venus vs different locations or cities equally developed. There is no location in the world that would not require high investment and subsidies from start, no matter its potential. Look at Dubai and Las Vegas, they started with high investments but no resources, now they are 2 of the most growing cities in the world, once you start with some investment and good economic policies, you generate an avalanche of private investments which generates all the most part of the income with a increase help from the tourism and other movements. Again, I could not explain better this starting point for a colony than in the link I post some pages back. Venus has another advantage.. companies would not require go through high bureaucracy and environmental studies over each step of their production process with the complaint risk that some local communities might have. You want to produce energy.. take some extra money... you want to make your own floating city for only tourism.. take some extra money. You want to provide internet or a location service.. take some more. All that generates extra income and employment which require extra colony space and increase the profit of each business already in venus. After some point you attract the most intelligent people in the world because this is the location when the dreams come true and the best solutions and tech are needed. So many smart people together creates more wealth. This however can happen early in the colony development (5 or 10 years later) , is not hard, it all depends on how big is the asteroid you choice and its orbit. A 22m diameter asteroid has 10000 tons, you can install a small nuclear reactor inside that would use the same ice as propellent. That is another advantage on venus.. the city is always moving from east to west, takes 6 days to complete the circumference. You can change latitude very easy just tilting the same wind turbines you drag on lower altitude. You can map and drop drone explorers very easily and recover them 6 days after. Reach other location in mars requires a lot of energy and tech (if you fly you can not land). Because we never had the need, no because it can not be done. Neither less take a look to this firefighter vehicle: https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/automotive/robotic-firefighting-vehicles It can stand 700c by 15 min (a lot) and 400c by 30min. This taking into account that this vehicle does not really had the need to be close to the fire by longer times. It use a combustion engine, if it uses an electrical engine would have less problems. You mean venus competitors or earth competitors? If it is venus I dont find any trouble, extra investment (and of course they can choice no share the tech), about earth competitors.. no sure what are you trying to said, because the environments are very different. asteroid mining has more sense to export to earth, but you need to export the 100%. In the Venus mining case, the 99% will be bought by the same venus companies to produce products and sell that to the venus population at lower price than minerals from asteroid to earth. So I repeat.. if you have people living in venus, this mean that it has a local economy, so you don't need to export things to earth, you just need to attract investments, play with the tourism, the adventure, the intellectual property, etc.

Oh thank you for your generosity, but I don't need it Falcon heavy lift around 40 tons to Leo in reusable mode (at least the 3 main stages), without reusability cost 90 millions, this time the 3 main stages are the 90% of the rocket cost or more. So it will cost around of 10 millions in reusable mode. But we dont need to launch a rocket to carry fuel to venus to launch a rocket and send things to earth.. that is crazy. We just need to calculate how much cost launch a rocket from venus. Venus requires less deltav to leave the atmosphere, at that height the gravity is 8,7 m/s2 and venus circumference is lower. That decrease only a 15% of the deltav, the good news is that recover a rocket stage in venus is pretty easy. You just add a 10m diameter balloon to the stage (which also has hydrogen gas inside the tank) and it will float around 35km height. You only need to consume fuel to reduce the reentry speed of each stage. No need for fins or legs. So you can have a heavy falcon venus version that can lift 50 tons to Low venus orbit in reusable mode (much more easy to reuse because you dont need to land or do a back boost to your base) Oh thanks, that is convenient.. I take it then.. XD Nah speaking seriously.. you will mine searching all elements, in places where you get heavy elements and in different places for metals or other elements. In the separation process, you get these % of gold, platinum, paradium, etc. All those heavy things that you might not use, you sell to reduce your general mining cost. Not sure how much will be the cost.. so let's put a "??" and it will be added to the transport cost to earth. Right now gold is more expensive than platinum, next year can change.. I dont know. Lets said that we transport a mix of heavy elements with a cost of 30000 per kg. (gold is at 40000). There is a problem with our rocket.. water in venus is no so cheap, no sure how much there is on the underground, electrolysis will be less expensive due lower energy cost, the same than co2 to make methane. But lets imagine that the fuel cost will be 5 times more expensive. This mean 20 million for each 50T to venus low orbit. Once in LEO, venus has another advantage. You can capture an asteroid and use venus thick atmosphere to aerocapture, you previously paint the asteroid to make it reflective, and you mine that to get rocket fuel which that can feed a transport tug that goes from lvo to leo, dropiing the payload and doing aerocapture in both cases (go and back). You can made solar sails of 500m x 500m in orbit using no more than 200 or 500kg of material. Each one can transport 10 tons in 6 or 9 months at all moment in any time window. They are reusable and the payloads always use aerocapture. So at the end, your venus to earth transport will cost less than 1000U$S per kg for sure. So you have 30000U$S of material minus the mining cost. The rest is profit. As you can see, it can be a big margin. You mine many things, so you would not have 100 tons of platinum.. you will have 100 tons divide between many metals and heavy elements.

By "they".. I was speaking of ESA, sorry. my english is bad, so if you focus in those mistakes.. you will find a lot.

Engine US force study http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/press_release/AFRL-REL_CRADA_Press_Release_15April2015.pdf Esa study: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/press_release/Press_Release_S-ELSO_Completion_V5.pdf http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27591432 I really need to put the link of the first stage landing or the upcoming launch of falcon heavy?

Point 1: spacex is very close to achieve a big % of reusability, they already made serious studies about skylon´s engine and its economic potential. Now, we are talking about the potential of colonies that might have 40 to 70 years of development plus the years from the date that the colony was started.. So we can be talking about 80 years into the future.. but you just predict a reduction of 25% for the launch cost? I guess that is close to the Elon musk goal for the next year Point 2: You can not flood the market even if you wanted.. First it will have a cost for you, all new industries starts with loses until their develope enough and start to compete, then they have the advantage of producing from a renovated source, so your industry can only improve meanwhile others goes down. Even if you can produce a lot and export with a lot of profit, the demand will increase. Now it does no really increase because we have a limited year production of 100 or 200T by year, this mean that you can no start a big business around platinum, because your big demand will increase the platinum cost, even if the current cost works for you. And the platinum cost is increasing every year by the huge potential of future hydrogen catalysts. But if another source of platinum appear, many other business can appear because they know that the prices will stay the same or even lower. In that link are named the two examples cities who grow up faster than anything with no real exports. They had few resources to become partially self sustain (thanks to technology) but they work in base to some of the lines that I explain in the link. I explain a big part in that link.. "I cant copy paste to here because is repeated content". Again.. the profits for a location are not always based in your exports or the thing you mine. I will answer just the venus vs mars case, in case you tell me that you can get that more cheaper from earth, then I will need to ask you to read that link again and then I will continue providing examples. a) why I can not mention heavy elements? because other locations does not really have much? What about normal metals? b) energy cost will be less than half of earth and at least 4 times less than mars (this reduce the cost of all your process) c) Turism, people always find exciting to meet different places of what they know.. for example people who lives in mountains and lakes places, they tend to choose other kind of landscapes that are different of what they know, the same for people who live in desert places. The experience to live in a floating city in other world will be of great attraction for many, with the addition that you can open a normal door and go out to the exterior of the city envelope just wearing some suit base on plastic, teflon or latex, with a oxygen mask. No space suit required. d) cheap and high quality carbon fibers e) any process or products that requires heat will be cheaper, you just locate that process in the venus floor. f) you can move to any planet location just wasting a small amount of energy, this also count for the cities.

Ok you are right, I did not wanted to suggest that, but I am pleased that you have detailed the differences. And a lunar colony has low latency too, so yeah, I don't like it as a possible colony. About the other vacuum places as Mars, europa, enceladus.. the main difference is that you are seated over resources. You can go under the ice and build your habitats with no need of many extra resources from earth, and you solve the radiation issue. Make a hole in ice with heat does not takes much and then cover the walls with thermal insulation panels neither (all thermal insulation materials are light by definition or physics) You just need to add some hatch to the surface.

all your questions were already answered in a general way in the topic that I show you and you did not read. First read that, then take the case for those cities and we can continue with the discussion.

Which increase the cost.. but well, I already help you in that matter with the under the ice pole location. Radiation shielding, meteorit shielding, vacuum proof, close to the main resource, close to the energy source (nuclear) and much easier and safe to dig in ice than in dirt. North pole should be the best of the two, it does not have a 8m deep dry ice layer, it is a lower altitude than the south pole which give you a bit more of radiation shielding for surface operations. You mean by the almost 0 wind speed on the surface? Yeah it is very dense.. but you don't need harpoons. In fact one venus rover design use sails to take advantage of any trace of wind that might be there. http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/niac/2012_phase_I_fellows_landis.html Look how light it is. The explanation is right there in the 5 lines that you are quoting! Is not the first time you do that, everybody is pointing you the same thing, you don't even read the things you are answering. It seems that your only goal is to spam as many comments you can, no sure if it is just trolling or what.. You had learned before how to quote just the part of the post you want to reply, but it seems that it take you much time which is against your spam goal. And I forget to mention in case was no obvious enough.. you can recover the balloon with the hydrogen too, which it will be welcome for the venusian people. You dont really need airplanes in venus, but in any case, airplanes will look like this: Half airplane, half airship, even without propellers will float at 50km, it can reach an altitude of 70km. VIDEO And you get to that conclusion following what info or logic? Because all your past comments had a big lack of info or understanding. Dont me get started on venus surface mining?? Lol, what does it mean? What could you possible add that I did not crush before with tons of evidence and logic. Machines able to mine the venus surface would be as common or simple as any industrial cooking oven. If you will make a reply, do it base to all the info that I already provide on that matter. Why you can not launch a rocket from a blimp? a whole nasa venus concept is base on that.. HAVOC. We also launch rockets to space before under airplanes, which are no as stable as an airship. Only if you want to float at 10 or 20km altitude, that seems good to recover emply rocket stages, but no for an habitat. Wow a lot of comments on this forum and you never read any of the benefits of venus? Mining atmospheres is the most cheap and efficient to do (you need to pressurize mars atmosphere to take advantage of that), and you can mine the venus surface very easy (read 2 pages back). Venus has more heavy elements than mars because is close to the sun and it is geologically active (this mean high concentration locations of certain minerals) It does not really need to have export to pay imports, take a look to many cities on earth and tell me what they export.. There are cities with huge exponential grow with no exports, I explain that with more detail here: By the way, there are tons of other pros than a Venus colony has over mars.

We have the ISS, that is your space module colony right there. But it does not have more sense than that.. We are talking of something that can serve as a second home with its own resources and economy. Anything you do in orbit can be teleoperated with no latency from earth surface without no much need to be right there. In space you need to deal with vacuum, radiation and you need to provide gravity. All those have solution but it just increase cost. Low earth orbit and geo are also full of debris, which increase the risk. Living under the ice seems the best solution for many places on the solar system.. Mars.. Europa, Enceladus. The cold problem can be handled covering the ice walls with thick thermal insulation panels. The power of choice should be nuclear (or future fusion if we achieve it in the future and has economic sense), but in those places (mostly in mars), we really need to be care about nuclear accidents, the pollution can be several times more problematic than on earth. About resources I am not sure yet, I need to do some research to see the potential of each place. ------------------------------------------------------------- A place where the cold is really a problem is on Titan where temperatures are -180c and its 1.5 bar of pressure does no help in thermal insulation. You can manage to insulate habitats, but you can not benefit of a walk on the 1.5 bar atmosphere with pure nitrogen, because a simple breath of air will freeze your lungs eyes and face. You should go out with so many coats that you will look like a ball. But well, this place requires more study on its advantages, it seems that it is the paradise of light resources as water, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, etc.

Just because you are used to it; and I am kinda too, but it does not make it right. In this Numberphile video is explained why it does not have any sense: If you think that it is because it save you time with names.. not really: million, milliard, billion, billiard, trillion, trilliard. Million = Million1 Billion = Million2 Trillion = Million3 On the points and comma, the ip number use points and I bet you are fine with that Is all about at what we are used to it. But I will like global standards all based on coherence, even if some are against my habits. I did not follow you there.. You mean that you have a new word or decimal point just for numbers between 1 and zero? What about 4,56 or -0,24? It does not have sense.. the bigger mark should not be in the place when it really matter to separate? As decimals? Meanwhile we dont have a global understanding of this, we would make huge errors that might cost lives in some cases, because there is no way to know what is this mean: 634.345 unless the people who read it has a really good understanding of the number context. I kinda picture the image.. from the couch... hey honey! What's the date today? -23.. no I mean month... Your second example may have a bit more sense, but no enough to put the month first , day second and year third.

Ok my bad.. Not sure why understood the spin in that way but no the charge. Let me start repeating that I dont defend any long tech, I always said that interstellar manned missions are way far of our reach in practical terms. But I dont have any trouble discussing interstellar probes because I know a possible cheap and practical way. I just joint up to the BH ship because is fun to think about it, and find ways to focus that energy that I did not thought before. Use the search tool in the forum, and put my name and search by black hole propulsion, or SBH. I comment on this since 2013 and I always knew how hard it was. But you are mad that everybody point you the big error of your 50000 years trip and now you are trying to search anything to criticize. That is not a concern.. the real concern is how you storage all the energy you need to then be used in 1 nano or pico second all focus in something very small.. The same author recognizes how hard is to make a SBH, but the true is that there is nothing in physics that said that is no possible. So he just let away with the possibility without boring the reader on engineering details of how to achieve that, why? because is a conceptualized notion of an original idea. Just that. The idea is that you can use black holes for propulsion, something that nobody thought before.. so more respect to the author! That is why he also mention the super lucky chance of find one by accident. But well, at least he was bother to put some "details" on how can be one created... Try to find some details in ZPE or FTL ships. Asteroid?? what asteroid? BTW, is incredible the amount of time you waste trying to point obvious issues for the practical BH creation when nobody was defending the idea or even commenting on that matter. And yes.. if we have one black hole.. then is possible in the long term to build a ship and use it to reach lightspeeds, I show you how in that case you can achieve light speed with 50% of efficiency or even less (when you said that was impossible). But now after so incredible long post.. you did not said nothing about that.. how is that possible? 750 years of travel.. Those are 30 generations.. How you keep them alive? With a machine that can take any atom and convert that to other atoms and 3d print any object they want? How you solve all the social issues over 750 years? How much take this ship to be made? What kind of tech appear in that time? Just an small increase in efficiency in your engines due tech, it will save 50 years at least, which is enough reason to always wait a bit longer before made it. More if you want to try a 750 year experiment with 200 dead guys (or grandchildren if you are lucky) So time ago I did a big post proving with logic and ton of evidence.. that we are close to make an IA (15, 30, or 60 years, does not matter), and this IA once created evolves exponentially, this mean that in few years, lets said 50 more, it will reach GOD status, this mean that it will know everything that can be know in the universe (you just need a big of logic and common sense to prove that). That is just a little example of how huge can be your error of just ignore the effect of technology evolution over 750 years. Ok. now your colonizers number increase, your travel time double, its crear that you dont see any problem with that last... Forgetting that crazy factor.. yeah the ship design seems fine. But I see wrong some things.. you dont have stages to release cargo that you would not need. Something that any rocket should have, more if you want to cross interstellar distances. I will use lower number of nuclear reactors (which reduce weight) and increase the acceleration time that is very small compared to the trip % without acceleration.

Why nuclear will have more sense if no even here has much more sense than solar at 320w/m2 annual average, taking into account that nuclear reactors can waste hundreds of thousands liters of water on evaporation cooling. In 3 or 5 years solar panels will become cheaper than nuclear energy on earth. Is all about cost of each technology.. it does not matter if with few tons of nuclear fuel you can produce a lot of "heat" if your initial cost is huge and your lifetime operation does not pay off. Me either, but I will like to compare all these options with good analysis in each case.. From energy cost, habitat cost, resources cost, etc. Then we can have an idea what planet or locations has more sense.

Why? it has more sense than the other way from my perspective. Because a "," is more notorious than a "." The same for the long and short scale with "billions and trillions", our way has more sense from the math point of view and name. I can continue with the date: month-day-year.. what is the sense of that? Almost no US standard has common sense.

You dont need an airship.. and you dont need to dock with the floating cargo, you just need to pick it up and take it to the base. You dont need to drop it from space in a way that it will fall close to the base, you just need to point more or less to a certain latitude, it will float at lower height to reduce your balloon requirements and there is no acid there. the east to west currents are slower than at high altitudes, an airship drone can pick it up and rise altitude to carry the cargo to the colony without wasting much energy, just compressing and expanding gases to change its buoyancy. So depending the cargo, you can choose the best altitude to float, an average can be 35km, in where the temperature is 180c and you lift 7kg for each m3 of hydrogen, this mean that a 100T package only needs 2T of hydrogen and a balloon with 30m of diameter, that seems a lot to you?.. if it does.. let me tell you that each of the 3 main chute of the Orion Capsule (10T) has 35m of diameter! Better than mars, I will prove it in the other topic when I include and explain estimatives cost of all other necessary things. I guess you can get cheaper resources (all kind) from venus than mars. You did not read the main post where I explain all this? Is in the point 1 You dont need pressure resistant containers if you dont have a pressure differential.. This machines are not manned, they are teleoperated from the colonies. And almost all materials (no gases) are not compressible at those pressures. The effect of pressure is absolutly zero. Materials just start to change properties after many GIGAs of pressure. Close to 1 millon times higher pressure than venus surface. As I said, the only problem that probes (from earth) might have on venus is the lack of energy sources (no much sunlight). But as I explain in that link, if you have colonies there, you can solve that with many ways that are very cheap. Ask to the Real Chute modder, maybe is hard to combine chute surfaces animation and make it to work fine with FAR mod.

Why you will use a nuclear reactor in mercury? Even on earth PV with 320w/m2 anual average will have the same cost than nuclear in just 3 year, on mercury you have 9000w/m2 (then discount planet rotation and cooling). And nuclear is even expensive there than earth because you dont have cold spot. It has similar drawbacks than mars on low latitudes, PV is the best choice in Mercury by far, they just need a small radiator, nothing too fancy.. PV are not real thermal machines, they improve some efficiency working on low temperatures but no much, and they can be designed to work at high temperatures with good efficiency. We already use some of those on PV concentrators. On berm, if you already can choose some location in which you dont need to do nothing to block light, why no go for it? But yes.. you can use that and expand your posible locations on mercury, some idea?

You have the import cost and the export cost.. In mars you can export cheap but the import is expensive because you need much more deltav than venus. DeltaV to venus is low the same than time windows, and you can use aerocapture.. On mars you need more deltav and you need to use supersonic retropropulsion and then extra deltav to land. What is the thing a colony need most for its early development? Cheap import. If you want to export something from venus, you choice the most expensive material and still payoff. Once you are well established, deltav does not matter anymore.. tech eventually solve those things.. we are very close to achieve it with spacex and later with skylon in the future. Better idea just use that hydrogen with a fuel cell to produce work, but in venus case as I explain, there is a better reaction that use the co2 from venus. But that is only for probes that are send it from here, there is no need to use those stuff with machinery if you already live there and you have access to different sources of energy. Then let's not choose those materials.. But there are more materials that resist those temperatures than materials who don't. Here there is a list of all the elements and their melting point. http://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart-elements/melting-point.htm Then mostly all metals and alloys resist that. http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/melting-temperature-metals-d_860.html You has also a lot of different mix that are not metals that also resist that. Tethers, ceramics and even some plastics or almost all insulators as aerogels. Take a look to all the things that firefighter use. So the only way you can design something that does not resist venus temperatures, it is on purpose. We have millons of common products that we use all the time that resist that. Forget about any kind of terraformation, that is no practically possible. Besides, Venus is much better location to mine near asteroids or the asteroid belt. I explained already few pages back on this topic.

I did not follow you about the berm technique.. We are talking of colonies, no single missions. What colony location shows the best future potential after some development. One thing that I forget to mention on why I don't have an estimative for mars energy cost, is because I don't know how pure are the dry ice or Ice layers in the poles.. Any other dust or material will act as insulator which should be removed.

Ok, I have to admit that I did not look in the pole option too serious before, I make some research on its properties and I found a much better case of what I previous thought. First I will explain why I thought mars was a really bad case for energy. I always picture a mars colony on low latitudes (mars advocates always mention its 24 hours advantage), and I did not know how thick was the ice cap and dry ice cap. So living at low latitudes.. is a really bad option for a mars colony. Lets imagine the case after certain level of colony development. Energy production on mars: Solar: Mars receive half of earth energy on its surface, you need to clean more often solar panels and some dust storms can last upto 3 month in which you will need other options. Wind: There is an amazing lack of wind info on mars, I really can not understand after so many probes and landers sent there.. But it does not look good. Nuclear (or a different thermal machine): Thermal machines work using a heat spot and a cold spot, we lack of cold spot on low latitudes. We have 4 main thermal conduction options: conductive, convective, phase change and radiation. Conductive using the mars ground.. really bad.. soils are good insulators, each meter that the heat moves from your heat source, is a meter of insulation that we add. Convection does not help, mars atmosphere density is 60 times lower than earth, this mean around 60 times less heat transfer by convection. We can not evaporate water because we need it and there is not much at those locations. So you have only radiation, but only using 1 side of the radiator, not like in space that you can use both sides.. These are also covered by dust which reduce its emissivity coefficient. But well, if we go to the poles that is a different case, there is some km of Dry ice and Ice layers that can be exploited as cold sources like Peadar said.. I imagine a moving nuclear reactor with wheels and a large cooper plate with many holes pressing on the surface to evaporate the co2, or maybe a long pipe with a heat exchanger in the extreme transporting the liquid or gas thermal carried (in close system) which descent deeper and deeper, evaporated co2 or h2o can also help to increase the efficiency of the system. But there are some problems with nuclear.. Mars atmosphere mass is 204 times lower than earth's atmosphere. This mean that any pollution problem is 204 times more severe than earth, so all the safety measures should increase the cost of nuclear energy. A fukushima event might screw up the entire planet. Here is a list of all advantages to locate a colony in the poles vs equator (Is the same scientist who help to spread the venus cloud colonies idea, what I like of him is that is always free of anthropological concepts.. he always thinks outside the box) Energy options for other planets or locations (Earth cost =1): Mercury--> Colony location: big crater close to the poles to provide permanent shadow --> Solar panels with radiators --> Estimate cost: 0.4 Venus--> Colony location: floating in the clouds --> Wind turbines dragged by the colony 5 km below to harvest the wind gradient. --> Estimate cost: 0.4 Moon --> Colony location: The dark side receive more sunlight but you lost the earth view --> Solar Panels with storage (hydrogen) --> Estimate cost: 1.3 Mars --> Colony location: In the poles under the ice --> Nuclear --> Estimate cost: not sure. Asteroid Belt --> Colony Location: There --> Nuclear or Solar --> Estimate cost: 2.5 Europa --> Colony Location: Under the ice --> Nuclear --> Estimate cost: 0.8 Titan --> Colony Location: surface --> Nuclear (methane lakes as cold spot) --> Estimate cost 0.6 Enceladus --> Colony Location: under the ice --> Nuclear Producing and sealing big lakes under the ice --> Estimate cost 0.7 I add many other points of why a extraplanetary colony might have sense here: Funny.. is similar to what I always said. But you defend nasa projects cost, and many times is hard for you to understand some business cases in which many big companies look with interest.

You can use nuclear in enceladus which is better.

Yeah, and that is why nobody notice the biggest drawback on mars... "energy cost". I need to think a bit more on this.. But I guess mars will be the place with the energy bill more expensive of all .... Enceladus, Titan, Asteroid Belt, Venus, Moon, Mercury... all can produce energy more cheaper than mars.