Mars Colony Concept

[radonek]

4 hours ago, Darnok said:

My idea is not about self sustaining bio-sphere underground, it is about living space that would require medieval technology, like simple pickaxe, to make this space larger.

Having this we would need to send some criminals to this underground colony and they would do labor for food and air. While experienced colonists would install airlocks and more advanced equipment.

I smell ghost of Heinlein here :-) Problem with this is producing air and food for laborer is way more expensive and complicated then producing power for drilling machine, not to mention cost of bringing people there. Maybe if you have some magical propulsion to bring in supplies cheaper then maintaining robotic mining.

1 hour ago, NSEP said:

Know that, but better spacesuits, maybe?

Skintights? That one sure would make it easier to swing a shovel around, but hell, I wouldn't  want to be pressed into one for hours. And it does nothing to resolve main thing - maintaining shovel swinger, especially one draining liters of water.

Also, Elon Musk's Mars Colony Would Have a Horde of Mining Robots.

[Darnok]

9 minutes ago, radonek said:

I smell ghost of Heinlein here :-) Problem with this is producing air and food for laborer is way more expensive and complicated then producing power for drilling machine, not to mention cost of bringing people there. Maybe if you have some magical propulsion to bring in supplies cheaper then maintaining robotic mining.

I said it is not solution for self sustaining colony, it was only argument to point out that medieval tools could be used to make underground colony larger

As for costs and low tech... IMO basic steam engines would be enough for drilling machines, I know not medieval tech, but should be easy to replace broken parts. And this could be way to reuse/purify contaminated water.

[NSEP]

16 minutes ago, radonek said:

 

Skintights? That one sure would make it easier to swing a shovel around, but hell, I wouldn't  want to be pressed into one for hours. And it does nothing to resolve main thing - maintaining shovel swinger, especially one draining liters of water.

Also, Elon Musk's Mars Colony Would Have a Horde of Mining Robots.

Yeah im going for robots too now for my next mars colony.

[Darnok]

37 minutes ago, Chabadarl said:

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

You know that some people will do random crimes just for the chance to have a ticket on your mission ?
This is not the 19th century anymore : just make a television show, lots of people will come at the casting. Audience will be on top, especially with the risk of operation you are willing to take. You may have some legal issue but I can't think of a court that exend its juridiction to Mars. 

 

I didn't said you wouldn't be allowed to go to Mars willingly, only that for hard labor we could use criminals, because why not?

I am not huge fan of tv shows.

[Chabadarl]

1 minute ago, Darnok said:

I didn't said you wouldn't be allowed to go to Mars willingly, only that for hard labor we could use criminals, because why not?

I am not huge fan of tv shows.

And I say that some people will become criminals to go to Mars, even if it's a hard labor job...

[NSEP]

2 hours ago, Chabadarl said:

 

-A machine that extracts the Oxygen and Hydrogen from the water, for people to breathe and to use for liquid oxygen for the return mission. Also, storage tanks.

You can stock the hydrogen for fuel cells. I think it will be ligther than bringing a nuclear powerplant and way lighter that any form of battery.

 

Ok.

[Nibb31]

4 hours ago, Darnok said:

I didn't said you wouldn't be allowed to go to Mars willingly, only that for hard labor we could use criminals, because why not?

Because spending billions to send potentially uncooperative and unskilled labor to build and maintain vital equipment in a high-tech space colony is a recipe for disaster.

[Darnok]

17 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Because spending billions to send potentially uncooperative and unskilled labor to build and maintain vital equipment in a high-tech space colony is a recipe for disaster.

They would have two options, be cooperative or they will die. Since their lives depends on each other they would motivate each other to do their job right.

If thief can disable your car-alarm and steel car then he is skilled enough to drive mars-rover for few kilometres and prepare ground or unload equipment for next experiment site.

Mars colony, with criminals from Earth or without them, will need laws and punishments... what if someone steels something? What if one person kill another? That is also interesting part of colony concept

Edited October 25, 2016 by Darnok

[radonek]

7 hours ago, Darnok said:

They would have two options, be cooperative or they will die.

If they die cost of bringing them there is wasted. Again, this is only workable with magical propulsion that will bring down cost of interplanetary travel to near zero. With chemical rocket propulsion, every human send there is gonna have price tag of tens of millions. Also there is the small thing of crew being totally uncontrollable - if one of them decides to  kill everyone, there is little you can do to stop it. You want a working colony or movie plot? :-P
 

[Darnok]

3 hours ago, radonek said:

if one of them decides to  kill everyone, there is little you can do to stop it.

You can give everyone of them a gun, bullets are little and pretty good at stopping murderers

[Chabadarl]

1 hour ago, Darnok said:

You can give everyone of them a gun, bullets are little and pretty good at stopping murderers

Are you from the NRA ?
Giving people gun is the very first thing that can make people murderers....

 

I really don't see the point of using criminals when you will find over-competent, multi-skilled and very motivated contributors that are willingly going up there.

This is not a colony to Australia or America where dozens will die during the trip because of diseases or starvation with no hope to ever see or communicate with the ones left behind and you will not need a large number of colonists to ensure your domination on the land you have conquered for your crown.... 

 

[Darnok]

20 minutes ago, Chabadarl said:

Giving people gun is the very first thing that can make people murderers....

Right because they can't murder you with knife, bat or piece of steel
If having gun means you are murderer then you should be very afraid of every police officer or soldier in your country.

Mars or any other colony is going to need guns, so people would be able to protect them selves from criminals...

 

20 minutes ago, Chabadarl said:

I really don't see the point of using criminals when you will find over-competent, multi-skilled and very motivated contributors that are willingly going up there.

 

...since you want to sent there skilled volontiers, you can't assume that each one of them is going to like each other person. If colony is going to last longer than year or two, then some people may argue over things, just like on Earth plus psychological factor of constant danger and little space could make weaker minds confused and more aggressive.

Without basic technology for defence against hostile people you would risk lives of all members of colony.

 

 

 

[Nibb31]

You must be trolling here, right? Sending instable personalities to Mars and giving them guns? What could possibly go wrong?

The people sent to Mars in the construction phase are going to be highly skilled and trained engineers and techs. Unless a government suddenly gets politically pressured into the venture (I don't see how that could happen), these people will be corporate employees. They will also be highly paid, because a tour of several years on Mars is going to be dangerous and hard emotionally. Sending them there is going to be super expensive. Keeping them alive there is going to cost even more.

Do you really think that people can't be locked up for a year without going bonkers and killing each other? What kind of world do you live in?

There will be no guns, because that would be a waste of payload and also because guns are a stupid idea when you live in pressurized hab modules. The main driver for peacekeeping in those stages will be peer-pressure, and unless something goes dramatically wrong in the hiring process, that should be more than enough.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Nibb31

[NSEP]

Sending criminals and guns to a mars colony is the strangest and dumbest idea i ever heard while talking about science and spaceflight.

[Darnok]

24 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

You must be trolling here, right? Sending instable personalities to Mars and giving them guns? What could possibly go wrong?

 

Criminals wouldn't have guns... read again, I was saying that guns are for volontiers.

[radonek]

Guys, you are completely missing the point. Guns are not important. All Darnok's "volunteer" crew will die-off in matter of weeks in series of simple equipment failures. End of story, guns never enter the equation.

And no, you can't have crew constantly check all their equipment. We are talking 100% artificial environment here, anything and everything around can be dangerous if mishandled. Just a breathing mix can kill you in several different ways. Whole venture is gonna be damn dangerous even if everybody work to their best. Crime is unaffordable luxury under such circumstances.
 

[Chabadarl]

That could be a new forum's game thread : Mars Cluedo.

The "murderer" has killed  the "victim(s)" using "the weapon of choice" in "the location of the murder".

Ex:

Jeb has killed Bill with a KAS strut in the VAB.

The pilot has killed everybody brutally venting the lifespace Module. 

Valentina has killed Jeb firing a septatron splashed down in the moutains...

[Darnok]

3 hours ago, radonek said:

Guys, you are completely missing the point. Guns are not important. All Darnok's "volunteer" crew will die-off in matter of weeks in series of simple equipment failures. End of story, guns never enter the equation.

It is only matter of scale of colony.

3 hours ago, radonek said:

We are talking 100% artificial environment here, anything and everything around can be dangerous if mishandled.
 

Large cities like New York seem as well 100% artificial, yet people commit crimes there

It is not matter of where colony is located (US was colony as well?), only its size and way of thinking that "maybe nobody finds out" and I get more food, more oxygen, more whatever is expensive and desirable by society.
People are even buying fake facebook likes (which is not only 100% artificial, but also 100% virtual) and you expect that nobody is going to steal anything in Mars colony?

[kerbiloid]

On 25.10.2016 at 5:53 PM, Darnok said:

could use criminals, because why not?

Cramped overcrowded habitat, poor food, an hour of sunlight per day, hard monotonous work etc. Find the three differences.

While civilian volunteers imitate 500 day flight to Mars and get tired, some of those gentlemen have already flown twice to Jupiter and back, and the most patient of them are reaching Pluto.

[radonek]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Cramped overcrowded habitat, poor food, an hour of sunlight per day, hard monotonous work etc. Find the three differences.

While civilian volunteers imitate 500 day flight to Mars and get tired, some of those gentlemen have already flown twice to Jupiter and back, and the most patient of them are reaching Pluto.

Now this is finally a good point. Now you just have to invent some way to turn, erm, gentleman, into highly qualified specialists and motivate them to repeat their experience without being forced.
 

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, radonek said:

Now this is finally a good point. Now you just have to invent some way to turn, erm, gentleman, into highly qualified specialists and motivate them to repeat their experience without being forced.

Nothing new under Moon Kuiper Belt.  Specialization of labour is the key.
"Gentlemen" will motivate the specialists, specialists will do the work.

[radonek]

I see. So, bad part of Darnok's plan is not in having guns, but giving them to bad people. I mean good people. Which are bad for this, so bad people are good… you know, this actually seems like good idea. Except if it's good, it is actually bad idea? My sense of right and wrong just got shortcircuited.
 

[tater]

A more sensible Mars plan would not involve sending people. Even colonization is better done by robots than people.

Send maker-bots. Build destination. 

After there is someplace to go, THEN send people (because there is no place to go on Mars until there is a self-contained habitat built).

 

Things like inflatables are obviously easy to do even with people around, but truly large and innovative colony habs would be better built by robots, and this is even true once people are there. Outside is nasty, and dirty. Every EVA is a chance for the doors to get gunked up by dust, which will then abrade surfaces, etc. Large human work would be best done with rovers, frankly, and they can dock, and the people never leave a shirtsleeves environment. 

[kerbiloid]

1. Wait for thermonuke reactors. This gives you Superpowers/Abilities to vaporise everything by heating, to keep the plasma cloud in magnetic field and to sort ions with magnetic fields.
2. Build a heater/separator where you can heat and split any piece of trash into ions of pure elements and separate them into different containers. Use any stone, any piece of useless trash, sewers pulp to get thinnest metal powders (iron, alumina, calcium, magnesium, etc.).
3. Mix these powders to get the mixed powders for 3d printer additive technology plant. One for wires, another for ceramics, etc.
4. Destroy all your mining and metallurgical plants, forget this overcomplicated hell as a frightening dream.
5. Recycle all your trash, adding random stones from the closest rocks, reuse anything you procude, dramatically decreasing the need in new resources,
6. Develop a standard Construction Yard containing thermonukereactor, magnetic heater/separator, powders mixer, 3d printer additive device.
7. Clone this Yard and send it wherever you want on Earth, Moon, Mars, asteroids, etc.
8. Let them do converting useless regolith into ceramic blocks and mechanical parts.
9. Build anything anywhere.
10. ?????
11. Profit! Extraterrestrial colonies! Occasional mining facilities for rare elements, because you need neither iron, nor alumina from the Moon (you have enough useless stones right here), and most probably no children would grow up alive and healthy in low-G. So, anyway live on the Earth or rotating orbital stations and use robots and avatarbots.

P.S.
Imho, btw, this is the only way to make the notorious He-3 on the Moon really useful. Convert the regolith into ceramic bricks using this He-3 to power the Construction Yard.
P.P.S.
Send such plant to another star and make it clone itself and build huge alumina antennas to study the system and send you data.
P.P.P.S.
Repeat P.P.S.

Edited October 31, 2016 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

On ‎31‎.‎10‎.‎2016 at 9:34 AM, kerbiloid said:

Build a heater/separator where you can heat and split any piece of trash into ions of pure elements and separate them into different containers. Use any stone, any piece of useless trash, sewers pulp to get thinnest metal powders (iron, alumina, calcium, magnesium, etc.).

Supercritical water oxidation is a currently available piece of tech that does almost that.