Mars Colonization Discussion Thread

[Green Baron]

5 hours ago, tater said:

To be fair, the chart says "Awarded Global Commercial Launch..." This means contracts to launch. It's not impossible that SpaceX has an over 50% share of contracts, particularly given the post-accident delays that extended their backlog.

I don't have an educated opinion on it past just reading the header use of "awarded," however. 

Morning :-)

Nor do i, i can't judge the significance or know the source of the table but it fits well into the (in my eyes overhasty) thinking that a Marsian colony can somehow be a real thing in the medium future (i say 30 years).

 

 

My general thoughts:

This is all based on a few presentation slides of a visionary guy who surely has his successes (F9 is a giant leap imo), but in general tends to dream a little ahead of reality or communicate without a real plan ("steal underpants").

I mean in KSP you slab together an ISRU ship, fly to wherever, timewarp till the tanks are full and then fly back. Jeb's moronic grin will be with you all the way and F5/F9 if you landed at the wrong spot is routine. Reality is a little different, right now there is no prototype, little to no knowledge about density or concentration (heck even availability) of resources.

Even on earth with its rich crust and resource pools everywhere the exploration is a work for geologists and geographers, then engineers to judge the how, when and with what before work can begin. In my opinion, thinking that one just lands, hangs out too funnels one tagged CO2 and the other H2O, suck in whatever and do some blackbox magic that fills your tank will not work. It might just be that H2O once was there but now is gone or out of reach. Or there are traces but in the next valley over yonder.

If you want to do exploration to check the feasaibilty for a colony to support more than a few specially trained people for more than a few years you must do more than send probes and automated laboratories. You'll need data, charts, analyses, blabla, like how much of what is where and how can it be obtained. Technologies to actually obtain things and do something with them to make them useful. That's a universities job and one for a huge industry !

Even Jeb looses his facial features for a second when thinking of it :-)

Edited November 4, 2017 by Green Baron

[DAL59]

10 hours ago, PB666 said:

Coming out of Mars those wings do not offer any advantage.

Are you using ksp to disprove it?

Or X-plane? 

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars-entry.mp4

 

4 hours ago, Green Baron said:

H2O

Mars air has 100% humitidy 24/7

[Green Baron]

10 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Mars air has 100% humitidy 24/7

That would still be a bit more than nothing.

But it can't be. Why ?

Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars#/media/File:PIA16915-MarsCuriosityRover-Humidity-GaleCrater.jpg

[DAL59]

 

[Green Baron]

Sorry, i can't see the link, javascript error.

May you want to clarify your thoughts on it, because "100% 24/7" is not true, in contrary, sorry :-)

It is not impossible that rel. hum. reaches 100% in low areas at night at very low temperatures (acc. to NASA). Still absolute hum. is very low, i doubt it is technically usable but i do not know that. Last i heard that irl timewarp is buggy :-)

 

Edited November 4, 2017 by Green Baron

[DAL59]

Very buggy.  Sometimes, your mass increases!

Anyway, there is plenty of non-liquid water on Mars.  

[PB666]

7 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Are you using ksp to disprove it?

Or X-plane? 

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars-entry.mp4

 

Mars air has 100% humitidy 24/7

That is a useless, there is not a chance that it would work. If the breaking forces are as great as they say they could never turn a wing sideways.

Second wings that create lift also create drag. So on launch want your engines to provide lift, not the wings, they provide more weight to carry up. As the speed increases and they begin to create dynamic force the only force you want comes from the aft section of the wing, but either the wing is creating drag on the fore or or lift (pushing the craft over). Basic physics.

 

The more SpaceX throws out baseless concept material the more I distrust their opines about reaching Mars.

 

 

1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

Very buggy.  Sometimes, your mass increases!

Anyway, there is plenty of non-liquid water on Mars.  

Please stop distributing misinformation. Plenty is relative. The Pacific Ocean has plenty of salted-up freshwater.

[Green Baron]

There is much more water in the Sahara air and a little less than half the Co2. Could one fill a spaceship tank there ? ;-)

Edit nonsense.I forgot a zero. It is less than a tenth of co2 on earth. 0s do matter.

Edited November 4, 2017 by Green Baron

[DAL59]

26 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Could one fill a spaceship tank there ?

No, because there's no glaciers!  

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

Plenty is relative.

True, but there is still more than enough ice for millions.  

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

The Pacific Ocean has plenty of salted-up freshwater.

Desalination does wonders.

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Morning :-)

Nor do i, i can't judge the significance or know the source of the table but it fits well into the (in my eyes overhasty) thinking that a Marsian colony can somehow be a real thing in the medium future (i say 30 years).

 

 

My general thoughts:

This is all based on a few presentation slides of a visionary guy who surely has his successes (F9 is a giant leap imo), but in general tends to dream a little ahead of reality or communicate without a real plan ("steal underpants").

I mean in KSP you slab together an ISRU ship, fly to wherever, timewarp till the tanks are full and then fly back. Jeb's moronic grin will be with you all the way and F5/F9 if you landed at the wrong spot is routine. Reality is a little different, right now there is no prototype, little to no knowledge about density or concentration (heck even availability) of resources.

Even on earth with its rich crust and resource pools everywhere the exploration is a work for geologists and geographers, then engineers to judge the how, when and with what before work can begin. In my opinion, thinking that one just lands, hangs out too funnels one tagged CO2 and the other H2O, suck in whatever and do some blackbox magic that fills your tank will not work. It might just be that H2O once was there but now is gone or out of reach. Or there are traces but in the next valley over yonder.

If you want to do exploration to check the feasaibilty for a colony to support more than a few specially trained people for more than a few years you must do more than send probes and automated laboratories. You'll need data, charts, analyses, blabla, like how much of what is where and how can it be obtained. Technologies to actually obtain things and do something with them to make them useful. That's a universities job and one for a huge industry !

Even Jeb looses his facial features for a second when thinking of it :-)

If you say south pole style research base in 30 years, yes that is plausible, one who produces fuel for return missions and an faction of their own food also likely if you have the base.
Not much more as its no need for much more 

Now Mars moons might be more economical interesting for mining, the cost of going to Mars orbit is low and the science pays for the Mars operation, letting you refuel in Mars orbit would save fuel, it might well make sense to export fuel to LEO.  

 

[PB666]

2 hours ago, DAL59 said:

No, because there's no glaciers!  

True, but there is still more than enough ice for millions.  

Desalination does wonders.

The ice on mars is largely frozen carbon dioxide. The water on mars is 100% brine that crystalizes in extreme cold and flows under sunlight or geothermal heating. A comparable water source would be a salt flat on the edge of the dead sea.

 

[PB666]

Given 1 human.

Required space 2 meters by 1 meter by 1/2 meter. Biological weight about .08 tons (naked)
Oxygen intake per year 0.785 tons
Oil equivilent in weight Steric Acid (the most common fat and most compact energy source in human body) 0.285 tons
Minimum capsule size for storing oxygen and food and one human. 2 tons. (this includes physical housing, airlocks, waste water recycling/AC/heating solar panels) <---- very conservative probably 10 times higher.
Minimum coffin that can keep human alive for one year 3.5 tons in weight including weight of human.

Shipping one coffinized human to mars from LEO and back into LMO before docking with return vessel. 91 tons In LEO (using 5760 dV to transfer and circularize at mars, 5250dV to land on mars and return to orbit) using Metholox (ISP = 375 although the long term storage method for oxygen is not included in weight). Sending another vessel to dock with first vessel in orbit and return human to earth, 50 tons. Getting 150 tons to orbit ~ 7.5 Falcon 9 launches one BFR (vapor rocketry).

The lunar module weighed 16.2 tons and housed 2 individuals for a few days. 8487 of that was devoted to fuel. Thus 8 tons was divided between 2 humans or 4 tons each. This was for a stay of maximum of a week and was not designed to break against a martian atmosphere.  So a more reliable estimate of the amount of mass required for structure and other components is 10 tons which means to get a human to mars and return him back to earth would require 1kT/human of payload in LEO. You fulfill Elon's dream of dying on Mars for about 0.5kT since you only need to feed him for 8 months.

A Nasa Style mission to Mars (3 individuals including one that stays in orbit) Probably 2.5kT in low earth orbit. The non-expendible is $62,000,000/15.1t in LEO translates to 4.1 million dollars per ton at present cost. The cost of sending 1 man to mars and getting him off  4.1 billion dollars, slightly less per person to send 3 to Mars, 2 down and 1 in orbit. around 10 billion dollars. This does not include the research and development costs or the cost to fabricate the parts required to get their. My guess is such an venture would run 0.2 trillion dollars or so. The cost of sending a 1000 people to Mars (assuming the pooped filled ships are not dumped in the pacific), probably 3 trillion dollars at nominal cost basis.

Note a  previous post that if you create a highly eccentric orbit around earth the transfer cost to mars is 2460 m/s, but requires a refueler that essentially uses the energy require to reach GTO and transfers fuel before alternings its course to crash back into earth. If you launch an essentially empty ship into Orbit, you can refuel in LEO, then create an eccentric orbit, refuel again and transfer occupant before burning to Mars. In this scenario you decouple a fuel tank (or in Apollo style, a pilot and back home fuel) in Mars orbit then you land collect sample, connect with fuel ship where pilot joins landing crew, decouples and burns back to Earth, 9 months later they arrive at home. In this fashion you can break the launches up into at least 4. The Lander assembly, the orbit assembly, LEO fuel to eccentric orbit, eccentric orbit fuel to Mars and return. For such a 3 man mission you would have on average launch 625t of LEO payload. The BFR is 150t at LEO, which means that alot more work needs to be done.

Again, this assumes that you cut the Mars landing dV cost from 4000-5000 to 500 or so by some 'handwaving' means. Without a defined means of cutting the landing dV the assume weight of fuel for mass of payload is 9.17 to 1 and thus a lunar module size lander would need 100t of fuel (substantially larger engines and fuel tank carrying capacity).

As long as Space X is talking about rockets in the 150t range . . . . . . . .we are dreaming about Mars. When they start testing structures and engines with Payloads in the 1kT magnitude, I'll start taking those Mars-land-die dreams seriously.

As for Me, I got 1.063 kT into LEO today (launch Mass 25kT). But im going to send Kelon Kusk to Mercury, because we know there is icey-water there! But then Kelon is a Kebal and he can live indefinitely in a 0.7t landing craft. They don't need food or water, they don't poop or pee so . . . . . . .

Looking at my counts it took RS-68A 22 + 28 + 48 engines, an additional liquid fueled two engine boosters (24)

[Green Baron]

9 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Desalination does wonders.

No. :-)

[Diche Bach]

16 hours ago, PB666 said:

Given 1 human.

Required space 2 meters by 1 meter by 1/2 meter. Biological weight about .08 tons (naked)
Oxygen intake per year 0.785 tons
Oil equivilent in weight Steric Acid (the most common fat and most compact energy source in human body) 0.285 tons
Minimum capsule size for storing oxygen and food and one human. 2 tons. (this includes physical housing, airlocks, waste water recycling/AC/heating solar panels) <---- very conservative probably 10 times higher.
Minimum coffin that can keep human alive for one year 3.5 tons in weight including weight of human.

Shipping one coffinized human to mars from LEO and back into LMO before docking with return vessel. 91 tons In LEO (using 5760 dV to transfer and circularize at mars, 5250dV to land on mars and return to orbit) using Metholox (ISP = 375 although the long term storage method for oxygen is not included in weight). Sending another vessel to dock with first vessel in orbit and return human to earth, 50 tons. Getting 150 tons to orbit ~ 7.5 Falcon 9 launches one BFR (vapor rocketry).

The lunar module weighed 16.2 tons and housed 2 individuals for a few days. 8487 of that was devoted to fuel. Thus 8 tons was divided between 2 humans or 4 tons each. This was for a stay of maximum of a week and was not designed to break against a martian atmosphere.  So a more reliable estimate of the amount of mass required for structure and other components is 10 tons which means to get a human to mars and return him back to earth would require 1kT/human of payload in LEO. You fulfill Elon's dream of dying on Mars for about 0.5kT since you only need to feed him for 8 months.

A Nasa Style mission to Mars (3 individuals including one that stays in orbit) Probably 2.5kT in low earth orbit. The non-expendible is $62,000,000/15.1t in LEO translates to 4.1 million dollars per ton at present cost. The cost of sending 1 man to mars and getting him off  4.1 billion dollars, slightly less per person to send 3 to Mars, 2 down and 1 in orbit. around 10 billion dollars. This does not include the research and development costs or the cost to fabricate the parts required to get their. My guess is such an venture would run 0.2 trillion dollars or so. The cost of sending a 1000 people to Mars (assuming the pooped filled ships are not dumped in the pacific), probably 3 trillion dollars at nominal cost basis.

Note a  previous post that if you create a highly eccentric orbit around earth the transfer cost to mars is 2460 m/s, but requires a refueler that essentially uses the energy require to reach GTO and transfers fuel before alternings its course to crash back into earth. If you launch an essentially empty ship into Orbit, you can refuel in LEO, then create an eccentric orbit, refuel again and transfer occupant before burning to Mars. In this scenario you decouple a fuel tank (or in Apollo style, a pilot and back home fuel) in Mars orbit then you land collect sample, connect with fuel ship where pilot joins landing crew, decouples and burns back to Earth, 9 months later they arrive at home. In this fashion you can break the launches up into at least 4. The Lander assembly, the orbit assembly, LEO fuel to eccentric orbit, eccentric orbit fuel to Mars and return. For such a 3 man mission you would have on average launch 625t of LEO payload. The BFR is 150t at LEO, which means that alot more work needs to be done.

Again, this assumes that you cut the Mars landing dV cost from 4000-5000 to 500 or so by some 'handwaving' means. Without a defined means of cutting the landing dV the assume weight of fuel for mass of payload is 9.17 to 1 and thus a lunar module size lander would need 100t of fuel (substantially larger engines and fuel tank carrying capacity).

As long as Space X is talking about rockets in the 150t range . . . . . . . .we are dreaming about Mars. When they start testing structures and engines with Payloads in the 1kT magnitude, I'll start taking those Mars-land-die dreams seriously.

As for Me, I got 1.063 kT into LEO today (launch Mass 25kT). But im going to send Kelon Kusk to Mercury, because we know there is icey-water there! But then Kelon is a Kebal and he can live indefinitely in a 0.7t landing craft. They don't need food or water, they don't poop or pee so . . . . . . .

Looking at my counts it took RS-68A 22 + 28 + 48 engines, an additional liquid fueled two engine boosters (24)

What if the humans are popsiclized before loading?

 

[DAL59]

Actually freezing people is not doable with technology we will have in the near future.  However, topor, where you just sleep for a long time like a bear, might be very near term, and is being studied and funded by NASA.    

[Diche Bach]

58 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Actually freezing people is not doable with technology we will have in the near future.  However, topor, where you just sleep for a long time like a bear, might be very near term, and is being studied and funded by NASA.    

"Zombie Dogs"

[Green Baron]

Wow. What happened to their brains and are they still alive ? I read they lack volunteers for human experiments ... no wonder. Quite a lot of dogs were less lucky.

Mengele reborn ? No, that goes too far, but somehow at the limit of what ethics allow, or not ?

Edited November 5, 2017 by Green Baron

[Diche Bach]

12 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Wow. What happened to their brains and are they still alive ? I read they lack volunteers for human experiments ... no wonder. Quite a lot of dogs were less lucky.

Mengele reborn ? No, that goes too far, but somehow at the limit of what ethics allow, or not ?

I suspect it is largely paid for on Federal grants, and long-term it may well improve the lives of countless millions of humans and other animals. Not an area of specialization for me, but I'm glad someone is doing it, and also hope they are being held closely accountable to human and animal subjects and all research ethics and safety standards.

The article is vague but apparently a "minority" of the dogs suffered brain damage. I'm a dog lover (animal lover, no heck . . . LIFE lover!) so if it seemed to be mere sadism I'd be highly critical.

Fact is: cost-effective, reliable cryogenics is likely to solve a large fraction of the "how to get humans to other celestial bodies" problems. If every passenger only needs 1/25th of the "living space," 1/1000ths of the nutrients and gases, and 50% of the power (not to mention the benefits to sanity, as well as possibly longevity, and limiting micro-gravity exposure) that a conscious ambulatory passenger/crew needs, well those are some pretty sizeable operational gains. Perhaps not cost-effective for trips to Mars, but for more distant destinations . . . maybe, eventually.

Not to mention for survival situations. Catastrophic failure of some sort means death by asphyxiation/starvation/exposure/dehydration are a certainty before rescue can arrive? Well if the mechanisms and power plant that run the cryogenics still function = life boat.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Diche Bach
ADDIT

[DAL59]

Even normal topor, the kind NASA is studying, would mean you only would need several hundred calories of nutrient injection a day, which wouldn't actually take up that much room.

http://spaceworkseng.com/torpor-faq/

[ChrisSpace]

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 2:00 AM, tater said:

The answer depends on knowing what the long term effects are of 0.38g. If that gravity is compatible with human flourishing, then I think that people might someday live on Mars.

From my research, it appears that the "lower limit" for long-term human survival is somehwere between 0.2 and 0.35g. But I could be wrong.

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 4:24 AM, Spaceception said:

If people are worried about jobs, colonizing a freaking planet should do more than suffice. We'd need more educated people, but I think it would have a positive feedback loop, and science/math would be focused on more, just like during the Apollo era.

We need more educated people in a lot of industries here on Earth too. But I see your point.

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 4:49 AM, Bill Phil said:

I'm more in the orbital colonies camp, but I do think Mars will be colonized eventually. But that would be after decades, if not centuries, of perfecting (mostly) closed loop life support systems.

For anyone interested, you should take a look at this:

http://www.nss.org/settlement/physicstoday.htm

Certainly a good point. Raw materials for building and manufacturing things could be aquired from the Belt, so that solves that problem.

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 5:14 AM, tater said:

This would be a useful place to redirect arguments about standard tropes of Mars colonization.

Ie:

1. Is there a plausible economic model for trade with Mars, ever? (maybe in the distant future?)

2. Is there a plausible economic reason for the initial effort? (no, lol)

3. Are there alternatives to Mars? (I'm with @Bill Phil on orbital habitats)

4. What would the logistics look like to establish such a colony?

1. Probably.

2. Maybe.

3. Venus, the Moon, L-points, the Belt, the Galilean moons, Titan, etc etc.

4. Complicated.

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 7:01 AM, tater said:

I don't see the distant solar system as a place for colonization, ever, frankly.

Isaac Arthur recently made a video on the topic of colonizing Titan. It's actually a good idea, depending on your definition of "colonization".

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 7:04 AM, kerbiloid said:

The only humans' colony is the Earth, forever.
(Unless they find one more Earth at some another star).

Unless the temperature, atmospheric pressure, atmospheric composition, radiation levels and so on are all perfect for human nabitation (spoiler alert: they won't be), even the new "Earth" will need to be terraformed. And considering the distances involved, it might just be easier to terraform Venus or Mars.

 

[ChrisSpace]

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 8:24 AM, DerekL1963 said:

And all this presumes that Mars doesn't end up like Antarctica, where private residence is forbidden and you'll simply be placed on the next ship outbound (in cuffs if need be) if you try.

I'm highly doubtful of this. Mars has no native ecosystems that need protecting, and it's overexploitation won't do any harm to Earth.

On ‎7‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 12:24 AM, tater said:

Historically, oceans did not separate people, they linked people. After 1620, the number of ships crossing the Atlantic skyrocketed, eventually there were literally hundreds of ships at sea at any given moment in the Atlantic, sometimes thousands.

1620 was 128 years after Columbus. That's a long time for things to slowly build up.

On ‎7‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 12:24 AM, tater said:

All that said, Musk has said that his primary reason for accumulating wealth is to fund this project. Bezos has a somewhat coincident goal (millions of humans living and working in space is certainly colonization, even if orbital). The question is, of course, is a few 10s of billions sufficient for realizing this goal? I tend to think not.

Of course a few tens of billions aren't enough for the million-population goal, but a few dozen or even a hundred is certainly doable.

On ‎7‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 3:14 AM, GreenWolf said:

I expect all of you are familiar with the extreme delta-v requirements necessary for landing or launching something on a planet.

This isn't a problem if you have some large-scale orbital infrastructure, like a space elevator or "Orbital Ring".

On ‎7‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 3:14 AM, GreenWolf said:

If you have the technology to create a closed-cycle life support system that is self-sustaining (or needs only a relatively small amount of occasional materials inputs) and capable of indefinitely supporting human habitation in space, why would you go to the trouble of building it on the surface of another planet, which would require you to haul everything up and down two gravity wells and across vast interplanetary distances?

Gravity? Well, Mars doesn't have very much of that in the first place, and it's trivial to build a counter-weight and tether system to provide centrifugal gravity.

Minerals? Maybe, but anything you can get from Mars, you can get far more easily from asteroids. In fact, there's a lot of things you can get from asteroids that you can't get from Mars, like phosphorus.

Water? Same deal as before, get your ice from comets and asteroids.

Radiation shielding? Here Mars has a slight advantage, in that it has more space available to put stuff beneath several meters of rock. But it's not too hard to add some layers of shielding to a spacecraft. If you really want to go the distance, you can hollow out an asteroid and use that as your living space.

While Mars still has it's benefits, I certainly see your point.

[ChrisSpace]

On ‎9‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 2:33 AM, regex said:

I see that a lot as a reason for people being in space, in newer fiction especially. Writers have moved away from MacGuffins like mining magnetic monopoles and such to simply effing up Earth, usually through human intervention like war or global climate change, or a combination of both, to propel our species into the "more habitable"areas of the solar system.

You'd need to ruin Earth quite a lot to make offworld colonization more favourable.

On ‎16‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 10:45 PM, TheGuyNamedAlan said:

who knows, we could get to mars in about 10 years or so.

Possible, but highly unlikely.

On ‎18‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 12:24 AM, PB666 said:

Ask yourself the basic question. . . . who would conceive and raise offspring on Mars or on a Venusian cloud floater? Before you ask that question think about the practicality of raising offspring at the south pole. Hey Johnny go outside and play,  . . . not. Diaper duty takes on a whole new meaning in a sealed container. Romantic, say go live with Inuvet citizens through a cold canadian winter. Then you are talking about colonization potentials.

In a large enough habitat, this isn't really a problem.

On ‎18‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 12:24 AM, PB666 said:

I should also point out that Mars has a moon that about to disintegrate and bombard the surface, survival of inhabitants would be unlikely. So as a backup to earth its not the place.

"About to" is a long way away. And if you have the ability to build a large colony on Mars, you also probably have the ability to push Phobos into a higher orbit.

On ‎18‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 7:15 AM, DAL59 said:

The south pole has 6 months of darkness, so you can't grow food there.  Mars has a 24 hour day, so you can grow food.  Mars also feels warmer than Antarctica, because the air is too thin to wick away heat.  

The air may not carry as much coldness, but the ground certainly does.

On ‎18‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 4:40 PM, Nibb31 said:

Mars' regolith is pretty toxic. You're not going to be walking on it,  breathing air that's in contact with it, or eating food that uses it as a substrate.

So you can grow potatoes in it, but you can't walk on it?!

On ‎23‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 5:32 AM, Streetwind said:

To start with, he outlines that the following should happen:
- The USA exits the Outer Space Treaty, thereby becoming able to declare themselves owner of property in space
- The USA invites its numerous allies to also exit the OST, and instead join them in their efforts, so that a new power block is formed that can hold its own against the UN and the rest of the world
- In return, each country joining would receive a guarantee along the lines of "own 1% of the solar system" (exact details up for negotiation)
- The various countries would then sell or lease parts of their stakes to private companies for money, or form state owned companies dedicated to resource exploitation
- Space exploration would be driven primarily by market forces - in other words, if there's money to be made, people will be all over it
- The USA uses its vast amounts of existing military technologies to enable rapid resoruce exploitation and planetary colonization by asteroid bombardment
- Asteroid mining, orbital fuel depots and space tugs feature heavily in this vision, as does nuclear thermal propulsion

So, space imperialism. Seems legit.

On ‎31‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 4:31 AM, kerbiloid said:

Why not build a launchpad on the Everest and an elevator to deliver rockets?
It's near equator (more or less), it's above the atmosphere.

Reaching orbit isn't so much about going up really high as it is about going sideways really fast.

[Green Baron]

Who said one can grow potatoes in Marsian soil ? :-)

It must be refined before it can be used. Techniques would have to be developed. One would surely have to separate the growing grounds from the natural soil to avoid contamination. A real life Whatney would have died.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/can-plants-grow-with-mars-soil

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-04910-3

Otoh it seems unlikely that bacteria on the outside of the landers might survive. Is that good news ?

 

The whole Mars colony thing is pretty premature.

Edited November 6, 2017 by Green Baron

[DAL59]

3 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

So you can grow potatoes in it, but you can't walk on it?!

Exactly.  You have to wash the soil first though.  

[Green Baron]

And take enough ketchup with you. That feeling of desperation when it runs out ...

 

Seriously, i quote from the above linked text:

"These data show that the combined effects of at least three components of the Martian surface, activated by surface photochemistry, render the present-day surface more uninhabitable than previously thought, and demonstrate the low probability of survival of biological contaminants released from robotic and human exploration missions."

 

So, no potatoes on Mars. If even bacteria can't survive. At least not before it is clear how to deal with inhospitable and toxic environment. And lack of water, and that of an atmosphere, and radiation, and and and :-)

Edited November 6, 2017 by Green Baron