Mars Colonization Discussion Thread

[DAL59]

6 minutes ago, tater said:

but that's an option they have.

If that's the case, then you can argue  that humans should never leave LEO.  They have to accept some risks.    

[tater]

30 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

If that's the case, then you can argue  that humans should never leave LEO.  They have to accept some risks.    

Straw man.

The point is that they already know they need better LS systems. Easier to maintain, commonality of parts, more reliable, etc. 

[DAL59]

The ITS has enough tonnage to take some spares.  Plus, it could have 3-d printers.  

[PB666]

"Pay attention to dust production and accumulation.Dust contamination is a common issue in ISS"

 

[PB666]

3 hours ago, DAL59 said:

The ITS has enough tonnage to take some spares.  Plus, it could have 3-d printers.  

3D printers are good for making models and plastic cooling fans. Wont help you much with an integrated circuit board or a 12 feed power supply. You really have no idea what breaks on these pieces of equipment.

Let me give you some 30 years experience managing a lab. Power supplies (blown capaciters and short circuited transformers), integrated circuit boards, on several occasions photomultiplier tubes, belts frequently break, but there is also the seizing up of bearings  (which sometimes need to be lubricated), clogged hepa filters (some of which cost 1000s of USD). None of this cheap ______ electronics is suitable for a journey to mars, switches and electronic power transformers (the current favorite of the small machine industry) are not suitably reliable for such a journey. Long term refrigeration, I seen 2 -80 freezers blow before their 5th birthday, you are not going to repair that type of equipment in flight (older models or much more reliable but the CFCs are now banned by international agreement). Overheating of equipment that was built in too small form factor. Glass or plexiglass can spontaneously shatter under stress, teflon parts (such as on those dreamt about human centrifuges) can wear down.  Of course you can have complete short to ground in the motors of major equipment (creating 1000s of dollars worth of instant space junk). Water leaks did 10,000s of damage to some electronics, brown-out destroyed one entire system. Fancy equipment needs alot of robust infrastructure to give longevity.

Lets talk about the other problem those perchlorates on Mars, how are you going to remove them from the EVA suits before the folks get back into the station. Perchlorates plus humidity = short circuited electronics.

 

[Diche Bach]

I fear this story might not be very popular. To be fair, I find a bit of their language to be a bit  . . . inflammatory. And still, if the truth hurts, it doesn't make it any less true?

Trump to Announce Human Moon Base Mission and Lunar Mining?

I think the billionaire real estate guy might get it.

Quote

President Donald Trump is planning to announce a mission to return humans to the Moon to set up a base and start lunar mining, according to multiple sources.

This is a welcome departure from President Barack Obama's policy, which in 2010 terminated and abandoned President George W. Bush's program which had a goal of a human return to the Moon and establishment of a permanent outpost in the 2015-2020 time frame. President Obama infamously justified the cancellation of the ongoing work because, as regards the Moon, "we've already been there". That's about as stupid as if Christopher Columbus had been told by the king and queen of Spain that there would be no return to America because they had already been there, and so the next trip will go to the South Pole.

The plan of the Trump Administration is even better than President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration Bush_NASA because Trump plans to engage the private sector to take over as much as it can, whereas the Bush Administration followed the same old traditional government contractor centered programs which are slow, inefficient, expensive, risk averse, and sometimes corrupt.

President Trump apparently "gets it" about the much greater business value of the Moon, unlike Mars, as the Moon has valuable products and services to sell to Earth, will cost a lot less to get started, can be achieved much more quickly, and entails far less risk. (This is why I compare America to Antarctica above.)

The property mogul surely appreciates the importance of private property rights on the Moon, and the development of real estate there.

President Trump has already met with leading private sector entities for commercial development of the Moon, who were invited to the White House to discuss these matters. The Trump Administration has some key advisors and personnel who are proponents of the utilization of lunar resources for space industrialization and human colonization.

 

[Bill Phil]

Constellation was riddled with flaws, more so than SLS.

[James Kerman]

41 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

I think the billionaire real estate guy might get it.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

The lunar mining doesn't require a lunar base. All it needs is a lunar lander with a poweful videocard and an internet connection.

 

[Nibb31]

5 hours ago, PB666 said:

Lets talk about the other problem those perchlorates on Mars, how are you going to remove them from the EVA suits before the folks get back into the station. Perchlorates plus humidity = short circuited electronics.

Suitports. The suits stay outside. But even then, contamination from the outside is going to be a massive problem, especially if you live in underground habs or if any minerals that you might need have to be dug up and brought inside. Moon dust was already a problem on Apollo: once in orbit, there was lunar dust flying around the cabin. The dust was highly abrasive (due to the lack of erosion) and could cause severe respiratory problems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_health_effects_from_lunar_dust_exposure

The problem would be much worse with perchlorate-ridden dust from Mars, since perchlorates are highly toxic.

My intuition is that:

• If you have to live underground to protect yourself against cosmic radiation,
• If you have to decontaminate everything that comes in,
• If everything outside is sterile and toxic,
• If you have to rely on closed-loop technology to survive,
• If there is nothing of any inherent value in the environment,

Then why choose to live there in the first place ?

Edited November 9, 2017 by Nibb31

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

Then why choose to live there in the first place ?

Exactly ! That's probably the intuition of the majority :-)

[NSEP]

Hmmmm, it seems like i haven't spoken much on this thread.

I personally don't see the point in full on colonization on Mars, with millions of people and terraforming just yet. Maybe a close-to-self-sustainable labaratory base here and there, you know, to research the effects of lower gravity, isolation and other things like that. And just in case the humanity wipes out, the brave scientists come back to Earth and 'recolonize' it. (i higly doubt we will ever completely wipe out however, since humans are cockroaches).

I do think we will eventually do it, but not so soon.

[tater]

Yeah, I'm with @Nibb31 and @Green Baronon this, I've never understood the Mars obsession. I think visiting would be cool, and perhaps a science outpost, but colonization seems to not make a lot of sense.

[NSEP]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Yeah, I'm with @Nibb31 and @Green Baronon this, I've never understood the Mars obsession. I think visiting would be cool, and perhaps a science outpost, but colonization seems to not make a lot of sense.

Same. I think the only place suitable for colonization is everywhere on Earth itself or an Earth-Like planet in another Solar System. Mars is not a good candidate for colonization, neither is Venus in my opinion.

[kerbiloid]

Mars has water (H), carbon dioxide (C), perchlorates (Cl).
Maybe instead of colonization it's better to populate it with self-replicating bots consuming the ice, dioxide and perchlorates and spitting bricks. Polyvynil chloride bricks. And stack them instead of the consumed polar caps.

A thousand years later, future humans will have de-perchlorated Mars ground and endless stacks of polyvynil chloride bricks, ready to use. All Martian chlorine and water will be collected in a handy form.
Anyway, all these raw materials would lay there eternally with no purpose.

[Green Baron]

48 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Mars has water (H), carbon dioxide (C), perchlorates (Cl).
Maybe instead of colonization it's better to populate it with self-replicating bots consuming the ice, dioxide and perchlorates and spitting bricks. Polyvynil chloride bricks. And stack them instead of the consumed polar caps.

That reminds me of a movie about a love story between two cute little robots ? :-)

Edited November 9, 2017 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

That reminds me of a movie about a love story between two cute little robots ? :-)

Didn't see that movie. Just was thinking what loot could be gathered from the useless Mars to be used later.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Mars has water (H), carbon dioxide (C), perchlorates (Cl).
Maybe instead of colonization it's better to populate it with self-replicating bots consuming the ice, dioxide and perchlorates and spitting bricks. Polyvynil chloride bricks. And stack them instead of the consumed polar caps.

A thousand years later, future humans will have de-perchlorated Mars ground and endless stacks of polyvynil chloride bricks, ready to use. All Martian chlorine and water will be collected in a handy form.
Anyway, all these raw materials would lay there eternally with no purpose.

Martian Atomospher : Carbon dioxide (C)(O), Molecular Nitrogen (N), Argon (Ar), Carbon Monoxide (C)(O), Perchlorates(Cl)(O),

Martian Soil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_soil#/media/File:PIA16572-MarsCuriosityRover-RoverSoils-20121203.jpg

Note the presence of Na20 and CaO. In the presence of water at any appreciable levels and carbon dioxide Na20 form Na2CO3 and CaO will form CaCO3. The lack of detection of either of these is a general indication of dehydrated soils and the lack of moisture.

This is another incredible risk for Mars, the soil is incredibly alkaline.

So at least at the mid latitudes water is going to be extremely difficult to come by. Let me rephrase this lest I be confused. With Fusion power you can survive anywhere on Mars, and water is available at teh Poles, although there may be soil stability problems. Without fusion power you are dependent on solar power at midlatitudes, which means Martain water is likely deep within Martian crust.

Edited November 9, 2017 by PB666

[Green Baron]

56 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Didn't see that movie. Just was thinking what loot could be gathered from the useless Mars to be used later.

Wall-E ? So cute ... Forms bricks out of and stacks all the rubbish from a sunken civ :-)

Edited November 9, 2017 by Green Baron

[Diche Bach]

9 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Suitports. The suits stay outside. But even then, contamination from the outside is going to be a massive problem, especially if you live in underground habs or if any minerals that you might need have to be dug up and brought inside. Moon dust was already a problem on Apollo: once in orbit, there was lunar dust flying around the cabin. The dust was highly abrasive (due to the lack of erosion) and could cause severe respiratory problems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_health_effects_from_lunar_dust_exposure

The problem would be much worse with perchlorate-ridden dust from Mars, since perchlorates are highly toxic.

My intuition is that:

• If you have to live underground to protect yourself against cosmic radiation,
• If you have to decontaminate everything that comes in,
• If everything outside is sterile and toxic,
• If you have to rely on closed-loop technology to survive,
• If there is nothing of any inherent value in the environment,

Then why choose to live there in the first place ?

Because it is THERE!

 

2 hours ago, NSEP said:

Same. I think the only place suitable for colonization is everywhere on Earth itself or an Earth-Like planet in another Solar System. Mars is not a good candidate for colonization, neither is Venus in my opinion.

O'Neill Cylinder, alternatively Bernal Sphere, Stanford Torus, etc., etc. We don't even need asteroids, though they and/or extraterrestrial bodies in general might make for far more efficient building materials

ADDIT: I'm all for the "Colonization of Space." I simply feel it makes a HELLUVA lot more sense to do it the safer, cheaper and more logical way, i.e., as close to home as possible for Space Colony v 1.0.1 through v 3.5

Perfect the myriad stuff that needs to be sorted out to create nearly self-sufficient closed loop habitations (which probably necessarily means perfecting the arts and sciences of resource harvesting, and industry in space). THEN worry about colonies on gravity wells like the Moon and then Mars. Of course, all three could be running in tandem, but the focus of rational people should be on the first step not the 10,000th step.

If selling the 10,000 step of the "sexiest" example sells to sponsors well then that is fine; as long as the salesman know they are engaging in a bit of snake oilery.

Edited November 9, 2017 by Diche Bach
clarify

[Nibb31]

15 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

Because it is THERE!

That's a pretty good reason to go and explore, but it's a rubbish reason to sell all your belongings and bring your wife and kids to live there.

[Diche Bach]

Just now, Nibb31 said:

That's a pretty good reason to go and explore, but it's a rubbish reason to sell all your belongings and bring your wife and kids to live there.

Absolutely!

[DerekL1963]

On 11/8/2017 at 4:50 AM, tater said:

Question: how much non-critical hardware is there on a sub?

Define non-critical...  I mean, the ice cream machine is certainly non-critical, but what about the refrigeration equipment?  Without it, we don't die per se, but we could lose almost all the electronics that support our reason for being there (refrigeration equipment chills the water used to chill the air used as a heat exchange mechanism).  The same equipment also chills the chill box (a giant refrigerator) and the freezer that holds most of our food...  Losing that won't kill us (we can always fall back on dry goods and dehydrated goods), but it will sharply limit mission duration.

It sounds silly, but it's a serious question.  There is a broad range of varying shades of grey between  white ("successful mission completion") and black ("everyone evacuates or dies").  A large amount of maintenance effort goes into maintaining systems that aren't critical to the immediate or short term goal of keeping us alive, but which are critical to completing the mission.   And that's not including the hours spent on routine housekeeping, inventory and tracking stores, on administrivia such as updating documents, etc... etc...

Those miscellaneous non maintenance tasks are why I keep hammering on the difference between "maintaining the station" and "performing maintenance on the station".  The two terms are not equivalent.  The latter is a subset of the former.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, Diche Bach said:

O'Neill Cylinder, alternatively Bernal Sphere, Stanford Torus, etc., etc. We don't even need asteroids, though they and/or extraterrestrial bodies in general might make for far more efficient building materials

ADDIT: I'm all for the "Colonization of Space." I simply feel it makes a HELLUVA lot more sense to do it the safer, cheaper and more logical way, i.e., as close to home as possible for Space Colony v 1.0.1 through v 3.5

Perfect the myriad stuff that needs to be sorted out to create nearly self-sufficient closed loop habitations (which probably necessarily means perfecting the arts and sciences of resource harvesting, and industry in space). THEN worry about colonies on gravity wells like the Moon and then Mars. Of course, all three could be running in tandem, but the focus of rational people should be on the first step not the 10,000th step.

If selling the 10,000 step of the "sexiest" example sells to sponsors well then that is fine; as long as the salesman know they are engaging in a bit of snake oilery.

What you showed [VIdeo of Cylindrical Habitat] is physically not possible based on current materials science.  A cyclinder even 1/10th that diameter (e.g. babylon 5-ish) is still difficult, I would argue. A larger cylinder is a larger target and asteroids traveling around at 20-70 km/second, the shielding on such an object would have to be massive. 

The third problem is that your source of energy would be entirely artificial since, 1. The ends hold up the floor and glass is not structural, but sheathing.  2. The length of the structure either has the light always coming in at an oblique angle or a reflector (not shown). The optimal structure is a much thinner disk where the light come in the center as is reflected to the sides by a mirror. This is much thinner and allows more colonies and less risk of a catastrophic failuer for each colony.

The Mass required to build just one of these and provide ambient non-inertial reference frame comparable to earth's surface is well beyond any serious proposal.

You must find a source of mass in space first and a means of converting mass into the basic elements required to build such structures.

We can think of it like this, The earth, the place you stand, coalesced over 5 billion years, the heat it gained during coalescence has been evolving also for 5 billion years, energy that has been lost to the earth. To create earth like environment in space you have to impart all the ambient (non-radioactive, no solar hv) heat that the Earth has lost during the 5 billion years.

Also, your gravity, is not what you think, If you drop a ball its on a sub-orbital trajectory. If the earth is not there (but somehow the energy is) it go into a orbit about that point a barycenter between the earth and the moon. If we take the briefest moment of motion you are in orbit, at the end of that moment the Earth steps in to force you back to where you were. It is the stacks of matter that are pushing you up. While it does not appear to be the case its a dynamic equilibrium that occurs between all objects on the surface in motion, the appearance of immobility is due to the way relative motion appears. An example of this dynamic are objects floating on the tides as the tides role around the Earth. If you read the articles on  the Cartesian coordinate system they point out the Z coordinates for all objects relative to the earths true center are always changing at least twice a day sometimes 4 times a day the motion changes. While the structural aspects of the Earth are able to resist most change, they cannot resist all changes. Because the motion is very slow its all but unnoticeable. This change is very minor with small spherical and compact objects in space that try to maintain a non-inertial g-force on the surface, but as objects get more massive these shifts in force become more apparent. If you have an extremely massive structure and you spin it to simulate earths surface gravity the sun (or other local bodies) will cause that structure to begin pulsing. IN order to prevent damage that structure would need to be heavily braced from its center. 

Lets imagine a cylinder 10 km across. To achieve 9.8 meters per second you need a velocity of W2R. 0.98/1000 = w² . omega = 1/31.6 radians per second (About 2 degrees). The entire structure making a revolution in about 3 minutes. If you were inside the structure you literally would hear it creeking and cracking, houses would be in a constant settling. Nails would not be used because they would eventually be pulled apart.

 

Edited November 9, 2017 by PB666

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

35 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I mean, the ice cream machine is certainly non-critical, but what about the refrigeration equipment?  Without it, we don't die per se, but we could lose almost all the electronics that support our reason for being there (refrigeration equipment chills the water used to chill the air used as a heat exchange mechanism).  The same equipment also chills the chill box (a giant refrigerator) and the freezer that holds most of our food... 

So much efforts to justify an ice cream machine purchase?... Wow...