Mars Colonization Discussion Thread

[sevenperforce]

5 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Not when there's barely any atmosphere to speak of.

Forced air cooling is possible on Mars. Not on the moon.

[Bill Phil]

4 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Forced air cooling is possible on Mars. Not on the moon.

Sure, but you'd be hard pressed to cool anything down. It probably would be better to use the heat to heat up a fluid and pipe it into the ground. Even on Mars.

Just because its temperature is low, it isn't necessarily a good medium for heat rejection.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Bill Phil

[Green Baron]

13 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I have yet to come up with a single role for people that cannot be better handled with telepresence.

Cheaper. Better ? idk. When one can actually get geocehmical/geophysical labs on the Marsian surface (i mean more than the rovers that are well done but still quite limited) with people who actually run those, judge where to take samples thet'll be one of those giant leaps, imo.

But that still takes some time ...

[sevenperforce]

Funny thought...

Imagine a future where cryptocurrency becomes far bigger than it is now, but where the interception of communication makes transferring cryptocurrency highly difficult, and AI-aided hacking becomes a huge problem.

You could have Mars cryptomining centers where you would HAVE to have people on hand, because the cryptomines would be completely unplugged from outside communication. People would visit the site, transfer mined currency from the mine to a flash drive, and then put the flash drives on Earth return rockets.

Now THAT would be a reason for a Mars colony.

9 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Cheaper. Better ? idk. When one can actually get geocehmical/geophysical labs on the Marsian surface (i mean more than the rovers that are well done but still quite limited) with people who actually run those, judge where to take samples thet'll be one of those giant leaps, imo.

But that still takes some time ...

And there's no money in that, yet.

[tater]

Kelly’s book puts the lie to the idea that going far from home is a silver problem.

[kerbiloid]

Just on Mars the cryptomining center solves two problems at once: it makes money for the owner and melts the ice terraforming the planet.

[DAL59]

On 2/24/2018 at 10:19 AM, Kerbal7 said:

Find a competent aerospace engineer and transportation expert near you and ask them if this'll work.

 

 

Why wouldn't it work?  Whether P2P will actually happen due to regulations is up for debate, but they are planning on doing some hopping test missions.    

On 2/25/2018 at 12:12 AM, tater said:

For Mars colonization, someone is going to have to invent some, indeed, any economic way in which Mars can pay its own bills, or it's a non-starter. Maybe they can genetically engineer sand worms that make spice, and people on Earth will buy it at any price to prolong life. Short of that, "Why?"

People will want to move there.  If you build it, they will come.  

On 2/25/2018 at 1:14 PM, Kerbal7 said:

We can't get the things working to keep 6 people alive in low earth orbit.

Actually, we have.  For 20 years.  

As I have stated nearly every page, cosmonauts have had the same radiation dose, with no consequences.  

Also, the BFR has a radiation shelter.  

And, radiation on Mars is a non isssue due to regolith.  Just put a foot of regolith over your habitat.  

[tater]

48 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

People will want to move there.  If you build it, they will come. 

We cannot get doctors to move to “flyover” states in the US, offering them north of 500 grand a year, and they won’t die walking outside.

So some people want to live on Mars. Great. Everything they need to make their lives better, and for a long time literally everything they need to not die comes from Earth, and costs “money.”

Money is this stuff that you exchange for goods, and people get “money” from providing goods or services. There is nothing on Mars to sell anyone on Earth for this “money” stuff your colonists require to not die. Going to Mars to die isn’t a colony, it’s a death camp.

 

48 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Actually, we have.  For 20 years.  

ISS has constant problems with the life support system, and it is constantly under repair with parts that take a few hours to get to them about every month.

It is not even close to being ready to go to Mars. Zubrin’s direct approach would need multiple backups of everything, or large cargo ships sent with spare parts, just in case, and that’s for a jaunt, not a colony.

[DAL59]

1 minute ago, tater said:

large cargo ships sent with spare parts

Hmm... I wonder what could be a large cargo ship

 

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Money is this stuff that you exchange for goods, and people get “money” from providing goods or services. There is nothing on Mars to sell anyone on Earth for this “money” stuff your colonists require to not die. Going to Mars to die isn’t a colony, it’s a death camp.

 

Thats why you need a huge initial colony: self-sufficeintcy.  

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Thats why you need a huge initial colony: self-sufficeintcy.  

Self-sufficiency on Mars would not happen on the first flight. You're looking at centuries of supplies from Earth before Mars could reach anything approaching a self-sustaining colony.

[DAL59]

4 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

You're looking at centuries of supplies from Earth before Mars could reach anything approaching a self-sustaining colony.

In a century we'll have nanobots, making self sufficeincy trivial.  For the near future, we do have 3-d printers, and increasingly intelligent robots.  They should do an experiment in Antartica maybe.

[tater]

Automation that can make such a colony almost for the cost of a single, or a handful of launches I would say is a prerequisite for such an endeavor.

Then, you sens the self-replicating machines, and tell them to build a habitat for 1 million people,  and XX years later, it's functioning, and ready for people. THEN you send people, because there is someplace for them to go. The machines already make all the food, and other necessities of life, so the people don't need to sell stuff to Earth. Short of that, it's not happening.

[sh1pman]

26 minutes ago, tater said:

Automation that can make such a colony almost for the cost of a single, or a handful of launches I would say is a prerequisite for such an endeavor.

Then, you sens the self-replicating machines, and tell them to build a habitat for 1 million people,  and XX years later, it's functioning, and ready for people. THEN you send people, because there is someplace for them to go. The machines already make all the food, and other necessities of life, so the people don't need to sell stuff to Earth. Short of that, it's not happening.

And sooner or later one of these sentient, self-replicating machines (that can build anything) will malfunction and realize that they don’t really need humans and can continue colonizing the universe on their own. Too many problems with those biological bodies!

[tater]

Like I said elsewhere, they even make better colonists (Von Neumann machines).

[PB666]

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Self-sufficiency on Mars would not happen on the first flight. You're looking at centuries of supplies from Earth before Mars could reach anything approaching a self-sustaining colony.

I wouldn't say a century, but it depends on what level of committment. Lets say 100 fold greater committment from Earth than that devoted to the Apollo mission. Just to make a point, LEDs will be essential to such a colony, but are much more cheaply shipped than made initially on Mars. Other high value equipment likewise. Other things like the housing for equipment, bunk beds, etc. could be made on Mars. As one point was made, its not evident what Mars could send back to Earth that would justify the cost, since even the rarest minerals on Earth are easier to extract here and ship elsewhere on Earth.

 

[Kerbal7]

6 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Why wouldn't it work?  Whether P2P will actually happen due to regulations is up for debate, but they are planning on doing some hopping test missions.   

Rocket travel is not near safe enough for commercial travel. Rocket travel is not near economical enough for commercial travel. Rocket travel is not near comfortable enough for commercial travel. They say they are doing hopping test, but they also said they were landing a capsule on Mars and flying people around the moon. What people say and what they do are often different things. 

[DAL59]

29 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

but they also said they were landing a capsule on Mars and flying people around the moon

They are.  A much larger capsule

 

[tater]

49 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

Rocket travel is not near safe enough for commercial travel. Rocket travel is not near economical enough for commercial travel. Rocket travel is not near comfortable enough for commercial travel. They say they are doing hopping test, but they also said they were landing a capsule on Mars and flying people around the moon. What people say and what they do are often different things. 

They altered their plans to maximize their RoI.

The money and effort to man0rate FH was judged not worth it, when they are actively working on BFS right now, and expect a grasshopper flying in a year. Ditto Red Dragon. being agile is a good thing, chasing bad ideas just because you started them is not smart. Learn, adapt.

Doesn't matter WRT Mars, since they will starve to death because there is no way to pay for anything (like resupply).

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, tater said:

ISS has constant problems with the life support system

Every time when looking at another project of Martian expedition, in my head I'm trying to recall how many times they had a toilet out of order in ISS.

And how many toilets would have a spaceship with crew of 6 in a 2.5 years long journey far from the Earth.
I guess, 2x2 + 1 in radiation shelter.

Spoiler

2 independent life support modules with ISRU and 2 toilet seats, because what if crew of 6 ate something while one module is out of order.
+ 1 biotoilet in a radiation shelter.

So, almost full crew could be sitting with journals and have an intellectual discussion.
Except the helmsman who is on duty.

Otherwise it will be a little hurting cause of accident: "crew sank in wastes".

In 2x2+1 case, maybe the toilet seats could be just workplaces.

P.S.
Now let's imagine BF(S/R) on its way to Mars.

6 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Thats why you need a huge initial colony: self-sufficeintcy.  

The only way to make a Martian colony self-sufficient in several flights (except finding a derelict alien ship with a cargo of rhenium) is to take something important from the Earth and move it to Mars.
Then give ultimatums or start blackmailing.

It's a lot of perchlorates there, but neither fish to salt it, nor wood to make matches.

6 hours ago, DAL59 said:

In a century we'll have nanobots, making self sufficeincy trivial.  For the near future, we do have 3-d printers, and increasingly intelligent robots.  They should do an experiment in Antartica maybe.

and will build a paradise on Earth, completely burying the idea of Mars colonization.

[PakledHostage]

7 hours ago, DAL59 said:

In a century we'll have nanobots, making self sufficeincy trivial.  For the near future, we do have 3-d printers, and increasingly intelligent robots.  They should do an experiment in Antartica maybe.

Erm? I thought this was the Mars Colonization thread, not the bad science in fiction hall of shame thread?

[Green Baron]

An experiment for independent (except power) growing of greenhouse stuff is running in Antarctica. I have linked it somewhere here. And that reflects our current possibilities. Not nanobots, intelligent robots (to a degree, e. g. rovers) and superduper spaceships. None of these exist and will not for the next decades. The Mars society will not go to Antarctica, they stay in rural America where they can buy tarps and tents in diy stores and have their trucks parked at the side of the road to get home for dinner. I recon they aren't the guys that drink "tea, hot", but "beer, cold" :-)

We can fantasize about what's in a century (the economy has crumbled, mankind has reduced themselves to a quarter of today, and people got more nature bound because tech levels sank ;-) but that doesn't help in estimating the chances. We are running in circles.

If we assume the the holy company SpaceX are the first who try then we must first see how successful they really are in building their bfr, or if they must stay with missions based on fh for a while because tech cannot just be sized up linearly.

 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Or fh gets unreliable and they stick to f9 in the Name of Glorious Proton and other Arianes.

[PB666]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

An experiment for independent (except power) growing of greenhouse stuff is running in Antarctica. I have linked it somewhere here. And that reflects our current possibilities. Not nanobots, intelligent robots (to a degree, e. g. rovers) and superduper spaceships. None of these exist and will not for the next decades. The Mars society will not go to Antarctica, they stay in rural America where they can buy tarps and tents in diy stores and have their trucks parked at the side of the road to get home for dinner. I recon they aren't the guys that drink "tea, hot", but "beer, cold" :-)

Weren't there two Earth sphere experiments that ditched after  a few months.  One can dawn a ballerina costume and go out on a salt flat and pretend its a ballet, photoshop it and sell it as a broadway production, someone will buy it. Im not going to disparage the Mars society, but the reality is that their reports need to be distilled into the few grains of value that might be in them.  The society is working on peripheral problems, problems that might best be solved by robots. The core problem with Mars is energetics, we cannot produce energy the way we dream that energy can be produced. Almost all the transportation 'fantasy' systems lack a functional working prototype. On the surface your energy is within 60' of the equator and your primary resources are within 20' of the poles. There is no fusion power, and the proposed fission reactor would barely suffice for human needs, let alone production of fuels, or building colonies.

'once we get fusion working we will have . . . . '. But fusion power isn't working, and they have been trying for 50 years which tells us something.

Getting ;'stuff' to orbit is not that horrifically expensive anymore. There is no cheap way however to get it to the surface of Mars, getting humans on the surface is plausible, getting them off is not.

 . . . . . . . dissatisfied with what exists, seeks out stuff that is fantasy and tries to push it off (derail) as equivalent to reality.

If we want to talk about ideal circumstances
1. A rotating crew capsule producing 0.39g of centrifugal force at least 15 meters in diameter.
2. A capsule surrounded with a meter of water and a meter of lead, borate, . . . . .  to block the cosmic radiation and neutrons
3. A propulsion system capable of moving astronauts to LMO. (In 39 days requiring 10,000 dV)
4. Also able to land on mars.
5. And lift off from Mars and return to LEO.

These 5 circumstances are contradictory given current technology, we do not have the energy. Getting food to Mars is a small problem in comparison, there will have to be compromises to human health, to safety, to returnabilitiy.

 

[sevenperforce]

A thought (more toward LEO colonization, but it speaks to the overall problem of making space economically viable)....

Novelty is worth a little. Scarcity is worth a lot.

If you tell me, "This bottle of wine flew on the Space Station!" then it is a novelty. I might be willing to pay a little more for a little bit of novelty, but it's not sustainable.

If you tell me, "This bottle of wine is made from grapes grown in zero gravity!" THEN we have scarcity. I will pay a lot more for scarcity than I will for novelty, because scarcity implies that the commodity is intrinsically rare, while novelty only implies that the commodity is incidentally rare.

It goes further than that. Suppose that Maker's Mark takes six newly-casked barrels of bourbon and pays SpaceX to toss them up into orbit on a Dragon 1 for two years. When the bourbon returns, Maker's Mark now owns something which has never, ever existed before: bourbon aged in zero gees. There is no convection in zero gravity, meaning that the aging process would take place solely through molecular diffusion, presumably changing the flavor profile in an immediately detectable way. Now we have something that is intrinsically different than anything else in the world.

A commodity which exists in such limited supply is effectively priceless; Maker's could demand literally any dollar figure. Someone will buy it. The challenge is selling enough of it to recoup their investment; their commodity might in fact be priceless, but if they set the price point too high, their target market shrinks to the point that they cannot make enough money to pay off the cost of launch.

This is where lowering the cost of access to space could present greater opportunities, immediately. Do grapes grow in space? What about cacao plants or coffee bushes? Both coffee and cacao require extremely precise conditions to grow properly, and the demand for chocolate and for coffee is virtually infinite. Plus, the regions of the world where coffee and cacao grow are unstable and dangerous. In theory, it could be cheaper to mass-produce certain products in space.

If you had high-volume, high-mass access to space for a low price, you could send up a whole greenhouse to grow coffee or cacao or any other commodity in the exact conditions you want. With enough product, it could be cheaper than the alternative, AND you could charge a premium for it.

[Green Baron]

26 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Weren't there two Earth sphere experiments that ditched after  a few months.

Maybe, idk. I meant this http://eden-iss.net/

Seemingly/apparently/maybe something controlled and watched over with a potential for a reliable outcome. Or so, who knows :-)