Colonising Mars and a meme I found

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Looking into this in a little more detail it turns out that there are algal sources of DHA. Interestingly it appears that these sources were discovered by a NASA research program into life support systems using plants, for long duration spaceflight.

You wrote something about the effectiveness of certain solutions. It is for me the need to use technology developed by NASA to replace meat is inefficient.
In addition, this is only one study that shows the problems vegetarians are faced with, as always new discoveries are ahead of us.

My point of view of vegetarianism is that it was a promise of healthy, organic food. Here it turns out that a vegetarian can not be ecological, because he must use technological solutions to replace meat, that grows organically in the form of animals.

 

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Cassel said:

Really? Then why there is no answer to my questions?

I have hardly looked into that part simply as I see food as the easiest part. We know that we need to eat and are good at producing food. 
We do not know to make an large closed ecosystem but has som pretty good leads and its something who would be possible if we spent enough time and money. 

We have no flipping idea how to make stuff like space suits from stuff you mine on Mars. Uses space suits as they are essential and they are very complex, and yes you must also be able to build all the stuff you need to construct the space suit from the mining equipment and up form raw materials. 
In short you have to build an von-newman machine except that you can use humans in the loop. 
Now start writing the specifications for this

 

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

But that is not what the text you linked says and afaik it is not what medicine men and women tell their customers. The text says that even vegan women can give birth to normally developing children, if they do some nutritional planning.

Millions of vegetarian women have quite normally developing children. My little sister has three of them. I don't know any vegans, though. And i am no expert in this.

Of course, every vegetarian has healthy children and therefore studies show that there are differences in the development of children of vegetarians and normal people.

 

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

No idea. Maybe you can find an answer in the link above.

Wait, you have not read these materials yourself?

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

On mars ? Not initially. Much must be imported at first. There will certainly be a degree of self sustenance and recycling of vital elements in such greenhouse, the eden-iss experiment is due to end in 2020. We will hopefully have some nice publications afterwards, or at least a report.

 

I doubt that it will be possible to build a perpetual motion machine.
Whether it's about physics or biology is irrelevant, if you want to create an environment that will provide people with a source of energy that allows you to work, it's just like creating a perpetual motion machine that will do this work for a human and will not need an external source energy.

[YNM]

@Cassel So, is 8.5 ha per 100 people with 1 out of 4 working on the facility is satisfactory enough ?

Also, "ecological" is a dull term anyway. Our plants are mostly humongous compared to their wild counterparts.

[Cassel]

6 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

I have hardly looked into that part simply as I see food as the easiest part. We know that we need to eat and are good at producing food. 
We do not know to make an large closed ecosystem but has som pretty good leads and its something who would be possible if we spent enough time and money. 
 

 

Look at this problem in this way. We know how to make space suits on Earth, we do not know how to build an artificial ecosystem on Earth that feeds people.

As for me, food production seems more difficult.

4 minutes ago, YNM said:

@Cassel So, is 8.5 ha per 100 people with 1 out of 4 working on the facility is satisfactory enough ?

Also, "ecological" is a dull term anyway. Our plants are mostly humongous compared to their wild counterparts.

I didn't yet finished to read what you posted... it is finally something interesting in this topic.

8.5 ha means 85,000 square meters of pressurized space on Mars?

Edited October 3, 2018 by Cassel

[YNM]

6 minutes ago, Cassel said:

8.5 ha means 85,000 square meters of pressurized space on Mars? 

Only 1/17th of them need to be inside a pressurized area. (that's about 0.5 ha, 500 sq m.)

And yeah only 1/17 of the worker will be working on the plants. Though I'd suspect a greater degree of automation is possible.

Edited October 3, 2018 by YNM

[magnemoe]

2 minutes ago, Cassel said:

Look at this problem in this way. We know how to make space cosmic suits on Earth, we do not know how to build an artificial ecosystem on Earth that feeds people.

As for me, food production seems more difficult.

On earth you order parts. You can not do this on an mars colony if earth is destroyed. 
Just for fun how do you get copper for cables? You need an copper mine, hope its copper ore nearby or you need an second town for this and transport between them and you need cars. 

[Cassel]

9 minutes ago, YNM said:

Only 1/17th of them need to be inside a pressurized area. (that's about 0.5 ha, 500 sq m.)

And yeah only 1/17 of the worker will be working on the plants. Though I'd suspect a greater degree of automation is possible.

I do not think I understand something, what is 8.5ha? And what is 0.5ha?

7 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

On earth you order parts. You can not do this on an mars colony if earth is destroyed. 
Just for fun how do you get copper for cables? You need an copper mine, hope its copper ore nearby or you need an second town for this and transport between them and you need cars. 

You probably missed the main problem. On Earth, we have the production technology of spacesuits, but we do not have the technology of producing food in closed ecosystems.
This is the main problem, if something is developed on Earth, it can be transferred to Mars, or modified. In the case of food production in a closed ecosystem, we are talking about coming up with something new that nobody has done yet.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Cassel

[p1t1o]

Lets say we figure out how to create a colony of X people that is totally self-sufficient.

Wouldnt it be far easier to build them on Earth, to use after a dino-killer event?

As far as I understand, Mars is worse than post-dino-killer Earth.

Plus also, you'd still have access to resources/salvage.

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Wouldnt it be far easier to build them on Earth, to use after a dino-killer event? 

Pretty difficult to let sunlight through the global debris cloud ? Not to mention you don't know whether you'll be on the bullseye or not...

 

TBH, as I said, it's just an idea, not a fact. I and my descendants might be well dead before one such thing ever occur, or maybe we'll be all dead tomorrow. You just can't be too sure.

9 minutes ago, Cassel said:

what is 8.5ha? And what is 0.5ha? 

hectares. 85,000 sq m and 500 sq m.

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Usually one serving of rice is about 150 grams. 3 of them a day is 450 grams.

So for 100 people, we need 45kg of rice a day.
From one square meter farm you can get 12.87g of rice a day? (correct me please if I am wrong)
So to feed 100 people, you need to collect rice daily from about 3496 m² (0.35 ha) of hydroponic farm area.

How long does the rice ripening cycle take in the hydroponics farm?
And there is also no information about how many tons of minerals need to be added to the water in each cycle?

Quote

Hydroponics offered 11 ± 1.7 times higher yields but required 82 ± 11 times more energy compared to conventionally produced lettuce.

This probably explains why hydroponics is not popular on Earth :-)

 

 

[YNM]

7 minutes ago, Cassel said:

How long does the rice ripening cycle take in the hydroponics farm?

The paper gave the data in kg/(sq m.day), so you just need to adjust the planting periods accordingly. (I haven't seen the full paper though, can't download it). If you want to see how they came up with the data, please consult the paper.

9 minutes ago, Cassel said:

And there is also no information about how many tons of minerals need to be added to the water in each cycle? 

Again, still on the paper, I can't download it. If you want answer I suggest you look into the paper for now.

10 minutes ago, Cassel said:

This probably explains why hydroponics is not popular on Earth :-)

You said that...

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/from-paddy-fields-to-uae-deserts-the-farmer-growing-rice-using-hydroponics-1.46990

[Cassel]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

You said that...

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/from-paddy-fields-to-uae-deserts-the-farmer-growing-rice-using-hydroponics-1.46990

I wonder how much it will cost 1 kg of such rice?

Because of "scientists" who publish such charts I have trust issues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click on image to zoom&p=PMC3&id=4483736_ijerph-12-06879-g003.jpg

 

 

2 hours ago, YNM said:

The paper gave the data in kg/(sq m.day), so you just need to adjust the planting periods accordingly. (I haven't seen the full paper though, can't download it). If you want to see how they came up with the data, please consult the paper.

No idea how to calculate what I want from this. I googled that rice needs about 120 days to grow and some plants in hydroponics grows 25-50% faster. So it gives me 60-90 days to gather crops.

 

Adding this to my calculations for 60 days rice growth cycle (updated, corrected):
For 100 people, we need 45kg of rice a day (2700kg for 60 days, single cycle).
From one square meter farm you can get 772.2g of rice in single growth cycle.
So to feed 100 people, you need to collect rice daily from about 58.275 m² of hydroponic farm area.
Your entire hydroponic area for entire growth cycle needs to be at least 60*58.275m² = 3496m² (0.35ha).
Now I am using your calculation of electricity consumption about 5.6ha of solar panels.

If anyone finds information about how many tons of minerals would be needed for single rice cultivation cycle in hydroponics, then I will be grateful.

And it's only for 100 people, and Musk said something about a colony of 1 million inhabitants?

 

 

Edited October 3, 2018 by Cassel

[Green Baron]

@Cassel: i loose the mood to discuss with you if i get scoffed at for trying to provide you with information. You could as well be curious, dig into it and try to find an answer to your questions and hints where to find more material. Maybe after being through you can present to us what you have found out. I mean, you can see, we admittedly have no immediate answers for you, use that and become an expert for future discussions since that question pops up every other month.

No, i have only taken a brief look and it seemed suitable to me to present to you as a possible information source.

 

To the dino-killer thing: discussion sways forth and back on how much the impact really wiped out the dinosaurs. In conjunction with broad magmatism and the loss of large connected landmasses since the Jurassic (Pangaea breaking up) it surely was the "final blow" for many species.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

You probably missed the main problem. On Earth, we have the production technology of spacesuits, but we do not have the technology of producing food in closed ecosystems.
This is the main problem, if something is developed on Earth, it can be transferred to Mars, or modified. In the case of food production in a closed ecosystem, we are talking about coming up with something new that nobody has done yet.

True we don't know how to make an large closed ecosystem, this is hard to do, its also expensive to test as you need an large closed greenhouse. Just one test I know of biosphere 2. 
As i understand biosphere 2 failed because curing concrete and that the biosphere was to small. 
Note that unlike biosphere 2 its perfectly ok to cheat by using co2 scrubbers and other chemical or mechanical metodes,  same goes with the soil and water. This make the closed ecology more like an island ecosystem than an fully closed however the cheating is likely to require lots of energy. 
So yes its an very hard problem but it should be solvable is you spend enough time and money on it. Probably smart anyway as we would learn a lot. 

Now lots of technology can not be scaled down well, yes an smaller capacity facility is smaller but not less complex. Yes 3d printing and CNC make it easy to make simple parts but they require computers, making integrated circuits require an new and very long chain of special products. 
Now if you manage you can also make von-newman machines. 

[YNM]

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

No idea how to calculate what I want from this.

They did their cultivation in a way such that they yield ~13 grams per square meter per day. They may as well plant a small part of it every day so they always get a result every day. This is hydroponic, you don't need everything to be the same, unlike on fields where in one box of field you need to plant them on the same time.

The fertilizer intake obviously adjust to this but then they just give the result accordingly.

EDIT : Crap, they don't have the full paper... the download was only the journal's abstract list.

Edited October 3, 2018 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Mars is worse than post-dino-killer Earth.

That's absolutely true.
Earth at least had the dinos to kill.
Mars is dino-free by design.

 

4 hours ago, YNM said:

Pretty difficult to let sunlight through the global debris cloud ?

How long?
Iirc the nukewinter should last for 1-2 years.
Krakatau has caused iirc 1 "year without summer" and several years of nice red sunsets.
Thera, Toba, and Chicxulub also haven't killed the plants.

So, they should have enough food for several years and seeds to restore the plants after leaving the vault.

P.S.
Stop making the spacemen to starve on 450 g of rice. 
A standard adult human unit requires ~800 g of dry food per day.

[YNM]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Krakatau has caused iirc 1 "year without summer" and several years of nice red sunsets.

pretty long, not sure.

 

That being said though, I think what people are thinking for to be done on Mars is already done in the Netherlands.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/

Spoiler

small wonder, really.

 

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

For 100 people, we need 45kg of rice a day (2700kg for 60 days, single cycle).
From one square meter farm you can get 772.2g of rice in single growth cycle.
So to feed 100 people, you need to collect rice daily from about 58.275 m² of hydroponic farm area.
Your entire hydroponic area for entire growth cycle needs to be at least 60*58.275m² = 3496m² (0.35ha).
Now I am using your calculation of electricity consumption about 5.6ha of solar panels.

That's the garnish. And where's the food?

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

And it's only for 100 people, and Musk said something about a colony of 1 million inhabitants?

Those who dislike GMO soy and unicellular chickenpigs will be fed intravenous.

Upd.
A tip. Mars starts from potatoes.

Upd2.

Spoiler

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Just for fun how do you get copper for cables?

But.. Isn't copper being mined from the cables???

 

Edited October 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

10 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

 

  Hide contents

 

But.. Isn't copper being mined from the cables???

Ok so you are the one stealing cabling from the railway causing all the delays. 
Yes it has happened. 

On an more serious note you could use aluminium who you need for other stuff anyway. Still the same issue repeats for all other type of materials. 
Our technology the last 100 years build around that you can order any sort of material or half fabricate so nobody will manufacture an drill who use aluminium rather than copper for wiring simply as copper is better 

[DerekL1963]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

As i understand biosphere 2 failed because curing concrete and that the biosphere was to small. 

Biosphere 2 failed for a wide variety of reasons - the underlying one being that it was originally designed by ecological shamans with very little input from actual engineers.  The shamans then spent a great deal of money on frippery (such as importing "authentic" beach sand at great expense), and the engineers spent a great deal of money trying to fix or at least ameliorate the errors in the design.  When they were about to run out of money and schedule, the sponsor basically forced the facility into service (without proper commissioning procedures or trial runs) to justify his investment.  The result was inevitable.

As a result, I regard the Biosphere 2 results as inconclusive (to put it politely).

And guys, when it comes to food, none of the problems are insoluble - assuming you're able to manufacture and maintain the required hardware.  The ability to be self sufficient in manufacturing underlies the solution to all problems.

(Or, to put it another way, please stop going in circles over food - four pages now and you're still talking past each other.)

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

 The ability to be self sufficient in manufacturing underlies the solution to all problems.
 

It is impossible to build a perpetuum mobile that will produce more energy and raw materials than it will be delivered to the system from outside. Unless I do not know about something?

[DerekL1963]

17 minutes ago, Cassel said:

It is impossible to build a perpetuum mobile that will produce more energy and raw materials than it will be delivered to the system from outside. Unless I do not know about something?

The mobile need not be theoretically perpetuum - the rate it runs down is directly proportional to the rate energy and raw materials are extracted from the system.  Get the slope of the curve low enough, and the mobile runs long enough to take advantage of resources from outside the system.  (And that's setting aside that in terms of energy the system is not actually closed as the Sun delivers considerable energy.  Don't drag in the lower insolation, that only changes the minimum possible slope of the curve.  It does not invalidate the basic proposition.)  Post-Apocalypse the ability to be entirely materially self sufficient without input from Earth is the only significant driver to determining the slope of the curve because the ability to produce material goods underlies all other problems.  (I cannot repeat that often enough.)

An important point is that I'm defining "the system" in human terms - specifically in concrete economic terms* rather than handwaving abstracts.  Why?  Because we're discussing human survival and that itself renders the discussion concrete and defines the nature and terms of the discussion.  If it's not available to the economic system comprised by the individuals, then it isn't relevant to the question.**  Placing things on a human scale also sheds light on why the discussion of micronutrients in food (specifically in a vegetarian diet) is pointless.  Vegetarian societies (such as India and Japan historically were) serve as existence proof that such a diet may not be perfect, but it is sufficient.  And the ability to provide even that sufficient diet is (again) a function of the ability to provide the material goods needed to produce the foodstuff.

* In these terms, how many man hours are spent on basic survival are important.  You and I can do things someone from the Stone Age couldn't not just because of technology...  But because for lunch I'm having a tuna salad sandwich, and all the inputs to that sandwich are already processed and ready-to-use.  I don't have to go fishing or harvesting.

** Which clarifies the nature of "outside the system".  That doesn't mean "offworld" - it means "previously unavailable".  That can include deeper ore bodies for example.

 

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

The ability to be self sufficient in manufacturing underlies the solution to all problems.

And the manufacturing is mostly metallurgy and organic synthesis.

So, once you have a full-featured industry, you already have everything to produce most part of synthetic food as a by-product.

***

And one should remember that agricultural processes is extremely volatile, and vulnerable.
You should have a really great redundancy to not repeat the Irish experience of XIX century.

You should grow much more than really require (in case one of a hundred agricultural plagues takes out you harvest.)

Spoiler

Just look into these tiny, cold, merciless eyes. It wants your food, and it will get it, sooner or later.

Or like it says to you: "Give me! Give me! All your potatoes are belong to us!"

It lives! It lives on your leaves.

A corrupted policemANT supports the aphids instead of catching them. He is in. ^*)

^*) Btw, a theme for the next Antman sequel. 

Do not forget to rotate several plant cultures in a, say, 3 years cycle to starve the parasites to death.
And grow several grain types at once. If rice dries, eat wheat.

So, a toyish glass room with fruits and vegetables from the ecopictures suddenly turns into fields and more fields.

You still want to be a marsofarmer because you are smart and use hydroponics?
Nice. Now imagine how much equipment will it need.

And then you realize that
1) Martian ecofood farming can be only a privilege of an extraterrestrial megalopolis.
2) You should reduce any farming as radically as possible. Grow only that what is absolutely necessary, and synthesize everything other.

Synthetic fats and carbohydrates are your way, your destiny, your road to stars. Grow only proteins, and do this as intensively as you can, keep the equipment as compact as possible.
Make vats, not fields.

P.S.
If you don't like the chickenpigs, you can farm the ducksheeps or rabbitsharks.

Edited October 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

40 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

The mobile need not be theoretically perpetuum - the rate it runs down is directly proportional to the rate energy and raw materials are extracted from the system.  Get the slope of the curve low enough, and the mobile runs long enough to take advantage of resources from outside the system.  (And that's setting aside that in terms of energy the system is not actually closed as the Sun delivers considerable energy.  Don't drag in the lower insolation, that only changes the minimum possible slope of the curve.  It does not invalidate the basic proposition.)  Post-Apocalypse the ability to be entirely materially self sufficient without input from Earth is the only significant driver to determining the slope of the curve because the ability to produce material goods underlies all other problems.  (I cannot repeat that often enough.)

Yep, there is a certain inertia in such a system. But even a large system with a lot of inertia, balanced as good as possible, will run out of all sorts of equilibrium states and the contained cycles will suffocate or starve. How long this takes depends on how well balanced it starts and how well the states can be monitored and controlled, i. e.  stuff (be it nutrient, energy, control units, construction material, ...) taken out or re-filled. More concrete: if people are able to run such a greenhouse with an initial load for 2-3 years, that would be more than we can expect now. I hope we'll get a report 2020.

And then there is still the open question if greenhouse veggies alone can keep people healthy for a long time. The protagonists say "It is much batter !", the other side says "too much consumption is one cause for sicknesses", and normal people say "it doesn't taste as good as fresh veggies" (which is true ;-)).

I am not sure if i understood you right, the point is that, as long there are no production facilities for all the needed high tech nicknack, an extraplanetary colony remains a dream.

Right you are (imo) :-)

Btw., haven't we been there 2D12 times before ?

:-)