The moon and magnets on mars

[Spacescifi]

 

The Moon:

I will come clean and admit that virtually most of the space knowledge I know I intend to write scifi with. Otherwise the knowledge won't be put to use as I am no astronaut.

In my opinion, based on what is currently known, none of the planets besides Earth are worth the time or expense to colonize. If you wanna colonize Mars, it is worth remembering that Mars is only slightly warmer than Antartica and unlike Antartica, water is scarce and you cannot breath the air. Did I mention cancer? Mars will give you that too without heavy, and I do mean thick protection, unless we engineer a thin radiation shielding material that blocks both cosmic rays and lethal radiation.

The Moon is probably the striongest contender for colonization since it is only three days away. Even then, I think it is best used as an expensive vacation resort, and also as an ore processing station. Ideally robots would do most of the work and humans would drop in every few months for maintenence.

I view the planets and asteroids as valuable for the resources they have that we can bring back to earth. For example, if you wanted to mine a huge asteroid but did'nt want to send several rockets on rendezvous missions to build an ore processing plant on top of it, send it to the moon.

Seriously. Send several laser armed rockets powered by nuclear reactors. To the huge asteroid. Attach them. Zap away. The lasers ablating the asteroid will make a rocket plume of the asteroids's own exhaust. Send it to crash on the moon as close as reasonably possible to your moon ore processing plant. From there it's a simple three day drive to fetch precious space rocks back to earth.

Because when I say processing, I really mean breaking the rocks into pieces small enough that you can haul it back to earth with a fleet of rockets.Earth has all the chemicals needed for your processing needs. The moon? Not so much. You would have to import them from earth.

 

Magnets on Mars: i always look at the rusty plains of Mars and think "Wow, a magnet would have fun times there."

Don't want that martian low gravity to bounce you so much? Electromagnetic boots are the answer! Because on Mars, even the soil has a lot of iron oxide, and I have played with that stuff long enough as a child to know that it responds to magnets just like iron.

Beyond that, here's a video illustrating how tough life on Mars would be. It fails to mention the obvious though. Moon? Help from earth is about three days away if something goes wrong. Mars? Help from earth is six MONTHS away at best... maybe more.

 

Edited May 24, 2019 by Spacescifi
Antartica

[Shpaget]

15 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Because on Mars, even the soil has a lot of iron oxide, and I have played with that stuff enough as a child to know that it responds to magnets just like iron.

You are mistaken. Iron oxide (rust) is a lot less ferromagnetic than iron itself.

There is a topic around here that discusses pros and cons of Moon and Mars colony, but IIRC the bottom line is that both are hard and inhospitable, with Mars having an added con of being a lot further than Moon.

Also don't forget that the best thing about having material in space is the fact that it is in space. Chucking it down to Earth is very wasteful. Sure, it might be ok for some low volume and high value materials that are expensive to produce on Earth due to their rarity, but mining iron or nickel in space just to crash it down to Earth is not sound. The sheer volume of iron produced in the world means that in order to have any significant impact on the economy, it would need to have a much more significant impact (as in dino killing asteroid impact).

[Spacescifi]

7 hours ago, Shpaget said:

You are mistaken. Iron oxide (rust) is a lot less ferromagnetic than iron itself.

There is a topic around here that discusses pros and cons of Moon and Mars colony, but IIRC the bottom line is that both are hard and inhospitable, with Mars having an added con of being a lot further than Moon.

Also don't forget that the best thing about having material in space is the fact that it is in space. Chucking it down to Earth is very wasteful. Sure, it might be ok for some low volume and high value materials that are expensive to produce on Earth due to their rarity, but mining iron or nickel in space just to crash it down to Earth is not sound. The sheer volume of iron produced in the world means that in order to have any significant impact on the economy, it would need to have a much more significant impact (as in dino killing asteroid impact).

 

Good points. Speaking of iron oxide, I managed to kill a beetle with a donut magnet and a pile of iron oxide (rust) as a child. Let's just say I managed to magnetize the poor creature... although I will admit it took several minutes before the beetle succumbed to it's injuries.

As for mining space metals, I was thinking more like the rare and expensive ones.

Like platinum. I once read a scifi short story about an orbiting asteroid made of antimatter.

Earth was divided on whether or not to try to divert it to LEO for further processing or to destroy it entirely.

The story ends on a cliffhanger of suspense as tbe astronaut assigned to destroy it finds the mission has been sabotaged, and is hearing radio calls from both factions, one begging her to destroy it as assigned, the other telling her to divert it to LEO to help solve man's desire for greater energy and power.

The end is when she fires her railgun, yet the story does not tell you if the asteroid was diverted or destroyed. It just ends with the asteronaut's thoughts as they fire, knowing she will either be hailed a hero and live on some caribbean island when she returns, or be sent to jail.

Either way, she would make the shot count. She would not miss. For this was going to change history.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Spacescifi

[Shpaget]

Well, if you were looking for something more devastating than crashing an asteroid into Earth, crashing an antimatter asteroid into Earth would do just fine.

[Spacescifi]

6 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Well, if you were looking for something more devastating than crashing an asteroid into Earth, crashing an antimatter asteroid into Earth would do just fine.

 

That was fiction, but yeah.

BTW in my original post I was speaking of crashing asteroids onto the moon. Then breaking the shards into small enough chunks to haul back to earth on a three day trip from the moon.

I may like scifi, but even I think redirecting asteroids to crash on Earth is kinda questionable behavior.

Just because we did it in Kerbal does not mean we should in real life.

Saw Scott Manley try and land an Orion thermonuclear pusher plate warship on the moon once. Fun times.

 

Regarding ore processing: The ideal spot for an asteroid refining plant is in LEO. It can easily be resupplied and repaired that way.

But I am not sure how comfy earth is with a huge asteroid in LEO though. That was why I suggested a laser rocket assisted crash onto the moon first.

Last you could rocket haul the shards to an ore refinery in LEO. Finished product could be retrofitted to orbiting vessels.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Spacescifi

[DDE]

On 5/24/2019 at 8:54 AM, Spacescifi said:

I view the planets and asteroids as valuable for the resources they have that we can bring back to earth

And that’s where you goof up. That’s a low value-added export combined with inevitably extreme shipping costs... and since Earth is a representative terrestrial, you’re not going to an abundance of some sort of previously unavailable resource in space. We’re not running out of dirt and the stuff in it; even when dealing with something cosmically rare like iridium and platinum we’ve proven very adept at engineering around resource bottlenecks.

It’s a very flimsy excuse for spaceflight.

And no, I don’t have a particularly good one on hand.

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

And that’s where you goof up. That’s a low value-added export combined with inevitably extreme shipping costs... and since Earth is a representative terrestrial, you’re not going to an abundance of some sort of previously unavailable resource in space. We’re not running out of dirt and the stuff in it; even when dealing with something cosmically rare like iridium and platinum we’ve proven very adept at engineering around resource bottlenecks.

It’s a very flimsy excuse for spaceflight.

And no, I don’t have a particularly good one on hand.

Ouch. So that means that human space travel is almost a waste of time.

About the only application benefits are:

Improving flight and military technology, and some of it can be used for civillians as well.

Kind of how NASA channel puts it. "Off the Earth for the Earth."

So as interesting as human space travel may be, you think human resources would be better spent elsewhere right?

Robotic and drone space travel on the other hand is very much within our power and can remain useful for solar power  harvesting long to come.

[wumpus]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

And that’s where you goof up. That’s a low value-added export combined with inevitably extreme shipping costs... and since Earth is a representative terrestrial, you’re not going to an abundance of some sort of previously unavailable resource in space. We’re not running out of dirt and the stuff in it; even when dealing with something cosmically rare like iridium and platinum we’ve proven very adept at engineering around resource bottlenecks.

Platinum is sufficiently useful (for things like catalysts) and gold's inability to oxidize would probably be wildly more useful at a lower price (not to mention conductivity, and use for connectors).  But any "space mining for Earth" would almost certainly have to come from the asteroid belt: the vast costs of dragging something out of even the Moon's gravity well would cost more than any Earth extraction.  I think the cannonical example was that even if the surface of Mars was covered with gem-grade diamonds it wouldn't justify the costs to pick them up and bring home (and I'm fairly sure those prices are true after taking into account just how much mass Falcon Heavy can "cheaply" throw to Mars intercept).

[Shpaget]

14 hours ago, wumpus said:

gem-grade diamonds

Well, to be honest, gem grade diamonds are almost worthless. Pricey yes, but no intrinsic value other than the potential to be ground up and used as industrial grade dust. Dumping huge amounts of gem grade diamonds on Earth would crash their price to the level of industrial stuff, and industry wouldn't even notice.

[Rakaydos]

22 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Ouch. So that means that human space travel is almost a waste of time.

About the only application benefits are:

Improving flight and military technology, and some of it can be used for civillians as well.

Kind of how NASA channel puts it. "Off the Earth for the Earth."

So as interesting as human space travel may be, you think human resources would be better spent elsewhere right?

Robotic and drone space travel on the other hand is very much within our power and can remain useful for solar power  harvesting long to come.

And that is why goverments cannot be trusted to pursue space exploitation- there's nothing in it for them. Columbus wasn't commissioned to find new lands, he was commissioned to find a new route to old markets. Actual pioneering is entirely to speculative.

But there's nothing to be gained from climbing Mount Everest, either, and they just had a lethal traffic jam on the highest slopes of the world. Build it, make it possible, and the world will beat a path to your door.

[kerbiloid]

54 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

But there's nothing to be gained from climbing Mount Everest

Why? And green boots?

Spoiler

No, I don't mean gathering loots from the frozen bodies.

I mean searching for extraterrestrial artifacts left there by other civilizations millions, maybe thousands years ago.
Their spent batteries, depleted canisters, crash sites of the flying saucers...

Spoiler

Wait...

The crash sites...

Spoiler

... It's exactly gathering loot from the frozen bodies...

 

 

 

[Terwin]

23 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Ouch. So that means that human space travel is almost a waste of time.

About the only application benefits are:

Improving flight and military technology, and some of it can be used for civillians as well.

Also micro-gravity research and manufacturing.

Some things cannot be easily done in a deep gravity well, and if sufficiently valuable, could warrant the cost of a trip to orbit to produce them.

 

There is also some value in not having all of our eggs in one basket, but that is more of a wish/dream fulfillment motivation than a profit-based one. 

[Spacescifi]

19 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Also micro-gravity research and manufacturing.

Some things cannot be easily done in a deep gravity well, and if sufficiently valuable, could warrant the cost of a trip to orbit to produce them.

 

There is also some value in not having all of our eggs in one basket, but that is more of a wish/dream fulfillment motivation than a profit-based one. 

 

Yes

 Perhaps we will find a way to generate antimatter easier around saturn's rings (hopefully without blowing up a lot of tbose beautiful rings).

Regarding eggs in other baskets though... there aren't any baskets. We would literally have to construct one, a whole nother eatth environment.

The day war breaks out in such a contained environment will be a fatal day for whoever lives there.

Long story short, the technology is an engineering issue, really hard but not impossible.

Humans being flawed? That is not an engineering problem that can be fixed. Especially in a closed environment. Think like big brother but much harder because of the need for limited resources.

Off world colonization is a horror story waiting to happen.

Because we are'nt talking earth two, which would be feasible to colonize. We are talking places with no breathable air, and water that must be processed if found at all.

Edited May 28, 2019 by Spacescifi

[wumpus]

11 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Well, to be honest, gem grade diamonds are almost worthless. Pricey yes, but no intrinsic value other than the potential to be ground up and used as industrial grade dust. Dumping huge amounts of gem grade diamonds on Earth would crash their price to the level of industrial stuff, and industry wouldn't even notice.

That's somewhat similar to the argument of bringing a lot of platinum.  You might crash the market, but you'll likely drive up the demand for semi-cheap platinum (for catalysts and whatever else they want it for) and you'd have a (short term) near-monopoly on the stuff.  I doubt diamonds would find such a use.

[DDE]

17 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It's exactly gathering loot from the frozen bodies...

Perish the thought.

[Spacescifi]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

Perish the thought.

What movie is this?

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

What movie is this?

I guess,
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/