O'Neill Cylinders and 0g Manufacturing

[sh1pman]

4 minutes ago, Nothalogh said:

It's already a dead world, so stripmining it and turning it into a WH40K forgeworld won't hurt anybody's feelings

Musk wants to terraform it somehow. Not sure what I like more: an Earth-like gardenworld or a 40k Mechanicus forgeworld. The latter is probably more useful.

[Nothalogh]

4 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Musk wants to terraform it somehow. Not sure what I like more: an Earth-like gardenworld or a 40k Mechanicus forgeworld. The latter is probably more useful.

Only the latter gets you a fleet of generation ships.

[derega16]

55 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Musk wants to terraform it somehow. Not sure what I like more: an Earth-like gardenworld or a 40k Mechanicus forgeworld. The latter is probably more useful.

Unless they find some sort of ancient alien there ...

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Nothalogh said:

Only the latter gets you a fleet of generation ships.

We have the moon, mercury the belt and the gas giant moons for forgeworlds. 

[GuessingEveryDay]

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Have we actually made stuff at 0g?

(I tried to imagine how an asteroid miner could process ore... and outside of centrifuges, couldn't.)

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

 

I've known about shot manufacturing for decades - and yet I would have never made the connection that 'we were using microgravity here on earth'. 

Kind of a head slapper...

... because, of course when the lead is freely falling - which allows the surface tension to force the cooling lead into spheres - it is in 'free fall' and hence microgravity. 

[Geonovast]

This topic has been split off from the SpaceX thread. 

[kerbiloid]

Why?! It's just about the next Space-X project - the O'Neill-cylinder-sized Superstarship. A multikilometer rocket used as wet (literally) workshop.

7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

It's crazy that people are burning entropy to run computer calculations that are intentionally designed to be wastefully expensive, just to show "proof of work".

They just sacrifice the energy to the spirit of profit, and  sometimes get gifted.  

 

16 hours ago, tater said:

The people living there are defacto the owners.

Not that that means much of anything, there's no gain to be had. The only places worth living in on Mars will have to be built, they're not worth living in until people build them—and at a level that makes them worth it. Pretty high bar. If you build literally a shack on a south pacific island, sure the house is meh—but you're on a south pacific island. WIN. You pretty much need to build the nicest indoor space ever built by humans just to make Mars "acceptable" as a place to live, IMO.

So, then can they become an independent country and join UN?

If so, they can be selling their citizenship and carbon dioxide quotas.
Just the latter can make them enormously rich.

Edited May 18, 2021 by kerbiloid

[SpaceFace545]

4 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Musk wants to terraform it somehow. Not sure what I like more: an Earth-like gardenworld or a 40k Mechanicus forgeworld. The latter is probably more useful.

The prior seems impossible, I guess you can heat up the atmosphere and make it earth-ish but a stray solar storm would strip away your hundreds of years of hardwork in a second.

[southernplain]

1 minute ago, SpaceFace545 said:

The prior seems impossible, I guess you can heat up the atmosphere and make it earth-ish but a stray solar storm would strip away your hundreds of years of hardwork in a second.

Atmospheric losses due to solar wind are mostly meaningful on a geological timeline. 

Mars lost its original atmosphere over billions of years.

Besides, if we have the technology and will to terraform a planet, it is relatively trivial to give it an artificial magnetosphere to slow atmospheric escape via solar wind. 

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

They just sacrifice the energy to the spirit of profit, and  sometimes get gifted.  

Too true.

1 hour ago, southernplain said:

Besides, if we have the technology and will to terraform a planet, it is relatively trivial to give it an artificial magnetosphere to slow atmospheric escape via solar wind. 

Well, first of all, I doubt we do have that technology. But secondly, I do not believe it would be in any way "relatively trivial" to create an artificial magnetosphere. We at least can conceive of bringing water from other places it exists in the solar system, or tailoring bacteria and algae and such to create an atmosphere. But how would you simulate the entire spinning core of the Earth?

Anyway, the main problem is not that we can't figure out how to terraform Mars. The main problem is that it would take so long that we don't expect there would be any humans around to make use of it.

[Terwin]

8 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Well, first of all, I doubt we do have that technology. But secondly, I do not believe it would be in any way "relatively trivial" to create an artificial magnetosphere. We at least can conceive of bringing water from other places it exists in the solar system, or tailoring bacteria and algae and such to create an atmosphere. But how would you simulate the entire spinning core of the Earth?

I think I remember an idea about putting a large spinning magnet at a Lagrange point to deflect solar wind?

Not terribly practical as I think it would take multiple SS loads just to get it to orbit, but certainly possible.

[southernplain]

15 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Well, first of all, I doubt we do have that technology. But secondly, I do not believe it would be in any way "relatively trivial" to create an artificial magnetosphere.

Considering that the fast version of terraforming involves bombarding Mars with various redirected comets/asteroids, putting a ring of superconductors around the planet or a magnetic dipole at a Lagrange point is relatively trivial. 

Could it be done today? No. Neither can terraforming, but an artificial magnetosphere involves huge orders of magnitude less engineering and raw materials.

[YNM]

2 hours ago, southernplain said:

Besides, if we have the technology and will to terraform a planet, it is relatively trivial to give it an artificial magnetosphere to slow atmospheric escape via solar wind. 

This have been talked about in a different thread.

Putting actual stuff on the surface is more reasonable than putting it away from the surface, actually. Although it's definitely still sci-fi ish.

Edited May 18, 2021 by YNM

[magnemoe]

43 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I think I remember an idea about putting a large spinning magnet at a Lagrange point to deflect solar wind?

Not terribly practical as I think it would take multiple SS loads just to get it to orbit, but certainly possible.

Talking about teraforming mars and starship clashes a bit, viking ships and the Panama Canal being to small is an reference. 
Pulse nuclear orion battleships, nice crafts but  honestly 5000 T and 5" guns its an destroyer who support  the +45K ton capital ships. 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

5" guns

Nukes are from 6"

Casaba and so on should be used.