Colonisation/terraforming - Eve vs Duna

[Holo]

Yep, Eve is about 25 times less hostile than Venus.

Anyway, here's my completed habitability table:

Take conclusions from that if you will, I'm too tired of making tables to number crunch this thing right now.

[czokletmuss]

I just checked, and it looks like Gilly is a nice and warm 41.38 C (it says 0 in-game, but that's because the thermometer measures atmospheric temperature. I worked out this value from the luminosity and distance from the Sun). Much more pleasant that the sweltering 150 C summers on Eve.

But it means problems with cooling (which is said to going to be added). Wouldn't the Ike be better? Colder, yes, but you can build a base and cover it with the regolith plus use the energy from the solar panels to warm it a little bit. And you have quite habitable planet few m/s away. And to make journey even more cheaper in terms of delta-V, you can perform a reverse gravity assist (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Gravity_Assist)

Edited April 19, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Holo]

Looking at my table, in order of habitability, are:

• Kerbin
  
• Laythe
  
• Gilly
  
• the Mun
  
• Minmus
  
• Duna
  
• Ike
  
• Dres
  
• Moho
  
• Vall
  
• Tylo
  
• Bop
  
• Pol
  
• Eeloo
  
• Eve
  

This doesn't take gravity or radiation into account yet, so take these with a grain of salt.

TL;DR: Gilly is good, Eve is terrible, Duna's better than most other things

EDIT: New chart. I've added habitability scores (out of ten), the type of the body and whether it has breathable atmosphere.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Holo

[czokletmuss]

That's interesting but since we are speculating in a quasy realistic way we have to take radiation into consideration. Here's what the neighbourhood of the Jupiter-like planets looks like:

You see this ring which connect the innermost moon with the gas giant? This is a plasma torus which provides Io - or in our version, Laythe - with a deadly 3,600 rem (36 Sv) of radiation per day.

We should also include distance and inclination - maybe on Moho there is plenty of energy but getting there is a very, very difficult task. The same thing goes for Jool and his moons, not to mention the Eeloo. I would also say that the Dres is not worthy the energy - more or less the same conditions as on the Mun but less energy from the Sun and much more distant target.

So effectively we are reduced to the inner planets and not all of them:

1) Eve - absolutely deadly enviroment, crazy delta-V requirements means this is a one way trip, no solar energy on the surface (90km of clouds folks), high temp and pressure

2) Gilly - not worth the risk; why go so far if you can effectively have the same conditions (low G) on Minmus? However you get more solar power but less or no water at all, plus the distance between the Kerbin and the settlement is huge

3) Kerbin SOI - Mun and Minmus are obvious targets, all the minuses are negated by the very close distance to the KSC; few days and you have your supplies/crew

4) Duna and Ike - like Mun and Minmus but further away

So that's it - Kerbin's moons, Duna and Ike, maybe Gilly and maybe - if you can deal with the radiation and enormous distance (more or less one year) - Laythe. The rest is a joke

Oh and we don't know whether you can breathe on Laythe - there is a highly reactive oxygen but we (and Kerbals also?) don't use the pure oxygen to breathe. In fact only 21% of our atmosphere is oxygen, the rest is nitrogen. But this is a big plus since we can use jets on this pretty moon.

[Holo]

Laythe's OK, as long as you don't want to reproduce ever. Although yeah, there's way too much radiation. I'll see if I can calculate some radiation levels for the Joolian moons. I'll also add gravity to the equation.

[Elemental]

Eve's delta-V requirements are simply not sufficient to maintain anything other than a prison.

Now THAT is a GREAT plan!

[Temstar]

With Eve and colonies in general, what exactly are you going to return to Kerbin? Surely not some kind of interplanetary trade in Blutonium? Kerbin is self sufficient and does not really need any kind of resources from offworld colonies given the expenses involved in getting them back to Kerbin (particularly in Eve's case). So really the only thing you may consider returning from colonies are people. Us humans are already toying with the idea that astronauts going to Mars should stay on Mars. Given the bravado of Kerbals when it comes to space travel surely they would run their own "Eve to Stay" colonisation program. So if the requirement becomes "once in a while we may need to lift people into orbit, starting from a 6.5km mountaintop colony" then it's not as difficult. Before forum got eaten the most successful ship in the SERV challenge managed to loft two Kerbals back to Eve orbit with around 14 tons of rocket. It was an "open air" rocket without a command pod, something like:

So we don't know how practical it is when we consider it realistically, but still it shows that 7500m/s is within current engineering capabilities. For comparison it takes about 9400m/s to reach LEO from here on Earth.

[ROFLCopter64bit]

Holo, turn that spreadsheet into a google doc, I would like to do some work on it.

[Itsdavyjones]

Resource transfer will happen. If you've read the Mars trilogy, they mine the rare materials like gold and platinum group metals and other rare materials on earth and send it back once a space elevator was built, since it made it many times cheaper than with rocket launches. But if space elevators aren't introduced, than it would be much cheaper to mine asteroids then planets due to the gravity well. Assuming that asteroids get introduced.

[Kerbface]

That's interesting but since we are speculating in a quasy realistic way we have to take radiation into consideration. Here's what the neighbourhood of the Jupiter-like planets looks like:

You see this ring which connect the innermost moon with the gas giant? This is a plasma torus which provides Io - or in our version, Laythe - with a deadly 3,600 rem (36 Sv) of radiation per day.

This is just a thought and I only have a very basic understanding of planetary physics, but I was thinking Laythe seems pretty far away from the sun considering it's temperature and it has huge unfrozen oceans. Is it possible it has a very active interior which heats it up (and has many underwater geothermal vents heating the oceans) and this also gives it a very strong magnetic field, protecting it from the massive doses of radiation it would get from Jool to some degree?

[Holo]

Holo, turn that spreadsheet into a google doc, I would like to do some work on it.

Sure, here's the google doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkQSKd3qq9H_dF9CbDBDcEZiSGhxZjhzX0J2SnBtX0E&usp=sharing

You just edit it how it is, it's a copy of the main one.

[Spatzimaus]

Is it possible it has a very active interior which heats it up (and has many underwater geothermal vents heating the oceans) and this also gives it a very strong magnetic field, protecting it from the massive doses of radiation it would get from Jool to some degree?

One doesn't imply the other. Moons of gas giants can have very active interiors, but it's not for the same reasons Earth's interior is active. Instead, it's because the tidal forces from the gas giant pull on the moon so hard that the center stays warm from the stretching and contraction; this is why it's commonly thought that Europa's oceans are liquid, underneath a thin layer of ice, and several other moons have geysers or volcanoes. The liquid oceans on Europa do affect the magnetic field caused by Jupiter, but the amount it does this is thousands of times smaller than the strength of Earth's magnetic field, so it wouldn't have any real effect on the amount of radiation.

Laythe isn't exactly a perfect analogue of Europa, but it's meant to be similar. Regardless, the amount of energy coming off any gas giant would be enough to cause problems.

[Kerbface]

One doesn't imply the other. Moons of gas giants can have very active interiors, but it's not for the same reasons Earth's interior is active. Instead, it's because the tidal forces from the gas giant pull on the moon so hard that the center stays warm from the stretching and contraction; this is why it's commonly thought that Europa's oceans are liquid, underneath a thin layer of ice, and several other moons have geysers or volcanoes. The liquid oceans on Europa do affect the magnetic field caused by Jupiter, but the amount it does this is thousands of times smaller than the strength of Earth's magnetic field, so it wouldn't have any real effect on the amount of radiation.

Laythe isn't exactly a perfect analogue of Europa, but it's meant to be similar. Regardless, the amount of energy coming off any gas giant would be enough to cause problems.

So it's not possible that the moon could have a strong enough magnetic field to protect it from lethal radiation doses?

[Spatzimaus]

So it's not possible that the moon could have a strong enough magnetic field to protect it from lethal radiation doses?

I wouldn't say IMPOSSIBLE, but with what we've seen, it probably can't. Laythe is in a tidal lock with Jool, so it wouldn't be spinning fast enough to generate a magnetic field from any metal content. (Even if it had much metal content to begin with, which many moons don't. Our own moon is very metal-poor.) Europa's magnetic field is basically an induced effect from coupling with Jupiter's own field through its salt water content. But salt water isn't THAT conductive, and the amount of water on the planet isn't much compared to the size of the interior. Europa's magnetic field strength is only about 400 nanoTeslas, while Earth's magnetic field at the equator is about a hundred times stronger than that (31 microTeslas).

Realistically, what'll save Laythe from hard solar radiation would be the fact that it's well inside Jool's magnetic field; Jupiter's magnetic field is far stronger than Earth's, and it's not unreasonable to expect the same of Jool, so Laythe would be protected from the high-energy solar particles that Earth's Van Allen belts stop. But, that wouldn't help it survive the massive amount of high-energy particles contained within Jool's field itself, so Laythe should be completely inhospitable to life.

[Holo]

I wouldn't say IMPOSSIBLE, but with what we've seen, it probably can't. Laythe is in a tidal lock with Jool, so it wouldn't be spinning fast enough to generate a magnetic field from any metal content. (Even if it had much metal content to begin with, which many moons don't. Our own moon is very metal-poor.) Europa's magnetic field is basically an induced effect from coupling with Jupiter's own field through its salt water content. But salt water isn't THAT conductive, and the amount of water on the planet isn't much compared to the size of the interior. Europa's magnetic field strength is only about 400 nanoTeslas, while Earth's magnetic field at the equator is about a hundred times stronger than that (31 microTeslas).

Realistically, what'll save Laythe from hard solar radiation would be the fact that it's well inside Jool's magnetic field; Jupiter's magnetic field is far stronger than Earth's, and it's not unreasonable to expect the same of Jool, so Laythe would be protected from the high-energy solar particles that Earth's Van Allen belts stop. But, that wouldn't help it survive the massive amount of high-energy particles contained within Jool's field itself, so Laythe should be completely inhospitable to life.

Laythe does have some life on it. It just can't support multicellular life.

[Kerbface]

I wouldn't say IMPOSSIBLE, but with what we've seen, it probably can't. Laythe is in a tidal lock with Jool, so it wouldn't be spinning fast enough to generate a magnetic field from any metal content. (Even if it had much metal content to begin with, which many moons don't. Our own moon is very metal-poor.) Europa's magnetic field is basically an induced effect from coupling with Jupiter's own field through its salt water content. But salt water isn't THAT conductive, and the amount of water on the planet isn't much compared to the size of the interior. Europa's magnetic field strength is only about 400 nanoTeslas, while Earth's magnetic field at the equator is about a hundred times stronger than that (31 microTeslas).

Realistically, what'll save Laythe from hard solar radiation would be the fact that it's well inside Jool's magnetic field; Jupiter's magnetic field is far stronger than Earth's, and it's not unreasonable to expect the same of Jool, so Laythe would be protected from the high-energy solar particles that Earth's Van Allen belts stop. But, that wouldn't help it survive the massive amount of high-energy particles contained within Jool's field itself, so Laythe should be completely inhospitable to life.

Aw, well that's a bit of a shame. I thought the idea of landing a colony on Laythe or finding some sort of life in it's oceans would be pretty cool...

[Richy teh space man]

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html

Higher pressure causes water to stay liquid even beyond its normal boiling point. Not sure of the exact point (guessing that 2atm probably isn't enough to counterbalance the 50 degree temperature difference), but it's not impossible.

Ahh I see thanks, I was wondering about that.

As to the original question I think Duna would be the more habitable due it being easier to return from, although given the choice of planets and moons Laythe would be the obvious logical choice for a colony in the game.

[ROFLCopter64bit]

Hospitality isn't the only reason you want to set up camp places; it's the shiny things that make you want them.

As far as scarcity goes, Eve is best place to get expensive stuff. Even though that it was the worst rated in the Kerbal Holiday Reviews.

[azazel1024]

One thing to take in to consideration is that Laythe also has a moderate atmosphere, and this would do a fair amount to screen some of the high energy particles. It would not be as effective as a good magnetic field, but it would reduce some of the impacts of the radiation contained within Jools magnetic field.

[drakesdoom]

Has anyone stopped to consider that this is not NASA but KSP, the main difference being we are using kerbals. It seems to me that their think green hide skin and large overly think lead laced skull would protect them from significant radiation doses. Also what If I told you the only way to fuel your nerva rockets was with eveian fuel? We here at KSP believe in the jeb way, if there is a problem MOAR BOOSTERS!!!

[Kerbface]

One thing to take in to consideration is that Laythe also has a moderate atmosphere, and this would do a fair amount to screen some of the high energy particles. It would not be as effective as a good magnetic field, but it would reduce some of the impacts of the radiation contained within Jools magnetic field.

I know it's tidal locked in the game, this is all what if, but if Laythe did have a significant spin, would my earlier suggestion be possible?

[azazel1024]

Yes it would.

To expand, even without a significant magnetic field of its own, it is likely to have low enough radiation to have life. Or at least the possibility of life. Especially within its oceans where received radiation doses would be significantly less than on the surface.

The atmosphere would provide a fair amount of protection, even if doses would be dozens-hundreds of times higher than background radiation on Earth. Light protection could still do for you and light construction techniques would be all you'd need for buildings. Just make sure you don't sunbathe too much (err, well stand under exposed skys). At least not with a light protective suit.

Edited April 20, 2013 by azazel1024

[Temstar]

Even if the surface of Laythe is scarred by ionising radiation life would be able to survive in the oceans. Remember every 7 cm of water cuts radiation by 50%. You can safely swim in nuclear reactor's spent fuel pool. In fact diving into the spent fuel pool will actually cause you to receive less radiation than you would in everyday life from background radiation, as long as you don't dive to the bottom where the spent rods are:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

I've seen a few suggestion where deep space spacecrafts should have a "radiation shelter" where it's a small room completely surrounded (except for the entrance tunnel) by the ship's water storage tank.

Edited April 20, 2013 by Temstar

[czokletmuss]

Yeah, but it's like building a base on Europa and Mars. Due to distance and hence the cost, you will always be able to send more payload to Mars then to Europa. Which means you could either have a decent size base on the Red Planet or a small outpost on Europa. Tyranny of the rocket equation - you can't just ignore the delta-V requirements for Laythe, especially with comparison to Duna, which is the closest planet to Kerbin in terms of m/s.

[Temstar]

Eve actually has a slightly lower delta-V requirement compared to Duna. Being an inferior planet it also has a shorter travel time.