Colonisation/terraforming - Eve vs Duna

[koshelenkovv]

Minmus:

Pros:

- A lot of solar power

- Require least dV, that makes base provisioning a lot easier

- Low gravity makes return of production easy

Cons:

- Lack of atmosphere make ground activity quite complicated

- Low gravity makes prolonged stays unfavourable

Duna:

Pros:

- Gravity is not too low, and is not too high

- If atmosphere is mostly CO2 then many plants will grow in heated greenhouses (yes, 1/5 Kerbin atm pressure, but pure CO2!)

- If polar caps are mostly water ice (like on Mars), it will increase colony self-sustainability even more.

Cons:

- Thin atmosphere of unbreathable gases impedes ground activity somewhat

- Somewhat low on solar power, may require a reactor

- Higher dV requirement impedes exchange of goods

Laythe:

Pros:

- Gravity is close to Kerbin's that makes possible very long stays without adverse effects

- Atmosphere have pressure like 2 km at Kerbin and similar proportion of free oxygen (at least).

For EVA one needs warm clothing and a gas mask with a small air filter in backpack. (If oceans contains ammonia, it must be in atmosphere, together with a lot of CO2 and maybe other harmful gases.)

- There cannot be such great amounts of free oxygen at this temperature and pressure without it is being constantly replenished. Most likely, Laythe have a microbial photosynthetic life in its vast ocean. This life can be very exciting to study.

- Have a lot of water (with nasty chemicals, though)

- Plants can grow in heated greenhouses with aid of artificial illumination.

Cons:

- Depending of strength of magnetic fields both Jool and Laythe, there can be quite high amount of radiation of a surface (charged particles not fully blocked by atmosphere) (oh, there must be auroras all over Laythe!). This radiation can cut down the time of surface activity.

Even if there is high radiation level, Kerbals can build ocean bases - giant float and underwater quarters, or ground bases covered with very abundant sand.

- Quite low solar power, reactor really needed.

- Very high dV requirement makes practical only permanent self-sustained colony

So, start with Minmus, build mines and factories and travel to Duna for less dV (and on nukes only).

Laythe colony can be built after getting sustainability experience on Duna.

Edited July 30, 2013 by koshelenkovv

[Kidneythump]

The ozone layer isn't formed due to lightning. Sure, you get ozone if lighting strikes in an atmosphere with oxygen in, but our ozone layer comes from the reaction between oxygen and UV light high in the atmosphere. Nothing to do with clouds.

You are right indeed! However after some googling I found an article that states that during the rainier part of the year as much as 30% of ozone created comes from lightning, but again your are right the majority is generated from UV. I wonder how much UV radiation Laythe gets, being so close to Jool and all, and the distance to the sun doesn't really help

[koshelenkovv]

...

also, I'm assuming the polar caps of Duna are carbon dioxide and not ice, since Duna is analogous to mars and Mars's Polar caps are made of CO2.

oh, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_polar_ice_caps

[chaos_forge]

I wonder how the fact that Duna has massively bigger ice caps than Mars affects its prospects for terraforming . . .

Edited July 30, 2013 by chaos_forge

[koshelenkovv]

Some people say laythe is the best place for a new colony, but there are some things to consider:

laythe's oceans, although liquid water, must be very, very salty to prevent it from freezing, as its temperature is far below zero celsius

AIR, not water temperature ranges from +6 to -60.

On Earth we can have -30C air temperature in Arctica, but ocean's temperature will be about zero C.

We can have +50 somewhere in Africa, but ocean at same latitude will have a temperature about 25 C (in upper layers only!)

Oceans are constantly mixed. Temperature difference causes strong currents.

So and Laythe oceans too will have temperature neither +6 nor -60 C, but something in between. Also, Laythe is heated from inside but lose heat through its atmosphere.

most importantly - it's too close to Jool. at certain points in its orbit, it would pass close enough to the gravitational field of Jool to be bathed in trillions of ionically charged particles - i think it's something like that on io - essentially irradiating the entire planet's surface.

A whole lot of this particles will be stopped by atmosphere. Once stopped, there are harmless. Induced gamma and x-rays radiation is minimal - the lighter the element, the weaker induced radiation is.

Edited July 30, 2013 by koshelenkovv

[fenderzilla]

Yes fenderzilla Minmus could not hold an atmosphere at least not for very long by the usual standards and the sheer amount of breathable air that would have to be transported from somewhere in the solar system is unimaginable, but i'm not talking about terraforming it just colonizing, setting up an underground base that as well producing fuel by electrolysis of water deposits that you would find on Mun as long as its similar to the moon in its possession of small frozen ice deposits, but i'm not sure about Minmus, it may or may not have and trace amounts of water, but with the water you can keep some for hydration, some for fuel(separated tanks of oxygen and hydrogen) and create some Oxygen for life support on another note 100% oxygen would be extremely uncomfortable and dangerous ,as it turns out the moon does have trace elements of nitrogen which can be used to create an 20/80 oxygen to nitrogen air balance (again Minmus may or may not have trace nitrogen), this would be mined at least in small quantities because no matter how good the conservation of air/water etc gets it just wont quite reach 100%.

As painful as it was to read this post, I have to agree with you. I love Minmus. I love getting there, landing on it, fooling around, and flying back to kerbin. you're right in that it's pretty easy to reach and incredibly easy to leave. The frozen lakes would provide plenty of hydrogen and oxygen, both which are infinitely useful. You wouldn't need to bring your own nitrogen though, because pure oxygen is totally fine to breathe (that is, if you're a human. I'm assuming Kerbals have a similar respiratory system to that of humans). Other than that, I think a spaceport colony on Minmus is a great idea.

[Brotoro]

As painful as it was to read this post, I have to agree with you. I love Minmus. I love getting there, landing on it, fooling around, and flying back to kerbin. you're right in that it's pretty easy to reach and incredibly easy to leave. The frozen lakes would provide plenty of hydrogen and oxygen, both which are infinitely useful. You wouldn't need to bring your own nitrogen though, because pure oxygen is totally fine to breathe (that is, if you're a human. I'm assuming Kerbals have a similar respiratory system to that of humans). Other than that, I think a spaceport colony on Minmus is a great idea.

Sure, you can breathe pure oxygen, but RonDon's point is that a pure oxygen atmosphere is very dangerous as a fire hazard.

[Rondon]

Right, I am sorry if my post was painful, I don't have many post's on this forum or any other, any suggestions would be appreciated. I only mentioned the Mun/Minmus because I've always noticed how people bring up Mars/Duna for colonization far more than the mun/Moon, even though it would be considerably harder colonizing the mun/Moon, not that's there's no good reason for that though, as interesting as the Mun/Minmus/Moon can be it just cant quite compare with the whole planets outside of our sphere of influence and the frontier quality they bring with them.

And since we don't necessarily hath to prioritize difficulty over fun, I'd go for Laythe for my choice of colonization, there's just so much to do.

[fenderzilla]

I'll try using the kethane mod etc. to make a minmian spaceport colony. I love the idea.

also brotoro has an excellent mission story about colony stuff on laythe. check it out.

[lazarus1024]

Well, at least in so far as real planets and moons go, Mars has significantly more readily accessible resources than the Moon does. Regolith can be processed for Oxygen, but not super easily.

CO2 atmosphere of Mars (even though super low pressure) can relatively easily be processed for breathable air. Plus a fair amount of permafrost dry ice and water ice, as well as the polar caps (for both again). The Moon has a small amount of ice that we have identified, pretty much only in the Southern polar crater (though far more than enough to support a moderate colony with plenty of recycling). Regolith is also very dangerous. The Moon does not, nor has it had an atmosphere over any real period of its existance. Therefore there has been no atmospheric or water errosion of the regolith. This means that basically the regolith is powdered pieces of stone, NOT soil or even sand like exists on the Earth. It is very sharp edged, even though tiny. Very, very, very abrasive. Not something you'd ever want to get in your eye, or delicate machinary, or even not delicate machinary. It is possibly the biggest problem with long term visits or colonization of the Moon.

Mars has an actual atmosphere, so its surface is much closer to Earth normal "soil" than exists on the Moon. Of course there is probably no organic component to Martian regolith, but it has been weathered by the atmosphere and possibly some water errosion, at least millions of years ago.

[Rondon]

Fenderzilla glad you like the idea and yeah I'm already checking out Brotoro's story's about Laythe. I should say I tried out a Kethane colony on Minmus and I have some advice, 1-unless you're habitation modules are just sitting there and aren't coupled with the mining systems and unless you can confidently design for it ,docking on the ground with any ship large enough to bother with could be extremely difficult, after what seemed like an hour fruitlessly bumping the fuel transport ship near the Sr docking port on the mining module I found this out the hard way. 2- although it would be cheaper per unit eventually, it might take considerably longer to extract and export the Kethane compared to just sending regular fuel from Kerbin to orbit, I think it was a 2:1 mun:kerbin time ratio for my design, but if you design the ships to be large enough and your good enough at docking the time investment may payoff if you're doing a lot of interplanetary launching. good luck!

lazarus1024: I never considered the properties of the Lunar regolith or the fact that oxygen could just be extracted from the martian air, under that system the oxygen could be taken from the outside air and CO2 from the inhabitants could just be extracted and sent back out into the air, in theory you wouldn't even need an air recycling system! And yes one advantage mars has is that it has soil which is probably the closest to terrestrial soil in the solar system, if a GM plant could survive under these conditions food and fuel could be obtained in easily, that doesn't work Nuclear would work fine. With regards to the regolith again, yes extraction of oxygen from the regolith of which 40% is oxygen would be difficult, I was thinking more of splitting the H2O in an underground lunar ice deposit for oxygen and then using/dumping the excess hydrogen, although even the water could be laced with contaminants and if they cant be purified without a gigantic quantity of infrastructure and are unsafe, then extremely expensive water and oxygen would have to be brought from earth, come to think of it unpure fuel would also be far less useful depending on the contamination. with regards to the dust, i'm thinking (possibly naively) that with enough infrastructure regolith could be cleaned away from a person's suit, but the damage to rovers/mining vehicles, dunno, if its traveling very slowly it may avoid most damage, until they start mining, mining could create a lot of problems dust wise.

With regard to the resources of Mars, the utilization of (land/soil in a nuclear powered greenhouse) could lead to exponential growth, whereas a lunar colony would be limited by the current demand for fuel in earth orbit, maybe additionally the mining of He3 or surface deposits of valuable metals gold/platinum providing there even there in the minutest quantity,or the potential as a space tourism location. even if with cheap fuel, interplanetary travel grows at an exponential rate, the rate of say colonists on mars to the required number of people on the moon to mine the fuel for them to get there could be within 1/100 or 1/1000.

In total there are a lot of variables but taking the martian CO2 and the lunar regolith's various dangers and into account, Mars even with the extra delta-V might be easier, but unless Elon Musk's dream of an 80,000 martian population in 2-3 decades becomes a reality it would take a very long time for the mars civilization to become as helpful to the space economy as a lunar fuel port that would slash Earth to X-planet fuel costs to mere percentage of there current sum, maybe in the scheme of things a space agency/corporation will create a mining outpost on the moon helping the (already/about to start/starts afterwards) colonization of mars, as well as the rest of the solar system for that matter.

[DJEN]

Some people say laythe is the best place for a new colony, but there are some things to consider:

laythe's oceans, although liquid water, must be very, very salty to prevent it from freezing, as its temperature is far below zero celsius

It's halfway across the solar system, so getting there and back would be net to impossible

it's unlikely that there is an abundance of anything that could be used for energy or rocket fuel - even solar power would be sparse as it is so far away from the sun.

most importantly - it's too close to Jool. at certain points in its orbit, it would pass close enough to the gravitational field of Jool to be bathed in trillions of ionically charged particles - i think it's something like that on io - essentially irradiating the entire planet's surface. you could work out some sort of way to draw power from this, but your bases would have to have heavy radiation shielding. I think that this would make it impossible to terraform it into an inhabitable world.

So much fail that I can't help but shout swears to you.

DO YOUR RESEARCH

[DJEN]

This thread is going to become a battlefield soon, I recommend a mod to lock this thread.

Edited August 2, 2013 by DJEN

[fenderzilla]

Fenderzilla glad you like the idea and yeah I'm already checking out Brotoro's story's about Laythe. I should say I tried out a Kethane colony on Minmus and I have some advice, 1-unless you're habitation modules are just sitting there and aren't coupled with the mining systems and unless you can confidently design for it ,docking on the ground with any ship large enough to bother with could be extremely difficult, after what seemed like an hour fruitlessly bumping the fuel transport ship near the Sr docking port on the mining module I found this out the hard way. 2- although it would be cheaper per unit eventually, it might take considerably longer to extract and export the Kethane compared to just sending regular fuel from Kerbin to orbit, I think it was a 2:1 mun:kerbin time ratio for my design, but if you design the ships to be large enough and your good enough at docking the time investment may payoff if you're doing a lot of interplanetary launching. good luck!

No, no, no. I don't mean that you land your ships on minmus to refuel. you would have a fleet of small rockets on the surface of minmus, each capable of drilling and converting kethane. these would make rocket fuel and oxidizer, then fly it up to a space station in orbit around minmus. ships flying out to the rest of the solar system would dock with the station to refuel.

Never, ever, ever try to dock on the surface.

[fenderzilla]

Some people say laythe is the best place for a new colony, but there are some things to consider:

laythe's oceans, although liquid water, must be very, very salty to prevent it from freezing, as its temperature is far below zero celsius

It's halfway across the solar system, so getting there and back would be net to impossible

it's unlikely that there is an abundance of anything that could be used for energy or rocket fuel - even solar power would be sparse as it is so far away from the sun.

most importantly - it's too close to Jool. at certain points in its orbit, it would pass close enough to the gravitational field of Jool to be bathed in trillions of ionically charged particles - i think it's something like that on io - essentially irradiating the entire planet's surface. you could work out some sort of way to draw power from this, but your bases would have to have heavy radiation shielding. I think that this would make it impossible to terraform it into an inhabitable world.

okay, I'm taking back what I said about laythe. having never been there before, I had no idea what everyone was talking about. now that I've landed a ship on laythe, though, I have to bite my tounge - laythe is exquisitely beautiful. the sea is really well animated and the land looks pretty as well, and I love to look into the bright blue sky to see Jool hanging there. Laythe is truly a second kerbin; I understand now why that old astronomer thought it was kerbin through his telescope.

[boxman]

So much fail that I can't help but shout swears to you.

DO YOUR RESEARCH

He is right about at least two things.. There is no way it can have liquid ocean water as we know it, no matter how much tidal energy there are. The only way for liquid water to exist at such a distance from sun would be underneath a sheet of ice like Europa. There is no way tidal effects could heat up the atmospheric air temperature. He is also right about radiation.. If jool is anything like a real gas giant, then the moons would bath in radiation that would be extremely harmful to human beings and most likely kerbals.

I have same issues with minmus.. It is supposed to have water ice, but that is impossible as it is at same distance as kerbin and has no atmosphere, which means that the surface temperature in the sun would be boiling hot, which would instantly turn that ice into vapour that would leak into space.

The only way water can exist on such a moon is in deep shaded craters where sunlight never reaches or maybe below surface.

Edited August 13, 2013 by boxman

[Aqua667]

Eve's atmosphere, if it was like Venus', would be highly toxic and acidic. Everything would have to built out of glass reinforced with carbon fiber so it doesn't get crushed, melted (by acid). or melted (by heat). As far as I know, NASA or any other space agency has never had plan to send a person to Venus.

Duna's atmosphere is co2, which means it contains some oxygen, purify the air and use the carbon to make pencils, and viola free air and writing utensils.[spoiler ALERT!]

Stupid theory:And the pyramid's sstv signal shows a beam pointing to Ike. Maybe that means Ike is a device that will somehow terraform Duna?!?!

[END SPOILER!]

so, DUNA FTW

[czokletmuss]

Eve's atmosphere, if it was like Venus', would be highly toxic and acidic. Everything would have to built out of glass reinforced with carbon fiber so it doesn't get crushed, melted (by acid). or melted (by heat). As far as I know, NASA or any other space agency has never had plan to send a person to Venus.

Yup. If anyone is interested how it may happen (landing on Eve in a more realistic KSP universe), just read this (SPOILERS!).

[alacrity]

I have to say that Duna is the better choice.... little harder to land on (chutes don't work as well) but way easier to escape. I have not heard of anyone that managed to drop a launchable return vehikle.

The other issues concerning habitation

Temp.... Way easier to warm up duna habs, then cool Eve habs

Grav... after weeks in null g, Eve's 1.7 gravs would be a serious burden in the initial time period while Duna's low grav would be a bone loss issue over the long term.

Resources...Eve's dubious oceans may or maynot produce drinkable water, while duna's ice caps would be hard to mine out and create more temp issues as setting up the perm hab there would increase the need for heating

I think that choosing between a lowland Duna and a highland Eve habitation... Duna wins

Alacrity

[boxman]

I have to say that Duna is the better choice.... little harder to land on (chutes don't work as well) but way easier to escape. I have not heard of anyone that managed to drop a launchable return vehikle.

The other issues concerning habitation

Temp.... Way easier to warm up duna habs, then cool Eve habs

Grav... after weeks in null g, Eve's 1.7 gravs would be a serious burden in the initial time period while Duna's low grav would be a bone loss issue over the long term.

Resources...Eve's dubious oceans may or maynot produce drinkable water, while duna's ice caps would be hard to mine out and create more temp issues as setting up the perm hab there would increase the need for heating

I think that choosing between a lowland Duna and a highland Eve habitation... Duna wins

Alacrity

Not to mention that if EVE is anywhere near true to Venus then the poor kerbals would be crushed if they went on a EVA due to the extremely high pressure. Same thing with capsules and rovers, they would not stand the pressure as it is as high as deep oceans here on earth.

[fenderzilla]

He is right about at least two things.. There is no way it can have liquid ocean water as we know it, no matter how much tidal energy there are. The only way for liquid water to exist at such a distance from sun would be underneath a sheet of ice like Europa.

Well, pure water or even saltwater. the current guess is water and ammonia.

I have same issues with minmus.. It is supposed to have water ice, but that is impossible as it is at same distance as kerbin and has no atmosphere, which means that the surface temperature in the sun would be boiling hot, which would instantly turn that ice into vapour that would leak into space.

The only way water can exist on such a moon is in deep shaded craters where sunlight never reaches or maybe below surface.

Hmmm. I thought atmosphere-less planets and moons would have a temperature or about 0 kelvin, because they're touching the vacuum. guess I was wrong. now I think minmus is covered in salt flats.

Duna's atmosphere is co2, which means it contains some oxygen, purify the air and use the carbon to make pencils, and viola free air and writing utensils.

Ever heard of plants? They're what we use to convert CO2 into O2. also everyone jokes that kerbals evolved from vegetables so they'd probably be fine to breathe CO2:D

[Marten2Productions]

What about Duna in the ice caps?

They could be made of the name stuff mars' ice caps have: Dry ice (frozen carbondioxice or CO2)

[StUdIoGuY]

How can Eve have water in it's oceans if the temperature at sea level is over 100 degrees celsius?

Water boils at 100 degrees at 1 atm pressure, on Eve, as others said, the pressure is 5 atm, water's boiling point is at 149 degrees

[mnemon]

Just as a short interjection: Why would anyone having expended a huge amount of efforts, money, and ressources to climb out of the gravity well want to go back there again so soon? Is that our monkey genetics? "MUST.... HUG...EARTH".

From a purely economical point of view, it would be much easier to grab a couple of asteroids (mostly h2o, co2 and iron, so 95% of the stuff we need), and process those into whatever materials we require. The biggest difficulty will always be - until the advent of cheap abundant fusion and/or other means - the energy required to sustain our fragile Kerbals. Shipping stuff up and down planets, or even terraforming them, will take so much more energy than even building "ringworlds" or Halo installations.

But of course that does not answers OPs question, so I´ll shut up now.

Regards

[ArmchairGravy]

Duna/Mars. Drop an ice-rich asteroid into the canyon for volitiles, a couple of solar arrays for heat, a couple of pressure domes for greenhouses, and you've got a colony. If you want to get fancy build into the walls of the canyons. Going underground eliminates the radiation hazard, and since the planet is tectonically dead (unlike Eve/Venus) it's safe.