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#1 Re: Human missions » Outsourcing the VSE and Mars » 2006-09-10 04:12:53

Is NASA's main purpose to subsidize the least competitive American companies, or to do space exploration?

If I want to buy a new car, then I don't care where in the world it comes from. What I care about is price, quality, design and features. The same logic should apply to procurement of space exploration hardware.

It is true that NASA has more space exploration experience then anyone else, but their hardware is essentially flying prototypes. We will sooner or later enter an era where space exploration hardware will have to be mass produced, and NASA and American companies have no more experience in mass production than companies elsewhere in the world. The flat-screen TV was probably not invented in South Korea, but South Korean companies are certainly better at mass-producing them than American companies.

Maybe it is because I am European, but I don't understand why you people think that everything should be developed and made in the US. I am sure that companies in for instance Thailand would be able to improve your prototypes and produce high-quality space hardware for NASA for a lot less than you currently spend. This way you Americans would be able to get more space exploration hardware for less.

A lot of the computer memory chips are produced on Taiwan, and this is good both for the US and the rest of the world. If it still had to be produced in the US then we would essentially still be in the stone age. Where would the US be if we had kept the industrial revolution in Europe?

Technology should be shared for the benefit of all. period.

#2 Re: Human missions » The First to Mars - Who will it be? » 2006-08-23 14:06:17

I think private sector will succeed in making the necessary hardware to go to Mars before anyone else. However, the private sector will not be the first ones on Mars themselves, because they simply cannot afford their own hardware. This is very similar to the colonization of North and South America - the companies that made ocean going sail ships did not travel across the ocean themselves. Many actually didn't even know, or care, that the ships they built were going to travel that far away from home. Being the first ones on Mars is then simply a question about who will be willing to spend lots of money on going there. I voted for China, but it could be another big country (like India) as well.

#3 Re: Human missions » We have a new planet - Ceres » 2006-08-16 17:02:37

Will it have a great impact on space exploration that Ceres will now be considered a planet instead of an asteroid?

I think it will!

Previous space exploration has been focused on Mars and Venus, but I believe this might change when Ceres is redefined as a planet. This little ice-covered world the size of Texas should certainly be explored with suitable equipment. Maybe we could even send manned missions there one day - the escape velocity is not exactly very high, and the frozen surface water makes it suitable for settlement.

#4 Re: Human missions » Save-A-Stage » 2006-08-16 09:13:20

I don't think a maglev would sense from an economic point of view, and I will try to illustrate why by making up some numbers. Let's say building something like this would cost $100 billion. If the interest rate is 5% then that would be a fixed annual cost of $5000 million. If the variable cost per launch is 0, then the price per launch would be something like this:

1 launch per year - $5000 million per launch
10 launches per year - $500 million per launch
100 launches per year - $50 million per launch
1000 launches per year - $5 million per launch
10000 launches per year - $500 000 per launch

With traditional launches I guess it is the other way around, so that the fixed costs are low and the variable cost per launch is sky high. I made up all the numbers here, but the conclusion would be the same with real estimates: you need A LOT of launches per year to make a profit.

#5 Re: Human missions » mining lunar ice » 2006-08-14 17:28:31

As for what to do with the water just store it as H2O I say.  In that form alone there'd be plenty of uses for it at a lunar base.  Any cryogenic H2 or O2 should be meant as short-term storage for immediate launches otherwise we'd be wasting water - only use electrolosis to break it up when we absolutely need to.  It takes more effort and energy even in the shaded regions of the moon to keep O2 and H2 at those temperatures so, again, only when nessicary.

I agree. Splitting the water into oxygen and hydrogen is a bad idea. If there is a limited amount of water on the moon then every single drop should be preserved for "organic" purposes. Using it as rocket fuel would be horrible idea. A liter of water split into hydrogen and oxygen will not get you very far, but can on the other hand be sufficient to grow you a decent meal every single week.

#6 Re: Civilization and Culture » So what about Mars is appealing to you? » 2006-08-05 13:23:18

I like dense cities, and I think quality of life could be just as good in a Martian city-state as in any city on Earth. I don't believe that there would be any more individual freedom on Mars than in most democratic countries on Earth though. Quite the contrary, people will be much more dependent on the "civilization" then here, because of the dependency on expensive equipment no individual can afford on his/her own like power plants, water extraction equipment, space suit factories, nitrate extraction mines, huge domes etc. etc. The same applies to potential lunar colonies. I don't think any group of people on Mars will be able to isolate themselves, because they will depend 100% on trade and contact with others.

What really appeals to me about colonizing Mars is that it is a possibility for humanity to spread beyond our current habitat. It is like we suddenly discovered new uninhabited continents on Earth. I think it is natural for any organism to try to spread and conquer new places. Those who don't eventually go extinct.

The settlers on Mars will bring along both negative and positive aspects of their own culture, and the culture of a Martian state a few hundred years from now will simply be a mix of the cultures brought by the first settlers. Just like US American culture is simply a mix between Northern European and Latin culture. Mars will certainly not be a Utopia, and there might even be wars between different groups of settlers. It depends on who go there in the first place - it is an undeniable fact that some cultures are more peaceful than others.

I am, unlike a lot of Mars enthusiasts, skeptic about the idea of terraforming. I think it is better to spend resources on technology that makes it possible to thrive without radically changing our environment. Besides, we might discover other planets orbiting other stars that already have an atmosphere suitable for life in the open.

Colonization of Mars might change Earth more than we realize today. Maybe the whole planet 1000 years from now will turn into a kind of national park / museum in order to preserve it so that other terrestrial species are allowed space to continue to evolve.

#7 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Followup on the Heim Drive » 2006-08-05 08:38:50

Wow. I initially thought this was just bogus, but just found an article in Science Daily about some serious ESA-funded experiments that at least partially proves the connection between magnetic fields and gravity:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 232140.htm

Using this technology to make something fly off the ground will probably not happen in hundreds of years, but the effect is still quite interesting. We shouldn't wait for this technology to mature before we colonize Mars though...

#8 Re: Life support systems » Protein Sources in First Colonies - An idea » 2006-08-05 08:08:44

Mars probably has some sort of nitrogen deposits, but we haven't really been looking for it yet I think. The composition of the human body gives a good idea of what elements that must be found on Mars, and what element that can be brought from elsewhere:

99% of the mass of the human body is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.

Oxygen (65%)
Carbon (18%)
Hydrogen (10%)
Nitrogen (3%)
Calcium (1.5%)
Phosphorus (1.0%)
Potassium (0.35%)
Sulfur (0.25%)
Sodium (0.15%)
Magnesium (0.05%)
Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)
Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthings … ements.htm

#9 Re: Life support systems » Protein Sources in First Colonies - An idea » 2006-08-02 15:20:23

Soy and other beans can easily provide sufficient high-quality proteins, and can be grown in greenhouses at Mars. Beans depend on nitrogen-fixating bacteria that should be brought from Earth along with the plant seeds. I don't know how much nitrogen that are present in the Martian atmosphere, but if there is not enough of it then it shouldn't be to hard to find nitrate deposits in some form somewhere on the surface. Enough nitrogen is important because it is a main building block of proteins.

#10 Re: Terraformation » Projected Marsian Population? » 2005-11-15 17:49:25

Low available energy will limit population. You could build a kilometer high tall building covering all of Mars. But the power would have to come from space.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology … 00908.html

Nuclear energy can be cheap, clean and efficient. The technology is not really that complicated either - I could easily build a small reactor in my living room if someone provided me with the right kind of uranium. I am sure that Mars, like Earth, has many sources of suitable radioactive isotopes. Fusion energy has a great potential, but if it doesn't work then normal fission is a good and proven alternative. In the long term it may be possible to transport energy between different locations in our solar system in the form of anti-matter. This anti-matter could for instance be produced on Mercury.

#11 Re: Terraformation » How far? » 2005-11-04 05:36:25

Let's say people move to Mars, and start inventing and utilizing all the technologies needed to sustain themselves there. When they have adopted their technologies to the environment they would have no incentives to go into the terraforming business.

SF6 is a heavy gas, and I am actually not even sure that it would mix into the Martian atmosphere. It may sink into the deepest craters instead, and this would make the heating effect very local indeed.  Mars would look kind of funny if the 9 kilometers deep Hellas impact basin is the only place that get terraformed. The water vapor might not be able to escape either, making the 2100 kilometer wide crater a possible closed ecosystem.

#12 Re: Terraformation » How far? » 2005-11-03 15:37:49

The most efficient greenhouse gas is sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which is 22,200 times as efficient as CO2. If all we want to do is to heat Mars then this gas would be perfect, and it has a lifetime of 3200 years in Earths atmosphere. SF6 is a heavy gas, and it is not going to escape from Mars. The catch is that producing it requires a lot of energy, and even a slow terraforming would require a few power plants equivalent to the biggest ones we have on Earth. If I were living on Mars I would rather have used that power on heating my dome and growing food for my kids unless there is a huge power surplus that can be invested in long-term projects.

#13 Re: Martian Politics and Economy » Languages - Parlo Italiano - What langauge should be the Official? » 2005-10-17 18:05:53

Who cares? Language is a minor issue, and kids can learn any language very fast. Let the Martians decide what language they want to speak among themselves. I do not care if they decide on Mandarin, English, Japanese or whatever. They will probably not even make a decision, but simply let one language evolve as the dominant one.

#14 Re: Life support systems » Martian settlement with a few hundred people » 2005-10-16 17:17:20

That is a great render! It is unfortunately not one of mine though.

#15 Re: Life support systems » Martian settlement with a few hundred people » 2005-10-16 16:43:56

Very cool picture!  I'm probably going to start drawing stuff to that effect, but not nearly as neat.  Is that program like a Fractal Image program?

Thanks!

POV-Ray is based on scripting, and can be downloaded for free at http://www.povray.org/ . Here is a sample script to give an idea on how it is used:

#include "metals.inc"
#include "colors.inc"
#include "stones.inc"

//1.Camera
camera {location <0, 5, -10> direction <0, 0, 2.25> right x*1.33 look_at <0,0,0>}

//2.Light
light_source{<-200,200,-200> color White*1.1}

//3.Floor
plane { y,0 texture{T_Stone17}}

//4.Ball
sphere {<0,1,0>,1 texture {T_Gold_1A}}

The image:
simple6bk.jpg

#16 Re: Life support systems » Martian settlement with a few hundred people » 2005-10-16 08:13:12

Very nice. Have you seen the images on the ESA website for the artists impressions of future Mars vehicles? You should check them out, maybe give you more ideas.

I did not really find any at the ESA site. My main concern when making the vehicles in the render was to maximize the internal volume and minimize the surface area. I think that is what you have to do if you want to make a pressurized vehicle as light as possible. I also considered making a tractor-like unpressurized vehicle optimized to drag heavy stuff around on the surface. The water-tank in the picture is for farming krill - these wonderful small shrimp-like creatures that is the foundation of all life in the Arctic.

#17 Re: Human missions » If you were in charge . . . » 2005-10-16 07:00:02

Current NASA hardware is not optimized to be mass-produced efficiently. The first thing I would do as the big boss of NASA is therefore to introduce ease of mass-production as an important criteria when making spaceships and rockets. This would include cheaper rocket fuels. NASA does not have that much experience with mass-production, but I am sure that companies like Toyota and Airbus would be happy to help. All new designs optimized for mass-production and cost-efficiency would be published under an OpenSource (GNU) lisence on the internet, so that both private companies and other countries could reap the benefits.

#18 Re: Civilization and Culture » A fully developed, mature, and sovereign Mars » 2005-10-16 06:39:48

In 1000 years people might have found more earth-like places than Mars orbiting some of our closest stars, and they are going to spend lots of money (or rather machine time) on coming up with ways of getting there.

I have always imagined Mars in the far future to be an almost continuous city, and the low gravity makes it possible to build much taller structures than on Earth. I am not sure that terraforming will be a success though.

People are going to look just as they do now if we for some reason don't start genetically engineering ourselves. Evolution in rats and other fast reproducing mammals are much much faster, because they in 1000 earthling-years time could have gone through as much as 4,000 generations. The same amount of natural selection in humans would take at least 100,000 earthling-years.

I believe those who think of Mars of some kind of future Utopia will get very dissappointed. Mars will never be a paradise, and neither will any other human settlement. Just look at the world today - there are no such thing as a perfect society or culture - and there never will be.

#19 Re: Martian Politics and Economy » Companies and Mars » 2005-10-15 10:48:38

However, the progression of aerial technology from the days of horribly unsafe and scary airplanes of the Wright Brothers to the modern airplanes braking the speed of sound took maybe 40-50 years, no govenrment involvement.

It was the German military that developed the jet engine (during WWII), and they also developed the rocket technology that later enabled the US to go to the Moon. The military was also the first ones developing super-sonic air planes, and I therefore do not agree on that aviation is a good example on how the private sector can develop something new all by themselves. All the major innovations was done for military purposes, and the work done on airplanes during the first world war was particulary important because they for the first time demonstrated that planes were something more than just dangerous toys.

#20 Re: Civilization and Culture » Domestic vs Industrial » 2005-10-15 10:21:44

It would be great if something valuable enough for exportation was discovered on Mars, because this would mean that the private sector would gladly put huge amounts of money on the table to develop the technologies necessary for colonization.

However, one aspect about mining and exploitation worries me, and that is how robots could easily make humans in space superfluous. Robots on our own moon can for instance be run directly by remote control from earth, and I don't really see any reason to have people there at all if you want is to extract minerals. Robots are getting better every year, and they will soon be capable of performing all the same tasks as humans.

I would therefore like to have a combination of both mining/exploitation and people wanting to go there for other reasons. The profit motive was an important incentive in the colonization of the Americas, and similar incentives would also work on Mars.

#21 Re: Human missions » No immune system....oh crap! » 2005-10-13 08:55:39

If we consider this a problem then the obvious solution is to have astronauts take a long break on Mars before they climb into their spaceship and go back again, not to introduce artificial gravity. The human immune system will most likely be able to adapt to the Martian gravity, but this obviously depends on the age of the astronauts. The younger they are, the more sure we can be on that they will adapt.

#22 Re: Human missions » No immune system....oh crap! » 2005-10-13 08:32:55

We do not need artificial gravity. The people within the space ship will already have been exposed to all the diseases present in their ship before their immune systems starts to deteriorate. The trip to Mars is not that long either, and human t-cells have a lifespan of 20 years.

#23 Re: Terraformation » How far? » 2005-10-13 06:56:07

What's the point?  Spend all that money and risk all those lives to go all the way to mars just to live in a dome?

Heck we can save a lot of trouble and just put up domes in Antarctica.

Again this example from Antarctica... Let me repeat what I have said before: people are NOT ALLOWED to move there. However, people are allowed to move to the Norwegian settlement on Svalbard close to the North pole, and doing so is so popular that the Norwegian government have had to put in place restrictions to protect the polar bears up there. The total population is now 2500, and half live in the capital Longyearbyen. Without restrictions there would soon be 100,000 there. People would move to Antarctica too if they were allowed to.

Svalbard-Location.jpg

The long-term opportunities for mankind would be much greater if we colonize other planets though, and that is why I support spending money on settlements on the Moon and on Mars.

#24 Re: Martian Politics and Economy » Concern about the Government.Will they allow black to go » 2005-10-12 13:01:54

It is a myth that difficult conditions make people go nuts. Most people can actually survive for instance a plane crash and be able to do their job efficiently the next day. Even survivors of holocaust are surprisingly sane. Besides, there are people who travel across the oceans on our own planet all by themselves, and I think that is much tougher than going to Mars. The only people who go nuts on a trip to Mars are those who are already nuts before they go.

#25 Re: Terraformation » How far? » 2005-10-12 11:56:28

Just to cut to the chase, how far would you want terraforming to go for you to be satisfied?
As for myself, I would be happy if I could take a stroll on the Martian surface with an oxygen mask, a pea coat, and maybe some goggles to keep out the sand.  If terraforming went that far, even not in my lifetime, I would be happy.
Which reminds me of some Martian art by I forget who.  I'll try and find it...

Terraforming is not a big issue for me. People will live in cities anyways, and the cities will be covered by domes. (Check out the link in my signature to see what I mean)

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