New Mars Forums

I think that the thinking in my prior post is not too bad.

https://www.youtube.com/@Anthrofuturism

Did an analysis of the relative value of heat engines or solar cells on the Moon.  They concluded that heat engines are not as good, as the Moon is radiating heat, so the cold side is not cold enough.

I think that if Data Centers are to be on the Moon, a radiation shelter with an air containment around it can make sense, where the air containment can be a radiator.

OK, I sort of have this in mind:

An outer metal "Cylinder" holds an air pressure of 333 mb.
An inner tower made of Moon brick, sintered or cast makes a tower.
The brick tower has compressive strength, and can block radiation.
The outer metal "Cylinder" has tensile force to hold in air pressure.

Chevron: https://www.creativefabrica.com/product … line-icon/
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Of course, they would be thinner than that, but would serve as external radiator fins that will also block damage to the cylinder wall from impactors.

I have imagined this to be in a shadowed crater, but a sunshade system also could be setup to do this at lower latitudes.

A method of beaming power in the vacuum of space from a solar power source to a spacecraft is suggested in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0tMViyxxcw
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https://exlumina.space/

So, if your data center were in a shadowed crater, then you could send power from peaks on the crater rim to this location of cold.
Of course orbital power stations or relays might also help.

If you have lots of compute and such on the Moon, then you could have almost an infinite number of robots.

So, you would have vast amounts of labor on the Moon, and energy, and compute.

Power stations on the Moon could beam power to spacecraft in orbit of the Moon, perhaps powered by;
-Neumann Drive
-MagDrive
-Mass Drivers expelling Oxygen Ice Cubes with magnetic dust inside of them.

We hope that the dark craters may have some water and CO2 in them, but I now wonder, about importing even more of it.

Imports would need to be justified by an increase in productivity of the Moon world.

Sources of these materials to import could be various.  Let's say Asteroids though.

So, we may build robot systems that will fly out to suitable asteroids and extract substances from them such as water, CO2, and Iron perhaps.

Then we would have them bring it back perhaps using CO2, Oxygen, Iron as propellants.

Then you have to get the substances onto the surface of the Moon.

-Landing
-Crashing
-Venting

One method of venting would be to hover a cargo ship over a shadowed crater and burn all of its fuel with Oxygen.

Although the output is very hot, it expands rapidly and so cools off.  If it hits the cold surface of a shadowed crater, will it condense into solids?

Well that is sort of how comets might deposit materials.

So, then the Moon being valuable would become even more valuable.

And here is another question.  If you launch a rocket from the Moon, how much of what it expels is recaptured into the Crater?

Unknown, but desirable to know.

The Moon is likely to be the 2nd most valuable world in the solar system, I think, after the Earth, of course.

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I got tired of putting more fins:

It seems quite reasonable to think to beam power with lasers from orbit or even better from mountain peaks next to shadowed craters.

Imaging a Aluminum Balloon with fins as high as a skyscraper, with fins that help protect from impactors.  Oxygen at 333 mb should forma protective Oxide film as it always does so fire would not be a big problem.

In the basement a data center with radiation protection.  Perhaps using a heat pump to heat the Oxygen and to provide coolant to the data center.

So, the shadowed craters might be very valuable for that.

Granted that there is time latency, but for some things that may not so much matter.

This could be modified for the Moon: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 09#p234709
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So solar power on the outside rims of these craters or in orbit of the Moon perhaps.

Beam power from several mountain peaks to the data centers.

Again time latency issues, but for the Moon the compute would be rather local, and for the Earth for some applications it would still be useful.

The Moon materials and structure can provide many protective potentials, and of course materials for the making of structures.

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I guess I will post here again today:  Mini-Starship?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … 04#image=1

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I don't know how true the above is.  I thought SpaceX/Elon Musk only wanted to work on the main Starship. but who knows?

I agree with Dr. Robert Zubrin that you have two ways to go with a pair a Big Starship + a Mini-Starship.

You can leave the Big Starship in orbit of the Moon and use the Mini to go up and down, or you can park the Big Starship on the surface of the Moon permanently and use the Mini to go back to Earth.

*Also if you involve a capsule like Orion or Dragon you can keep both at the Moon in some manner.

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RocketStar seems to be working a bit with SpaceX so maybe this has merit in that sense:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … r-AA1O4oF7
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It seems to be said that they have plasma thrusters, and can boost the thrust by 50% by adding Boron which will cause Aneutronic Fusion with lower level radiation production than Neutronic Fusion.

I can see where this could be like a 2nd Stage to the Starship system if it works well enough.

But you have to have water lifted off of a world and Boron as well.

So, Starship could lift 100 to 200 tons of materials to LEO and then such a ship might do good works with it.

https://rocketstar.nyc/
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So, they will need electric power to produce the plasma from water as well.
And the water and the Boron.

But if this is combined with the materials of post #182, the power will not be as much of an inertia burden as might be feared.
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 45#p234645
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So, probably useful Earth/Moon early on.

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An interesting video, including ideas from Dr. Robert Zubrin and also Tim Dodd:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_oGUheJ3Mk
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It seems like Dr. Zurbin suggests a Starship that could stay in orbit of Mars somehow, and a Starboat that would go up and down Mars Orbit<>Mars Surface.

Of course freighters would land direct and stay on the surface of Mars, I expect.

He likes this for the Moon as well it seems.

Depending on size of Starboat, it could launch on New Glen or Falcon 9.

Tim Dodd has interesting ideas about a "Stubby Starship".

As I often do I will spitball an idea.  (Crude visual though).

For Mars, what about a self-propelled Surround/Garage.

What I am looking for is a thin frame with Solar panels that the Starship can nest itself into.

My original thoughts are that since much solar panels will be available; the self-propelled garage could be Argon/Zenon Electric.

That could be modified.

There are 3 sources of problem radiation in on Phobos:
1) Solar:  I have provided landing in a crater in the polar areas to reduce that.  The mirror mostly only sends useful light but I suppose some secondary radiation might occur but not too much.  I have provided also that bags of regolith filled may be attached to the frame as shown.
2) GCR: The bags give some protection and the moon Phobos itself also provides some protection.
3) Secondary radiation from Mars: Radiation is emitted as secondary, from radiation that strikes Mars.  I think not being directly facing Mars helps and so the bulk of Phobos and the bags of regolith will help.

The Garage helps shield from impactors also and may provide a relatively stable thermal environment.  With proper insulation the sun side will not allow excess heat inside of the garage.   But electric power will allow keeping the cabin warm.

It may be that Phobos could be made to provide some Oxygen and some new structure from the materials of Phobos.

That would reduce the amount of propellants that Starboat would need to lift from the surface of Mars.

This may allow Starship to loiter in Mars orbit for considerable time.

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So, an "Island" could be a robotic warehouse, or something more.

A garden run by robots might assist visitors.  Probably a FastShip stopping by could discharge its waste materials to it, and yet pick up food.

The waste could be treated with pyrolysis to produce CO2 for plants, and the sterilized remnant could be used as fertilizer.

Probably a FastShip would recycle air and water, but not so much grow food or carry a lot of food.

So, a garden run with robots might be low pressure, but the station might have a pressurized space that the people in a FastShip seek sanctuary in.

But an "Island" might be a home for some people as well.  100 to 10,000 people perhaps.  In that case it would be much more extensive and have fully pressurized gardens.

Maybe as much as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere
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But one with spin.

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Let's say 10,000 of these with 10,000 people each, between Earth and Mars.

100,000,000 people???

So, then the "SlowShips" would do freight between these an natural worlds, and this setup would support Electric Drive "FastShips".

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Probably other designs can be considered but:

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As for power plants, I am open to both solar panels and heat engines using mirrors.

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I have an idea that I suppose could be its own topic, but I will initiate it here:

I would call it "The Slow Boat <> Fast Boat Method".

Here is the deal.  Electric Propulsion is faulted as it is slow, perhaps too slow to transport people.
But it is efficient.

And if it turns out that Neumann Drive and MagDrive work well, then we might do "Island Hopping".

From one point of view this might be the squandering of mass, but on the other hand it may allow us to better handle time.

We may suppose that we will have robotic electric propelled vehicles with high efficiency.

We may suppose that they might spiral in and out to travel from one world to another.

The problem with such a vehicle traveling from Earth/Moon to Mars is:
1) The sunlight gets dimmer as you spiral out.  If you are using solar panels they give less and less energy.
2) You have to bring all you propellant from Earth/Moon to Mars and use it as you go.

For the moment I am only imagining spiral paths, it is possible that there are alternatives.

Now suppose you designated 3 "Islands" between Earth/Moon and Mars.

A slow robotic ship can supply these island slowly, and we may not mind if it takes months and years to go one way.

For a Trip Earth/Moon>Mars, a ship may start without mirrors for there solar panels.
And that ship only has to have enough propellants to reach Island #1.

* These Islands are more or less in sun circular orbits.

At the edge of the hill sphere of Earth Moon, the FastShip can be refilled and proceed to Island #1.

At Island #1, the Fastship takes on more propellant and is loaned a set of mirrors to improve the performance of it's solar panels.

Then the FastShip goes to Island #2 and does the same thing.

Then the Fastship does it again.

Then the Fastship arrives in a high Mars orbit where it can again be refilled with more propellants from a "Mars Island".

Then the FastShip goes to Demos/Phobos/Mars and along the way may refill.

And if the same ship were to go back to Earth/Moon:

Refill at the high orbit "Mars Island"

Goto Island #3 and leave your mirrors there, but pick up smaller ones.

Goto Island #2 (Repeat)

Goto Island #1 (Repeat)

Go to a high orbit "Earth/Moon Island".

And so on.

It may be that some refilling of the islands can come from near asteroids, not just Earth/Moon & Mars/Phobos/Deimos.

So, if the solar system provides an abundance of Iron and other propellants, and the energy is constantly available and we have robots to run the SlowShips, do we really care if we "Squander" mass?

I would not mind some member inputs here.

Just in case it is not yet understood, we hope to quicken the flight time of the FastShips by keeping their mass low and yet their propulsion nomal or high.

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The two prior posts that I made today could additionally be supported by the use of T.A.R.S, which is a thing that Calliban has introduced previously.

It is possible that ships returning to Earth could be given a boost with Tars, but also several substances might be transportable using it.

Iron, Dry Ice, Carbon, and Water.  These might be kept from being very much trouble for boil-off.

So, these if packaged correctly could be ejected from Mars orbit to more inner, elliptical orbits, and a electric propulsion ship could overtake them on the way and pick up this cargo.

https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/09/tars-sy … ar-system/
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While they want to use sunlight, I might want to use Electric Iron propulsion to spin the device.  The devices could be very large and made from materials of Phobos and Deimos.

Another possibility to spin them would be to project an electron beam from a source, perhaps Phobos or Deimos.  I am relatively ignorant of how this works and its potential in this case but maybe it has application.

https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/relati … lar-travel
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As I say, I don't know if some version of this could work near Mars or not.  But an electron beam, unlike a laser beam has mass.  And over time the orbits of Phobos and Deimos could be altered by shooting an electron beam out of them at a TARS.  The TARS then could eject resource packages into sun orbits that electric propelled spacecraft could intersect.

Iron and Carbon will not have boiloff of course.

Tanks of water/ice will not be likely to boil off unless the tank is ruptured.

Dry Ice might be preservable by putting a good sunshade method on the container.

* Incidentally Neumann Drive can use Carbon as a propellant as well as Iron.

We may well have many places where we can extract CO2 and Carbon.

I will not mind some comments from the members if they feel they could participate.

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So, revisiting the post of #9: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 61#p234761

I would think that a rock igloo might be a first effort to make and establishment on a moon or Mars.
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While the use of robots is probable, if humans were also to participate, they would likely have to be conditioned periodically either on the surface of Mars or in a spin gravity device that likely had been sent from Earth/Moon.

Again the Igloo rock structure is sort of a tent like dome made of appropriate structural beams and chicken wire.  Rocks held in wall compartments are to be inserted into the structure, to provide a protective surround of an inner chamber, which is above a pit on the surface of a rubble pile world.

Additional "Domes" could be added horizontally, but also digging the pit deeper, it may be that we want to create retaining walls of Sintered or vitrified/glass rock.

Cobble sized rocks can be used to fill the netting chambers of the domes, and smaller materials may be processed to extract such Oxygen, Iron, Carbon, and Hydrogen as are obtainable by easy reach methods.

Nature has provided a lot of grinded rock over billions of years, but if digging the pit deeper an adaptation of the Quaise methods:  https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … &FORM=VIRE

Their method might be energy consuming, but can both produce rock to powder and produce a vitrified wall for a drilling hole.

So, if a large rock is encountered while drilling an option can be to turn it into dust, and also using microwaves it may be possible to vitrify the walls of a pit being dug.  This would produce a "Jar".  If we go down far enough and encounter large slabs of rock, we might create caves by using some sort of jacking method to part large rocks and putting supports between them.  Also, small materials could be removed between large rocks.

At some point a large enough chamber might support a synthetic gravity machine inside of such a chamber.  Perhaps composed of Starships and maybe space station modules, including inflatables.

Phobos has a lot of void space in it already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_(moon)
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So, supposing the entire moon Phobos was processed into space structures we could probably increase the void space by many times.  And so the moon would be even more porous, and much larger in outside dimensions.

If an electric method of propulsion using Iron as propellant can be created, then Starship might lift those propellants and the solar power plants for such propulsion from the Earth and possibly the Moon.

Then using electric propulsions, the ships passing to the moons of Mars could bring special alloy materials for Iron maybe other metals, and rather than those ships going back to Earth they could stay and be refilled with more Iron propellants from Phobos.

Having laser methods of sharing energy these ships could both do propulsions and send energy to Phobos..

Once again from post #7, we have this: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 45#p234745
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The point is a electric rocket system then could only bring enough propellants to do an initial capture to a high Mars orbit.  Then its siblings refilled with Iron from Phobos and/or Deimos could go and refill it's Iron propellants.  Also, these devices could share energy.

Much is made against Mars about it's dim sunlight, but very thin mirrors can amplify that light in Mars orbit rather easily, so I would say Mars orbits will be energy rich, unlike the surface of Mars.

So, I make this argument that if we find that these machine systems that I have mentioned do actually emerge to be practical, then the moons of Mars should be of great interest to us.

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If most labor on Earth is going to become robotic, and servers in orbit will help support them, then we can suppose that the same should be done for Mars.  And Phobos and Deimos can be supportive of that.

The energy resources in orbit have a vastly larger potential for quantity and quality than accessible surface energy.

Relatively raw materials from Phobos, such as Chicken Wire cages of cobbles might be used to give some shelter to the data centers.

Iron and Steel could be useful.  Probably robots could have Steel parts created from the materials of the moon and installed to robots that would be shipped from Earth/Mars.  The low gravity situation of Mars/Phobos/Deimos may be permissive for the weight of these parts.

Coolants of CO2 and H20 could primarily be made of Oxygen from Phobos and/or Deimos, and possibly Carbon.  Hydrogen may need to come from Mars.

Here is another article about power beaming in orbit: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … r-AA1MXCJK  Quote:

I have been considering "Habitable Radiators" and Biocompatible Habitats.  These in orbit of Mars might house the servers and even house humans.

Here: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 10#p234710

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For Mars Orbits though I might think of some changes.

Rather than water inside, I suggest mostly dry.  This is for fear of rust of Iron and Steel parts.

Radiation protection could be Chicken Wire Cages of Cobbles that do not rotate.

So perhaps a form of Air Cooling?  The waste heat to warm the habitats.

Also, lots of energy beamed to the devices from orbiting power plants.

If you want gardens, then you might have Greenhouses inside of this where humidity can be higher.  But lots of food likely will be synthetic such as cellular fermentation and precision fermentation.  Just so the outer walls of the cylinder are kept dry.

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Now, I am at the point where I would like to seek out asteroids of interest, about the size of the moons of Mars, and possibly intercepting the orbits of Earth and Mars. (Or close to it).

This group is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_asteroid

We really are in the dark about these objects, especially the "Stony" ones.  They may have Hydrogen of some sort in their chemistry, but we don't know.  But they apparently have some small amount of water from impactors and perhaps interaction with the solar wind.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a … 3516308120
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But this may be sufficient as the work of Anthrofuturism, suggests that Hydrogen Pyrolysis, does not give up Hydrogen but may accumulate it.

So, if we might make Iron and Oxygen products, the Hydrogen amount may accumulate.

Carbon friendly asteroids are the majority, but stony ones are more likely to be near us.  I do not know what their Carbon content will be.  In the case of rubble piles, there could be different types of contributions.  If these are from the Mantles of previous larger asteroids that had cold brine seas on them, it could be that some of the rock will have some carbon in it.

Anyway, at some point we might want perches on asteroids that are somewhat between Mars and Earth.

The question is, do we do Moon>Phobos/Deimos/Mars>Tweeners or do we do some other progression.  If we develop Phobos and Deimos we may be able to support efforts to settle these Tweeners from Phobos and Deimos.

I guess time will tell.

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So "Dumb Bags of Rocks" may be of significant value in Space.

Lets imagine that this is a "Chicken Wire Dumb Bag of Grey Rocks" in microgravity:

We have a kinked pathway in, and this structure might provide protections from:
-Radiation
-Impactors
-Thermal Fluctuations.

We may attach power devices to this so that it can have electrical power.  Solar devices or nuclear devices.

We may make an Igloo structure on Phobos and/or Deimos.

At some point a Stupid Bag of Rocks, becomes heavy enough even in the gravity of Phobos and Deimos, that you can use it for a fulcrum for mechanical attachments.

I do not intend these structures to hold air at all, in fact I do not want them to, as I do not want a rapid expansion of gas to blow them apart.

Along with "Chicken Wire" simple iron fixtures might be used, even small metal beams.  Perhaps also some kind of cloth, maybe a beta cloth attached to the "Chicken Wire".

"Chicken Wire" is deformable but also can to a limited extent hold form.

Thank-you wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_wire
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So, in my mind Chicken Wire might be relatively light to transport to the Orbits of Mars, from Earh/Moon.  And might be possible to manufacture from Phobos or Deimos, somewhere down the line.  Keep in mind that Simple Steel Iron-Carbon, will not likely rust in the situation I have proposed.

We do not have to galvanize it for this purpose: Quote:

So Wrought Iron suggests here other Iron forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrought_iron
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So, we might value "low Carbon "mild" Steel" the most: https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/meta … 719e2f6ea5

Wire: https://www.asiametalltd.com/news/Low-C … rview.html
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I am thinking that with a Carbon or Hydrogen Pyrolysis process done on the fines, we could extract Iron and Oxygen, at least and then make Steel Suitable for wire and that wire can be formed into a matrix like Chicken-Wire, to stuff correct sized rocks into, to make shelters in low g environments.

Then we can put space stations inside of those.

Space stations of Starships, and like those of "Vast Space" and others, including inflatables as well.

Pretty good, I think. 

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