New Mars Forums

Thanks Flash gordon

Welcome to New Mars...

The problem with all nuclear fueled options is that they do tend to attract a lot of opisition. But with the world changing there is a growing public awareness that Nuclear is the only way to ensure a lot of countries get to keep there lights on and this will flow towards Nuclear options in space and into more public acceptance for that option.

Political advantage will be gained by a permanent base on the Moon. Only when we have a series of these bases will there might be a need for permanent orbiting Lunar station.

Economically the lunar station does not make sense but a reusable lunar lander does. Of course this only applies if fueled by Lunar materials, wether aluminium oxide or methane oxygen stored at a lunar base.

Dr Griffin has been recieveing a lot of flack over the Vision for Space Exploration and the changes he has to make to implement it.

Griffin Defends NASA Exploration Vision

Fish farming certainly using the sea is a youthful buisness and they are learning a lot but are also finding a lot of drawbacks to what they are doing. We have found that farming salmon concentrated there natural hazards like sea lice and the diseases that salmon got. Also when the fish escaped they would cause damage to the wild stocks. We are now attempting to farm Cod having learnt these lessons and with the cages that attempt to stimulate the cods natural behaviour even to adding toys but it is still a very young science. Of course there is naturally stimulating growth by creating artificial reefs but there is a limit to what can be done.

GCN is correct that at present there is no real need for a long term large human prescence in space. But that only happens if we in the Human race stay as we are and that means about 7/8ths of us living close to poverty. (Africa, Asia). We just do not have the energy sources and materials to be able to raise that much of the population of the world up to the standards we in the west currently enjoy. We have already seen what the Industrialisation of China and India is doing to the price of Oil and Minerals but there is only so much that it is economical to mine and as it gets harder to find and produce these materials so prices rise.

We have found that we have two choices.
1) The enviromentalists want us to reduce our consumption and to live closer to what the planet can easily give. This is in effect to beggar ourselves and to reduce our quality of life so that others(Though nowhere near all) can have a better guality of life. They say we have limits to growth and that spaceflight is a waste of time since it distracts from fixing the problems we have in front of us. They say we burn to much energy and that petroleoum as a finite resource should stop being burned instead kept to make the plastics and materials we need. In short we will be abck to the horse and cart as a prime means to move people

2) The space advocates note that though the Earth has a limit on what minerals and energy is cheap to get at that space does not have this problem and there is enough resources to have a human population of 800 to 900 billion people living comfortably if not in a much better guality of life than we currently have.

So needless im of the second viewpoint I honestly think that we will go to space not to conquer but to protect ourselves and that means finding and returning what we need to keep our civilisation going and expanding.

PGMs will be harder to find on Mars than the Moon due to the increased gravity well and Mars having an atmosphere. But they will be present, though the likehood is it will also be more expensive to deliver these items back to the Earth.

Another possibility is that by the time we get to Mars we will have a serious space culture and facilities in orbit and the Moon. Mars though it is further away, does have all the building blocks to create a substantial civilisation and this includes agriculture. There is nothing to stop Mars with its lower gravity to deliver grown food to the Moon and Earth orbit cheaper than it can be grown there or even delivered from Earth. Its not the distance that is the problem it comes down to how much energy is reguired to get it there.

Still there is also the possibility that our search for minerals will take us to the asteroid belt. And there Mars will be in a prime situation to supply water and Food to these prospectors.

Jeff Bell and his view of the VSE and its engine and basic design

The VSE Booster Switch

True single stage RLVs are beyond us at the moment. Even two stage RLVs will be expensive to develop but also are unlikely to have a large cargo capacity. Whatever happens there will be a need for a heavy lift option just so worthwhile payloads can be sent up.

For RLV's to deliver economy there has to be regular frequent flights and the TSTO RLV will need to be not only safety checked before launch they will also need to mated to the lower stage. It is possible to have throwaway upper stages so that heavier cargo's can be sent up but they will never have the single lift capability of a heavy lift rocket.

Another thing that RLVs do is that they lend themselves to being crew delivery systems. And for crew to be delivered there has to be a destination and the RLVs cannot put it there only Rockets can.

But it does not though compare when the economies of scale are used.

A SDV heavy lifter using a pod will have to wait for that pod to be refitted and then flight verified before it can be used again. Since there are a limited amount of pods if we need to ramp up the launches then it will be impossible with pod technology. In short we have a set price and it will not drastically change even with advances in technology.

But the more we use an SDV heavy lifter the more that are made when expendable then the cheaper it gets. There is less need for flight verified and there will be less concern over wear and of course these launchers will have a greater cargo launch capacity.

And the savings leading to a Mars mission is wrong that money saved from a launch will be spent elsewhere. It will not go to a bank account for a future Mars Mission. Actually much more likely is it will be spent on testing sea soaked rockets to ensure they launch correctly.

So no savings and delayed launches regulary

Mars is a lot more drier place than the Antartic and Atacama this is due to the surface baking by the undiluted bands of the sun and of course the exceptional amounts of oxides which will leach water out of the air and surfaces. We have seen dust devils scour the rovers on the surface giving there solar panels a clean but this indicates another problem in that this dust which unlike the building sites and factories is a positively charged material. In short it is magnetic and the regular dust storms can have this material in the air for months at a time.

But as I have noted it will not be a mission crippling problem but it will be one that will require constant attention and may well be one of an astronauts core duties. Cleaning the insides of the habitats regularily. We will have it enter the habitats and it will enter the human astronauts. We just have to reduce this from being a problem and ensure that those diseases of the body that long term exposure to fine dust and especially the effects Mars and Moon dusts will have on the body cannot get a hold.

We have found that Mars dust like the Moons is charged positivly this is the effect the unneutered sun has had on the planet. Mars dust unlike the Moon has had weathering but it is still being bombarded by the ultra violet region of the suns output and like the Moon this causes the fine particulates to pick up a charge. A Martian dust devil is a situation where the wind picks these particulates up and since they are travelling at 100+ mph they scour anything they hit this is what is causing the weathering on Mars and it is this that cleaned the solar array of the rovers they where scoured clean by a dust devil. Another point is that what we have recorded is that surprisingly to scientists is that dust devils have exceeded 4000 volts a meter in charge and with some of these things hundreds of meters across and 20 miles high they can deliver a fatal blow. We will obviously not be interested in using this method to clean ourselves 

It is NASA which has the problems with this elements and it is why they have financed the Nakagawa's project dust to see what is the best way to deal with this problem and potential hazard. Nasa is also concerned that a humans respiratory tract is designed to deal with Earth like conditions and that Mars and especially Moon dust reacts more like long term exposure to Volcanic dust. Short term is ok but long term causes health problems.

Time to get the pledge and the duster out and do the regular hab cleaning.

Jon, as we discovered on the Moon the dust gets everywhere but unlike the Moon where our exposure was limited to 3-4 days the fact is we will have astronauts on Mars for a lot more time and we need them to be operating all the time. We cannot afford them to be ill or even worse incapacitated for long periods by something we can plan against. The appollo astronauts described the taste of the dust as gunpowder and complained of eye irritation. Long term exposure and eye irritation can lead to dermatitis and blindness.

Still it is a learning experience and with us going to the Moon we will certainly learn and many lessons learned there will be used when we go to Mars.

Mars as a planet will be anything like Hot unlike the Moon absorbtion of light will not be a problem. Still I know lightness of material is essential for a space suit but Im still of the mind that a hard suit would be more practicle for the Moon and Mars especially when it comes down to the debilitating dust.