New Mars Forums

O.K. I hope you are not put off by my presence.  That can make sense to me, as a starter.

It seems to me that you want to fly a match to Mars and light a fire, not fly to Mars and make a match to light a fire.

What about flying a premade unite into a lava tube that has been completely scouted out.

http://www.space.com/18519-mars-caves-l … hotos.html
http://i.space.com/images/i/000/023/738 … 1353102866
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lav … &FORM=IGRE
http://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=OIP.M0e0 … &rs=0&p=0]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/field … _2560.jpeg

http://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.M53a7 … 0&pid=15.1

http://magickcanoe.com/history/lava-tube.jpg

It will be heavy, and will have to hover, and drop into the hole and get under a rooftop and set down.  But then it will be radiation sheltered, and thermally sheltered as well.  And in this case, if it is nuclear, you don't have to be as equator dependent.  Also, you don't have to bury the thing, so that's less work to start with.

So the robotic thing flies into the cave, and a transponder allows it to communicate back it's health.  If it is good, your people land, and have an instant in situ robot that helps them grow food, and extract Oxygen from the atmosphere, maybe makes rocket fuel.  And then that leaves the people to do science, and get more water as a first task.

If there were ice deposits in the tube great, or maybe there will be ground ice nearby, or maybe water from soil.

Now I will just continue.  My next preferred move if the lava tube had lots of room would be to see if CO and O2 can be harvested directly from the atmosphere efficiently.  If so then you can run fuel cells from that, and import such fuel cells from Earth at first.  Those fuel cells would have the diodes directly tied into them, so that you could put the light emitting units into new "Gardens" you would build primarily from native materials.

If you cannot get the gasses from the atmosphere directly, then perhaps you make some type of solar equipment which can.  In any case you pipe a fuel and a Oxidizer to the fuel cells with LED's.   The piping could be made of some type of low grade iron, and perhaps plastics, as your start of building materials.

From there you might try to get to the point where you can deal with some kind of transparent greenhouse glaze to promote gardens.

By the way diluted urine is a good fertilizer to start with.

Just a proposal.  Do you have something else in mind?

So, I read your various references, and am impressed.

Transmutation would be particularly valuable in space activities, if you had lots of Nickel, it would seem, to make your Copper.

And Autarky in spite of it's shady past, does in fact also by itself have deep value for human groups who are remote from the main historical center, Earth.

So, all good.

This does suggest a tidal wave level of change going forward in time.  In most cases potentially good, at least for North America and Europe.  Our Air Craft carriers may be almost or completely out of date, but in the near future, it likely does not matter, since we will have far less vital interests overseas.

It's good for an old guy like me to get such and update, since, I am rather out of touch.

I did some calculations to examine the potential for extracting oxygen from Martian rocks.  The easiest substance to reduce is Iron III oxide, which thanks to the long term presence of water on Mars, is available in abundance, giving the soil its rusty colour.

The mineral hematite (Fe2O3) can be reduced by heated to 1400C, at which point it reduces to Fe3O4 (Magnetite).  The reaction is written like this:

3Fe2O3 = 2Fe3O4 + ½ O2

The energy cost of this step of this reaction is 14.8MJ per kg O2.  Next, the magnetite can be reduced to pure iron by hitting it with hot CO:

Fe3O4 + 4CO = 3Fe + 4CO2

The energy cost of this reaction is 17.2MJ/Kg O2.  Other reactions, such as reduction of silicon dioxides and aluminium and magnesium oxides are possible, but the energy cost is much higher.

To add 70mbar of oxygen atmosphere to Mars through direct regolith reduction would require total energy of 4.2E18 MJ.  If it were done over a 100 year period, that would equate to a power requirement of 1.33billion megawatts (i.e. equivalent to 1million modern day nuclear power reactors – or more likely, 100 extremely big nuclear power reactors built at the poles).  I wonder if there is enough fissionable material on the planet.  To do the same using solar PV power would require a circular solar power satellite some 4000km is diameter.  Fusion reactors would probably work better at that scale.

The total mass of oxygen needed is 2.6E17 kg.  About 3kg of hematite would be needed to produce 1kg of oxygen.  Assuming it exists in rock / regolith at concentrations of 10% by weight, about 30kg (10 litres) would be needed to produce 1kg O2.  To produce the entire 70mbar atmosphere, some 2.6E15 m3 of rock and soil must be reduced.  That is equivalent to a cube 138km aside, or a 1000km x 1000km mined to a depth of 2.6km.

I think it could be done if Mars were to become the industrial steel producing capital of a future solar system.  The process would easily release enough steel and glass to para-terraform the entire planet, which would probably have happened anyway by the time a future Mars had mustered the resources for such a huge industrial effort.

SpaceNut wrote:

Is there a way to calculate how much gavity would need to change by in order to stop the lose rate due to the solar winds and then from that amount of gravity change we could then solve for the amount of mass to make that happen. If that mass is centered around the equator to concentrate the effect.

Lack of gravity isn't the problem.  The catastrophic loss started when the planet lost its magnetic field.  The (then) more extensive atmosphere was scoured by solar winds from the nascent sun.  The present loss rate appears to be quite modest in comparison, but the damage is done.

This isn't to say that no terraforming could take place.  There would appear to be substantial gas remaining.  But we need to temper our expectations.  A strictly Earth analogue environment is probably not achievable given the extent of past volatile losses.  Transporting mass or volatiles from other solar system bodies would be a very expensive long term project and more than a little risky.  In my opinion it just doesn't work economically.  But who knows?  In a thousand years immortal beings of infinite wealth might decide to make that very long term investment.

Life on Mars without domes will not be a problem for people for quite some time to come anyway.

I recall that from the polar ice caps, the south cap in particular, Verified CO2 should be enough to raise the average from 5.5 to 11 mb.
This is supposed to be enough for snow, and with snow, can exist temporary melt streams.

The soil contains more if I am to believe the experts, so perhaps even though not enough for a non-pressure suit situation, enough for more permanent streams, and perhaps temporary ponds and lakes.

But I will deviate from that conversation and ask you to consider reading these references:

Deep layers of water ice and sediments over the entire northern hemisphere:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc … marswater/

Hypersaline Lake Nitrous Oxide Production:
Without Life:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n … eo847.html
In the presence of life at very cold temperatures:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3528574/
Nitrous Oxide Clathrates:
https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/ … ad3598a587

So the first reference suggests that a "Third" reservoir of water is present.
The second and third reference suggest that Nitrous Oxide is formed in the presence of brine wetted soil.
The fourth reference suggests that Nitrous Oxide Clathrate could be present.

If this optimistic situation is true, then when the atmosphere of Mars began to thin and cool, the water pooled as ice in the northern hemisphere.  Very deep ice.  Very Very Deep.  With soil sediments being mixed in.

This process would not have been overnight.  So there would have been cold hypersaline lakes and seas, and still some snowfall, and daily or seasonal melts during transition.  This would have transported some of the atmospheric gasses into the reservoirs below.  There, perhaps action with the soil would have generated Nitrous Oxide, and cold and pressure may have preserved some of it as Clathrate.

I hate going out on a limb like this, but it appears that there are three reservoirs.

The first is the original common one, and then there was a split, where a large bulk (I hope) became buried underground, and the remainder gradually drained into space, leaving a residual atmosphere.

So the truth lies somewhere between this optimistic scenario and the scenario which was stated on the evidence of Mavin.

I am pulling for the 2 mile deep sediments of ice and soil in the Northern hemisphere, and by the way I have seen articles that indicate that it is present in the rift valley as well as part of that situation.

Imagine a system of above and below ground cities connected by buried hyperloops.

Never-the-less, although I am pulling for Mars to be a great place to set up shop, I like the Moon for reasons like this Mavin information.

The 1mm x 1mm area comes from Dr. Paul Webb's original paper submitted for publication in December 1967, published April 1968.

Properties of Human Skin—The tensile strength of human skin is more than adequate to prevent serious deformation or rupture in the small spaces between the strands of elastic netting. According to Yoshi-mura, the average tension required to tear adult human skin is 1600 gms/mm², while the maximum force of 170 mm Hg which might be developed wearing the SAS is 2.3 gms/mm². The elastic materials we are now using show spaces as big as 1 mm² only when grossly overstretched.

Removing a glove completely would result in edema. That's severe swelling. It would be painful.

The book Red Mars had one of the characters remove a glove outside. But that was after extensive terraforming, increasing ambient pressure. I don't think you could do it today.

Terraformer wrote:

Well, Antarctica is in a similar political situation to Mars as well, so that's another factor suggesting an Antarctic colony should be attempted. Maybe not within the Antarctic circle, though. Settle one of the islands off the coast.

The dark winters are extremely psychologically hard though. You have to live it to understand it.
When you have one hour daylight, sometimes none at all - it really messes with your psyche.
It's even worse than extreme cold (which can also drive you bonkers - any little thing you need to do outdoors becomes a huge project.

One of the things that worries me the most about living on Mars, is the prospect possibly no natural light for months on end. And what does it do to people, to NEVER be able to go out in nature?

Terraformer wrote:

Actually, we *could* colonise the Arctic - and I think we *should*, to demonstrate the sort of technology that we need to colonise other planets. We have the technological ability to ...

I agree. That makes perfect sense. One step at a time.
No point in daydreaming about huge settlement projects on Mars if viable settlement in inhospitable regions on earth isn't possible.

@Rob
It's the "corporation" wording that got me going.  Tom is right that I am extremely suspicious against corporations, particularly those that are big enough that they are able to start any kind of operation on Mars, whether mining, or running some kind of relocation service.

I just don't see how this would pan out. Homesteading on a planet which doesn't even support life?

I also come from an Arctic country and I think we know perfectly well why so few people live in the Arctic areas: The distances are huge, costs for everything gets hugely inflated, crops can not be grown at all, or only during a short period. Native population have to be propped up by central government, or they would all simply leave, alternatively live in total deprivation. None of their traditional activities are profitable in the least.
On Mars we'd have all these problems x1000

The only thing that is profitable in that region is oil/gas or mines. Even then, distances and logistics cause problems.

So given all this: If somebody just wanted to homestead, they'd be better off doing it in the frozen Arctic -  at least there, you can subsistence hunt and there is air to breathe. Technically you could run a greenhouse all summer 24/7 in the Arctic.

But on Mars, you don't even have air to breathe, and that's just the beginning. I can't see ANY way that anybody could AFFORD to homestead on Mars, given that every single thing has to be transported to Mars.

For the price it would cost them to homestead on Mars, they could buy a palace in Manhattan.

The only situation under which people would move to Mars, would be if there was something very lucrative they could do there, that would justify the expense of running the colony.

The question then is - who runs this operation?
This is where I thought you were suggested a one-stop-shop corporation, and where my suspicions kick in.

If Americans are involved - we'd have the suing culture. Things would go wrong. People would die. The company would be sued out of existance at the first mishap.

Whereas I personally would possibly trust a not-for-profit/at cost  cooperative or perhaps state owned venture.

I think the prerequisite for colonisation of Mars is:

1) Earth is over populated in the extreme. I.e. large crowded cities on Greenland, in Northern Siberia, Arctic Canada etc. Perhaps as a result of people having to flee the equatorial area due to greenhouse heating and a warmer climate making these areas uninhabitable. The situation is intolerable and people are prepared to take huge risks for a break.
2) Some natural asset is discovered on Mars that would finance the building of the colony and provide private enterprise with enough incentive to invest in Mars.
3) Some kind of user owned co-operative is set up by the colonisers that let them run affairs and control the profits from the exports.

Sorry I know this was poorly written - I don't have time to structure it properly but wanted to respond.
Basically - gutted but I just can't get it to add up.