New Mars Forums

I think the best way to think of what Mars will export is to look back to the colonization of the new world. Most of the exports that fueled the colonies were items that could not be gotten from anyplace but the new world. Spain's gold rush was relatively short lived and did not create many long lasting colonies. No commodity that can be found on Earth will likely be worth shipping back to Earth. So what does Mars have that Earth does not, martian geology. Just like the new world the colonies will not be funded by mundane rare commodities but by unique luxury goods. Anything that could be fashioned into jewelry from martian 'rocks' will be worth orders of magnitude more than the identical item of terrestrial origin. Anything that has a unique make up and an appealing appearance will be worth shipping back to Earth. Martian granite and marble will be more valuable than platinum. It will be shipped back to Earth to floor the most exclusive hotels and the most expensive mansions.

This power is no issue has been suggested before but I think that its going to depend on what choices are made for each leg of the mission to Mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical … ce_Station

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated … subsystems

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/3610 … s-xltn.jpg

Two blankets of solar cells make up a solar array wing, or SAW. Each wing is 115 feet long by 38 feet wide. Each SAW weighs more than 2,400 pounds and uses 32,800 solar array cells. Altogether, the four sets of arrays can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity. The solar arrays produce more power than the station needs at one time for station systems and experiments. When the station is in sunlight, about 60 percent of the electricity that the solar arrays generate is used to charge the station's batteries. The battery charge/discharge units (BCDUs) regulate the amount of charge put into the battery. Each BCDU can regulate discharge current from two battery ORUs, and can provide up to 6.6 kW to the Space Station. During insolation, the BCDU provides charge current to the batteries and controls the amount of battery overcharge. Each day, the BCDU and batteries undergo sixteen charge/discharge cycles. The Space Station has 24 BCDUs, each weighing 100 kg. Each battery assembly consist of 38 lightweight Nickel Hydrogen cells and associated electrical and mechanical equipment. Each battery assembly has a nameplate capacity of 81 A·hr and 4 kW·hr. This power is fed to the ISS via the BCDU and DCSU respectively. The batteries have a design life of 6.5 years and can exceed 38,000 charge/discharge cycles at 35% depth of discharge. Each battery measures 40” by 36” by 18” and weighs 375 pounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Truss_breakdown.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elect … bution.png

Sure seems like to get the power that we need is going to be quite massive.....

In all societies during and since the stone age (and probably before),  people have had to have a "job" of some sort (generalized definition) in order to live.  It is hardly possible for a single individual to supply himself with all his needs for all of his life.  We learned to live cooperatively in groups,  each doing different "jobs" so that all could live better,  long before we were ever human.  Many species have done this,  because it works.

The flip side is that you don't eat (etc) if you don't do your job.  I don't care what economic system you want to talk about,  that's still fundamentally true.  So,  everybody has to have a "job" to do.  Period.  That's just life.

OK,  now automate all the jobs with robots of one sort or another.  So what are we humans supposed to do for a living?  Didja ever think of that?  I think robots are fine,  as long as there is something else useful for us humans to do for a living.  When there isn't,  I am dead set against automation.  Period. 

Western civilization has been down this road several times before.  Each time it did not turn out well. 

The last time is when they automated manufacturing to the greatest extent possible,  without any thought at any level anywhere in society,  as to what else the fired workers would do for a living.  What they couldn't automate,  they outsourced overseas to the slave labor societies. 

That is precisely why for the so-called "middle class",  it now takes 2 full-time workers to support a family,  instead of the 1 full-time worker that it took when I was a boy. 

"Automation for profit without regard to the human consequences" is the most precise way of saying what I so strenuously object to.  And that's precisely what is being discussed above,  in this thread. 

Beware,  you are planning your own demises,  should this speculation actually come to pass. 

GW

In a "Human Missions" discussion thread...

louis wrote:

What's lacking is the political will (Obama in particular doesn't do space - he's a Chicago street activist and they were always complaining about the space budget not being spent on the poor).

This concerns me. I'm all for helping the little guy, but space is about opening new frontiers and new resources. Opening new resources makes the entire economy richer. The poor need consideration, but obsessing about them to the exclusion of opening new resources simply makes everyone poor.

I am concerned about what is going on in Canada. When the current Conservative government was elected in January 2006, the cancelled the last cut by the Liberal administration to personal income taxes. Then a year later brought back that same tax cut, claiming they had cut taxes. It was only 0.5%, but bringing back a cut they cancelled is not a cut. There has been no cuts to personal income tax since. Instead they cut corporate taxes. The Liberal administration passed a law to cancel corporate capital tax, but the effective date was after the 2006 election, so the Conservatives have claimed credit. The Liberals stated their intent to cancel corporate surtax, but during the 2006 election they were in the process of abolishing corporate capital tax. One at a time; if you cut taxes too deeply too quickly, you abolish the surplus. The surplus is used to pay down the debt, which reduces debt service charges (interest). That reduced interest is what allows the government to reduce taxes. So cuts have to be slow. Cutting too quickly kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. The goose is the surplus, and golden eggs are tax cuts. But the Conservatives didn't stop there, they cut corporate tax down to 15%. Personal income tax at the lowest income bracket is 15%. That means multi-billion dollar corporations are paying taxes at the same rate as individuals with income below the poverty line. That's absurd. That does have to change.

My proposal for Canada is:

• Cut personal income tax by 2% points in every income bracket. For the lowest income bracket that reduces from 15% to 13%. Effective January 1st 2016. That's New Years Day following the next federal election. Election day is scheduled for October 19, 2015.

• Increase corporate income tax by 1% point that same day, January 1st, 2016. From 15% to 16%.

• Shift tax on dividends from personal income tax to corporate. Again January 1st 2016. That means corporations will no longer be able to deduct what they pay in dividends from taxable income, effectively charging corporate income tax on dividends. Corporations will be prohibited from deducting anything from the dividend cheque; the corporation pays, now shareholders. Of course how much a corporation pays in dividends is up to them. And dividend cheques from a corporation that pays corporate income tax to Canada will not be included in taxable income for personal income tax. Making a dividend cheque tax free. But that would not apply to dividends from foreign corporations, because they don't pay corporate income tax to Canada. The Canada Revenue Agency has to get their tax money somewhere.

• Increase GST (Canada's federal sales tax) by 1%, from 5% to 6%, effective April 1st, 2016. That gives retailers time to adjust their cash registers, and April 1st is the beginning of the Canadian federal government's fiscal year. Increase a further 1% effective July 1st, raising from 6% to 7%. The GST was 7% on election day 2006, so this just puts it back to what it was.
  Note: Personal income tax cut by 2%, GST raised by 2%. But income tax is on all your income while GST is only on some things. And the raise in GST will be delayed, so taxpayers get a break.

• The GST Credit is a rebate cheque mailed to low income taxpayers once per quarter. Effective April 1st (again start of the federal government's fiscal year), change that. Change it to a line item added to your paycheque. Instead of taking the annual amount, dividing by 4 and mailing a cheque, instead divide by how many paycheques you get per year, add that to every paycheque. So instead of 1/4 every 3rd month, you could get 1/26 bi-weekly. Current line items on a pay stub are deductions, but this would be added to your paycheque. And employers would net this out with income tax withholding. Most importantly, the total amount paid per year would double. Yes, this off-loads expenses to employers, and passes on those savings to taxpayers. If an employer complains, my response is "Suck it up buttercup."
  Anyone not employed but receiving Employment Insurance benefits would receive this on their EI cheque instead. Anyone not employed and not receiving EI, but retired and receiving Canada Pension Plan benefits would get it on their CPP cheque. Anyone not getting any of that but getting provincial welfare, would get it on their welfare cheque. Anyone who doesn't get any of that would get their GST Credit on the following year's income tax refund.
  And to ensure no one gets more than one payment, all employers will be required to register employee's Social Insurance Number (SIN) (Canadian equivalent to Social Security Number) with a website of the Canada Revenue Agency. If that SIN is already assigned to get the GST Credit elsewhere, or doesn't qualify to receive the GST Credit, the employer will be told "No". No explanation why, just "No".

• The following year, effective January 1st 2017, federal personal income tax will be cut another 2% points in every income bracket. For the lowest income bracket that cuts from 13% to 11%.

• To pay for that, the same day, January 1st 2017, corporate income tax will raise by 2%, from 16% to 18%.

• The year after that, January 1st 2018, personal income tax cut another 1% point in every income bracket. The lowest income bracket will be cut from 11% to 10%.

• To pay for that, the same January 1st 2018, corporate income tax increase 1%, from 18% to 19%.

Then leave it there. On election day 2006, corporate income tax was 21%, plus corporate surtax, plus corporate capital tax. After all this, corporate income tax will be 19%, and no corporate capital tax or surtax. That's lower and that's enough. Individuals below the poverty line will pay 10% income tax; that's a tithe.

I also want to restore the surplus, treat the federal debt like a mortgage, pay the whole damn thing off. Once the entire Canadian federal debt is gone, completely abolish federal personal income tax. Of course the GST Credit would have to go at the same time as federal personal income tax. One major purpose to the GST Credit is incentive to file your income tax return. If you don't file, you don't get the GST Credit. Employment Insurance (EI) and Canada Pension Plan (CPP) together are the equivalent to Social Security. Those premiums pay for those programs, so the premiums have to stay. But no increase, no decrease, no change what so ever. Provincial income tax is under authority of provincial governments, so anyone who wants to change that has to talk to their provincial politicians. This plan doesn't change that. Corporate income tax and GST itself will stay at the level I just listed. The real reason for shifting dividends from personal income tax to corporate is so when federal personal income tax is completely abolished, dividends stay taxed. So this isn't magic. But if you look at your pay stub, look at the box that says "Federal Income Tax". That will be gone; your paycheque will be that much bigger because it simply won't be deducted.

Further spending cuts: In late 2005, the Liberal administration was a minority government, so to stay in power they needed support from at least one other political party. The Conservative Party was trying to force an election, so the Liberals tried to placate the NDP. In Canada, the Liberal Party is not as "liberal" as the Republicans in the United States use the word. The Liberal Party tries to be fiscally responsible. However, the New Democratic Party is socialist. In an effort to placate the NDP, in late 2005 they introduced a bill to create a national childcare program. It didn't pass, and the Conservative administration has instead created the "Universal Child Care Benefit for Children Under the Age of 6". Yea, long name. It's a $100 cheque mailed to parents every month. But it's considered taxable income. After tax that works out to $16 per week. Not much, but in 2011 cost the government $2.8 billion. They haven't included a line item for that program since. During the 2011 election, the Liberal calculated the cost of their childcare program: $0.5 billion the first year, rising each year until the 4th it would cost $1 billion, then capped at $1 billion thereafter. Now the Conservatives have promised to increase the cheques to $160 per month, parents would get the money starting this July. The election is October: can you say "buying votes"? I knew you could. My idea is replace the Conservative childcare plan with the Liberal one. Assuming the cost of the Conservative plan hasn't increase since 2011 (it probably has), then the 60% increase means $4.48 billion per year. Replacing that with a $0.5% billion program saves about $4 billion the first year alone. And the Liberal plan is more effective. It entails training unemployed people receiving EI benefits or welfare to establish a home business providing childcare. That gets individuals off social assistance, instead self-employed.

Isn't that more effective?  This doesn't cut funding from space. Again, space is an investment. There's lots of new land on Mars. Lots of metals in asteroids. Lots of resources to make society richer.

Another perspective. My mother was a pre-school child during the Great Depression of the 1930s. She described growing up in a small town in southern Manitoba. Here in Canada, in the province where I now live. Her parents had a tiny house with a coal-and-wood stove; no furnace. They had to stoke the stove before going to bed at night, and during the coldest nights of winter had to get up during the night to re-stoke the stove. She often woke to find her bed sheets frozen to the bed. When they got up, they ran to the stove to warm up. They drew water in a bucket from a hand-pump; they didn't have running water. Their father (my grandfather) hunted for meat: deer, duck, geese, occasionally smaller animals. They had a small subsistence farm with a few acres of potatoes, vegetables, and some chickens. Canada didn't have a national healthcare system at that time. Their mother (my grandmother) got serious complications from childbirth, worse with each child. She stopped after 4 children. Her husband (my grandfather) had to pay punishing hospital bills, so they were dirt poor until those bills were paid. After the Great Depression they recovered; had a small restaurant for a few years, then my grandfather built houses until he retired. But now compare the so-called "poor" of today with how my own mother grew up. Are they really poor? It's all relative.

Something to keep in mind with transportation on Mars is that we want to keep it as simple as possible.  We need to ask ourselves:  How little energy can we use, how weak can we make our motors, etc.

My proposal is this:  Robotic driving would be easiest with a "rail" made of bricks laid down for the car to follow.  This is solely a guide rail and the entire weight and maneuvering forces on the car would be on the ground.  The car can travel at speeds as low as 5 m/s (18 kph; 11 mph) or less.  The path can be designed to have inclines below 10 degrees.  Maybe it's fine if the cars turn off at night.  Maybe on an incline the vehicle will "gear down" so as to use less power by going slower.

But, thinking about it, chemical fuels are probably the way to go.  They have really high volumetric and specific energy densities and can be pretty easy to manufacture and store.  Oxidizer is kind of tricky, but we don't necessarily need a very powerful one.  Chlorine is a liquid at ambient martian temperatures, for example.  We don't need to worry about polluting Mars.  In fact, CF4 is a very powerful greenhouse gas.  The best argument for not releasing it is that it may be worth keeping the chlorine for reuse.  Oxygen isn't as good because it's not liquid at Mars pressures, but you could get a reasonably high density by pressurizing.  Then there are compounds like Ammonium Nitrate, which are relatively safe, oxidizing solids that can also be dissolved in water. 

My point is this: Keep it simple and low-powered, and chemical, and it'll work for a long time at low cost.

Louis,

I want to make sure that I did not intend the "Screaming Child" thing to indicate you or any of your associates.  I am really thinking of the human race as a whole, and much less people like you.

Please don't take insult.

Salt deposits: Probably near dried-up bodies of water, such as shores of the dried-up ocean basin. And what was the deepest part of the ocean; as it dried up the salt water would flow there before finally evaporating. But that implies little chance for water flow through salt deposits.

Earth has plate tectonics, so everything is constantly moving. Mars never did have plate tectonics. The islands of Hawaii formed by volcanic eruption from a hot-spot in the mantle. As the tectonic plate moved the island off the hot-spot, the volcano stopped erupting. Then a new volcano would form over the hot-spot, creating a new island. Then ocean waves slowly eroded erode old islands. But this never happened on Mars. Volcanoes at Tharsis just built up to huge size. And Tharsis is on the opposite side from Hellas Basin, probably the shock wave from the asteroid impact that created Hellas caused the volcanoes of Tharsis. All this means no salt deposits that can later be dissolved to form caves. No process to build up then tear down.

We don't know if limestone deposits formed. On Earth, igneous rock eroded by lowing water into clay. Alkali metals dissolved from that rock washed into the oceans: sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. Early Earth had a thick CO2 atmosphere, so a lot of CO2 dissolved into the ocean creating carbonic acid. That's a weak acid, but dissolved carbonic will combine with calcium to form calcite, or with magnesium and calcium to form dolomite. Those two minerals precipitate out of solution, forming limestone. Today Earth doesn't have a CO2 atmosphere, so this process doesn't happen any more. Today coral other life forms make calcium based skeletons, which accumulate to form coral reefs. But bulk limestone was formed by early Earth through this non-biologic process. We find calcite and dolomite in Mars soil. It's part of the dust, they haven't found limestone deposits; at least not yet. I'm sure the chemical process was the same, the question was whether these minerals were formed in rivers and streams, or Mars ancient ocean. Could there be limestone deposits at the bottom of the ancient ocean?

Limestone caves: there wasn't much time for one of these to form. When the ocean started drying up, it's possible a part of limestone left on land could have had water percolate through to the lowered ocean. But that wasn't much time. Look at the ancient shore line, but there may be no limestone caves. We haven't even found bulk limestone yet.

But orbiters have discovered lava tubes. These form when a lava river flows down a volcano hillside. Cooling lava forms a solid crust, which acts as insulation so remaining lava underneath stays hot longer. This forms a tube of molten lava. When the volcano stops, the honey-like lava flows down hill, emptying the lava tube. Some lava will solidify on the tube floor. We have lava tubes on Earth, but for some reason lava tubes on Mars are larger.

Wikipedia: Martian lava tube
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … a_tube.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … t_crop.jpg
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Com … id-6x2.jpg
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images … -1_650.jpg