New Mars Forums

Josh, does that suspicion include me? If so I can assure you such is not the case. Only because nicknames might be familiarly Italian sounding, that does not mean we are related.
I simply have no more patience with terror on Russian or Chinese peasantry than I have for "final solutions" of other people.

Cheers! 

As for "Plymouth", self sustainability is an important goal as evidenced only from a lot of posts only in this forum (and you can count on that I'm all for it), but it will only be achieved gradually and even then, self sustainability is not the same as a positive balance of trade.
The question remains, what will the martians have to offer in return for imported goods? Seen as a free market venture, what's in it for Terran capitalists?
From a purely economical point of view, asteroid mining for rare minerals and solar power utilization in near Earth space seems to me a more promising perspective than colonizing Mars, at least in the short to medium perspective, yet even in this case it has proved exceedingly difficult to attract private capital.

The comparison of America to Mars is actually completely reversed. In the case of the American colonies, huge profits could be engendered with a minimum of time, effort and investment. Simple people could set up businesses in the new world with a minimum of preparation, the labour of which transformed into material values, flowed back and benefitted the mother country. The cost of emigration was more or less that of ballast. I forgot to mention that timber, grain, fish and iron were also major export articles, readily extractable. In the case of Mars only the arrangement of adequate infrastructure to remain alive on the surface is an enourmous financial undertaking. Who will fund it?
Private capital is not good at providing infrastructure as experience shows. It's prime concern is the upcoming quarterly balance sheet. It's all about putting money where it will provide the biggest profits in the shortest time. Even in the United States the wise Washington agreed to print money provided it went into infrastructure, getting it locked there so it wouldn't cause inflation, which in turn private enterprise could benefit from. Free market forces proved insufficient for sustainable growth without political interference.
Same thing applies to space. First the infrastructure must be put into place and only then might private capital be interested in establishing itself. And in the case of Mars there is still the question what will be produced and traded. For the foreseeable future, I mean.
I firmly believe in colonizing Mars as beneficial to humanity as I do exploitation of near Earth surroundings. But in the case of Mars we should be happy with only the emergence of two parallell economies that will not have very much to do with each other. That is freeing Mars from one sided economical dependence on Earth.
I can see no other agency to undertake these developments than stable and strong willed governments. Only political agencies are potentially free from the short sighted constraints of profit making competitive business.

Food for thought: The United States made it to the Moon in less than nine years because of an explicit, political aim. The space program started to crumble in the early seventies. Exactly at the same time as state driven keynesianism was replaced by the principles of free market neo-liberalism.

Concerning martian lettuce:

He, he, maybe it's time to introduce a marxist-leninist maoist appeal for the tolerance of constructive criticism? "Oh my God, an infidel, stone him!"

- That's because colonization of the Americas payed for itself by hugely lucrative exports of tobacco, sugar, fur and indigo. What will the Mars colony be exporting in exchange for the substantial amounts of sophisticated merchandise it needs just to sustain itself? Martian cultivated cabbages just won't do.

- Well then, trash the bureacracy and change the priorities. A mission to Mars is a political matter. The only thing lacking is political will power.

- I don't know, maybe you are right. I won't turn this discussion into a dispute over semantics though.

By the way, I can't remember having that KISS philosopy conversation. Nevertheless, sounds like a philosophy I'd be ready to subscribe to. The faster ordinary people can turn into brave Mars pioneers, the better in my opinion.

Considering that any Mars settlement will have to be tax funded for generations, I find it somewhat odd that libertarianism and every sort of anarchic or capitalist ideologies hold such a notable sway over many people wanting to go there.

Kind of counter productive, I reckon. Well, that's just my humble opinion.

I'm no expert but strangely I've come to exactly the opposite conclusion. Ground launch, in fact, I think is the actual ra?son d'etre for nuclear pulse propulsion. As such it could also have enormous implications for nearby industrial ventures.
Speaking from the interested public side of the fence, what really made me appreciate the idea of resuscitating the Orion are the incredible thrust levels involved. Almost makes me feel like digging up the treasures of a lost civilization.   According to http://www.islandone.org/APC/ it had a T/W ratio of about 4, as far as I can tell making it optimal for carrying heavy payloads into space.

Provided fall out levels can be minimized as outlined by Nuclear Space and discussed in this thread, the immediate use for an updated Orion would thus be for Earth launch as a heavy lifter.

Why do I think that's decisive?

Well, when going to Mars for example, going there as fast as possible isn't the primary concern (although you'll do that as well), arriving there in one piece and good health is. That requires things like heavy shielding for protection against coronal mass ejections (if lead, I've read 50 cm, which is probably pretty heavy) plus an adequate system for providing artificial gravity. Minimum requirements for the latter suggests a cylinder 44 m in diameter and as far as I've understood it, even then 0,3 g will be about the level reached if the cylinder is not to revolve too fast to be comfortable.

With the Orion we could put all this bulk on top and stuff the equipment needed for setting up a substantial martian base in just one trip. The entire hab section can be lined for protection so we won't need to rely on hopefully accurate reports on space weather and storm shelters. There'll be no need for consecutive launches from Earth by chemical rockets, dockings and final assembly in LEO just to get the spacecraft together. I suspect the latter can be more complicated than expected and by any rate prone to mistakes. Instead, just launch it from Earth as one complete package and go! So long as there's no orbital infrastructure, I find a direct launch much more appealing (not to mention that I can think of no better way of getting this into place).
In transit, forget about complicated tethers and cramped living quarters. Accomodations could be provided to make Flash Gordon envious.

Whatever couldn't nuclear pulse propulsion do to boost the Mars Direct plan? The spaceship could remain in Mars orbit, dock with the ascend viechle and be used for the return trip. Sounds like one critical sequence in the entire mission apparatus. While remaining in orbit it could prove vital as a means of premature evac if something went wrong on the surface, it could even be equipped with several landers. Bigger payloads means room for contigency plans and thus increased security. Big is bold, practical and generous. Thus, big is beautiful.

If however, a launch from orbit is callled for, I see no decisive need for using the Orion concept. NTR or hybrid NTR/NEP would be sufficient, at least since industrial expansion and scale economics is not on the agenda but merely a humble mission to Mars. Too bad I guess, the most meaningful use of the Orion concept is precisely the one everyone fears: a ground launch.
One more thing that caught my eye. It seems to follow from the pulse propulsion concept (total number of bomblets/pulse interval) that accelerating/deaccelerating is done within a rather limited time frame at the start and end of each journey. That means there's a long segment of cruise speed in between, which I believe is well suited to artificial gravity since none will be generated in the wrong direction.

A layman's point of view:

I've known about project Orion since I was about 15 and read Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Having come to view the entire concept as ridiculuos (never even contemplated it for Earth launches because of radiation issues), I must admit that reading through the four pages of this thread has caused a change of heart.

Well done Mr Nuclear Space!

I mean, just think about the thrust to weight ratio obviously related to this technology! (Okay I might still need to look into some details on my own here.) Yet with the productivity implied, does it really matter if one or two viechles might explode at some desolate location, especially considering the great number of even thermo nuclear rocket viechles needed for the same amount of payload? (If those are feasible for down gravity well launches that is, at least I had hitherto thought so!)
Astronauts and related staff are asked to have the right stuff. It's their duty to put their lives on the line and not to wheen too much about security. Test pilots and speed freaks for Christ's sake. Moreover, as soon as we get some decent infrastructure up there, maybe we won't need to continue any potentially hazardous earth launches, anyway.

Plus, Werner von Braun got sold on the idea. Then it simply have to be good!

And this is the second time tonight I heard the name Freeman Dyson (obviously the project manager in the old days). Sounds like a good omen.

In fact, and I hope you find it good news, quite a number of these extra solar gas giants (there are currently over a 100 of them) do exhibit quite regular Jovian orbits.
Then regarding the specific prerequisites for life in our solar system, such as Jupiter and the Moon, why not consider 47 Ursa Majoris (a G0 star at 45.9 ly), which have two gas giants in nearly circular orbits at a distance of 2.09 and 3.73 AU from their parent star, with 2.54 and 0.76 Jupiter masses respectively?
Let's say their hypothetical homeplanet, at about 1.1 AU, have an even bigger moon than ours, making their world almost a double planet system; now hear them go:
"Because our beneficient gas worlds b and c, functioning like giant vacuum cleaners, not to mention our unique twin planetary constellation, without which we wouldn't exist, have provided life in our solar system with such terrific stroke of luck, we must estimate that intelligent life in the galaxy is probably exceeedingly rare".

http://www.solstation.com/stars2/47uma.htm
http://www.extrasolar.net/mainframes.html

By the way, 47 Ursa Majoris is believed to be 7 billion years old. Plenty of time for life to evolve. I'd be damned if there isn't somebody up there right now as we speak.
:;):

I think this is all a fact of human existence. One's the ball starts rolling all capable political entities on Earth will want to have their share of Mars.
In such a scenario there's really no use discussing what constitution should be imposed etc, since every colony will be run according to the political culture of its terran government and these are diverse indeed.
The post cold war order is already giving in to a new line of sovereign terran super powers. These are roughly the United States, China, Russia and Europe. Each with its own agenda and potential capacity for territorial expansion within the Solar System. The first to touch down in an area will claim it for their empire, limited to the extent over which it can exert control through physical presence.
This I believe, is probably the way the dividing up of the martian hemisphere will go, haphazard and chaotic and spontaneous. Maybe stalked here and there by international agreement.