New Mars Forums

I see what Tom is driving at is a safe mars simulation that is based on the devon island Mars society work along with what was done with the Mars 500 mission as a dry run for a complete mission in isloation which is what going to Mars would be.

Human 2 Mars conference April 22 to April 24 in Washington, D.C.:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/7899049269/efblike

Keynote speech by NASA administrator Charles Bolden. I plan to attend.
Hoping to get feedback on the possibility of using using solar powered plasma drives to shorten flight times:

http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2014/0 … sible.html

  Bob Clark

I think we could reasonably land stuff on Mars in ten tonne packages.  What would be bigger than that?

Seems kinda silly to go to Mars and establish some surface base (temporary or permanent),  and NOT take the equivalent of a front-end loader.  That's a digging bucket on the front of your rover with the drill rig on the back (that you also need).  Take two in case one fails or is needed elsewhere when you want it.  Three is even better.  They might be around a ton each,  if built stout the way we do here on Earth.   

GW

louis wrote:

The evidence from the Rovers on Mars is quite the opposite. Even in dust storms, substantial amounts of radiation get through (I don't think they have ever dipped below 20% of expected insolation). But of course, with any solar energy system, you will be storing energy, most likely as methane, which can then be deployed to power generators.

I agree power demands will probably be a lot higher on Mars. But while we do need all that life support and so on, we won't be for instance cooking in ovens for hours or watching TV on huge screens or using our washing machines to wash a couple of socks etc etc. In other words we won't see the sort of profligate personal energy use that is common in rich countries on Earth.

As I say, I have nothing against ambient light greenhouses - but they will be far more vulnerable to global dust storms. The fact that plants can operate at low pressure, is certainly in their favour, I would agree.

As you indicate, chambers also protect against radiation events.

Huh? What? Do you understand what I said? I said plants endure a lot more radiation than humans. They continue to grow and just ignore radiation. The MARIE instrument on Mars Odyssey measured radiation in Mars orbit, and were able to estimate how much would get through to the surface based on a formula devised by NASA and the US military nuclear bomb guys. It's a very accurate estimate. That was verified by an instrument on Curiosity rover. The result is about twice was much radiation gets to Mars orbit as ISS, but only a quarter of that gets to the surface. So radiation on Mars surface is about half of ISS. Roughly, it depends on altitude of your landing location. They also found radiation in space measured by Curiosity was about 50% more than measured by Odyssey. That was because Curiosity launched during solar maximum, Odyssey didn't. Furthermore, the atmosphere of Mars blocks about 90% of heavy ion radiation at high altitude locations like Meridiani Planum where Opportunity landed, and 98% at a low altitude like Gale Crater where Curiosity is. So Mars atmosphere shields against the worst, nastiest type of radiation. The plastic film of an inflatable greenhouse will block all alpha and beta radiation. The same metal coating used by NASA to block UV on spacecraft windows and spacesuit visors would be applied to the greenhouse, that would block UV. Since it's metal, it also blocks a little X-rays, but X-rays in space are so slight that the metal coating is enough to block it all. The aluminized Mylar used for thermal protection in the white fabric of a spacesuit will protect that. On Mars we want something else for thermal protection, such as Thinsulate, but a single layer of aluminized Mylar would act as X-ray protection. So all you have left is proton, light ion, and medium ion radiation. Plants can endure that. Plants can endure more radiation than exists on Mars. Global dust storm or not, plants can ignore far more radiation than is there.

Radiation is not a dragon. As Robert Zubrin said, Medieval maps often had "dragons be here" for areas not explored. This scared sailors away. We need to slay the "dragons". Radiation is not an issue. For long term settlement, a human habitats would have a minimum of 2 metres of regolith on the roof. For exploration, a single layer of sand bags filled with Mars regolith. However, greenhouses would not. This is supposed to be the Mars Society. The people here are supposed to be the ones knowledgeable about Mars. *DO NOT* fall into the trap of treating radiation as a hazard that prevents humans from Mars. Every time you talk about burying a greenhouse underground, what the public hears is it's not safe for humans to leave Earth.

Yes, a greenhouse on the Moon would have to be buried. The Moon does not have an atmosphere, Mars gets 47% as much sunlight as Earth but the Moon gets full sunlight, and the Moon gets 2 weeks of sun followed by 2 weeks of night. So any greenhouse on the Moon must be buried. But not Mars. On Mars you can build a greenhouse on the surface. This is one of the many reasons for going to Mars instead of the Moon.

And I already addressed dust storms. Yes, you need artificial light during dust storms. That takes power. Expect no industry during the dust storm, so power for the greenhouse would take away all power for mining and refining. Just make sure you don't have a power failure during a dust storm; that would mean death. And this is one of the many reasons why I keep saying solar power on Mars is not good enough.

I still argue for ambient lighting. Mars will have multiple redundant life support systems, but power is a single point of failure. The only life support system that works without power is a greenhouse.

Materials: glass windows made from Mars sand. One rover did find a tiny deposit of pure silica sand, but it was a cup or two. I presented a paper at the Mars Society convention in Chicago in 2005, about smelting aluminum. Silica gel was a byproduct; add soda and lime to turn that into glass. So glass as a byproduct of aluminum production. Ore is bytownite, a mineral constitutes 21.5% - 27% of Mars surface, according to MGS. We can make steel from hematite concretions: those "blueberries" discovered by Opportunity. We can make fibreglass from glass. All plastics can be made from CO2 and H2O, with enough electricity. Some need a few other things: nylon and melamine need nitrogen, polycarbonate needs salt. All exist on Mars. We can make Portland cement from Mars rocks. I have read that cement requires nitrogen bubbles to cure properly, so not sure how that would work outdoors on Mars. The key to all insitu resource utilization is power. Mars needs lots of power.

One of the local movements is for the schools to make use of local grown produce for lunches. Making local food a priority at UNH, one meal at a time

For individuals, it takes a little bit of work to eat locally. For an institution like UNH, which serves an average of 16,000 meals each day during the school year, using locally-grown and produced foods is a serious challenge.
About 23 percent of all the food dining services purchases is considered local—that is, it’s grown or produced within a 250 mile radius of campus. The university is also home to Food Solutions New England, a regional network “dedicated to advancing a sustainable New England food system.” Part of that vision: that the region can build the capacity to produce at least 50 percent of the food New Englanders need, in an environmentally and socially-sustainable way, by 2060. That produce is grown using compost created in part from food waste from the dining halls. As part of the composting system, food waste is washed off plates and trays into a trough. Water pushes the waste down the trough and into a drum, where the waste is ground up and liquid is extracted from it. The waste is then placed in large yellow buckets—each holding 75 pounds of food waste—and sent to Kingman Farm in Durham, where it’s used to make compost. That compost later returns to the university, where it’s used by students in the Food Experience course to help grow salad mix, tomatoes, zucchini and other vegetables that are served at the Dairy Bar and other university locations. Waste cooking oil is processed into biodiesel. Dining services has its own small electric car—like a golf cart, but enclosed—that Hill and Dining Services director John Plodzik use to visit the campus’ dining halls.

Looking at this as a mars building direction a small colony would need to distance the food from earth supply and in order to do that we would need a game plan as well as a timeline for how much resupply would taper off by following each successful mission to mars.

IMHO, it's rather tough to control what language people speak. Usefulness usually precedes standard. I know it from near because I'm french, my wife is polish, & we speak together in english. that is, each year God makes, the "english" is more & more polluted by Polish or french words, or even sentence structures. My own daughter is perfectly biligual, yet clueless in english(age 6).

Therefore I've read quite a few books on the topic, and my uneducated guess is that there will be a local pidgin for Martians, a kind of mix between origin languages, plus new words specific to local conditions. Later it should evolve in a creole, and, finally, after a few centuries, in a full language, as wicked as current ones. I don't believe in a standardized, simple language like esperanto, for the very reason that useful languages evolve as quick as their environment. Whatever the original language.

RobertDyck wrote:

Quinoa - high protein grain

My sister suggested we grow quinoa on Mars. She's into self-sufficiency, and has a bag of this grain. It's big advantage is amino acids are balanced.

I think she's on the right track from an energy preserving and nutritional perspective.

A high protein vegetarian/vegan diet requires less effort, energy to produce, and can fully meet any human being's nutritional requirements. Plus, it the best dieet to keep them healthy - there are many vegetables that actively fight certain common illnesses and conditions.

Who'd want to be struck by diabetes, cancer or arthiritis on Mars? A balanced vegan diet prevents that. 

IMHO anyone who can't live without steaks or pizza should probably not go to Mars, at least not in the first phases! I think it's almost shocking to read about people who expect to eat beef and chicken. The body requires neither, most of the world's population never or very rarely eat it, and it's incredibly inefficient use of space and energy as a food source.

I'd love to find out more about how to grow crops on Mars, so I'll check out that site about self-sufficient living on Mars.

For example - could a fully functioning greenhouse be constructed based on material available on Mars, assuming the required tools were available.... ? Or would it be necessary to bring the parts, and the material?
Ultimately the goal must be self sufficiency, mustn't it?

And for that, people's expectation on what is needed for a good life must change. Mars just don't have the resources to sustain the couch potato, high-consumer, meat eating culture we have in Europe and America.

Yes, Moon Express. I forgot the name. There's an article about their smallest lander, designed to win the Google Prize, at http://www.gizmag.com/moon-express-mx-1 … der/30050/ . I also saw information about a medium sized lander that masses 2.5 tonnes and can be thrown to the moon by a Falcon 9, but now I can't find it. A sample return vehicle landed on the moon with the medium lander could bring 8 kg back to the Earth if it goes to the moon via the "weak boundary [or stability?] layer" over a 3-6 month period.

As for subsidy to Mars, it will be decades before someone can get there for $250,000. I doubt Musk could get people there for less than $100 million each!

Even with a fully developed system for mars travel there are just only so many customers that can afford it even a Musk's prices. So how do we make a mission to mars more affordable for the average working person. Even with subsidizing the mission with all of the movie rights and others stuff its the upfront costs that need to be reined in.