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This technology exists. Apparently it take 0.31 KwHes to make1 litre of water. So if your electricity costs 10 cents per KwHe that's about 3 cents per litre, leaving aside capital cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospher … _generator
Residential water use in North America is about 500 litres per household (maybe 2.5 people, so about 200 litres per person). So on that basis water would cost about $6 per day per person. If electricity costs 2 cents per KwHe, then that would be $1.2 per person per day.
I think the lower figure would probably be much cheaper than charges from water suppliers - no need to maintain all those dams. canals. aqueducts, pipes and reservoirs. In the UK households often pay over $1000 in water charges.
Louis,
What you're talking about doing is "air conditioning the planet". There's probably an engineering reason why we don't typically obtain fresh water by "de-humidifying the atmosphere", it probably relates to energy consumption, no matter how cheap the energy is, and you will probably completely ignore that, but there it is.
What does "Covid deaths" mean? Very old people who die from respiratory disease have an average of 14 pathogens in their lungs. Why choose Covid 19 over anything else? It's old age that's killed them. Vaccines won't see them. In every country that introduces mass vaccination programme beginning with the elderly we see the death rates rise steeply.
The Delta strain has caused Sydney in Two-Week Lockdown as Delta Variant Infections Rise
The United States on Tuesday surpassed 600,000 Covid-19 deaths with 99 percent of its most current deaths because of non-vaccinated people, and the Delta is yet to strike.
My view is that green energy will eventually become extremely cheap. We are still seeing so many technical innovations that are driving down the price. Think about it logically: nature delivers the electrons and the powered air molecules to your generating system totally free of charge. So all you have to think about is cheaper and cheaper ways to use the fuel delivered to you free (and how to store the energy you produce). The evidence of past decades is we are relentlessly clever in inventing new ways of exploiting this resource more efficiently and more cheaply.
Once we get down to a v. low price - below 2 cents per KwHe lots of things become possible. The water problem will be resolved through using dehumidifiers to extract water from the atmosphere. The technology is there already of course - it's just expensive to use. You can extract water from the atmosphere in even the driest of deserts.
I like many paths. We should not inhibit creativity at this point, in my opinion.
Here is something I really like. I am not a run to Mars sort of person, thinking that the Earth will die.
I feel that we will make more than one world valuable, and will enhance the value of Earth in particular.https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ho … &FORM=VIRE
Where these people want to generate chemical fuels, and pipe them off to areas without enough energy. That is OK, but I want
to add water. If we could bring and produce more water where so called "Green Energy" is, which are sometimes arid, then
enhance lifesupport/living standards can be enhanced in such places.I have the American SW (Solar), and also the high plains (Wind and maybe solar),in mind.
Also we have costal wind in NA, and even so more clean water is to valued. We will almost certainly get a gift from the UK
and Europe, as their necessity is causing them to pioneer advanced coastal wind power.This is not to say that we would not continue to seek nuclear, and other methods. We just nuture various things, and get
what is eventually demonstrated to work.I do not thnk that we will willing give up a thirst for energy, so indeed, also we can consider space solar power. Why think
small??? The future could be absolutely fabulous.Done.
Most of these big tech billionaires speak liberty and practise oppression.
I'd say Musk is more of an exception to the rule...he just seems to me to be much more a member of the human race than most other billionaires. He seems to recognise his employees as humans first, units of production second.
For Louis re #10
Thank you for your substantial contribution to this topic!
I think the defining feature of capitalism has been (a) the move from individual ownership to joint stock ownership, which the law eventually accepted as removing from the individual personal liability (hence the concept of "limited liability") -
SearchTerm:liability as a key element of capitalism - invention of the stock company
That led to the notion of a corporation being a "person" and having "rights" in society. I think that notion has gone too far, but also note that governments have seen fit to exert sovereignty over corporations when their immoral behavior exceeds social bounds by a sufficient extent.
Right now, we see the European Union taking on US corporate giants without hesitation, and there very well may be examples of that going on in the US that I'm not aware of. At a local level, it ** is ** routine in the US for governments (towns, cities, counties) to block initiatives by corporations to build structures that don't meet local expectations.
Your example of Amazon approaching an ideal is interesting, and one I'll keep in mind as the future unfolds.
There is an active effort on the part of Amazon to replace humans-acting-like-robots with actual robots... We are all aware of the initiative to deliver packages by drone, or by robot delivery cart, but recently I read of the introduction of a small number of what sounded like human-equivalent robots in at least one Amazon warehouse.
In another forum (I've forgotten which one) I ran across a report (possibly apocryphal) that Jeff Bezos has a mental image of humans as lazy. More clear is the claim that the Amazon work structure is deliberately designed to discourage any hope of progress from the bottom tier to higher levels in the organization. That policy, if true, is quite likely related to reported high levels of turnover at the bottom levels where the bulk of the work gets done.
A high turnover at the bottom tier would be a prerequisite for smooth introduction of robots as fast as they become capable of taking on human functions.
Jeff Bezos himself is concentrating on his space venture. Amazon is running on it's own now, with a culture he created driving the actions of the humans who remain in leadership positions. Ultimately it would not surprise me at all for a Google-like AI to come into being as the overall coordinator of the flow of work of myriads of robots, and the ideal corporation will be present.
It will be fun to see how governments deal with ** that ** when it happens!
(th)
The Chinese are sophisticated game players - have you ever heard of "The Art of War"?
If their main space exploration focus was on Mars, the last thing they would do is tell you it was. They would tell you their main focus was the Moon.
I agree that China has a lot of calls on its resources apart from Mars. They are intent on catching up with and surpassing the USA militarily and ensuring they can overcome Taiwan with a huge excess of force. I would accept currently Taiwan ranks a lot higher than Mars. But they think very long term and will see the dangers of allowing Space X/the USA to get control of a whole planet's resources.
Has anyone else considered the possibility that the Chinese are not seriously interested in establishing a Mars colony?
The Russians and Chinese seem very preoccupied with their lunar ambitions, and this is what they constantly talk about in the news. Every other space agency and private corporation except for Blue Origin, another American company, is at least a good 10 years behind the power curve when it comes to development of fully reusable orbital launch vehicles, which are mandatory foundational technology for a Mars colony to exist at any scale. Blue Origin is probably 5 to 7 years behind SpaceX. Both corporations have reliable LOX/LCH4 engines with lots of testing, but nobody else has anything like that in production and only Raptor has actually flown aboard a launch vehicle, or the upper stage of one, moving under its own power. SpaceX is fabricating both the booster and upper stage for a fully functional orbital vehicle, and sub-orbital testing continues. Nobody else is anywhere near that far along. The Chinese use any success as a propaganda tool, so we'd know about it if they were close, because they would intimate to everyone that they are.
NASA has the only fully tested long duration closed loop life support system in existence, and they have decades of experience with development of long duration life support. You can't simply steal the blueprints and copy that technology, as the Chinese theft of F-35 design data has proven. Thorough understanding is required, which only comes from home-grown development and testing.
We know that Russian and Chinese space suit technology is nothing to write home about, either. They're good basic designs, and I'm not taking anything away from the technical skills of their design engineers, but NASA has gone through more successive generations of space suit technology than both of their space programs have produced over their entire history. This is the difference between having an entire private industry based around a technology set and having one or a handful of specialty equipment suppliers. America's space suit programs are not limited by the creativity of the engineers at NASA or some government-run corporation.
When last I checked, the electric propulsion technologies used by Russia and China are fairly primitive, so their ability to launch the "slow boat from LEO" to deliver heavy cargo is likewise limited.
No amount of hand-waving or claims without evidence can dismiss the importance of those technologies or how necessary they are to any long duration exploration or colonization campaign.
One other factor that must be considered is that, much as NASA has become a political organization today (a welfare for program for smart people and a jobs program for politicians to exploit), space exploration is a special interest group within all governments. Both Russia and China have limits as to what resources they're willing to devote to accomplishing a given space exploration goal. Russia has largely given up on sending interplanetary probes to Mars because their success rate is very limited. China has landed a single small rover on Mars decades after the US had accomplished the same goal and behind India. Let's see how repeatable their success rate is before jumping to conclusions, as well as the longevity of their technology in operation, because those are much better gauges of their commitment to the task.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFSJDSh1jmE
This $4000 EV automobile will be quite attractive to a lot of young couples I imagine.
Certainly gives the lie to the idea that EVs are only for the rich.
If we develop electric roads (induction charging as you drive) then these vehicles will become even more desirable: cheap to run, cheap to maintain and you will be able to go long distances with them .
Well of course Sweden has its hydro "batteries" so storage is not a problem. It doesn't really need anything else in terms of storage but it is not best placed for either wind or solar energy. In fact if you look at the mass of humanity probably 97% or more have better access to solar and wind energy than do Swedes - they are lucky to have their hydro and to be next to nations (Norway and Denmark) who can provide cheap wind and hydro energy.
Louis,
Unless those wind turbines and solar panels produce electrical power 24/7, then a backup plant is always required since there's no such thing as a battery-based grid scale storage solution anywhere in the world. Nuclear power doesn't care at all about whether or not the Sun shines or the wind blows. If the backup is a gas turbine or a coal fired power plant, then it's turning and burning 24/7 to deal with the fact that those types of plants don't spin up instantly and don't like thermal cycling and they need to produce power 24/7 to pay for themselves.
Edit:
We keep rehashing the same basic concepts related to energy production over and over again. I'm not learning anything, except that the ideology of "green energy" evangelists is impervious to accepting the actual cost of their ideas to electricity consumers. Wind and solar costs every bit as much as nuclear power, and then some, given its very short average lifespan before retirement and replacement is required, and the fact that a backup power plant is always required. Nothing has fundamentally changed. Batteries are every bit as impractical for replacing fossil fuels as they were when I was born, which was 40 years ago and counting. If Lithium-ion battery costs fall to the same as that of Lead-acid, then it'll be slightly less wildly impractical for energy storage. Nobody uses Lead-acid for storage because it costs too much. Energy density is nearly meaningless for a stationary battery. Only total cost of ownership, time in service before retirement, and recyclability actually matters.
Total red herring.
Nothing like the long lived rovers which simply wiggle their panels to get rid of excess dust. Clearly a design fault with Insight.
In any case I personally have never proposed a PV powered mission to Mars that would not include panel/film cleaning. Generally I think mobile robots blowing off the dust is the best solution but there are other solutions e.g. if PV film was hung on wires, you could twang the wires to clear the dust.
This contribution is from GW Johnson who remains without a computer for the present ...
This document provides assessment of the dust problem for solar panel users on Mars.
I see a glimpse of a possible future solution with the ability of Ingenuity to direct a blast of air at objects directly below.
However, Ingenuity is not available for Insight.
Well, the following article from AIAA's "Daily Launch" email newsletter is very pointedly illustrative of why solar power on Mars is NOT just rolling out some panels and sitting back harvesting energy! Note that they are NOT talking about degraded insolation due to dust in the air, they are talking about degraded reception of that light due to dust laying on the panels. An actual dust storm would kill the probe (in its current condition) almost immediately.
Outfits on Mars will have to expend considerable effort cleaning dust off those panels, or else we have to design and develop machinery (that does not currently exist) that can do it for them. Once developed, that machinery still costs more weight to send there and requires some of the harvested energy to run. Doing it with human effort costs extra food and oxygen to support the efforts, and those cost weight to send them there, too. Or else the equipment and facilities by which to create them in situ.
Either way you pay, because none of that will be cost-free or weightless. Nuclear reactors might not look so excessively heavy or dangerous, once you figure all this in, with the hazards of humans working in spacesuits to set any of this up.
GW
from "Daily Launch" for 6-23-2021:
Dust Accumulation Could Force End Of InSight Mission
Space News (6/22, Subscription Publication) reports that “dust accumulation on the solar panels of NASA’s InSight Mars lander is reducing the power to the spacecraft and could force the mission to end within a year.” During a meeting of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group on Monday, Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for the InSight mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “said dust accumulating on the lander’s two solar panels has drastically reduced the amount of power they produce, requiring some instruments to be turned off at least temporarily.” Banerdt said, “The dust accumulation on the solar arrays has been considerable. We have about 80% obscuration of the arrays.” According to data presented by Banerdt, “the amount of energy available to the lander per Martian day, or sol, has dropped from nearly 5,000 watt-hours shortly after its November 2018 landing to less than 700 watt-hours now.”(th)
Well in 2019 nuclear tied with hydro in Sweden, at 39%, so nuclear has to take its share of the blame!
https://www.statista.com/statistics/101 … by-source/
It's just good old market economics I presume. A big industrial plant can always choose to create its own energy source if the grid won't supply it cheap enough. Big industrial plants are just way more powerful than individual households, so through their consumption they command lower prices. That is a pattern across the world.
Louis,
It appears as if households pay most of the electricity taxes on behalf of corporations in Sweden, unless corporations there typically own their own electric generating infrastructure.
Why is that arrangement necessary if green energy is so cheap?
Are energy-intensive European corporations like steel mills otherwise unprofitable or not competitive, due to the cost of green energy?
We know it's not because European countries are using the taxes to meet their defense spending obligations to NATO, since nearly all of them fail to do that.
A lot of things get mixed up in discussions of capitalism.
1. There is often an assumption that market economies are the same thing as capitalism. Not so, markets have been with us since the dawn of time. Even chimpanzees have some grasp of the idea of fair exchange and (experimentally) have engaged in market economies for barter or purchase of food. No Communist state has yet been able to abolish markets entirely despite desperately wanting to do so.
2. Money is sometimes identified with capitalism . Money is in fact a very old method of facilitating exchange that predates capitalism by tens of thousands of year. Again no Communist state has yet been able to abolish money.
3. Profit is identified with capitalism. But this is wrong in the sense that all organisations (charities, state owned enterprises, museums etc) have to have a surplus of income over expenditure or, ultimately, they go bust. Even if they are reliant on lending or subsidy, they still need lending/subsidy to create the reality of a surplus.
4. Exploitation of labour. Exploitation of labour is not unique to capitalism. It is a feature of feudalism and slavery for instance.
5. Profit used for private gain. A co-operative that distributes part of its surplus to its co-operative workers is doing the same. In the UK and probably most Western countries the main shareholders are in any case pension funds. So the private gain is being distributed far and wide.
6. It is often asserted (including by pro-capitalist authors) that capital is a store of value. This is complete nonsense. No one can "store" value in terms of money. We have seen too many instances of hyperinflation to know that there is no store of value. What a big bank balance means is in effect a big voucher that can be used as a call on current production. Of course people can make agreements about calls on future production, but there is never any guarantee the future production will be there or that your voucher will be valid in relation to it.
I think the defining feature of capitalism has been (a) the move from individual ownership to joint stock ownership, which the law eventually accepted as removing from the individual personal liabilty (hence the concept of "limited liability") - this was key to liberating investment, so people were free of ethical and legal responsibility for their investment (b) the detachment of investment decisions from what one might call the social nexus (as Marx pointed out), so that investment decisions are made purely on profit potential, not as part of a rich social network of relations (e.g. as we see in the feudal system, the Church or even the State itself) and (c) (partly because of (b) being a key feature) capitalism's fruitful relationship with new technology, beginning with steam, then the railways, then the automobile and so on through the decades.
Capitalism of course continues to evolve. In the 21st century we have seen a return to almost pre-industrial forms of investments where people with IT development skills have accumulated huge fortunes that enable them to operate independently of shareholders. This has allowed companies like Amazon to focus on almost 100% growth reinvestment rather than producing high dividends. Algorithms allow companies like Amazon to operate almost like the planned economies dreamed of by Marxists in the early 20th century but never before attainable because previously it was not possible to monitor every transaction and integrate it into an overarching program.
I have been thinking of starting a thread on the socio-economic foundations of a Mars colony.
It's actually E0.18 per KwH for households.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistic … statistics
Obviously I didn't think you were referencing domestic usage when talking about steel production. Sweden I believe is still a big producer of steel. Their electricity costs E0.06 KwH for non-household usage. I think that's an average. So could be lower for big industrial plants.
You were looking to the future, and so was I. It's clear the cost of green energy and storage is falling dramatically and these falls will continue. While it's true the cost of building a green energy infrastructure has increased the price to date, once the storage issue is addressed, we will see prices fall.
Louis, €0.2/kWh is the average EU electricity rate right now. Not what it will be in 10 years time. The UK is at the high end at €0.22/kWh.
https://strom-report.de/electricity-prices-europe/It keeps going up, not down. The average UK rate of €0.22/kWh is $US0.3/kWh. Surely you pay electricity bills? If you pay $0.02/kWh, then I am envious. My electricity bill is £1000/year. The UK has some of the best wind power resources in the world. And $0.3/kWh is what we pay for this bountiful gift.
This thread started ten years ago. And really - what progress has been made? Nothing tangible. Compare and contrast with wind and solar energy plus battery storage.
Anyone can cherry-pick a price comparison point. This shows that the steel price was well above $500 per tonne for most of 2012-2014. So steel was more, not less, expensive in the past.
https://www.focus-economics.com/commodi … /steel-usa
Why would electricity cost 20 cents per KwHe? That's nuclear industry type pricing.
Some solar contracts now have electricity being produced at less than 2 cents per KwHe.
So, the energy input would cost less than $100.
I think your EROI alarmism is as unwarranted as climate alarmism.
Thermodynamics is a reality but you tend to underestimate the impact of technological innovation. Just take use of robots in mining...this is clearly going to drive down the cost of all mined ores over time.
Looking at the energy consumption figures for steel production in the article that Kbd referenced, I get an energy consumption of about 5000kWh per metric tonne, if we attempt to produce fresh steel using electrical energy alone, I.e. with no supplemental fossil fuels. Not so long ago, fresh steel was trading at a price of $300/tonne. It is now up to $500/tonne, thanks to the recent boom in commodity prices. If we had to make steel using electricity alone, then fresh steel would be much more expensive, unless electrical energy could be produced very cheaply. If electricity were to cost $0.2/kWh, which is about the average retail price in Western Europe, then 1 tonne of steel would cost $1000 in electricity alone. On a per unit strength basis, this would make steel almost as energy intensive as aluminium alloys.
But it gets worse than that. Because of the thermal gradients that exist in a steel furnace, it isn't really practical to run these items intermittently, because cooling the liner would fracture it. So steel furnaces need to run continuously. The same with electrolysis. Whilst thermal gradients are less of a problem, capital cost of the electrolysis stack is a large proportion of hydrogen end cost, so there is a lot of benefit in running the stack continuously. Hydrogen cannot be stored in large quantities at any acceptable cost, so it needs to be used as it is generated. Collectively this suggests that to compete with fossil fuel derived steel, electric steel production needs very cheap, uninterrupted electric power. Thanks to the green tech lobby, electricity supply cost and reliability are headed in the opposite direction at present. Adding together various capital costs and electricity cost, I would estimate that electric steel would be 3-5 times more expensive than fresh steel is at present. Given the enormous stocks of steel in the form of retiring buildings and cars, it would be sensible to focus upon reducing global per capita steel use and recycling using arc furnaces. A large reduction in global steel use would require significant changes in the techniques used for building construction as well as reductions in car use.
I agree with the comment on ammonia being most practical for large users. It might be appropriate to locate ammonia fuel factories at airports and sea ports. I suspect that if we are using modular nuclear power sources to produce ammonia, then it makes more sense installing those reactors directly into large cargo ships for direct mechanical power, rather than attempting to manufacture an intermediate chemical fuel. Ammonia isn't something that you really want to be piping or shipping unnecessarily. Large spills could kill entire populations downwind. But it could be used to supply truck fuel stations located on trunk roads or train fuel depots.
At present, it would be sensible to convert as many large vehicles as possible to run on LPG or gasoline. This would reduce consumption of diesel oil, which is the most problematic fuel in terms of supply. As conventional oil production declines, remaining production is getting lighter. There is already a steady business in converting diesel vehicles to LPG. It is existing technology. Legislation could provide a helping hand here.
My observations on global warming/climate change.
(a) It's suspicious the climate alarmists switched from global warming to climate change. Climate change allows them to claim every - literally every - weather event out of the normal range as a result of climate change whether it be droughts, severe rainfall, cold periods (warmed Arctic air pushing cold air south), periods of extreme heat, hurricanes, tornadoes, hailstorms, just about everything.
(b) When you look at actual official weather figures, it's clear that the rise in temperature has been below virtually all "scientific" prediction levels.
(c) Even so, official figures cannot be trusted because of factors such as urban heat effects. Just think about how airports have grown in size over 50 years and how much hotter they are than surrounding areas. And yet airports are always used as weather stations. We think satellite observations are "objective" but they actually require loads of calibration and statistical interpretation. It's way too easy for people to decide to take the approach that most underlines the risk of climate change, because that way hardly anyone will criticise the observations as inaccurate.
(d) There has been no general rise in sea levels of any consequence. If there had been we would be losing islands in the Maldives and Seychelles, but we are not.
While I don't approve of ludicrous scaremongering I think on Earth we need to apply the precautionary principle and try to get control of CO2 emissions.
I agree we don't really live in a natural world anymore. In the UK probably 99% of the landscape (including all rivers and coasts) is managed through urban settlement, farming, forestry, Government departments, local authorities, National Parks agencies, and Environment Agency. Some mountains and a few dense thickets here and there are left to their own devices perhaps.
My notions about handling global warming
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------I don't have my MS Word running, so this is likely to be a spell check mess for a bit.
A title for a topic?
Well....."My notions about handling global warming"
I have not entered this as science, but chat, because I know that I am not all that
qualified.To begin with, I am influenced by Robert Zubrin, his writinigs. He mentioned an event where Native Americans were able
stimulate Salmon growth by adding iron to the oceans waters. It worked. What followed was interference by Ecotopians.
They managed to stop it. It was not "Natural". However, their case is false, in my opinion. It has been said by another
person, that "We do not live in a natural world".We live in a manged world. But it is often badly managed, in my opinion. I could argue that if humans managed to overheat
the Earth severely, that was only natural, as it would demonstrate the humans are naturally stupid. However, if we could
bypass the naturalists, then perhaps we could save the day, without having to exterminate most of the human population.I could go into rants about what I consider to be stupid thinking, and so put down those who I think are a primary source
of not being ablle to solve/treat the problem, but I have better things to do.How is the strip mining of the oceans of fish "Natural"? Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of seeking the ban of it.
However, I wish to analyze it's possible impact on the environment. Does it alter the distribution of nutients in the waters?
I think that very likely the answer is yes. If so, then rather than considering that situation as "Natural" it may be
considered "Unnatural". And sensible agriculture should prompt those who harvest to then fertalize the waters, to return
them to a state more resembling the natural.I will attempt now to provide a sufficient reference:
This is not it, but it is interesting:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21339-5www.nature.com has many articles, but I have not obtained the one I want most yet. It's title was "What controls ocean productivity
on long time scales".I guess I don't need it. For the most part it indicated that insufficient Iron in many cases limits the produtivity.
So, then photons go unused I presume. If that is true, then it is the possible case, that by fishing out oceans we remove Iron
which otherwise might recycle to some degree. The remains of the fish may end elsewhere.The point I am tryging to get to is that the oceans might be manipulated to do a better job of absorbing CO2, and
involving it in sedimentation on the ocean bottoms. So, it may not just be that we add CO2 to the atmosphere, but
it may be possible that we have crippled the oceans ability to consume it. This of course also would lead to less food
for people.A higher content of CO2 in the atmosphere has apparently according to some sources shrunk the Sahara Desert by 10%.
I presume this is because plants find it easier to fix CO2 with less water loss. It may also be that warming oceans
might deliver more precipitation to some locations. By shrinking the Sahara Desert, there might be less Iron bearing
dust delivered into the oceans, and this factor might reduce ocean productivity. This would not be a "Natural" process.The process of warming the Earth with added CO2 in the atmosphere, should cause more evaporation of ocean waters,
and I would presume more precipitation at certain locations. More precipitation should cause more erosion which should
remove more CO2 from the environment.---------
I just wanted to do some diagnosis, as I feel that Ecotopians, really seem to lack the ability to see the bigger picture.
---------
OK, now I have something else to speculate on as per greenhouse gasses.
Some greenhouse gasses are fuels, and some are not.
Fuels=Hydrogen, CO, Methane???
Non-Fuels=CO2, and water vapor????
Whe have been hearing obcessions about Methane.
I have encountered articles that indicate that there are mocrobes that suck Hydrogen and CO out of the atmosphere. Some
are in Antarctica, but it is expected that they are in many places.I do know that there are microbes that consume Methane, using Oxygen in the environment(s)
So, in order for life to make biomass using CO2 and Water, they seem to use photons as the energy source.
For life that makes biomass from Fuels and Oxygen, photons should not be necessary. It seems very likely to me that
given a choice at least some organisms would prefer to get their Carbon from Methane and not CO2. This is not proven,
but there is a lot of support that I suspect can be found.-------
I would love to see experiments preformed where we see what happens if you inject Methane into a closed greenhouse
with a diverse biology of both Mircrobes and vascular plants at least. It could be controlled so that the amount of
Methane was not explosive. There would of course be Oxygen present, to simulate Earth like environments.So, I am not a climate denier, but feel that the science around this needs to be improved. It may be possible that it
is not possible under current conditions to accumulate enough Methane in the atmosphere, to be a larger danger.Maybe
Done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMKQFl0KF4U
Some new finds from Joe White. Interesting as always.
The latest from Felix:
Given the absence of fossil fuels on Mars, plastic will likely be a rather and expensive product. The people of Mars will need to find substitutes. Here's one solution for polystyrene-type products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cApVVuuqLFY
Any other suggestions?
Obviously recyclable glass bottles and containers can be used for many applications. One of the disadvantages of glass - its weight - will be far less apparent on Mars, being 62% lower than on Earth.
Bamboo is a useful packaging material.
Bioplastics appear often to mixed in with traditional plastic, so not really a solution for Mars.
People have been developing ways of using CO2 as a feedstock for plastics production. This appears to be quite advanced:
https://www.bbcearth.com/news/turning-c … to-plastic
Presumably this approach could be adopted on Mars to create and oil-free plastics industry.
Well I think it is a very important topic because there is no way - even with Musk's Big Concept - that we ship out 100,000 ton factories.
We need to scale down the industry we know from Earth to a level that can provide a growing Mars community of tens of thousands of people with what they need, without importing huge mass from the home planet. So microfactories with flexible robotic cells are the way forward I feel.
For Louis re new topic ...
Bravo!
Best wishes for success with what promises to be a long lasting and ever-evolving topic!
In the age of de-globalization caused by the recent/current virus, this concept appears (to me at least) to have a ** lot ** of potential right here on Earth.
(th)
Well why not have a really thin outer layer of plastic that can be removed after a dust storm and then replaced by another.
Void, welcome. Glad you're back.
One of the things with agriculture is many different configurations are possible. And they all work.
You mentioned transparency. An inflatable greenhouse is great for a science mission, but don't expect it to last long-term. I suggest PCTFE film for a science mission, with spectrally selective coating. But after a major dust storm, the film greenhouse would be scratched. For long-term using in-situ materials, I suggest tempered glass. That's just normal glass that's been given a heat treatment.
Scientific American: How is tempered glass made?
Tempered glass is stronger than normal glass. But the important feature for Mars is that it's harder than minerals on Mars surface. That means harder than dust and sand. Sand cannot scratch anything harder than itself. So this means dust / sand storms will not scratch or craze windows.
Well I won't take that point by point, I will just say I adhere to the precautionary principle and think we should not be doing stuff to the atmosphere that increases carbon emissions above pre-industrial levels. I just feel that's a good principle. Doesn't mean I think we are about to be deluged by a 10 metre flood of melted ice!
louis wrote:I am not saying Space X are above criticism. ... However, it also seems like they have taken no steps to deal with the carbon emissions issue. If I were Space X I would be using artificially manufactured methane even if it cost another $100 million. Just being able to say "Our methane is green" would be a huge win for them and get the Green fanatics off their backs.
Snake oil! I'm sorry, I believe in the environment. But I have researched the issue. Have talked to actual real scientists. Yes, super-greenhouse gasses need to be regulated. And they are. But carbon emissions? That's based on the fantasy from the 1990s that rapid global warming was caused by carbon. That completely ignores the global cooling from 1855 to the summer of 1970. And ignores the natural global warming that occurred before the industrial revolution of 1855. Ignores the fact rapid global warming ended with the end of 1998. If you plot the pace of global warming from 1550 to 1855 and assume it would have continued at the same pace if humans hadn't screwed with the climate, then the temperature at the end of 1998 was exactly what it should have been at that time. Oh! That's when rapid global warming did stop! Coincidence? I think not! Global warming was such a slow pace that during the first decade of the 2000s, environmental scientists debated whether there's any global warming at all. Turns out there is a tiny bit, a tiny little bit above the pace of nature, but it's tiny! This means the rapid global warming from the summer of 1970 to the end of 1998 was the planet recovering back to it's natural temperature.
Did I mention the stratosphere? They devised instruments to measure the stratosphere in detail, measured form 1990. Temperature of the stratosphere dropped in perfect sync with soot from coal burning. When Mount Penitubo erupted, and again during that Icelandic volcano, temperature of the stratosphere spiked up, but then dropped when volcanic ash settled. Concentration of soot dropped as well. Volcanic ash flushed the soot out, and the temperature dropped accordingly. This was Mother Nature cleaning up our mess. The last of the soot was finally gone in the summer of 2010.
Surface temperature over land dropped due to shade from soot. The soot caused global heating of the stratosphere, global cooling on the surface over land, but we also had global warming on the surface over ocean. Highly unlikely, highly unbalanced. It wasn't due to nature, it was pollution. Governments in all industrial nations passed legislation in 1970 that was effective and enforce, to control pollution from coal burning. That's why global cooling reversed to global warming. There's practically no industry over oceans, so very little soot causing shade over oceans. And there's a deep ocean current that takes 1,000 years to circle the globe just once. That current is pushing the Earth's climate back to Mother Nature's schedule.
Hey! I came up with various ways to improve the climate. Houses powered by solar, wind, and geothermal so houses in Canada where it's cold would be 100% energy independent. Sized to be energy independent for worst case weather, the other 51 weeks per year they would sell surplus electricity to the grid. Conversion kit for used cars to convert them to electric. Etc. My issue is Canada has created a carbon tax. This is a heavy tax that harms our economy, and harms average working people. Justification is ideology based on an incorrect view of climate.
So SpaceX shifting to green methane? How is that? Add the same green dye used for St Patrick's Day beer? If this sounds snarky, realize politics in Canada have gotten bad. The government promised their carbon tax would never exceed $50 per tonne of carbon. Now they're talking about $170 per tonne. This is not just driving up gasoline prices, it's driving up home heating. This is Canada, if you don't have heat in the middle of winter, you die. When temperature is between -32°C...-38°C, real temperature not including wind chill, fall asleep outdoors and you die. Home heating isn't a luxury that government can play with, it's life or death!
But I said there's politics. Some people in Quebec want Canada to be controlled by southern Quebec and southern Ontario. The portion of Quebec along the St Lawrence river used to be called Lower Canada. The portion of Ontario along the St Lawrence River and northern shore of Lake Ontario used to be called Upper Canada. Canada was founded when politicians from Lower Canada and Upper Canada went to the Maritimes (Atlantic Provinces) to convince them to join in a new country called Canada. In the 1960s-1980s Quebec had 25% of Canada's population, and Ontario 26%; between them they controlled 51% of seats in Parliament. Some people in Quebec want that to remain. But BC and Alberta have grown. Stephen Harper and his Conservatives were the previous government, their political base was Alberta. So Quebec wants to destroy all industry in Alberta, ensure they cannot be a significant political force in Canada. Alberta has been called Texas with snow: oil and cattle.
Carbon emissions? Pttt! If that's your issue, then realize methane is a lot more "green" than RP1. And certainly a lot more "green" than solid rockets. RP1 is highly refined kerosene, basically highly refined jet fuel. It has a lot more carbon. And solid rocket fuel! That's made with polybutadiene rubber, the same rubber as car tires. Don't you remember the thick smoke trails from Shuttle launches? If you're suggesting an expensive source of methane for Starship, that's going in the wrong direction. Elon wants Starship to be cheap! As in cost effective. It will still cost millions of dollars per launch. And SpaceX hasn't succeeded in a single orbital launch yet. No revenue. They certainly can't afford to waste money on some fairy tale political activist rhetoric.
I guess a couple of other relevant factors are that with a greenhouse in an area of maximum insolation on Mars we might be approach Earth-based temperate light levels, especially if we then factor in the longer period of higher insolation in Mars's nearly two years long orbit around the Sun.
louis wrote:Thanks for those comments Robert. Do you think solar reflectors will help on Mars, to boost insolation? I'm thinking craters might be good
locations with terraces on the south facing side, where the greenhouses would be located, and reflectors on the east and west sides reflecting light on to the greenhouses. As the wind force is so low on Mars the structures could be quite lightweight.I envisioned greenhouses on flat ground. With habitat built into a hillside. Two styles of greenhouse. Most vegetables thrive in shade; crops that do grow in shade you can build a dome greenhouse. Maximum growing area for minimum enclosure surface. Mars orbit gets 47% as much sunlight as Earth orbit, but we really need to compare surface. Earth has a lot of atmosphere; oxygen and humidity absorb significant light. Mars surface gets 53% as much light as Earth surface.
https://greensarawak.com/wp-content/upl … ectrum.jpgSome crops require full sun, such as grain, corn, etc. For crops that do, I have suggested a long-narrow greenhouse. Twice as wide as high, and much longer than wide. The long end oriented perfectly east-west. With flat mirrors outside the greenhouse, full length along both long sides. Mirror height the same as top of greenhouse. This does not have to track the Sun. At noon sunlight reflects from mirrors directly into sides of the greenhouse, so as much light from mirrors as directly from the Sun. That doubles insolation. At dawn light shines from east to west, reflecting off the mirror westward into the greenhouse, but still into the greenhouse. At dusk light shines west to east, reflecting eastward into the greenhouse. Mirror angle will have to adjust for season, but only 1° every 14 Mars solar days (sols). That's every second week. That could be done with automation, or simply an astronaut in a spacesuit adjusting a support rod to the next notch.
Some crops that require full sun:
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Corn
Squash
Peppers
Cucumbers
Melons
Some crops that grow well in shade:
kale
lettuce
green onion (scallions)
spinach
Fiddleheads
Some crops that tolerate partial shade: (grow faster in full sun, but grow well in 4-5 hours direct sun per day)
Beans
Peas
root veggies (carrots, potatoes, etc)
Brussels sprouts
squash
I am not saying Space X are above criticism. It's been a worry to me how they have interacted with the local community. It seems like spraying money over the problems has worked so far.
However, it also seems like they have taken no steps to deal with the carbon emissions issue. If I were Space X I would be using artificially manufactured methane even if it cost another $100 million. Just being able to say "Our methane is green" would be a huge win for them and get the Green fanatics off their backs.
Given the Dems concerned represent Oregon and Washington I suspect they are pretty much on the Left of the Party rather than being influenced by ULA payments.
Louis,
1. SpaceX signed a piece of paper that says something like, "SpaceX agrees not to test their gigantic experimental rocket near someone's home, because we understand that that would be dangerous if it crashes and explodes." FAA's response was basically, "Bad boy, slap your own wrist.", and then allowed them to continue testing as if nothing happened, after moving beyond the verifiable fact that they violated their own agreement with FAA.
2. ULA's response was that SpaceX is a mature rocket company that understands the rules, knows how to comply with them, and should be held responsible if they don't comply with the rules. This is, of course, very self-serving, but that's because they recognize that SpaceX will quickly surpass their capabilities with full reusability, if they're allowed to continue development.
3. The Democrats involved likely received money from ULA, and since they're supposed to represent the interests of their constituents, they held a hearing in ULA's favor. And yes, Elon Musk also committed the unforgivable sin of questioning far left orthodoxy / radicalism by critiquing their policy failures, and by moving Starship construction from Democrat-run California to Republican-run Texas. He didn't do that to upset Democrats, but their inept policies kept interfering with his right to conduct commercial activities, thus his decision to move.
The end result of the impact to SpaceX operations wasn't so much as a blip on the radar screen, so I'm not sure why you're so upset over this. It's standard government interference with private enterprise, which comes from both political parties but especially from the Democrats because they see more government as the answer to all of life's problems, and why so many Californians leave to go to Arizona and Texas.
Pretty much nobody in the Republican Party cares about messing with SpaceX or Elon Musk, because they're completely disinterested in interjecting more federal government into every aspect of American life. They'll be thrilled if SpaceX succeeds where others have failed, but won't be upset no matter what happens. They like the fact that an entrepreneur might usher in a new era in space travel, and probably lobbied SpaceX to move to Texas so they can score political brownie points with their base if he succeeds, as most think he will.
If Democrats held the exact same dim view of interjecting more federal government into the lives of the working man / woman that the Republicans do, then it's highly improbable that SpaceX would've moved to Texas. Some of us think answers have to come from those with the problems, not some third party like the federal government that can't manage to pass a yearly budget, despite the fact that that is one of the only things that Congress is mandated to do.
Thanks for those comments Robert. Do you think solar reflectors will help on Mars, to boost insolation? I'm thinking craters might be good
locations with terraces on the south facing side, where the greenhouses would be located, and reflectors on the east and west sides reflecting light on to the greenhouses. As the wind force is so low on Mars the structures could be quite lightweight.
I spoke to an engineer about greenhouse design. The atmosphere of Mars transports so little heat that you really only have to worry about heat loss to the ground, and radiant heat. "The Case for Mars" conferences were before the Mars Society was founded, one paper from those early conferences suggested an aluminized mylar curtain drawn across the ceiling inside the greenhouse. Not a hanging curtain, but flat across the greenhouse transparent ceiling. This would be closed at night to contain radiant heat, opened at dawn.
I have also suggested a spectrally selective coating to block UV, and also control IR. Long-wavelength IR comes from warm objects like the floor, walls, furniture, ground, etc. Short-wavelength IR comes from extremely hot objects like the surface of the Sun. A coating to reflect long-wavelength while transparent to short-wavelength can let heat from the Sun in while trapping heat so it can't get out. Of course this isn't perfect. A coating that reflects 10% of short-wavelength while reflecting 40% of long-wavelength will have a net heating effect. But an aluminized mylar curtain will reflect near 100%.
Ground can be used as a thermal mass. The University of Manitoba is in Winnipeg. Here we don't have permafrost. Ground near the edges of the greenhouse will leak heat, but ground under the majority of the greenhouse will be warmed by the greenhouse itself. On Mars you would want something to insulate your greenhouse from the ground. One option is a styrofoam skirt buried in the ground at the periphery of the greenhouse. The idea is to use the ground as thermal mass, but don't let heat leak out to the extremely cold ground that isn't directly under the greenhouse. If the average temperature outdoors day/night is -60°C then the ground will be that temperature. You don't want to loose heat through the ground. And deep ground will be the average over the entire year: summer/winter. On Mars that can be very cold. For Winnipeg the average temperature is about +7.4°C (45.3°F) so deep soil is that temperature. No need to insulate the greenhouse from deep soil, just from ground that isn't under the heated greenhouse. But Mars is much colder.
You could dig a hole where the greenhouse will be. Line the bottom and sides with styrofoam. Backfill with dirt you dug out. Then build the pressurized greenhouse on that. It still requires a pressure tight enclosure, but not thermal insulation. Heat would leak from the floor of the greenhouse into the ground, but that ground would act as a thermal mass. With styrofoam acting as thermal insulation between dirt beneath the greenhouse and the rest of Mars, that contains the heat. Note this means the ground doesn't have to be within the pressure envelope.
This is an interesting video that will have a lot of relevance to Mars. It focuses on a firm Arrival who are producing EV commercial vehicles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Qyor9Yc-s
The interesting thing is that they are making their vehicles in "microfactories".
The factories and the vehicle design have been integrated. They use a proprietary product to mould the frame - so it does not need to be pressed and as the colour is integral to it, the vehicle does not need to be painted. Welding is avoided - they use adhesives and attachments as in the aero-industry. These all give big savings on space.
During the production process the vehicle passes between robotic cells (on a robotic carrier). Very flexible and means you can produce more than one product. No linear production.
This is definitely the sort of production facility we will need on Mars for a range of items.
Could this be the basis for Mars greenhouses?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNJnwCbnFX4
Apparently with an uninsulated floor, these greenhouses survived a Manitoba winter, never going below freezing inside.
Some adaptations:
This would have to be pressurised. IIRC it has been suggested you could operate on Mars with 20% of Earth atmosphere pressure and near 100% CO2. Not sure how that fits in with using plastic.
The thermal blanket might need to be on the inside, rather than the outside.
You might need to use thermogenic plants to add heat overnight.
Insolation levels might need to be boosted through use of reflectors. Shallow craters might make good locations for using Chinese greenhouses (on south facing terraces) with reflectors placed around the crater.
There might be some need for supplementary heating e.g. running hot water pipes from nearby urban centres - especially making use of waste heat from industrial processes.
