New Mars Forums

Kalbfus -

Your assuming that consciousness will survive transfer to electronic forms. There is no evidence of that.

Consciousness is poorly understood.

If we are not conscious "we" do not exist.

That is how I distinguish between "good" and "bad" technology in this area - we must preserve our consciousness. To be robotised would be simply suicidal.

It took me a long while to establish that the special relativity theory applies only to bodies that aren't accelerating or decelerating - that's why it's called the special theory because it relates to special conditions. The reason it took so long was that it is never mentioned in primers or popular science books. But for all other bodies i.e. all bodies in the cosmos (!) which are of course accelerating and decelerating all the time relativity doesn't apply.

I was sparked into thinking about this by realising that of course we EXPERIENCE the forces of acceleration and deceleration and so we KNOW if we are moving away from the platform (though for a few seconds it might take the brain  a while to notice the forces).

Don't be cheeky Bobunf!

I'm v. critical.

However NASA have been very clear that the Mars Rovers operate for only four hours max. a day, so if you want to dispute that you will need to provide some evidence.

See this article for efficiency of over 40% being achieved -

http://www.reuk.co.uk/40-Percent-Effici … Panels.htm

The Mars Rover panels would have been state of the art when designed in  2000-2002 I guess. So would not seem impossible for them to achieve 30% around that time I think. 

I have just seen an efficiency claim for ultra thin of over 19% which is also v. encouraging.

Thanks for that Jon. It confirms my impression that this is a lot about competition for scarce resources within the scientific/technological/business community.  There is nothing odd about that - it is perfectly natural. But as tends to happen I think some people have ended up arguing a little dishonestly (again, that happens on all sides).

I don't think that there can be any doubt that, as you say, kg for kg, humans make by far the better explorers, being so versatile and so well able to zero in on the important.

The real question in the human v robots debate is the cost of getting humans to location X which with current technology is always going to favour robots. That said, if you were to look at the relative cost in terms of knowledge output, I think the calculation would favour humans. I mean - how many robots would you have to put on Mars to replicate the abilities of one trained geologist with his mobility, a laptop, a knapsack and a spade? I think you'd probably be talking in terms of 20 or 30 separate machines working for just 4 hours a day if you are lucky and even then they would have to avoid certain types of terrain.

One method of dome construction could be to create a sphere resting in a hemisphere hollowed out of the regolith. This wouldn't  need anchoring - water or regolith could be used as ballast at the bottom. Hydroponic farms using artificial lighting could occupy the lower levels of the sphere.

"Five thousand or even ten thousand square meters of PV panels seems quite feasible."

I agree Bobunf.  In fact with ultra thin PV film and no weather we can cover large areas easily. Although there may be some reduction in efficiency compared with standard solar panels, the reduction in mass would still make the use of film desirable. 

Ciclops -

Food production could be conducted on a near closed loop as far as water and nutrition is concerned, supplement with some lunar-sourced nutrients.  I think we can move straight into food production. You take hydroponic equipment, water, and nutritional solution and an inflatable facility. The advantage is that once it is up and running you can make proper use of all waste matter - faeces and food scraps to recycle. If you don't have a food production facility, you don't have that recycling opportunity and you are having to resupply from earth.  I think you could probably get a useful facility up and running with 200 litres of water. It's better to ship that in if necessary than not to set up crop production.

Interesting ISRU outline. Broadly, looks OK.

Couple of points:-

1. I can't for the life of me think why you would bother with a nuclear reactor on the moon, given there is no weather there. It is perfect for ultra thin PV film, which already exists and which can no doubt be made even more efficient over the next ten years.

2. I would argue for moving straight into crop production as food is one of the greatest contributors to mass in terms of what needs to be supplied. Once you get your hydroponic facility going waste matter can be recycled into nutritional solutions.

"Actually no one owned the land, it was just there. The Indians in North America didn't recognize property rights, they just lived there and roamed the land freely."

That is a very ignorant view TK.  A large proportion - probably half (my guess) of the Native Americans in what is now the USA were settled farmers, some with quite sizeable permanent settlements. Remember it was the Native Americans who kept the Pilgrim Fathers alive with their farm produce.

What we think of as the archetypal Red Indian - freely roaming the plains on horseback - was a consequence of European intervention. Prior to the arrival of the horse on the continent - introduced by the Spanish - the Native Americans had little mobility and were much more settled.

Even the Plains Indian recognised communal property rights - "these are our hunting grounds".  When the land was stolen by the USA it was usually simply taken into a different communal ownership i.e. federal state ownership.

Depends where you live Terraformer. If you live in Saudi Arabia they'll come round, tear down your tower, arrest all the congregation, put you all in prison and give you 500 lashes or similar.

If you live in the USA they'll probably accept it.  Muslim scholars  distinguish between the Land of Islam (where Muslims rule) and the Land of War (where Muslims are not in control).

I'm stopping there whatever anyone comes back with.  I don't want to ruin this lovely space forum with such considerations.

I agree with you Gregori about the importance of ISRU on the moon. If I've got this right, it doesn't take a lot of energy to propel a large craft with lots of consumables on board from earth orbit to Mars orbit. I think if we can grow a lot of the food on the Moon, that will make the problem more tractable.

Deep sleep technology will at some point become a reality (we already have medical procedures where people have been kept alive through deep freezing). However, I think we better assume that for the foreseeable future our pioneers will be fully conscious - and hungry.

Regarding water and air, I've found it difficult to get accurate figures on recycling. I mean 90% recycling doesn't mean much unless you know over what time cycle. Figures can be rather ambiguous.

I'm looking at this from the point of view of an initial colony where we want to minimise the manufacturing base. I don't think there's much point in leaping on to solar system wide industrial production.

I'd like to throw in some ideas from other threads.

I think part of the solution will be ISRU on the moon, so we manufacture both rocket fuel and a simple "space bus" housing maybe 30 people.  The space bus might be assembled in lunar orbit following a number of launches by a dedicated vehicle.  Once assembled the space bus is towed from lunar orbit to earth orbit.

We then launch the Mars lander from earth. The lander - which all the complicate machinery on board is attached to the space bus (which will be attached to the front of the lander). When in Mars orbit, the space bus and lander detach and people are taken down five at a time say. There will be a number of landers already on Mars and rocket fuel will be being produced on Mars. So a number of landers will go up and meet the "space bus" and bring people down over the course of say 2 to 3 days.

Once launched, Mars landers never return to earth, they only ever enter low earth orbit. People return to earth in two person  "Pods".  People are transferred to the space bus from dedicated stripped down personnel launch vehicles.