New Mars Forums

Apparently aerogel is even more awesome when it is full of vacuum.  Wait, that doesn't make sense, does it.  Well, anyway, you know what I mean.

These guys will send you some to play with for $25 - proceeds to SpaceGen.  I'm going to get some as Christmas presents 

http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerogel/outreach.html
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No sale!

Look, I'm not asking for a detailed business plan - just a couple of powerpoint slides.  It is hard enough to execute on a good idea.  If you are relying on street theatre and puppet shows your only hope is to profit from the learn-from-my-mistake book that you write afterwards.

I read an article that some MMORPGs have virtual GDPs greater than 50% of the world's nations, as well as healthy, and decidely non-virtual, revenue.  Start a Mars-themed one where players have to solve problems within the parameters of the harsh Martian environment.  Say that any player who tops the leader board for long enough has a chance of actually going to Mars - the ultimate prize.  Make it that couples have a better chance of topping the leader board so that the game becomes a kind of dating site.

Will you get 3 million players?  "The Sims" has shipped over 7 million copies.

You're welcome.
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My understanding of your plan: each of 3 million people send you $9.95 per month every month for 15-20 years.  In return you give them ... nothing as far as I can tell except for the private satisfaction of knowing they helped pay for a manned mission to Mars.

Let's say you work out that you are going to have to give your subscribers something to keep their interest over that time period.  Perhaps a monthly newsletter?  How does that compare with the circulation of major magazines ...

Fortune - 900,000
Wired - 500,000
Rolling Stone - 1,200,000
Vogue - 1,300,000
National Geographic - 7,000,000
People - 3,600,000
Smithsonian - 2,000,000
Cosmopolitan - 3,000,000
Martha/Oprah - 2,500,000 each
Newsweek - 3,200,000

http://www.mdsconnect.com/topcirculation.htm

Say the entire Wired crowd catches Mars fever - you're still down 2.5 million subscribers.  You're maybe one article per year in National Geographic.  Perhaps Martian Living Magazine?

Say no.  Say you're not even going to give them a magazine.  They'll do it for the good feeling.  Who to compare with?  Greenpeace - 3 million subscribers (paying members).  NRA - 4 million subscribers.  Rotary - 1.2 million subscribers.  PETA - 850 thousand.  Actually for a good comparison we need an organization that is working for a goal 20 years distant ... how about the American Cancer Society - 2 million subscribers.

Only 2 million people in the US regularly support research that has an odds-on chance of saving their life.  I bet the average ACS contribution is less than $80/year.  What are you offering your subscribers Marsman?  I don't think you can lump this issue under TBD and expect to be taken seriously.
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Not at all a silly question.

Here are the sky maps for early evening ...

This one you hold above your head ...

Remember that Mars will rise in the East and set in the West as the Earth turns throughout the night, so it might be easiest to look for the surrounding constellations, like Taurus.  Don't expect too much without a telescope.  Even binoculars will help.  Good luck 
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• 

  Let’s swim to the moon
  Let’s climb through the tide
  You reach your hand to hold me
  But I can’t be your guide

  Easy, I to love you
  As I watch you glide
  Falling through wet forests
  On our moonlight drive
  Moonlight drive
  Moonlight drive

Thanks Rxke.  Wikis are good  8)
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This is actually really interesting - one of the things about climate that we are still only guessing at.  Water is such an interesting molecule.  You're right.  There are scenarios that can lead to a Snowball Mars.  Wouldn't that be a terrible irony!  To warm the surface 100 degrees and achieve a hydrological cycle that lets it rain and snow, only to lose the planet to a global ice age.  But I don't think that nothing could be done.  Imagine that is just how we had found Mars today.  We would think ourselves lucky.

Snow increases albedo, and a Snowball Mars would be an extreme case, but the greenhouse gases we're planning on using (PFCs) are over 10000 times as effective as carbon dioxide at keeping whatever energy the surface does absorb (almost as good as water vapor).  Even if we lost all our water vapor, as long as we keep pumping out PFCs, then at some point the surface temperature will rise and the ice will melt - if the incoming energy can't re-radiate back out into space, then there is really nowhere else for it to go.

One thing with replenishment - once there is a good atmosphere then, say we had an ammonia comet in Mars orbit, rather than deorbiting the whole comet at once, we could break it up into smaller pieces that would burn up in our new atmosphere and rain down gently.  It would take more energy and the continuous stream of comet rain would effect the weather patterns, but it avoids apocalyptic events and it might even provide a weather control system of sorts.
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Sorry about the digression John, I'll focus on the scenario in which Biospheric Power Generation (a wholly owned subsidiary of Biospheres Extranational) is selling kWhs and we can discuss exactly how their customers will be classified into "scientific" and "non-scientific" in another thread 

I was looking into CVD processes for thin-film solar cell manufacture, and the actual process for building the solar cells seems straight forward enough - you just lay a half dozen layers one on top of the other.  CVD concerns include deposition rate (how thin can the layers be?), keeping the chamber walls clean (otherwise bits can drop on to your otherwise pristine solar cells), keeping the deposition nozzles unclogged, and withstanding medium and long term erosion by evil gases like fluorine.

However, these things seem to be doable.  What concerns me a little more is automated manufacture of a substrate and deposition gases of sufficient purity from luna regolith - all on the same rovot.  I assume we can choose an easy area, but there is still going to be some inconveniently large rocks about – so maybe some sort of dozer-sieve to begin with, and we won’t be able to always go in straight lines, and we’ll have to be able to cope with stop and go – hopefully we can avoid sharp shocks to the deposition chamber.  Then there is the fact that we’ll only want a relatively small amount of the material we dig up, so there is going to be a mound of dirt to one side. 

Then we start to get to the separation processes.  Spraying fluorine gas at the regolith gets you SiF4 – which can probably be used as a deposition gas (leaves behind the silicon, recycle the fluorine) - but it probably gets you other stuff as well, some of which you are happy about because you want to use them as dopants, but the whole point is to keep the different dopants separate.  The different gases might form separable layers at different temperatures and pressures – but you are going to have to be careful that you don’t waste too much fluorine each time ‘cause it’s about as common as carbon (i.e., you’re going to have to ship it from Earth). 

Here is a paper by Landis on silicon production that talks more about fluorine ...
http://www.asi.org/adb/02/13/02/silicon-production.html

I’m wondering if you wouldn’t have at least two types of rovot: raw materials refiner and solar cell paver.  The pavers could visit the refiners when they got low on something.
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Natural selection couldn't do the job?
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It is obvious that you made it.  By the way you are pushing it, the clip probably has some sort of trojan virus embedded in it capable of infecting insufficiently patched operating systems.

Everyone here probably already knows this, but if you run Windows you should regularly visit http://update.microsoft.com/
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Here are some more possibilities.  These companies are using printing-press technologies to make thin-film solar cells ...

http://www.konarka.com/technology/manufacturing.php

http://www.nanosolar.com/processtech.htm

However, it might not be possible to easily make the required "inks" from luna regolith.
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This is actually a really interesting question.  Just how close can we get?

But I don't think it works like this.  In particular you seem to think that temperature is directly proportional to gravity, which isn't the case.
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