New Mars Forums

This topic is now in Meta New Mars. All are encouraged to visit this poll / thread and participate (or not) as you deem appropriate.

Agreed. I am inclined to relocate the poll. Where? Not sure yet, but Human Missions is supposed to be about technical stuff, with politics and the like only as directly relates to technical stuff.

And all of this is why MARS is the second safest place in the solar system to raise a family. Nitrogen may be an issue but the other stuff is there, CO2 and H2O.

The Moon is a potential mine and potential site for certain industrial processes we do not want to perform on Earth. Potentially, maybe, perhaps.

The Moon may be a terrific place for some telescopes although some people say free flyers are better.

Its also a place to practice for Mars because if your life support develops a flaw that will take 10 days to kill you off, you can come home.

I concur.

Threats (whether direct or strongly implied) are not acceptable.

Collecting asteroids from the lunar surface will be far easier and there is 1/6 gravity to assist processing.

No argument here.

However, carbonyl digestion & deposition needs heat, not electricity and sunlight is plenty good for that. Pumps? I agree, those will need power. I like heat engines for that - - lightweight reflectors concentrate sunlight to create fluid flow via convention to spin turbines. Moderately low tech solar powered Sterling cycle (for example) engines might be fabricated from the low value metals extracted from the asteroid itself using vapor deposition.

Supercritical CO2 is being developed now for cutting edge nuclear power on Earth. Beats pressurized helium and even supercritical water.  Find volatiles on the asteroid and that becomes the working fluid for your turbines. The asteroid itself is transformed into the tools used to disassemble it. 

For example, asteroidal nickel and iron does have NO value exported to Luna or Earth. But you can build a robust cage/scaffold around the asteroid you first enclosed with a flimsy scaffold.

Then once the target asteroid is fully digested, move this fully assembled cage/scaffold to another close asteroid and you have a read-to-go work platform. Open one end up and manuver it to surround your next target.

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For the many valid reasons GCNRevenger describes, however, this is far, far, far beyond current technology.

Therefore, trips to the Moon to hunt large intact fragments seems far more practical and will offer many of the benefits of asteroid mining with a tiny fraction of the headaches.

Carbonyl digestion and deposition will also allow some pretty cool nickel fabrication even if PGM bearing Ni-Fe fragments prove rare on the lunar surface.

CGNRevenger, I agree with you about lunar fabrication with the possible exception of vapour phase deposition of nickel carbonyl. And perhaps other metals.

An intact Ni-Fe asteroid (like Hoba) will yield metallic nickel (not oxides) even if the PGMs are scarce. Grind into powder and make Ni(CO)4 gas. Then deposit on a mandrel at modest temperatures.

Here are a few representative interesting links:

NVD   Note: "excellent dimensional accuracy and reproduction of very fine surface textures"

Weber Manufacturing

INCO does quite a lot of NVD fabrication and in Wales they do NVD at open air temperatures.

Any opinion on William Jenkin's ideas?

I recall reading somewhere that if boron is properly introduced into the nickel carbonyl gas stream that a nickel boron alloy superior to stainless steel can be vapor deposited.

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As for chopping up an asteroid, you make excellent points. Therefore let us first look for intact fragments like Hoba on the luanr surface.

If that fails, we can still enclose small asteroids inside a cage and use the cage to mount drills and the like.

Difficult? Yup. Finding one on the Moon seems easier.

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PS - spining asteroids? Okay I'm stumped for today.  :?

Some of the spin rates are quite high, many RPM for example - - multiple revolutions per minute.

Earth rotates at 1 revolution per day for our other readers. 1 R per 1440 minutes not multiple R per 1 minute.

Too bad he wasn't here for the silly Latin quote contest. Also, the idea that Latin is a pagan language strikes this Roman Catholic as being a wee bit odd.

Yes!

A re-useable lunar lander (parked where: LEO or EML-1?) plus lunar LOX both for lunar return and export to LEO to fuel LEO-to-LLO/EML-1  will lower lunar access costs significantly even if Earth-to-LEO remains costly.

Actually, since George has been a major player in "Yuri's Night" maybe he's a communist. Those Fulbright scholars, you never can tell.

And that "Peace - Love - Space" stuff he has supported.

You never know.

Years ago (pre-9/11 and I had just read "Case for Mars") I came across a bulletin board run by some bootstrappers who had the odd idea the US government would freely permit them to purchase a few dozen pounds of bomb grade uranium or plutonium to run surface reactors on Mars.

They thought I was paranoid to suggest that the US government might oppose their acqusition of those items.

For the record, Nike actually doesn't make anything. Sara Lee doesn't bake cheesecakes any more either.

Boots? Nah.

But Nike does pays out nearly two billion dollars per year on endorsement contracts. Just Nike, excluding Adidas, Reebok etc. . .

Tiger Woods wears a Nike logo shirt and people buy Nike shirts or shorts or hats because they are fans of Tiger Woods. I have a pair of expensive Greg Norman khaki slacks because his shark logo is cool. I haven't played golf in three years.

If Nike poured $250 million per year into a Burt Rutan orbital program and Burt's pilots and ground crew wore Nike polo shirts, more people would buy Nike polo shirts than otherwise. Because they were fans of Burt Rutan.

Sir Richard Branson will make more money from Virgin Galactic from Volvo, 7-Up and M&Ms marketing than he will selling tickets. IMHO.

Now I agree that NASA would have a heck of a time capitalizing on this, but who said that spaceflight should equal NASA?

To repeat myself. Yet again.  :sigh:

Few (or perhaps no one) will pay to watch tourists, or buy consumer goods that express their support for space tourism. No argument. Space tourism doesn't really bother me, but there is no pot of gold there either.

But settlers? People who go to stay, not to play? That will resonate with people. And if it doesn't? Then we won't get the votes for taxpayer funding, either.

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Oh. The first permanent settlers will be heroic.