New Mars Forums

At the risk of being redundant:
http://www.space.com/22996-spacex-launc … light.html

If they got test data, then they got something.

The article also seems to claim some engine performance improvement in a Vacuum.

GW Johnson.  Thanks for replying.  Your always a gentileman.

Other factors would have to be considered, to make the judgement on that, and putting it on the Moon may or may not be the best payoff.

I would hope that the containing torus could be constructed from lunar materials, with a laser printing process, and then soil bearing down on it with gravity induced compression would make it capable of containing a compressed atmosphere.  Additional strength could be added by wrapping the basically ceramic torus with a strong fiber material.

In other words I do not verify that a relatively convenient build process could occur on the Moon, but I do want to explore the possibility.

As for the "Train Cars" that would ride in the torus, yes, it seems likely that they might mostly have to be provided from Earth, at least until an "Industrial Civilization" was present on the Moon.
However they might be relatively light weight like aircraft, as if I calculated right going 22 mph is not an outragous thing for a machine to do.

You are correct that a torus in orbit with spokes has advantages as you mentioned them.

However if this device were done it could have pressurized spokes as well, but you would have to stop the "Train" periodically to get on and off of it, but subways are much the same in that respect.

The attraction I see, is that all of your mines, processing plants, and people would be able to interact in the moons low gravity field, Mars simulation could be tested, no rockets, mass-drivers needed, (Except to transport people and specialized machines).  Radiation protection possible.  Once you had a setup, it could be a source of fuel and machines to support activities in places other than the Moon.

I certainly hope that private organizations and government organizations will try to go to Mars, but if that does not happen, at least the Moon might not be dismissed with the same arguments.

The Moon is actually a very big place, having the surface area similar to North and South America combined.

Some private orgainzations already want to go there and do things, and moving people on and off of the moon by rocket to conserve their health will be expensive also, and may also promote fatalities.

Learning to stay there permanently (Maybe) is worth a look I think.

Since Volcanism is a related subject:

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-duo-early- … nnels.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanolog … h_and_Mars

I am not expert in this at all.

However, I have tried to reason that one reason Mars does not behave like Earth with plates and subduction is that Mars may have a very thick layer of light materials over the heavier materials, and convection is inhibited by that.  It must have the full spectrum of materials, but less of the heavy materials by volume.

What is favorable about that if it were true would be that Mars would have lost less heat than would be expected in that case. The idea that their could have been volcanism in the last 2 million years might support that notion, since perviously it was not thought that Mars could have recent volcanism.

I did read an article by some scientist, from Japan I think were he put forth the idea that Mars is just now starting to form plates.  On the other hand recent discoveries of rocks similar to Earth minerals, suggests that it behaved like Earth in the past.

I read in the past that it is thought that the Moon at times had a magnetic field, because a large object had caused its outer shell to spin at a rate different than it's then liquid core.  The article seemed to say that such a situation could persist for a million years or so.

So, it could be considered to slam a volcano sideways, with a space object, hopiing to induce such an effect, and maybe even breaking open a magma pocket as well, if there were one.  (And generating effects of atmosphere loss/gain as a possible side effect).

I see a changing of objective to be essential to the purpose of humans accessing space.  Having the focus solely on Mars fatally damages that objective, for a variety of reasons.
Among those are that there are others who are interested in Non-Mars space objectives.  Even though Non-Mars, the tools needed to achieve those Non-Mars goals in many cases would be useful also for Mars objectives.
Another human problem is the contrast between Ear-Mouth people and Eye-Hand people. 
There are two basic human functions.  One is used primarily to manipulate people.  One is used primarily to manipulate physical objects.  Each has it’s value, and cannot be dispensed of entirely.  In my opinion the sad course of human civilization is that the Ear-Mouth heritage eventually subjugates and displaces the Eye-Hand heritage, at which point a civilization becomes degenerate and impoverished, and vulnerable to exterior conquest.  That (Exterior conquest by Eye-Hand People),  I suppose is a potential  last resort to reset the situation, but in our present situation, the weapons which could be employed for such a reset are potentially very dangerous, to the point of ending the potential for human ascendancy, and perhaps even an end to humans entirely.
This site is at a logical impasse, since the sponsors are more interested in the potential for life on Mars (Which I also think also is important).
They come in two polar variations in my opinion, some are interested in life on Mars from a scientific objective to understand the history and current reality of life in the universe, and some have a political desire to dispute the existence of the spiritual.  That later item is political in nature, and tied to the Ear-Mouth people trying to get a free lunch, and to subjugate and replace the Eye-Hand people.  They instinctively wish for freedom from moral behavior, which translates into the genetic and cultural subjugation and elimination of Eye-Hand people.
I mentioned the potential of a violent reset, but there also exists the potential for a frontier expansion.  The Ear-Mouth people have provided two impediments to this that I can think of that are obvious.  The first was the outer space treaty. 
How can the Ear-Mouth’s extract material benefit from the Eye-Hands, if they cannot hold them at a location where a vertical hierarchy can be imposed?  While that treaty’s sponsors would not all have had bad intentions, the effect was to deliver ownership of places beyond the Earth to the  international Ear-Mouth process.
The other method brought forward has been the protection of alien life potentials off Earth.  This originally applied to Mars, but could very likely be extended in a tenuous fashion to many other places.  Europa for instance or other places with potential environments which may be presumed to support life.
This could even be extended to the Moon, for the reason that rocks ejected by impacts of the Earth might hold fossil records of life from era’s billions of years ago.
Similarly, some asteroids and the Dwarf planet Ceres could be declared off limits.
So, it may be necessary to invoke a horizontal Frontier Eye-Hand process to counter the Ear-Mouth process.  This should take the path of least resistance from the Ear-Mouths. 
Overcoming the desire of the Ear-Mouths to exploit a controlled population is one objective, (Bypassing dark ages I would hope). 
The other is to identify what objectives can be practical to manipulate physically by the Eye-Hand process.  That is in flux, as there are many new proposed machines, and machines which are under development.  We cannot define with any certainty what future of propulsion systems will dominate the process.  We cannot either understand with certainty what methods of manipulation of physical objects will be the most effective.
Therefore specialization should be avoided, and a generalist posture should be taken to evolve the Eye-Hand culture.
For this reason I support the continued consideration of cycling spaceships along with other processes under consideration.
I have been considering rings of cycling space habitats in relatively circular solar orbits in concert with cycling space habitats in elliptical orbits.
If the Earths orbital period (Year) were considered as represented by the number ‘1’, then I propose rings with the periods of;
.24 (Near Mercury);
.62 (Near Venus);
.94 (Near Earth);
1.88 (Near Mars, and not too far away from the relatively circular orbits of the objects in the asteroid belt).
The above are rough numbers, (Don’t do the finishing work, and then build the house, that’s how the Ear-Mouths do things/Never get things done/Trash the object manipulation process/Take the goods).
Materials for such habitats could come from the Moon, or elliptical asteroids, Phobos, Demos, and perhaps the circular asteroids of the belt, and perhaps even Mercury.
I would see habitats as not needing to be huge in the circular rings, perhaps 1000 persons per habitat, more or less.  They could  function in a manner where 2 or more would be joined periodically.  The force to manipulate their relative orbits (Locations) would be from the sun, either photon sailing, or sailing on the solar wind itself.  This would insure that the rings would each function as a society with material and population interchanges.  The habitats of the rings would also be able to synchronize with the elliptical orbiting habitats, insuring that at both the high and low end of each elliptical orbit, some habitat would be located to do an interchange with.
In addition to such abrupt interchanges there could be space ships which could ride below each ring, in a mostly circular orbit, to provide transportation, also using solar force as propulsion.
Beyond that would be spiral orbit ships which could use solar or ion or any other efficient and effective method to transfer goods between circular habitats, elliptical habitats, and planets, dwarf planet (Ceres), and asteroids.  These most likely would be robotic.
I have written this to leave open for thought the potential of cycling devices, but not to disrupt any other considered process, such as an expedition to Mars (If you really think you won’t be stopped).
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In general I am not sure that an elliptical cycling spaceship would have strong value for an early expedition to Mars, but I will make a trial proposal anyway.
Suppose you did create such a device, and it had only the functions of radiation shielding and centrifugal gravitation substitution, and perhaps some other assets for survival such as communication gear, and some solar power.  Obviously, it might have more pressurized volume than the expedition ship, so as to psychologically provide some relief to the space travelers.
I can speculate on a mission where that being robotically placed in an orbit, would provide a temporary location for a space expedition to ride, a camping place more or less.  The actual expedition ship would have minimal mass, and the people riding on it would  then get out of shape over a period of weeks or months, and would arrive to it, and would be reconditioned and protected during a segment of travel.  Then they would launch from it with their minimal ship, if safety conditions were good, and go to Mars.  Although this could be in a circular solar orbit, it seems more practical that it would be in an elliptical orbit phased so as to be most convenient to the process of moving people from Earth to Mars.  A return process would be needed as well, if they did not intend to stay on Mars permanently.  They might arrive on Mars in relatively better physical condition, then if they tried to go all the way without reconditioning.  This notion of course would not be the most energy and mass efficient method, but, delivering weak and sick people to Mars would not be of much value, a wasted effort in fact, no matter how Buck Rogers your expedition was.
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Another variation would be where the cycler robotically was poised in an elliptical orbit where orbital energy was provided by some relatively efficient means not usually considered for human missions, and where that orbit intersected Mars at a future point, and as a one time event, the human piloted craft intersected it after a few months, and joined with it.  Then that joined expedition would enter Mars orbit on a permanent basis, providing a space station with centrifuge and shielding in orbit.  In that case, the cycler would have a Periapsis much higher than Earth orbit and a Apoapsis which intersects with Mars.
The human carrier could intersect with the cycler at Periapsis or some time after, or even nearer  to Apoapsis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsis
If you paste a non-response, non-reply jump over on top of this post I will consider that you may be a Ear-Mouth person 

I am interested.  Does anyone have an opinion on the dune materials of Mars?

Information I have so far originally suggested that the dunes were of Basalt, and would be chemically unstable in the presence of Oxygen and water.

However, material obtained lately suggests sand like Earth's, but finer grains.  I have also see descriptions such as glassy.

I understand that the higher latitude dunes have ices in their pore spaces, water, and perhaps CO2.

It is a bulk material, and perhaps at lower latitudes would be loose and not cemented by ices.  I suspect that not all dunes are alike chemically, but similar.

What I am after involves 3D printing of very large structures.  To visualize it simply, I would propose a cubic structure, where a printing robot melts grains of dune material on the flat surface of the top, in successive layers.  I choose this, because I hope that the machine would be able to perform it's work largely unsupervised, and would likely do so when solar power was significantly available.  It would leave "Caves" inside of the structure which would be filled with packed but not "Sintered" dune material.  Later an extraction process, likely involving humans and machines would empty these cavities.

I can think of two uses for such a structure.  Building a Martian analog of a high rise building (But with very thick walls), or a C02 condenser.

As a habitat, I think I do not have to elaborate much.  Metal airlocks would likely be fitted into well formed structure in the "Cubic Stone".  Whatever else needed.

As a condenser, I believe that the block would achieve stable temperature suitable to condense CO2 in it's interior, as a solid.  Shading would also help, but at higher latitudes would not be needed.  I also have been reading dialog here, I think that a pump raising the pressure of the Martian air mix inside would assist in the condensation process.  Of course if it would work that way, it would also yield a mix of non-condensed gasses, which may also have some value.

I do not contemplate transparent glass.

Another problem to solve is to extract the dune material, and distribute it to the top of the cubic structure, and to spread it, so that the sintering robot could do it's work.

Other shapes than a cube would be available, but I chose a cube for ease of visualization, and also because it has a flat top, allowing such a robot to have a simplified environment to work in.

I like that information as well.

I think that I am done on this thread for a while.  I think it was worthwhile for me.  I have a better understanding now.

Qraal01 made an excellent post yesterday with a link to a site with answers to that.

If I understood;
1) A greater rotation than Venus now has would be needed, to provide atmospheric isolation for the polar regions, so that the moisture of them would tend to stay there, and not humidify the lower latitude atmosphere.
2) A humidity of 1% in many cases could allow such a planet to be habitable even at a distance of .5 AU.

Beyond that we do not have convergence.  However that is quite a lot.

I have wondered if this could be converted into a space propulsion.  Of course you would need to bring the gasses with you where there is no atmosphere, but also I am thinking that those can be more normal gasses.

For instance for Mars, could you bring dry ice up from the surface as a propulsion gas?

Venus, extract it from a floating location in the atmosphere, and use it in orbit?

Could you exhaust water vapor from ice from ice worlds such as Ceres?

Could you reduce space rocks, and exhaust whatever gasses that produces?

The point of advantage, is that for Mars for instance for a mission, you do not have to capture Methane and Oxygen for a return trip to Earth, but Dry Ice.  Of course this may not work at all for getting it to orbit.  (Unless you used a high pressure CO2 steam rocket).

That might be a possible trick some day, high pressure steam of CO2 or Nitrogen to get to orbit, and then ionic propulsion somehow adapted to vacuum (I mention again, that the propulsion gas would have to be stored on the spacecraft).

qrall01 I appreciate that you provided that article also.  A great addition, more dimensions.  For instance spin.

So, if it is not feasible to increase the spin of Venus, could the humidity of Venus be throttled down further, containing water in habitats only.  I presume the spin is needed so that the polar water has time to cool down so that it does not actually boil humidity into the atmosphere.  Covering it with a shading?  I believe plants can grow successfully with 10% Earth light so on Venus you would let 5% through the shaded moist locations?

I had heard of these desert planets, but only the most vague reference to this point.

Is it reasonable to say that Sulfuric Acid along with such water vapor as is present, is one of the keys to the current high temperatures of Venus?

It looks to me that a pathway if found between the current stable condition, and a preferred new stable desert planet condition, might involve a sequence of manipulations.  I can only offer that removal of Hydrogen from the atmosphere, and therefore H20 vapors and Sulfuric acid vapors might help to lead to an initial cooling, along with that dust could improve that situation, and I might hope that a cooling surface might absorb some atmospheric gasses.  (The reverse has been proposed for a Mars where the surface is warming, that gasses would be released).

Well actually yes. 
It appears to me that Venus is balanced by the Sulfur compounds.  A dust effect could push it off of that balance, and then some other actions could perhaps cause it to take another path to a different type of stable environment.

Dust from Asteroids?  Or could you use mirrors to create a swirling wind storm that reaches to the surface and sucks up dust?
Or bombs?

Here is another trick.  Could you mass produce floating bubbles with solar collection?  Could those bubbles also have a means to alter the atmospheric chemistry? 

My take on the whole Hydrogen thing is you extract it from the Sulfuric Acid and collect it into floating greenhouses, until there is no significant amount of it.  It must likely be a type of greenhouse gas itself, just as water is.  This will unblock certain wavelengths to radiate out into space.  Injection of additional Hydrogen would only heat the place up more.

I believe I saw speculation that when the oceans of Venus are presumed to have boiled off the surface temperature would have risen to thousands of degrees.  That may have occurred, and would have continued until the bulk of the Hydrogen was lost to space.

While you could inject constructed small objects into the atmosphere from orbit, it might also make sense to inject dust, to block the sun as well, and to directly absorb the Sulfuric Acid into a compound which would settle to the surface.  If the surface temperatures drop in the high mountains, it might be deposited there and stabilize.  However then you may loose much of the Hydrogen to the surface.

Another effect of dust might be to alter the PH.  It seems reasonable that if you are injecting metals, and that the acid reacts to them, and that collects in the high mountains, then the atmosphere becomes less acid.

In such conditions, I would ponder not a free floating habitat, but platforms on hollow supports, where the hollow supports have floatation properties, but are anchored to the surface.  If the upper side of the platforms were cold enough, it is possible to speculate on condensing CO2, as solid or liquid.  Also maybe Nitrogen.  The purpose?  Manufacture it there, drop it by some means to the surface, and you then have a coolant at the surface, and one that can boil and expand, and power robots.  Some of them being capable of helicopter actions, or airplane, or steam rocket. (Steams of various things).

Another scheme might involve the possible Lead Sulfide on the high mountains.  It may be near its evaporation point, so an alternative would be to heat it up into a gas, and pump it up to where a receiver for orbital beamed solar power could separate out the lead, and drop that to the surface.  If the environment of Venus were still a bit acid, then a high temperature lead-acid battery process could power robots.

If you have robots on the surface, then you can access a very large range of materials to construct more robots and floating towers with.

I do say that if it turns out that two companies on Earth can collect small asteroids, then it seems reasonable to me that it could be done near Venus as well, and while much of the materials might be used in orbit, there should be an excess of tailings that could be dumped into the atmosphere of Venus, as dust or floating machines that block the sun.

As for getting rid of the whole atmosphere?

That would have to be a plan for much later.  It may be that by the time the above were implemented for Venus (If it were), the inhabitants would be quite happy with a Venus altered to that degree, with habitats on high platforms.

Taken even further, if all the surface were covered by such habitats, perhaps they could shade the ground so much that a CO2 Ocean would condense.  They would still need platforms in the sky, I think because the Greenhouse effect from the Nitrogen would be too much without them.  But perhaps eventually at that point they could import Hydrogen in Mass, and gradually convert the liquid CO2 to H20 and biomass, and deposit the biomass at the bottom of oceans.

Terraformer said:

Why not do both?  No laws against it.

Let me attempt to in a better way communicate what I intended with the Magnetic field.

It is about frame of reference.  I would not want the lower layers ionized.  I would want it to rotate with the surface.

The magnetic field is intended to counter rotate the highest ionized layer, so that relative to the solar wind it would not rotate, but relative to the surface of Ceres it would rotate in opposition to the surface, causing approximately and on a average a zero speed.  This if possible would remove the centrifuge effect which you fear would contribute to atmospheric loss.

And since a magnetic field is in use, then why not use it to oppose the solar wind?

Ceres if it is to have an atmosphere would need every trick.

I have little to offer for the effect of solar heat overheating molecules to escape velocity however. 

I might offer, that I am trying to figure out if somehow with the shape of the field, you could have one magnetic field always behind Ceres, and hope to catch some otherwise lost molecules and funnel them back down to the atmosphere through magnetic lines of force.

But if that worked, you are left trying to figure out how you spin the upper atmosphere in the solar plain.

An alternating field might funnel some particles down from the dark side, using two different polarities, north and south in alternating fashion.  Perhaps a rotating spin followed by a South on the dark side, then another spin, and then a north on the dark side? 

It might also be hoped that if the molecules can be directed to the dark side, and then funneled down the magnetic pole, they might cool to a degree?  But I believe that plasma holds heat by electrons spinning around a magnetic line of force, and I don't know if exposure to cold alone will cool them.  However if they contact cooler atmosphere, then I believe that plasma will
then quench into it.

It is also worth speculating that such an alternating field would also warm a salt water body of ice, might cause very cold brine to develop and eventually an ice covered ocean.  Eventually warming even the rocky core, but this would take time.

We have had these conversations before.  I want habitats in hollows in the ice above the ocean, and chemosynthesis and artificial induced photosynthesis in the ocean, with mining of the core,  you want orbital habitats, but why can't I/You/We have all of it?

Ideally a magnetic field would be induced by the solar wind which would require orbital machines to capture it's energy and convert it to a world field.  I don't have a master plan for that but I have intentions to think about it.

The colder than Mars temperatures are a plus for an ice covered ocean.  Some mechanical assistance such as domes, and other protective coverings required.  As for the thickness of the ice layer, I would want it generally thick enough to place hollowed out habitats into, as a trial balloon 1 mile or 1 Kilometer thick?  However where domes are on the surface no problem with having pressurized ponds, lakes and swimming pools.

StarDreamer and Terraformer,

Get a solution for the acid environment first, and I am on board.