New Mars Forums

Agreed, a planet capable of suporting a civilization for 100,000 years offers far more than what the human race has been supposed to have used so far as a technological creature or collection of creatures.

And if you can reboot that with smaller solar system objects, then yes, a magnetic field is a luxury.

A pleasing converstation sir.

If I understand, the walls are the transparency.  The roof is not transparent but weighted.  I like it.  Place reflective foil on the ground around that then to get more light in.

I have an inni for your outi.  A ring shaped berm.  Inside that then place a vertical wall to hold the berm.  A central space within.  A glass wall, concave inside the concave wall holding the berm.  Reflective foil on the floor of the hollow space inside the berm.

While the pressure pushes outward against the berm retaining wall, the transparent inner wall is also pushed inward towards the center.  But you may also place struts or cables between the walls, where tension of the struts fastens the outer retaining wall to the inner "Glass" or "Plastic" wall.  A ring of beneficiated environment between the two walls.  A ceiling of manufactured materials, weighted down by rigolith.

I see your mind and I like it.  I offer my toys just as you also offer yours to me.

I am glad to get a helpful caution from your studies.  I consider your understanding to be better than mine for this case for sure.  (Although it is now mine also).

For myself however, I would like to keep it as an open possibility, with the understanding that such difaculties would have to be answered to in an actually functional way.  (Which may in the end make it not workable).

I will counter argue even so, for the hope of further discovery.

I will see your point the filter feeders which use a lot of water to get a small amount of ditritus and small organisms must be open to infections to a high degree.  So, actually, I am going to bow on that one and suggest that barring a scheme not presently apparent, that is the least feasable.

I will make a special case for the the ones that use chemosynthisis however, in symbiosis with embedded bacteria.

I can see a case where a primary pool is a more fresh water, with or without transparent structures above to allow in sunlight.
It would actually be easier to have this pool dark, and a covering of non-transparent materials.

I then see the idea of having salt water tanks inside of this "Lake", down perhaps 33 or more feet.  Henry,s law:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry's_law

The point being that the main pool, the fresher pool could be at about 0 degC or 32 degF with a vapor pressure of perhaps 6 mb.

An enclosure could be assisted by a layer of ice, where the top of the ice could be quite a bit lower than freezing, down to the average ambient of the local climate, which is presently quite cold.  Therefore the evaporation pressure from the top layer of ice would be much below the ambient pressure.  It would still be possible for a wind of dry air in the daytime to evaporate this ice, so a protective material should also be deployed above the ice.

If this enclosure were accomplished, the movement of robot actuators and even well protected humans is not out of the question. 

So having put salt water tanks into this "Lake", it would also be possible to disolve Methane, Oxygen, and Nitrogen into the salt water of the tanks at a pressure of perhaps 330 mb or more.  This might support organisms that can use this for an energy source.

The main point is that each salt water tank could be isolated (In this case), and the physical barriers, and the barrier of fresh water might controll epidemics of parasites of the shellfish, making it possible to make a profit.  If desired, the fresh water could be very defficient in Oxygen, further inhibiting the kind of parasites that might infect shellfish from propagating to each of the salt water tanks.

It would fit into the needs to make fuels and Oxydizers.  One method of rockets, vehicles, and for some types of food.

I have not certainty that the particular shellfish can be cultivated this way or if they are edible.

Therefore I consider it an open item requiring further research, and proving.

I am not wild about animal cultivation, but I am also not a vegitarian, so for survival it might be an asset I would further consider, along with the cultivation of mushrooms and other forms that can run on chemical/organic sources.

I also make the alternate point that the Iguana's could be considered:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galapagos_land_iguana

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_iguana

Some will be horrified by such a use of a proteced species, but I don't consider it any more wrong that chickens, just as long as you do not damage the wild populations.  In fact it would be a further protection of the species.

The fact that the Marine variety can dive into cooler water and eat algea is convenient.

However any such enclosure would have to provide sufficient pressure, Oxygen, warmpth.  The water can be cool, but they might need "Dog Houses" with sunlamps some of the time.

Lewis said:

A collection of diverse players would be good.  Not a single organiztion, but contributors in coordination I think.

A single organization is subject to types who then harness the force for their own ego agenda and careers.

On another subject.  Grasshopper is a prototype for a hoped for re-usable booster system.

I am wondering if such were sized for use on Mars, if that size might approximate what would also work on Earth, provided a air breathing booster system were added to it.

Previously some time ago that there was an effort to create a electo-magnetic linear engine to boost rockets to 1000 MPH.

Of course the liability is that the acceleration is too fast for humans, and also the booster size would be limited.

However, I am wondering why a jet pack in the form of a circular surround for a booster like grasshopper could not assist it up the first 10,000 to 30,000 feet?

I am thinking the "Jet Pack" might have 6 jet engines for verticle lift off, and that the Jet pack would be composed of 2 semicircles that are joined around the grasshopper, with 3 engines in each.  Once the "Jet Pack" was done with it's task, it would do a horrizontal landing.

This way the total "Boost" to orbit of a payload would be partially air breathing, and so strongly reducing the percentage of the whole launch package that would be Oxydizer.

Does this make sense?

Another thought was that if the Grasshopper had an engine problem while assending through the trophosphere, it's engines could be shut down, and perhaps the jet pack would be powerfull enough to allow a non-crashing abort to ground.

If animal food is also considered, I would go ahead and work with cold blooded water animals. 

If salt water, then from the polar areas, though generally slow growing, requiring water quite cold.

But not restricted to cold water, if you add more heat and deal with greater pressures for the enclosure.

Cold blooded animals require less food for their biological budget, I think quite a lot less, and so also likely would consume less Oxygen.

Shellfish, and fish I suppose.

Another point being that it is possible to power something like that not only from sunlight, but from chemicals, simulating a cold Methane seep. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_seep

I don't know how edible those are, but it is worth investigation I would think.

The calcium carbonate might be an objective in it's self.

The Microbes that feed the filter feeders could run variously from such sources.  When the sunlight was more seasonalbly available, then tilt the exosystem to that, and otherwise tilt it to being chemical driven.

The tanks where the animals were kept could be relatively pressurized, and if desired less pressurized tanks could foster the microbial population.

This could be convieniently done by having a tank inside of a tank.  More or less a enclosed pond with cold water where the algae, and microbes that feed on chemicals would be multiplied.  At temperatures +/- 5 degrees.  Therefore, a vapor pressure not much more than Martian ambient.  Therefore the dome holding the pressure and vapor pressure could be substantially minimal.

As for the animal tank, put that down about 33 feet in the water, (That is about 330 mb pressure) saturate it's water with disolved gasses of O2 and N2, warm it to foster animal growth.

If other organisms that do not have bacterial in them that harvest energy from Methane:

There would be two mehods to get the microbes from the cold water to the animal tank.  Either they would have to be filtered out in a fine filter, and back flushed into the warm tank, or if you had solar concentrating mirrors the water could be pumped from the bigger cold tank during the day, warmed, and then pumped into the animal tank.

As for harvesting the animals, I guess if it is shellfish, a robot could do that.  If it is fish, perhaps a duct would allow them to circulate to a holding tank where humans could be present.

I would think this would occur at higher lattitudes where there is lots of ice, but maybe if an aquafer were available at lower lattitudes, then that way.

Another alternative is reptiles.  They also being cold blooded.  Vegitarian Iguana's?

I am very much in favor of many seedlings, and see what can take root best.

At some point a leadership will have to develop, and a first plan, second expansion, and so on.  Perhaps there will be reliable and cost effective ways eventually to cover a significant portion of areas of Mars with domes that seldom leak for habitation by humans.

If I had my preferences, I would turn the north polar depression into one big shallow sea with domes over it.  However that is at a scale where indeed it might be easier to add to the atmosphere and melt it that way.

For humble starts though, it could be true that something that would simply grow in ice with dirt sprinkled on it with a little added light, might release methane, which might assist as Terraformer would paraterraforming Mars up to 11 Mb.  In the end though it must be about economics.  How to get the most for the least effort in this case is valid I think.  I cannot predict which methods will play out the best 20-50 years from now with changing technologies, and not understanding how the pattern of approach to Mars will unfold.

So, nuture all the ideas, and plant the ones that have a reasonable chance, and favor the ones that take hold like a bad weed.

Yes in general I think I get what you are saying.

Augmentation of powers with values less than prefered.

I make this point.  At one time lions would rid the human race of stupid people dumb enough to want to invite such an attack.

As horrible as that was, it was in a way like a guiding hand.  We could not be the lions because they occupied that space.  And so we were generalists sometimes predator, herbavore, and food.  This was like a container which defined our physical, intellectual, and psycological shape.

Now we risk becomming cancer.  Without defined form.  Later having a new definition of form perhaps defined by predation between human/cyborg groups (Killing, enslaving, etc.).

All this leaves us now is self control if possible.  At least defining some of the potential pitfalls might help.

But maybe in the end it is not ours to decide.  Just throw the computer chips in the air and let the best cyborg win?

Grey Parrot assimilation perhaps.  Resistance is futile. 

I want to suggest an alternative with the orbital mirrors, where a relatively modest influence of added energy coupled with the injection of a relatively small amount of dust would provide a habitat for cyanobacteria in pockets of water in the polar ice.

This might be supported by:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 … -mars.html

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SUA1 … old698.php

http://skywalker.cochise.edu/wellerr/st … r/Mars.htm

http://spacescience.spaceref.com/current/event/osu.html

It is not out of the question to augment the existing solar flux during the polar warm seasons, but then UV is an issue.  The articles suggest that the organisms can protect themselves from UV at least on Earth.  However in the polar night, there could be very little UV.  The mirrors would need to be selectively reflective, not reflecting UV.  That along with the injection of dust could form a layer of dirt maybe 6 feet below the ice layer, and a reasonable addition of light by mirror reflectance could then make this habitat support a microbial community that might release greenhouse gasses suitable to an additional warming, and maybe even helping the formation of Ozone.  Maybe this has been covered elsewhere to a degree.  I would simply consider it another tool in the tool kit.

As for existing Martian life, I might suggest using a laser to melt small pockets of polar ice, and then sending down a probe to sample the water produced after a reasonal time period.  I am going to guess that the Martian habitat has on it's own produced temporary pockets of water inside the ice during relatively recent times, and that if there were life compairable with Earth life swapped back and fourth, there should be the possibility that something lurks in the ice caps, waiting for the occasional melt of a pocket of water.  I don't expect that this would be the first check for life, but perhaps the last before terraformation is implemented.

In fact perhaps a mission could instead consist of a probe with a laser which would drop to a pocket of long lasting ice, and shine the laser downwards, it might be that the spectrum of light reflected upwards would reveal the growth of organisms.  I would suppose that a tiny water pocket formed would first have one spectrum, and changes in organics would then alter that spectrum.  Perhaps after a change was noticed, the laser would be able to change it's spectrum to one that would evaporate the ice, and an air stream conducted to the evaporation would carry it vapors away, in effect drilling down to the site where organic changes were susspected.  Then it would be a simple matter to grab some of the goop for further inspection.

http://www.exploremars.org/msl-picture- … rs-phoenix

I know that I am in the terraforming section, but obviously there will be a lot of resistance to the terraformation of Mars until at least some such testing is done.

Alternately the laser probe thing would be useful to confirm that an added solar flux would produce the microbial growth that is desired.  Of course such an experiment could be simulated on Earth first.

I wonder about creating a receiving robot to help in the landing.

http://www.space.com/20254-spacex-reusa … -test.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasshopper_(rocket)

I hope that they will fully develop the version that they are planning with the collapsible landing gear.  I want to see it work and how it works.

However I speculate on a crane machine on four or more wheels as a robot with grasping hands having air cushioned bag grips, and for that matter even during the grasp, squirting an air cushion from the fingers to help create a non damaging catch.

Then dispensing with collapsable legs on the rocket, and instead the crane robot also putting a shock absorbing cushioning device benieth the descending rocket prior to contact.  There would need to be legs or leg, but that could be less complex perhaps.  Another option is that the rocket would not have legs, but that pins with pads would push up from the receiving pad, as part of the robots receiving process.  Maybe a padded ring pushing upward on pneumatic or hydraulic legs as the hands grasp the upper rocket body.  Or maybe the "Pad" would be a partial ring, a "U" shaped pad to land on that would escape much of the rocket exhaust by being deployed sideways below the rocket body but above the rocket nozzle.

The rocket able to hover like a helicoptor according to the information given, but also the crane being able to move at significant speed laterally on the pad surface, and yet if a well made robot, being able to approach and co-operate with the rocket to secure it.  This would also be useful to compensate for some degree of unexpected wind conditions.  Further having the rocket secured to a wheeled vehicle, if it is desired to roll it into a shelter for inspection and service, or to protect it from comming weather conditions that also would be an option.

Having collapsable landing gear is cool, but also complicated, and I susspect a burden of complexity to add to the rocket.  The objective being to recover a re-usable rocket, I think a receiving robot is worth consideration.  I note that even the tires of such a device would help to serve as part of the verticle shock absorbing process.  (Even though during the rocket hover it should be at almost zero verticle speed.

Granted that the robot will also cost money, but anthing to reduce the complexity of the actual air borne device may be worth it.

I guess there could be a double cost if a accedent damaged or destroyed both the rocket and the robot, but I believe that the descending rocket is very low on fuel at that point.  Perhaps an explosion could be survived by the robot without total damage to it.

Think Eagle snatching a fish from a lake.  It should be easier than that.

I wonder also if it was necessary to have alternate emergency landing sites if a stationary rack could be tried where the booster would dock itself, (Or try to).  Say a rack with a gutter slightly tilted, (Well padded) with some kind of catch at the bottom that it would try to latch itself onto.  In that case then it would have to be later retrieved by heavy equipment.

SarK0Y

While I might present ideas from my personal (Which is a culturally infulenenced) bias, and others are of course welcome to adopt, or question them, my primary purpose for joining the hive with you at this moment is a sanity check, so thanks for the "Check".

I will attempt to present some arguments, which do not invalidate your statement, but might add qualifications to it.

These will only be related as arguments as to why I think we need to maintian concious awareness of the problems that the hive mind can present.  I do not present them as absolute, but as perceptions, which to me are supported by significant evidence in history and in my personal experiences.  Many are drawn from books written by persons living in previous time periods.  So the samples span time longer then my era or immediate culture.

1) "The crowd, A Study of the Popular Mind." by Gustave Le Bon.  A crowd of idiots is as smart as a crowd of Einsteins.  The hive mind of a crowd is an idiot.

2) "Woman And Power In History" by Amaury De Riencourt. On his word, I draw that prehistoric culture myth had primarily female diety, and were cyclical in nature, up until the advent of the Hebrews and the Persians, and the emergence of male diety represented a shift that helped to create the modern world, linear thinking, the ability to rise (Or fall) from the limits of cyclical thinking.  I add on my own that women have 4 or 5 spoken words for each word that a man will speak.

3) My own assertions are that we have an opportunity to rise (Or fall) from our current cycle, and a concious awareness of the process is required by individuals who choose it and who can find it.  The crowd will always opt for the tried and true, bread and the circus, because a crowd is a idiot.  The idiot will then make it impossible for the idividuals who can make a difference towards rising to do so, rendering social energy into non productive activities.  Productive being difined in this case as capability, capability to access a new frontier.

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy  I regaurd encription as a waste of my time.  Although I had planned to expand my programming capabilities in that direction, after those idiots did 9/11, I concluded any such activity would draw moronic response from our national hive, and concluded that my efforts would be better invested in other things.  However the philosophy of the software has value I believe.  The notion that privacy and personal property drive the ability to rise above a cycle.  Otherwise, if anyone can walk off with your personal intellectual and material property, (A tribal culture), everyone knows your business, then the hive has much too much of an edge over the individual, and the individual wastes it's time and weakens itself against competitors and is driven out of the gene and meme pool.

5) We need to channel to the degree that we can the path that is taken.  The balance is between those who read books, and those who write books.  The word book symbolizes recorded memes.  Many many people follow books, and do not think.  This can been very efficient as to capture the matrial goods and to dominate the gene pool and exclude other types, but it's capability is primarily in reptition, cycles.  Writing a book requires that you have something to write (Worthless or Useful).

6) In this current world as in previous worlds, there are emergent cultures writting new things, and there are heritage cultures clinging to old things from books.  Muscle and bones.  A good body is not all bone.  A good body is not all muscle.

7) An Astronaut recently said that motion appears to be connected to mind.  He said that there is an organism that when young is free swimming, but when older anchors itself to the bottom of the sea, and then eats it's central nervous system.
Trees do not have what we would call a brain.  Read between the lines if you like.

8) I have just experienced an era where a baby boom thought outside of the box, and invented new technologies, then a power group invented as many crimes to harass them with as they could.  Crashed the process to possess it, then redirected it to provide controll.  Even so I have benifited, since it turned out I could be of service, but most of my generation ended up being put into chains by their own inventions, so that a group of people could bend reality and choose the winners and loosers not on the basis of merit, but on the basis of selfish inherited unconcious motivation to procreate at the expense of others.  Not something unusual, but really quite predictable from history.

I guess I think it comes down to making the point that you should look before you leap.  The mouth and ear are one thing, the hand and the eye another.  Except for the deaf, mostly hiving is done with words.  What about the eye and hand?  Inventions, individuality lives there more.  Since access to space is to a large extent a question of manipulation of material objects the eye and hand are more important.  But yes manipulation of groups which are inherantly idiots is also important.  This is where we could likely hope for intellegent wise women who do not make the focus of their lives the minipulation of playboy men disguised as leaders (Who then recipocate by channeling unearned material goods to their matrons).

I think I will go to the gym again.

Awareness that's all I am asking for.

Perhaps you will tollerate my comments.

I have pondered things like this, not quite the same but related.

For instance I have tried too peer ahead to the path that might be taken, to inhabit some of the Moons of Jupiter or perhaps a cold Earth like planet around another star.

I have considered just how efficiency and survival might lead the descendants of the humans or some other alien population.

My solution for cold worlds is to be able to master oceans under ice sheets, since smaller outer worlds seem to offer this, and inner worlds at best offer dry rigolyth and ice at shaded locations.

I have considered an engineered human connectable to a diriviative of a primitive whale.  With a avatar robot on the surface also connected.  The "Whale" which would have legs so as to walk in tunnels in the ice shell, but could also swim in the ocean below.  The "Human" would perhaps have minimal lungs, but would be connectable by a placenta type organ to the "Whale".
The "Whale" would digest primarily "Hydrogen" and an Oxydizer for energy and would derive it's other needs from the water, and perhaps the "Human".  As it would not eat with it's mouth the human would ride in it.  And so keep warm. "Johna" : )
The human would be able to disconnect from the whale when in the tunnels.  The tunnels could be habitable and warm, lined with manufactured materials.

The brain of the whale could be cybernetic.  The Robot on the cold surface of course also so.  Those three minds could be linked as in the rats, so the human could be aware of self or the whale's experiences, or be aware of the experiences of the robot working an very low temperatures on the surface.

But this would be a different life form, not a humans as we conceive of it.

What would be it's psycology?

Beyond that we have the danger of the hive mind.

Individual humans could be as dim witted as bees, if they were all linked together.  The hive would direct them.

Where the danger is is the conflict between efficiency and capability.  Sadly, efficiency is what nature favors, not intellegence.

The limits of communication have caused humans to have atonomous awareness as individuals.  1,000,000 chimps typing on keyboards might result in one of them stumbiling on a clever new thing.  One hive mind is one hive mind.

In my opinion verbal language has already damaged the evolution of the human mind.  We do need sufficient efficiency to acutalize material goods, to actually live out the dreams that we may have, but their is a danger of generating an unwise organism that only exists to spread, a virus in it's effect of existance.

There may not be a thing we can do about this, but I think stupid ant hives would be a sad ending for our heritage, when we are about to have the chance to live the dream of Solar system and perhaps even interstellar expansion.

On the other side of this is might an organism be created that can solve all puzzles in the universe in 1 hour?  Then what does it do to amuse itself?  Do we wreck our existance, our happiness, by achiving to much in the wrong direction?  Like a child who enjoyed swinging on a swing, but now we are adults, and even seniors, and would we enjoy it now?

Anyway I have not developed thinking beyond this so far.

Interesting stuff.

As far as stiring such planets, perhaps Jupiters system could be a model. 

The spin of Jupiter I believe tries to raise the orbits of Io, Europa, and Ganymede with tidal action, but because those moon cause a flexing of the interiors of each other, the orbits do not rise, but instead the spin is turned into heat which at least in the case of Io drives volcanism.

Some of the other parts of your telling suggest that that if there were to be successors to the present day human population of Earth, they would first migrate into the outer solar system and adapt to icy worlds, and then when the sun became a white dwarf, they would migrate back in.  Perhaps they could even influence the formation of new planets close to the white dwarf.

That's along time from now.  I am guessing it won't be humans as we define ourselfs.

As for migrating to white dwarf systems, well maybe someone will.  However your second part implies that the chemestry of our bodies would not behave in a manner we are evolved/created for.  At least not close to the WD.

I cannot speculate on how that could be managed.