New Mars Forums

I think I am seeing your particular drift.  I would really like to see your plan when it emerges because I will bet it will be practicle or almost there.  And no it would not require rotons unless they are truely worth including.

Well, mining is OK, but there are other places.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Vesta

With a rotation of 5+ hours and such a low gravitation, I am thinking easy space elivator.  Learn how to do it at Vesta, then see if you can do it at Mars.

I am also thinking hollow spinning habitats in orbit for 1/6, 1/3, 1/2, 1 gee as may work.

I am thinking further experiments with various things.

An outpost as I said for perhaps 5000 people.  Research in methods.

In fact there may not be enough water.  Importing may or may not be worthwhile.

Perpaps from such an asteroids spinning habitats could be built, and then they could move over to Ceres to pick up Water and other things such as Ammonia (Nitrogen), then load up with people, then out to the Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and so on.

I am just investigating the potential value or lack of value to the idea.  I havn't come to a conclusion.

I guess value would be relative.

Another use of course would be mining where perhaps Mars would want to import materials.  Although it has Phobos and Demos, a person cannot be sure of what their orbital ambitions for construction might be.

Anyway, I am also willing to forget the idea, but not until examined.

It might be possible that the center could be hollowed out some day and made into a habitat with artificial gravitation machines inside of it (Spinning habitats).  But that's way out there.

Other locations;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Pallas
may prove more useful, but for now, we have some significant data on the nature of Vesta, so I will think about what could be done with it.

Maybe some star systems only have little worlds like Vesta, and some comets.  Very long term being able to habitate such a star system might be useful to humans.

Well, I guess I will take the bait and risk a beating.

I suggest the use of a carbon nano-tube ribbon, in conjunction with a roton on the nose of the entry vehicle.  If carbon-nanotubes are so strong, then how about a strong Ribbon/Flag (But a long one)

I know that rotons have outlived their welcome, but in this case, I am not so much suggesting helicoptering down to a landing with a roton, but using the combination of roton and ribbon, to slow the craft down for the next event, which could be a parchute and thrusters, or just thrusters, and maybe with the assistance of the roton.

I see the roton as starting the slowdown by largely thrusting perpendicular (With canting allowed) to expand the trailing vacuum bubble.  This might help to slow the
craft down.

Then from the roton arms, from a compartment in the roton arms a ribbon deployed and allowed to trail the craft.  The twisting motion of the roton on the base of the
ribbon being expected to cause it to form a helical 3D presentation to the stream of atmosphere around it.

I do fear flapping like a flag, which although that flapping might convert spacecraft momentum to sound waves and heat, it might also tear the machine apart.

Anyway that is why I involked the roton twisting, to try to counterbalance the twisting force with the linear force of the atmospheric stream to cause a flexible ribbon
to have a 3D profile while making a high speed entry to the atmosphere.  I presume that this happens after the maximum heating event on the heat sheild of the craft.

Anyway at the upper end of the ribbon could be a container, which woud block the air stream, and help to keep the ribbon strait and not flapping.  In that compartment could be a baloon or parachute as you might like, or a thruster pack.

If it were a thruster pack, then the ribbon would remain attached to the craft all the way down, and that thruster pack way above on the ribbon would fire to keep theribbon erect and could also assist in the final landing.

Alternatelly after the ribbon and roton had slowed the craft sufficiently, they would be ejected and a parchute deployed, and finally thrusters as normal from the
bottom of the craft.

Please remember that I am way out of my normal area of thinking here, and we were asked for ideas.

Obviously a cloth ribbon of carbon-nanotubes makes me think it would be about as strong as a ribbon could be, but I am just guessing.

I agree, to the limits of Chaos, it is best to explore options and keep them available, since modification/adaption plans for human presence on Mars are in their very early days

One thing I am beginning to have greater awareness of is a time period division.  1) When tools and materials used are dominantly those carried from Earth/Moon and/or (Earth/Moon)/(Phobos/Demos).  2) when tools and materials are dominantly those produced on the surface of Mars.

So the tool kit for the first minute on Mars is one thing.
The tool kit for the first hour is another.
The tool kit for the first day,
The first week,
The first Month,
The first Year,
The first Decade,
The first Century,
and beyond.

So, each need has it's own options, some have been considered and some still need to be "Discovered".

I think that sometimes confilict comes from two or more people thinking of solutions for different time scales.

They can both be right, but might still confilict, not understanding the time scale intended by the other.

Yes, I hope Musk is all what he seems,  he has to be something else already to have achieved what he has.  Let's hope is that good still, and even better.

Well perhaps dust is not a normal issue except during global dust storms.

Anyway I like the solar collectors you presented inside of or outside of an enclosure.

As for the side process, that can also occur without the solar colectors in it's greenhouse  or with them in.

These are options, and a mission to Mars is long away from now.

Thats a good one.  My only concern is keeping the more complex surface from the accumulation of dust.

To protect from dust, I suggest a greenhouse at near ambient pressures to encase the solar panels.  While I am aware that that would deminish the output from the cells, I will suggest a side process that might justify this loss, and turn it into a gain.

In the bottom of the greenhouse a tray which can contain a weak alcohol solution to be evaporated by the collected waste heat.

An electric pump would collect the concentrated alcohol vapors, and force a condensation into metal tubes immersed in water tanks.  The water tanks would be used to supply heat for living confort, particularly at night, and perhaps bathing water, or alternately aquariums to grow organisms.

I am going to post an article which suggests where this alcohol might come from.

I suppose the little tiny brainchip human replica's and the notion of interstellar travel where out there.  Actually I was hopeing for an explaination of why this should not be done if it could be done.

I spoke of Lions.  In my view, the human race has exceded limits which have defined it's nature, and so like people who have an abundant food supply and no self control, unsightly consequences are possible and even likely.

The question is manipulation or adaptation.  I will confess, I lean towards a compromise of both, where most people here are all about manipulation, or mechanical adaptation.  However, if biology is a machine, that that is also mechanical adaptions.

To steer towards the topic as you have requested, I would say that at many stars have "Ice Giant Planets".  Many free floaters may be out there as well.  What to do with them if anything?  I think the notion of making them into Earths is not out of the question for very advanced life forms, but very advanced life forms would be what the decendants of humans would be, if the human race has a biological or perhaps even a mechanical continuation.

I would say that the adaptations for Neptune I suggested did include a manipulation, a tether system to collect energy.  That would be a starter.  Further manipulations would be options.  However I was making the point that those doing it are likely to have a altered nature and perhaps altered motivations.

But since you have requested orthydoxy, then I ask if GWJohnson's suggestion about a hemispheric fusion explosion to strip off the atmosphere could be used?

Beyond that I wonder if you could do that, might you indeed make Neptune or Jupiter work like a controlled star.  Drop a special type of Fusion bomb into it periodically to induce a fusion flash of the atmosphere or slushy oceans of whatever?

Then couild you construct a dyson sphere around Neptune?  (Free orbital eliments, not a big metal shell).

I have thought that perhaps if you did put a dyson sphere around Ice Giants or Gas Giants, perhaps the infared light reflecting back would raise the atmospheric temperature and cause the to glow at a shorter wavelength.  If we cold see down in the lower layers, I am sure it would glow in visible light.

Still I am not sure what that gets you.

However this is sort of a way to Soliform Neptune, not Terraform it.  I'm sorry.

The gravitation not being that much greater than Earth, and the spin being more (I believe) could it happen that a space elivator could give access to the thicker atmosphere, and that useful slushy materials from the deep down hot could be extracted and brought up to that space elivator, and moved to orbit, to construct a whatever, leaving behind a gass ball like Saturn?

Or just the reverse, could a process turn Neptune into a binary planet, one a gas runt, and the other a terrestrial?  Perhaps starting with a fusion kaboom, and blowing  knot of gas into orbit of Neptune, and if it would condense into a gas midget, then repeat the process?  Then the Hydrogen would be available for future use for energy production.

Anyway, perhaps that puts you closer to where you want the thread to be.  My appologies for the earlier deviation.

I want to participate, but it will be weird.  Just warning you.

One thing that is noticible is that most of the time when we speculate on the future, we leave out the probabable part where the humans change into something else.

Cyborg seems the most likely, so I will include that.

Supposing that the biological mush that composes our bodies and brains is to be kept alive by extrordinary methods.  Then there must be vastly expanded places to put people, and they must be provided at an economical cost, but to be moral in on sense the quality of life must be good.

So, for big planets, I propose that a human upon becomming very old, might have a modified biological body, one with the purpose of surviving in zero gee, and also for supporting itself off of sunlight power.  The body designed to run down deer, and escape from lions would be set aside.

An organic "Host" would be manufactured.  It would perhaps be created in part from the subjects own cell lines.  However photosynthis, or the ability to digest Hydrogen would be  added.  The host would be very large.

The subject might exist in the following ways. 
Case 1 -It could be entirely inside of the host, and needing no bones.  No calcium to loose.  The wole thing in a canister, the canister inside of a big "Transformer Robot".  I don't think it could be a car or a truck though.
Case 2 -It could be like a human body, but with bones replaced by artificial bones attachment to the host would be with an umbilicle, and this might limit mobility, unless the host moves with you.
Case 3 -It could be a detachable human like body, with a real human referbished brain, and would share blood with the host.  As disgusting as this might seem to others, drinking blood from the host, and the returning the blood to the host, is more moral than eating other organisms in my opinion.  I only say blood, because it would be a fluid containing hemoglobin.  Oxygen being the need to satisfy.  Many things would be modified.  No bowels, no feces.  No urine.  Just the exchange of fluid.
The host would of course recycle the materials passed back to it, producing sugars and so on.  This organism would be eaten by lions if their were lions in orbit of Neptune, but since the predator prey relationship we had in the past is gone, the shape of us may change.

So to power this, either solar concentrators, or tethers dipping into the atmosphere of Neptune.  The tethers, orbital motion would be a compromise between Magnetic field, and the motion of the atmosphere.  If the teather was part of a bigger system of a ring circling the entire planet geosynchronis, (Very big and star treck), it could conduct electricty from one part of the atmopshere to another, using the power.  It also could have windmills within the atmophere, perahaps Nano-Windmills on the tethers.  At the bottom ends of the tethers, substances in the atmosphere could be collected, and conveyed upwards to the orbital ring.  The needed products to conduct Fusion for instance.

So, not enough room on Earth for all the "People" living to be 300 years old?  Send them to orbit Neptune and other places.

Then some very bazarr inventions are needed to produce avatars that can function in whatever lies below.  That is if that can be done and has value.

So, a "Human" could have various avenues of mobility in orbit, and could also perhaps have an avatar deep down in Neptune.  However machines to do that would be completely different.  They would opperate in a much different way with different physical properties than anything we currently do.

Make it into an Earth?  Well go star treck go, but once the human race changes into something else, that is not needed.

I like the idea that you can expose a hand, but I am wondering if a compromise could be used to give some of the benefits of being bearhanded, while, risking less a repetive type injury.  In other words, I am thinking that repeatedly exposing hands to vacuum has unknown consequences, and I fear a accumulation of injury, and I think that a modified scheme might help.

Since we are generally "Handed", right or left, what if a right handed person, kept the glove on the left hand, using it for gripping only, and what if the right hand glove had open finger tips?  I think that the finger tips are the most important tactile feature of the hand.  What if in addition the right hand had a second outer glove you could pull over the fingertips from time to time.  It could be a counterpressure glove, but it might be easier to slide a pressurized container over that hand with the exposed fingertips to rest the fingertips.  Either an Apollo glove, or even a bit funny, a "Captain Hook" type prostesis.

The "Captain Hook" device would be a little canister your right hand could fit into with some type of sealing method.  Eather a metal flange scheme, or a torroidal sphincter at the wrist.  The canister would be pressurized by a device to compress Martian air into the right hand canister.  (You seem to have this person working in a workshop, so a little air compressor is not that far off base).  Then inside of the right hand canister would be a mechanical device which would allow the right hand to still do work squeezing the device to actuate a mechanical grip on the front of the canister, much like a person who has a prostesis can.

So in Mode 1: the person would have a left hand fully gloved, and a right hand partially gloved so that they could do tasks where the sense of touch and fingernails might matter.  In Mode 2: They would rest their dominant hand inside of the pressurizable canister, but still be able to use the dominant hand to grip things using a prostesis double hook type device.

A modification of this would be to have one finger and thumb exposed, and to keep the other fingers which are mostly for power anyway protected by a partial glove.

Not the fastest, agreed.
Not the cheepest?  What is? (Real question)

However what they show there is a interesting start to a situation where you don't go from point A to point B by the fastest method or the cheepest method, but it the spaceship is a world of it's own. 

Technologies keep changing also, for instance heated graphite mentioned in one of the threads here.  I would suppose that that might spew atmospheric gasses.

I wonder, does the existing concept of such propulsion include electric rockets and that efficiency, or advanced robotic resupply ships?  Further, if resupply is eventually from other sources than the Earth, does that change the economic balance.

The Moon, Ceres, Vesta, Demos, Phobos, the upper atmosphere of Mars, Callisto.

I'm reaching.

However for civilians cycling spaceships have an advantage.

I am expecting as I think everyone would that the first people who go to Mars will be exceptional people. Physically, with youth, and a good survival sense, and a energy level that can sustain abusive circumstances for a prolonged period.

Later they will be more towards average.