New Mars Forums

So what, if a power has settled a sizable population and has enough fire power to defend it, it isnt theirs.

Thats nonesense.

Thats what i basically said, and that there is a profit opportunity outhere.

obviously nasa wont build up nothing upthere.

But i agree with you on the terraformation, terraforming mars may be a waste of time as we can bild up structures and a viable economic base in mars without it (it may just be a hopefull dream, but lets hope not).

Martians (us humans basically , only indeginous there) might do it out of "civic" pride.

Well lets just agree to disagree 

But i would say that the main reason that humans have not moved to the antartic are becouse it has been denominated as a preservation zone and political neutral zone, but otherwise there have been plans to colonize antartica, its not becouse we cant or dont want to but becouse we are not allowed to.

About the mall and outdoors thing, in asteroids or the moon why would you make the colony in a way that you have to go outdoors from building to building if you can build corridors?, i those types of colonies there wouldnt be Outdoors living, all will be indoors and interconnected.

The moon mining problem is due to the lack of infrastructure, but there is a threshold of infratructure and production needed to make the capital return worth it, and that can be achived and thereby making the moon or whetever areteroid economically viable.

The problem is that you are thinking of small colonies, think of larger colonies designed in a less "ethical" (think weyland-yutani corp) manner and designed to use the most of manual labour (stick an inflatable tend on the moon, supplies to make the colony self sustainable and you can even make people with a pickaxe and a cheap protection suit mine the moon without special equipment besides a general life support for the tent and the mass driver facilities, i can draw diagrams if you want), cheap labour may come if you present the mine as a penal colony or hire cheap labour from disadvantaged backgrounds or third world countries.

I mean just think on the production and infrastructure threshold plus on how to reduce production cost to their minumun and you can make any rock in space profitable.

About communication, if colonies with a settlement or economic purpose are to be distributed across the system communication will be needed even if its slower than earth base communications and asteroids and moons will need some sort of relay and will be relays to other colonies.

An example of mining "moon" gold:

With approximations to costs, it wil takes 200,000 dollars to send a human into space in the next few years if not decades, but lets say it may take 400,000 to send a human to the moon.

to send lets say 120 employees to the moon it would take 48,000,000

And with near future costs of sending one kilo into space being 3,000 dollars, and lets say 70 tons of equipment, shelter and life support are needed the cost will be: 190,509,000

if you choose employees from one of the low end african nations it could cost you 300 dollars a year in salaries, in total: 36,000 dollars.

total rough costs: 238,545,000 dollars

1 kilo of 24 carats gold price now is 30,330, it would take about 9 tons of gold to brake even.

Ofcourse this figures may be optimistic but with future advances and better infratructure costs would drop significantly making mining the moon viable and other places in the system.

Id love to live there, depending on the social nature of the colony its purpose.

Well here are some pics:

This one shows the membrane to conatain its atmosphere (although i still gotta work out the seal at the edges, below the terraces, tree farm and water tanks can be seen.

IMHO even if we find a earth like planet within 20 light years or so the huge interstellar distances are far to large for humans in the near future to concider colonizing that planet, humans will most likely in the next few centuries try to exploit and settle the solar system till nearlly all available territory and bodies are inhabited or claimed by future polities or groups, and the solar sytem is large enough to accomodate hundred of billions of humans and thousands of polities if not more, when the system is more civilizised and has a better space infrastructure and technology humans might would beging to colonise nearby systems.

Mars being the most earthlike and habitable planet besides earth in the system will be up for grabs and terraformation wil surely be carried out in the next few centuries, but maybe not to a complete extent, humans could modify (cyborgs and/or genetic engineering) them selfs to survive in a partialy terraformed mars.

But on the other hand, terraforming mars may not be neccesary as humans can live in artificial enviroments, for example all a ster needs to be worth colonizing and settling is a asteroid belt and ices, or even a gas giant.

This is a texture of a terraformed mars i made as i would see it, its originally made for celestia but it works as a map in a way. 

hope you'll like it:

Well actually people do fly into cyclones for various purposes, so with the aid of a AI system it might be possible.

I had today a sort of odd idea, im not sure if it could work so i wanted to put it across for opinions.

My thought was that a sort of modified space plane could be used to glide the low pressure near he eye of a cyclone upwards, then when the plane has reached the limmit of the cyclone it then would fire its rockets to help it clear the remaining distance.

A method like it could reduce the fuel needed.

So do you think its feasible?

Well yes, but all it does its transport heat from the core outwards into space, reducing over time the over all energy contained in there, but at those pressures and current heat you could chuck loads of nuclear material which would help increase the temperature (thats the only way by putting more "rock" as i see it).

first answer, adding more rock to the core shoulndt increase its energy stores, as the enery contained within bodies like earth are remenants of the energy when they formed (or from fissionable material, adding uranium like hell to the core might help reheat it.

Second answer: yes volcanic ougassing wil help replenish the martian atmosphere but not quickly enough for human time scales

im sorry, some times i can be quite thick.

(by the way, nice stuff you got there (red oasis))