New Mars Forums

The penetration wouldn't need to be very deep, but deep enough that the radiant energy is more entirely captured. By detonating at the side, you're losing just over 50% of the energy.   Just a few meters into it and you'd be much closer to 100%.   And the chances of any large debris getting aligned to a collision course with Earth is incredibly small, unless this happens within lunar orbit.  And if it happens within lunar orbit, we'd be wanting 90% of that blast energy, not 45% of it.

We'd have to find it in large quantities just sitting around though.   It is possible, unlike on the Earth where you won't see any precious metals laying around on the ground.  But the processes to create it may not have existed or they may simply be inaccessible.     I'm not saying we shouldn't try to monetize space travel, but the odds of it being more than a drop in the bucket for a long time are pretty slim.

Well, no, they're not constitutional even slightly.  It's just that a deeply racist and xenophobic SCOTUS, suspicious of hard working Chinese, made up the power and SCOTUS's that followed haven't overturned it.  Yet.  Just like Plessy said it's okay to have separate but equal and it took half a decade to overturn it because it was blatantly unConstitutional.   The Constitution decides what is constitutional.   And there is zero delegated authority for it.  The Founders were absolutely for open borders ethically, even if they expressed some occasional concerns about possible side effects.   The first several rounds of immigration laws were all found to be unConstitutional later.

I for one, can't wait to get to Mars, and start drawing lines around the place and tell astronauts where they can and can't go.   Let's arbitrary up that place!

I think both are unfeasible at the moment.   Humans have very little capacity to build structures, let alone absolutely air tight ones.   The only way to do this for awhile is to drop in entire habitat modules, and then perhaps have the landing gear contain wheels and motors to move them into place and connect them with airlocks.   Robotic connection of the modules would work, but I think we're still decades away from having mobile robots on Mars that can do the metal 3D printing, placement and welding that would be required, let alone the mining and processing which takes enormous energy, enormous facilities and major disruption of the surface.  We take for granted how difficult, massive and energy consuming construction is of any kind.

This thread needs a soundtrack  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20BHMBj_Xcc

Federal immigration law is unConstitutional.  The Founders believed in open borders.  And Republicans had it as part of their party platform in 1864 as Democrats became increasingly xenophobic.

The problem with Mars is the same problem with the moon.  The astronomical costs of going will wear on the economy.  Bringing down the cost is critical, but even then, the costs will still be high.   There is no real way to monetize it except for space tourism.   If we're going to go for precious metals, I think that will end up being NEA or Moon-based.  Unless Phobos or Deimos are awash in precious metals easily extracted, anyway.   Mars is isn't very pretty, but it has the benefit of being a lot less ugly than the Moon.   The only thing the Moon has is its view of the Earth.   OTOH, we could lay waste to the other side, mining the crap out of it and no one would care since no one can see it.  Tourism on one side, mining on the other. 

One of the thing things that would be too difficult to do on Mars, but might be possible on the Moon is to send a ton of lander based habitats to Lunar orbit, link them all together by a system of airlocks and frames and then land the entire base as a complete system.    Each landing leg could have its own pressure sensor that identifies when has more pressure than the other legs and release it to match the right amount of pressure from the structure, and making sure it is level.     A series of octagons with 4 airlocks each that could be welded with electron beam welders in orbit.   Rocket engines could even be placed in the spaces between the units, or more likely, attached to each module's underside.  The engines would automatically sync with each other and be managed like a mesh network, so if one were to fail, the others could pick up the slack automatically.  The trick would be to land it softly enough to avoid structural damage.  Shouldn't be too hard at 1/6G.     

This is probably why the Founders didn't put NASA in the Constitution.  Too much waste.

This is my idea for a solar still hull that uses 3D printed aluminum alloy hull that is "corrugated" in order to heat/cool water on the exterior, then a vacuum channel for insulation, then a water storage series of channels that provide more strength and radiation shielding.

It looks like the new "Lockheed Martian" lander has an actual elevator and lower air lock integrated into the design.  There appears to be some sort of air lock system built right into the base that lowers down to the surface.  Plus what appears to be some sort of lifting elevator to lower supples from the cargo hold.     Advantage Lockheed.

My Mars Lander design solves all of those issues, as does the one above I found.

Well, once we have robot armies that are capable of building/printing any part we need with the press of a button, and we will, nothing is impossible.  Terraforming Venus and Mars becomes possible.  Creating massive space stations anywhere in the solar system becomes possible.    Constant travel to anywhere in the solar system becomes possible.   Building a massive interstellar ship in Jupiter's orbit becomes possible.   

I don't think we want to waste water on the Moon for fuel.  Better to harvest for other uses.   Better to use up an asteroid that could eventually threaten Earth and turn it into a mere meteor shower.    I would also say that, yeah actually being IN the suit is pretty useless with the telepresence and drone technology we already have.    A worker bot could be tiny and could mount itself magnetically to a surface and allow for assembly, disassembly, welding, 3D printing, whatever is needed for the job.  All controlled from inside the base.

We can do a 1G 16 spoke station with about 60-75 launches (100m or 120m diameter).   And it could be mostly self sustaining.