New Mars Forums

Of course everybody would *like* to be #1, but it ain't bad to be #2 or #3 either.

Speak for yourself. I am most interested in Venus, Lagrange points and Titan.

Only in regards to the specific thing accomplished. If China can beat the US in a space race, it implies a dictatorship is better *for a space race*. However, it doesn't say anything about other things. If China can beat the US in a space race, it has no bearing whatsoever on whether China is better in GDP, populace happiness quotient, birth rate or anything else. Getting to the moon first only proves a dictatorship's superiority in pursuing space -- nothing else.

Tom, you seem to be under some kind of delusion that we will have to bow down to them if they get to the moon first. That kind of logic seems to make no sense to me. They're not bowing down to the US either because the US got there first.

Space is a pretty damn big place. There is room there for both them and us. Indeed, the more of them there are in space, the cheaper our own missions will get, simply through global economies of scale. Space-rated solar panels will get cheaper when there are more buyers, space-rated electronics will get cheaper when there are more buyers...a lot of the materials will get cheaper because there are more buyers.

We as humanity are all in this together, and what one side does, helps the other side.

A race is not a war. We're not trying to kill the other guy. We shake hands, compete, and then the loser congratulates the winner with a smile, "Well played!" We should be happy for them if they pull off a great race. It's going to be nice having some company out there in the cold vacuum of space.

Well, as long as he used it neutrally it's all good.

I'm sure he (and I, for that matter) would be pleased to consider alternative abbreviations. What is a less offensive abbreviation when you don't feel like spelling out the entire word "Japanese" each time you write it? Jps?

Her name was Anna Politkovskaya.

Trust me, I know all the points you are making and more. They just don't change my mind.

Oh I see, you actually meant to say, "countries I like", not "the Western World".

The difference between the two being, the latter isn't defined by whether you like their government or not. The former is, so using it is the accurate choice when you want to exclude countries you dislike.

Quite bluntly, I'm guessing 95% of Americans couldn't give two craps about who goes to the moon. Their feeling is, "why should we waste money on a race that produces nothing useful?"

Now, I don't feel that way myself. But I can understand the Americans that *do* feel that way. I wish they didn't, but there's little I can do to change it.

Just like there's little Griffin can do to change the fact that China's got a very good chance of beating out the US or Europe or Japan to the moon.

Sometimes, you just gotta live with reality.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this happen.

Democracies, pretty much by definition, implement change slower than dictatorships. Democracies are always about the majority opinion, and the majority opinion *rarely* wants anything radical. We can easily see that in the lack of majority support in the Western countries for the space race. People just don't want anything radical, and the government will have to reflect that.

Conversely, a dictatorship, if they decide they want to go to the moon, they can devote their entire nation's infrastructure to making that happen. They don't need to give a crap about what the people want, they just fulfill the dictator's whims.

It strikes me as obvious that a dictatorship should be more able to pursue the space race than a democracy, since they don't have to be hampered by pleasing public opinion.

You can get yourself new NASA administrators and new congresses ten times over, a hundred times over, a thousand times over if you like, but no administrator and no congress is going to be able to match the sheer singlemindedness that a dictator can put into pursuing a goal. It doesn't matter who are on those seats, they'll always lose to a dictatorship, if the dictatorship chooses to pursue the race.

I don't know if a shipyard, specifically, but in general I agree that what we really need in space is a minerals processing plant. A place that can take lunar rock and asteroid rock and refine it into its component elements. Also, a mining/cargo ship. Those are the two things we need really badly to be our first steps. Having those two would reduce costs of future space endeavors drastically because we wouldn't need to import every ton of material from Earth.

Water

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/30oct_eclss.htm

In Iraq they're testing a "refrigerator sized unit" which purifies 4 gallons per minute. If we assume that 4 gallons is enough for one person's drinking water needs per day, then that unit would be enough for 1440 people. Like oxygen, drinking water appears trivial as long as we are talking hundreds and not thousands of inhabitants.

Shower and industrial water is, of course, a different issue altogether, but we can consider them a luxury and think about them later, until we've resolved all issues with the absolute necessities first.

Food

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=229

Estimates for required area for food production range from 50-80 m2 per person. Even if we made the entire station a huge farmland, its 5680m2 would still only feed 71 people (who would not have any room to sleep because the entire station is farm).

So food production is the real chokepoint. Scrubbing air and water of impurities is comparatively trivial, but food production is what will restrict the amount of people we can cram onto a space station.

With half the station's area taken up by the sidewalks anyhow, we're talking 30 people if the entire remaining area were farmland. And because we want some room for other things on the station than farmland, too, let's say we could have 10-20 people permanently living on a closed environment 3x4x1420 m3 in size.

Going back to my little thought experiment, the NSS Enterprise:

We've got a 3m high x 4 m wide x 1420 m long living space filled with 80N/20O. We can breathe there, but not for long. The next step is thinking about the life support systems.

In BIOS-3 the Russians managed to keep O and CO2 in balance with Chlorella algae -- 8m2 per inhabitant. So if we covered the entire 4x1420 m2 floor with Chlorella, that's 5680m2 of exposed algae which can support 710 people breathing in and out indefinitely. Unless we can find a better CO2->O mechanism, the absolute upper limit of the station's personnel is 710 people, and they would need to be wading in algae 100% of the time. So, having less people and dedicating less space to algae would be desirable. Let's also remember that fully 50% of the station's floor space is tied up in the 2m wide sidewalk running through the station.

One potential idea might be to double-use the sidewalk space. Have algae mats, and then right above them grating which would serve as the sidewalk area. Basically, the sidewalk would be 10-20 cm above the algae mats. Having the sidewalk consist of grating instead of solid would allow the atmosphere into more or less unhindered contact with the algae mats under the sidewalk. Forget red carpets, NSS has green carpets to walk on!

Dual-using the space under the sidewalks gives us a 2x1420m algae growth, which can support 355 people. For that matter, why not make the entire station's flooring grating-on-top-of-algae-pool? Living quarters and everything with algae underneath. That'd give us the previously calculated 710 people max. However, we probably won't even be able to fit even 355 people on the station, so it might be pushing it to have algae carpeting everywhere. We just don't need that much CO2 processing power.

The CO2->O problem is thus fairly trivially solved as long as our station numbers in the hundreds and not in the thousands.

Next up, food and water...