New Mars Forums

The only thing he's really selling is insanity, but he does need to lay off the Holocaust revisionism (which I deleted).

Bolonkin is a genius.  You could fund the domes by using them to grow biofuel crops (e.g., switchgrass) on otherwise unusable land.  We should do this.

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill//tea … a/hell.pdf

The force due to gravity drops linearly from the surface to zero at the center (assuming constant density).

F(r) = G*(4/3)*pi*rho*r

where G is the gravitational constant
r is the distance from the center
and rho is the density of the mass in the sphere defined by r

** Edit to add gravitational constant.

This is basically the plan outlined in Zubrin's The Case for Mars

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

It isn't possible.

$US 1 million per pound delivered to the surface. 

Rocketry is a strategic technology with national security implications and thus will never by unburdened by government regulation.

Best of luck to you.

Hi Orionite, welcome to newmars.

Good thought, but where are you going to get enough Xenon?

Possibly at Europa.  I think you'll have a much harder time with any of the smaller moons ( which is most of them ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_so … _by_radius )

Well, the heating of Io should come from the rotation of Io in Jupiter’s powerful gravitational field.  And probably early on it did, but then the internal friction that generates the heating eventually caused Io to be “tidally locked” to Jupiter (i.e., rotate exactly once per orbit so that the induced tidal bulge doesn’t have to move like it does on Earth).  If Io’s orbit were exactly circular, then there would be no heating, but because it is elliptical, it still gets “squeezed” each orbit by changing gravitational forces and that is what generates the heat. 

My understanding is that Io’s interaction with Jupiter’s other moons is what keeps its orbit elliptical.  I’m not sure how stable that is – I’m sure it can last for millions of years, but I don’t know about billions.  It’s an interesting question.

Hilarious.  Have you ever even had an original idea?

Actually, the first human-made object to reach Mars was a Russian probe ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2

... but it really should have slowed down a bit more before reaching the surface.

Viking 1 sent back the first images.

JP Aerospace has probably taken this idea the furthest ...

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

The problem is that mere altitude doesn't get you much.  You need orbital velocity and lots of it.  The main benefit of Pegasus' carrier aircraft is that they can avoid some launch scrubs due to bad weather.  But balloons are even more sensitive to weather.

Using thermite as a fuel is problematic for a number of reasons.  The first is that it has a low specific impulse (Isp) which is the general measure of a good fuel.  The second is that it burns so hot that it will destroy the rocket engine unless you use CNT composites or something.  The third is that the inputs are solids, so you are limited in design - you can't pump solid aluminum.  The fourth is that one of the outputs (aluminum oxide) won't be a gas, so it will coat everything, even if you use CNT composites, further limiting your design choices (basically it would have to be a big dumb booster, further killing your Isp).

There was some talk about using a tri-fuel mixture of Aluminum, Oxygen and a little Hydrogen for lunar missions that was supposed to yield an Isp of 400 seconds, so you might want to look into that.  In general you want to use atoms with the smallest possible nucleus - Hydrogen if possible.

It's annoying, but you can keep it for now since you're all enthusiastic 

Yes, but in practice it is easier to get Deuterium from seawater by chemical methods. 

ITER uses Deuterium/Tritium fusion.  Tritium is made commercially  from Lithium-6 via neutron bombardment (you can use a fission reactor, but you don't need one, just a particle accelerator).

Although Deuterium/Tritium is easier, Deuterium/Deuterium is also possible, as is Deuterium/Helium-3.  On Earth, Helium-3 is "produced" from Tritium decay, but people have long talked about mining the lunar regolith for He3 (as well as, later, the gas giants).