New Mars Forums

I wish to appropriate materials from RGCLARK as they fit with this topic, I feel.  But I do not what to interfere with a more
professional dialog, which I presume is desired at the location of that topic.  https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 01#p238501  Quote:

I agree, but as it might already be known, I have plans for the "Expended" Starship: https://www.humanmars.net/2019/08/cutaw … rship.html  Image Quote:

The above diagram is pretty good for my purposes.

If you broke the Starship, Expendable into two parts, you could use the upper part in LEO+ and refill and fly the lower part to land on the Moon.  You might remove or replace some of the raptors prior to the launch to the Moon.

You might have a specialized landing pad that would minimize the need for legs, and upon landing of the device, it could be tipped and placed on a wheeled device to move it to a desired location to place on a prepared ground.

While these might in some cases be upgraded to host humans, they also might be workshops and safe places for robotic devices at night.

With regolith piled on top perhaps as sintered arches, a thermal capacitor or if you like battery could be created.  The interiors might not be pressurized.  Cart-type rovers might just roll inside for the nighttime; Humanoid robots might climb stairs to go up to a higher deck.  A door might be rather simple just to help retain heat at night.

Electric power within might help the robots endure the night.  If these hosted workshops, then the robots could do useful work at night if electric power is sufficient.  Doing work would help keep the places heated.

You could make long strings of these things.  You could move to higher and higher levels of clean as you moved inward from one section to another.

I see this as a way to accelerate the arrival of the ability to manufacture Satellites on the Moon and a Mass Driver to send them into space.

Back to the upper part of the Starship in LEO+, it could be made into many different things and even the scrapping of it could be very useful for the notions of Sun Synchronous Data Bases in orbit.

So, this is an "Expendable, Not-Really" plan.

Ending Pending

I saw a video about orbital data centers.  It was interesting, but I feel it was flawed.  The author presumed that the satellites might last 6 year and then be disposed of by dumping them into the atmosphere.

I suspect that this is what I would call the "Cyclic Thinking Flaw".

I think this flaw, is a flaw now but was not before.  Farming was Cyclic, with the seasons.

Even Egypt had seasonal water flows.  Although it used technology to irrigate, it developed hierarchy, which in my opinion caused specialization and limited mental resources, and froze the culture.

If by some mysterious source, boats perpetually appeared upstream in the river, and flowed down the river and were composed of various materials including metals, then an industrial feature would be added to the Egyptian culture, and the agricultural economy would have some part of the governing power.

The flow of mass from a world is unnatural also.  But with the invention of Rockets, it has the potential to be perpetual.  From the Earth and eventually with other means as well from other worlds such as the Moon.

Our problem with "Cyclic Thinking Flaw" is that the descendants of "Farmer" thinking, will not be able to comprehend accumulation of Mass in unnatural locations.

We have reached a point where a continual "River" of Mass can be emitted by a world to orbital locations.

The farmer mentality eventually formed hierarchy where some people started farming other people.  This leads to stupid rulers that mostly understand communication skills and violence.  The pesante are not valued for anything except to be easy to extract wealth from using communications and if needed violence.  Any resistance to such wealth flows may get your culled from the peasant gene pool.

It has become clearer to me from items from the internet, the thoughts of others, that in the conflict within the Anglosphere and connected regions, has two major forces.  One has been called by some people, "The City of London".  The other is the USA.

After WWII, in the 20th Century, it appears that the "City  of London" won.  The USA was running out of OIL, and manipulations across the planet endangered imports of Oil.  We became convinced that we needed to deindustrialize.  Until Fracking was invented, we were stuck in that, and the City of London was able to begin culling American resistance to Pesantization.

I think that now our resistance is the result of the Greens promoting ridiculous cultural concepts, which were intended to reduce breeding of industrial peoples especially in Europe and North America.  We have finally rejected that "Cup of Vomit" that they tried to make us drink from.

Now we have this river of mass that is traveling into orbits, and may possibly get another river of matter flowing form the Moon. 

We must understand that the "City of London" (Not entirely a geographical concept), depends on degrading the industrial classes and managing the decline, in order to extract wealth from the decay process.

So, with that historic pattern, our need is to nurture the emergence of a new industrial economy against the consumption of it desired by the "City of London".

At first, at least that may make sense as AI grows in power.  But I don't know what the result later on.  An elevated humanity or an extinct humanity.

I am not thinking that anyone as low as a human knows how this turns out.

Ending Pending

https://www.prometheanaction.com/the-mi … h-11-2026/
Quote:

I am interested in various notions of what reality is.  I am still thinking about it.  I will be happy to be corrected.

Ending Pending

I am going to offer some things that I think are true, and others that I simply hold as speculation/theory that is under further consideration.

There may be a parallel between Subtractive vs. Additive Space, and Subtractive vs. Additive Social regulating.  The reason this may matter is that if we are stuck in a Subtractive form of Social Regulation, we might also naturally apply Subtractive thinking to space where we should not do so.

An example of space environment that may have features of Subtraction and of Addition could be the asteroid belt.  We think that the asteroid belt was added to during an earlier point in the formation of the solar system, and we think it is tending to be subtracted from since then.  As objects collide they either shatter and the dust might be pushed outward by the solar wind and sunlight.  Also, objects that may wander near aa sizable world may be added to that world, and so subtract from the asteroid belt.

In Earth orbits, subtraction is typical.  So, any mass added may be conserved, but any mass added to it may be expected to decay over long stretches of time even with the best conservation efforts.  So, the answer is then to get more mass to those orbits from a proximate world, such as the Earth, or Moon.

In human psychology, I think we are struggling to emerge from a psychology of "Managed Decline".  I am not the first to mention it.  I believe that the expansion of the so-called west, lead to the Baby Boom, and the response was that the management decided to "Eat the Children".  To squeeze more out of them and to throttle down the birth rate.

I do not necessarily find fault with their diagnosis of what they could do or should do.  But they need to readjust at this point.  The social programs that they promoted to discourage successful mating and child rearing events is not appropriate to what is to come.

The idea of breeding a superior race by applying cruelty is stupid anyway.  The results of the application of cruelty will be unsuitable to civilization.  They might wish to have a race tuned for the situation of the 20th century, is stupid in itself as we do not now live in the 20th century.

I feel that the movie "Gravity" illustrates wrong thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_(2013_film)

The idea of managed decline is not to build a society, but to consume it and be the winner while others lose.
Instead of a movie about cleaning up the problems, they are still in the mode for the last Sacellum.  Perhaps about 80 years.
In that time period the west had a bump in population that could be "Eaten" by the rulers, and a contraction of resources available for them.
It is not that that sort of management is always wrong, but it is wrong to insist that it is they only pathway that is appropriate in all time periods.

We are gaining new methods to amplify human power and our reach is expanding.  But we will need to be careful to push back the zombies from the previous era, who only see this potential expansion as requiring an increase in decay rates by any means possible.

So, what is coming in reach are methods to suppress the Kestler Syndrome, and methods to use space resources below the Van Allen Belts and beyond.

So, we need to understand that any effort to build a future will be in some danger from those who find decay a source of their nutrition.

Ending Pending

This is my second post on this topic today: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … ORM=VAMGZC  Quote:

It is an interesting work.  However using Chlorine which can be recycled, it appears that Iron, and I think Oxygen, could be extracted from regolith at much lower temperatures per "Salt Mining".

See this topic: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11305
Quote:

These web sites have useful resources to offer as well:
https://www.youtube.com/@Anthrofuturism
https://www.spacestartupnews.com/

Ending Pending

Being Value

Doing Value

In orbit: Being Value: 1kg Gold, 1kg, Steel, 1 kg Aluminum, 1 kg Silicon, etc.

In orbit: Doing Value: Those masses, involved in wealth creation.

Because In Orbit Being Value could be translated into Doing Value, it could be speculated on, just like precious metals in a vault.

But their Doing Value Potentials, would make that speculation different than on Earth.  The Gold might not be as valuable as the other materials.

Does, space junk and potential space junk have "Being Value".

The radiators from the International Space Station may have being value, if they could be converted to a new "Doing Value".

Atmospheric Drag is a rent that must be paid.  Low orbits have higher rents.  It costs more to preserve any value.

But higher orbits have a greater up-front cost.

But lower orbits have less time latency with the ground.

Electrodynamic Tethers are not massless drives, they expel the Earth.

I think the plan is still very good.

but what some people are missing about the slowdown to Mars, is it may ultimately accelerate a Mars success.

Starship has its own Starlink as a customer, and will likely have the military as a customer.  They will have their data centers as customers, and other people data centers as customers.  And NASA is already a customer for Starship technology..

Human activities on the Moon will probably develop heavy equipment and robot construction groups.

And smaller ships might be developed.

So, when SpaceX starts churning out large numbers of Starships the cost for them will be low, and the maturity of the hardware will be advanced.

Better a Moon base and a Mars colony delayed by 5 years that succeeds than a failure from haste.

Ending Pending

The idea of making convertible Starships has some appeal to me.  Of course, it might not be the most productive pathway to data centers in sun-synchronous orbits, but I kind of like the idea.

Unless the fairing section we converted to be Aluminum, then most of the metal in syn-synchronous orbit would be Steel.

Magdrive and Neumann Drive can run on any conductive material unless it has a low melt point, I understand so Steel might be OK.

But the problem with those types of propulsion is that they are energy pigs, but they do have a high efficiency for the mass expelled.

Space Startup News has an evaluation of them: https://www.spacestartupnews.com/2026/0 … ropulsion/  Quote:

I have toyed with some notions and would like to adapt this one to the Data Center concept:

Ignore the legs for now.  If a Starship were given a detachable upper section of fairings, made of Stainless Steel or Aluminum, then the bags I show might be carried up, uninflected to LEO, in the fairings.  Then the bags would be inflated with bags of materials for 3D printers or Alloys.  And then filled with Urethane foam.  Attached to the sides of the ship in LEO.  Then the Ship being refilled might travel to the Moon without the fairings.

The Fairings left in LEO, could be appropriated by the nest ship that is to be a data center.  It could carry the fairings to sun-synchronous orbit, and then it might be converted into propellants for Neumann Drive or Magdrive.

So, that would be for station keeping for the data centers.

Ending Pending

I have been wondering for a while, how hard would it be to use a Starship of some sort as a data center?

I think that an Expendable-Not-Really Starship, if outfitted with solar panels as a sunshield, and poised in the sunlight could have a cold side that data devices could be bonded to.

The basic idea:

So, some projections seem to be that a onetime Starship might lift 250 tons of cargo eventually.  I think this could be worthwhile as long as the Super Heavy is not expended.

So, in LEO, the Solar Panels might be deployed by robotic systems, and perhaps the Raptors pulled and send back to the surface.  An Electric Rocket motor(s) added, and some amount of a propellant.  Then the Data Center features included to it and then it would fly itself to Sun Synchronous and then start using some of the electric power to power the data center aspects.

This may require one or more reusable Starships to give 100 to 200 tons more resources for each Starship flight with recovery.

So, of course in this case your radiator is Starship tank and fairing walls, which are currently Stainless Steel.  You could add Aluminum radiator fins to those surfaces, but that is more mass.

I do not expect that the two main tanks will be kept pressurized, perhaps a smaller tank could hold actively cooled Argon.

Or perhaps Neumann Drive or Magdrive would be used.

I guess better minds may do something else, but I though the idea at least may disserve a look.

Ending Pending

OK, I have elaborated a bit more:

A bit like a fishing rod that can pivot on the bottom of the solar array.  Forward<>Backward or Left<>Right, or clockwise or counterclockwise.

This may help it dodge space junk below it, or to come close to the object that is to be netted.  The netting apparatus may have small thrusters, to fine adjust quickly the netting event.

Like a fishing rod the cable can let out line with a drag function, to keep the line from snapping.  And like a fishing rod after the event in in control the netted object could be pulled in.

So, I am thinking that the data center elements may orbit just a few 10's of kilometers below the orbit of this service device.

If the service device and the data centers were both in circular orbits, then the net will be moving at a slower speed than the data centers as it depends as part of the catching and service device.  So actually, the timing has to be such that the pendulum has moved the net to it's maximum pendulum speed in a forward direction, to overtake the data center.

Here is further elaboration:

Ideally fetched materials will be reusable part to part, but of course some old stuff might be made into something else, if nothing else then radiation shielding.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

A second fetch method would be to beam power to a Neumann Drive or Magdrive to bring large junk objects up to the service station.  For instance expended 2nd Stages of Terran-R or Rocket Lab, or maybe even Falcon 9's.

So, I feel eventually it makes not sense to drop mass that was lifted to orbit to burn up in the atmosphere.  It's value in orbit is larger than its value as dust in the atmosphere.

So, mass will accumulate in orbit of Earth and perhaps the Moon, even before mass can be extracted from the Moon.

Ending Pending

OK, then referencing the two initial posts, perhaps you include a net that can travel up and down the pendulum tether.

Granted, you also could do a rotavator, but I think that might be more difficult to use with a giant solar power platform.

Then I antihate that you would have electrodynamic tethers that extend upwards and which draw the solar panels upwards against the decay of orbit from air molecules and the snatching process.

Ending Pending