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Mars_B4_Moon

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Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

PowerReactors big so why not Go Big..Giant Village sized Cars/Tanks

I'm exploring this idea, a mega-sized 'Wagon' of sorts but scifi-ish not pulled by a horse but instead a Walking Machine Wagon with a power source inside and maybe the size of a small village or town...of course it does not have to walk, it can drive or crawl like an insect move like a flock of birds or herd of animals or whatever?
I guess in a ways the people don't plant their flag on one hill, they would be like Gypsy or Eskimo or Serbian or Inuit or Roma, from Middle French nomade the people with fixed habitation, but these people would constantly wander the Mars lands.  The distances needed to travel from a Colder part of Mars to a Warmer part of Mars do not seem impossible in the near future, retired exploring hiking people have traveled great distance taking time out on bicycle, or you often hear stories of guy makes record Trek from South America to North America or across Europe or 'Guy Walks Across America'. I wonder if this Robot Mecha Wagon concept might work, a moving walking village on wheels. Maybe the idea I'm trying to form is the idea of a cross breed between a Walking Space Station and a Truck or something, all different sections and modules on the move? Eventually this Nomadic community could lay down their own unique transport perhaps like the Swisslog Monorail is one of the fastest and most efficient systems for the automated transportation, Trains and ships and aicraft on Earth mostly rely on fuels like oil to transport people and goods, the Truck becomes cost effective for shorter distances. Once a rail link is established on Mars maybe a Mono-rail then on average, trains are 4x more fuel efficient, it can carry more freight at the same time than a truck but trucks will deliver perishable goods better and maybe be more 'on time'. Maybe on Mars it would not be one single vehicle but a series of Cars/Trucks linked with each other like a Convoy or Wagon Trail? If you had the mass of people moving themselves, just as a military moves on foot but maybe in an underground tunnel system to shield themselves from Mars hazzards. The nomadic people move by jogging or Bicycle or a human Walking with Military Rucksacks or Tactical Backpack, they have transport, their larger cargo is moved by truck or machine, this would be the most effective form of transport.

I did a search on my idea and did not find anything

Picture this scifi-ish setting I am thinking of on Mars for a moment. This is a fictional speculative scenario, we need to move around while protecting ourself from the hazzards of Mars, so why not explore an idea a giant tank/ship, mega car or train some type of walking vehicle. On Earth the military types have created giant transport helicopters, there are hovercraft, we have the Belaz 75710 a truck with a capacity of almost 500 tons it is the biggest dumper truck in the world, in the horror of World War 2 the Nazis came up with this idea of a crawling Tank/Train/Gun called the Gustav Gun it was intended to crawl or walk or drive into France and fire hundreds of kilometers hitting London all the way from France, I do not know if it ever worked but it is a scary and impressive looking machine. The Terex/Bucyrus RH400 is a peace time machine for building and construction, the machine has a bucket capacity of 45 cubic metres per shovel load. Caterpillar are a great company when it comes to building projects and have a long-held reputation for monster machines, NASA crawler transporters are other almost ship sized MEGA machines for moving rockets

Back on Earth we have the Ainu in north Japan who still live a nomadic life with nature, we have a Race of African Pygmies who live a life nomadic different to the typical Congoid, Negroid, Nilotic peoples of East and West Africa, the Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits a people who reside along the cold coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far northeast of the Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska, Most Indigenous Australian Aboriginal Tribes seem to have been Nomadic prior to Western contact, some Sami Laplander people have a very nomadic life but different to the European Gypsy or Roma community while Magyars and Serbian people once lived a nomad life, the Nukak a previously uncontacted people from the Brazilian Amazon live a nomadic life moving from place to place to get better foods or resources . So in a future Mars with access to machine vehicle technology and resources scare, why not put Everyone into one giant moving machine? Some people might move above ground in a nomadic life, some might move by rail or underground, giant tunnels and subway and railway systems are already possible for mankind, some reach lengths of 30+ miles or 51 km some go as long as  85 miles (137 km) long the Delaware Aqueduct is an aqueduct in the New York City water supply system was one such tunnel system built, Water Tunnel in Finland is another giant system that deals with the Cold Climates, Yulhyeon Tunnel a railway system of South Korea is a huge system for movbing people, the Lake Sevan tunnel is another giant water supply system built by Armenia during Soviet times, Beijing Subway and Guangzhou Metro are massive systems surpassing the Channel Tunnel and Gotthard Base Tunnel, the USA, China, India, Russia operate rail and tunnel systems tens of thousands of miles, a service system as high as 100,000km. .

Let's assume life is hard for colonists, we have one or two amazing robotic factory on the fuctional on suface. These factory were built by enormous expense but the great thing is it comes with near endless power that is almost able to 3-D print and self assemble anything low-tech. This AI factory however can not just 'print' foods, it can not make high tech stuff it can only print things like metals and it can print some basic types of fuel or plastic polymer which our clever A.I robots will then self assemble to make other things. Everything is going mechanized on Earth these days so let's assume Mars has some super factory that a Nation on Earth has or a factor one of our Mega Corporations could build. Let's say in the near future AI, and mechanization and AI software continue growing and growing and let assume for a moment we in the near future and it is not a perfect Utopia, people do go hungry. There is good and bad is healthy competition on Mars from USA, China other parts of Europe and Asia, the Private sector is doing well. Tensions are always high because of lack of resources for people and to help us we have some kind of Robotic type things looking like monkeys or dogs or robo-birds or robotic looking mules or elephants or machine people looking things moving on the surface to help build or repair stuff in factories or we have some AI Boston Boston Dynamics type Robot. Rovers and animal/insect looking rovers are drilling and digging setting up power for a future village and city but life is difficult and Mars is at its maximum human capacity. Let us assume in the near future some of the early Mars settler have a nomadic lifestyle as the people surving on Mars move from one Bio-Dome to another and they are forced to move as temperature and resources change in the long summers and long Martian winters, humans on Mars are acting like Migratory birds or the migrations of Moose, Bull Shark, Bison, Wildebeast, Grey Whale...humans are doing the very same thing on Mars, moving and surving to get access to scarce resources each season. Let's say in our near future scifi Mars people are surviving by moving. There are a few people that started to figure out how to live on Mars by being nomadic like ancient people on Earth once did, these new Mars nomads have mapped out how to survive by moving on the surface but Moving people in buggys or bikes or nuclear cars is not easy, a lot of it can not be done and not if it is done it is not cost effective.

The idea of moving tank cities or mecha castles that move in space, this concept of sorts appears many times in our fictional books and film, in Mortal Engines a movie based on the Low-tech Steampunk novel of the same name by Philip Reeve. In other scifi Literature James Blish wrote a series of books called Cities in Flight, in scifi the idea of people living inside Ship transport probably appears too many times for us to ever count. The idea of 'Mecha' is another idea of people moving around using tech, these giant moving creature looking things or looking like tanks ro suits. In the Gulliver's Travels there is Laputa is a magnetically floating island that was explored before our modern scifi age. The idea of Mecha is speculative scifi concept where people travel around in these IronGiant type suits, it could be s super sized Car like seen in a Mad Max film, it could be a Godzillia type robot or 'Zoids' idea, it is sometimes seen in Japan film as a pure obsession with mecha, the mecha concept of giant robots is all over Japanese and Asian art books and Japan cartoon animation. The kids tv show Power Rangers had the idea of Big robots moving around and fighting. In the tv show Firefly "Trash" there is Bellerophon people living in giant Cloud city type balloons, ultra-wealthy citizens that float over an idyllic sea. Giant Robot tanks and moving towns and cities would appear in comicbooks like the post apocalypse world of the 2000 AD Judge Dredd comics.

Back in our real world on Earth you have Nuclear propulsion in the Seas, there is propulsion of a ship or submarine with heat provided by a nuclear reactor. Russian operates a floating nuclear power station in the cold North Eastern Siberia across from Alaska. Today 32 countries operate nuclear power plants but some countries are starting a nuclear phase out and going back to things like gas or wind or coal? only France, Slovakia, and Ukraine use them as the source for a majority of the country's electricity supply. There are many ideas for power designs, there is also the conventional arangemeent with MOX fuelrods in core control rods and a rotating reflector drum to provide two methods of reactor shutdown. The idea of Fusion might one day no longer be a scifi concept, Liquid Lithium reactors are a possibility. A Big vehicle or small village might have a small reactor, cooled by some inert gas, another idea could be to explore  lithium cooled reactor feeding a thermoelectric converter like on an RTG, people say reactors that are on ships or submarine reactors are too heavy for space use but the reactor tech gets smaller each years. The Charles de Gaulle is a Nuclear-powered Carrier and flagship of the French Navy, the Mutsu from Japan and Otto Hahn from Germany were to be Nuclear powered commercial cargo ships. Some submarines have a single reactor, some Russian submarines have two and also USS Triton, one US Aircraft Carrier was powered by 8 reactors.  There are some ideas from the Navy and military and National Reactor designs are already out there, the Pirvate Sector can possibly one day take and modify these designs for some kind of Giant moving Village/Truck/Wagon the relability and simplicity of these system is something that people on Mars would learn from. Harnesing liquids or chemical from the martian air to help augment cooling is an idea and with robotics and 3-d printing it could be possible a lot of the reactor itself is already pre-produced on Mars in some sort of AI 3-d printer pre production phase and only would need the final higher tech Nuclear Reactor parts delivered from Earth. There might also be Internal combustion engines on Mars, perhaps a Village or Vechile or Trasnport Tank or Town could be powered with Methane or Diesel engine, the Solar electric power topic has also been covered for delivering power to vehicles on Mars.

Moving machines, wonderful power sources and big moving mechanical creations is something that features in our science fiction all the time. Transformers the kids toon and fictional movie also explore the idea of mecha, a person going inside this machine that can change itself from a machine to a big robot. The big mecha machine idea it is also seen in the James Cameron movie Avatar and the second Aliens movie we see characters like Lieutenant Ellen Ripley move around in big robot suits, Pacific Rim is a 2013 American science fiction monster film directed by Guillermo del Toro people moving around in Godzillia sized suits, in Star Trek the Borg Cub was this space ship where 'Borg' lived inside while being able to launch colonization on other planets, the Borg often portrayed as 'evil'. Children are familar with mecha in the Marvel/Disney movie Iron Man the character Tony Stark makes himself even bigger than the Giant Hulk and beats up Hulk wearing this giant special suit. The idea of Mecha also appears in 'Warhammer' universe, the people sometimes move around in space by Combining cioncepts of moving Houses that are cross breed with things that look like Tanks, Humans, Animals, Fortress, Trains and other 'Mecha' these giant moving machines sometimes don't really look like any exact thing but they are almost ugly looking Abominations, not a Tank or a Human shape or a House or an Animal hape but instead these weird cross-bred ideas moving across planetary landscape taking energy from its fuel and powersource. In StarWars which is considered Low scifi Fantasy you had the idea of All Terrain Walkers, machine that looked like Machine-Dinosaurs fought like the futurist idea of scifi tanks and the Robot Dinosaur could transport people inside its belly, other science fiction had less Wars and more Peacrful concepts such as machine that looked insect or carb like or sometimes in scifi you had machines that looked like creatures from Folklore or Mythology. In "hard science fiction" scifi writers would write in such a way not to include fantastical ideas but instead explore ideas which could be one day physically possible, for example they woud try to explore elements of realism in 2001 A Space Odyssey, the film Moon in 2009, Blade Runner or the Martian film based on book by Andy Weir. In a complete contrast to hard-scifi in sword and Wizard Sorcery books they sometimes explore the idea of a Castle that can move, sometimes a mix of scifi and fanasty like 'Asgard' in Marvel or a Flying City or a Fortress that moves like a Beast or even an idea in Fantasy of Floating Continent.

Here are some scifi pics I found

Although not exactly what I'm exploring, maybe something that looks more like a cross between an insect and NASA's crawler transport.

I guess the near future 'idea' I'm exploring or coming up with is a cross between a Transport Ship, a Village and a big Tank with maybe some kind of Power Reactor inside..., it would combine the ideas of vechicle technology, or maybe the people themselves woudl move, help with power and robotics and giant walking or moving architectural designs, is such a thing even remotely possible?

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-11-30 07:15:50)

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: PowerReactors big so why not Go Big..Giant Village sized Cars/Tanks

It could be amazing if a Mars community could self assemble itself with robot vehicles, material of course 3-D printed and then a concept of exploring how to move while deconstructing and then a community reassemble itself after moving to another location. Many companies from Earth are now looking at the Moon and Mars, Rovers have already done sucessful missions on Mars and Cars have already been tested on the Moon and the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) was a battery-powered four-wheeled rover used on the Moon in the last three missions of the American Apollo program. Sometimes on Earth the military produce some very intresting vechiles, Zubr class NATO name "Pomornik" is a class of Russian or Soviet-designed air-cushioned landing craft (LCAC) the hovercraft is, the world's largest, with a standard full load displacement of 555 tons, could such a style of vechile be used on Mars. Could flying craft or drones become useful in a Wagon trail, perhaps to scout ahead and look out for dangers in a route traveled? Back on Earth we have vehicles like the Aton Impulse Viking is an expensive 17-foot, 2.5-ton car/truck that is designed to go offroad and built to get people out of blinding Siberian style Snowstorms. Dodge the car company has a Power Wagon, it comes with the standard front-mounted winch helping anyone who got stuck. The Hummer was originally designed as an all-terrain military vehicle, the Hummer was purpose-built to perform a sandy environment. The old Beetles of the 1950s and 60s and 1970s were modified for the desert and customized for races the Beetle's rear-engine configuration put so much weight over those rear drive wheels, these little VWs became the blueprint for the original dune buggies. In parts of the world some poorer people live in trailer parks, people who can not afford a big expsnsive home or who can not stay in one place sometimes live in  park home, trailer home, it can also be aprt of the Gypsy or Carnie lifetsyle. TYhe concept of 'modular homes' in that they are homes almost ready to assemble or almost made but transported on flatbed trucks rather than being towed, a moving caravan home moved by big cars or SUV the modular home is moved trucks and when it reaches its destination it usually becomes a permenant fixture on Earth, others might move like a living-van, there were many Campervan by companies like Chevrolet.

Perhaps on Mars a moving home will have some kind of robotics, it could perhaps assemble or disassemble itself almost scifi like 'Transformers' or 'Ironman' cartoon. A unique Mars vehicle might become a mix of an off-road vehicle, people might live inside it like travel trailers but it also might be a robot that builds itself and unbuiilds itself Japanese Origami-style, they could be some form of popup campers. In Europe there is the living concept of the Truck Surf Hotel, the Hotel moves like a truck but then builds itself to become a two-story, five-room bed-and-breakfast hotel built onto a Mercedes Actros truck chassis, which serves the surfing community, these guys also live a nomadic lifestyle but they are recreational people with money to burn. The Truck suf hotel 'Transfroms' itself from a Truck into a Hotel in Portugal, its downstairs is plumbed for heating and it has lots of water, it has a restroom, cooking, washing, shower, and kitchen, and sewage. The Transforming Truck has two 500 litres (130 US gal) fresh and wastewater storage tanks. In the US a snowbird man or songbird woman is a person who migrates from the colder northern parts of North America to warmer southern locales, typically during the winter, some are older or retired people who say their joints are sore in the winters or people who suffer from seasonal affective disorder who wish to enjoy the longer daylight hours in the southern latitudes in winter. It happens along the West coast near California and Oregon and Washinton State there are also Several areas in Florida and Arizona have large RV communities that appear and disappear seasonally. The moving motor home on Mars would become the 'Wagon' of sorts that would move Martians in a Nomadic lifestyle, the Larger home and Domes could robotically build themselves and disassemble themselves and then be transported by a some super sized Truck or Tank, the whole thing looking like a Oregon Wagon Trail or maybe the entire movement of people looking like convoy is a group of Truck vehicles like you would see back on Earth.

I will post some pics again to try show or slowly paint a picture of the future 'idea' I'm exploring, maybe a subway or complex tunnel system could be built as the nomadic Mars people moved from North to South and back from South to North during the seasonal changes on Mars.

Former school bus or shuttle bus have also been purchased and customized, they have been converted into a RV. People often traveled with safety in numbers, the military use Naval convoys, planes fly in formation, refugees would often move together in one mass and Humanitarian aid convoys would push themselves into war zones, why would the people on Mars not move in the same fashion? Back on Earth there is also an off road expensive vehicle called the Desert Challenger, it is off-road motorhome is among the biggest all-wheel vehicles around the world so far, it can carry 2500 l fuel, hold 2400 l drinking water, 66 kg stored gas, keep food supplies and has on-board batteries. Perhaps a moving vehicle robot might even dig itself into a hill side or cover itself in dirt to help with radition shielding, it could be a Transport Module and also perhaps some kind of Drilling or Digging Machine vehicle? Today the Japanese company Toyota are looking to space travel perhaps soon ready to lauch their own 'Lunar Cruiser' it seems also that  Lockheed/GM are exploring Motor concepts, such a vehicle would offer the chance to save on space suits, give people the chance of being able to move about on the Moon or Mars without a space suit in the comfort of their own normal clothing. Porsche family from the German automobile dynasty is also looking to space and XTend Design is showing off concepts inspired by Skoda's electric car.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-11-30 05:55:16)