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As for a refuellable nuclear reactor, one option is a thorium reactor. Thorium was found by Mars Global Surveyor, so we could mine nuclear fuel on Mars. Thorium consumes 1 neutron for each neutron it releases, so radiation leakage out of the reactor core causes the reaction to damp down and stop. It requires a neutron source to keep it going. But a small uranium neutron source can keep a large thorium fuel core going. If we find a deposit of thorium concentrated enough to mine, we could keep mass sent from Earth very small. Furthermore, thorium is an indicator mineral for uranium so prospecting for thorium might stumble upon a uranium deposit. It would take substantial processing to convert uranium ore into an operational reactor, but the first Mars settlement will use a reactor sent whole from Earth. We could consider energy independence from Earth a decade or more after establishing the first mining/manufacturing capability.
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I could dig up the synthesis and reactants needed if you have a specific polymer you'd like to make though my knowledge of inorganic (minerals) is limited. I could make a stab at it.
I could give you the list of minerals believed to be in Mars soil, and ask which will dissolve. If that isn't your field we could focus on polymers. I compiled a list of most polymers and reactions to make them. It's a fairly simple list of reactions and I don't have energy figures for most of them. If you want to give details to each process, and most importantly energy figures, it would help Mars Homestead plan the size of the reactor needed. It would also help us choose which material to use. Several options are available, the question is how much energy is needed for each and how much equipment.
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As for a refuellable nuclear reactor, one option is a thorium reactor. Thorium was found on Mars by Mars Global Surveyor, so we could mine nuclear fuel on Mars. A thorium consumes 1 neutron for each neutron it releases, so radiation leakage out of the reactor core causes the reaction to damp down and stop. It requires a neutron source to keep it going. But a small uranium neutron source can keep a large thorium fuel core going. If we find a deposit of thorium concentrated enough to mine, we could keep mass sent from Earth very small. Furthermore, thorium is an indicator mineral for uranium so prospecting for thorium might stumble upon a uranium deposit. It would take substantial processing to convert uranium ore into an operational reactor, but the first Mars settlement will use a reactor sent whole from Earth. We could consider energy independence from Earth a decade or more after establishing the first mining/manufacturing capability.
Sounds interesting but I would sooner save the labor for the first 50 yeas and ship the fuel from earth. Although time permitting I think some early experimentation with such processes should be done in the first years. Question, aside from the fuel is the mass per power output of a thourium reactor comparable to other refuallable reactors. The reason I ask this is even if local fuel is used a reactor will probably not be built on mars for quite some time. Thus the value of using local fuel must be compared against to cost of any added weight that might need to be shipped to import such a reactor.
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" It would take substantial processing to convert uranium ore into an operational reactor"
No kidding. It takes ALOT of processing, even with the fanciest centrifuges or laser ionization seperators. The small mass of fuel needed dictates that highly enriched uranium will simply be sent from Earth for the forseeable future... I don't think mining Martian radioactives will be practical for some decades following first landings.
Edit: Traditional methods require alot of Fluorine too
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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My field is more concerning the study of polymers but I know quite a bit about synthetic methods, though thermodynamic calculations would be a little rough.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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RobertDyck, I think this Mars Homestead stuff is a very worth while project and congratulations on all the work and research. However, when I checked out the link earlier all I saw was pictures. It sounds like you went further then pictures and started identifying some processes. This is good for brain storming but does not qualify as engineering. We have to go beyond the chemical process and start considering some flows and reaction rates. A device needs to be designed that can produce some of these things at reasonable rates relative to the mass of the device. We then have to look at how much the device weighs how much it will cost to ship and how much will it save or cost us in the long room. We have to go from vague brainstorming ideas to cost benefit analysis and program timelines.
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That's exactly what we're trying to do. I can't give you figures now because we're just working on it. The two guys who founded "Mars Homestead" started with a "programming team" who would make broad-strokes estimates of all those things you're looking for. These estimates are intended to give direction for more detailed research. For example, do we want masonry buried in regolith or a fibreglass pressure shell? Or aluminum, or steel? How big does the habitat have to be? How much power will we need, how big will the reactor have to be?
The "programming" discussion isn't available to everyone on the web, it's a private email list only available to team members. The result from each phase is published. They're recruiting for the second phase, if you want to join there is a link to email your interest.
I was supposed to detail materials production, bulk gas, and life support. For life support I used figures for equipment built for the US habitation module of ISS, but a couple members had trouble reading my report (only 4 pages long) and one individual disagreed with my approach of a recycling life support system separate from bulk gas production. Recycling takes less power and I think we want to keep bulk gas for building and backup life support only. To ensure my equipment mass and energy figures were realistic I used flight hardware from ISS. I had trouble getting equipment mass and energy figures for all steps of all polymers considered; it's a big job. Thanks in advance for the help, GCNRevenger, I really need it.
The manufacturing guy quit (personal life stuff, didn't have time) and the project manager expected me to pick that up as well. I had difficulty completing everything in my own area, I didn't have time for manufacturing as well. "Manufacturing" means taking raw material such as sheets of aluminum, pellets of plastic or beads of glass and making equipment or habitat modules. I asked the aerospace engineer I know who develops tooling to manufacture airliners to handle the manufacturing; she expressed interest but hasn't been as quick as the project manager wanted.
Anyone who wants to volunteer to develop the cost/benefit analysis or timeline is more than welcome to volunteer.
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Anyway my area of study is control systems so that is where I will be the most beneficial. I haven’t renewed my membership in a long time. I am a student and decided I didn’t need the expense however small. I do plan to donate large sums of money later in life but anyway……. Lets get back to the Mars homestead project.
Looking at an earth industrial park of just a small town it is clear that we are not going to put that in a rocket. I think manufacturing is a fairly big enterprise and it will be quite some time before we have large factories on mars. First there will be power, shelter, food, and gas. The industry will primarily be devoted to maintain or expanding these necessities. The initial objective will be to lower the cost of sustaining people on mars so science and engineering research can be done at a reduced price. The accumulation of this enterprise over time will lead to a more self sufficient community.
Anyway maybe I am thinking along the lines of your group or maybe not. I do think you are taking on quite an ambitious project for a small group of people and it may be more productive to try an organize the information gathered into some publicly accessible resource. Until there is a large body of literature I think the papers should focus on one technology at a time or overall planning and strategy. The reports should be summarize the work of the group, with key results and should not try and document everything.
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Mars Homestead is more ambitious than I thought. Yes, John's right - it's going to barely creep along with only a few volunteers. If your description is accurate, it's moderators could stand to be more focussed or more forgiving.
However, I don't see anyone else doing a much better job on this particular issue. I'm glad to see someone exploring it. If I weren't expecting to be as busy as a one-armed paper hanger till February, I might send in one of those volunteer letters myself.
Maybe in a few months...
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Well,
Before we look at colonization of mars or any other planetary body in our solar system we need to examine the required infrastructure around earth-moon system. We need to move upwards of 100+ humans over a period of years to and from mars to create a successful colony outpost. We have many different issues to overcome including the long term effects of lower gravity on Mars relating to the conlonists.
Yes, the initial costs to build the infrastructure within the earth-moon system and the transportation of cargo, and personnel to and from other planetary bodies will be extremely costly in the short term but the benefits out way the initial costs, with the advancements in human understanding, knowledge, new processes, newer technologies, and new discoveries for humanity.
To move a large workforce offworld will change the dynamics of the human economic world. Economics in space are different to earth. Entire economic structure will be developed and regulatory frameworks will be required to be assembled to expand the human settlement in space starting in low earth orbit and expanding to the moon. Debates might include do we have earth-moon economic system or does the moon have a separate and treaties are required. ( earth dollar, lunar dollar, martian dollar and what central bank and what government framework etc.)
These are some of the issues that need to be sorted out as we build a exploration plan of our solar system and land on planetary bodies setup permanent outposts and move humans and cargo throughout our solar system.
You want to stay - are the government framework controlled from earth or from Mars ? who will make that decision ? As the technology to get to mars becomes cheaper more and more will come, are we going to let the strong rule with a private security forces like in 15-17th century feudal earth or mars security forces are going to be controlled from earth as a new territory with only a governor.
I know I am looking ahead but we need to look ahead because these issues will be decide on how the outpost become a settlement and how the development of business, investment, terraforming and expansion of humnaity onto other planetary bodies throughout our solar system and beyond.
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Well,
Before we look at colonization of mars or any other planetary body in our solar system we need to examine the required infrastructure around earth-moon system.
Okay, there is next none none. That part is done lets go to mars now.
We need to move upwards of 100+ humans over a period of years to and from mars to create a successful colony outpost.
100+ so what its just a number. Successful in what sense? Over a period of years? Well we certainly can’t move then there in a couple of days.
We have many different issues to overcome including the long term effects of lower gravity on Mars relating to the conlonists.
I’m over them. Still got issues? If not lets go.
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"We have many different issues to overcome including the long term effects of lower gravity on Mars relating to the conlonists."
I think he is thinking about slow muscle degredation, which might make returning to Earth difficult.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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We have many different issues to overcome including the long term effects of lower gravity on Mars relating to the conlonists."
I think he is thinking about slow muscle degredation, which might make returning to Earth difficult.
I know this but I don’t think it is a problem. I wonder how the translife project is going or if the centrifuge will be put on the ISS soon. I’m sure we will device medical ways to reduce these effects and I think the human body is resilient enough. People will recover and rebuild there mussels. It will just take them a while. Better option. Stay on mars.
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Anyway my area of study is control systems so that is where I will be the most beneficial. I haven’t renewed my membership in a long time. I am a student and decided I didn’t need the expense however small. I do plan to donate large sums of money later in life but anyway……. Lets get back to the Mars homestead project.
Looking at an earth industrial park of just a small town it is clear that we are not going to put that in a rocket. I think manufacturing is a fairly big enterprise and it will be quite some time before we have large factories on mars. First there will be power, shelter, food, and gas. The industry will primarily be devoted to maintain or expanding these necessities. The initial objective will be to lower the cost of sustaining people on mars so science and engineering research can be done at a reduced price. The accumulation of this enterprise over time will lead to a more self sufficient community.
Anyway maybe I am thinking along the lines of your group or maybe not. I do think you are taking on quite an ambitious project for a small group of people and it may be more productive to try an organize the information gathered into some publicly accessible resource. Until there is a large body of literature I think the papers should focus on one technology at a time or overall planning and strategy. The reports should be summarize the work of the group, with key results and should not try and document everything.
But, that the point John, we are going to have a problem putting in factories and we can't leave factories out of the picture either. Whether to have factories on Mars or to have no factories on Mars, they each have there limiting effects as to what we can do on Mars.
As you noted, it going to be a major endeavor to put factories on Mars and we can't currently do it with present infrastructure or technology that we have on hand. I mean, it just can't be done.
Your second choice is not viable either, because once you get over a certain number of people on Mars, shipping the stuff you need from Earth to Mars is not going to be a viable option either. Even with a partial use of Martian resources, it still no going to sufficiently offset what we will have to send from the Earth to Mars so that the Martian colony can continue to exist. Even to get that Martian colony up to just a hundred people with the present technology and infrastructure, it may be undoable let alone get the Martian colony up to a thousand or more people. Without the ability to be able to put in a manufacturing complex on Mars it might not be doable to colonize Mars past a few hundred to maybe a thousand people, because of the cost to maintain them on Mars.
No matter which way we go we are going to run into a barrier when it comes to Mars. If we choose not to attack the manufacturing problem, we doom any serious attempt to colonize Mars. If we choose to deal with the manufacturing problem, it will doom short term effort, because it will take at least two generation to develop the technology and build the infrastructure to be able to build a manufacturing complex on Mars. Like it would take forty years or so with a government crash program with almost unlimited funding to be able to do something like that.
Larry,
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Well,
Before we look at colonization of mars or any other planetary body in our solar system we need to examine the required infrastructure around earth-moon system. We need to move upwards of 100+ humans over a period of years to and from mars to create a successful colony outpost. We have many different issues to overcome including the long term effects of lower gravity on Mars relating to the conlonists.
Yes, the initial costs to build the infrastructure within the earth-moon system and the transportation of cargo, and personnel to and from other planetary bodies will be extremely costly in the short term but the benefits out way the initial costs, with the advancements in human understanding, knowledge, new processes, newer technologies, and new discoveries for humanity.
To move a large workforce offworld will change the dynamics of the human economic world. Economics in space are different to earth. Entire economic structure will be developed and regulatory frameworks will be required to be assembled to expand the human settlement in space starting in low earth orbit and expanding to the moon. Debates might include do we have earth-moon economic system or does the moon have a separate and treaties are required. ( earth dollar, lunar dollar, martian dollar and what central bank and what government framework etc.)
These are some of the issues that need to be sorted out as we build a exploration plan of our solar system and land on planetary bodies setup permanent outposts and move humans and cargo throughout our solar system.
You want to stay - are the government framework controlled from earth or from Mars ? who will make that decision ? As the technology to get to mars becomes cheaper more and more will come, are we going to let the strong rule with a private security forces like in 15-17th century feudal earth or mars security forces are going to be controlled from earth as a new territory with only a governor.
I know I am looking ahead but we need to look ahead because these issues will be decide on how the outpost become a settlement and how the development of business, investment, terraforming and expansion of humnaity onto other planetary bodies throughout our solar system and beyond.
It looks like you have spent some time thinking about the problem and I can agree with most of what you are saying. I have brought up many of the same issue on this board, so I understand where you are coming from.
Larry,
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Without the ability to be able to put in a manufacturing complex on Mars it might not be doable to colonize Mars past a few hundred to maybe a thousand people, because of the cost to maintain them on Mars.
The more people you have on mars the bigger manufacturing complex you can build on mars and the parts that are too hard to make can be shipped from earth. I don’t get why starting with small obtainable goals with a degree of vision and forethought is such a foreign concept. There is much that can be done now on mars in terms of science, testing ISRU techniques and testing construction techniques. These things must be done first before you spend trillions committing thousands of people to a futile battle for survival because you went way to big before the necessary ground work was done. The economic and humanitarian consequences of such a misguided act are horrendous.
So we don’t build a factor on mars at first, we just have a odd mix of machines producing the resources that minimize the costs during each phase of development. We build infrastructure and capital as we go along until a bigger base/colony can be supported. You seem to have a love affair with man power. People may be better at many tasks but are expensive to sustain. The more automation and robotics that can be used to build up the necessary infrastructure the cheaper local production will occur in the short run. This will speed up the time for which it is possible for mars to support large settlements. To live on mars we need capital on mars not on the moon. I don’t go build my house in Alaska if I want to live in Florida.
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The idea is that the combination of whatever we send will be able to produce bigger and better copies of them themselves out of local materials.
So basically once we send up a core kit of bus-sized single purpose plants, there first goal after production of maintainance and replacement parts will be reproduction. Granted some things won't be possible for a good long while, like a chip fab plant, stuff like that can be set in kit from earth.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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The idea is that the combination of whatever we send will be able to produce bigger and better copies of them themselves out of local materials.
So basically once we send up a core kit of bus-sized single purpose plants, there first goal after production of maintainance and replacement parts will be reproduction. Granted some things won't be possible for a good long while, like a chip fab plant, stuff like that can be set in kit from earth.
That is ultimately the most desirable case and I hope we get to that level of technology soon. However, I don’t think that miniaturized manufacturing technologies have high output rates. The cost saving come by leveraging a large amount of mass from a small amount of mass in a short period of time. The study NASA did on the moon said the reproduction time was 50 years. This works out to 1.4 % per year of capital growth. But this is with dumping all the resources into capital growth and what a base/colony needs is capital output and not capital growth. 1.4% is significantly bellow a reasonable rate of return like 10%. Thus if the money was instead invested in the stock market and the resulting interest used to fund lunar development the lunar colony would grow quicker then it does with the self replicating technology. Still for other reasons even a 1.4% growth rate on the moon could be a good investment but the NASA report was only a report. The hardware does not exist.
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I think that "capital" should be measured by the things we no longer have to send. If they have some extra iron that they've shiffed out of the soil, and melt it down and decide they can mill out key components, such as the frame, out of next bulldozer due to be launched. That will save tons off the next launch leaving room for other stuff.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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I think that "capital" should be measured by the things we no longer have to send. If they have some extra iron that they've shiffed out of the soil, and melt it down and decide they can mill out key components, such as the frame, out of next bulldozer due to be launched. That will save tons off the next launch leaving room for other stuff.
It will only save off a key component if they get an output out of the equipment sent to mars of over 10% of the mass of the equipment per year. If the component requires labor then to calculate the input mass due to labor the fraction of the time the person spent working on it must be multiplied by the total mass budget that was required to support the person.
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Robert, has the Mars Homestead project looked at metal carbonyls? It should be possible to find nickel-iron meteorites on Mars. Unweathered regolith should be a few percent nickel-iron. They should separate from silicates magnetically. Zubrin's *Case for Mars* talks about exposing nickel-iron to heated carbon monoxide gas to make liquid metal carbonyls, which can be poured into molds, then heated up to crystalize out a solid metal. I suppose some parts could be cold-rolled as well, which makes them stronger.
-- RobS
P.S.: Regarding earth-moving equipment being too light in weight on Mars to work well, couldn't one add weight to them on Mars by tossing rocks into a special metal box?
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Looking at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ma … ]Elemental Composition of Rocks and Soil
A good mixture to start from. But how to extract and manufacture basic building components, with lightweight equipment ?
Gaming, mapping, visualization software developers are starting to focus on Mars.
http://www.digitalspace.com/papers/simp … l.html]Sim Planet Even http://www.esri.com/news/releases/02_2q … .html]Esri is getting into multiple planets.
Now that Bush has fought the Mother of All Battles,
can US intelligence spare a spy satellite to image Mars ?
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"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"
Looking at
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ma … able1.html
I'm slightly confused. :hm: :hm: :hm: :hm:
edit: missing /code in brackets to close
Modified by moderator 2022/06/16 during Post Repair
There was a young lady named Bright.
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
in a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
--Arthur Buller--
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Ok so doing manufacturing of products are dependent on resources and cost to mars orbit for mass of item. Use what you have taken with you and turn that into useful items to jump start manufacturing processes.
Example food containers and other such packaging: shred and melt to form plastic sheets, if materials are available make plastic solar cells, Make plastic tubing lots of different stuff can be made from this waste items..
Looks like some of the first items need to include a furnace or some sort of smelting oven. This same tool can also be used to make glass from the regolith and the list goes on and on for what it can do.
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What about recycling the original transports and propulsion stages?
PS:
Recycled plastics are an excellent suggestion, Spacenut. That reminds me of a prior thread:
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … moplastics to Mars
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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