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Here's some different ideas of what we can use on Mars to power cars (or whatever we'll get around with), trains, machinery, and to provide electricity in general to colonies and such. As you all know, there are no fossil fuels on Mars.
Solar-will be great in areas with few dust storms, but if/when terraformed, as on Earth many areas will be too cloudy to be effective. Plus, the sheer amount of acreage needed for the photovaltic panels is not efficient
Hydrogen-Burning hydrogen (assuming an eventual O2 atmosphere) would yield only water vapor (which Mars could use) but where do we get the H2 in the first place??
Wind/Hydroelectric - Wind may work now, but the thinness of the air would be an impediment. On a terraformed Mars, sure. Hydroelectric could work if we made some sort of dam.
Ethanol/Methanol - If/when Mars can grow outdoor crops, this could be viable. Of course to burn anything you must have oxygen first. But to grow crops outdoors you'd need at least SOME oxygen...
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Everything depends on abundant power.
When man lands on Mars, first will be the unfolding of solar arrays for life support systems, greenhouses, and a miniature factory to produce more necessities. Nuclear plant/battery would be good insurance for dusty weather.
All optimized to reduce chances of a catastrophe.
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Use solar or/and nuclear energy to produce nanoparticle alluminium dust.
Burn it in internal combustion engines with CO2 from the surrounding atmosphere , compressed for the engine with turbocharger. The Aluminium steals the oxigen to form alumina and carbon, the solid residue could be processed out of the engine in some vacuum-cleaner method.
With dry ice + nanoparticle aluminium mixture , you could easily have also solid fuel monopropelant rocket booster , both for ground-top-ground applicatioins, and for ground-to-orbit ones.
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My personal vision of Mars is initially one in which we start with the basics in order to keep the cost down. As all high technology will have to be imported from Earth at substantial cost for quite a long time; i suggest that we would have to engage in what I call "retro-tech".
In terms of propulsion, I would say that our best bet initially would be steam power. The compound silane could be easily manufactured on Mars as part of the in-situ atmospheric processing for air, water, and rocket fuel by combining silicon from the sand with hydrogen. At ambient Martian temperatures, silane would be a semi solid. What makes silane useful is that it can combust or :burn" in a CO2 environment.
This silane semi-solid would not be useful in any sort of internal combustion due to its consistency but would make great fuel for a boiler.
Steam power could run vehicles, turn turbines for power, and provide hot running water and the only thing you need to make that happen is sand; one thing that Mars has plenty of.
I know that this is not as sexy as most other ideas but it would be relatively cheap and practical.
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I guess it comes down to exercise bikes driving electric generators...Ten million colonists riding to nowhere just to keep the batteries charged.
"There's plenty of work at the electricity plant... We pedal- power the generators all day."-Phil, Mars Colonist and Electricity producer.
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It is very unlikely that there are fossil fuels on mars but there is still some debate whether oil even comes from fossils. It may come from deposits of natural gas and underground pressures.
The great dust storms on mars cover the whole planet so there's really no getting away from them, unless you go underground, but they usually happen at a certain time of the year. Solar is still a good supplemental power source on mars.
Karov: Burning aluminum and oxygen in internal combustion engines? You would have to bring most of your oxygen from the earth and ICE use a tremendous amount of oxygen.
SRMeaney: People burn food and oxygen to make energy. I think our efficiency is about as low as you can get compared to other energy generating equipment.
I see nuclear power supplemented by solar energy being used for a very long time on mars.
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Karov: Burning aluminum and oxygen in internal combustion engines? You would have to bring most of your oxygen from the earth and ICE use a tremendous amount of oxygen.
Dook: read more carefully or to explain it in simpler way?
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Thomas:
Yay!
I've a bit of the same feeling about this... Just find yourself a technical encyclopedia from around 1900-1930... A lot of that tech is
1) still useful, like telephones, electricity, yadaayadayada...
2) Quite simple to build with a minimal of initial technology.
Some kind of 'bootstrapping,' refining your tech as you get more stuff you can 'brew' in-situ. Using late 19th- early 20th century tech. Simpl but robust, stuff you can repair yourself, w/o having to wait months for excuisite spare part #18885-ab-445AA getting to you from Earth.
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Thomas:
Yay!
I've a bit of the same feeling about this... Just find yourself a technical encyclopedia from around 1900-1930... A lot of that tech is
1) still useful, like telephones, electricity, yadaayadayada...
2) Quite simple to build with a minimal of initial technology.Some kind of 'bootstrapping,' refining your tech as you get more stuff you can 'brew' in-situ. Using late 19th- early 20th century tech. Simpl but robust, stuff you can repair yourself, w/o having to wait months for excuisite spare part #18885-ab-445AA getting to you from Earth.
I absolutely agree with you and with Tomas about the retro-tech approach. It combines perfectly with the living-of-the-land one.
The first human groups` life supporting venues on Mars should have extensive tech base of simple machines, produced by easy to produce local bulk stuffs and able to be repaired with hands... internal combustion engines, even stream ones, rough rockets , hydrogen baloons and dirigibles...
The solar energy is still plentifull enough on Mars and the martian vicinities, so we should find way to harness it and to collect it in simple usefull gradients - fuel+oxidizer, etc. The nuclreal power will be absolutelly necessary in the very begining for bootstraping. Plenty of machinery with low efficiency ( but enormous redundancy factor), is better than hi-tech with great efficiency but too earth-dependent...
Accumulating enough dull tech there, we`ll be able to bootstrap for higher tech levels with importing from the earth only "vitamine" machinery innitially, and later only the information and know-how, untill the process after some critical point reverses and martiam human nest becomes exporter of techs in some areas.
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There are alot of asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. Maybe one of them have the elementals we need. Like Carbon,Iron or Antimatter (would be a dream if we could find a natural source of it)
"...all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by."
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There are alot of asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. Maybe one of them have the elementals we need. Like Carbon,Iron or Antimatter (would be a dream if we could find a natural source of it)
Carbon and Iron are both plentiful in the asteroids. However, they are also both plentiful on Mars so there's little reason to go to the asteroids for them. The main reason to mine the asteroids is for rarer metals, especially PGMs. Antimatter you almost certainly won't find in the asteroids or anywhere else in the solar system. (Well technically virtual anti-particles are created all the time around us, but they're instantly destroyed again and are of little use at the moment.) If there was any anti-matter in the solar system (highly unlikely to begin with) it would have been destroyed long ago by collision with matter. Consider that most asteroids are themselves cratered; they hit each other from time to time. Even a matter micrometeorite colliding with an antimatter one would produce enough force to blow the whole thing apart.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
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Hi Everyone,
Mars2015, what an interesting thread. I have some comments...
Here's some different ideas of what we can use on Mars to power cars ....
Solar-...
It was pointed out to me that Mars' near vacuum atmosphere makes up for its greater distance from the sun so that solar power is about as efficient as it is here (which is to say, pretty inefficient). My understanding is that this thread is for how to power vehicles so solar is pretty much out, it does not have the energy density. (You could gradually build up a mass of energy using solar cells but for a vehicle you will need a richer energy storage medium.) We actually don't have any sort of energy shortage on the Earth now. The Earth is seething with radioactivity and energy of all types. We are lacking a good way of storing and concentrating power. (See "Friday" by R. A. Heinlein for a fictional account of what would happen with cheap energy storage.)
Hydrogen-...
We can crack O2 and 2 x H2 from a couple of water molicules but this requires a lot of power. I think that there is lots of water on Mars in the form of permafrost and ice so I don't think you will have much trouble finding water. (At least more than 40 degrees away from the equator.) There are problems with burning H2 & Oxygen: first, you need to carry both fuel and oxidizer. Second, they burn hot. Most internal combustion engines will erode quickly at their combustion temperatures. This could be fixed by using CO2 as a buffer gas. Overall, it is not bad. You need a local source of water but with enough power you can make everything locally.
Wind/Hydroelectric -
Again these are too diffuse for a vehicle but could gradually accumulate power if you have good storage for concentrated energy. Windmills on Mars need to be big, which makes them expensive. There is also a concern about how well they will run (with all those moving parts) in an environment with the very fine, possibly toxic dust.
There is a study in "On To Mars: Colonizing a New World" by the Mars Society, called "Mars Surface Power Technologies Options" by Jeff A. Wead on pg 146. He found that the best power option for a Mars base was geothermal (if it could be found) followed by nuclear fission, followed by solar. It was followed more distantly by solar power satellites (SPS) beaming microwaves & wind.
Ethanol/Methanol - ...
You would still need to carry oxidizer and fuel for your vehicle. Closely related to this is Methane (CH4) which can be gotten from water and Carbon dioxide so you don't need a lot of crops (just concentrated energy).
In the "Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin, on page 143 he suggests a number of different options. A highly regarded one is the Methane Oxygen car discussed above.
ibid: pg 182. Zubrin points out that with some power and chemistry we can turn water and CO2 into Ethylene. This is a great fuel and Mars storable. (It is also the basis for a plastics industry.)
ibid: pg 202. Zubrin shows that you can make Silane (SiH4) on Mars. The interesting thing about Silane is that it burns using Carbon Dioxide as the oxidizer. So using this fuel, you do not have to cart around your oxidizer as well as your fuel. The big problem with burning silane is that it produces silicon as a waste product which would jam an internal combustion motor. So we would have to make it an external combustion plant (a steam roadster) to use this fuel source.
ibid: pg 213 Zubrin suggests using a nuclear reactor to provide thrust with CO2 as a reaction mass. (He calls this "NIMF" for Nuclear rocket using Indigenous Martian Fuel.) This gives you a truck that can move anywhere on the planet landing and refueling (compressing CO2) if you need to extend your range.
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Everything depends on abundant power.
I absolutely agree with you MarsDog. With abundant power you can melt ice, create fuel and air from CO2, create plastics, metals, bricks, ceramics, etc. You will have the power to send data at high data rates improving the science. Your explorers will be able to move around faster and farther, doing more science and learning more.
Use solar or/and nuclear energy to produce nanoparticle alluminium dust.
I don't know how easy it will be to generate nano scale aluminum dust but you wouldn't want to burn it in an internal combustion engine as it will produce AlO which is a solid. It could be used in a external combustion engine. By the way, why not use Iron nano-particles? It will also burn in oxygen and we will be getting tonnes of the stuff as we process the dirt.
My personal vision of Mars is initially one in which we start with the basics in order to keep the cost down. As all high technology will have to be imported from Earth at substantial cost for quite a long time; i suggest that we would have to engage in what I call "retro-tech".
Hi Thomas,
I think faster growth of the colony would be to have certain high tech items imported from Earth (rocket engines, computers, iron carbonyl manufacturers, fission reactors (until we find uranium and or geothermal power on Mars), etc. The Martians will build everything else themselves a soon as possible. Economic independence is vital as much as possible but growth will be fastest with a high energy / high industrial control strategy.
Dook,
Natural gas is a fossil fuel. So if other fossil fuels come from CH4, where does the CH4 come from? The planet wide dust storms will continue until we raise the south pole's temperature by 4 to 5 degrees C. Then the subliming CO2 cap won't drive the dust storms. As for solar being a good source of power... well... OK. I think it is marginal and will get worse as we get more air and clouds on Mars.
The efficiency of solar probably deserves its own post. Another time.
Stormrage, I'm afraid that there is no chance of finding a large (as in micrograms or larger) chunk of antimatter anywhere in the solar system. Every partical in the solar system is hit with particles from the solar wind. If there was any antimatter it would soon erode away displaying a bright gamma ray gravestone. Reddragon had the right of it.
There is however huge amounts of Helium 3 in the outer solar system. This is the most concentrated form of energy we are likely to find in the universe.
Warm regards, Rick.
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