Deimos

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-21 12:49:43

What can we do with this moon?

Deimos, like Mars's other moon, Phobos, has spectra, albedos and densities similar to those of a C- or D-type asteroid. Like most bodies of its size, Deimos is highly non-spherical with triaxial dimensions of 15 × 12.2 × 11 km,[3] making it 0.56 times the size of Phobos. Deimos is composed of rock rich in carbonaceous material, much like C-type asteroids and carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. It is cratered, but the surface is noticeably smoother than that of Phobos, caused by the partial filling of craters with regolith. The regolith is highly porous and has a radar-estimated density of only 1.471 g/cm3.[13] The two largest craters, Swift and Voltaire, each measure about 3 km (1.9 mi) across.

It has an escape velocity of 5.6 m/s[2] and apparent magnitude of 12.45.[4]
Mass 1.4762×10¹⁵ kg
What can we do with this moon? Can we move it? can we claim it? What if we change its orbit, what if we built a space colony out of it?

RobertDyck · 2015-09-21 12:59:15

Carbonaceous chondrite asteroids (C-Type) are composed of pebbles embedded in a matrix with tar, gypsum, clay, and other hydrated minerals. And ice. ICE! Some scientists believe that ice in C-type Near Earth Asteroids will have boiled off long ago do to heat from sunlight. Only asteroids as far as Mars will still have their ice. Mars? Both moons of Mars are C-type. And Mars can be used for aerocapture. So this makes the Moons of Mars sound like ideal candidates to mine for rocket fuel. Fuel that can be brought back to Earth orbit.

You don't move an object measured in kilometres. Miners don't move a mountain to the outskirts of a city, they mine the ore body in place. Actually, we can move mountains. Coal miners in West Virginia top mountains so they can open pit mine, but that's done one truckload at a time. One hill in Brazil has gold, it was mine completely flat, then mined so the hole is now as big as the hill used to be. They mined that by hand, with shovels and wheelbarrows. Amazing what people can do when they have motivation. But again that's one wheelbarrow at a time; you don't move intact an object as large as an asteroid.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2015-09-21 20:25:18)

RobS · 2015-09-21 20:16:08

I doubt either moon has ice in it. One theory is that both moons have formed out of debris kicked into space from impacts on the Martian surface. See how red Deimos is? That may be Martian regolith covering it. In the process, the battering may have degassed it to some extent.

SpaceNut · 2015-09-21 20:33:12

The tar clay will act like a barrier to any interior out gassing and loss of water if it is encircling the moons interior and not just spotty in coerage....

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-22 01:48:23

RobertDyck wrote:

Carbonaceous chondrite asteroids (C-Type) are composed of pebbles embedded in a matrix with tar, gypsum, clay, and other hydrated minerals. And ice. ICE! Some scientists believe that ice in C-type Near Earth Asteroids will have boiled off long ago do to heat from sunlight. Only asteroids as far as Mars will still have their ice. Mars? Both moons of Mars are C-type. And Mars can be used for aerocapture. So this makes the Moons of Mars sound like ideal candidates to mine for rocket fuel. Fuel that can be brought back to Earth orbit.
You don't move an object measured in kilometres. Miners don't move a mountain to the outskirts of a city, they mine the ore body in place. Actually, we can move mountains. Coal miners in West Virginia top mountains so they can open pit mine, but that's done one truckload at a time. One hill in Brazil has gold, it was mine completely flat, then mined so the hole is now as big as the hill used to be. They mined that by hand, with shovels and wheelbarrows. Amazing what people can do when they have motivation. But again that's one wheelbarrow at a time; you don't move intact an object as large as an asteroid.

Why not? Low thrust, high specific impulse options aren't available for moving mountains on Earth. What about reworking Deimos into a hollow sphere so that it is more habitable for humans, it has a mass of Mass 1.4762×10¹⁵ kg, that is 1.47 trillion tons. I think we could change its rotation rate. The tidal forces Deimos experiences at this distance is fairly weak, so if we spun up this moon, it would keep on spinning for some time. For starters, we could give it a 24-hour solar day, right now it has a 31 hour solar day. With a 24 hour day, Mars would be seen to rise and set from Deimos' surface. One often overlooked fact is that there is more material in the Moons of this Solar System than in its asteroids, not counting the Kuiper belt, but of course those are very far out.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-22 01:52:20

RobS wrote:

I doubt either moon has ice in it. One theory is that both moons have formed out of debris kicked into space from impacts on the Martian surface. See how red Deimos is? That may be Martian regolith covering it. In the process, the battering may have degassed it to some extent.

Well then why doesn't it look more like Earth's Moon, because that is how Earth's moon was formed? Deimos looks like an asteroid.

Terraformer · 2015-09-22 04:20:10

Wut.

......

For the same reason that planets don't look like asteroids, despite having formed of the same debris?

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-22 09:52:40

No one has yet sent a mission to these moons, all they have done is snap pictures of them, no one has brought back samples, I wonder why? Seems to me a Deimos Sample Return Mission ought to be a lot easier than a Mars Sample return mission.

As for what we might do with Deimos, it has an average radius of 6.2 km and a volume of 999.78 km³

You could make a sphere 12 km in radius with a shell 580 meters thick and a hollow cavity 11.42 km in radius out of that Moon, Basically it would be a giant Bernal Sphere rotating it once per 3.57 minutes will produce 1g at the equator.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-09-22 10:30:13)

Void · 2015-09-22 12:53:37

The subsurface may be different than the surface, and might include ice, or hydrated minerals. That has to be of interest.

As asteroid like or asteroid objects, it should fit in with the general notion that industry will start with small objects "Near Earth" but in my opinion would then likely develop markets and capability to handle such an object as this.

If it does have ice, then you get spaces in between rubble to put structures into. If it does have simply hollow spaces between rubble, then you get to build machines in those spaces. Perhaps a whole city.

As for a shell, why not a sphere of solar collectors, encasing the Moon. No need to "Shell" pressurize it until much later. If their are significant "VOIDS" then surely there could be put into those synthetic gravity devices.

I know that many like to conceive rather grand concepts, but those could be lived out later. At first scale back expectations, and plan for several metamorphic transformations.

One thing is true, that if significant water is available then this world would be really more connectable to an Earth(Oribt)/Moon/Asteroids economy than Mars.

As for Terraforming, perhaps this moon would have both resources to be a moon in itself, and resources to alter the atmosphere of Mars relatively remotely.

This fits particularly well with a situation where political circumstances promote a hands off of Mars force, due to speculation or evidence of life on Mars. It would allow the forming of a forward base while future evidence for life was explored. It would also facilitate the completion of the examination for the existence of life in a shorter period of time.

I am not negative at all about such a plan. Having the asteroids, Moon, and the moons of Mars, is quite a lot more than we have now. Expecting too much (For Mars), too soon, could set things back quite a bit.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-22 20:09:50

A sphere of solar collectors would mean some of the solar collectors would be in darkness and not collecting solar energy. A flat solar panel squarely facing the sun would collect the most Solar energy with the fewest solar panels. Now Deimos is in almost the right orbit for a Solar Power Satellite beaming energy down to Mars, Deimos would have to be lowered into a Synchronous orbit so it stays about a power receiving station on the surface of Mars.

RobertDyck · 2015-09-22 21:07:25

Or use the moons Deimos and Phobos as raw material, construct a dedicated solar power satellite. Or better yet, construct solar panels on the surface of Mars. Remember a planetary solar panel receives light 50% of the time (day, not night). A solar power satellite receives power all the time, but the best power transmission system only receives 30% of power transmitted. That's why sunny areas on Earth are better served by terrestrial solar. And clouds absorb transmitted power, dramatically reducing received power. So cloudy areas are not well served by satellites either. Mars is sunny everywhere.

Another "big" application is to mine the moons as raw material to make a mirror for terraforming. You need a mirror with as much surface area as the entire Mars south polar ice cap. You can reduce material by making it thin: aluminized Mylar. But that's still big. You'll need an asteroid for raw material. Something with feldspar for aluminum, and Carbon-Hydrogen-Oxygen for plastic. ABS, Nylon, and Melamine also need Nitrogen. Lexan needs sodium. But I said Mylar. This sounds like we need a Carbonaceous Chondrite asteroid. Where could we get one?

Void · 2015-09-22 22:12:55

Even though a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, here I go. Get the rubber room ready.

There is inadequate information, and little ability to see the future sharply, but at best with very poor eyesight.

So there can't be wrong answers, just yet. So sure, as a further eventual evolvement of a human/robot presence on such a body.

Tom,

An unpressurized shell could not only harvest photons, but solar wind power. It also can help prevent tools and machines from drifting away. Further, it can be a modifier of temperature as the moon itself is a heat sink, heat coming off of it will reflect off of the shell, and so the interior could have a moderated temperature swing, and such a shell may be a micro meteorite shield.

Most plans say, oh, we will construct this massive thing, and then get benefit from it. However a unpressurized shell around such a moon may be constructed parts at a time, starting as a dome which would be "Jacked up" as further expansion sections were added to it's perimeter.

While it might be nice to have habitats in hollows deep enough below, it also might be nice to strip mine the surface. The machines for that then could be very massive, and so heavy even in such a small gravity. The shielding on such mobile machines could be very good (Heavy), so humans could be inside.

Anyway, this is a notion that works at a small scale, and can be scaled up to a maximum size.

I am very concerned that panspermia really did happen, and Mars if it has as much subsurface ices as it would seem to do may hide underground life. I will expect our enemies to exploit these notions to slow down the progress of the human race into space. I will not list who I think these entities are, but I do believe they exist. Even if they do not exist, I anticipate that there could be an enormous amount of interference in protecting such life, but really many of the entities will be doing it to keep the human race on the planet Earth, for very selfish reasons.

Taking actions to mine asteroids, and so items also like the moons of Mars, will defuse this situation and make it much easier to settle Mars, because the cows would already be out of the barn. Those who pretend to protect supposed Mars life, but actually have other reasons, will have had an end run done around their game plan. So, they will have to try something else, or give up.

And the Moon of Earth itself with resources from asteroids, is a whole world in itself.

Building gigantic machines? Sure, but first build a factory for it.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-23 06:50:37

What is the advantage in having the shell unpressurized? If the shell is 500 meters thick, I'm sure that shell can hold in the pressure of one atmosphere, and speaking of building mirrors to terraform Mars, Deimos can be made habitable much more quickly than Mars could be terraformed, byt making Deimos into a shell, rotating it for gravity, and having concentrating mirrors to produce Earth equivalent sunlight on the inside surface of the shell, that way you would get a terrestrial environment with an Earthlike atmosphere an gravity level, sunlight would be let in through widows.

Deimos could be made into this, except instead of being 500 meters in diameter it would be 24,000 meters in diameter with shell as thick as the diameter of the original plans for the Bernal Sphere. You could probably detonate a nuclear warhead nearby and the interior of this Bernal Sphere would still be well protected from radiation. Now lets see if you have an interior radius of 11.42 km, a climb to the axis would produce the atmospheric equivalent of climbing a mountain that was 5.71 km high, this is less than Mount Everest, so if the equatorial region is a 1 bar atmosphere, you could still breath the atmosphere in the center of the sphere. The thick 500 meter shell can stop most meteor impacts, so the inhabitants of the sphere would be well protected.

Void · 2015-09-23 09:34:49

Well, I thought I had already answered that question. But, you appear to be interested in a before and after picture, and no references to how to get from point A to point B, the intermediate steps.

But that's not actually wrong. You and I are asking two different questions, from different perspectives, which is normal for this web site. Very hard to understand what the other person is thinking.

This is your thread, so, I will bow out. I have no other offerings to try for this case.

Void · 2015-09-23 09:35:49

Last edited by Void (2015-09-23 09:36:35)

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-23 10:10:02

Void wrote:

Well, I thought I had already answered that question. But, you appear to be interested in a before and after picture, and no references to how to get from point A to point B, the intermediate steps.
But that's not actually wrong. You and I are asking two different questions, from different perspectives, which is normal for this web site. Very hard to understand what the other person is thinking.
This is your thread, so, I will bow out. I have no other offerings to try for this case.

Its a resource, that's the thing. The hardest part about building an O'Neill colony is getting the material on location. With Deimos its already there. So lets compare the advantages of Deimos with other asteroids.

There are the near earth asteroids for example, the disadvantage of those is they are in independent orbits around the Sun, and generally orbit inside the orbit of Mars and outside the orbit of Venus, since they have orbital periods close to that of Earth, they are hard to get to, the orbital windows are infrequent, though sunlight is plentiful here, volatiles tend to be baked out of these rocks and they tend to be moon like in composition, with lots of silicates and metals, where as we need hydrocarbons.

The asteroid belt has plenty of asteroids, yet they are farther from the Sun than Mars, and there is no atmosphere available for aerobraking maneuvers to match velocities with them. Getting to Deimos is as easy as getting to Mars. Now how do we make Deimos habitable? Seems like we can build a number of towers on Deimos, in Deimos' low gravity this is easy, those towers act as rails to deliver Deimos material to twice that Moon's radius from its center. Perhaps at this point, we need to spin up Deimos slightly, so at the equator of Deimos there is zero net gravitational pull towards its center, with the surface gravity cancled out by centripetal force, we then mine Deimos and transport the Deimos material up elevators in the tower and we deposit it in nets the rock and rubble would be held to the nets by outward centrifugal force. We fuse the rocks together using concentrated Solar Energy. Surround it with a balloon about 12 km in radius, to capture all that vaporized rock, and form a shell. We basically take apart Deimos and transport its material towards its outer shell fusing the rock together so it can withstand greater centrifugal force. We slowly increase the rotation of the shell as we determine that it can hold itself together until we get a Bernal Sphere.

GW Johnson · 2015-09-23 11:53:37

Deimos looks like an asteroid because it is one. So is Phobos. They may or may not have significant volatile content, depends on their prior history before Mars captured them.

Most asteroids are not solid bodies at all, they are rubble piles bound by nothing but very weak gravity, plus some weak adhesive and cohesive forces if there are organics or ices present. The low densities reflect internal void spaces between the rubble objects. If you push on one, it'll break apart. Yet locally, a block of ice can be quite hard.

Now, these things could yield useful materials if mined. Or if utilized for construction in some way. Known science indicates that even the minerals could be used, say as some sort of fused rock. But science is not the same as technology. What might become possible to do is covered by science. What we really might do is technology: machines, procedures, and experience. Absolutely none of that yet exists for mining asteroids.

The closest thing existing to any of that technology is the Hayabusa and Philae probes trying to land, grab on, and extract samples. I noticed that nothing about any of the grab-on schemes worked on either spacecraft, which almost killed their ability to grab samples. That's proof of my statement that asteroid investigation and utilization technology does not yet exist. We cannot even yet secure ourselves to one. QED.

That's not to say we shouldn't try to invent such technologies, because we most certainly should. But, it won't be easy and it won't be quick. All we really know from the two probes so far says ground truth is still remarkably different from what our remote sensing told us. "Surprise, surprise", said Gomer Pyle, USMC. The more we look up close, the more we'll find out how wrong we were before. That's been the history for centuries.

No, we are not yet ready to build anything out of asteroidal materials. Not by a long shot. I wish we could, though.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2015-09-23 11:56:27)

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-23 14:23:55

GW Johnson wrote:

Deimos looks like an asteroid because it is one. So is Phobos. They may or may not have significant volatile content, depends on their prior history before Mars captured them.
Most asteroids are not solid bodies at all, they are rubble piles bound by nothing but very weak gravity, plus some weak adhesive and cohesive forces if there are organics or ices present. The low densities reflect internal void spaces between the rubble objects. If you push on one, it'll break apart. Yet locally, a block of ice can be quite hard.
Now, these things could yield useful materials if mined. Or if utilized for construction in some way. Known science indicates that even the minerals could be used, say as some sort of fused rock. But science is not the same as technology. What might become possible to do is covered by science. What we really might do is technology: machines, procedures, and experience. Absolutely none of that yet exists for mining asteroids.
The closest thing existing to any of that technology is the Hayabusa and Philae probes trying to land, grab on, and extract samples. I noticed that nothing about any of the grab-on schemes worked on either spacecraft, which almost killed their ability to grab samples. That's proof of my statement that asteroid investigation and utilization technology does not yet exist. We cannot even yet secure ourselves to one. QED.
That's not to say we shouldn't try to invent such technologies, because we most certainly should. But, it won't be easy and it won't be quick. All we really know from the two probes so far says ground truth is still remarkably different from what our remote sensing told us. "Surprise, surprise", said Gomer Pyle, USMC. The more we look up close, the more we'll find out how wrong we were before. That's been the history for centuries.
No, we are not yet ready to build anything out of asteroidal materials. Not by a long shot. I wish we could, though.
GW

What about vapor deposition? seems that we could bag this moon, inflate it with hydrogen gas so the balloon stays rigid out to a radius of 12 km, then we vaporize some rocks on the moon's surface, the gas expands to fill the balloon and as it expands it condenses on the balloon's inner surface, we keep doing this until we get a thick rind made out of rock, then we cut some holes in this sphere to let in light and spin it up for gravity. The only way we learn how to do this is by trying to do it. So you think we could transport a balloon that is twice the diameter as Deimos to Deimos, we'd have to bag it, seal it, and then inflate it, the gas pressure to inflate it needn't be much, thus we wouldn't need that much gas to inflate it in a vacuum.

GW Johnson · 2015-09-23 16:16:57

Somewhere along about 1958 and 1959 I remember two satellites known as Echo 1 and Echo 2, that were large aluminized mylar balloons (on the order of 100 m size). They were used only as radar reflectors. There was nothing inside of them. To the best of my knowledge nothing like that has flown since. And the guys who actually did that are long dead now.

There's nothing wrong with your idea of trying to piece together a bunch of mylar (or other polymer film) into a gigantic balloon and making it into a huge enclosure. But, it'll never need for inflation, or even successfully contain, more than the merest whisp of gas pressure.

With meteroids, it'll likely not hold that pressure but a few weeks, but it won't collapse in free fall. The pressure of light might collapse it over a long period of time, once deflated. The things and procedures we use for patching holes down here in polymer films do not (yet) work in space. There are no tool or procedures for this that are vacuum and zero-gee-rated.

I'm not at all sure about your vapor deposition idea, from a basic science standpoint. Such plastics are a puddle on the floor at just over 120 C. Minerals are generally liquid near 1500 C and vaporize somewhere in the vicinity of 2000-3000 C. The balloon simply cannot survive being touched by rock vapor, and the mineral particles cannot deposit on anything if they're already condensed below 100 C.

Our science doesn't support that part of your idea, much less any technology that might possibly function in vacuum and zero-gee to create the rock vapor in large quantities.

But, if by some hand-of-god that we don't currently possess, you could make your hollow ball of rock, I don't think I'd bother putting an atmosphere inside it. Rock material is like concrete: good in compression and shear, but lousy in tension. Your shell would go into hoop stress tension in latitudinal and longitudinal directions if you try to pressurize it. Biaxial stress state does lower the failure stress below what 1-D samples test, I might add.

Your rock shell sphere would require reinforcement with something good in tension to survive any significant pressurization. You'd have to embed that reinforcement as you build your shell. Down here we use steel reinforcing rod in our concrete. I'm not at all sure what you could use as reinforcement for this sphere thing, but you'd need an awful lot of it, that's for sure.

I think this set of very fundamental problems exists with all the proposals to use asteroidal material as construction material for large built things in space. I've read proposals like that for years, but I've never seen one word in any of them about exactly how we might do it, and exactly with what.

Like I said, the technologies do not exist at all to do these grand things yet. And sometimes on close inspection, the supporting science takes a hit.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-23 20:39:18

So maybe we need a superhuman electronic brain to figure out what human brains cannot. Humans don't seem to be any good at figuring out ways of colonizing space inexpensively, maybe such genius is beyond us, so we need some help from superior electronic intelligence that we may devise. Seems like computers are advancing tremendously, yet we have had trouble getting into space for 58 years now! The Space age is 58 years old, yet we are still too stupid to put more than tiny objects into space, we should have gotten much farther after the Apollo Program, but we just weren't smart enough! Maybe artificial intelligences greater than us we succeed where we have failed. I was born during the Apollo years, 1967, I was too young to remember the Apollo missions when they happened, and I'm 48 years old now, it is amazing how little progress we have made since those first footprints on the Moon. There has been talk talk and more talk of how we'll send astronauts to the Moon, I remember when the book High Frontier was published, I remember the descriptions and the illustrations of those space colonies, the only problem was, we just weren't smart enough to build them, and right now we are struggling to build only slightly larger versions of the Apollo hardware which got us to the Moon 46 years ago, and I've heard all the excuses in the world for not going. I think the people in charge of development are just cowards, they are so deathly afraid of failure that they just test things ad nauseum and are afraid to take that risk because they fear it would be the end of that program and more importantly for them, their jobs! For too many NASA is just a jobs program, something to keep smart people busy. It took most of my life to get that picture of Pluto by the way, we still need better photos of some of the moons of Uranus and Neptune by the way, as only one spacecraft has ever visited them.

The main damning thing is that despite 58 years of the space age, space travel is still something we only watch rather than do. Now is space travel ever became routine, such as buying an airplane ticket, I am sure taking apart Deimos wouldn't be a big deal, they would have tried a number of things and figured it out by trial and error.

Antius · 2015-09-24 15:00:14

Phobos and Deimos could be excellent early targets for a manned mission to the Mars system. The logistics of a Phobos-Deimos mission would appear to be much easier and less risky than a manned landing on Mars itself. Practically all of the propulsive work can be carried out at low thrust levels (I.e. electric propulsion) which would improve mass ratios substantially. There is even the option of using bulk surface material as reaction mass for the return journey (I.e. mass driver propulsion).

A base in Stickney crater could teleoperate machines on the Martian surface in real time. Sample returns would only need to travel to low Mars orbit where they could be retrieved by mass driver tug and returned to Stickey base. Artificial gravity could be provided by rotating a surface habitat. The walls of the crater and bulk of the asteroid would block something like two thirds of incoming cosmic rays.

I think your idea of ceramic pressure vessels is workable, but at the scale you propose it would require enormous resources to construct. Smaller vessels could be constructed from sintered blocks prestressed using iron long bolts. The blocks would provide cosmic ray shielding. Think about a habitat 100m in diameter rather than 50km.

Last edited by Antius (2015-09-24 15:30:01)

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-25 01:55:49

Probably it would start on a small scale unless you had massive robotics. The further we push a Mars mission into the future, the more sophisticated those robots become. I sometimes wonder if we'll land on Mars before or after we develop strong AI. If we can have robots building robot, transforming Deimos into an O'Neill colony becomes feasible, it could in fact be one of the first ones. The way things are proceeding, I would expect that O'Neill colonies, when they are finally built, would be built almost entirely by robots sometime in the 2050s I expect. I hope they have AIs with superhuman intelligence that could quickly find a cure for old age, so I can see the rest of this century at least. Seems like my only hope of seeing those O'Neill colonies is if someone or something breaks the age barrier, and I could be biologically 20 again. What happens after that is a population explosion, I can guess, as people stop dying to make room for all the children that are born. Well Space has lots of room, and I expect the population growth rate to level off after people get used to the fact that they will stay young indefinitely, but I just don't know whether it will happen during my lifetime, I can hope, ordinarily I can expect to live to 2037 to 2047, there is some time for some breakthroughs I guess. About 20 years, maybe a breakthrough will happen.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-09-25 02:02:44)

Void · 2015-09-27 22:16:05

I have for some time felt that handling the surface of worlds like Phobos and Demos could be done by constructing a mobile dome, if you will, and analog of the horseshoe crab. If it is a multi-layered shell, then of course the top layer being regolith. Below that at least two metal shells, with a pressurized atmosphere between those. Under the bottom shell, a vacuum filled dome. And of course mobility devices such as legs, and/or wheels, tracks, etc.

Radiation protection would exist, from the blockage provided by Mars, by Phobos or Demos, and by the blockage of the shell.

Under the shell, the surface could be illuminated by artificial lights, of course robotic devices and humans in suits to address the materials of the surface, and to transform it into useful things such as solar collectors, fuels, propulsion mass, and whatever else is wanted.

The shell having a slow mobility across the surface.

As for dealing with the innards of the moon/asteroid, if it is a rubble pile, that would be handled differently, However the "mobile shell" would be an excellent starter machine to poise over the opening to an underground shaft/facility. Also wanted of course is a source of water and Carbon, which is possible in the case of some moons and asteroids.

As for how this vision would evolve from the present situation in outer space, we could only hope that indeed asteroid mining companies starting off small will be able to harvest water and metals from asteroids, to make fuel and small high quality metal parts (All of this being proposed already by various companies).

If there is a profit to be made, then they will come, and the efforts will be scaled up over and over again, until, in fact I would not be afraid to speculate that a mining company would pay to manufacture a mobile dome at some location more local to Earth/Moon, and transport it to Phobos and/or Demos, to open those worlds to industrial manufacturing.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-28 01:38:28

Would they be wearing suits like these?

It seems kind of strange to have domes, and men in space suits walking around inside, I mean come on! If you got the dome for radiation protection, why not have it for holding in an atmosphere as well, so the men inside don't have to wear space suits? The radiation environment around Mars is less intense than it is around the Moon, and astronauts on the Moon walked around in space suits in that environment and many of them are still alive today! No need for a hamster ball that doesn't contain air.

Void · 2015-09-28 11:16:47

Yes, sometimes some of them might wear a suit like that. However, if they are not young, and do not have good exercise and diet habits, they will not look as fit as the model you presented. For instance if they lay about and eat chocolate fudgies, not looking so good, most likely.

The reasons for the dome are multiple.

As I stated, the dome would have multiple shells, a pressurized environment allowed between any two shells. In fact perhaps a good design, because the outer shell would encounter tensile force and the inner shell compressive force. If you put struts between the two shells, the force may to a degree balance out.

Not every open space must be occupied by atmosphere, and fashion models in suits

Certainly a fashion model in a suit would get in the way of the empty space below the double (Or more) shell dome. In fact after the fashion model fizzed and bubbled, he would have to be disposed of, which would get in the way of productivity.

Unlike Harry Potter, we cannot speak magic incantations, and cause material and energy to alter it's current state to another.

Many persons do make their living by speaking incantations, to cause other people to cause material and energy to change their state, but having learned to make a living doing that generation after generation they often degenerate into Eloy, and the Morlocks simply stop listening to them and end up spreading the Eloy on their breakfast biscuits.

Obviously, we cannot organize a multi-member society to do a coordinated collective behavior towards a collective goal, without communications, but word smiths often become parasitic before they become discovered to be useless. (And Morlocks eat them).

But lets see what we might hope to do with this lower vacuum deck of the "Dome".

First of all the whole dome assembly is a fulcrum. If you are going to act in a focused way on some object on the surface with a robotic arm, then the whole weight of the dome is at your use. Imaging shoveling dirt without significant gravity. Well, if you have the dome over you and can attach yourself to it in a compatible way, then you should be able to shovel dirt. You might want a clam-shell shovel however.

A prime target will be rocks suspected of having been ejected from the surface of Mars. I will touch on this to a greater extent later.

This dome might move to another location as well, so it offers the opportunity to be re-used, to access much of the surface.

Now consider magnetism, mass, inertia, and static electric effects. Also consider thermal properties.

I will start with a static magnetic field. As part of the structure of the dome, electrical coils might offer the opportunity to manipulate local magnetism.

A steady magnetic field may be considered. How much magnetic force will it take to levitate material from the surface? Some may have been magnetized or has magnetic properties.

So, now lets reverse the polarity of the field. Keep doing it. Now you are inducing vibrations in the materials below, and shaking things up.
Not only that, but you can levitate metals that are not magnetic except by induction.

Now spin the fluctuating field. Make a tornado.

The intensity of this action will determine what happens. You could keep the intensity low, and just add some magnetic particles, if they are lacking and abrasively treat the surface, the better to determine if any of the rocks exposed are from Mars, of are of some other special interest.

A special interest rock, might be of a kind that should contain water or Carbon, and so on. Robotic arms can collect those into bins.

Now if you like you can intensify the field, and actually levitate things. It will depend on a balance between levitation force of magnetism, gravitation, centrifugal force, and the interaction of particles and rocks (Vibrations), on what happens. Most likely the magnetic materials drawn towards the center of magnetism, heavy and non-magnetic material pushed outwards towards the perimeter of the device.

Now as far as people in space suits, it would be desired to eliminate this as much as possible. Over time, robotics and A.I. should go a long way towards that. Telepresence will help as well. The teleoperators will be inside the double or more layered dome if desired, so quite local, no real time lag.

As their can be multiple layers of dome, I would say the bottom layer would be extraction and concentration, the next layer up storage of rocks of particular value, the extraction of water, and in fact on that floor, or subsequent floors above literally a factory floor, and so the whole device acting like a creature which eats dirt and rocks, and solar energy, and lays golden eggs, and discards tailings. The golden eggs being whatever is manufacturable and is considered of value.

So there you go.

Now that you are rich, go ahead and see a taylor and get a nice suit. Join a gym also and get rid of the pot belly. Maybe take some classes on communications, but don't get into the habit of raping other people with words, the Morlocks are out there

Alright, the rocks from Mars. You can make allies of scientists if you collect them. You can make and end run around the Eloy.

The Eloy want to speak magic incantations that make your outer space money turn into money for marsh mellow fudgies that they can eat while reclining in bathrobes on their couches, emitting foul odors from their bloated bodies.

You want allies, their verbal magic incantations are very powerful, and they will put you in cages if you don't play the game right. Cages of bordom or worse.

Last edited by Void (2015-09-28 11:55:09)

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