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The originally landed cargo ship have already on the first flight to mars to set up insitu systems for nuclear and fuel creation have been unloaded and have been functioning for at least a mars launch cycle to prepare the way for a crew being able to return home if anything should happen in the first 30 days other wise they will be on the surface for the typical 500 days before they must finally stop working and get ready to go home.
If the second mission with crew has additional cargo ships we must send a cable or the means to splice multiple sections to be able to create the first underground covered starship cargo section. Hopefully the starships have landed within a 1000 ft radius such as to be able to accomplish this first home building for permanent settlement and not a temporary structure.
I know that the first crew missions timeline for doing research and science is the favored but at some point setting up for the future is a must.
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The image just does go to show that even when all we have are a few resources that man can adapt to a Mars under ground living with near to no issues.
Man's requirements to sustain life are simple
Air, Water, food, shelter and even the smallest amount of power all while salvaging materials from the ship we came in.
If colonists are prepared to live on dried foods, that are rehydrated using Martian water, then an adult consuming enough calories to maintain a stable healthy weight, can survive off of a few hundred grams of food per day. A single Starship payload of dried food, delivered every 2.5 years, could sustain about 400 people.
Our first colony could therefore be almost completely underground. We can produce oxygen by electrolysis of water, using the hydrogen liberated to reduce iron oxides to make steel. We can recycle most water and convert human wastes into feedstock for plastics and fuels. We don't actually need to start growing stuff for quite some time. But I imagine that agriculture will begin scaling up from day one.
An actual underground city can be built by pushing Martian regolith over a steel frame that is constructed on flat ground. The nuclear powered vehicles that Kbd512 introduced in another thread would be perfect for the task of pushing huge volumes of soil, continuously, 24/7/365. Building in this way would not be practical on Earth, because precipitation and ground water would make the underground space damp and uncomfortable. Rain would run through the dirt roof. Water would seep through the piled earth walls. But Mars has not precipitation and ground water is frozen. So a simple arrangement of heaping soil over a braced frame is adequate to produce a pressurised space. It would work even better if the frames could be assembled in a natural depression, as you wouldn't then need huge soil dams at the edges, to keep pressure in.
Such underground spaces need not be dark and cramped. Supporting columns can be made from thin steel or cast iron, with dampened regolith heaped into them and compressed to provide a concrete like filling. Columns like this could support a high ceiling, maybe 100m or more off of the ground, especially if the columns are braced against each other. The roof can be sprayed with plaster made from wet, fine regolith. After this dries, it can be painted with blue pigment to simulate a sky. Buildings can be constructed from simple, unfired, mud based brick within the pressurised enclosure. To introduce light, aluminium plated tubes would pass through the regolith roof. These would be capped on the inside with thick glass domes, which would transfer pressure load into the regolith overburden. The top of the tubes would be covered by thin glass, to prevent dust from entering the tube.
Nice calculations of required food levels and how to make it last.
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For OF 1939 ... The 17 person expedition topic you created is in need of some attention.
I hope you are in good health, and that your schedule will permit a few minutes per day to be devoted to moving this important work forward.
The positions need to be defined fully, so that recruiting activities can begin.
The topic needs to be developed so that a Nation State will find it so compelling it will enlist support at all levels of society.
(th)
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We have discussed much but it lacks the initial landing site known water source to make it even possible due to the large volume required in the period of allotted time to create fuel for the return flight.
Once we have that boots on the ground survey we then can send a support cargo group to that sight to prepare the way forward.
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For SpaceNut re #179
Planning for the expedition can (and must) proceed without knowing precisely what location on Mars is to be explored.
People are the focus of this topic ... the people who will be going are (hopefully) in school now, so it would make sense (to me at least) to recruit them now and to enable them to jointly prepare for the adventure of their lifetimes.
Meanwhile, in parallel, and hopefully in multiple parallel tracks, other groups of people are (hopefully) developing the hardware and procedures to secure the information needed to select a landing site.
The two have almost nothing to do with each other, and must be pursued simultaneously.
The landing on Normandy included literally thousands of separate streams of activity to prepare for the event itself.
Those independent streams of activity included information gathering, right up to the last minute.
So it must be for the planning and preparation for the first (major) expedition to Mars.
Some Nation State may try a small team flight to Mars. OF 1939 has what seems to me to be a vision of an expedition of sufficient size to accomplish some major science, and quite possibly a bit of engineering on site.
My concern is that with each passing day (on Earth) we are seeing the potential of development of the ideas of OF 1939 become ever so slightly less likely.
I agree with you that a ground survey (such as the one proposed vigorously by GW Johnson) is needed for site selection.
That activity has nothing to do with selection of skill sets, and identification of candidate human beings who might be interested in bending their academic career paths toward participation in the proposed expedition.
(th)
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Thomas-
Dried foods are the answer to long term survival and well-being. The colonists/explorers will undoubtedly fart a lot from eating legumes! Beans and split peas, as well as lentils, last for over 20 years in storage under dry Nitrogen conditions or under Argon. They are also high in protein and have significant carbohydrates for energy.
The hardest to provide in long term survival are fats and oils, as they tend to become rancid even under favorable storage conditions.
Having adequate supplements to provide a proper vitamin and mineral intake will be a HUGE consideration.
As I have remarked elsewhere, mammals generally require 2% o 3% of their body weight in edible food. This is well known in the veterinary profession, and is the basis of livestock management programs.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2022-04-07 10:32:53)
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One skill set we've tended to overlook , is that of COOK! If we're going to be doing hard physical tasks, having good meals will keep morale at a proper level.
I recall being on a 10 day field exercise at Fort Carson, Colorado in 1961. There was snow on the ground, we were bivouacked in 2 man pup tents, and everyone was cold and bitching about conditions. We were there during Thanksgiving, but we all had the Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans brought out to us and served piping hot. The Commanding General of the post was there to supervise that we all received a good, hot meal. That improved everyone's attitude and morale.
But food and sanitation go a long way towards keeping everyone functional. Adequate and well-prepared meals, coupled with hot showers, will help maintain peak effectiveness of all involved.
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Lack of Vit D from sunlight will seriously compromise your immune system.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f … 04621ea-lq
The image just does go to show that even when all we have are a few resources that man can adapt to a Mars under ground living with near to no issues.
Man's requirements to sustain life are simple
Air, Water, food, shelter and even the smallest amount of power all while salvaging materials from the ship we came in.Calliban wrote:If colonists are prepared to live on dried foods, that are rehydrated using Martian water, then an adult consuming enough calories to maintain a stable healthy weight, can survive off of a few hundred grams of food per day. A single Starship payload of dried food, delivered every 2.5 years, could sustain about 400 people.
Our first colony could therefore be almost completely underground. We can produce oxygen by electrolysis of water, using the hydrogen liberated to reduce iron oxides to make steel. We can recycle most water and convert human wastes into feedstock for plastics and fuels. We don't actually need to start growing stuff for quite some time. But I imagine that agriculture will begin scaling up from day one.
An actual underground city can be built by pushing Martian regolith over a steel frame that is constructed on flat ground. The nuclear powered vehicles that Kbd512 introduced in another thread would be perfect for the task of pushing huge volumes of soil, continuously, 24/7/365. Building in this way would not be practical on Earth, because precipitation and ground water would make the underground space damp and uncomfortable. Rain would run through the dirt roof. Water would seep through the piled earth walls. But Mars has not precipitation and ground water is frozen. So a simple arrangement of heaping soil over a braced frame is adequate to produce a pressurised space. It would work even better if the frames could be assembled in a natural depression, as you wouldn't then need huge soil dams at the edges, to keep pressure in.
Such underground spaces need not be dark and cramped. Supporting columns can be made from thin steel or cast iron, with dampened regolith heaped into them and compressed to provide a concrete like filling. Columns like this could support a high ceiling, maybe 100m or more off of the ground, especially if the columns are braced against each other. The roof can be sprayed with plaster made from wet, fine regolith. After this dries, it can be painted with blue pigment to simulate a sky. Buildings can be constructed from simple, unfired, mud based brick within the pressurised enclosure. To introduce light, aluminium plated tubes would pass through the regolith roof. These would be capped on the inside with thick glass domes, which would transfer pressure load into the regolith overburden. The top of the tubes would be covered by thin glass, to prevent dust from entering the tube.
Nice calculations of required food levels and how to make it last.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Definitely! Hot fresh food is best but on Mars we may need to compromise with hot prepared food imported from Earth and cold salad style food to begin with. Beansprouts are very nutritious and grow quickly, though.
One skill set we've tended to overlook , is that of COOK! If we're going to be doing hard physical tasks, having good meals will keep morale at a proper level.
I recall being on a 10 day field exercise at Fort Carson, Colorado in 1961. There was snow on the ground, we were bivouacked in 2 man pup tents, and everyone was cold and bitching about conditions. We were there during Thanksgiving, but we all had the Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans brought out to us and served piping hot. The Commanding General of the post was there to supervise that we all received a good, hot meal. That improved everyone's attitude and morale.But food and sanitation go a long way towards keeping everyone functional. Adequate and well-prepared meals, coupled with hot showers, will help maintain peak effectiveness of all involved.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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I have been looking back on the use of a greenhouse as a part of life support and have made a couple posts about where nasa is Mars Lunar Greenhouse
This could be something that we not only can use as a base design onboard the ship but since the level of people that might remain on the large ship continuing to grow food we will want a similar system on the mars surface to give replacement parts and general knowledge for its use.
The buried units on the mars surface will require a sleeve for it to reside within.
Mars-Lunar Greenhouse (M-LGH). Funded by NASA Ralph Steckler Program, our team has designed and constructed a set of four cylindrical innovative 5.5 m (18 ft) long by 1.8 m (7 ft) diameter membrane M-LGHs with a cable-based hydroponic crop production system in a controlled environment that exhibits a high degree of future Lunar and/or Mars mission fidelity.
Bioregenerative Life Support
• Per Person Basis
0.84 kg/day O2
3.9 kg/day H2O
50% of 11.8 MJ/day [BVAD Values, 2006]
•2000 Cal/day diet
•Buried habitat
•Six month crew change duration
•Solar for energy supply
•Autonomous deploymentAverage daily water consumption 25.7 L day-1
Average daily CO2 consumption 0.22 kg day-1
Average daily elec. power consumption 100.3 kWh day-1 (361 MJ)24 ± 4 g biomass (ww) per kWh, or
(83 g biomass (ww) per MJ)
edible + non-edible biomass35.9 min day-1 labor use for operations
Of course the question comes to how much of the life support we will need as its based on available power.
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In addition to dried, refrigerated, canned, and frozen food, we will need dietary supplements to make up for the shortfall in these foods we're bringing along.
Here's a list of the ones that I consider extremely important, and that I take on a daily basis:
Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc mineral supplement. Various ways to get these, but these are essential minerals for good health.
Multivitamin tablets.
Krill oil capsules
Norwegian cod liver oil capsules (a source of omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin D, and vitamin A )
Acetyl Carnitine ( the "missing" B vitamin from all standard Vitamin pills)
Coenzyme Q-10
Selenium
B-100 vitamin mixture
B-12
Vitamin C chewables.
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For OF 1939 .... thank you for the list of nutrition elements you've provided in Post #186
SearchTerm:Nutrition for space travelers - Mars residents - anyone away from Earth
(th)
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There will be others are we need vitamin D as a case of sun burn will not happen but I am not sure its got to be in a cod liver oil yuck....
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The Norwegian Cod Liver Oil is in 1000 mg capsules and is tasteless. Two of them provide 110% of the daily Vitamin A, and Vitamin D requirements, as well as the Vitamin E requirement in addition to a substantial portion of the Omega-3 fatty acids required for excellent health.
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One thing to consider is the effectiveness and expiration or shelf life. With a yes and a no...
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Expiration dates are usually a way for retailers to control the aging of their inventories, and are a sneaky way for manufacturers to sell more products. Most dietary supplements have an almost indefinite shelf life and effectiveness. Only certain antibiotics actually deteriorate, especially tetracycline drugs, which undergo slow decomposition to some toxic by products.
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After reading the topic I did not find anything for the recycling levels that man would need to employ with the starships use for a first mission to mars as well as for the life support atmospheric ability.
The first mission for man relies on preload, extended duration so as to be able to create enough fuel for a return home.
The preload would consist of dry foods, water,and equipment as well as nuclear and solar panel power source materials.
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This is for OF 1939 ....
I noticed that on more than one occasion, you have expressed appreciation for the writing skills of kbd512.
The "early evening" Zoom has become less active in recent weeks. kbd512 and i are thinking about retiring that time slot (Midnight UTC) from active use.
However, it occurred to me that you (and other members of the forum who appreciate the writings of kbd512) might enjoy meeting the author in Zoom. The experience is lively (I have never seen a session hosted by kbd512 that was boring) and there is a considerable chance you'd enjoy an hour with kbd512.
Please let us know if you are interested in this idea by posting in the Zoom topic. I have no way of knowing (of course) if your equipment is capable of supporting a Zoom session. Anything that might be needed can be secured before next Sunday.
(th)
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It has been a while but in light of this article and paper its time to think about whether this could support a first mission.
Repost for the content on drilling for water, larger nuclear kilowatt reactor and fuel processing plant.
MIT design for Mars propellant production trucks wins NASA competition
https://www.marsdaily.com/reports/MIT_d … n_999.htmlUsing the latest technologies currently available, it takes over 25,000 tons of rocket hardware and propellant to land 50 tons of anything on the planet Mars. So, for NASA's first crewed mission to Mars, it will be critical to learn how to harvest the red planet's local resources in order to "live off the land" sustainably.
On June 24, NASA announced that an MIT team received first place in the annual Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts - Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition for their in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) design that produces propellant on Mars from local resources instead of bringing it from Earth.
Their project "Bipropellant All-in-one In-situ Resource Utilization Truck and Mobile Autonomous Reactor Generating Electricity" (BART and MARGE) describes a system where pairs of BART and MARGE travel around Mars in tandem; BART handles all aspects of production, storage, and distribution of propellant, while MARGE provides power for the operation. After presenting their concept to a panel of NASA experts and aerospace industry leaders at the RASC-AL Forum in June, the team took first place overall at the competition and was also recognized as "Best in Theme."
"Previous ISRU concepts utilized several different small rovers and a fixed central plant, but MIT's BART and MARGE concept is composed of essentially just two types of fully mobile, integrated large trucks with no central plant," says Chloe Gentgen, PhD candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) who served as team lead for the project. "The absence of a central plant enables easy scalability of the architecture, and being fully mobile and integrated, our system has the flexibility to produce propellant wherever the best ice reserves can be found and then deliver it wherever it is needed."
Gentgen led an interdisciplinary group of undergraduate and graduate students from MIT, including Guillem Casadesus Vila, a visiting undergraduate student in AeroAstro from the Centre de Formacio Interdisciplinaria Superior at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya; Madelyn Hoying, a PhD candidate in the Medical Engineering and Medical Physics program within the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology; AeroAstro alum Jayaprakash Kambhampaty '22, rising MIT senior Mindy Long of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); rising sophomore Laasya Nagareddy of the Department of Mathematics; rising junior John Posada of AeroAstro; and rising sophomore Marina Ten Have of EECS.
The team was formed last September when interested students joined the project. AeroAstro PhD candidate George Lordos, who founded the MIT Space Resources Workshop and who has led or advised all MIT NASA competition teams since 2017, was a mentor for the project team. Jeffrey Hoffman, professor of the practice in AeroAstro; and Olivier de Weck, Apollo Program Professor and professor of astronautics and engineering systems in AeroAstro, served as faculty advisors.
"One year ago, the MOXIE experiment led by Dr. Michael Hecht and our team's advisor, Professor Jeffrey Hoffman, produced the first oxygen on Mars. Today, we are on the cusp of orbital test flights that will bring us closer to the first human mission to Mars," says Lordos.
"As humans venture to other worlds, finding and utilizing local water and carbon resources will be indispensable for sustainable exploration of the solar system, so the objective of our MIT team's concept is an exciting and topical technology."
The MIT team addressed the RASC-AL theme "Mars Water-based ISRU Architecture," which required delivering the target 50 tons of propellant at the end of each year and the ability to operate for at least five years without human maintenance. A few other constraints were placed, chief among them that teams could rely on one or more landings of 45 tons of mass and 300 cubic meters of volume on Mars, leaving it to university teams to propose an architecture, budget, and a flight schedule to support their mission.
They developed a comprehensive Mars mission architecture and defined a comprehensive concept of operations, from a precursor ice scouting and technology demonstration mission in 2031 to the main propellant production, storage, and delivery mission in 2036. BART is an end-to-end "ice-to-propellant" system that gathers water from Martian subsurface ice and extracts carbon dioxide from the red planet's atmosphere to synthesize liquid methane and liquid oxygen bipropellant. These are then stored onboard at cryogenic temperatures until delivery directly into a rocket's propellant tanks.
BART is accompanied by MARGE, a 40 kilowatt electric mobile nuclear reactor based on NASA's Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology project (KRUSTY, which also inspired the MIT team's name) that generates power from nuclear fission to support long-duration operations on distant planets.
For the team's proposed mission, four tandems of BART and MARGEs will roam the region known as Arcadia Planitia at the mid-northern latitudes of Mars following a prospecting rover named LISA (Locating Ice Scouting Assistant) in search of accessible ice to use for propellant production. The entire system has 100 tons of storage capacity and can produce 156 tons per year, against a demand of 50 tons per year, and requires only three landings.
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supporting paper.
https://rascal.nianet.org/wp-content/up … -Paper.pdf
a RedWater drill, scroll compressors, water electrolysis and Sabatier reaction chambers, cryocoolers, heat exchangers, fuel cells and 25t storage tanks.
It is powered by MARGE, our mobile power truck design based on NASA’s upcoming 40kWe Kilopower reactor
The MIT team addressed the RASC-AL theme "Mars Water-based ISRU Architecture," which required delivering the target 50 tons of propellant at the end of each year and the ability to operate for at least five years without human maintenance.
This seems a lot smaller than what I would expect but it might be the fuel processing cart that is the issue for not getting more fuel.
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The topic has been idle and with the interest to do more with less what can we do.
So mars came up as a starting point for use as well as earth and while the first mission will land possibly 2 cargo ship and an unmanned fuel factory that is a crew capable ship, we will do this again in a mars cycle without considering that once 4 cargo ships are totally empty what to do next for a sustainable mars' future.
This topic brings forward how one might make them into a geothermal heating system for the future by converting them into what we know works.
To use solar concentrated and store it seems possible Geothermal and Geostored Energy which means we now have a store of heating for any settlement in the future.
Here is another solar reflective heat creation topic Trough Solar Collector- Design- Construction- Operation- Maintenance that was to create gasoline or diesel, but we may need to get a good supply of oxygen to go along with that.
So what are the resources of a starship that can be made use of is the question.
4 cargo ships each carrying Liquid filled tanks of:
methane oxygen
240mT 960mT
An at a minimum height of 50 m tall there is lots of shell materials to make use of as well.
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Let's say we have not enough storage tanks to hold the water that we gather and rather than stopping its gathering want can we do to make temporary storage for it. If we have a large area to be sealed from leakage into the regolith and can cover it equally quick or pour it into a clear Blatter than we can allow for it to freeze if we can cover it to stop it from subliming.
Then when we need it, we can warm it up via uncovering it and reclaim it even from a regolith covered frozen pond.
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Time to work this after seeing articles on habitats.
Its going to be a long time to being able to live in one of these on Mars.
Unfinished, hobbit-inspired home hits the market 57 slides in the gallery
This one could be done from the start of the first landings as proposed that cargo we will need can be put into these.
See Inside This $3.5m Container Home in the Desert 85 slides
Of course, long before we build like a hobbit, we might be able to go to this.
3D-Printed Houses: What Do They Cost and Are They Actually Livable?
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Going with the above post in that if its good enough to live in for earth then with slight modification its good enough for Mars.
Shipping Container Tiny Home
This 320-square-foot abode has it all: a bedroom, shower, toilet, sink, kitchenette, living area, appliances, heating, and air conditioning. But the best part might just be those charming french doors, which let in plenty of natural light.$36,000 (plus $3,755 shipping)
Sure mars shipping will be a bit more....
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It was a while ago that I put forth making use of shipping containers to build with that the equipment was brought in.
https://youtu.be/COcoIe1zzt8
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