Some general observations.

GW Johnson · 2018-04-28 08:40:07

The notion of "microwave-edged" digger blades makes no sense to me at all. That's just another consumer of electricity that is going to be in very short supply whenever propellant is being made, or whenever the sun is not high in the sky, if no nuclear is available.

I think the notion of processing 1000 cubic meters of slightly-damp dirt to get 1-5 cubic meters of water is a ludicrous idea as a "preferred procedure". That's a last resort if you picked the wrong site with no ice deposits. It'll be very energy-intensive when energy is in short supply.

The ice deposits do seem to be on Mars, and some are in landing sites that are otherwise attractive. They are buried by meters to hundreds of meters of regolith (that's why they are still there, by the way).

If there really is a buried glacier near where you land (not directly underneath, that would be too stupidly risky of a cave-in), then take a clue from the oil industry and drill for ice, recovered as liquid water, using steam injection. Compared to processing enormous dirt volumes, drilling is far, far, far "cheaper" in terms of effort and energy expended, and (especially) in the equipment size and mass needed. That's in part why fracking buried shale has out-competed surface tar sand recovery here on Earth. Why not use that in-your-face lesson?

The energy used to make the steam can come partly from waste heat recovery, partly from solar thermal, and thus only partly from the camp's electric power. That eases the energy draw from the power supply. Electricity WILL be in short supply. I don't think any sane person would contend otherwise.

As for explosives, yeah, you WILL need them. And, Louis, they do NOT depend in any way upon air for their explosive yield. Air carries a shock wave, if you're building bombs. If you're blasting dirt and rocks, those solids carry the wave, and right where you want it. Works in total vacuum.

LOX-carbon was the original explosive used at the Mesabi iron ore range in northern Minnesota. You have to be very careful, it is easy to blow yourself up with that stuff. It was replaced by the ANFO as safer and cheaper, with the downside that larger shot holes were needed to propagate the detonation.

Shot hole size is a nominal 1 inch with dynamite (that's why the sticks are the diameter that they are). Shot hole size for best yield with ANFO is 9 inches. I don't know what the shot hole size is with LOX-carbon, but it has to be somewhere in between. Nobody here on Earth uses that anymore.

You will need detonators and real dynamite to do any serious blasting. Detonators are sensitive, yes, but mostly to stray electrical energy, and to fire exposure. Well-shielded, they present little threat in transport. Dynamite is sensitive to shock, fire, and friction. Well packed, it presents little threat in shipment.

Most explosives used in big charges require not only a detonator, but also a booster charge to multiply the initial effect into something big enough to set off mass quantities. The most common ignition train is an electric blasting cap poked into a quarter stick of dynamite, in intimate contact with the main charge, and all under some kind of confinement.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-04-28 09:23:02)

Oldfart1939 · 2018-04-28 08:58:21

As GW has already pointed out, the two most valuable commodities on Mars will be water and ENERGY! For this reason alone, we'll need to use nuclear power in spite of all the resistance by various members of this group against such. One of the earlier proposals made here (by me) was a strip mining system with large carts which a rover could pull large lumps of regolith-ice mixture inside a special habitat which had good solar exposure (solar gain) and in a pressurized environment simply allowed to melt from solar heating. Unfortunately, the amount of H2O required for electrolysis and conversion to CH4 is pretty excessive with the BFR/BFS. This is one reason I believe SpaceX, once they get to another milestone point in planning, will decide on a much reduced size first manned mission. NO brilliant plan ever survives contact with reality.

GW Johnson · 2018-04-28 09:38:40

I'm just guessing here, but I think I understand Musk's thinking. He wants to set 2 unmanned BFS's down near each other at a site where he believes there is buried ice. These ships, if they survive the landings (and I think it likely 1 or more will be lost), carry a lot of the supplies and construction equipment the crews in the later ships will need.

But, they will also have to carry multiple rovers of some undefined or unrevealed type. These will have to be robotically (or teleoperator-ly) unloaded. They will have to drill to verify that the ice is really there, and exactly what sort of shape it is in. These things aren't going to be your usual science-experiment rovers. We're talking about robot (or teleoperator) drill rigs capable of reaching ice that could be meters down, or even hundreds of meters down.

One of the many long poles in Musk's tent is where these rovers will come from. Nobody, not even the JPL boys, has ever done anything quite like this before. I don't see anybody actually doing anything like this, and there's not much time left to get them built and tested, if the 2022 date has any reality at all. That's exactly WHY this is a long pole in the tent.

It would be wise to use those same rovers to grade-off flatter spots for the subsequent manned BFS's to land with greater safety.

The first manned BFS's will be small crews and a lot of equipment and supplies. They may be there for multiple years before any BFS makes the trip home. Indeed, much of the equipment and supplies sent with these will depend upon what is found with the earlier unmanned ships. THAT is why a swarm of appropriate rovers is so crucial for those first ships.

As I said, I'm just guessing here, but these are educated guesses. There really are some awfully long poles yet to address in Musk's tent.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-04-28 09:41:40)

kbd512 · 2018-04-28 17:09:52

Louis,

If regolith processing becomes necessary, then I provided a potential solution that could work in the real world because it has no fantastic power requirements that mandate multiple football fields of expensive solar panels. The fresnel lens and stainless steel vacuum thermos are not cutting edge tech, but they work well and require little to no maintenance. Molten salt heat engines are proven simplistic ways of providing continuous thermal power to perform mechanical work or generate electrical power. This is the only realistic alternative to nuclear fission that I can think of.

The solar arrays provided by Orbital ATK may be light as a feather and provide lots of power, relative to their volume and mass, but those panels are also around $1,000 per watt of output. There's no question that some are needed, but a one megawatt array would cost about 1.5 billion dollars. There's also no question that the panels will work as intended since Orbital ATK has a 100% success track record with the technology, but you pay dearly for that sort of assurance of capability.

The amount of electrical power required to microwave enough regolith to produce hundreds of tons of water from what is essentially desert soil is ludicrous. If you can land on a glacier and suck the water out of the ground with a pipe, then you do that. If you can't, then you have to process a lot of regolith. Equipment for both methods should be taken along, just in case someone made a massive error regarding where the water is, how much is actually there, or BFS lands on an iron plate.

GW,

Packing high explosives into a spaceship just seems like a bad idea to me. Aren't there enough explosive hazards aboard already? Theoretically, it should be fine if properly packaged, but then there are all the potential ways to blow yourself up with explosives and these people are likely to be amateurs when it comes to demo work. Almost anything could work with enough engineering and power behind it, but why not try the simplest methods first?

SpaceNut · 2018-04-28 17:24:12

The mars soil is of a high iron content to which its going to obsorb the energy same as a fork in the microwave....

louis · 2018-04-28 17:32:40

Good point! Although I think that does vary across the planet of course - so that might be another factor for a landing zone: lower iron signals, but not too far from iron ore sources.

SpaceNut wrote:

The mars soil is of a high iron content to which its going to obsorb the energy same as a fork in the microwave....

louis · 2018-04-28 17:34:34

If I were working for Space X I think I would open up the landing zone issue to all interested parties across the globe. Space X could draw up a "top ten" of landing sites and ask people from all around the world to comment/indicate a preference.

I think this would generate interest and consolidate global support for the mission, allowing all nations to feel involved.

Last edited by louis (2018-04-28 17:35:28)

GW Johnson · 2018-04-29 10:11:42

Louis:

That's actually not a bad idea. The more ideas get looked at, the more likely a good, workable one can be found. Statistics, if nothing else. And it applies to all sorts of issues, not just the landing site issue.

I really do hope that Spacex, NASA, and the rest actually peruse some of the forums like this one. That's where out-of-the-box ideas can be found. They'll be hidden among the nonsense like a needle in a haystack, but they really are there!

Kbd512:

I quite agree about the risk of transporting explosives on spaceships. Should not be done unless needed.

I think there will be an interval of time between the first landings on Mars, and when a chemical industry can finally be set up on Mars, when explosives need to be sent there to support heavy construction. Hard rock digs go much easier if you can drill and blast.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-04-29 10:14:52)

Terraformer · 2018-04-29 11:24:36

Do explosives have to be sent in their final form? Why can't the oxidiser and fuel be mixed on Mars, instead?

SpaceNut · 2018-04-29 18:07:51

louis wrote:

If I were working for Space X I think I would open up the landing zone issue to all interested parties across the globe. Space X could draw up a "top ten" of landing sites and ask people from all around the world to comment/indicate a preference.
I think this would generate interest and consolidate global support for the mission, allowing all nations to feel involved.

You actually did create a topic for that in Where to Land

louis · 2018-04-29 18:17:23

It's amazing to me that the media engage with so much trivia but have no interest in where the first off-Earth planetary human civilisation might be founded in as little as 6 years! But then again, one has to admit that even people involved in the space industry seem to have virtually no interest in this subject!! Oh well, their children and grandchildren will attend lectures, maybe rather boring lectures, about why Sagan City, the first city on Mars, came to be located where it is!

SpaceNut wrote:

louis wrote:
If I were working for Space X I think I would open up the landing zone issue to all interested parties across the globe. Space X could draw up a "top ten" of landing sites and ask people from all around the world to comment/indicate a preference.
I think this would generate interest and consolidate global support for the mission, allowing all nations to feel involved.

You actually did create a topic for that in Where to Land

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-08-08 07:57:19

Engineered plant, a specially made Mushroom “designer microbes” to help colonists establish their presence on Mars.
Animal and Plant and Meat and Carbohydrate, Vitamin, Fruit and Vegetable. However Will the 'Omnivore' be of better value to Mars or offworld colonies on Titan or Europa?

All Waste and Sewage will be recycled back into a system, the Trash can and Toilet will feed new life and become Fertilizer for Food and support animal.

Would an A.I Robot make a hard choice a human might hold back on, the Software Computer Machine Artificial Personality be able to make those hard, difficult decisions that a human might have trouble making when dealing with its animal companion or pet and farm animal? In the end a mission and colony must survive a first year long winter.

How will food be made in those Lava Tubes and what kinds of Food is best for those Tunnels?

A cosmic Fox engineered for space? Canidae are a biological family of dog-like carnivorans, but they can also survive on some Omnivore diet. Foxes can survive long winters can live on the North Polar region and on every continent except Antarctica, the Tiny Big Eared Fennec Fox is often a pet it moves from North Africa to Asia. The Fox and Dog are different, Canids are typically monogamous, provide paternal care to their offspring, have reproductive cycles with lengthy proestral and dioestral phases and have a copulatory tie during mating. They also retain adult offspring in the social group, suppressing the ability of these to breed while making use of the alloparental care they can provide to help raise the next generation of offspring, Most canid species are spontaneous ovulators, the Fox is a difficult creature to domesticate and train in comparison to a normal working Dog. In the wild back on planet Earth, the typical lifespan of a fox is one to three years, although individuals may live up to ten years. Coywolf is an informal term for a canid hybrid descended from coyotes, eastern wolves and gray wolves. The Australian dingo–dog hybrid is a hybrid cross between a dingo and a domestic dog. The current population of free ranging domestic dogs in Australia is now probably higher than in the past, in year 2021, DNA testing of over 5,000 wild-living canines from across Australia found that 31 were feral domestic dogs and 27 were first generation hybrids...many foreign species introduced to Australia have become pests which destroy the Native Eco-System. Unlike many canids, foxes are more like Cats and are not always pack animals. Typically, they live in small family groups, but some such as Arctic foxes are known to be solitary, the species of gray fox is one of only two canine species known to regularly climb trees as Cats do; the other is the raccoon dog, another species of Dog the dhole Cuon alpinus are now endangered in the wild because of persecution, its is not just humans that kill these guys the Dhole competes with the Tiger, Wolf, Indian Asiatic Lion, Bear and the Leopard, perhaps one day the new Biosphere and Biodomes of Mars will save species from being lost on Earth?

Some here talked about Biodomes with little farms and inside, a tiny Goat or mini engineered Cattle

Others wanted all sorts of plant, maybe something to feed and farm with the plant and of course you need your Pet Space Feline or Cat to keep the animals in check once they bred to levels where they became a 'pest'

But eventually things might get so bad the Doggie might have only a plant or you might have to feed your Dog other Dogs?

Think of the worst case scenario, the colony starts to fail, your Omnivore can switch to either plant or meat. There might be a way to bring birds to Mars but in Zero G they die as they can not drink and need gravity for that throat mechanism. The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae, are a family of passerine songbirds found around they can switch, the Pig, some Lizards, some Fish, and the Dog, the Badger can also be herbivorous, Pink the fairy armadillo from the hot and cold Sands and Scrubby grasslands of Argentina, the simple kinds of field mice, the good thing about Omnivorous mammals is when the Food Chain breaks down totally an Omnivore might survive a winter by even eating its own kind.

During the 19th century westward movement in the United States, mountainmen, native Americans, the U.S. Army, as well as the Confederacy during the American Civil War sometimes had to sustain themselves on dogmeat; first to be consumed would be the horses, then the mules, and lastly the dogs. Eating dog meat is taboo in Polish culture. However, since the 16th century, fat from various animals, including dogs, was used as part of folk medicine, and since the 18th century dog fat has had a reputation as being beneficial for the lungs. In France, butcher shops in Paris selling dog meat were open all over town until around 1910. The extinct Hawaiian Poi Dog and Polynesian Dog were breeds of pariah dog used by Native Hawaiians as a spiritual protector of children and as a source of food, consumption of domestic dog meat is commonplace in Tonga, and has also been noted in expatriate Tongan communities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.

I remember books and tv clips in recent documentary that told the heroism of Laika, the first animal that went to orbit and died in Soviet Russian space flight, I would prefer not to eat 'Man's Best Friend' but perhaps there could be 2 Colonies and the Colony that decides to restrict its diet will not survive. For Laika no capacity for her recovery and survival was planned, and she died of overheating or suffocation hours into the flight.

Crops, Unconventional
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7568
Nutrition
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=231
Genetically cloning a Beast of Burden..ethical & moral implications?
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9898
Livestock
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6234
Genetic Engineering
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3222
Crops, Aquatic
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7327

Some might be a cultural mind set, sometimes in Asia you might meet a people who are shocked a Western man might eat something so cartoonishly innocent and cute looking as a Rabbit?

the Hindu might take offense you put a Cow into a Burger.

but they in parts of Asia also Eat Pet Cats and they Dogs don't they?

South Korea launches first lunar orbiter
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/s … 26bde2d400

The Future of Lunar Exploration Might Lie Underneath its Surface
https://www.labroots.com/trending/space … -surface-2

NASA Launches “Lunar Loo” Challenge to Design a Reduced Gravity Toilet
https://www.medgadget.com/2020/06/nasa- … oilet.html

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-08-08 10:27:44)

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#51 2018-04-28 08:40:07

Re: Some general observations.

#52 2018-04-28 08:58:21

Re: Some general observations.

#53 2018-04-28 09:38:40

Re: Some general observations.

#54 2018-04-28 17:09:52

Re: Some general observations.

#55 2018-04-28 17:24:12

Re: Some general observations.

#56 2018-04-28 17:32:40

Re: Some general observations.

#57 2018-04-28 17:34:34

Re: Some general observations.

#58 2018-04-29 10:11:42

Re: Some general observations.

#59 2018-04-29 11:24:36

Re: Some general observations.

#60 2018-04-29 18:07:51

Re: Some general observations.

#61 2018-04-29 18:17:23

Re: Some general observations.

#62 2022-08-08 07:57:19

Re: Some general observations.

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