Air. Shelter. Water. Food.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-02 15:22:07

As Russia turns off the gas, can Germany stay warm this winter?
https://www.yahoo.com/video/russia-turn … 54537.html

How cold is it - 80 F to or -62 Celsius

A summer day at the Equator &0 Degrees F or 21 Degrees C

At the pole they can drop -195 F or -126 Celsius or 147 Kelvin

Perhaps only the extreme colds of Titan will be worse which are 94 K or −179.2 °C

At the start of a Mars colony it would seem every drop of fuel has to be transported to the Mars at great cost, back on Earth there is access to supply but even then costs exists Annual heating to cost C$5,500-$4,200 for heating a home or even more, on Mars perhaps the fuel will be grown not transported, solar panel will collect energy for warmth. Perhaps nearby reactors will provide power, maybe Nuclear power also keeps the Biodome farms warm, the trees and bamboo can be grown inside Biospheres, Wood burning stoves on Mars. The furnace provides heat to the underground space through walls constructed of perforated bricks, maybe pipes would also run through tunnels and Lava tubes. The Mars settlement would also be a Modern building with floor heating, working through air conduction, radiation, and convection, using electrical resistances or thin fluid-filled hoses, maybe an oily product is burned and heat eleased through air vents located in the settlement buildings ceilings and walls, if Metal manufacturing is done on Mars then projects across a new offworld colony can rely on central radiators to provide heat, Mars might use something similar to a household boiler system. The Larger production factories might eventually try change the climate of Mars by adding greenhouse gasses from their Wall-mounted Chimney, inside smaller Mars biodomes and Martian homes the Free-standing metal Chimney gives warmth, on Mars you will have much longer winters and Dust storms, many days of darkness a year. New high tech facilities and building on Mars can be so well insulated, they will need little heating compared to structures on Earth.

Old Article on Antarctica

Designing a High-Performance Building for Antarctic Conditions
https://buildingenergy.cx-associates.co … conditions

another new mars topic
Thermal heat storage
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9229

Why Cosmic Radiation Could Foil Plans for Farming on Mars
https://www.paidforarticles.com/why-cos … s-2-588808

What would it take for humans to live on Mars? The first step is to successfully get people to the red planet, of course. Once there, the astronauts would face a task that could be even more difficult: figuring out how to survive in an environment that is vastly different from Earth's. A new study demonstrates one of the challenges -- Earth's plants don’t grow as well when exposed to the level of radiation expected on Mars.
Wieger Wamelink, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who describes himself as a space farmer, has been frustrated by sci-fi depictions of growing plants on Mars. "What you often see is that they do it in a greenhouse," he said, "but that doesn't block the cosmic radiation," which consists of high-energy particles that may alter the plants' DNA. Mars lacks the same degree of protection from cosmic radiation that the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field provide. To prove his suspicion that cosmic radiation could be dangerous to plants, Wamelink decided to test the hypothesis himself.
First, Wamelink and his team had to recreate the cosmic radiation. The team settled on using gamma rays generated by radioactive cobalt, even though the actual cosmic radiation that bombards Mars' surface consists of various types of radiation, including alpha and beta particles. But, generating alpha and beta rays on Earth is much more difficult, Wamelink said. It would require a particle accelerator, which Wamelink would love to use, "but I would have to put some plants in the collider for, let's say, two or three months." Considering the high demand for the equipment, "I think it's not ever going to happen," he said.
Once Wamelink and his team secured radioactive cobalt, the team grew rye and garden cress in two groups: one with typical growing conditions and the other had similar conditions but added gamma radiation. Four weeks after germination, the scientists compared the two groups and saw that the leaves of the group exposed to gamma rays had abnormal shapes and colors. The weights of the plants also differed; the rye plants in the gamma-ray group weighed 48% less than the regular group, and the weight of the garden cress exposed to gamma rays was 32% lower than their unblasted counterparts. Wamelink suspects the weight difference is due to the gamma rays damaging the plants' proteins and DNA. The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences this month.
Michael Dixon, who studies agriculture at the University of Guelph in Canada and wasn't involved in the study, said this research did a reasonable job replicating the cosmic radiation considering that it's impossible to copy it perfectly. Ultimately, researchers would need to study plants on the Martian surface to get a full understanding of the impacts.
Dixon is a part of a team that's planning to attempt to grow barley on the Moon, which should happen in the next ten years, he said. One of the first questions that Dixon and his co-workers plan to study is whether or not plants can survive the exposure to lunar radiation.
Wamelink said space agencies should step up their research into crops to improve the quality of the food that astronauts eat. "People at ISS [International Space Station] still eat astronaut food. And that's not very nice," Wamelink said. "I don't know if you ever tasted it, but, well, you don't get happy from it."
Researching space farming and food production is "way more important than some people think," he said. "Radiation is a problem, but it's solvable, I think."

No nails no problem?
https://files.catbox.moe/wcmzkc.mp4

Kids and their toys
https://twitter.com/wamelink_wieger/sta … 3203404803
'Gone buy this, although I do not agree with the greenhouse of glass. I love the space plants. There must be a space farmer there'

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-09-05 13:21:06)

SpaceNut · 2022-09-02 16:00:25

The deeper in the ground will gain thermal insulative values from the cold of mass and with proper layering of insulative barriers there should be able to reduce the amount of heating required.
Since equipment when running gives off heat and we will have many such items heat should not be an issue.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-05 08:47:36

Building

Moon pits could provide shelter for pioneering astronauts
https://www.masslive.com/news/2022/08/m … nauts.html

Chinese space designers eye moon base in volcanic caves for long-term stays after 2035
https://player.fm/1BSDVMs

On the Moon, the Real Gold Might Be Human Urine
https://futurism.com/the-byte/moon-real … uman-urine

This Is the Most Important Experiment to Happen on Mars Yet
https://news.yahoo.com/most-important-e … 15244.html

If we ever want to establish a colony on Mars (paging Elon Musk), then we need to make sure we have plenty of oxygen to keep our astronauts alive. The only problem: there’s not exactly a lot of it on the Red Planet, since its atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.
Luckily, a team of MIT scientists have created a device that’s roughly the size of a lunch box and is capable of producing oxygen on Mars—and apparently, it’s been doing so for more than a year now.
In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, the MIT team launched the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover in 2020. Beginning in April 2021, it conducted six runs where it turned the carbon-rich martian atmosphere into breathable oxygen. During each run, it created six grams of oxygen an hour—roughly as much as a small tree.

Timelapse of Discovery Building Construction at Rothera Research Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTXCALyn9ag

Calories to keep warm and body fuel for work to be done, shipping food, 1 million meals...will Mars get expired food?
What Do You Eat in Antarctica? | Antarctic Extremes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzlA9HDNwBs

old film
'ANTARCTIC NUCLEAR REACTOR AT McMURDO'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSmQ7TUowao

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-13 02:32:55

Caves a place to store goods, subterranean designs and adapted cave architecture

I mentioned before about a California off world exodus, in parts of this world perhaps people already live a life less comfortable and more dangerous than what they could have on Mars.

Dangers of Flood waters on Earth?

‘Where would I go?’: Seoul’s underground dwellers see few options
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220811000622
Seoul is banning subterranean living

Parasite: The real people living in Seoul's basement apartments
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51321661

Modern designs

cheungvogl expands seoul city center with unfolding underground landscapes
https://www.designboom.com/architecture … 7-04-2018/

an Article from 2009 mentions Standards

Seouls Subterranean City Project Takes Shape
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/b … 57403.html

It is the first time that such a concept is being promoted as an urban development policy in Korea."The master plan will include the components of the underground city, while establishing safety standards and guidelines for underground networks," an official with the Seoul Metropolitan Government said. "Subterranean development here has so far been conducted without established standards."

Japanese Tycoon Soichiro Fukutake Masters The Art Of The Turnaround
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jsimms/202 … urnaround/

Beneath the Surface: A Peek at Private Pools
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 … pools.html

A Subterranean Farm in London
https://www.qsrmagazine.com/content/sub … arm-london

Situated 12 stories under London, it supplies some of the city's restaurants with greens.

Underground theater: Ukraine actors return to stage in bomb shelter
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/u … mb-shelter

'The cultural front': Ukraine theatre goes underground
https://sg.style.yahoo.com/cultural-fro … 40815.html

The tiny underground stage and the minimalist set provides "a form of 'art therapy'" for the people who have stayed in Mykolaiv and need something other than the grinding fear of war.

Subterranean sake: Cave aging Japan’s national drink
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2022/ … i-brewery/

SpaceNut · 2022-09-13 21:07:51

sealing and keeping an underground site might be hard on mars just like they are here on earth.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-16 05:44:36

Fusion?

Perhaps cause a revolution like the Nuclear Fission has done, or Steam Works once did or Internal combustion engine and rise of the mechanized factory system of the industrial revolution, no longer needs to burn Biosphere bamboo or wood for heat in Martian stoves. Could be a near endless supply of energy, solve power needs, less worries about heat storage and energy storage.

China working on a fusion-fission reactor?
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science … er-6-years

Chinese researchers will try to create a nuclear fusion reaction by using the strong electric charge to ignite a small number of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. And in a departure from previous designs, the fusion energy produced by the Chinese facility will not go to the power grid, but drive a swamp of superfast particles to hit uranium – the fuel which will power the facility’s fission component.
The Z-FFR reactor is expected to be completed around 2025 in Chengdu, Sichuan province in southwest China.

'New Zealand spending plan includes rebuilding Antarctic base'
https://infotel.ca/newsitem/as-new-zeal … 1665421183

Building on other buildings

We’d do well to learn energy lessons from ancient rural construction
https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/new … nstruction

As Calder and Urban explain: ‘Perhaps the starkest lesson that the pre-modern blackhouse has to offer is that is that the level of energy and carbon we spend on our building materials is, by world historical standards, deranged. Steel, glass and concrete all existed when blackhouses were being built, but they were rejected for their exorbitant cost in heat energy. To achieve net zero we must return to low-embodied energy materials wherever possible.’
Retrofitting, re-using, building with true circularity in mind: we have a choice to move towards this. We can celebrate the reworked, the renovated, the untidy patina of buildings that already exist, rather than always chasing the shiny, the pristine, and the brand new. We can hold the earth closer.

Extreme Construction: Building in Antarctica
https://www.constructconnect.com/blog/e … antarctica

The AIMS project will consolidate the 100+ buildings that comprise McMurdo Station down to 16, including 10 existing buildings and the construction of 6 new buildings. The first building planned for construction as part of the AIMS project is the Information Technology & Communications building as well as relocating and extending utility lines running from the building to other parts of the station.

ife at McMurdo Station is like living in a small town located in the middle of nowhere. The station has about 1,200 residents during the summer months, made up of research scientists and support personnel to keep the station running, cook meals, run the fire station, clean, provide transportation, perform maintenance, IT support, etc. During the winter months, the population drops to about 250 residents.

Residents live in double-occupancy dormitories and all staff members are provided with three free meals a day. The station features a number of amenities including a post office, library, laundry facilities, gyms, a store, hair salon, 24-hour coffee house, movie lounges, music room and instrument rentals, a disc golf course, and two bars, Gallagher’s and Southern Exposure.

There are also plenty of activities available to participate in during downtime. There are a number of indoor and outdoor activities for residents of McMurdo Station. From hiking and cross-country skiing to yoga and basketball, there’s something for everyone. Many of the residents offer classes and talks on a wide range of topics.

Calliban · 2022-10-15 06:17:45

Underground house in Manchester. This will be the standard way of building on Mars.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JYShp9aiEIg

Last edited by Calliban (2022-10-15 06:17:59)

tahanson43206 · 2022-10-15 07:26:05

For Calliban re #532

Thank you for the link to that video of the structure built under the garden because local regulations prohibited building above. it seems to me this is a good example of regulations redirecting creative energies in productive ways.

I note that the window glass ** should ** be relatively easy to sweep clean of the occasional snow in England, as well as the accumulation of leaves in fall.

On Mars there wouldn't be a lot of snow or leaves, but there ** would ** be plenty of dust to sweep away.

All-in-all, that is quite an impressive demonstration of creative architecture.

Update a bit later: A Mars refinement is that the windows need to be able to withstand habitat pressure.

Following the 3-5-8 rule, that pressure would be 8 PSI or 500 millibars.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-10-15 18:58:23

In addition, take the pelting of sand plus if struck by anything larger. It will not be a single pane system but many to give the toughness and ability to not be penetrated.

tahanson43206 · 2022-10-15 19:25:44

For SpaceNut re #634

The concerns you raised reminded me of aircraft windows, and spacecraft windows at the next level of extreme.

The example Calliban showed us is from a comparatively benign Earth environment. The up facing windows are in a restricted space, so random objects (like rocks) are unlikely to land on them.

I ** think ** the point Calliban was trying to make was about how a subsurface living space might be made attractive to live in. This forum contains a number of realistic suggestions for how to admit light into underground habitats on Mars. Some are more realistic than others, but i don't recall any of them addressing the issue of dealing with a blowout from inside air pressure, or failure due to arrival of a space rock, or a falling wrench, for that matter.

When ** real ** architects set to work on ** real ** designs for real people on Mars, your warning about protecting against failure of optical systems such as those in the UK mansion guest space will become concerns in the same league as providing power and air to the required specifications.

The topic has stretched over 600 posts.

It would take a while to read them all, but the effort might prove fruitful.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-10-15 19:33:46

The ISS Cupola windows use a drop cover to shield them from impacts so something similar could be part of the design to make the shelter even better.
I did kind of show just how bad it could be in post 504 but at least if you have power the stands of living get better.

Calliban · 2022-11-17 20:12:40

Musk intends to build a city a 1 million people on Mars by 2050. That is a difficult accomplishment and will require building a lot of living space very quickly. I have been giving some thought to how that might be done. Humans on Earth are accustomed to open sky environments. We have evolved in an environment that allows us to walk for miles. Being confined to small buildings will do bad things to the mental health of Mars colonists. Luckily, conditions on Mars are conducive for construction of very low cost pressurised volume. Specifically, Martian fine regolith will produce solid ceramic if subject to modest compression.

I have written before about underground construction on Mars and others have devoted a great deal of effort to this concept. However, many concepts have focused on 3D printing or brickwork construction. Both are relatively slow and difficult. They require extensive robotics, or laying bricks in spacesuits. However, establishing a steel industry on Mars affords a different option, one that would not be possible or practical on Earth. Huge areas of the Martian surface can be made habitable using thin steel frames. Firstly, steel tubes with a fanned base will be placed within a depression on the Martian surface in a hexagonal arragement. The tubes would be filled with fine regolith, which will be tampered in layers to form a steel jacketed ceramic column. Next, a steel hexagonal canopy will be lifted into place on top of the six colums. This is repeated until columns and canopies fill the depression. At the crown of each canopy will be a sunlight pipe, which will have about three quarters of the diameter of each canopy and will extend upwards at least 10m. The canopies are covered with fine regolith which is tampered down to form a hard ceramic. Coarser regolith and rocks are then piled over the top until only the tops of the sunlight tubes are visible. The top of each sunlight tube is covered with a glass dust cover. At the bottom, each sunlight tube is covered by a plastic hemisphere, which lets light in and transfers internal pressure to the canopy. Following the sealing of the light tubes, the entire volume can be pressurised. The internal pressure force pushing up on the canopy will be about 75% of the weight of regolith on top of the canopy. Weight and internal pressure almost balance.

Using this arrangement, dozens of square miles of Martian surface can be rendered habitable very quickly. The steel members can all be produced from mild steel sheet. The tubes will be hot rolled to ensure ductility, and will be seam welded. The canopies will be shaped in a press, which will introduce some cold working for extra rigidity. The sulight pipe will be welded onto the canopy and coated internally with aluminium. The mass production of continuous repeated units will bring down cost. If each canopy is a hexagon roughly 10m in diameter, we would need about 12,000 of them to cover 1km2 and 36,000 steel support tubes.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-11-17 20:29:25)

SpaceNut · 2022-11-17 21:49:54

Recycle the shell from the cargo lander into structure requires cutting it from it and then moving it to the surface would allow for a space that be created without any industry to jump start construction. Can left over methane and oxygen cut through the shell or would we need other means to get the material for use?

initially this is what the ring sections looked like
Boca-Chica-orbital-Starship-progress-031419-NASASpaceflight-bocachicagal-1-c-1024x768.jpg

but they look like this now.

9-4.jpg?resize=1024%2C575&ssl=1

Oldfart1939 · 2023-02-21 23:39:03

A plasma cutter would make cutting these rings apart a piece of cake. Lowering and moving them would be another story, though, due to the weight involved. They aren't really that heavy in Mars gravity, but they would be very unwieldy to handle with primitive resources.

kbd512 · 2023-02-22 03:29:18

SpaceNut,

The residual LOX/LCH4 would need to be compressed into gas storage cylinders and then used to power a fuel cell to supply the electrical power to something like the plasma cutter that Oldfart1939 suggested. I think a Trumpf electric nibbler could be used as well. That's a 32 pound electrically powered metal punch that punches out the metal it cuts through using a carbide bit. These are $8,000 tools that use 2.6kWe of power. They're designed to cut through tempered steel, including stainless. Cutting speed would be about 1.6m per minute through Starship's 4mm (6 gauge) thick 304L sheet metal propellant tanks. Maybe a plasma cutter can go faster, but not using O2 as the shielding gas and not if cut quality matters greatly. Plasma cutting will affect the temper of the steel, whereas the nibbler will not. However, the plasma cutter can also cut through parts that the nibbler never will. I'd cut angles and weld joints using plasma, then switch to the nibbler for working with the individual sheets. You also need drills and bending brakes and welding equipment to use the repurposed sheet metal.

You could fabricate a double-wall pressurized tracked vehicle, and fill the void space between the two walls with powdered regolith for radiation protection and impact protection to prevent a breach of the pressure vessel if you accidentally run over some large rocks. With a small forge, you could give the colonists real heavy-duty silverware and kitchen knives, pots and pans, appliances like washers / dryers / ovens, and springs. Stainless knives won't hold an edge very well for severe cutting duty, but it's a very tough steel that will last a long time. It will cut anything you'd eat without issue and won't rust. The engines are made from stainless alloys that could be repurposed and suitably hardened as field or construction site knives and saw blades (not really optimal for sawing, but you take what you can get), fittings for pipes or tubing, tubing to transport water and brines (life support, liquid fuel transfer, fuel tanks, using acids in industrial processes), fasteners like bolts or studs (with appropriate deformation / work hardening to impart greater tensile strength), etc.

SpaceX is giving us a lot of high quality stainless to work with. After we collect enough Nickel-Iron nuggets from the surface, then we can make high-speed tool steels.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-04-29 02:38:07

NASA extracts oxygen from lunar soil simulant

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA … t_999.html

As NASA works toward sending astronauts to the Moon through Artemis missions, one of the agency's primary goals is to establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface. Resources like oxygen are crucial building blocks for making that vision a reality. In addition to using oxygen for breathing, it can also be used as a propellant for transportation, helping lunar visitors stay longer and venture farther.

During a recent test, scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston successfully extracted oxygen from simulated lunar soil. Lunar soil refers to the fine-grained material covering the Moon's surface. This was the first time that this extraction has been done in a vacuum environment, paving the way for astronauts to one day extract and use resources in a lunar environment, called in-situ resource utilization.

NASA's Carbothermal Reduction Demonstration (CaRD) team conducted the test in conditions similar to those found on the Moon by using a special spherical chamber with a 15-foot diameter called the Dirty Thermal Vacuum Chamber. The chamber is considered "dirty" because unclean samples can be tested inside.

The team used a high-powered laser to simulate heat from a solar energy concentrator and melted the lunar soil simulant within a carbothermal reactor developed for NASA by Sierra Space Corp., of Broomfield, Colorado. A carbothermal reactor is where the process of heating and extracting the oxygen takes place. Carbothermal reduction has been used for decades on Earth to produce items like solar panels and steel by producing carbon monoxide or dioxide using high temperatures.

After the soil was heated, the team was able to detect carbon monoxide using a device called the Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSolo). A similar device will fly on two upcoming exploration missions to the Moon's South Pole - the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 in 2023 that will help scientists search for water, and NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) in November 2024 that will explore Mons Mouton, a large flat-topped mountain, to get a close-up view of the location and concentration of water ice and other potential resources.

"This technology has the potential to produce several times its own weight in oxygen per year on the lunar surface, which will enable a sustained human presence and lunar economy," said Aaron Paz, NASA senior engineer and CaRD project manager at Johnson.

SpaceNut · 2023-04-29 11:02:54

The lunar vacuum is not the issue as a chamber makes it easier to gather the oxygen from the heating. Its still about power to fill the chamber that is the tall order for even Mars as well.
Energy poverty as caused by a system failure will be the main issue for man's landing on mars from its start and depending on that how early it might occur man will need fallback plans for how to survive.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-05-31 03:34:51

This is How NASA Wanted to Rescue Space Shuttle Astronauts

https://www.universetoday.com/161656/th … stronauts/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-12 14:40:10

Cylindrical Autonomous Drilling Bot Could Reach Buried Martian Water
https://www.universetoday.com/162766/cy … ian-water/

The south pole of Mars is a likely candidate for future exploration efforts there. It is also an area of interest for astrobiologists, as there is a decent chance that there might be signs of ancient water there and, therefore, signs of ancient life – if there was any on the Red Planet anyway. But to access that ancient life, explorers would have to get to it, which means digging much further than has ever been dug on Mars before. Typical deep-bore drilling equipment is bulky, heavy, and difficult to set up on remote terrain like the Martian South Pole. So a group of engineers from Planet Enterprises, a Space Technology Incubator based in Washington, developed a new deep bore drilling concept they call Borebots.

another topic

'Practical Water Extraction Methods for Starship Missions'

https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9199

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-25 06:20:25

I thought I would find a thread with a stimulant drug 'Coffee'

EDIT
there are some items in this article that cause a posting error so I will post a smaller quote

Scientists Strengthen Concrete By 30 Percent With Used Coffee Grounds

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/0 … ee-grounds

Coffee grounds can't simply be mixed in raw with standard concrete as they won't bind with the other materials due to their organic content, Dr. Roychand explained. In order to make the grounds more compatible, the team experimented with pyrolyzing the materials at 350 and 500 degrees C, then substituting them in for sand in 5, 10, 15 and 20 percentages (by volume) for standard concrete mixtures.
https://www.engadget.com/scientists-str … 43441.html

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-25 06:21:24)

tahanson43206 · 2023-08-25 06:42:40

For Mars_B4_Moon re #545

Thank you for finding and posting this report on research to strengthen concrete using coffee grounds.

If someone has time, please follow the links provided by Mars_B4_Moon to see if (possibly) the "secret" is to drive off the hydrogen from the carbohydrates of the coffee beans, leaving carbon behind. Is the carbon able to bond with the standard ingredients?

Chemical composition Portland cement is made up of four main compounds: tricalcium silicate (3CaO · SiO2), dicalcium silicate (2CaO · SiO2), tricalcium aluminate (3CaO · Al2O3), and a tetra-calcium aluminoferrite (4CaO · Al2O3Fe2O3).
The major cements: composition and properties - Britannica
www.britannica.com › Technology › Industry
About Featured Snippets

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-12-03 20:51:49

Oxygen for Mars

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4697/1

There is a lot of attention in our community on creating a backup location for humanity and, along with pressurized in-space settlements, Mars is one of the best locations for that. But along with the human race and its civilization, we should also include the important requirement that we need a backup for life itself. Right now the only place known where life exists, and can survive and grow, is Earth, just one tiny planet. Our lives are enabled and enriched by the incredible variety of animals and plants that live on Earth, on land and in the seas. We would be immensely impoverished if all we had kept alive in space were the most critical plant species that we grow for food. So we need to think more about how to keep a whole biosphere alive.

Here is a scale-up table showing energy use and mass for hydrolysis of different amounts of water ice. Each line or row has 1,000 times (three orders of magnitude) more of mass and energy use than the last. Most people are not even familiar with the names of amounts of energy this large.
Energy use (amounts) Water ice mass Oxygen Mass Hydrogen Mass
7 watt-hours 1 gram 0.88 grams 0.12 g
7 kilowatt-hours 1 kilogram 0.88 kg 0.12 kg
7 megawatt-hours 1 metric ton 0.88 tons 0.12 ton
7 gigawatt-hours 1 thousand tons 880 tons 120 tons
7 terawatt-hours 1 million tons 880,000 tons 120,000 tons
7 petawatt-hours 1 billion tons 880 million tons 120 million tons
7 exawatt-hours 1 trillion tons 880 billion tons 120 billion tons
7 zettawatt-hours 1 quadrillion tons 880 trillion tons 120 trillion tons
The last row in italics shows the quantities we actually need to deal with.
The extra 8–10% (80 trillion tons) of oxygen would possibly be absorbed by the surface rocks and regolith after billions of years of exposure to a near vacuum had reduced the oxygen pressure and molecular rock surface saturation levels to effectively zero.

SpaceNut · 2023-12-11 19:55:39

So far, we know that starship is to land 2 cargo followed by a mars cycle with 2 more outgoing and a crewed ship to mars. That is going to be a tall order to fill for planning of cargo and a selected first mission sizing to lay a path forward.

Experience the Starship interior as one of the crew Starship-Concept-LW-Section-A-LEVEL-1-6-copy.png?fit=2560%2C1808&ssl=1

looking downward
Starship-Concept-LW-Level-6-Flight-Deck-copy.png?fit=2560%2C1808&ssl=1

there are many decks to see if they will work or modification will be required for what will optimize a mission.

SpaceNut · 2024-02-18 18:47:54

Things that are covered in a capsule.

ECLS into the following seven functional categories.
1. Active Thermal Control System (ATCS)
2. Air Revitalization System (ARS)
3. Fire Detection and Suppresion (FDS)
4. Flight Suit Interface (FSI)
5. Potable Water (PWMS)
6. Pressure control system (PCS)
7. Waste Management (WM)

Again, I have referenced the biggest change to the ship and payloads has to do with sticking to a mission profile of time and numbers required for it to be possible.

Mission types are covered in the post Forty 40 Ton Mars Delivery Mechanism in post #29.

Nasa has pegged power at 11 kw e continuous per man on a closed tent camping mode that does not count for energy needed to do recycling of human waste streams and for processing new assets to restock these consumed items.

It does not even look at food as we know we will need to do with gardens. Nasa on its use of Orion for mars has neglected to include other requirements for oxygen and water such as module leakage, science experiments, and extravehicular activity (EVA).

EVA can be a source of consumables loss in several ways, such as the airlock, cooling systems that vent water, and non-regenerative CO2 removal systems in the space suit.

SpaceNut · 2024-02-19 11:37:48

Solar calculations for minimal capsule is 11 kw x 25 hrs is 275 kw an hour a day to support 4 people so for 17 we are needing 4.25 times as many to do the crew size that we are in need of.

Since we know that we need 3 parts to the journey the solar arrays must be able to be repacked back into the ships system when landing and be redeploy able once on the surface and still require 4 possibly 5 of the kilowatt reactors.

The solar needs to be expandable once on the surface which means extra unused batteries are required.

240 kg of water in four tanks (960 kg) is used for a crew of 4 for 21 days.

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