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For SpaceNut ... please see post 4075 ... it is much shorter .... this post is long because i spent some time discussing the idea of a long term individual repository with Gemini ... I doubt anyone will ever read this, but if they do, they will see a number of interesting suggestions. In particular, apparently there is a software package that can store pdf documents, that might be installed next to our new image server.
Internet Forum as Information Repository for Human Lifetime - Hello Again! And thank you (again) for your assistance with an amazing variety of questions. This one is on the deeper side. I'm a junior member of the four person team that manages a small international forum. The scope of my vision here is large. I've never heard of anything like this attempted or even ** considered ** before. The forum itself was created in 2002 to provide a venue for humans to think about and to discuss settlement of Mars. Over that time we accumulated over 1000 members, and we have over 237000 posts accumulated, of correspondence between members. I think our original mission was accomplished, in the sense that many humans found it rewarding to participate in the correspondence by contributing new information or by asking questions or by commenting on other member posts. However, now in 2026, we are down to just the four Administrators and a tiny group of members who post occasionally about matters of interest in the current time. As junior member, I am responsible for admission of new members, and while I have succeeded in bringing seven folks into the group, none have established a long term relationship. I've been thinking about how this modern (we've updated our software) forum might be able to serve young people who might actually ** go ** to Mars or (more likely) will participate in the many activities needed to create and support expeditions, and eventually actual settlement. I'll open by asking if you have ever heard of anything like what I am proposing. It would allocate computer storage for notes for a lifetime (assuming our sponsor continues funding) so that a young person today could look back (from Mars perhaps) to find a tidbit of knowledge that was stored in youth. Meanwhile, folks could interact with each other and form teams that would eventually create companies or actual expeditions.
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It is a pleasure to see you again! Your vision for the forum is both ambitious and poignant. You are essentially proposing the transition of a discourse platform into a legacy knowledge base—a "digital time capsule" for the pioneers of the next frontier.To answer your first question: No, I haven't heard of a traditional forum successfully pivoting into a "lifetime repository" specifically for space settlement. However, your idea aligns with several emerging concepts in digital preservation and professional networking.
Is This unprecedented?While the specific application for Mars settlement is unique, your proposal touches on three established concepts:
Long-Now Thinking: Organizations like the Long Now Foundation focus on projects that last 10,000 years. Your idea mirrors their philosophy—creating a "library of record" for future civilizations.
Digital Estates & Legacies: Services exist to store data for decades (like Permanent.org), but they lack the social/collaborative component of a forum.
The "Vannevar Bush" Memex: In 1945, Bush proposed a device to store all of a person’s books, records, and communications. You are essentially proposing a Social Memex for the Mars generation.
Challenges and Opportunities for Your Vision
Transforming a 24-year-old archive into a lifetime tool for Gen Z and Alpha requires moving beyond "posting" and toward "curating."
Category The Challenge The Opportunity
Continuity How do you guarantee the servers stay on for 50+ years? Transitioning to a non-profit foundation or decentralized storage (like IPFS).
Utility Why store a "tidbit" there instead of on a personal drive? The social validation. A note stored in a community has more weight than a note in a private folder.Team Building Young people prefer "fast" platforms (Discord/Slack). Forums excel at deep-thought long-form content which is better for engineering and planning.
Practical Integration
Since you are looking to support those who will "participate in the many activities," you might consider creating dedicated "Workbenches" or "Personal Archives" within the forum.
A young engineer could start a thread in 2026 titled "My Logic for Life Support Calculus," and in 2045, they (or their team) could reference the original debate that shaped their thinking.
How to Start the Pivot
To attract those seven new members (and the next seventy), the forum needs to feel like a utility, not just a history book.
Would you like me to help you draft a "Mission 2026" manifesto or a set of guidelines for these "Lifetime Archive" threads to show your senior administrators?
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Thank you for considering this inquiry, and for reminding me of Vannevar Bush and his "Memex" concept. I had a chance to read about that recently. The context may have been the history of computing. I think it is fascinating that you found that reference in your search of the data to which you have access!
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I'm so glad that reference resonated with you! It’s one of those "hidden" pillars of computer science history. Even though Bush was imagining a desk full of microfilm and mechanical levers, he perfectly predicted the associative nature of human thought—the idea that information is most valuable when it's linked to other ideas, rather than just filed away in a drawer.What makes your vision for the forum so "Bush-esque" is that you aren't just storing data; you are storing the context of the conversation.
Why the "Memex" Model Works for Mars
In a standard database, you might find a fact about Martian soil chemistry. In your forum, a future explorer finds:
The fact (the data).
The debate that led to that fact (the "trails" of thought, as Bush called them).
The personalities and disagreements of the people who figured it out.
That "human layer" is what turns a repository into a legacy. It allows a young person in 2026 to see not just what was known, but how their predecessors solved problems.
Building "Trails" for the Next Generation
In the original Memex concept, the user could create "trails" of related items. Since you are the junior administrator handling new members, you have a unique opportunity to act as a Human Librarian.
When those seven new members join, they might feel overwhelmed by 237,000 posts. You could help them by:
Creating "Bridge Threads": Curate links to the most prophetic posts from 2002 that still apply to the engineering challenges of 2026.
The "Lifetime Log": Encourage them to start a "Personal Development Thread" where they commit to posting one significant learning or design idea per month for the next decade.
It’s about moving the forum from a "place where we talk" to a "place where we build a record."
Since you mentioned you’ve been studying the history of computing and how these repositories function, would you like to explore some technical ways to make your 237,000-post archive more "searchable" or "interconnected" for these new members?
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Thank you for your encouraging follow up! I should add that the 237000 existing posts are not necessarily valuable in the context of my proposal. They ** are ** valuable as a foundation of history for new members. The forum software we have is limited in capability, and I don't foresee much improvement. For example we have a search tool that stores words in a database table, and adds the ID of posts that use those words. That was an ambitious idea when the software was created, and it still works today, but it remains only ** somewhat ** useful because when members create posts, they are usually not thinking about posterity, but instead are focused upon a question or issue of immediate interest. However, we have added a new information repository for images to supplement our existing software that lacks that capability. Perhaps there are other similar additional services we might obtain permission to install. I am particularly interested in a repository for pdf files, so that our members can store more than a post full of text, or an image in the image server. FYI ... we are sponsored by a large non-profit organization. We function as an online adjunct to the existing physical chapter system.
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It is helpful to know that you are operating within the framework of a large non-profit and a physical chapter system. That provides a level of institutional stability most forums lack, which is essential for a "lifetime" project.The shift from ephemeral conversation (the 237,000 posts) to durable documentation (PDFs and structured archives) is exactly how an organization matures into a research repository. If your current software is rigid, the best strategy is often "Modular Expansion"—adding specialized tools that sit alongside the forum.
Expanding Your Repository: The "Three-Legged Stool"
To support your vision of a lifetime knowledge base, you can supplement the forum with two specific types of external repositories:
1. The PDF/Document Library (The "Library of Record")
Since your current software isn't built for document management, you might suggest a Zotero or Omeka integration.
Zotero Groups: This is a free/low-cost tool used by researchers worldwide. You can create a group library where members upload PDFs, white papers, or technical sketches. It handles metadata (author, date, tags) much better than a forum post ever could.Update.... Zotero Groups is an online resource. It may be worth studying
The Benefit: A young person can upload their thesis or a technical proposal here, and it remains linked to their forum identity.
2. The Wiki (The "Distilled Wisdom")
Forums are "linear"—information gets buried as new posts arrive. A MediaWiki (the software behind Wikipedia) or DokuWiki allows members to take the best parts of those 237,000 posts and distill them into "Articles."
The Benefit: It turns "posterity" into a collaborative project. New members can earn their stripes by "mining" the old forum posts for gold and recording it in the Wiki.
Overcoming the "Posterity Gap"
You noted that members usually post for immediate needs rather than for the future. To fix this, you don't necessarily need better software; you need better "Metadata" habits.
In a Mars mission, every tool has a "Log Book." You could introduce a protocol for these new lifetime members:
Tagging for the Future: Encourage a simple "Legacy Tag" system in post titles (e.g., [ARCHIVE: Propulsion]).
PDF Summaries: If a member uploads a PDF to your new server, ask them to include a "Letter to 2050" as the first page, explaining why this document might matter to a future settler.
A Small Parallel on Organization
Your PDF repository needs those "guide slots." If people just dump files, it becomes a digital landfill. If you provide a standardized way to upload—a "guide" for their data—it becomes a library.
A Potential Next Step
Since you are the junior member with the vision, you might propose a "Pilot Archive Program" to your three senior administrators.
Would you like me to help you draft a short "Requirements Document" for a PDF repository that you could present to your sponsoring non-profit? (This could help them see the technical needs and the "Mars-Legacy" value at the same time.)
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Thank you for your fascinating ideas, and for the tip about a package we might be able to add as a supplement .... Please forgive me for a smile at your suggestion of a wiki ... that concept has been attempted multiple times, but it hasn't caught on with us, or with the parent organization. The pdf store may be of interest to them, since they sponsor international competitions and conferences. I'll pause here and post our conversation on the forum. At this point, as with so many topics in the forum, we are just batting around ideas, and I am enlisting you as an "honorary member" to help. What I'm picking up on is your suggestion that an individual might want to store copies of papers, without regard to whether they would be immediately useful to others. They become a repository for that individual, with the advantage that they are searchable with modern tools. Much or an individual's work product is not of lasting value, but at the same time, all that work is preparation for the formal papers written later. We actually received such a paper from a student in Germany, and we had no place to put it. This new repository might fill that need. The paper when submitted was preliminary and it needed work, but would could have provided mentoring if we had been set up properly at the time.
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I am honored to be an "honorary member"! It is a privilege to help you bat around these ideas. I completely understand the smile regarding the Wiki—sometimes tools that seem perfect on paper just don’t fit the "vibe" or the social friction of a specific community. If it doesn't stick, it doesn't stick.Your observation about the student from Germany is the perfect "use case" for this proposal. It highlights the gap between a conversation (the forum post) and a contribution (the paper).
The "Personal Silo" vs. "Public Library"
The beauty of your idea is that it lowers the "barrier to entry" for young researchers. If a student feels they have to post something "perfect" for 1,000 members to see, they might hesitate. But if the pitch is: "This is your personal locker for the next 30 years—we just happen to be the ones keeping the lights on," it changes the psychology.
Mentoring through Iteration: As you noted, that German student’s preliminary paper was a seed. If your repository allowed for Version 1, Version 2, and Version 3, the forum members could act as a "peer review" board over months or years.
The "Scaffold" of Success: By storing the "prep work" (the messy drafts and failed calculations), you are preserving the educational journey. For someone on Mars in 2050, seeing how a 2026 student struggled and eventually succeeded is arguably more inspiring than just seeing the final, polished result.
Implementation: The "Paper Vault"
Since your parent organization sponsors competitions, they likely already understand the value of PDFs as the "currency" of academia and engineering. You could frame this new repository as a "Pre-Publication & Mentorship Vault."
It serves three distinct purposes:
For the Student: A secure, permanent home for their intellectual growth.
For the Forum: A concrete reason for new members to stay (they are "invested").
For the Sponsor: A pipeline of talent and a searchable archive of the "raw" ideas that might win their competitions in the future.
Building the "Guide"
To ensure this doesn't become a cluttered folder, you might suggest a simple Cover Sheet requirement for every PDF upload (much like the "slots" in our bread slicer analogy). It ensures that even 20 years from now, a search tool can identify:
Goal: What was the author trying to solve?
Status: Is this a rough draft, a hobbyist's sketch, or a formal thesis?
Mentor Request: Does the author want feedback, or are they just "parking" the data?
I’m curious to see how your fellow administrators and members react to this "Lifetime Repository" concept. It shifts the forum from being a historical archive of the past to being a storage locker for the future.
Would you like me to help you summarize this "Personal Vault" concept into a one-page "Concept Note" that you can share with your team or the parent organization?
There's a lot to think about in that exchange.
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Much like news articles that have been linked in discussions the links go dead as there is no archive system.
Usernames give personal and private aspects of the forums posts but when we have a crash these posts are lost much like these of the past great crashes.
All posts in the database that we have are backed up but if missed we can lose information as a result of server issues.
The excel pages of tables we dumped to restore the website for the updated php files, that we used is also a method to store if those are kept but there is no reason to prune posts on the websites forum database.
Dead links happen as system crashes that are not even ours and are restored to keep websites going.
Myself I have stayed due to investing post time with researched data to become knowledgeable so that I could learn what we are discussing.
I am a bit under the weather as I have had a low temp and headache pain that is dull, I see a doctor on Monday but most likely it is going to be well care and not medical care/treatment of what is happening. My hearing in the left ear is still gone for the most part.
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For SpaceNut Re #4077
Best wishes for feeling better! I hope the visit Monday does indeed turn out well!
Thanks for noting the document store option for our new image server!
It sounds as though you are in favor of activating that feature. I had no idea it was there.
We have the option of limiting the stored format to pdf. I think that might be a good idea, because pdf is universal and that is not true for other formats.
On the ** other ** hand, we have a lot of GW Johnson's work stored over on Dropbox, and a number of those files are XLS.
We'll have to think about this.
We do not want to violate copyright, for example.
We often skirt the edges when we put text from articles into posts. I try to always include the link to the source document when I paste text.
However, your point about links going dead is a good one.
Magazines or other news sites can't justify keeping copies of articles for ever.
On the ** other ** hand, apparently Google keeps everything forever.
Update: the potholes check is running from 236001 to 237000. It took me a while to get the run going. I don't set up the machine often enough, and have become rusty in remembering the command sequence. Plus the connectors got loose. It will be interesting to see how things look.
GW Johnson and Mrs. Johnson celebrated their 50th today. Hopefully the weather was good and the turnout strong.
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The computer print options can convert to Microsoft version of pdf or save those excel files to pdf and save it as a name of choosing. Then upload the files to the image server.
Best wishes to GW's 50th and beyond...
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For SpaceNut ...
Thanks for your greetings to GW and Mrs. Johnson! I'll pass them along in case they miss the update in Housekeeping.
Regarding GW's excel spreadsheets. As a reminder, those are provided for students who wish to take his course on basic space navigation concepts. They would not be useful if they were converted to PDF.
It's a dilemma .... Perhaps we might accept PDF by default, and make special arrangements for special cases such as GW's course.
In other words, we might have to turn ON the option to accept non-PDF documents on a case by case basis.
A lot will depend upon the kind of members we are able to invite to participate in this experiment.
This would be a learning environment for every one.
Question for you ... the Pothole Scan is seeing an unusual number of posts owned by SpaceNut .... does that happen when an Admin moves posts around? It's not a problem for the Pothole Scan. It finds the posts, which is all it is designed to do. However, I wonder if that means the original creator of the post can no longer edit it. Most posts are never changed so that is probably not a problem either.
Hope you're feeling better!
Update: the Potholes scan completed it's run to 237000 without further incident. I'll report results later.
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Post still can be edited by the owner of them as tagged with the user id. even when split or moved to new categories or titles.
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For SpaceNut re #4081 and Potholes report
Thanks for confirming the post creators can still edit after a move. That is good to know.
You might be interested to hear that the Pothole Scan found NO potholes at all, despite all those moves!
I ran the review twice because a perfect score is so unusual.
I even used another tool to look at the output to be sure.
Impressive!
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You will probably be contacted by RobertDyck via email, but just FYI, his email address was not included in the distribution about the recent outage. Speaking of that... it appears your email was the FIRST notice that was put into circulation about the situation. kbd512 then used his webmaster tools to confirm the database was alive and well, so the outage was elsewhere. We heard from the Powers that Be, and the site came back up.
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For SpaceNut re Garage Design for Mars...
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 65#p237065
Because of the risks to humans, would it make sense to keep the humans in a protected habitat with electronic access to the garage?
As you design the garage for the unique conditions on Mars, perhaps humans would best be kept out of the building.
All around the Earth, in Asia, Europe and in the US, teams are hard at work building humanoid robots.
These will certainly be configured for remote operation by humans in nearby protected habitats.
It seems to me your task as a garage designer is greatly eased if you do not have to worry about humans cluttering up the work area.
You will then not have to worry about radiation, except insofar as the electronics of the equipment needs to be protected.
Depending upon the roof structure you decide upon, you might be able to get suitable shielding using foam of some kind.
Plastic foam can be made on Mars. You can pull Carbon from the atmosphere, and will have to split water to make hydrogen.
My understanding is that such foam is effective in mitigation of some kinds of radiation, and the mass is much less than regolith would be.
The interior of the space needs to be well lit, but that would be in the context of what works best for the humanoid robot equipment.
Human supervisors can "see" electronically, so the sensors used to "see" inside the garage need to be matched to the lighting you provide.
Here's a detail I'll bet not too many folks have thought about. What electrical fixtures will you specify for this work space?
There are competing electrical systems on Earth, and ( I think ) completely different systems on the ISS and the Chinese space station.
A critical capability of the garage on Mars is the ability to remove dust from equipment that is brought indoors for service. What systems will you specify for that important function. Electrostatic charge is likely to be a problem. I wonder how the rover designers deal with it?
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Your post is a fishbone for the topic of how to trouble shoot a dead vehicle that is in need of repairs for a specific type of equipment since all the types are not going to have universal computer codes for what might be wrong with it. Same as current car and trucks.
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For SpaceNut re electrical fittings in the garage on Mars.
A solution is to decide upon a single electrical system for Mars.
This would require negotiation before any Nation lands on Mars.
We have international standards for many aspects of modern society.
Setting up standards for Mars seems possible before the kind of mess you've described occurs.
In the mean time, you have the power to simply declare what fixtures your be, and continue with your garage plan.
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Another fishbone topic of power
And yet with standards we still power things with different battery voltages, transmit AC power in 50 and 60 cycles, Single phase AC with ranges, Multi phase is a number of phase angle relationships, high voltage DV and AC transmission lines, ect.. Mars will use all as we do here.
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For SpaceNut re #4086...
You have the opportunity to design a garage to be deployed on Mars.
Everything you do that does not advance toward that objective is a waste of valuable reader time.
As you proceed, you identify problems.
Then, as a response, instead of giving up, you solve the problem and advance to the next step.
What you described as fishbones are actually invitations to fail by taking side roads that lead nowhere.
If you find you need to decide what power to provide your customers, decide, publish the decision and move on to the next problem.
You can consult with any garage builder on Earth. The problem is no different.
Every garage builder on Earth faces the same or similar problems.
You need components and services.
You need to assemble the components and provide the services.
When you are done we'll know what it will take to build the system.
Until you have made all the necessary decisions, we know nothing at all.
Take the assembly package for any kit from a vendor of kits as an example.
Step 1 is to inventory the parts. So you list the parts and show pictures of what they look like.
Step 2 is whatever step you think makes the most sense for anyone building your garage, and you show the assembly process with big simple drawings and arrows to show what goes where.
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Step n is to collect all the tools and odds and ends left over and take a picture of the completed job.
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off topic solving of potential failures within a project is just what the fishbone is for..
Fishbone theory, or the Fishbone Diagram (also known as an Ishikawa Diagram or Cause-and-Effect Diagram), is a visual tool for root cause analysis that maps out potential causes of a problem in a fish-skeleton-like structure, helping teams brainstorm, categorize, and identify underlying issues, not just symptoms, for better problem-solving in quality control and management. The problem is the "head," and major causes branch off the "backbone" as "ribs," with sub-causes extending further, revealing hidden linkages and process bottlenecks for future improvements.
you have you own topic of import everything to do you process within to make the garage that you want on mars.
I have already shown that import everything on the first connex box transport is not sustainable as the equipment gets larger to perform the task of building increases.
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