Plans, plans, plans

Phobos · 2002-08-24 17:26:09

1. Just wondering... is there any plan for a stay-only mission? I mean going to Mars and remaining there... And not depending at all of Earth. Simply having there just about everything to get started. A small mining machine, a bio-bank (with seeds from a lot of plants - or a gene bank), a small manufacturing plant (to make other tools, hab modules etc) and so on... I don't know why, but i always had the impression it would be cheaper than a two-way plan... and, why going back anyway?

I think when we do send people to Mars (hopefully not some one shot wonder) that we should send with them not only equipment to do scientific studies but also engineering type experiments for doing things like finding optimal methods for building greenhouses, etc. I like the idea of having things like mini-plants for doing manufacturing and mining. A Mars base would be a lot more self-sufficient if they had the capability to manufacture some of their own items. Of course then you get into things like prospecting and hoping the materials you want are close enough to the surface, etc, but I still think these mini-plants could go a long way even just as recycling machines that break down refuse into its raw materials.

.Universal Encyclopedia - a few weeks ago i realised there is no, but absoloutly no "encyclopedia" or "dictionary" that is really good at anything.

Well I disagree on one point. Encyclopedias can be good if all you want is a brief description of something your unfamiliar with. But I see your point for the need to store our collective knowledge somehow in case some calamity happens and we lose it not to mention such a databank would be good (and potentially bad) for people who are setting off into the Cosmos.

RobS · 2002-08-24 23:34:38

No one is considering one way trips to Mars because it is ethically questionable. No one can yet figure out what one should send to Mars to make survival possible. All the estimates for a small, relatively self-sufficient base, require hundreds if not thousands of tons of equipment. We aren't talking about a Robinson Crusoe stranded on a desert island type of situation here. We're talking about a harsh, nearly airless, ecology-less, frigid environment. It makes sense to start with small round-trip missions and gradually build up experience and facilities there. If one thing breaks, you figure out why and send out an improved version two years later.

As for the encyclopedia you want, it is not possible because of the size and complexity. No one would buy it. No one could assemble it. The "encyclopedia" you want exists already under two names, also. One is "library"; the other is "worldwide web." The quantity of knowledge is simply so great you can't assemble it into a single serial publication, and if you could, no one could store the entire series in one place. It would not do humanity any good if a meteor hit the earth because it would be too large to survive. You would be better off having Google store a copy of the entire worldwide web on Mars.

-- RobS

Phobos · 2002-08-25 17:37:30

No one is considering one way trips to Mars because it is ethically questionable. No one can yet figure out what one should send to Mars to make survival possible. All the estimates for a small, relatively self-sufficient base, require hundreds if not thousands of tons of equipment. We aren't talking about a Robinson Crusoe stranded on a desert island type of situation here. We're talking about a harsh, nearly airless, ecology-less, frigid environment. It makes sense to start with small round-trip missions and gradually build up experience and facilities there. If one thing breaks, you figure out why and send out an improved version two years later.

Sending people on one way trips to Mars in the hope of keeping them alive wouldn't be the purpose of setting up mini-manufacturing facilities. Such manufacturing abilities would just help in making a Mars colony that much more self sufficient. The people on Mars would still be given the means to get home. And I agree that this type of thing would be impractical for anything other than a large Mars base with potentially hundreds of people. Actually, I think for a base that size it could prove problematic not to have some kind of manufacturing ability. Who knows when you'll have to fabricate that obscure spare part.

As for the encyclopedia you want, it is not possible because of the size and complexity. No one would buy it. No one could assemble it. The "encyclopedia" you want exists already under two names, also. One is "library"; the other is "worldwide web." The quantity of knowledge is simply so great you can't assemble it into a single serial publication, and if you could, no one could store the entire series in one place. It would not do humanity any good if a meteor hit the earth because it would be too large to survive. You would be better off having Google store a copy of the entire worldwide web on Mars.
-- RobS

Yes, it would be impossible to completely add our total collective knowledge into a database, but I think we could add the detailed basic knowledge that underlies most of our science, technology, etc. into such a databank. Of course a lot of this knowledge would become obsolete but it would still give people something to work with, particularly if we ever send off generational starships or whatever.

C.COMMARMOND (FR) · 2002-09-03 02:39:04

Hello BGD,

1 and 3) this plan will not exist for a while because the things (bacterias, small mining machines...) you are talking about does not exists on Earth but in labs. More problems, these bacterias needs heat to work and so, there are better ways to do the job. About mining machines, they often break or doesn't work so good... To mine on Mars, the first thing is to have energy (a lot) so we have first to do a real big station.
I think that even if people can come back, we should be able to allow some of those who will go to Mars to stay there more thant the first 18 month mission. If this is possible, the number of the crew on Mars could increase with time and and become big enough to think about mining. The first mission should have 'raw' metal, plastic... and machines to work on them so people can 'react' to problems easily.
We are not so good with genetics now, wait 20 or 30 years more and maybe it will be good. For now, I think we could simulate a 'green house on Mars' environment (cold, less light...) on Earth and seed plants and 'select' the survivors.

2) About encyclopedia, you are right, it could be a good project to sum all the human knowledge in an encyclopedia. But it will be really huge (hundreds of gigabytes I guess).
About using our knowledge on Mars, think in most of domains, Earth knowledge can't be used on Mars because the environment is not the same and 'backgroung industry' does not exist. For example, make an electronic chip needs ultra pure water, silicium, aluminium, gold, germanium (and others), electronic design software, ultra vacuum,very big and special deflectors (to concentrate light:UV on a small area)... The last plant create by IBM costs billions of dollars, so, don't even dream about this.
The only way is to rethink every processes on Mars and to buy parts from Earth, assemble in space or on Mars and to sell to Earth. This is called commerce. The point is to find something to sell (water for rockets propulsion, metal, food 'made on Mars'...

I think, here, every one hope this will hapen one day...

But don't stop to imagine and dream...

CC

Phobos · 2002-09-03 18:58:03

To mine on Mars, the first thing is to have energy (a lot) so we have first to do a real big station.
I think that even if people can come back, we should be able to allow some of those who will go to Mars to stay there more thant the first 18 month mission. If this is possible, the number of the crew on Mars could increase with time and and become big enough to think about mining. The first mission should have 'raw' metal, plastic... and machines to work on them so people can 'react' to problems easily.

Once it becomes possible I definately think people should be allowed to stay longer on Mars if they desire it. Once we get to the point where we can do construction and mining on Mars we could do as John Franz mentioned and put a space station in orbit that rotates at 1 G to maintain the health of long-time Martian residents . And since your right about us not having any background for living on Mars it could only benefit us to learn these things. We could probably learn additional better ways for living on Earth from the spin-offs of such knowledge.

RobS · 2002-09-03 19:21:41

*Case for Mars* gives lots of information about making chemicals (methane is an important starting material), bricks, and glass. Mars will be littered with meteoric iron that can be collected by electromagnet; it can be converted into iron carbonyl using heat and carbon monoxide (whicg can be made from carbon dioxide with electricity). Iron carbonyl is a liquid at room temperature and can be poured into molds, then the carbonyl can be baked out pretty easily.

-- RobS

C.COMMARMOND (FR) · 2002-09-04 06:08:29

I agree with Phobos (but why a space station ?), I really think 0.38G is enough for people, I think they could sleep not horizontally but with feet lower than head so the heart have to work more and the blood stays more in the legs to compensate for lower gravity.

It is not difficult if needed to do a small (rotating) accelerator to simulate 1 G where 2 or 4 people could sleep 8 hours every week. 2 or 4 boxes on 1 or 2 arms doing a cross, a motor at the crossing point to do this turn, and this needs far less energy than to send people on Mars Orbit.

Robs, I agree with the theory, but how do you find meteorit ? You need time (remember in earth deserts how any meteorits are rare?) to travel the place and energy to move your rover and for the magnet. After, you need energy to create iron carbonyl to be molded and again energy to bake it. Did you count how much energy per kilo of finished product?

I come back to my point: if you want to mine or refine metals on Mars, first you need a LOT of energy...

For info: in best foundries, energy cost to melt 1 kg of refined iron is 960W (in batch of 1 metric tons).

CC

Bill White · 2002-09-04 09:04:09

it can be converted into iron carbonyl using heat and carbon monoxide (whicg can be made from carbon dioxide with electricity). Iron carbonyl is a liquid at room temperature and can be poured into molds, then the carbonyl can be baked out pretty easily.

There is a fellow who posts on some of the other Mars Society disucssion lists who has delved quite deeply into the iron carbonyl process. I cannot find the link right now, but maybe some one knows.

His ideas for using iron carbonyl seemed quite plausible to me.

RobertDyck · 2002-09-04 10:57:01

Jim Brown did some work on the carbonyl process to extract iron. See his Mars 1 web page. Derrick Davis also did some work, see Bootstrap Mission Chemistry - 101.

Some other web sites regarding space resource extraction are Colorado School of Mines, NEEP - University of Wisconsin, IEEE Spectrum Online - Mining Asteroids, and most especially F.I.N.D.S. - ferrous metal extraction from Near Earth Asteroids.

Bill White · 2002-09-04 11:27:49

Thanks!

I knew those existed but was too busy (lazy?) to go find them.

I remain impressed by the amount and quality of work that has been done on these subjects.

A great quote from Derrick Davis:

"The day after the ERV/ISPP/STPP lands, Mars becomes the second safest place in the solar system."

Carbonyl
However, using Iron Carbonyl production, the Iron is drawn off as a carbonyl vapor. So actually, we do not need an electromagnet... unrefined regolith goes in (maybe sorted by particle size) the mix is heated to 120? C with CO and the pressure is raised a bar or two. The gas is drawn off leaving the SiO2, CaO, etc all as they were. The gas is depressurized and cooled with the Fe(CO)5 condensing out for our use!!
Iron Carbonyl Production
Fe + 5CO => Fe(CO)5 120? C liquid, vaporizes at modest pressures
Iron Deposition from Iron Carbonyl
Fe(CO)5 => Fe + 5CO at 200? C.

Lots and lots of cast iron implements.

Phobos · 2002-09-04 22:20:07

It is not difficult if needed to do a small (rotating) accelerator to simulate 1 G where 2 or 4 people could sleep 8 hours every week. 2 or 4 boxes on 1 or 2 arms doing a cross, a motor at the crossing point to do this turn, and this needs far less energy than to send people on Mars Orbit.

Yeah I think your right. A small centrifuge on the surface that the astronauts could use maybe once a day or so would be a lot cheaper than building a 100 billion dollar space station.

C.COMMARMOND (FR) · 2002-09-05 11:48:22

Hi Bill and all,

I didn't find info about carbonyl energetic budget. It seem to work at low temperature, so I wonder why Earth industry don't use this way to extract iron. Is there any (hidden) draw back?

CC

RobertDyck · 2002-09-05 12:10:25

There is always a catch. The carbonyl process is used on Earth to extract nickel, but it only works with ferrous metals in metalic form. It won't work on oxides. All iron ores on Earth are oxides (hematite, magnesite, etc.) but iron on M-type asteroids is metal. Iron in Martian soil is also mineral oxides, so the only Martian iron that could be extracted that way would be meteorite remnants.

F.I.N.D.S. research, however, found this process can work on mineral oxides as well if you pump the pressure and temperature high enough. This is a new finding that may increase smelter efficiency on Earth. You have to love those spin-offs.

C.COMMARMOND (FR) · 2002-09-05 12:37:23

Super super super, i buy...

CC

Bill White · 2002-09-05 13:02:55

It is not difficult if needed to do a small (rotating) accelerator to simulate 1 G where 2 or 4 people could sleep 8 hours every week. 2 or 4 boxes on 1 or 2 arms doing a cross, a motor at the crossing point to do this turn, and this needs far less energy than to send people on Mars Orbit.

Could a permanent settlement build a subway track around the perimeter of a settlement - maybe kilometer or less of total tube length formed in a circle - and accelerate a car up to appropriate speeds? Using a subway tube, radiation shielding could be piled on top.

I visualize a subway car suspended on gimbals and weighted at the bottom, with no windows to minimize disorientation. At 2 or 2 1/2 meters in width and 4, 5 or 6 meters in length a gravity car could have universal gym machines, bathrooms and other facilities along with computer screens to stay in touch with the settlement.

7/10th gee of outward force from the spinning could be added to 3/8ths gee of Mars gravity to simulate 1 gee of force directed 50 degrees (more or less) above straight down.

Since the car is gimballed, occupants could sleep, exercise, whatever, in 1 gee unaware they are sitting or standing 50 degrees off true vertical.

Unlike a small centrifuge - you could add perhaps dozens of cars allowing dozens or hundreds of people to experience 1 gee or 1.2 gee at regular intervals.

Any suggestions on websites where I can figure out how to do the math? My bachelor's degree is in American History. I am not math phobic - just very rusty.

C.COMMARMOND (FR) · 2002-09-05 14:04:56

Bill, I try to calculate:

acceleration = speed? (in rad/sec) * R (rayon in meters)

For your example:
acceleration = 0.7 * 9.81 m/s?
R = 1000 m / 2 PI = 160 m

to find speed = SQR(a/R) = 0.207 rad/s

since your tub is 1 km long, speed = (1000/ 2 PI) * 0.207 = 32.94 m/s = 120 km/h = 2,3 rpm (revolution per minutes)

So it is possible. Since the tunnel has vacuum, the energy needed for each vehicle should be some 75-100KWh (it's a big car running at constant speed with no drag (air oposition to movment).

The real problem is to build it... It seems easier to create a circular inclined road and put two rails on it to guide electric car(s). But radiation shield? Maybe it is cheaper at 'short' terms to use eavier shielded vehicles than to make an underground tube.

The idea seems very clever. But for now, we don't even know if 0.38 G is dangerous for humans beings. But I think that if we want to do babies on Mars (in a 'far' future), this kind of system could be used to 'train' the baby in utero for the 1 G for better development and maybe for wounded people (I saw somewhere that wounded people could be better in low G because less efforts on muscle and less blood losses, but 1 G could be better during convalescence).

This idea is to keep in our mind for a needed system on Mars ground if colonisation becomes a fact.

Thank you for this Bill.

CC

P.S. My english is not perfect so forgive miswritings.

Shaun Barrett · 2002-09-07 01:35:54

I think this is the second time in recent months that the idea of using a kind of centrifuge on the surface of Mars has come up. I had never considered this concept before somebody else mentioned it, thinking that you could only really use rotation for artificial gravity in the (effectively) zero-g environment of space.
Not so, of course! I'd forgotten about inclined floors and simple vectors to attain the gravity you need.
In your scenario, Bill, as calculated by CC, the floor of the 'train' or centrifuge would incline at about 61.5 degrees to the horizontal. Surprisingly, though, the 0.7g of horizontal centripetal acceleration in conjunction with the 0.38g downwards acceleration, will give the occupants only about 0.8g, standing on the inclined floor. Maybe that's all you were looking for anyway, I don't know.
Surprisingly, to get the full 1g effect for the occupants, the centrifuge would have to develop 0.94g horizontally (! ) and the floor would need to incline at 68 degrees to the horizontal. The 'carriages' would be hurtling around the circle at 138 kms/hr, covering the full circumference every 26 seconds!
The buried loop with gimballed carriages sounds ideal, because you could adjust the gravity from 0.38g up to whatever level you want, simply by altering the speed. The gimbals would automatically adjust the inclination of the floor.
CC's inclined rail system is probably easier to build, but the inclination of the rails would have to be set for one speed and one gravity only. And, as CC mentioned, if people are going to spend appreciable amounts of time in such a device, radiation shielding becomes a problem for the exposed version.
I really like your plan, Bill! Getting people to spend their evenings and sleep periods in artificial Earth gravity, right there at the settlement, would ensure they remained in good physical condition. But would you have trouble persuading them, after a strenuous day out on the surface, to subject themselves to what would feel like 2.6 times their 'normal' weight?! Some of them might say: "I'm here for good. I'm a Martian now. I might as well just accept the conditions of my adopted world. Sure that blasted train is OK for people planning on going home to Earth, or the body-builders who enjoy feeling like superman when they step out into Martian gravity each morning! But me? ... I'm not interested!"
And with CC's plan for expectant mothers, how much of their 9 month pregnancy do you think they'll need to spend in this high speed contraption?
And what about people getting on and off all the time? Would that make you dizzy, even if you have adjusted to the Coriolis effect?
I suppose it could be done. But would it ever be a practical proposition?
:0

Bill White · 2002-09-07 12:22:39

Actually, Shaum, I believe 60 minutes per day of serious aerobic exercise and weight training in .8 gee would make day to day work on the surface far less exhausting - thanks for for doing the math, by the way and I am disappointed so much speed is needed for 1.0 gee.

Rather like a baseball player swinging 2 bats before walking to the plate, or a sprinter wearing ankle weights before running a 100 meter dash.

Mars-nauts should weight train as carefully as any professional athlete and thereby improve their comfort level. Also, having such a facility will allow the research needed to answer what are obviously matters of pure speculation today.

But anyway, to speculate further, I suspect that sleeping in .8 gee is not necessary and several hours per week of vigourous .8 gee exercise would have enormous cardiovascular benefits.

Resolving the effects of Coriolis forces is indeed a significant issue - but one we can do research on, if only someone would get started. ???

RobertDyck · 2002-09-09 22:09:09

Nobody will send humans just for exploration. The costs will be huge compared to the ones of sending robots / automatic probes etc.

I agree that sending robot probes is a cost effective means of preparing for a human mission, but robot probes will never have the skill of a human explorer. For example, geologists learned quite a lot from the anorthosite sample returned by Apollo 15. No robot probe would ever have found that sample.

One reason the public has become apathetic about space exploration is that so little has been accomplished. They will support human exploration much more if we can demonstrate results; but we have to produce results, and do so within a reasonable budget.

The idea of in-situ resource utilization is not new, but relatively little work has been done on it. The majority of work that has been done is ISPP by Robert Zubrin's company. We need a minimill, a flexible manufacturing facility that can be configured for short production runs. NASA and the US military have been working on rapid prototyping techniques to produce just a single component. Their solution is laser solidification of liquid polymer to produce plastic parts, and laser melting of metal powder to produce solid metal parts. Both produce complex 3D shapes, but the first is plastic and the second is a porous metal. A minimill uses small numerically controlled milling machines to literally mill solid parts. A minimill is applicable to short production runs rather than one-off parts. Considering the cost of transport from Earth, it should be applicable to Mars.

C.COMMARMOND (FR) · 2002-09-13 12:25:10

Hi,

yes, I forgot the vector so the speed should be a bit bigger for 1G.
Thank you shaun to have see that.

Bill, don't care about coriolis effect, someone made experiments and found that at the speed I calculated, there is no bad effect on common people. In fact, for most of people, even if they turn 3 times faster, they will not feel anything.

It is true that radiation shielding is the biggest problem in this project but if you do this in a tunnel.

CC

Bill White · 2002-09-13 12:50:04

Bill, don't care about coriolis effect, someone made experiments and found that at the speed I calculated, there is no bad effect on common people. In fact, for most of people, even if they turn 3 times faster, they will not feel anything.

This may be a new "darwinian" gate or bottleneck.

Genes that allow people to remain unaffected by Coriolis at these speeds will have lots more children and their children will settle space. The others will be too pre-occupied with upset stomachs to think about sex and their gene line will die out.

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