New Mars Forums

See also lunar KREEP. There's Potassium and Phosphate up there. Tbh I'd expect lunar rocks to have what we need, since it's made of the same stuff as Earth's crust and what would have boiled away. Iodine remains a potential difficulty; on Earth it is concentrated by various means. Mars and the ocean worlds might have it.

Worth considering that plants could accumulate elements that are at very low concentrations. Maybe we plant forests explicitly for this purpose.

Mars may end up being the cheapest place to get elements such as copper and tin and silver for in space manufacturing. Ores only form on planets with hydrogeological processes that can concentrate them. That means Earth and maybe/likely Mars.

In the meantime, we'll have to haul them up from Earth, but fortunately Luna can provide nearly all the mass we need. Maybe even meteoric nickel-iron. And unlike Mars, it has a possible business case for mining, tourism, research, and orbital support services. Which are the reasons humans live in inhospitable Terran environments today. Though, given his haste, Musk may have a Fallen Angels scenario on his mind, where the bulk of humanity turn against space travel and there are only the people up there already to carry the flame to other worlds. A few thousand people should be viable genetically at least, especially given how highly selected they'd be. He may also have an Elysium scenario in mind too, given the talk of using orbital datacentres for the next great economic leap...

Once we have manufacturing on Luna we can start sending sollettas and iron nanorods to Mars, warm the place up somewhat before we get there.

The private rape gang inquiry, organised and ran by Rupert Lowe MP (Great Yarmouth), is turning up and gathering quite a bit on the atrocities committed against native British girls - not just grooming and rape, trafficking also - by organised Pakistani community networks. It's... quite a lot. Not just the fact that so many in that community knew and facilitated it -- if we were to imprison or deport everyone who bears some responsibility, we'd almost certainly be accused of ethnic cleansing. But perhaps worse for the state is that it wasn't merely neglecting its duty to protect these girls, but actively assisting the rape networks and ensuring the girls could not be removed from their grasp. It's existential; the state is rapidly losing legitimacy and will have to rely solely on raw force if they don't pivot and root this rot out (they will not pivot and root this rot out).

Maybe half of copper use can be substituted with aluminium. Cabling appears to be doable, motors and transformers not really. That still leaves a massive shortfall if the entirety of humanity is to be brought up to a western standard of living, quite apart from any additional electrification... there are resources, but the grade is really low, so I won't be surprised if it ends up overtaking nickel in value.

Silver has settled somewhat, or at least is creeping upwards *relatively* slowly compared to its spike; I expect it will end up around $2.80-3.00 per gram. Quite a bit more than the $0.8-0.9 I paid for 54g back in 2013 that I need to sort out my access to (BullionVault).

FWIW the copper prices mean the pre 92 british copper coins (actual copper) are worth 2.5-3x their face value. Of course, meddling with the coinage is illegal in Britain. Key part there being "in Britain".

Looking over at Iran, wondering when the panic buying starts. Filled up my tank just in case. There were people there with containers to fill, petrol not diesel, so you're capped at 30L unless you notify the fire service. Diesel has no such limits because a spark won't cause an inferno.

In domestic news, looking forward to the Manchester by-election. Not unlikely Reform take it, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fun times, though St George's Day could be funner. Depends on how many more girls get raped by dinghymen between now and then, perhaps.

Britain, the country of the Henry Hoover and creator of The Best Plug In The World, should be all over this. Amongst other ruggedised simple equipment.

I have suggested before that hexagonal blocks would be a good design for a Lunar city. Can fit a circular pressure wall sandwiched between two layers of radiation shielding, and the blocks tesselate so the city can be expanded without creating expanses of empty space between blocks. Some blocks allocated as parks. Can be different heights -- imagine a central block being redeveloped with a tower.

Finally have a loicense to drive my car. Yay! No more reliance on overpriced underreliable trains that get hit with the ocassional wildcat strike!

Depends where you are. Cheapest is probably going to be solar (thermal) in deserts. Best for Britain, if not nuclear then wind, though possibly low temp solar thermal in summer for interseasonal storage.

There are a lot of energy intensive industries that could be located near deserts. Aluminum refining, for example. Glass making. Smelting with electrolysed hydrogen? Australia has a lot of the raw resources and a big desert for providing the power.

Spaniard,

If energy use is roughly proportional to economic activity, having to use half your energy to rebuild your energy infrastructure means half your economic activity is dedicated to energy production. We haven't been in this situation since... the British Agricultural Revolution? If it's fully automated luxury gay space communism I guess that's manageable, since the robots are doing all the work. Though in the case of solar you're going to be taking up a lot of land if you need to devote most of it to making more solar panels.

Tbh, it doesn't seem unlikely that, with decent thermal storage and a focus on using power when it is generated, as well as a good wind power generation supply, biofuel would be enough to cover the small amount of mechanical/electrical power that needs to be generated on demand. A fair few energy intensive tasks can be made intermittent to run on wind, including I would expect grinding and crushing processes. Desalination, too. Britain has 5GW of nuclear still, and that would be enough for the domestic grid if we picked the low hanging fruit for intermittent power use (large tanks of hot water, including kettles; appliances that use the hot water supply instead of heating water with electricity; not running the tumble dryer if it's an expensive electricity day).

Void,

Colocating demand might reduce the necessary building out of the grid, but aside from the transformers the grid is built of steel and aluminum, both very abundant metals. You're still going to need a lot of copper.