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Perhaps language would become less of an issue with translation machines, etc. I agree that English is/ought to be the lingua franca of Mars, but perhaps a situation like the UN would arise where various languages are spoken in official contexts w/ translation while each settlement would speak its own language.
This seems like a good and energy-efficient idea. Two thoughts:
-Usually human excrement is too "hot" (i.e., Carbon-rich) to use directly as fertilizer, so we would need to add Nitrogen (usually with fiber, etc.). Given that the early Martians will be vegan this will be less of an issue, and composting would probably improve it even further (especially if we use toilet paper, if I'm not mistaken).
-Would toilet paper be used or water? Either has its downsides; paper requires trees or plants, while water needs to be filtered before reuse to avoid the spread of diseases. (EDIT: Louis's idea of a Roman sponge sounds like a good idea.)
I'd have to agree with RobertDyck for the most part.
I just noticed I am listed as a moderator of this subforum. Is there anything I need to do to prepare for this position?
I have not heard back on my application to the best of my knowledge.
Thank you th, I'll see what I can do with such users.
I think I might be of assistance if such positions are still needed.
I do think any life on Mars would be unicellular given the conditions. It could exist underground as chemosynthesizers, but the paucity of water is itself an issue.
Mars atmosphere contains about as much Argon as Nitrogen. Argon will do just as well as an atmospheric component except it can't be fixed biologically for use by plants.
That's true, I'm just wondering how the amount of either material can be increased to reach roughly Terran values for a fully-terraformed atmosphere. The thing with both materials is that on Earth the vast majority of them occur in the atmosphere, and assuming the same is true for current Mars (i.e., no significant source of Ar or N2 locked up in the regolith) it's hard to imagine how they can be produced in situ without needing to import them (on Earth Argon is produced from Potassium decay, but I don't think such process is extant on Mars). I do think N2 is more important, both for biological fixation and the fact that an N2 molecule is lighter than an Ar molecule and as said earlier that a terraformed Martian atmosphere would have to be lighter than the Terran atmosphere.
The entire reason there is (long-term) life on Earth is due to plate tectonics and a cycle of silicate weathering. A simplified version is this: volcanoes emit CO2 from the mantle, which when it increases in the atmosphere warms the planet up, but that warming increases the rate of silicate weathering, a process that consumes CO2. On one hand, the weathering produces calcium carbonate from the CO2, which is ultimately subducted into the mantle, while on the other the decrease of CO2 cools the planet, slowing down the weathering and allowing CO2 stock to recover, ultimately warming the planet once again and providing a negative feedback on temperatures and keeping them in a fairly stable band over geologic time. (That's why we were ultimately able to escape the Snowball Earth even though the large ice cover increased albedo.)
Mars doesn't have plate tectonics. I've heard of a plan to rotate Pluto around it to heat the core up with tidal forces to produce it (or something to that effect), but that's far off even for terraformation. Biotic processes would be important for the carbon cycle, but we need to find a way to dispose of the buildup of dead organic material over time. (Perhaps the excess weight of it could put enough pressure on the mantle and core to heat up, but that seems to be wishful thinking.)
As for an atmosphere we're going to need a large source of nitrogen to form the "inert" (neither greenhouse nor phase-changing at relevant parameters) gas. To achieve the same pressure at sea level as on Earth we'd have to make it about 85% of the weight of Earth's (to account for Mars's lower surface area and gravity) if my calculations are correct. Earth's atmosphere is about 78% N2, so let's say Mars's would be 75% N2 to account for the slightly-higher need for greenhouse gases to warm it up more. Assuming this is all by mass, I reckon that Mars will need approximately 3.3*10^18 kg of N2 gas. I'm not sure how much nitrogen is available on Mars in the regolith, etc., but on Earth the vast majority of Nitrogen in any form is in the atmosphere, so assuming the same is true on Mars that's quite a lot of N2 we'd have to find somewhere.
There could be other inert gases, however. Pretty much anything other than greenhouse gases, water, or O2 could be appropriate, although heavier is better to reduce Jeans escape.
That bill is for the Washington State Legislature, not the US Congress. That said, I do think such a law is generally a good idea, in Chicago you have to be vaccinated to be in public schools.
It's also worth noting that vaccination can help reduce population-wide antibiotic resistance by limiting the ability of pathogens to infect and develop resistance in the first place. The autism link has been thoroughly debunked to the best of my knowledge, and although I have yet to look into the other effects louis provides and there are a few with contraindications I still believe that vaccination is a good thing (and should be required for those travelling to Mars).
Chicago's going to be so cold tomorrow (-16°F actual temperature, I've heard -50°F windchill and calculated ~-43°F windchill with Google's forecast) the University of Chicago, an institution that prides itself on not closing, has cancelled its classes, although not having other natural disasters in the summer is a plus.
Thank you all for your support.
We had one of my cats put down earlier today. She had had breast cancer for the past two months and was doing okay a month and a half ago but lately the tumors started bleeding all over. I'm glad she's in a better place today.
I agree that holidays have been quite commercialized here on Earth, and I expect a similar process, if not nearly as intense, to happen on Mars over time as well. That said, holidays in general are a crucial part of a society. I'm not sure if I said this earlier, but I'd expect the solstices and equinoxes to be prime candidates for holidays on Mars. I would rather Mars not use Daylight Savings Time, I think it's a rather needless complication.
I feel the solstices and equinoxes are also natural choices for holidays, as they are on Earth.
Of the prokaryotes and non-eukaryotes that are on Earth, less than 1% of bacterial species and no known archaebacterial species are pathogenic. Of those pathogens I would assume that the majority are no more virulent (severe) than the common cold or flu. If anything's a big threat for humanity on Earth it would be viruses, but on Mars viruses require the presence of other life forms to begin with, and likewise on earth most viruses are no more harmful than a common cold or flu.
Let's say that there is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance that life currently exists on Mars. Of that, let's say there's a half chance that it is in such a format that it possibly can infect colonists (so is not a form of life that is so alien as to preclude infection). Of those, let's go on a high end and say that one percent of the Earth-like life is pathogenic in humans. Of those, let's say that ten percent are virulent and severely deadly to the extent of Ebola, etc. That would (DISCLAIMER: All of these figures are arbitrary order of magnitude estimates and might not accurately reflect reality, but I believe that they are somewhat reasonable). All told, this gives a 5*10^-10 chance (or 5*10^-8% chance) that there exist pathogens on Mars that have the capacity to wipe out a human base, or 1 in 2 billion. By comparison, this says that the chance of getting struck by lightning is about 1 in 700,000 in a given year and 1 in 3,000 over the course of a lifetime.
That said, much like lightning it can be rather disastrous, and debating the relative worth of treatment and other care might also be affiliated with various costs.
I wonder to what extent the University would or should be associated with the surrounding society. I think associating the University administration with that of the colony/settlement as a whole opens the door for much abuse and curriculum manipulation, but going off knightdepaix's concept of a state college it might very well receive funding from the Martian taxpayer. Going off that concept as well I think Martian residents and settlers should get a discount of tuition compared to Terran students. Then again, that itself raises questions as to the concept of tuition and other sorts of fees/expenses once the University evolves from being purely research to include teaching. While STEM will almost certainly be a large part of the curriculum I would hate to deprive Martians of an education in liberal arts and the old "sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt" of Latin (and other languages). But teachers for such courses would certainly be determined by the budget.
Once children start being born and reared on Mars I also wonder when/if the primary and secondary educational infrastructure becomes separated from the University.
Perhaps the remainder of each sol could be used to make a completely new sol every given number of years, to create leap years. According to Wikipedia the Martian year is about 686.98 Earth days, so every 50 or so years a day could be subtracted from the year.
I believe exposure to oxygen in air will cause RuBP to oxidize rapidly.
I don't have the deepest knowledge of the biochemistry part of the process (just the general chemical equations and those of various other metabolisms), but I believe that's what is known as "photorespiration" and is a large source of CO2 waste in C3 plants, but which is fixed in C4 plants (this fix, however, doesn't entirely involve the chloroplast). And it's true that chloroplasts, on their own, can't survive for long without a nucleus because the process of endosymbiosis has throughout time involved transfer of most of the now-redundant chloroplast genome to the nucleus for efficiency, but some genes have stayed in the chloroplast for a variety of reasons (such as the genes being too hydrophobic to successfully move through the cytoplasm), and many of those are related to photosynthesis. Perhaps the remaining genes related to photosynthesis (and nothing else) can be transplanted back into the chloroplast to involve a fully-functional photosyntesis machine (or use a full-fledged cyanobacterium, but I don't think they produce the starch we want).
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy), it's essentially the number of states in a given system that are consistent with the given parameters (pressure, temperature, etc.), which I think are finite but really hard to count. Apparently it's the natural log of that multiplied by the Boltzmann Constant, which has J/K units, hence entropy has J/K units (while entropy/mole is J/molK).
From what I understand, entropy is essentially the number of states a system can be in at any given time (or the natural log thereof, IDK), but more intuitively it's the amount of energy that can't be used, which never decreases over time. I could be wrong, though.
I stand by my concept of Federalism outlined here. Essentially the following would be given to the federal government:
-Currency
-Bankruptcy
-Intermunicipal commerce
-Citizenship, nationality, and immigration
-Administration of the Outback
-Military (although municipalities would still be allowed to erect and maintain police forces) and Defense
While the rest would be given to the municipalities, which would be considered sovereign entities in their own right, like the US and Australia but unlike Canada and India.