New Mars Forums

Hey... that last link... about the memorychips... Nano-lab.com makes stuff like that, you can buy it for experimenting, there's a guy on Spacedailyboard trying to get a new kind of 'solar'cells (not neccessary solar power) out of that... using massive arrays of nanodiodes on a macro scale... That's the link,

he experimented with an array of limited connections on macroscale wich seemed to work under labconditions and now he's looking if it scales up to a usful powerlevel. He patented the idea, but now it's 'open source' so to say.

Nope, again :;):  turns out there's been so much publicized about it, it's the nano needle in the macro haystack...

'bout the health effects... Had a course called toxicology last year, asked the (damn... watchacallit in english...) Anyway, he's a doctor, does a lot of reading up on the subject, and there's a lot of confusion about the whole subject. There's nano and nano. Asbestos fibre being in fact Macro... some nano'd go 'right through' you, or get errr... absorbed by your system harmlessly through simple (what's in a name in biology) osmotic reactions of your cells...without causing much damage, unles it coalesces into bigger 'clumps,' wich go macro, in fact, it all depends how big the particles are...

(boy doesn't seem to make much sense, trying to translate from dutch a short discussion i had a year ago with a 'crazy' professor, i bet i got half of it wrong too...) Anyway if i remember correctly, most of these nanothingies get produced and applied in a soluble form, so there'd be minimal risk of huge 'dust' clouds entering your lungs. Sure enough, you wouldn''t want to go swimming in the stuff...

(edit) damn, i remember, the could pose a treath to health: some of these particles are possibly reactive, they can bond with other particles, like lead and so on, posing a threath for buildup of contamination or worse interference with antibodies (not sure if that's possible w pure carbon nanostuff)... But he was mainly talking about buckies and tubes w/o external free bonding places, so inert stuff...

Has there been any following-up on this tethering idea? When the Russians start launching paying customers again, and one of them is a Mark Shuttleworth(sp?) kind of guy, it should be possible to negociate with them to implement the idea. Shuttleworth insisted to do some sciencework himself, and he got away with it. Experiments could be 'simple' (read:small package) like embryonic bonegrowth (not human)... An 'eyes-closed' coordination test, a fruitflies-in-a-box flight pattern recording... Spiderweb building... Fluid mixing behaviour, osmotic behaviour... Of course, it all depends on how long they'd be prepared to operate in tethered mode...

No, the one i'm looking for is elusive, if i try to google it, i get gazillion matches... sigh...

The Space elevator is in my 'favourites' book, another amazing project... But it's not using nano-machines, 'only' nanotubes for it's cable.

I'll never find that article back, i'm afraid, found it 'by accident' while looking around tech pages, forgot to bookmark it.

Same feeling here, Wim...

Read the MDRS stuff too, he got flamed for no reason, in my opinion, they worked hard, and relaxed 'hard.' Nothing wrong with that, as long as they don't wreck things. I had my questions sometimes, like the racing stuff, what if someone gets really badly hurt etc... but still, Chuck Yeager and a lot of the first astronauts were a wild bunch, too... As long as you know when to party and when to get serious...
MDRS is very valuable to get to know in advance exactly the problems Adrian mentioned.
(BTW why only 2 weeks 'missions' ? By the time they get their bearings, they must start preparing to pack again. Probably a lack of money, but 4 weeks or longer seem to make more sense...)

About the "wait 'till the technology matures and gets cheaper" kind of reasoning... You're too right. Also, if everybody waits, it won't mature, or are there some magical creatures working for us when we sleep, doing the basic stuff?
Everybody that says something like that should get retired. I mean it. I'd say to them if you don't have a vision, you don't belong in science/engineering. Take a walk to the nearest pond and go fishing, but don't interfere with the hardworking people that actually DO something. You're burning up taxpayer money if you stay.
Sounds harsh, I know, but i have too much respect for people that still have a goal in their life to be apologetic towards the 'settled' ones. I still have a lot of respect for certain NASA and JPL people that make things possible, in spite of the hugely inefficient workings (what's in a name?) of the Dinosaur.

(ok, end of rant)

Hmmm... Found something disturbing... On the Foresight page.

Eric Drexler, the 'God' of nanomanufacturing, wrote a paper called: The Case Against Mars in 1984...

I think this is, sadly, the way a lot of scientists react: they're afraid to lose *their* funding if *another* Big Project? gets the limelight. Sigh.

      You mean: don't tell the Russians?

Seriously, that'll be exactly the reason why this technology will be vetoed down by some idiot behind a desk... no way they'll trust the hardworking crews with a 'still in their living quarters...

Martian citizens, after reading this, collecively heave a huge sigh of relief...  :laugh:

There's a huge difference 'tween China and former USSR. USSR collapsed, and almost overnight changed to capitalism, for wich they were not ready at all... China is slowly adapting, in fct they have a lot of economical ties with Europe etc, that they didn't have only 10 years ago...

Also consider the 'made in china' stuff, it less pronounced now, but you'd be surprized how much stuff you use that's been manufactured there, and i'm not talking about low tech stuff, a LOT of high end computer-cases, for instance are made in China, their plants are relatively up-to-date. You never saw a lot of "made in Russia" stuff, did you?

... Back to their hardware...

I repeat myself when i say i don't understand why everybody dismisses their achievment as being 40yrs+ behind the other spacefaring countries...

Some points:
-"it's basically a copy of Soyuz" ...WRONG! It's true they got a lot of info from the Russians, but it is NOT a copy, it's a really sophisticated capsule, and if it looks like a copy, that's because of the fact that Soyuz is a very sound design (look up the "pre-Apollo" (beta-versions?) designs, they look like a Soyuz, too, hmmm)

-Consider this: Shendzou is the most modern manned craft in use today! Yes, you read that right... Soyuz: 50's tech with some upgrades... Shuttle: 70's... Shendzou: 90's!

-It's a versatile design: launch two, let them dock, leave the servicemodules in orbit, hey presto, a small spacestation for the cost of two cheap launches. Add modules as much as you like...
-Abundant power: two sets of solar panels, so the abovementioned minilab will not need extra panels, launched separately. Again a very flexible design.

-docking system is compatible with Soyuz, thus ISS. lifeboat in emergency situation anyone?

My question: if they launch the next craft... leave service behind...(with experiments) three months later, they launch again, dock with the orbiting hardware, stay there some weeks, bring back their experiments...

Then, how far 'behind' would they be? (Also considering the low cost of such an operation, compared with a Shuttle launch)

spaceref

Nice pictures, amazing what can be done with a bit of coordination...

Cyclohm, there are devices on the market, mainly for use in musea, that measure relative humidity, temp, lightlevel (ambient and direct) (in visible/UV) in one handy enclosure Some of these have serial ports, so you can download/monitor their outputs. I've worked with some of them, and they're lightweight and very precise... They are pre-calibrated, and you can let them re-calibrate by service personnel... Stupid of me (or my fried harddisk), but i can't find the specs, not even the manufacturer, but there are several on the market... maybe you could ask your local museum?

I'm afraid these thingies are quite expensive, though, being 'reference' measurin devices...

All the luck with your project!

Spacedaily is a bit slow to load sometimes... (Australia)
I tried it myself to doublecheck, and it seems to load now, i'm in europe, so maybe that doesn't say a thing for connection of routers to your place...

(don't you just *hate* it when slow pages load, it's always the ads that load first? If it was not for the fact that i like that site so much, i'd be quite angry, sometimes)

I read the Nozomi thread, but i thought, because of the potential environmental impact (no pun intended) it was ok to put up here...