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Small rovers, not nano ones. Small as in the size of a cat, or something similar. If we could get it to build more factories we could begin the production of a colonies hab.
Conventional, Nuclear (Fusion or Fission, doesn't matter), Matter/Antimatter, all produce excess heat. It's just spreading it out around the ship to produce a sheild.
Has anyone considered using the excess heat to generate power?
Redirecting excess heat from the engines that would otherwise go to waste?
Like tagging it onto a planet or something similar (the moon) as a sort of Assisted Gravitational Assist?
not to mention we need to find out yet still if light is a particle or not
What effect would that have?
If the magnetic feild was strong enough it could heat up and vaporise meteoroids about to hit it (possibly).
I've an idea. What about placing powerful magnetic rings in space that accelerate the craft towards them and switch off just as the craft is about to hit, allowing the ship to be guided through the ring.
What about this idea. A solar sail in Solar orbit with enough power from the sun to counteract it's gravity and the force of the laser from the ship. A second one (the ship) get's acceleration from the sun and the laser on the sail. The ships laser pushes against the solar orbiting sail and gains acceleration.
How's this for an idea? Building your own planet! You could use asteroids and comets for resources and an artificial magnetosphere for atmosphere retaintian. It would in effect be a space station with no hull.
Here's an interesting thought. Due to the artificial magnetosphere charged particles will be directed towards the front and back of the ship (possible fuel?), releasing energy in the form of light.
If it was powerful enough you wouldn't need an airtight hull (the magnetosphere would keep the atmosphere in) allowing the possibility of custom built planets.
I was reading a Focus magazine artical on the Earths magnetic field and they used the analogy of a bar magnet. Then it occured to me. If the Earths magnetic field is like that it would be possible to place one (or two connected by a rod,if it's needed) in the middle of the craft. The magnetic field produced would keep out the harmful radiation. Would it need to be an electromagnet or could it just be permanent?
What about a modified reactor, so instead of using the heat to create stea, it's open-ended, directing all the pressure and energy from the reactor outwards?
Hello? Anyone there?
So all the Hi-Tech Terraforming work has been done. Should Mars then be a Lo-Tech agricultural one or and Industrialised Hi-Tech one? Or maybe a mix of both?
No, I meant they would have recieved our communication 8.5 yrs ago and would have beamed out a message to us. Alpha Centauri is the most likely to have life as A is the most similar to Sol (containing enough volatiles for planets that could have life on, large enough for enough light, gravity, etc; small enough not to burn out in tens of millions of years; being in the same area of the galaxy; I.C.G.O.B.W.G.B).
Actually, all main sequence stars experience this early in their lives and red dwarfs have lifetimes ~1trillion years long, so every red dwarf in the universe can be assumed to be only a small percentage of the way through its life.
But no red dwarf star has ever completed a sequence, making it at best an educated guess. No life could exist at the moment even then, because they wouldn't have settled down yet.
Gliese for example, is relatively stable.
Which one?
With todays tech nano rovers would be incredibly difficult to make. Maybe a factory that isn't a rover but would churn out small rovers?
Elsewhere on this site/forum. Not the thread.
The argumant is:
Alpha Centauri is the planet most likely to have intelligent life.
No radio waves have been picked up from there.
Therefore any intelligent life there either doesn't exist or hasn't invented radio.
(of course they could have invented radio 8.5 yrs ago and we have another month before the radio waves hit us. But we'd still be technologically superior.)
Don't get me started on dwarf stars. Life there would never have got aspirations to fly and break out of the confines of its home planet. The reason? Any species looking up at the sky would soon be dead of radiation sickness.
What about a vehicle based on the same principle?
So far all the ideas for nuclear rockets (except my own) seem to be based around a bomb being dropped out of the back of the craft, going off, and a thick plate stopping the explosion blowing the craft up, with the craft riding the explosion. That is so inefficient. It would surely be much more efficient to turn the plate into a tunnel and direct all the nukes force outwards, so energy doesn't get sent off in directions where it won't be utilised.
How about this for transport. Some kind of springy bouncyhoper (or whatever they're called). The astronouts would be able to bounce much further on mars than earth because of lower gravity and air resistence.
Assuming the geological integrity of these caves could be determined, these would be a great place to establish a base, do to the the free radiation shielding.
I came up with that idea first, elsewhere on this site.
One extremely important note. Caves are formed by running water. Therefore liquid water must have existed on mars.
Has anyone considered a vehicle that would glassify the Martian surface? It could first be sent as a probe and would build roads and a landing strip for the astronouts. It could be sent to sites of interest and the crew could just drive along the road. If it isn't to slippy.
The current composition of the Martian atmosphere is:
CO2: 95.32%
Nitrogen: 2.7%
Argon: 1.6%
O2: 0.13%
CO: 0.07%
H2O: 0.03%
neon, krypton, xenon, ozone, methane: Trace
Solid rocket Boosters.
Advantages.
No trouble with storing fuel under pressure. Leaks don't cause massive explosions.
Disadvantages.
They have to burn themselves out, they can't be turned off.
The best kind of rocket will be the solid/liquid mixture rockets that Virgin Galactic will run on.
Please can amoderator take a look at the Children Growing Up On Mars thread, it has gone a lot off topic (into the Terraformation section). I think it needs to be split and the Terraforming bit moved to the Terraformation forum.