New Mars Forums

To be honest I would prefer asteroids that reside between Mars and Earth for the first phases of such a system.  But here is a list of asteroids that cross Earth and Mars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_M … or_planets  They might prove useful anyway and they suggest that there may be some with a more circular orbit that do not cross Earth or Mars.

Stony asteroids have previously been considered as trash.  I think that needs reevaluation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroidal_water
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The craving for water for propellants, in my opinion is due to old concepts from the 60's and 70's where advancements in space flight existed, to a large extent based on Hydro Lox.  Later, those who consult libraries, and do not encounter seeds of innovation saw this as the only option.

I regard the use of Hydrogen in fuel as sometimes necessary but a squandering even so, at least until we get to the asteroid belt.

Nuclear Hydrogen is not really such a great concept.  Yes, it gives 2x the thrust it is said, but only with Hydrogen.  (Nuclear Electric is another thing).

I believe that even Dr. Robert Zubrin has written of a council of another person that proper use of Nuclear Fission would be to cook up chemicals with it, perhaps on the surface of Mars.  This only makes sense as the waste heat from it would be very useful, and Mars offers methods of heat sinking that could be valuable.

Nuclear Fission, if it uses water for a steam thrust is about as good as chemical rockets, I have read.

If you have read my prior posts then you know that I am interested in other means of propulsions, typically electric in nature, such as Ion, or Mass Drive, but if a Nuclear with some form of Fusion does show up then that is interesting also.

So, in general I support the avoidance of the use of Hydrogen in propulsion and the conservation of Hydrogen.  Exceptions are where large amounts of water, (Earth), or Ice, (Mars, Ceres, 10 Hygeia, Callisto as examples) exists.

While it is speculated that the Solar wind may implant Hydrogen into the regolith of Stony Asteroids, I think that they could have Hydrogen as Hydrated minerals or even the encapsulation of bring droplets.

Rubble probably came from larger "Whole" objects that may have had cold or warm or hot brines in their interiors.

They would have heat from accretion and also from radioactive decay.  Aluminum-26 as one possibility.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/blog/aluminum-i … lar-system
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It seems likely that the Asteroids were much colder on the outside in the early solar system.  So, they may have been more hydrated than they are now.  In fact, some asteroids resemble comets.

But with heat on the insides, they may have had brines circulating in their interiors.

The sun apparently was only 70% as warm as it is now.  So at least some stony asteroids may have water inside of them, not just on their surfaces from the solar wind.

The Carbonaceous Asteroids had water:
https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/ne … eans-earth
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroidal_water
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So, my interest in water in stony asteroids is that in this case it is precious and should not be squandered.  The Hydrogen in it can be used repeatedly with Pyrolysis, to extract Oxygen from regolith, and to so produce water which can be split into Oxygen and Hydrogen.  This will also reduce Iron which might be extracted to be a propellant or for structure.

Both Iron and Oxygen have magnetic and paramagnetic properties, when solid.  So, they may be suitable as propellants in a mass driver propulsion system.

Iron would be suitable for either Neumann Drive or MagDrive electric propulsion systems.

And I anticipate robotic mining methods to work with asteroids of various types to extract materials to use in "Way-Stations" in "Concentric Circle Way Stations".  Those then to service visiting spacecraft.

Rather then to bring the propellants back to Earth/Moon exclusively, they may be deposited into "Way Stations" that are in "Higher" Orbits of the sun.  In some cases, these locations will be easier to bring it to than to bring it to Earth/Moon.

Ending Pending

So, then "Glass Bubbles" on Mars and "Glass Bubbles" in orbit are more or less Para-Terraforming.  And they hold more promise of an Earth-Like existence than terraforming Mars as a whole.

And as SpaceShips can be SSTO on Mars, is it that wrong to suppose that you could make Liquid Methane on the surface of Mars, and bring it to orbit to react with the solid materials of Phobos and Deimos, to create H20 and CO2?

I feel that Martians may want to more be in orbit than on the surface of Mars, as their habitations can be part of a Spiral backbone of the solar system.

I have already mentioned this in another topic.  Cycling Spaceships are interesting, but I want to explore Concentric Orbits with linking spirals.

Here I show 3 concentric orbits between Earth and Mars:

Without being insulting, I want to say that this is different than 60's and 70's thinking.  In the Apollo age the idea was chemical to the Moon and Nuclear to Mars.  Using the Hohmann Transfer method.  This is not that.

They were stuck on the fact that in their time Electric Ion propulsion was not emergent, I believe, not very much.  And it was the Atomic Age and the Space Age.  Each sound impressive.

Space has been stuck on the idea that the sunlight thins out as you travel away from the sun.  But with properly sized mirrors this can become only a little trouble as you make 5 steps Earth>Mars, at each you take on a larger sized mirror and leave your smaller one behind.

This then sizes your mirror mass more appropriately to the power needs.  The power system the mirrors would feed is either Solar Panels or perhaps CO2 Supercritical heat engine.

I know that most people here feel that the solar panels are effeminate.  Powerful always sounds masculine.  "The Big Greed"  Even women have it.  But practical is more the desire take your fetishes elsewhere.

I do realize that the proper alignment of stopping points will repeat only occasionally if there is only one orbital station in a ring, so there would be many.  Many of them would be simple warehouses inhabited by robots.  Over time though they might build up into full habitations for humans.

Being able to trade mirrors is helpful, but we may want to move humans and a minority of cargo fast, but the bulk of cargo slow.

So the slow ships would be used to stock the orbital stations with propellants and parts.  The fast ships would take on enough propellants to get to the next station (+Margin), and could travel faster as to be lighter.  And of course they would exchange mirrors also.

Each ring might have multiple stations in it set apart from each other.  Instead of 3 rings there could be 10 or 100 or 1000.  Is there a limit?

It may be possible to communicate cargo to an from asteroids to some of these stations.

While an Argon/Xenon mix might be considered for propellants, Neumann Drive and Magdrive are expected to be able to use most conductive materials as propellants.  This includes Iron, Aluminum, Silicon, Carbon, and more.

We may also anticipate a mass driver on a ship that shoots out Dry Ice pellets with some magnetic Iron in them.

Is solid Oxygen Paramagnetic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramagnetism
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More difficult than Dry Ice with Iron, perhaps, but if you can make Oxygen ice cubes of a correct size and shape you might be able to expell them from a ships mass driver to provide propulsion.

I would expect that between the orbits of Earth and Mars, both Dry Ice and Oxygen Ice Cubes when expelled from the ship will rapidly evaporate.

The point is you could get Oxygen from almost any asteroid or moon in the solar system.

So, a mining base at a NEA may be ablet to move materials to a convenient station in the circular concentric orbits.

Of course, if this works you would extend it towards and into the asteroid belts.

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It is obvious that due to the nature of Mars and much of the solar systems reality that robots that can deal with cold, at least some cold are going to be wanted.

The zones between the poles and equator of Mars have many situations of thick slabs of ice under some layer of regolith overburden.

The scale of some of these slabs is rather large: https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news … ion-images  Image Quote:
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Some of these ice slabs extend at least halfway to the Equator, so solar energy will be a bit like Kansas, I think.  That is, there will be come solar energy year around barring serious dust storms.

This map give some idea of relatively shallow ice: https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasas … e-on-mars/
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I think that it is notable that the deeper buried deposits extend into the southern edge of the Hellas Depression.  (Towards the bottom left).

I believe that the map is for deposits that SpaceX could use to refill Starship.  It does not show deposits that may be closer to the Equator and perhaps buried under more regolith.

It does not show the deposit in Candor Chaos of the Rift Valley: https://www.space.com/mars-water-below- … ris-canyon  Quote:

The size of that deposit is about that of the Netherlands, I believe.  For that reason, I suspect that Hellas may have more underground ice than is shown on the Map.

I think that there is a pattern of selective release of information.  Authority prone types who we co-exist with in the USA, do for good or bad reasons, try to harness the energy of the population to make them servile.  I believe that the legs of the space program are broken periodically to achieve this.  Invention created by enthusiastic good intentions is then appropriated, and a government restart is done periodically.  We may be experiencing such an event just now.

I am sure that there are quite a few who think that humans in space is of little or no value.  And certainly, low level munchkins are not worthy.  It is what we have to deal with though.  Extreme specialists with limited awareness of the scope of realty seeking to enslave the generalists.  Sometimes you catch the bus, and sometimes the bus catches you. (From a friend who has passed away).

Anyway a 300-foot-deep layer of ice will exert almost 1 bar of pressure on its base.  Looking at the first picture in this post, we might speculate what lies below the ice?  In some cases, is it Lava Flows, lose regolith, or sandstone?

We might want to find Sandstone.

So, if found then robots might exist in caves carved in ice.  Humans and Robots might also exist in caves carved in sandstone deep below the ice.

Sandstone caves deep enough could be warm.

Sandstone blocks could be used for various purposes, such as floors for ice caves and supports for ice caves.

So, my hope is that this could be done in the Hellas Depression and perhaps in Candor Chaos in the rift valley.

This would be quite a lot of protection from the harsh reality of Mars.

Ending Pending

From the just previous post:

So, I suggested that these chambers would be mostly cold perhaps -20 degrees C, maybe a bit warmer.

But what if humans appropriated 1% of that for warmer quarters?  So then 1,600 cubic kilometers of warm spaces.

That is a lot of space, even if the minority of ice cave structures.

Probably these could be something like skyscrapers inside of an ice cave, the ice cave being well reenforced against cave-ins.  A heat pumping process could make sure that the heat in the ice cave were pulled back into the building as it leaked out.

If the heat built up to be too much it could be used to melt more ice cave space.

These places may seem dreary, but actually if we had several sources of energy, there could be green gardens in the buildings.

I feel that various spaces of Mars/Phobos/Deimos/Asteroids would be under development at similar times. 

So energy for a polar cap could come from:
1) Nuclear Fission.
2) Summertime Surface Solar.
3) Orbital Space projected to the ice caps.
4) Perhaps Fusion power.

Some ice caves might be filled with Oxygen, some with Methane, robots could operate in either or in those that might be filled with Mars atmosphere.  The storage of liquid forms would also be possible but maybe a bit more difficult.

So, what would become of the water that was meted or evaporated out of the ice caves?

Some would be used in the creation of Methane and Oxygen to fill the ice caves.

Some could be transported to fill a expanse of lakes and small seas.

If they had salts in them from the soils then perhaps Uranium would be in dissolved form in the water and could be extracted for energy.

Also some Methane would be exported from the Ice caps planetwide.  And likely perhaps also Oxygen.

In orbit of Mars at the same time could be spin gravity habitats that could be from 1/6th to 1 g in force and would have very nice Earth simulations.

What Phobos and Deimos might lack for building these could be supplied from Asteroids or if necessary, from Mars itself.

So, this world would not be one where you spent your entire life underground or under-ice on in the Under-Mars, but also could at times live in the sky.

If the inhabitants later on wanted to melt the ice caps as many have expressed a desire for, I guess they will do so.  That will be their business.  However, I don't think that is needed or desired.

But that is just my tastes in the matter.

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Some won't like this video as there is some amount of propaganda gloating for China and a bit of put-down for the USA.  But even so, the information is important.

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … ORM=VRDGAR  Quote:

I don't see the USA as earning that much put down, but it does explain why NASA has begun harassing SpaceX.  They must be getting pressure from powerful politicians.

I was around when the space program was stifled.  I know the mentality of the people who stifled it.

Unfortunately, the character of the USA is good much of the time, but sometimes it eats its own children rather than to promote them to greatness.

China and others are not without their own problems/faults.  But they are entitled to be pleased that they disserve recognition for this.

As for the US and other countries like it, we are in our European parts, a combination of remnants of Hunter Gathers, Farmers, and the Steppe peoples.  I consider that they each bring gifts and also problems.

The Steppe peoples somewhat may be more mobile and having the technology of that.

The Farmers though produce a problem which is the excessive building of Hierarchy built too much on verbal skills.  If the Hierarchy can cause the skilled in violence to obey it, then the masses can be enslaved.  A threat to this power pyramid is technology.  Apollo produced to many technologically skilled people with them accumulating power.  Of course, the priesthood of the farmer inheritance resented that and wanted to convert it to things they could command and extract power and wealth from.  So, the kill Apollo and promote the military.

Don't get me wrong, I am still here and I do not speak Russian or Chinese.  I am not dead (Yet).  Unfortunately, in dealing with the Farmers as in dealing with the other two heritages, you have to take some bad with the good.  And it is hard to tell from time to time which is which.

But Apollo sampled materials near the equator, I believe, and the Farmers wanted to emphasize that the Moon was a very dead and useless world.  They come in various flavors.
-Want the money for violence/security.
-Want to keep the human race on the Earth so we will be here when the rapture comes.
-Are atheists anti-humanist scientists who value their ivory towers among the anointed.  Want grant money.  Do not think that common people should be allowed to breed, perhaps.
-Jealous.

Even if water was found they would be happy to say that the samples were contaminated being brought to Earth.  They would be happy with a dead dry Moon.

Then they could say they were aiming at Mars, but never really mount a serious effort, just keep resetting the game, churning the money.

Again, although all of that frustrates me, I do have it rather good relative to average people on the planet, (Except for that bitter feeling of having my time wasted).

Still here we are and we have to work with what we have.

Ending Pending

I think it is reasonable to presume that the human race on Earth will be embedded in swarms of robots.  This may be a blessing, or they may end up killing us off, or maybe some of both.  It is likely that some humans will live to see whatever is going to happen.

Similarly for other worlds, swarms of robots seem likely to me to emerge.  If it turns out that robot swarms are compatible with humans, then they may make it more possible for humans to prosper on other worlds like the Moon, Mars, or significant asteroids.

I would say that such robots have to become very robust to survive these environments, but I think it is in the area of possible to try to make such a collection/swarm of machines.

Keep in mind that in the case of Hellas, if you could also evaporate all of the CO2 that is solid, but not necessarily melt or evaporate all of the water ice, you could increase the air pressure of Hellas more than 2x or very optimistically 2.5x.  So currently maximum pressure is ~11.5 millibars.  So, >~23 millibars and very optimistically >~28.75 millibars.  I use > because the air column will compress, so the ultimate maximum pressure could be > 2x or optimistically >2.5x.

I think that this would afford the robots a great deal more radiation protection than what is now available and the Hellas already offers the best conditions on the Mars surface.

The pressure being higher, then the temperatures will likely tend to be higher.

I have read that under those conditions real snowfalls might be possible, and even temporary melt water streams.  If so, then the basin might be a suitable place to refill Starships and to land them.  Otherwise, it may be that there may be aquifers with brine.  There may also be convenient glacier deposits.

One thing that is nice about Methane on Mars, is that you could pipe it around, and get it to Starships that way, and you can also react it with Oxygen to get more water as well.  Where piping water or Hydrogen would be inconvenient, Methane would be quite convenient, provided you have the infrastructure of robotics to build pipelines.

Power beamed from orbit may at times be helpful, and also it may be that power may be beamed up from Hellas to orbit.  This is a good reason to want to control the dust.

As for the structure of the book shaped 90-degree solar collectors, I am hoping that the foundations can be made firm and the main structure be made of compressed blocks of Mars soil.
https://www.sciencealert.com/it-turns-o … n-concrete
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While one function of these devices would be to serve as dust collecting wind fences, of course also the hope is to mount solar panels on them as well.

Further, if this device is to be considered a sort of stationary robot, the small amount of computer brains it needs can be hosted behind the "V" of the device in the shadow, where much solar radiation will be blocked, also some GCR would be somewhat blocked as well.

I will show the diagram again:

By texturing the land in this manner, you greatly increase the surface area that sunlight touches and also expand the amount of surface that infrared can be emitted from into space.  So, I anticipate that this may alter the way the Hellas Basin heats up in summer when global dust storms could be triggered.  The solar "Books" may act like heat exchanger fins and change that relationship.

To some extent if we are converting some of the sunlight to electricity, we reduce the heating during the day.  But the solar panels may tend to retain heat as well.  But the brick walls will store heat during the day and release it throughout all the hours of the Mars Day/night cycle.

It maybe that this will reduce the trigger for a Global Dust Storm.  But the wind fence effect will also help.

The stationary solar robots might be made very robust to survive the harsh winters.  More sensitive robots might go underground where they might be protected.  Perhaps part of the power grid would be nuclear fission and perhaps power could be beamed down from orbit in the winter.

Anyway, I see this as a possible contribution to a whole list of tools to terraform Mars with.

Ending Pending

I will accept that in part.  It was because of the rivalry of world powers and the distance of the Atlantic, that the USA could exist and was not subsequently reabsorbed (Yet).

I believe that various Europeans including some British did have aspirations for the greater rewards of merit rather than inherited short-cut minds. 

As for your king, we still owe him some consideration in the way we suppose that consideration is given to us.  (Not so sure anymore).

The remnants of the British Empire have been infiltrated by Orientalists, in my opinion, and I fear that some of them entertain the subjugation of some of us in America as was done to the Boers.

Yes, I know that is tricky.  The British used non-Europeans at times, and were the ones who seem to have created the concentration camps for the Boers.  I do not accuse the British Nation of treachery, but my spider sense tells me that there are some bad apples in the barrel.

The Boer reference is unfortunate as it implies a race issue as the dominant parallel.  As is quite common the story of the Boers was that they settled in a place which was occupied by a non-Bantu people while the Bantu were colonizing from the North.  The original inhabitants are to a large extent a small remnant, or in the mixed race people called Colored, I believe.  I do not hold the Boers as angels nor do I hold the Bantu as angels.  Only human.

But the concern now may some of the Europeans selling out to the type of people who have been pushed into your countries and Canada, in hopes of being on the ground floor of an imperial empire that does not respect historical European values, and are they hoping to come for us?

It is obvious that their was a campaign to guilt my people with blood libel and the strip us of our industrial capacity which might protect us in war?

The pattern seems to suggest a collaboration of Marxists and Islamists to disrupt our presence on this planet as a capable force.  An Axis of evil I might call it.

It is a pattern which suggest bad intentions.  It is not yet proof, but very suspicious.

Blood Libel is that my ancestors by reputation recorded did not participate in the slave trade, did not own slaves, and fought in the army opposed to the slavers.  While they did not want slavery for various reasons, that did not mean that they would really want to cozy up to the freed slaves.  That is thought of as racism, and I suppose it was in a sense.  But so called "White" ethnic groups did not so much feel they wanted to quickly integrate with each other's nationalities.  It took some considerable time.

But I can say that for any so-called black person they are likely descendant of a slave owner, and sometimes those slave owners were not so called "White".

In the end the freed slaves were adopted, grudgingly and sometimes resentfully.

But I do not accept that I inherit a special blame for slavery more than black Americans do.

The Kongo had slave empires that were a collaboration between the Portuguese and the local peoples (Africans).  They were usually the slavers, and not so much people from the USA.  (Or so much the British).

My point being that if you allow it and do not look it over and think it through these same people will try to enslave you with words of lies and distortions.

Ending Pending

FYI, I have done two posts before this one, today, on this topic.

The 70's and 80's had a notion of extracting things from the Moon to build things in orbit.

But now it seems obvious that it will be rather easy to provide power to locations on the Moon, 24/7,

So, for I have avoided mass driver notions and their like and also tethers to snatch things to orbit.  I do not oppose those, but think they are beyond my abilities to be expert in.  I will welcome them if they can be done.  It seems though that some chemical launch methods may be practical, or that asteroid materials can be brought in to make power plants to send power to the Moon, at least to start.

One thing I am interested in is if Neumann Drive or Magdrive could be a matter projector from the Moon?  Could you vacuum weld projected matter to an orbiting target?

At I am somewhat lacking as much knowledge about MagDrive as for Neumann Drive.  It turns out now that Magdrive apparently can use most metals for propellants.  I do not know if it can use Silicon.  But I believe that Neumann Drive can use Silicon and Aluminum which will each be important for solar power plants in orbit.

https://neumannspace.com/
Here is included a list of propellants for electric ion drives: https://neumannspace.com/metal-propellants/

I think if a substance is electrically conductive it can be used as a propellant.  Most elements apparently have that capability.

Consider a magnetic Beard in a orbital cup: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/2-i … brary.html

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/group … -299911407
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Point the beard down towards the Moon.

Here is my attempt:

Iron can be magnetized to provide the magnetic filings "Beard".  But Hot Iron will not be magnetic until cooled down.
Aluminum can have some inductive reactance.
Silicon might be catchable.

My hope would be that suborbital particles projected from the surface of the Moon would intercept the beard and be entrained into it and even vacuum welt to the magnetic particles.  I am hoping to accumulate and not to disintegrate the Beard cup.

The cup may be orbiting at a rather low altitude.  Some method to propel the Beard-Cup is needed, perhaps Neumann Drive or Magdrive.

Perhaps it could be pushed with an electron beam from the surface of the Moon.

Thinking bigger you might eventually even build an orbiting ring around the Moon or a planet like Mercury, but that is even more of a fantasy.

I suppose rotavators might also be a more sensible plan for the Moon.

But the point is if you could get massive amounts of Mass into orbit you could build orbital power supplies for the Moon, to serve many purposes on the Moon such as the support of data centers.

Ending Pending

This is pretty significant, I feel:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/starclou … 95328-hPJN
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Pause.................

Here is yet, something more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrVONWVww6c
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It could be that energy from 4 of the Lunar "L" spaces, might be beamed to the Moon.  Or Power Satellites might orbit the Moon to beam it power. This then to run many things, including Data Centers made primarily of Lunar Materials perhaps.

On the Moon if you have massive energy supplies, you could run heat pumps to augment radiators.  I have seen numbers of at least 200 degrees C as possible perhaps much more.  Using this and large amounts of power you could power data centers and keep them cool.

If you used solar panels as sunshades and such heat pumped radiators, even at noon, the radiators should be able to reject heat to the Universe.

https://www.space.com/18175-moon-temperature.html
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The 106 degrees C, I think only occurs at the equator at noon time.

So, if you were higher latitude the ground would not radiate that much Infared as for the high temperature spot.

Of course, the Moon lacks some substances but perhaps invention can deal with that or actual import of small amounts special materials.

So, I would not write off the Moon as a major project.  I also would be wondering if Mars/Phobos/Deimos/Asteroids could supply some of those special materials.

Ending Pending

Continuing from the previous post, in an age of autonomous and directed robotics, and where new propulsion systems are emerging, time is the primary issue of moving product around in the solar system.

While I have a value assigned to Mars/Phobos/Deimos, occasionally I have wondered about a solar system where beyond Earth we would deal with our Moon and the Dwarf Planet Ceres.  It is possible that other worlds such as 10 Hygea can be of interest as well, but we are pretty sure that Ceres has what is wanted on the Moon.

Often, I read articles about some new propulsion system that will get us to Mars in 10 days.  Well, that would be interesting, but I would rather be able to get materials from Ceres to the Moon, in 3, 5, 10 years.

I suppose some method will be found to lift materials off of the Moon in bulk and that will be good if it happens, but we can probably get similar to Earth and Moon orbits from NEA's without a futuristic planetary mass driver system.  We might even get them from Phobos and Deimos. 

The sun shines so there is power from Ceres to the Moon.  Propulsion systems like Neuman Drive, and Magdrive and spacecraft mass drive systems are likely to be useful in transporting bulk cargo.  It just requires time.

A mirror built at Ceres could provide plenty of power to a transport, and as the transport got closer to the sun, the materials of the mirror could be converted to propulsion mass for any of the three devices I mentioned above.

Very likely we can get Iron and Dry Ice from Ceres, it has lots of Carbon, Oxygen, and Iron I expect.  Iron impregnated dry ice pellets could be expelled from a spacecraft mass drive system to propel freight to the Earth/Moon (And Mars/Phobos/Deimos).

We could have 10,000 space stations with circular solar orbits staggered between Earth/Moon and Ceres.

And the Moon built up could be big in Data Centers and to export power to varoius locations in the Earth/Moon locations, also helping to power spacecraft.

Ending Pending

One thing that could facilitate the para-terraforming of a world money matters, of course.

And before terraforming a world you most likely para-terraform it.

I have been surprised to find that indeed some people are thinking about data centers on the Moon.

A gravity well will not prevent the export of data, or the export of energy.

Query: "Data Centers on the Moon"

Response: https://www.bing.com/search?q=Data+Cent … n-us&ocid=
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So, if it becomes viable, eventually it would be desired to build mostly with materials available on the Moon.  But before that, SpaceX may have a useful product.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXStarship … ted_may_6/
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Of course, for the Moon, no flap assemblies to be included.

I have long wanted the idea of a Lunar Starship where the Cargo Section can be separated from the "Locomotive".  The Locomotive being whatever feeds the raptor engines, including the main tanks of course.

The upper section, "Cargo Section" might make a place to put data centers into.

So, these upper half sections of Lunar type Starships if offloaded could be connected horizontally if provision was made for connectors to allow that.

Solar Radiation might be protected fairly well from with berms of regolith.  But the GCR may need additional shielding.  I think that is is often overlooked that the Moon itself will block perhaps 50% of GCR which would not be true for a Data Center in orbit, necessarily.

So, then the Locomotive would likely be refilled with Oxygen fully and have a remnant of Methane to launch beck to Lunar orbit and receive another upper part to bring down, and more Methane from a Depot.

The walls of the ship might radiate heat off fairly well, but perhaps some piping and heat exchangers will additionally be wanted.

If you had a heat pump you could reject heat into the main compartment from the processing unit.  This should then increase the effectiveness of the starship hull to reject heat to the universe.

The radiator fins shown may increase heat rejection and also protect the shell from impactors.  Perhaps they could be made of easily extracted metals from the Moons regolith?

A heat pump might be able to generate 180 degrees C or more.

Aluminum fins might be the best but Iron will be easier to get out the regolith along with some Oxygen.

It might be possible to make the Radiator fins attached to tiles that could be glued to the sides of the upper half of the ship.  But then you need glue.

And that raises a question.  Can the product produced justify the costs?

If we do not move data centers off of Earth then we have choices.  Ban more data centers, or have our electric bills keep going up.

But if we were on the Moon, we might as well arrange to beam power into space, maybe even to Earth.  Beamed power could power space Transporation.

So, at some point does it become economical to import glue, water and other things from places like Asteroids or Mars?

Ending Pending