New Mars Forums

Thank You for stopping by and commenting (th).

I expect that for any rubble pile Iron bonded with Oxygen is a likelihood.  Some magnetic Iron is also likely.

I appreciate that Starship is using ability to travel to Mars directly from LEO as a goal that helps specify its characteristics.  Apparently, the nature of it that this creates is at least somewhat compatible with other solar system objectives.

But we can expect that various kinds of electric propulsions will be more emergent over time.  This could lead to a situation where products shipped from Earth/Moon and elsewhere could be in collaboration with products that could be more completed on the moons of Mars. 

As it happens also, products like Iron which might be produced on these moons may serve as propellants for electric driven processes such as On-Board rocket mass drivers, or MagDrive or Neumann Drive.

It also seems that at the same time power beaming methods will emerge where power plant which will largely not be changing its inertia can transmit power to a transportation device that will be changing its inertia.

So, an electric driven inertia and orbit change device could achieve capture to a temporary high Mars orbit using Ballistic Capture methods, and then immediately begin receiving energy transfers to it from power stations in orbit of Mars.  Arriving to Deimos it could then take on more propellants such as Iron, and the by similar means drop orbit down to Phobos and take on more Iron and probably deliver products and receive products.

While Phobos is most likely to produce bulk items like Iron, maybe Aluminum, and Oxygen, minority items such as to make alloys, might be brought from Earth/Moon.  The machinery to be used on Mars or Phobos and Deimos could be produced by various methods, perhaps including 3D printing.

The same electric propulsion, perhaps including the use of Iron as propellant, could lower a Starship refilled with LOX to a very low orbit so that it could begin air braking to land on Mars.

My computer is acting extremely slow, so I am not happy.  It maybe I am being somehow impeded in my efforts to communicate.

There are some things I would like to collect into this post.

I have my eye on the process that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaise is using to drill.
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So, it is difficult to figure out how to grind rocks as we often do in mining here on Earth, but this process might take apart rocks and conduct pyrolysis at the same time.

NASA has been looking at building with glass on the Moon:
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/ … w-gravity/  Image Quote:

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/ … n-the-moon

So, sinter and glass could be two ways to treat "Slag" and make it useful.

The easy things to remove from the regolith seem to be Hydrogen and Iron.  Carbon and other volatiles perhaps less so.  Oxygen can relatively easily be removed from Iron oxides and from water.

If we can make glass parts for an enclosure can we put bands of tensile materials around it?  Perhaps some type of simple steel?

Then can a balloon be inflated inside of it?  Of Poly or even an Aluminum balloon?

According to Anthrofuturism, lasers could be used to "Distill" substances other than Iron, Hydrogen, and Oxygen.

Also though laser 3D printers may help to make structures from various materials.

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Obviously once human activity is in proximity of ice worlds this plan could work well.

Exceptional Asteroids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e … _asteroids

Most of these are volatile, including water bearing.  Being labeled G or C or B in type.  But there is some evidence now that at least some stony asteroids will have water in them in some form.

Using concentrating mirrors to provide the hot side of Biocompatible Heat Engines should be rather easy in the asteroid belt.

In the Trojans and Greeks and the moons of Jupiter, mirrors could also work, but would need to be bigger.

Going to the Saturn system mirrors should even then work but of course they have to be big.  Obviously, the Saturn system will have the advantage of the resources of it's moons including Titan which would include a lot of Nitrogen.

So, if it could be made to work then an enormous amount of electrical power generation and also biological productivity.

Adding the Laser power transfer methods of this post from elsewhere: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 09#p234709
A network of space propulsion pathways among these should be practical.

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It is my opinion that it could be that SpaceX, and others may end up lifting water and Carbon from Earth to space stations where it can be cooked into propellants.

The water can serve as radiation shielding and/or a method of aquiculture in orbit.  The Carbon could also serve as radiation shielding.
It may be that eventually Oxygen will be brought to LEO from the moon, maybe from NEA's.

So, the water and Carbon could be "Cooked" into propellants at a "Just In Time Rate".

I think that most people don't comprehend how much in the way of space station mass Starship could establish in LEO and higher orbits.

The "Stubby Starship" makes sense.

The booster for Lunar Injection could be filled and put into a "Freezer" to avoid boiloff.  Then the Stubby brought up to orbit and filled and then a crew could be installed into a "Stack".

To me this will make more sense than to do 6 to 7 refills to the Stubby of Methane and Oxygen.  Both water and Carbon will be much easier to store than a bulk of Methane and Oxygen stored during filling.

Of course until the space stations for this are established, it would be directly Methane and Oxygen.

If electric propulsions were to prove effective it might be that eventually Water and Carbon might be obtained from other sources than Earth.

Anyway, it might drift in the direction I have suggested.

We also have the possibility of direct cooked propulsions from Water.

From post #182:

To me this indicates that you could "Directly Cook" a propulsion method. 

Steam is one possibility.  While it is not the most efficient, it might reduce on board mass will allowing water to protect humans and machines.

Direct cooking of Hydrogen and Oxygen from water.  You would have a big water tank and a small Hydro Lox engine.  You could cook up your propellants in small quantities and burn them.  You avoid boil off issues and have radiation shielding while water is on board.

So there would be a large number of solar power plants in orbits, that could send power to these vehicles with lasers.  So, you are not dragging the large inertia of large solar panels to differing orbits.  And your tanks may be just water tanks, so perhaps not as heavy as for Methane, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Etc.

As for "Electric Ion Rockets", Argon-Xenon are said to be good.  Also, we may hope that Neumann Drive and Magdrive can run on things like metals and Carbon as propellants.

This apparently will probably work as a network for the Earth/Moon solar subsystem.

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Here I have changed the idea of a biocompatible heat engine a bit:

The "Light Splitting Window" allows more of the spectrum of the sunlight to impinge on the cone shaped "Boiler".

The window is a cylinder that will experience "Compression" as the "Outside" of the cylinder window is interior to the pressurized space, and the inside of the cylinder window is exposed to the "Greater Partial Vacuum" of the space environment.

The light is expected to come from a optical system of mirrors, or perhaps lenses, not shown in the drawing.

The window could be of two layers.  A compressible layer of transparent ceramic/glass/Silica?, with a transparent film wrapped around it.

As this is a "Compression Window", the differential pressure does not threaten to push the window out of its window frame, but actually may tend to compress the joins between "Glass" panes so then more to seal it.

The window itself may get heated up so a method to extract that heat, perhaps with piping and a fluid might be desired.

The objective would be to get as much raw sunlight as is useful to heat the boiler, but to hopefully be able to reflect photons that can drive photosynthesis to be deflected/reflected into the radiator.

I have speculated that some types of extreme microbes might be able to function in a pressure as low as 10 millibars, but I do not know if that is true.  I think that 50 millibars may do and certainly 100 millibars will do.

Certainly, the higher pressure used the more challenged the window will be, but the higher the life forms that could be sustained would be, up to humans perhaps.

Food for creative thought, I venture.

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It may be that at some point Starships might bring water and Dry Ice up from Earth or other worlds to be processed into Oxygen and Organic matter.  Then the organic matter could be processed into other things, perhaps fuels.

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In the prior post, it seems Europe is interested in a Mini-Starship.

They should think to contract with SpaceX to build a factory in Europe for the mass production of such.

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This is good.  Put some of the responsibility onto Blue Origin.

Probably it would be good to have a minimized human lander as speculated on for MK-1?

It is actually somewhat idiotic to land the Lunar Starship and then use it to lift humans to Lunar orbit and then abandon it.  It can be done but it is Totally Stupid!

Once it is on the Lunar Surface it can be made into a shelter using Lunar resources.  So, if you have a heavy delivery of cargo with Lunar Starships, and have a minimized lander/launcher transport for humans, at that point the Orion Capsule has some good use.

But eventually an upgraded Dragon that could be used, can be launched to orbits by less costly means would make sense.

The Stubby Starship concept could have merit.

From my point of view, a Starship could be created where you leave the Cargo/Cabin in LEO, to become Space Station structure, and the "Locomotive" could have a small Dragon Based, cabin put on to it, then that could be used for transit directly from LEO to the Moons surface.  Then that could be used to transfer humans back to Lunar Orbit.

This could strongly reduce the number of fills needed to access the Moon.

You just add more consumables.  The attached Dragon might have a heat shield, but maybe better not to do that but to have a Dragon or Orion in Lunar orbit for the return to Earth.

It really is totally wrong for NASA and others to use SpaceX as their whipping boy, when much of the fault lies with them for hot thinking this though better before this.  SpaceX is the one that is more on the ball than is Blue Origin.  Not that I fault Blue Origin though.  I bless them for their efforts as well.

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A Dragon-Starship Hybrid method:

While in orbit during a solar flare it should be possible to point the Locomotive at the sun to try to protect the humans in the Dragon.

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One reason I have gone into the idea of "Habitable Heat Engines", is that for orbits of Mars, the capacity to grow things with photosynthesis might be useful.

If you were to conduct pyrolysis of the materials of Phobos or Deimos using Carbon or Hydrogen, the results should be some mix of H20 and CO2.  Then if you put that into a greenhouse, that can be converted to Oxygen and Organic Matter.  Organic Matter then can be mixed with more regolith from Phobos and Deimos, and around you can go again.

I understand that you could use electrolysis to produce O2, CO and then make Methane by various processes, but with this machine, you can take this other route, and have places where humans might dwell as well.

The solar energy for the process is better in orbit than on the surface of Mars, but then if you are in orbit where will you house the processor, the robots, and the humans?  How will you feed the humans.

The drawings I have provided suggest possibility but I do not think that they are yet proven or perfected.

I think that probably the hot side will end up being much hotter than 100 degrees C.  But some care will be needed to have tricks that do not cause heat to migrate to the cooling water by way of Infared Radiation.

I do show a glaze over the hot side metal drum which will need a pigment set that mostly only reflects the light that plants want.

As I understand it that is some of the red and some of the blue and not the UV or Green or far Infared.  The desire would be to block those from reflecting from the boiler to the cool water.

There are 2 layers of transparency and the color scheme of the boiler surface.

The air pressure in use will have some effect as the closer to a vacuum you get, the less heat is transferred by convection.

While higher pressure versions could be nice for people, lower pressure ones may be more productive and easier to keep inflated.  Differential pressure on windows would be less.

It is a fairly tall order, but maybe it can be done reasonably well.

Pressures less than 1/3 bar would have very little Nitrogen, but for humans a 2/3 bar pressure would need some Nitrogen or maybe Argon.

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In the previous post I introduced this:

If a Biocompatible Heat Engine can be created, then I see the orbits of Mars/Phobos/Deimos as being an early place to attempt to create one.

I expect that for the most part things like Hydrogen and Nitrogen would need to come from Mars itself, unless the moons have water of some sort.

Phobos and Deimos, would supply most of the other materials.

And various versions of this might be possible many other locations in the solar system such as perhaps Bennu and Ryugu.

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Although not mandated, I imagine that the cylinder walls will have a sufficient body of water inside of them to give sufficient radiation shielding.  Generally, soil would not be used, as the water is to also be cooled and to store the cold to use in the heat engine.

If humans were in this, they would likely be on platforms on stilts, or boats.

Aquatic vegetation would be more normal but land plants might also be in place.

Technically a platform on stilts of a boat could have addition radiation protection.  So, the water would not have to provide full protection.  In solar storms then of course, you would retreat to these radiation refuges.

This would allow people to move about in a boat and be well protected but access most locations inside of the cylinder walls.

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Such devices might also host data centers.  And might beam power with lasers or microwaves to other locations.

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Because of Callibans post elsewhere: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 61#p234661

I made an attempt to formulate how to have a biocompatible heat engine in space:

I think this might be approaching value for utility.

Thanks Calliban.

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Yes payments of volatiles to Mars over time may improve it from out point of view.

But I suggest that we take out an "Water Loan".

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/icy-clo … tudy-finds
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So, by taking a "Water Loan", we may anticipate that the economy of Mars and the Solar System may become wealthier, and so in the future be more able to afford the transfer of non-local resources to various places like Mars.

If we go in the other direction, make water payments for 700 years, we take a heavy burden with weaker economic power.

Mars has lots of ice, but in the contest between dirt and ice, dirt is currently winning.

The kind of volcanism on Mars may have affected its climate, I think.  If you had mostly viscous Hawaii type volcanism with lava, perhaps then you place more CO2, Methane, and Hydrogen into the atmosp0here.

If you have explosive volcanism, then you place more dust onto the surface of Mars.  Then the dust may cover the ice and keep it from an evaporation/snow cycle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerberus_Fossae

So, emissions of water, lava, and volcanic ash might make alterations to the climate from time to time.

China thinks that liquid water may have been present on Mars within the last few million years.
https://blog.sciandnature.com/2025/03/b … finds.html

So, perhaps the climate of Mars may be a bit like a continuing game or "Rock-Paper-Scissors", sort of.

It its earlier days ground heat, and a larger amount of water may have allowed the snow process to hold against the dirt process more of the time.

But now without an unusual event like a large impact or volcanic eruption, dirt dominates.

If we could pull a bunch of ice from solid ice deposits on Mars, it might fall then as "Dry Snow Powder".  This could blow in the wind like dust does.

You might get a temporary cycle of High-Altitude Clouds, and dry powdered snow, until the water vapor got incorporated again into solid ice masses that were either covered in dirt or at such a high latitude that it is reluctant to evaporate again.

So, if we could tweak that we might be able to bootstrap the snow cycle back into action again, which would likely evaporate all the CO2, I hope and make active high-altitude clouds again.

And then if a biosphere could be established, the process of life might keep some methane flowing into the atmosphere from then on.
Even a high Arctic type environment might be helpful in that regard.

One possible way to get the snow started again would be lasers and microwaves to evaporate ice from the polar ice caps.  But other ways like greenhouse gasses and particles may be good as well.

But then with Mars made more economically valuable, the ice consumed could be repaid by moving volatiles from the more outer solar system to Mars as you have suggested.

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I wonder if you could exploit the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarkovsky_effect

Yarkovsky effect?

In the other solar system the Yarkovsky effect could exist from a method of beamed power, I suppose.

But where we could begin to build paper spheres would be in the Asteroid belt, I think.

So, in using an electron beam could we spin a sphere in such a manner to exploit the Yarkovsky effect for space propulsion?

Interesting notion.  If the sunward side of the paper heats up and then rotates to the leeward side, then does the emission of photons give a propulsive push?

Of course the paper has to be of the correct thickness and other suitable qualities, such as pigment, and other things.

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No more coffee, I think!

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