New Mars Forums

I have not yet tried the calculator.  It is a bit more effort than a usually expend, at least for now.

But your reasoning is good it seems to me.

But there is another interesting circumstance with a Nitrogen atmosphere in interstellar space.  It is asserted that early Mars, was kept warm by molecular Hydrogen in its atmosphere.

I expect that if sufficient heat to evaporate a Nitrogen atmosphere could be obtained, the interstellar medium might likely infuse the atmosphere with molecular Hydrogen and Helium.

https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/hydrog … early-mars
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Of course that would be a CO2/N2/H2 atmopshere.

Titan interests me in this.  I think it already has Molecular Hydrogen in its atmosphere though.  Maybe more would help warm it though.

And SF6 as suggested by you might be interesting.  However we might evaporate lots of CO2 and Methane and so swell the atmosphere.  Not sure if that is good or bad.  An atmosphere not stirred too much by wind might allow the CO2 to tend to settle down near the surface as well, but water ice could remain frozen as a rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan
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A feature of Titan that is locked in the previous time is dunes around the equator.  The scientific community wants to insist that it is ice particles, but a new theory allows that at least some of it could be comet dust.  After all if a comet strikes Titan and vaporizes, the dust may very well dry out and the ices not so much condense back on to it.

And we might discover Cryovolcanic deposits and might hope that salts including uranium salts could be available at or near the surface.

I have for long been interested in what I might call cold terrestrials or Titan analogs.  Even around a red dwarf, they might hold atmosphere I hope and might even not be tidal locked.  Probably all of the planets of Trappist-1 are tidal locked but maybe not the outermost one.

But rogues the size of Titan up to Earth size might be very interesting.  For instance, if struck by a large comet, they might develop a temporary atmosphere which might blow dry comet dust around before the atmosphere froze out.

This and the fact that there should have been a continuing influx of dust over billions of years, may make your suggesting with the added elements in this post very interesting.

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So, in reference to the two prior posts, it seems to me that the sensible thing to do is to carve short canals to near the launch site.

The barge with horizontal rocket might then be pushed to vertical position and desirably be then loaded onto the little transport type device that moves them around the pad.

Let's say the "Catch to Barge" is 20 to 500 miles offshore, then you might get the rocket back onto the pad in hours or even 1 day.

For roads crossing the short canal, you might want a lift bridge, which would only delay car traffic a little bit or to route the traffic more inland from the space port.

Lift Bridges: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Li … C3&first=1
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So, then you don't need legs on the Superheavy for a catch, but can catch downrange, further reducing propellant consumption.  And if you crash at worst it takes out the rocket and the barge but likely not the whole barge.  You do not take out a launch site with its tank farms and other facilities.

Further, you might interfere less with air traffic.  Also, noise reduction on shore.

It looks like a good plan to me.

It might also work for Starship if not landing with Cargo, and if upgraded it might handle the with cargo landing as well.

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To catch Super Heavy or Starship on a barge you might try this:

A flying tower with a universal joint connecting it to the barge, with thrusters, perhaps pneumatic thrusters.

While new barges have compensation for wave movement and wind, this device would also be able to compensate in real time.  When the rocket was cached to it, then it would lay itself down on the barge with the rocket.

But of course I did not think of the up and down motion.  Perhaps the barge can manage that during the actual catch.

So, to catch a legless rocket onto a barge and lay it down flat, downrange from a launch site.

I tried, maybe you the reader can do better?

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An article about TARS: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … r-AA1MrlT5  Quote:

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I have been working on these two concepts for working with "Stone" on alien worlds:

The object on the left has a mortar of plastic with metal elements embedded into it

The object on the right has the same thing but a metal heat exchanger plate sandwiched into this arrangement.  It also have the cross section of a pipe which is to be bonded to the metal plate.

It is my intention that the metal elements can be heated using induction, to melt the plastic to make a good bond(s).

I have previously indicated how I think that plastics and organic materials can be landed on the Moon with a relative efficiency using sky crane and air bag methods.  So, I do not see the Moon structures as having to be built 100% only from local resources.

I have more considered this for dealing with cold temperatures on the Moon than hot, but some plastics might tolerate a certain amount of heat, although I am not sure that long term they will not deteriorate in a vacuum with heat applied.

https://www.s-polytec.com/blog/temperat … stics.html

At any rate, to be able to store cryogenic propellants on the Moon, a need to radiate excessive heat may be required.  So, I am at least after that.

https://www.myconfinedspace.com/2015/02/20/arch-truck/
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/innovat … ccounter=1

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On the Moon there are some expectations that blocks could be made out of regolith by various methods.

With good foundations, arches could be built of them that might be made to serve as radiators.

But at near the poles we might make a spiral wall(s) as a radiator.

But also as radiation protection for a habitat.  For instance, a spiral wall or set of parallel circular walls might block much radiation, if they are high enough.  The "Radiator Walls" could also have some thermal inertia.  The block on the right has some protection from impactors as the pipe is under a metal plate, and against a stone of a wall.

Near the poles a solar collector might pivot on such a structure to keep itself continually in the sunshine if the sun is over the horizon and would then shade the radiator.

From a previous post, #159: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 00#p234300
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A ship landing near this to refill, if it explodes or crashes and explodes, may not necessarily wreck the cryogenic storage, if that might be inside the radiator ring of stone/plastics/metal fins and pipes.

I suppose some version of this might also work on other worlds.

As for any pressurized shelters inside, I expect that balloons will be used.  While the plastic mortar may be helpful in holding pressure, it is more intended to thermally bond stone to metal.

If a foundation shift might crack this bond it might be reset by inductively heating the plastic again with the metal filings or wires embedded in the plastic.

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Calliban, Agreed!  And Tony Seba and RethinkX indicate that much of our farmland on Earth will go back to wild or feral or (I say, managed feral).

Precision Fermentation, Cellular, Synthetic, will be vastly more efficient it seems.

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https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … &FORM=VIRE  Quote:

Perhaps questions about gender xenophobia may produce a useful understanding.

The portion of the female population that cannot with any amount of material goods be satisfied.  I like most people and society understand much more about the selfishness of men.  But is a non-war situation ideal for the genes of most of the females?  Or do they want to mate with the most bear-like men they can be conquered by.

Evidence is that there has been greater genetic pressure on the Male than the Female.

This is only one small facet on a complex structure, I think, but it seems to be one that is in a triggered status.

The aggravation produced, is being mirrored now by some of the male population.

The NAZI felt that causing groups to hate and kill each other would weed out the weaklings and produce a better human.  I think that only has some value, and likely not for modern humans.  It is more likely in my opinion to produce a fall in the quality of men and humans in general.  Having achieved civilization, some people do not find prosperity to be sufficient.  Rather, they emotionally "Think" to kill others and edit other kinds from the gene pool and take wealth from the killed.

Rape is disgusting to me, but a fact exists that a male that could do it has to be stronger than the woman or group of people who resist it.  I suspect that a certain number of women or groups with women in them, want a worthy partner, emotionally.  Ideally this kind of a woman can control an almost uncontrollable male.  A beast of burden, that is strong, but can be controlled sufficiently that her offspring will have the advantage of consuming the materials that the male takes from other people while perhaps even killing them.

Getting better genes by excluding "Bad" genes, really is not in our interest now, not by the stimulation of violence as a method of selection.  I think that this is how civilizations fall.  It is simply entertaining to those who are happy to eliminate the competition rather than to cooperate to a civilized purpose.

Having said that, I want to be sure that it is said that I think that quite a lot of females can overcome this desire to promote hate in society.  It is not evil to be one gender or the other.  It is just that not all players on the field, consider their lot to be just payment to them.  They feel they were born here and are entitled to push their demands to the limit.

So, they will not do Ozzy and Hariet.

As a resentful male, I have to confess to an emotion, of watching this emotional effort to push society into a stone age blood bath to a large degree end in their self-removal from the contest.  The gender hate is one of the most despicable things that we will have witnessed in our lifetimes.  But no that does not justify male errors, not at all.  The Chads and Tyrones are among the turncoat perpetrators.  Having the arrogance to believe that they are quite worthy of excessive replication, even if they really don't bring much to the table other than Stone Age skills.

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I thought I might add this: https://undecidedmf.com/why-mushrooms-a … verything/
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Mycelium seems to be able to digest any solid or even liquid hydrocarbon, and post #1 suggests the creation of a butter like hydrocarbon.  But of course, flavor is not required.  I did mention Mushrooms in post #1 after all.

One thing I have in mind for Mars, is that if you cut sandstone blocks to create an underground vault, you might make arches on the surface of the sandstone blocks, and you might seal the chinks between the stones using mycelium, if you fed the mycelium.

You would probably make the stone structure with the food in the chinks, and then pile regolith on top and then pressurize and heat the insides and add humidity.

I am planning to suggest how to make heat exchangers/storage by a similar process and plastics on the Moon.

Anyway, it seems that we will want to have the fungus among us when we go into space.

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We all know that it is never Aliens!

But if someone made a living machine that could pull nourishment from the gulf between stars, and it could bounce off of Stars with a glancing dip into its gravity well, if it was in the will of it's programming it could do Panspermia. to planets that seem like they could support life.

If these were like Van Neumann machines, then they could replicate.  Perhaps the machines would be cyborg, that is being both machine and organic.

So, then they could swing on a star, and presuming they could draw nutrients and energy somehow from the void, they might have been traveling the galaxy/universe, since before our star was born.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-repl … spacecraft

If so, then with such a panspermia method, many worlds might have RNA/DNA as part of organisms on them.

Of course I can easily say that odds are that 3I/Atlas is not one of them.   The probes might repeat back to stars they previously visited to check for success, or to try again if extinction resulted.

But can you be sure that they are not bouncing around between stars somewhere in the universe?

That no Alien ever existed that would have put such devices into operation?

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The standard process is to say of course not, even though you have not proven that it is not.

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Every world that lived would be a evolutionary laboratory where interesting new things might be found that the seeders might collect.

Even worlds with just unicellular life might provide interesting and useful sequences.  Of course, to get them they would not do a fly-by but some kind of stop-over with a smaller ship(s), I suppose.  Maybe they would even tweak the RNA/DNA of an organism from time to time.  (Like God might.  Maybe an Angel.).

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A RANDOM RNA/DNA generator.

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I would like to suggest a type of Alien that is not too standard.  I have been seeing occasional reports on 3I/ATLAS, that as expected in our current internet, are mostly untrustworthy.

But over time my ideas of what Aliens might want to have has changed.  Instead of shining massive stars with deep gravity wells, I have supposed that rogue planets might be of value to them.

But what about a mechanized/organic organism, made by aliens.  It might travel in the deeps of space, and absorb the substances that it needs in that travel.  But on occasion to change its direction it might drop into a stars gravity field, to turn it's directions to go to another goal such as a dust and gas cloud or another star to change directions yet again.

It would not want to particularly go fast to another star or rogue planet, but would simply bask in the starlight of the Galaxy, and extract nourishment from the dust and gas it passes through.  It would not be interested in Earth, except as a curiosity.

Deep in between stars if it accumulated enough substance, it might reproduce, making a copy of itself.

Time the way we live it would not be as it would consider time to be.  We have found that in the depths of the Earth, cells under stress might not replicate for 100 years or so, I believe.

An Alien like the above would likely not be a threat to us, unless we threatened it.  In which case, probably by the time we got on our bikes it would be way out of the neighborhood.

I am not saying 3I/ATLAS is such, but that it stimulated me to think that Aliens somewhere in the universe might initiate the creation of such self-replicating nomadic machines/organisms.

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Here is another video about the "Stubby Starship".  (In truth also it is supported by an orbital booster as well).

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … &FORM=VIRE
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I really like the plan for the Moon.  For now, the TLS Tug, can be expended, but I see a future where it may either be retrieved by a electric rocket system, or might air brake to a low orbit after boosting the Stubby Starship.  This would make the TLS Tug completely reusable.

The military as I understand it is experimenting with atmospheric skipping with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

If they are willing to assist SpaceX, then future versions of the TLS Tug might be able to boost the Stubby Starship, and then do several skips on the Earth's atmosphere to get to a refilling orbit.

I do like it.

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Some further thoughts.....

In the beginning humans will not overnight on the Moon, but robots could.  And when a Stubby HLS is about to leave for orbit, it might be unloaded of any and all items possible to expend.  Then robots left behind might do things with that material.

A Stubby HLS that lifted its humans to Lunar orbit and then managed to land again, might provide shelter for robots.  A tent skirt around the bottom might provide shelter from night cold and day heat.  The ship with batteries and solar cells might provided electric power to the robots.

The first line of robots I think of are the sweepers.  They would travel about during Lunar day and sweep up as much of the fines as they could.  Those might be reacted with plastics and organics with pyrolysis to produce fuels and Oxygen.  Fuels might be Methane and Hydrogen.  Also reduced regolith possibly can be used in Magdrive and Neumann Drive, if they are made conductive.  I do not yet know if that is possible.  And then to produce Oxygen.

But the Pyrolysis may produce water and CO2 first, which could more easily be stored until it is time to make it into propellants.

The sweeper robots might somehow use electrostatics to collect the dust.  During the process they might be able to extract the expected .5% Iron content by using magnetics.

The base site being reduced of dust, other mobile machinery will suffer less from the results of dust on them.

Many robots will not be humanoid, but some might be.

But I have wondered about Knuckle Walking robots on the Moon.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle-walking  Image Quote:

Of course in the Moons lower gravity, it could do both Knuckle Walking and bipedal walking.

To protect the hands, it could have gloves like a tin can with a grip inside.  It would not walk directly with hands on Lunar Surface.

As for carrying things, it could have various tools like a pouch, or perhaps be able to push a wagon, gripping it with its hands.  The wagon walk thing might be the best method of travel for it actually, and knuckle walking less so, and bipedal only used, when useful.  It may be that these robots could bound as a method of travel as well, maybe hopping, but being able to end a hop with four hand/legs.

As I understand it walking on the Moon in a balloon suit is a bit like walking on ice.  So, methods to stabilize would be desirable.

These would normally not be out on the raw Lunar surface, but on the surfaces previously treated by sweeper robots.

So, humans inhabiting shelters on the surface of the Moon would actuate these robots much more than to go out on the surface in a space suit.  And actually, much of the directing of such robots could be from humans on Earth as well.

If we than can bring plastic and Organic materials down to the surface of the Moon at a bargain price as I have suggested in previous posts, then these robots may be able to be assistive in manufacturing propellants.

And of course, if we can lay hands on Lunar resources such as water ice, then all the better.  But some bases may be quite far from the polar areas, particularly if it is true that Platnum Family Metals are to be found in about 6500 craters on the Moon.

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