New Mars Forums

I'm also going to suggest a very interesting variation of a water world, an ice world, and suggest why I think it could be habitable well outside of the so called habitable zone, or could be made so rather easily.

First of all I am going to B***H a bit.

Snow Ball Earth.  "If it ever happens, we don't know how it gets out of it". Duh! 

Red dwarf water world, "If they ever freeze over, we don't know how they would get out of it".

The answer in many cases is sublimation pits!  Sublimation Pits!

Logically, within limits dust, either volcanic or cosmic, will flow by winds, on a freeze dried planet preferentially to the low spots, and will embed preferentially in the warmer spots.

If the Earth had become locked in a snowball configuration, then you can bet that even if it's temperatures were Antarctic even at the equator, sublimation would occur, and the troposphere, to the degree there could be one under those conditions, would assist sublimated vapor to condense in higher areas, vertically higher, and latitude higher, in the case of Earth.  This process would cause a positive feedback where the pits etched, would become warmer, because of a thicker layer of atmosphere collecting over the evolving pits, and also dust of whatever kind would tend to collect in these pit bottoms, tending to make them more absorbent of sunshine.

Similar stuff for a Red Dwarf ice world.  Really a beautiful concept.  Imagine a single pit on the high noon side of an otherwise glacial planet.

This will of course have variation dependent on the amount of ice.  Not enough, and the day side is a dry day side, even far outside the habitable zone.  But I specified a glacial world, so instead, presume that there is enough ice to cover an Earth similar, but Red Dwarf world 20,000 feet (Sorry for the units).

We then have to account for mountains, plateaus, basins, winds, and the solar flux of a location.  Also we have to account for distance from the star, and of course the greenhouse characteristics of the atmosphere.

If it is a cold glacial world, then we cannot assume that CO2 will rescue the situation, at least in the case of a tidal locked world.  The CO2 will tend to accumulate on the dark side, like it accumulates in the south polar ice cap of Mars.

I am going to speculate on such a world, where the front side of the eyeball planet will be a sublimation pit, and by atmospheric displacement, some very interesting things could happen, to make the planet habitable, at least in the sublimation pit.

Of course there can be variations of this that are not tidal locked, particularly for cold worlds outside the typically attributed habitable zone, and I will eventually try to describe how those variations might look.

I think that it is just possible that Mars in it's younger days may have behaved like such a world.  I'm not saying it did, I am saying it might have tended towards such attributes, even as it does today.

If we wanted to, we might imagine how Saturn's moon Titan might respond to Saturn becoming a very dim Red Dwarf (Just entertain me, I am fully aware that it cannot).  And ignore the fact that this situation would eventually strip away Titans atmosphere, I am just trying to make a visual model for a Earth sized ice world around a red dwarf star, quite far out from a habitable zone as it is typically designated.

As it is now, without a imaginary red dwarf Saturn, sublimation of ice, and I think also CO2 cannot occur in the atmosphere of Titan.  But, if Saturn were suddenly to become even a very dim flare star, this situation for such a tidal locked object could change.  At the very least during flares, sublimation might occur at the high noon location.

A visual for Titan:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassi … 0223L.html

Although the use of Titan as a model of a icy "Terrestrial" world, deviates from the typical concept of "Terrestrial", it is very entertaining to me to visualize how such a model where the object is a full sized planet around a red dwarf star, might behave, well outside the "Habitable" zone.

In this case, for this Ice/Water world, a conflict will try to resolve itself.  A sublimation pit should form, but glaciation should also try to close the sublimation pit.  Then you must add in the probability that dusty and rocky material will line large areas of any sublimation pit, due to wind borne deposits, glacial deposits, and sublimation/evaporation.  Granted Titan has no terrestrial volcano's, but remember that rocks and dust and also organic materials which resemble that will likely accumulate in any such sublimation pit which might occur.

If you really did have a very large oversized Titan, perhaps in some cases the "Sublimation Pit" would reach all the way down to the underground ocean, but I think that might only be in some cases.  Otherwise, you would have a pit which appears much like land, because of the rocky and organic overburden in the low areas.  Boggy situations would also be favored, if you had Earth like plant life. 

This is getting long so I will try to get into a condensed version from here.

In the sublimation pit you could have a troposphere, even if in the icy areas of the planet you only had pressures similar to the Earths stratosphere (Maybe just a bit more that that).  This would conserve energy for the planet, since, the "Stratosphere +" would be capable of keeping N2 as vapor on the dark side, but might not keep water and CO2 as vapor on the dark side.

Glaciation would then provide liquid water and vapor CO2 to the day side sublimation pit, provided that a sufficient glacial deposit existed more or less planet wide, and that glacial deposit was significantly impregnated with dry ice (CO2).

The CO2 would tend to stay in the sublimation pit for a while before freezing again in the colder portions of the glacial planets stratosphere.

I said also I would try to imagine non tidal locked worlds.  Those come in many varieties.  Some with a slow spin, and perhaps some with a Earth like or even faster spin.  Some with and without moons of significance.  Examples: Earth with Moon, Mars without significant moon(s).

For an Earth like planet with a significant moon, I would imagine, a sublimation pit which encircled the equator, but was modified by objects of elevation such as Tibet.

For a Mars like planet (Sized up), I would imagine that the sublimation pits would migrate slowly with the variations in the tilt of the planet.

Done.

I have read your view, it seems sensible.  I am still pulling for telepresence from Earth's surface to assist in certain areas of action.  (Transport by a cart, pick up rocks, observations and that sort of thing).

I will also talk Mass Drivers, and re-label the type of it that I think we have had a tentative agreement towards.  I will call it a "Smart Mass Driver", and specifically say that like you I expect that we should want it to be as small as is functional to achieve a useful end.  The payloads sent by the mass driver will be smarter than a bag of rocks.  (Moon Rocks)

Here is an article which seems to indicate what some "Space Thinkers" are thinking about the Moon.  It is encouraging more than discouraging.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/20/90034 … anent-base

Here are some numbers claimed in a section of the article:

So, that looks encouraging, perhaps ~1/10 the cost for mass to LEO, relative to prior work for the Apollo program.

Typically, it has been suggested to place people in orbital machines in "L" locations in the Earth/Moon system.  Go and get mass from the Moon to process in the "L" locations, from low grade ore to manufactured objects.

I want to reverse that.  Instead, I would like to see the humans on the Moon, in a favored location, and to use a "Smart Mass Driver" to deliver small manufactured objects to a Moon associated location such as an "L" location.

Of course real research would have to give reasonable proof that this expansion from a Moon base is practical prior to sending smart loads to another location in space from the Moon.

Although there could be facilities for a small number of persons at the "L" location used, (Or a Moon orbit), mostly the "Factory" for recycling these objects would be more like an unpressurized tin shed.  But of course not as clap trap as that image might project.

Most of the manufacturing processes in this "L" located facility would be manipulated by telepresence machines, with the humans preferably in the Moon base, but perhaps also some help from humans from Earth, if that proves workable for some types of manipulation.

So for these smart loads, the first propulsion would be from the Mass driver, and the second would be on board of the smart load, and might be any variety of method.  I see no reason to exclude any options that make sense.

Nuclear propulsion would make no sense to me.
Solar methods might make sense, sailing, tethers, etc.
Chemical, might have a place, if you can mass produce chemical micro thrusters.
Electric might make sense, if you can similarly manufacture such micro thrusters.

The receiving method can be sudden catching, or a gentle arrival.

I believe that in the original plan, a spinning cup like object would receive dumb loads of bags of dirt and rock, and those would then be incorporated into the cups content, and would assume the spin of the cup, and that would capture the dirt and rocks, and bags into the synthetic gravity of this device.  I don't think it was anticipated that the dumb loads would be moving at a much different speed than the catching cup.

I am sure that for tiny projectiles, something even more active than that could be devised, but for now, I will simply default to the catching cup as a symbolic representation of the "Active Reception Process".

While in this post, I specified Lunar Surface to >>>> "L" locations (Or Moon orbit);

I would like to also suggest that there could be a nice spot in Medium Earth Orbit, where such a receiving/recycling center could be.  I don't specify LEO, because for a number of reasons, such as that is where your human inhabited space stations in many cases, and I do not specify synchronous orbit because there is a business use for that, it is already used.

Also, I am thinking a balance of other factors, such as time delay tolerance, where the teleoperators would be on the surface of Earth, and also time period of orbit, where the orbit ideally would fit into a human wake/work/sleep cycle.  And then of course if you were planning to recycle "Smart Payloads" ejected from the Moon by a mass driver, you might not want to drag them too deep into the Earths gravity well (LEO).

That's about it, trying to update the topics original intent with new technological possibilities.

OK, so it's one, two, three and your out at the old ball game.

Granted, not technically proven for ability or efficiency, not proven safe (Many serious reservations on safety), and I will add, not after all competitive.  That is, three main reservoirs of oil at price remain, Russia, Persian Gulf, and USA.  All others may be screwed, fastly (New word) or over an excruciating period of time.  And then there are electric cars, alternative energy, and the demographic realities.

So, unless others who want to do the work prove otherwise, power on the Earth is the mode of the current time, and not beamed power from space.  We are in a different era.  Isn't it interesting how "Karma" plays out?  The M.E. should have been happy to have what they had, but instead they prompted a revision of reality which has gone against them to some extent.

Some have suggested asteroids, as a purpose.  What does that indicate?  Some asteroids are large and far away, and some are NEO.  I think that if there are companies that think that they can turn a buck, mining NEO's then let them have at it, we will then see what they can do.

Now the Moon, we will share, at least with non-zombies.  That is if we can ever prove our worth by doing what we want.

Similar surface area to the America's, and not dry bones after all.

The Marsies are horrified.  Shouldn't be, gonna get that too I think, if it all works out.

Why wouldn't the same rich people who are presumed to want to pay for a joy ride into sub orbital space, not want to walk on the Moon in a telepresence alternate body, and pay for it?

Why would not a university want to pay for a geologist to do the same thing on the Moon?
And of course aquisitioner entities, for the same or similar motives, bonded with the universities.

I see much to do.   I see that there may be many who do not have true hearts in this.

Done.

OK GW, hopefully you won't think I am picking on you.  I am only seeking commonality of information.

You said:

Is it the NEO asteroids which do not look promising?  From what I read, the main belt ones will sometimes have 80% Iron and 20% other metals.  Hard to get to those though.  Comets will be really hard to use, unless you slam them into something. (Mars for instance).

But I don't want to be an ignorant jerk, it would not surprise me at all if someone like you were privy to data someone like me would lack.  I am interested in what you can tell me on the matter.

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

But....  How about this?  "What is the status today of O'Neill's vision today?".

I think it's status should be changed to "Under review due to changed understanding of the Moon".

First of all, I believe that O'Neill's vision needs revision, and I am sure he would do so if he could.
1) The Moon is not bone dry as they thought it was.  (Is this not true that they thought that then?).
2) No idea of electronic miniaturization, such as we might be aware of today.
3) Less understanding of microgravity disease.
4) If I understand, then the cash cow for the whole concept was to be beamed solar energy, which does not look that plausible at this time, for various reasons.
5) We may expect telepresence to become qualitatively better from here and further forward in time.
6) Humans in spacesuits although worth working towards and on, is always deadly serious work.
7) [Add your own stuff].....................

I think that the deal, is to telepresence human activity onto the surface of the Moon, and to also allow for that to in part support the existence of humans on the Moon.

Unless there is a more compelling reason to do it I am not at this time wild about placing enormous facilities in the "L" locations of the Earth/Moon.  (But appropriate way stations are fine).

As far as mass delivered from the Moon to other locations, I do not favor raw ore shipments, rather I favor an assembly line method to repetitively create and launch tiny machines made of processed materials, and capable of navigating to a programmed location.  Either to be "Netted" by high impact speed into a catcher, or to gently move to the appropriate orbit.

A mass driver for this could be very small relative to what has been previously been proposed.  And it could earn it's keep by launching tiny robots 24/7, as long as it is up and running.

So, the Moon, it seems is a much more Mars like object than was supposed from the original interpretation of Apollo era data.  It may have been that was the flavor of the month back then because there had been a back lash from the "Down to Earth people" then.

The Moon should contain ore bodies of asteroids which crashed into it.  (Tom K.)\
So that is a possible plus.

If you don't have to manipulate large masses through orbital changes, then you need far less of the chemical fuels that have typically been
used.

So, where can the paydays be?
1) I think that a lot of countries are going to go to the Moon regardless of what NASA does.  Having telepresence skills to sell, will be marketable.
*It appears that NASA has quite a lot in mind for the Moon.  I apologize to the Archangels of this site, as I know that only a rigid path to Mars is favored.  But oh, well, too bad, so sad.  Really it should be OK.
2) Little tiny machines that can fly themselves to a location should be useful, Mars, Venus, etc.

Now, about humans in Moon gravity, we really don't have much clean test data do we, just assumptions, and I know you much prefer hard data G.W.

The four bad things that I am aware of are:
1) Bone Loss
2) Muscle Loss
3) Blood pooling in upper body (Don't know about the long term effects, but it seems like something to avoid).
4) Eye damage (Might be because of #3?)
5) Other things to discover.

I am wondering if the Moon's gravity is sufficient to take care of #3 and #4, (With the body's adaptability, and some of whatever #5 could be).

As for #1 and #2, I think the Moon will likely buffer some of the bad effects.  In addition, I believe that space medicine might take care of the balance of the problem, once it is better understood.

As for the possible need for synthetic gravity, if you can do Hyperloop, surely you can do synthetic gravity on the Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
And, we have had other discussions about synthetic gravity, where magnetic methods might be used, or in my case, I favor floating the spinning habitat in a heavier gas filled chamber.  (CO2 for instance).

And we know the Moon can provide all the radiation shielding you might care for.

Done.  Hmmm....  Not going to be impressed if I get ignored here.  Not gonna whine either

Your thoughts are entertaining Karov.  Don't forget about wind blown snow as a source of rivers.
Some things go unsaid

So then when kids start school, they will be given robots to draw their pictures for them so that they can take them home to show mom and dad?

Adults want to show things also.  It gives life more meaning.

You worship technology, it should not be your god, but your servant.  If something does not promote the happiness of people, then it is not worth doing.

All we have in this world is time and space for a little while, and a chance to fill that with Experience.
Our actions in the end have a lot to do with what we experience. 

I can't say that most people I see on the street are handling indulgence very well even now.  They seem to have a neurotic tendency to damage themselves, as they have little self control.  A bit of struggle deepens their capacity to understand the cause and effect result of their actions, before it is too late.  So, I have to say, that something else is needed.  Something to occupy their time, with an appropriate level of challenge.  Space could do that.

Suppose you build a super robot which could solve all the mysteries of the universe in 1 second?  What does it then have left to do.  It can't even enjoy an ice cream cone, from what I think you have in mind.

Oh, I have so much more, but really, am I not wasting my time already?

I ran across this:
http://sputniknews.com/society/20160106 … amics.html
If it is something that was discussed already, sorry.  I didn't see it.

Anyway, sounds like a good material.  For my part I was thinking heat shield.  I know that NASA has been looking at inflatable heat shields, but I think that this material might allow the construction of larger heat shields in orbit. 

The good part would be that you could overcome the size limitations imposed by a rocket shape.

The bad parts are you need a heating process like a kiln at high temperature to cure it.
I am thinking of orbital construction, which we are really not up to yet, but it is a good objective.

A solar heated Kiln I presume.  That could be a problem because it would have to be large, and it would have to stay hot whenever the sun was occulted by an object such as the Earth.

Otherwise I am wondering if there could be a way to heat up the object in sections, say under a concentrating mirror.  But then again, what happens if you are doing it in low Earth orbit, every time you pass to the night side of the planet.

I know I will get beat up for it but what I am speculating on is a heat shield which attaches to a lander, and the two together might resemble a badmitton shuttlecock (Or I would have said birdie).

Or an Eggshell, with the payload attached to one end of the "Egg".

I do not know enough about heat shield technology to go much farther with it.

My intention is to increase drag in the upper atmosphere, perhaps eliminating the need for a parachute, (Or not).

I would prefer to have some further use for the heat shield after landing, but it could also be ejected prior to landing.

For instance, a shuttlecock shape, if it can work as a heat shield might also be upended after landing to serve as a tower receiver for focused sunlight from heliostats.  An egg shape, as a tank of some kind?  Probably too fragile.

I am not saying I think I have a problem solved successfully, just that I have formulated a problem which might be solved by people who have better skills in the area, (Or not).

GW Johnson said:

I am completely without emotion in this response.  I will give you credit, for making your points, which I consider good for balancing the discussion.

In reality I don't expect much of anything to come easy, or soon.  However, I decided to use Tom's idea and see where it might go, in part also wondering how much Tom and I could work together.  So, I added a few speculative accessories, and suggested what I think could be a more practical source of resources than from the outer solar system.  So, I did begin to try to apply drift in the direction I thought might be helpful to increase practicality.

I think the key to this whole thing if it were ever to happen would be the 2nd body, a robot body, with telepresence.  I do not think that very smart robots are coming soon, or that we should resort to a slave system where dangerous and potentially rival entities are created, while we let our skills atrophy.  But that's my personal feeling.

And I think it will be quite some time before our skills of making such a telepresence capability (Human enhanced mind <> base brain of a 2nd body), can be implemented in a useful way.

I think that in not a hideously long time, it might be possible to run service robots on the Moon, using a more primitive telepresence.  I think the majority of the operators should be on Earth.  The robots on the Moon would require brain base capabilities, but could also incorporate repetitive task routines.

Having that, (Eventually), a construction capability from extracted materials could be emplaced on the Moon.
That "Base of the Pyramid", could offer support for a skeleton crew of operators on the Moon, who would not have the 3 Second? delay in communications.  They would telepresence to machines on the Moon as well, and do tasks where the 3 Second? delay is a problem.  Having that total capability would then open quite a few options to deliver materials to various locations, using whatever is the best propulsion system for the case.

I do have to say I don't like the process where I mention a special item, because I want to test the reality of it, and it does not get discussed, and instead a summary dismissal leaves the questions unanswered.

But it is OK, that's my problem, I can cope.  It is just an annoyance.  I can and will move on.

You are hardly the most frustrating feature of this site.

Here's a smile for you another one   I'm not mad, just saying.

Tom,

I seldom see a plan for how you get the giant butterfly.  Isn't there a egg and caterpillar stage?
This is the real show stopper for me.

One other issue is that I am old enough to have read O'neill's book, when it was new.  It was a wonderful thought experiment, but some time after it was pointed out that no matter how good your seals were on such devices, to implement them to the magnitude suggested by the book, the leaks would consume all of the volatile substances in the solar system in a few thousand years.  I actually have thoughts on ways to really make them much tighter.

1) Forget windows.
2) Have at least a double shell.
*The space between the double shells would be a catch-basin kept at a very low pressure, but above that of space, to catch the leaked gas from the inner shell.  Why this might help, is if you keep the catch-basin at a molecular flow pressure and not a viscous flow, any holes in the outer shell would leak gas only when it bounced off the outside of the inner shell, and happened to bounce strait into the hole, or opened seam.  Of course, you would need vacuum pumps to pump out the catch-basin and return the gas into the main pressure vessel.

So, I do think that some diravitive of the O'Neill
concept is good to think of as a useful tool, it should be used sparingly, unless craftsmanship will overcome the leakage problem.

Things that could have value are staging points to planets, such as in Lunar "L" positions.  Cycling spaceships (Sparingly), mining stations.

As for generation ships, it has been calculated that if you sent one out, it would run dry of gasses before it reached it's destination.  Again, if you can design a cactus like method, perhaps you can reduce that risk, but it just shows how many problems there are in reality with things, that you can imagine in a shorter period of time, where they actually have to function for a very extended period of time.

Human nature is a problem as well.  As far as I can see the human compulsion is to start off with a people who build things robust, but then thereafter, those people get pushed out by tricksters, who's mode of operation is to water down the wine so to speak. 

An example is how certain crime organizations get involved in substituting inferior building materials, and running a profit by looting that way.  Often more legitimate companies, even do a lesser evil, where they run a business into the ground and make it look ok while they are looting it.  Later on it collapses, but for the time period of the "Hollowing Out" these people posture as geniuses, who have found a way to cut costs.

So, then having a mega-structure, any failure due to such a thing would be catastrophic.

And then finally we have the example of the Middle East, which I consider to be dry bones.
They have lost the capacity for green growth, and adore rigidity.  So, under those conditions, the underclasses, and the pushed aside, will resort to terrorism, anarchy, and sabotage.  So, again, a mega structure is most vulnerable to those problems from a social perspective.

And we know that such a mega structure would foster hierarchies and tribalism, basically predatory behaviors from the dominants, and that will lead to a response from the underclasses and outlanders which would put such a mega structured "Civilization" into a situation of internal conflict.  You would be dealing with humans after all.

I really like that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking
And for those who don't like tidal locked worlds, in this article which explains where the effect is weak, you can get different outcomes of a slow spinning world such as Mercury.

But I like tidal locked worlds to think about very much.

I have some models I like to keep in my head.
I have updated them as I encounter other peoples thinking.  I usually don't bother to make them complex with the Coriolis Effect, but keep to a more simple model.  I figure the Coriolis Effect can be added in later to get a more precise estimate of how the model would behave.

I typically morph two types of polarity to their extremes, for my play models.

Moisture, from it's bare minimum to allow for life somewhere on the planet, to a water world.  (So, +/- on that).

Distance from the star, from a circumstance where just the furthest dark side, maybe even at elevation is cool enough, to the opposite, where just high noon, in a deep depression is warm enough. (So, +/- on that).

And it entertains me.  Granted, at any of the extremes, you more often will have failures to support life, but I believe that with the apparent randomness of the planet creation process, in some cases even at the extremes, there could be cases of a life friendly planet.

While much discussion centers on the disabilities of tidal locked worlds, and also how they are overcome, I see great advantages to them for the potential to host life.

One of my favorite places to visit in my mind, is a water(Ice) world, where photo life can only happen in the raft of ice under the high noon. In small bubbles of salty water.   In that case humans would have nice houses with stationary mirrors to warm them.  But I am not sure that without rivers the atmosphere could be stable.

Another involves a dry planet with a tiny sea on the midnight side.  I enjoy sailing a boat on that dark sea and seeing the stars reflected in the water, and the towns lights on the shoreline.  Again, such a hot planet would have some trouble with atmosphere.

More on Ceres:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spe … e-volcano/
You will read it if you want to, so I won't make quotes.

Some thinking has it that Ceres may have had an outer solar system birth.  So that's an interesting thought.

I am sure that because of it's current location it has shed about all of it's lighter overburden such as Nitrogen, but I am hoping that some objects of it's size, or smaller may bear some resemblance to it.

It is estimated that 200 Dwarf Planets may exist in the Kuiper Belt, and perhaps 10,000 in the Oort Cloud.

I do not care for the characteristics of Pluto, too much overburden of light ices.  So, I am thinking that smaller Dwarf Planets may prove to offer more by having a reduced amount of such overburden.  But they would have to have cast it off by their original heat, or by impacts, or perhaps in the case of the smaller objects, the solar wind can still strip them relatively clean of such lighter ices, even way out there.

We have had much conversation about similar things before, but it might be good to have a teething ring, for those who want to jump to another star system, when this is all so young to us.

I am going to play a game, and see what happens.  I've done this before.

Should we find a suitable dwarf planet, I suggest that it could be prepared for human presence by a cataclysmic impact, or perhaps something more bite sized that that.  I suggest that should our ability to see become very good, perhaps we can use the super lasers that are proposed for star missions to nudge a second object to impact such a minor planet, to create a persisting body of melt water.

I do not hold strong hopes of maintaining an atmosphere on such a globe, at least at first, but perhaps someday with methods such as Karov's H.W.M, it might be possible.

Anyway, the catch is can you pick out a very remote object, and nudge it with a laser?