New Mars Forums

Just a side note.  I feel that the work of various scientists to promote extended healthspan which will likely extend human lifespan, along with anticipated technologic space propulsion methods suggests that the transit of humans from our star systems will not be entirely impossible.  Having abilities to best utilize worlds like Venus and Mars will be of great value in that case, because I anticipate many terrestrial worlds which are either like Venus or Mars to a great degree.

Karov,

I enjoyed your post and it's reference, because it seemed more reasonable/attainable than your previous more advanced mentions of the "Hall Weather Machine".

I see that it might be tried on Earth in a very limited way, which might produce very valuable protections for the planet.

I think that Venus is the world which might be modified the most by it.  One reason being that the floatation gas (Nitrogen?) would be much more easily retained by "Bubbles" than would Hydrogen, which would likely be needed to be used on Earth.

I am thinking at least two layers.  The upper layer being to shield the planet from excessive sunshine, particularly U.V.
This would reduce the continued production of Sulfuric Acid from water vapor and Sulfur Dioxide.
A lower layer might contain cloud seeding devices which last for some time.

I would suppose that Sulfuric Acid can be super cooled just like water vapor.  I suggest that this lower layer of bubbles would float to that region and nucleate ice of Sulfuric Acid and would get weighted down, and so would descend into the warmer atmosphere, to melt and drip drops of the liquid which would fall further to below the cloud deck as Verga, and there the Sulfuric Acid might decompose into water vapor and Sulfur Dioxide.  If not ice of Sulfuric Acid, then at least condensing a liquid sufficiently to create drops of Verga for the same purpose.

The two layers then might reduce the acidity of the cloud deck.  And of course your weather machine might cool the planet and drive the cloud layer lower in the atmosphere.

If I read the article correctly the plan would be to have a factory which would manufacture these bubbles.  This is more reasonable than the more futuristic notion of self replicating bubbles.  Therefore I can support it.  I would presume that the factory would float in the atmosphere, and would primarily manufacture the bubbles from atmospheric gasses.

Alright, that's enough, I am sure if the above is reasonable, then every member here would have their own version of what else should be done to Venus, so I won't go there.

Terraformer, you are a decent dude?  Well in any case a decent person.  Thanks for the memories.

I am sorry people, but this has gone on long enough.  Replies that I get back indicate that you either do not receive what I send or don't bother to read them.  This has been going on for years.

I'm done.

Your on the right track, but...

Your tent is for moisture retention only.  By other methods we prevent bulk boiling, but not small leakage of moisture from the covered pond into the tent.  You then perhaps use a method such as a compressor to recapture the small leakage of moisture.

I will go in steps.

You have your crater lake, it has ice on it.  You put the tent over it.  As long as the ice surface never rises to or above 0 DegC or 32 DegF, the triple point of water is never reached.  If the air inside the tent is a 100 % RH, you will not incur surface ice loss. Except:
During the night, moisture would condense on the inner tent wall, and so drop the tents humidity below 100%.  In this case, vapor will travel from the surface of the ice to the inner tent wall.  This is not well enough perfected in my opinion therefore.  In the day, that situation could reverse as sunshine drives frost from the inner tent wall to the surface of the ice, provided the surface of the ice was cold enough.  (It could get quite cold during the night).

So, and upgrade, would be to put a layer of plastic down on the surface of the ice.  Then during the night, that might serve as a vapor barrier to prevent evaporation from the surface of the ice to the inner tent wall.  This scheme could get into trouble during the day however, as if the surface of the ice builds up enough vapor pressure, the plastic coating could bubble up, and your transparency would suffer as those bubbles would collect opaque frost.

So, to do even better, think of a tile floor.  Your ice surface is going to be a mosaic of tiles.  Each tile is going to be a flat balloon, and you may fill the balloon with something, perhaps ice, maybe a transparent oil, or if you keep your lake warm enough, perhaps water.

For an  ice tile mosaic, you would have ice tiles encapsulated in a plastic balloon with a snug fit.

The tiles will get quite cold at night, and it is possible that during a daytime on Mars that inertia could be sufficient to prevent the encapsulated ice from having any ice melt or evaporate.  But if it did, it is encapsulated, and that by itself can keep the contents from evaporating since it is very unlikely that any melted water would get much above freezing, so the vapor pressure will not rise much above ambient, so the balloon can easily hold it's contents against evaporation, and the tiles will apply counterpressure over the water or ice below the tiles, preventing boiling/evaporation.

The tiles would float on the water.  Some moisture leakage would occur between the tiles, but your tent would be used to recapture that moisture.  You might employ some type of felt caulk between the tiles.

Personally, I am inclined to forgoe the transparent ice surface, and cover most of the lake with an opaque covering.  As I have said, Nuclear, Corrosive, Atmospheric, and Solar Energy of several kinds can supply the lake with life forces without making the whole surface a window.

I currently am thinking of just a plastic sheet layed down over the ice and a pumice raft over it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice_raft

It is rock or rock sand/dust with sufficient air filled cavities that it can float on water.

In this case, it would "Float" on ice.  I would simply put a plastic layer under it and above the ice to insure even better that the ice is very stable.  The pumice would be rather insulating, so the day/night and solar temperatures averaged under it, the ice should always be stable.

This is of course an upgrade from just putting regolith on the ice.  More effort, needed, but better results.  You are building a giant city on Mars, so I am guessing you can create artificial pumice.

*The pumice needs to be heavy enough to resist the wind however.  Or rather the surface area has to be kept low relative to mass, so maybe not pumice dust or sand, but maybe pumice pebbles.

The usefulness of this reply is questionable, but at one time in the past, I grew tomatoes in milk jugs, where I cut the tops off.  I filled these with small amounts of soil and Styrofoam particles and water, and added a fertilizer liquid.

I believe that that situation delivers a lot of Oxygen to the roots.  It also however allows the plants to dry out fast, if you don't keep the water level up.

Still I fastened them to a wire fence, and did grow Tomatoes quite nicely.  It did not seem to hurt the roots that light was getting through the bottle wall, and algae was growing.  As I said it seemed to work fine within the limiting factor of drying out in a few days.  That was inconvenient if I was going out of town.

Not sure if it was true hydroponic or not since I was using some soil mixed in with the Styrofoam, and water mix along with the nutrient solution.

However a point I will make is that sometimes, when another crop is small and not using all of the sunlight in the greenhouse, you might be able to hang something like this in your greenhouse somehow, and attempt to increase the efficiency of the use of photons.  This would make sense, because for every photon delivered into a greenhouse, significant costs in effort are incurred.  Wasting such photons, would be a poor practice I believe.

Happy New Year Louis!

I have been posting about putting plastic bags on the surface of a body of water.  In my case I would fill them with a fluid/solid, but a gas pocket on top could also be included.

As I see it these would be balloons around ice pans, for instance in one case.  Encapsulating them.  If you calculated the thermal inertia for the ice, the mass of the pieces and the thermal conductivity could go a long way towards making sure that the temperature of the surface ice was low, and therefore the vapor pressure would be low.  The encapsulation by plastic would easily suppress the remaining efforts of the cold ice to evaporate.

So, imagine a surface of such flat, plastic encapsulated ice pans.  Without further efforts, the "Joins" between ice pans would be exposed to atmosphere, and would also be locations where mechanical forces might damage the plastic balloon envelopes.  Those joins could have ice or extreme brine between them.  Still that is a bit less stable than what I want.  We might consider putting a felt around the perimeter of the ice pans, something to absorb and cope with mechanical displacements, rubbing.  With that things might be better.

I would not stop with that.  I would put a "Tenting" above that.  Here, if we have a "Web" (The plastic sheeting) that we can join from many small pieces to large pieces, we can consider one big dome.  It would not make that much sense, but you could.  The pressure inside of the dome would not be very much greater than the outside ambient pressure.  It might even be the same.

To justify doing this we would ask what the value of the "Epidermis" tent is?  Well, although the "Balloon Pans" would greatly suppress evaporation, there would still be some.  So this "Epidermis" Tent would allow the vapors to collect there for re-collection into water.

Also this "Epidermis" would be rather easy to replace, as it ages.  From reading RobertDyck's materials, I can see that using plastic envelopes will require the payment of a cost, as they will age rapidly in the Martian environment.

So, the use of a sacrifice layer that can be changed out "Live", is perhaps a good idea if you are infatuated with getting photons through such a layer, into the waters of a lake on Mars.

I am not so sure that that is what we want to do.

I am not against a "Skylight" here and there, but I am now turning away from the concept of relying on direct photosynthesis in lakes, since I think there are many good alternatives, that will not butt heads with the Martian environment as much as a plastic covered lake will.

Having said that I am very much in favor of lakes as the core of a city in many situations on Mars.

I would rather however, for the most part cover them with economic durable materials over ice, and those materials probably have to be Opaque to light.  But a skylight here and there could be just fine.

I originally was interested in a close analog of Antarctic Lakes where photosynthesis would be promoted by light going through the ice.  I now am much more interested in Hypersaline Lakes.

I have been trotting this out over and over:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vida

The above sounds incredibly uninviting as it is raw, but as a big salt pond, a Hypersaline lake has properties which should allow humans to easily modify the situation to their favor.

Lets start with Thorium Reactors.  (It seems I only hear the sound of crickets when I say "Thorium Reactor!"  ).

If you are in love with Thorium Reactors, you can just make them as heaters.  Heat up a very warm layer of water at the bottom of the lake, and you have already made the lake much more valued.  For a lake like that as long as you keep the lower warm layer sufficiently more salty than the upper cold layer, the water will not turn over on it's own, and you can do a long term energy storage at the same time with both thermal storage, and salt gradients.

But of course you know that I also want to use solar energy to power such a lake.  And I want to show that human comforts can be provided in a rational way, while obeying the physical laws of the environment of Mars, and not incurring massive maintenance costs.

So where lakes might be possible, you can have properties, of radiation protection, habitat connectivity, energy utilization/storage, and by many methods biological support chemistry.

Radiation protection is obvious.

Habitat connectivity would be available with "Big Piping".  That would be large sized pipes that connect in a network, and some are vertical and protrude from the ice and above it, while being rooted to solid rock foundations below.  Horizontal connectors would be use to connect these partially flooded skyscrapers with each other, and with other types of habitat including rock and ice tunnels outside the bounds of the lake.  For the Vertical towers protruding from the ice, I suggest that a berm of Earth encases them all the way up and above the ice, to protect them from mechanical movement of the ice.  (If ice is used).

These "SkyScrapers" protruding above the ice will make excellent receiver towers for heliostat redirected sunlight.  I can see three varieties:
-Raw sunlight including full U.V. delivered to a hydricity device.
-Selective reflected light (Without U.V. directed to aquatic greenhouses in the towers.  Spirulina being a proposed "Crop".  The lighting intensity as high as the crop will tolerate.  This will make the most efficient usage of windows, delivering the maximum amount of photons, to the crop, while greatly reducing the percentage of the received light that would be U.V.
-Lounges.  I should be quite reasonable to put lounge rooms in these towers where they can have greater protection.  These would be places where people could look out of viewing ports, read books, have meetings and gatherings.   The lounges would also have decorative plants to create the sense of a park.  Perhaps heliostats would be used to increase the solar flux into them.  Or perhaps they would rely to a greater extent on artificial lighting.

Connectivity would also be facilitate by the fact that in a hypersailine lake you could have "Ice Fishing" holes, and bring objects into and out of the lake through them.  I have discussed this elsewhere.

Now, energy utilization/storage:  Not only could you use Thorium Reactors;

You may use the powers of corrosion to generate heat.  Soils containing Olivine, Pyroxene, and Feldspar, will decay in the presence of water, or rather Oxidize.  This not only will generate Hydrogen, but it may even give off heat.  In order to use that heat, however, you need a very big collector.  Well a Hypersaline is a very big collector.
Soil delivered to the bottom will corrode, and give off Hydrogen and Nitrous Oxide, and also heat I believe.  That heat will be stored in the bottom layers of the lake.  The result in part may be useful clays.  The process takes a few years, so the soil could be change out periodically. And;

You may harvest the atmosphere of Mars, generating your condensed gases using a combination of Cryogenics, and Reverse Osmosis.
The Carbon Monoxide can be fed into the lake, or parts of it as food for Bacteria, which may also digest Hydrogen produced by the corrosion of soil.  You may also deliver the Oxygen for them to Breath.  Since there is twice as much as needed to Oxidize the Carbon Monoxide, you may provide some of the Oxygen to Humans.  Or you might increase the Oxidation of the lake for bacterial growth.  You don't want too much oxidation or you "Burn up" you bacteria.

Now you can grow your microshrimp.  They will require enough Oxygen, but may be tolerant of the temperature and salt levels in lower reaches of the lake.  So, you have chemosynthetically provide a vast food supply for your people, the Microshrimp.   Or if you don't like Microshrimp paste products, then consider growing other aquatic animals. They of course require greater sheltering, not being as tolerant of the conditions in the lake, particularly high salinity.

Now;
by many methods biological support chemistry.  Been there, done that.  But lets make it better and hope to link up with Spacenut and RobertDyck and their greenhouses.

No problem big piping connects to their greenhouses, and the lake provides utility resources to assist in them growing nice vegetables in them.

So, we have bulk production of Spirulina, Microshrimp, and optional production of Vegetables and Fish.

I will stop here, except to mention that "Big Piping" can provide some fail safe safety measures, much like sink traps.  Suppose one of your Skyscrapers depressurizes, your probable path of escape, if you are not trying to effect a repair, is down the pipe.  Barometric methods including sink traps, may provide survival and recovery methods in that situation.

Done.

-

I hope you have a sense of humor...

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=oni … FORM=VIRE5

The second video is also very valuable an "Onion Drive".

I have had previous interest in Spirulina.  I could be wrong but I believe that it is not restricted to alkaline conditions, but that here on Earth you want to grow it that way to prohibit the growth of poisonous algae.  I will try to confirm that.  On Mars if you were starving and thought things were hygienic enough you might dispense with the alkaline need if necessary.

My understanding is that it is tolerant of reasonably lower temperatures, but much prefers to be warm and intensely illuminated.  This is why I see it as being a crop to grow with the use of Heliostats.

As your article says it is highly storable, if in it's powdered form and kept away from light and moisture.  7 Years and the Protein is still good?

So, I do think it merits interest.

I have already given two examples of growing it with the use of Heliostats in a previous post, and was unable to provide a method to make it of use immediately after the first settlers/explorers thump/touch down.  I will try to approach a solution for that.

Here is a greenhouse notion with association with NASA apparently:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/scient … e-for-mars

If I am to interpret this, the "Spoke" greenhouses deploy in an accordion like fashion.
I am unable to find out what the shelf life of these greenhouses will be.  3 Months?  6 Months? a Year or more?

As for Spirulina, I suggest a water bag and necessary Spirulina life support devices.  Perhaps by doing that you can reduce the size of these accordion greenhouses and do their mass.

I am just trying to find a trick for you, but it is not that easy.  I think these people have done well with their accordion greenhouses, at least for the start of habitation.

OK, I am about to get Nutty SpaceNut.  How about using a Spirulina greenhouse as it's own airbag landing system?

So, a spacecraft gets it to Mars.  Perhaps it uses the slow new method which is not Hohmann transfer.  The one that lets the item do a ballistic topping motion just at the leading edge of the Mars gravity well, and lets Mars suck it in.  It takes a few more months but it saves fuel.  For a unpersoned spacecraft it might be OK.

Now if somehow the greenhouse could inflate and then be it's own heat shield that would be fantastic.  Could we hope that it's bottom could put up with the heat?  Well, I am guessing that that's not workable, but I am not too proud to take a dive for a possible option so I put it out there.  I will for the rest of the conversation presume that it is not possible.  You have to have a container which will be the heat protection for this greenhouse while it does it's entry to the atmosphere.

So, you had to pay the penalty and the heat shield and aero shell are ejected and wasted.  Now the greenhouse is in freefall.  Perhaps it has a aerodynamic shape though.  For the Earth, it might be shaped like the space shuttle or an Apollo capsule.  For Mars?  A flying saucer?

Anyway it has limited aerodynamic navigation powers, can navigate a bit.

And so there is another problem.  If you don't get it into the proximity of your settlers, you have wasted a whole lot of effort.  However that is a problem that has to be solved anyway, for the delivery of materials, so I won't dwell on it.  It is either solvable, or you have to send everything in one package, which from what I understand is very hard to do, to land something with that much mass.

So you have this big greenhouse bubble falling out of the sky, at a rather high speed.  If it hits at that speed, it will likely pop and perhaps also bounce in an undesired fashion.  So retro rockets needed most likely.

But when it hits it will be an airbag without a payload.  So, maybe it can make it.  Being an airbag, perhaps it can be moved a bit after landing.  For instance maybe a hover craft method could allow it to flow across the ground.  Temporary levitation from CO2 (Compressed from the atmosphere), giving temporary levitation.

Anyway a very weird idea.  A very tenuous maybe.

But if you landed it, and had a source of water, say from brine flows, then you could fill it with water, and hope to grow spirulina as a crop in it.  When it had deteriorated from U.V. and other conditions, you would shred it and reuse the plastics in 3D printers to make something useful (We hope).

I should be able to attract a lot of sadism from my fellow travelers at this site with this one, but nothing ventured nothing gained.  Stick your neck out, and see what happens

Louis said:

Perhaps so.  Also thanks for the last post with the NASA article.

I am also interested in ice caves.  The reason is most likely obvious to both of us, massive potential, if you master the art.

I would like to hear about your ideas.  I will present mine now.

I am interested the most in the "Grounding Line" of ice bodies, if it can be accessed.

http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glacie … ing-lines/

Of course ice bodies on Mars almost certainly will not include association with natural bodies of water, but that will not prevent humans from generating them if it suits their purposes.

So dealing with Martian ice bodies we have possibility to interface with the 1)Surface, 2)Ice, 3)Regolith, and 4)created bodies of water.

The ideal lava tube would be one that had a layer of ice over it, and yet was reasonably useable for humans.  The probability of discovering that is very low, so we must settle for a less ideal situation, but in large quantities perhaps.

Interface between the four connectable environments will require good methods. 

For instance if you are linking the 1) Surface with the 2) Ice, you will need a full force mechanical airlock for humans.  Maybe your ice airlocks will work well for bulk materials.  I will also speculate that if you used your ice idea, then you can reduce the necessity of finely machined airlock components by using some type of freezable fluid, perhaps even water.

Having mastered that, I presume you intend to try to pressurize habitats, I presume you intend to have buildings inside of these ice caves.

If it is to be a heavy building, perhaps we might prefer to find solid bedrock to use as it's foundations.  My preference would be sandstone, since you could cut blocks out of it to build the building, and create a sandstone cave at the same time.  A basement.  Sandstone seems possible, but I am not sure it exists in any quantity outside of the equator of Mars.

Without sandstone, you still might want to build brick roman arches on top of bedrock inside of your ice caves.  You might even consider encasing them in ice (Except the entrances), after construction.

Another material I have considered is tar paper.  That is Tar and Mineral wool, or even Basalt cloth.  But tar gives off fumes, so it might be a poor choice for direct human life support.  Alternately I believe that a Silicon Tar might be safe, if it can be created.  The point would be to be able to make tent like constructions, inside of ice caves.  There may be cases where small habitats are constructed for some purpose to house people in transit between locations.  Perhaps something like that would make sense.

So, 1) Surface, 2) Ice, 3) Regolith planed for associations.  That leaves artificial bodies of water.

A pond might serve well as an airlock method.  A hypersaline pond, could have suitably warm water in it's lower layers, and very cold water topped by ice above.  A layer of ice 10 inches thick 25.4 Centimeters? thick, would apply a counterpressure of perhaps ~9mb above ambient.  If we presume ambient is 6mb, then a total of 15mb.

If you cut a hole in the ice, and it was fresh unfrozen water, of course it will boil and freeze shut.  However if it is very cold hypersaline water, then you might be able to have a porthole into the pond, and you might lower and raise large objects into and out of the pond.

I am presuming that the surface of the ice of the pond will be protected from fast evaporation by some covering such as Regolith (GW Johnson), and I am also presuming that your Ice Fishing Hole will have an Ice Shack over it.

Perhaps an upgrade tar paper shack

While it would be prudent to make it as vapor proof as possible, water vapor losses should be rather small, with reasonable precautions.

I presume that this "Barn" will have a "Barn Door", though which large objects can be moved.  The door closed, most water evaporating from the ice hole and from emerging objects, will collect as frost on the walls and other surfaces.  Perhaps periodically when the doors are closed, the interior will be warmed up to evaporate the frost, and that humidity will be recaptured in some method.

So, you have a hypersaline pond with a big airlock.  Items brought into the water can be somewhat detoxified, by interaction with the water, and substances dissolved in the water.  Salts, and also organic matter could be dissolved in the water.  Perhaps sugar.

This should help to take care of the Hexavalent Chromium issue, and Perchlorates.

Further such a submerged item if brought into a habitat could be showered down, with the wash water going back into the pond, thus reducing the dust problem itself.

A big problem which has to be worked on is how to make hypersaline water and Ice play together nicely.  Berms of Regolith can help in this, and perhaps a resort to passages made of bricks that pass through the berms.

Anyway to my recollection that is what I have for human habitation involving ice tunnels.

But.....

You have stimulated me to recognize that while Lava Tubes can be made to work like lungs that breath Martian atmosphere, and also provide a heat sink for night and day energy potentials, Ice Tubes could be constructed for this purpose as well!  And there could be so much more them, a vast quantity.

I would construct the lung by melting a ice tube who's bottom was Regolith.  I would berm the edges of the Regolith bottom with Regolith berms.  I would put an arched tar paper roof over the bermed Regolith.   The ice tube would be required to hold only a small amount of pressure above ambient at most.  Perhaps never more than 24mb? on a guess.

As in the lava tube, the purpose of the ice tube would be to provide a layer of soil, which is mixed with a brine.  The brine may even be pooled above the soil to some shallow extent.

So in the shallow brine/soil pool we would have heat exchanger tubes.  I presume made of some suitable plastic.  In the night time the heat of the pond would go out to the 1) Surface to generate electricity.  The brine would be brought down to a quite cold temperature.  In the morning if the 1) Surface humidity justified it, Martian air would be run directly over the cold brine.   

Condensation would be promoted by the saltyness of the brine, and the cold of the brine.  Additionally as necessary, the air pumped in would be pressurized to also promote condensation.  That process would be expected to likely end at sunup or thereabouts.

At sunup we can hope to begin running Hydricity on the surface.  This is to generate A) Electricity, B) Chemicals (To be well promoted with U.V.), and C) Waste Heat.

The Hydricity will almost certainly involve Heliostats.  Perhaps with your polished steel.

The waste heat will be directed in part into the shallow bermed pool of brine and soil.  The limits on heating will be connected to water loss.

So, it may be that the brine can be warmed to the range of ~0 DegC (~32 DegF), just as a guess, without maintaining a above ambient pressure.  However, since you will have a method to circulate Martian atmosphere through the system during the morning, you may apply a static pressure during the day by simply using that system to pump it up, but restricting the outflow.

In that case perhaps the brine/soil could be heated to some temperatures above the range of ~0 DegC (~32 DegF) without large water losses. 

We would expect the tar paper enclosure to hold significant humidity then, and could use a condensing process to extract fresh water from the enclosure.

The warm water might promote a bacterial chemosynthesis process, where, we are using:
-Corrosion, (Hydrogen) and then (Methane) if Martian CO2 is added,
-Oxygen and CO from the Martian Atmosphere,
-Chemicals from Hydricity,

To grow bacteria.

Another item is waste.  Sewage might also be added.  Perhaps with some treatment, if your bacteria are going to be fed to microshrimp for a microshrimp paste.

However if you wanted to since you could likely have a vast number of these "Lungs", you could have some for food production which you would not inject sewage into, and some for the plastic industry which you might inject organic waste into.

I have been looking at what you guys are up to and for a time was getting frustrated, sorry about that, but I see that we have some good stuff going on,  and I am not talking about what I am adding, I really do like the directions that you people (You People!) are going in.

You are loosening up a bit, but I do believe that when the time comes appropriate rigor will be applied to an actual mission if you are to be involved.