New Mars Forums

So far what I see is that the Moon keeps being upgraded.  Although it is not equivalent to Mars, it is being discovered that it is more like Mars than the story we were told.

One thing I don't like about this site is that an idea that might be an alternative is almost always murdered in the nursery if possible, by those who have a pet notion of how things should go.

Personally I think that the primary objective of the American space program was to keep the human race from prospering in space.  I do not think that that is the intention of the people who work at NASA, at least not most of them, but I do believe that social engineers showed ups just in time to sabotage the plans.  Further they kept us away from an achievable objective, and also pointed us to one which was very hard, and then they made sure that not enough resources would exist to implement it.

However, the west is still full of inventors and doers.  It looks like it may be possible that humans will make it to Mars anyway.  On the other hand the cosmic criminals may go to deeper measures to sabotage that effort.

Therefore, it is wise to calculate options, such as Mars if it can happen, and alternately the Moon, Ceres, and Venus.  For Venus and Ceres, the Moon will be of great value.  Possibly for Mars it may have value.  We should keep all options on the table, to make the enemies task harder.

You are at war with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

The Soviet Union did what it did, thinking that they could simply gather the whole population into it's training facilities, and teach them to be good.  Then paradise would occur.  It did not.

They are not the only ones.  Just remember that the blank slate people want to retain you for their notion of a perfect world, and they most definitely do not want a branch of the human race to escape from their powers.  I picked on the Soviet Union, as an example, but their are many other of this type out there, but it would not be P.C. to go into those details.

Options, keep your options open, and don't forget to slap their faces and take their Cigars.

Just thought I would revive this topic a bit:
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/lowdown … sest-orbit

It is hard for me to visualize how ice would be under this dirt, but I believe it is, it is just that I don't understand why it does not flow upwards more through the dirt.

And then this:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-10/c … ta/7014134

And I have added this:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 105955.htm

All of this, and then there is the possibility that Ceres is full of Ammonia down deep, that is, if it was formed in the outer solar system.  (Some item of speculation lately).

For me this indicates that Ceres should be upgraded as a target, of intentions.
Just perhaps it could donate Nitrogen to Mars some day, and still without that notion;
I see that the object perhaps contains a broad distribution of chemicals desired, on it's surface.
It may have just enough gravity to allow for relatively normalized material acquisitions (Unlike small rubble pile asteroids),
Yet it has a small gravity.
It has Magnesium available for rockets (Although lots of things will do for such a weak gravity well).

I don't intend to go into terraforming here (Wrong section), but will mention that I am thinking reverse dyson sphere.
Not a pressurized shell, but rather a very large amount of orbiting discrete objects, so that many times the disc of Ceres can be recovered for solar energy, and so that the solar wind is blocked (And harnessed), and of course radiation shielding, and then in each discrete orbiting object the potential for a synthetic gravity machine.

Along with booster recovery just demonstrated recently and perhaps the notion of some nuclear (Fission/Fusion) propulsion, I really wonder if Ceres could be a good bet for cultivating a child culture for human kind/type.

Oh, well I don't necessarily agree.

That big yellow ball called the sun, that's a fusion reactor.  Been running for perhaps 4.5 billion years.  Burns real Hydrogen.  Your interfaces?  Sunlight>Temperature differences > wind.  So there.

Can you say Thorium?  Can you say fusion reactor (On Mars)?  Nice.

Still, there is that energy in the wind.  Alright, it will be a cost/benefit based decision.

Thing is, most likely best terraform of Mars has perhaps 250 mb of mostly O2.  Nights still very cold, days somewhat warmer than now.

I guess you would have a choice, perhaps you would want the high winds, or perhaps you would add a super greenhouse gas, and the nights would not get that cold, the days even warmer. 

Still, if a windmill were made to dissipate heat through it's blades, to the universe, then it could be quite a source of cold, and in one use, liquid atmosphere.

In a case where you also used Hydricity, and also geothermal (For energy, thermal storage, and mining), that cold would be quite useful.

I am not going to give you a free pass on this.  Prove to me that fusion power plants on the surface of Mars, or Thorium reactors will be more cost effective for the benefits received than the triad I suggest (Wind-liquid air, Hydricity, Geothermal-Heat-thermal storage-Mining).

The ball is in your court

I think I am in the mood to get rid of something, I have been carrying for some time.

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

I guess if you had that job you had to wear a Mushroom hat, and be a draft horse.

Lets suggest a lighter weight long duration suit instead.

Instead of the lady, have life support consumables.

Of course Mushroomhead has to put on a spacesuit of some kind.

Where the wheel pivots are create a balance beam situation.

Where the hands are, make a pivot connected to the hips of the spacesuit.

Now you can navigate the surface for days, weeks, or perhaps even months.  But your suit needs to allow you to deal with body functions, and that limits your mobility, but since you have a pivot at the hips and your rickshaw is a balance beam, your whole body capsule suit can rotate, and the balance beam wheels can swivel you to present your arms and face to many things.  You may also have solar cell arrays on your rickshaw.  And the Rickshaw can let you walk perhaps, if it is not a total capsule type, in which case it can impose extra weight on your body frame to make you fit.

Just some ideas.  I think space blankets to cover you up during the night will be a good idea as well.  In the night time if the rickshaw has enough power, it can take you to your next work site while you sleep, balancing on it's two wheels.  (Need gyro's for that though, I think).

There you go.

And a combination of two legs/feet and two wheels might not be that bad a method for a rover either.  Balance becomes easier, and stuck in a sand dune has options perhaps.

And by the way a rickshaw might be a very nice therapudic method for people who don't have enough strength in their legs to stand up and balance.

Yes, and if you have an Counterpressure suit, and you pee yourself repeatedly, I suppose that works, but it is distasteful.  I have yet to figure out how things work if your have diarrhea in a Counterpressure suit.  It's gonna happen.  It seems to me that having cleaning up such a mess is something worth trying to avoid.

Balloon suits let you pee yourself, and poo too, but then you have to clean that up.

Can't help it, sometimes you will be using those suits, and having to do some cleaning, and being rather unhappy.  Humility required to live on Mars.  (Or the Earth actually, if you want to continue to live.)

So, as far as I can see, the first issue is to reduce the amount of suit time you have to have outside.  Use telepresence as much as is practical.

Then, I recommend that in addition to counterpressure suits, and balloon suits, and their combinations, you develop long duration cyborg suits with the capability for the human to partially disengage from the suit to perform bodily functions in a less disgraceful manner.

Such suits by their nature will not allow you to do "Quick and Generalized" work, but will have to be designed to fulfill a choreographed service, and to do it efficiently and repetitively.  I generally try to avoid efficiency and hope to incorporate general capabilities instead, but at the end of the day you have to make a profit, or submit to the authority of others, and those others could include failure to survive.

So, I suggest as an example a suit with 3 arms, where the human is positioned in an enclosure with at least 3 wheels, perhaps 4 or 6, where they lie down on the floor, and have a view window below.  The reason for 3 arms, is they will have 2 arms deployed, and the 3rd will be an option which was not chosen to be used at that time.

The purpose of such a suit would be to work on flat ground.  Perhaps as a prospector, inspector, or electrician, or plumber, etc.

Mode 1 will have you poke both of your real arms though holes in the enclosure to manipulate objects below on the ground.
Mode 2 will have you poke one of your real arms through a hole in the enclosure to manipulate objects below on the ground.
But, with your spare hand, you will be able to clean distasteful body functions, clean said hand with clever methods which will have to be invented, and then eat something or drink something, in that order at all times we hope.

While your spare hand is not doing body functions, it may operate a joy stick and keyboard, to operate a cybernetic hand which is to assist the one real hand you have poked out of the enclosure.

A very ambidextrous and well trained person might be able to accomplish this, do good effective work and maintain hygiene, but we might want more.  If we presume that the hands poked out of the enclosure are in "Balloon Arm and Glove" suits, can they extract them and what is the dexterity of such gloved hands?

Still, if they could pull their arm/hands out of the suit arm/glove, they could take a break, eliminate body wastes, clean up, eat/drink something, and go back to work fairly easily.  Their cybernetic suit would include capsule space for that.  The suit would be suitable for extended stays on the surface.  A week?  A Month?

If this were accomplished this still leaves problems.

1) The Arms/Hands are not that dexterous.
2) The cyborg suit only presents the human to a ground presentation.  (Their facing the dirt at all times).

For #1, I suggest a triple join arm, where a protective balloon arm is attached to the capsule bell the human stays in.  However then human when extending their arm into that balloon, may have put on a counterpressure arm/glove.  Upon the insertion, a "Cork" (For lack of a better description), seats and therefore isolates the pressurized balloon arm from the capsule. 

The arm/hand balloon may then be depressurized, while maintaining cabin pressure.  The human arm and hand is double protected at this point.  The counterpressure protection protects from depressurization.  The balloon, and easily be re-inflated, if for some reason that is not working out.  It is not perfect.  You have a 2 layer glove, but you are not fighting the toil of closing your hand against a balloon glove.

Now if you want to live dangerous, if you can you can take off the balloon glove, and have a counterpressure glove, perhaps even modified to allow small patches of your skin to be directly exposed to Martian atmosphere (Not U.V though).  So, dexterous work if required.

This does then put you into some danger, if you cannot successfully get the balloon arm/glove re-attached to the capsule.  Therefore such failure modes will have to be planned for, a buddy system is one method to recover from such a situation.  Other methods will have to be contemplated.

As for #2, you would need motorized mechanization to move the capsule about in  3 dimensions to provide access to more objects that might exist on the actual Martial world outside of your habitat.  Here the safety issue will be to prevent crushing events for the arms in particular, and also with collisions of objects comes the risk of ruptures of pressurized capsules and death from depressurization.

Operating in the fluid environment of a lake provides some relief from the rigors imposed by the typical Martian surface, but of course eventually you have to work on that real Martian surface.

That's what I have for you at this time on the topic.

Oops! a bit of an addition about 5 minutes after the main post here.  In the event you could not get your exterior balloon glove back on you would have safety methods without the buddy system if your body inside the capsule was inside of a hybrid suit as well.  That is all of your body was protected by an air cooled balloon suit, except for your arms, which would be protected by counterpressure.  The way out would either be to depressurize the cabin by voice, or keyboard commands, and then pull the arm/cork out of the port, or just pull it out if you could, quickly and let the cabin depressurize that way.  Hopefully no other unprotected person in that cabin.  Otherwise to protect further, if you had to perform that stunt, the arm ports could have spring loaded doors that might close before depressurization became lethal.

  Think it is possible.

GW Johnson,

My last two posts may have seemed excessively dismissive of your comments to the point of perhaps being a bit rude.  That is not my intention.  I posted this stuff in the "Not So Free Chat", because for this topic I wanted to have the freedom to put emphasis on processes for the Planet Earth.  If it is also possible to consider adapting them to Mar, that is OK also.

If you are correct that Thorium is the ultimate answer on Mars, then that's OK with me, but a healthy and prosperous technological/industrial civilization on Earth will promote the settlement of Mars quite a bit, so even then these items may have indirect importance for our common focus of Mars.

If I were to try to join as many of the ideas in the previous post together as possible, I think the following might make some sense.

1) Hot Process: (EGS)
Pump a mixture of Carbonated Salty Water into a well, and include bioleaching as an objective.
2) Cold Process:
Create a liquid air output situation from windmills.
3) Solar process:
Hydridity (Outputs Hydrogen, Oxygen, and superheated steam).

It was not my original objective to focus on the extraction of minerals, but now it seems like it could be important.

In the #1 EGS process you could add Hydrogen, and Oxygen and other chemicals to the Carbonated Salty Water fluid to inject into the well
to feed your microbes which should be selected and engineered to extract minerals from the well.  Hydridity should supply some of those.

So, the intention is to bring back up heated fluid with dissolved minerals.  This will also tend to etch out the cracks in the rock further. 

The water does not have to be that hot to be useful, as it is going to be used to warm up liquid air to turn a turbine.  When the water is suddenly cooled, and perhaps the CO2 if allowed to boil out of it, minerals should come out of solution as solids.  So, then they could be collected.

As for the #3 Solar process, if you really wanted to during times of high solar output (Sunny weather), it is possible that heat could be injected back into the wells.

Anyway this could be one way that some minerals could be gained in the future for use on the Earth.  And with 3 different energy sources, it is naturally fairly balanced as far as energy output meeting demand without major deficiencies.

To adapt to Mars, you would have to use the cold of night for your #2 Cold process.

Of course to a degree this process replicates what happens naturally in ocean vents on Earth.

Void

Per your comments on Hydrocarbons, I mostly agree.
But if Natural Gas did evolve there, it would likely contain a content of Hydrogen which possibly be reacted against the tiny quantity of Oxygen and Carbon Monoxide in the atmosphere, if that can be extracted economically.
To avoid time wasting, it appears that we can choose not to commit on the certainty of the existence of Natural Gas on Mars.  I will settle for a maybe.

However if you read previous posting, it indicates the probability of evolving Hydrogen using a Serpentization process.  That might be enhanced with solar heat.

***

Initial sources of energy on Mars can be from devices delivered, and will have to be.

From there, developing Thorium seems to me to be an improbable next energy step.  Too complex most likely.

Antius seems to be working on some type of energy source requiring less high tech.  Things like that and/or solar will almost certainly have to be the next level.

Perhaps from there you could go to Thorium.

***

After that, other systems can be examined technologically at least.  If they cannot deliver for a reasonable cost, then they should be set aside.

Now I will bother you further.  I know your qualifications, and certainly I am less likely to understand drilling than someone like you.  But for the sake of investigation:
*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_ … mal_system

*

https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/pdf/IGA … /Brown.pdf

*

https://www.imwa.info/docs/imwa_2014/IM … ab_190.pdf

*
Liquid Air:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/ene … gy-storage

*

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

***

All of the above except the liquid air will involve drilling.
Not all of them can be done at the same time.

For Mars and CO2 liquid, it is fair to say that due to .38 gravity, drilling could go deeper.  However such a technology will be practical only when the industrial/technological infrastructure is rather advanced.  Perhaps economical might be to inject a Water/Salt/CO2 mix which should be corrosive.  If it can also support microbes, then they might be engineered and selected to help leach metals from the fracked rock.  Ideally then you could extract a heated fluid and use that heat as well as dissolved metals.

If the heated fluid is allowed to depressurize, the CO2 might bubble out, and this might actually cause the metals to precipitate as solids.
The CO2.  A little foggy here.  If a very cold brine absorbs CO2 as dissolved gas, and then that fluid heated up, then CO2 can be made to bubble out.  Perhaps run a turbine.  The CO2 cooled off, the brine cooled off, the two joined again in a solution, then injected into the well again.

Mining an power perhaps.  But it is for a significant time from now.

Otherwise just inject liquid CO2 and allow it to blow out of the well as a pressurized gas.

***

As for on Earth, I think a look at combining EGS;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_ … mal_system
And wind powered liquid air;
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/ene … gy-storage
Might be worth the trouble.  Wind needs a storage method, Liquid Air needs a heating method.
The two together might be rather good.
Maybe the EGS wells will last more that 20-30 years this way also.

As far as the evolution of energy on Earth and in the USA especially goes.
We drop COAL for energy.
Then we drop Oil for energy.
Use up the bulk of the Natural gas, and perhaps get into these renewable methods.  Perhaps the culture changes by then and we also go to Thorium reactors on Earth.

I certainly be dead by then so it won't be my decision or problem.

I am enjoying every ones work in this topic.  It all seems to be good.

Scope: I am interested in trying to contribute to energy obtainment methods from Insitu materials, just after the first settlement has been provided from delivered materials.

Obviously when stimulated by other peoples work, I then try to adapt it to my thinking.  This topic has been quiet for a little time, so now I will intrude and hope to add something or maybe just learn more.

So one thing needed is plastic tubing of some kind.  That requires Hydrogen, most likely.  While you certainly can propose electrolysis of water, this maybe is another way.  However it requires the attainment of 200 to 300 degrees Centigrade, so to do it you would most likely want to bring a light weight solar concentrator from Earth at the start.
http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2013/dec/h … livine.cfm

I risk displaying a broad ignorance, but I am desiring that the above reaction will also provide a clay.

Other substances that might be processed in a similar way are Pyroxine, and Fieldspar.

These may be found on Mars, in Rocks, Dunes, and fine soils.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpentinite
Quote:

So, we might have a source of Hydrogen for plastic tubing, either by electrolysis, or by in situ materials which assist the production of Hydrogen and Methane.  Both cases require that some manufactured materials be imported from the Earth/Moon location to establish the initiation of the industrial process of producing Hydrogen in situ on Mars.

I presume that having Hydrogen, you may react it to Martian atmospheric gasses to get what you want.  Plastics, Energy. 

But you guys are trying to make a KISS power source for Mars.  (Keep It Simple Stupid).
So, I will suppose that the preference is to use Hydrogen to produce plastics.

I believe that Antius has been working towards a KISS energy source, and I would like to try to contribute.

Searches by me on the internet suggest that 3D printers can manufacture the plastic tubing that is desired, if you have the plastic.

Conversation with Spacenut elsewhere suggests that clay might even be obtained from dune materials, using a centrifuge.  Or if I misunderstood, the Serpentinization process will be required to produce, it, or perhaps clay can be found in places on Mars.

I will presume it can come by some method from dune materials, or loose soils.

So having clay, compressed earth blocks are really possible, I think.  Bricks also, but for this purpose bricks would be overkill.

When I was much younger one of my deviant behaviors was to make a 3 sided (Tetrahedron) out of a soil with significant clay content.
I then spray painted one face, the solar face with black paint, when the object was dry enough.

I can testify, that even though I kept it in a porch which was very cold, it could hold significant heat from being exposed to sunshine, so Antius is on to something there.

From my point of view at this time it seems reasonable to construct a thermal diode composed of compressed earth blocks, and plastic tubing, and curtain walls.

You could make a 3 sided or 4 sided pyramid, or a cubic construction with compressed earth blocks, and put curtain walls, on south and north facing walls.  You could have plastic fluid filled tube loops which respond to natural thermal convection.

In one part bonded to the south facing curtain wall, and in another part bonded to the north facing curtain wall.

Then heat should be stored at the top of the structure, and cold at the bottom.

You might consider carbonated water as the fluid to drive your turbine process.  Heating carbonated water will likely take CO2 out of solution,  cooling water will allow you to saturate it with CO2.

You might want an additional antifreeze, such as salts to be involved.

Metal plates?  Sure, it just depends how you intend to unfold your expansion into higher and higher technology.  But with the above (Which I mostly drew from others), is a lower tech method to get power generation in situ.

Like the ideas about chemicals Terraformer and Lewis.

I just posted two posts and deleted them.  Maybe someone read them.  Good then.  Otherwise guess.

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

I am going to say that the violent history, and the cultural confusion could have really contributed to the criminal behaviors.

But no he was not a Russian any more than he is (Really) an American.  He may have a certificate that says he is an American, but his heart and soul are not.

So, yes your articles about various deposits are important, but I think that in the beginning it will be fortunate to have 2 or 3 significant materials available in a first settlement at a reasonable distance.

Being able to get stuff from dunes can help you increase the spectrum of available stuff.

Further, I believe from previous reading that micrometeorites survive to enter the "Soil" of Mars.  To me that suggests that some Nickel should be present, although it is not mentioned so far.

Also of a great interest to me is to create a hot solar process to create Hydrogen and perhaps even Clay from some part of dune materials.
I have found from reading that basalt materials could oxidize in the presence of water over a number of years, and might change to clay.

I would like to see if you could cook the stuff at a high temperature and get out Hydrogen and Clay in a batch.  This could be very useful for the first settlements.

But I am somewhat confused and unsure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpentin … _reactions

So the reaction creates heat, and Hydrogen I believe, and perhaps even clay in some cases?
What happens if you add heat, as in solar heat?  Do you get a quicker chemical reaction and perhaps even more Hydrogen?

Once again:
http://space.io9.com/sand-dunes-are-rai … 1678443555

Pyroxene and Fieldspar may also be present, I am not sure what reactions they will have.

So, I would have hopes that Hydrogen could be obtained in batches at will and perhaps "Burned" in fuel cells against a concentrate of Oxygen and Carbon Monoxide extracted from the atmosphere.

Otherwise, if that can't work of course you would want Hydrogen for various other reasons as well.

We are Duned!

http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/11/curi … and-dunes/
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=mar … ORM=IQFRBA

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/det … d=PIA20171

So, what I am seeing in the above suggests that we could entertain various separation methods, in hopes of gaining concentrations of materials we might want.  Obviously a vertical column of air flow could do a separation of sorts, although I don't know what that gains you.
Dry or wet magnetic separations might also work.  Of course there could be wet flotation methods, and I am wondering if you could do a centrifuging of the materials.  If you blew air into the centrifuge to levitate and fluidize the materials, could you get it to settle out in layers, where the layers might have a concentration of particular types of grains?

Of course size and specific gravity will matter in such a separator.  So, you will likely like some kind of screens as well, since heavy materials of small grain size might float into the location of lighter materials with a larger grain size (Response of air friction to grain surface area, and of course the specific gravity of grain materials.

But it seems hopeful to me.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … Earth.html

Of course the lighting tricks that are used leave you wondering if you are seeing reality, but I think I see enough color variations to suggest that you might even selectively extract patches of materials to get closer to what you want.