New Mars Forums

When is the last time a "Russian" type person came to the USA, and shot up a bunch of innocent people?

So, right off the start, they are way better than those creeps you mentioned.

Well, for me it's been a good Christmas, already!

1) First there is this:
http://phys.org/news/2015-12-metal-powd … fuels.html

2) Then I though, I would like to make liquid air with a windmill, and use that at the "Steam" for such an engine.  So, I searched the internet about it and got another present!
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/ene … gy-storage
http://www.hydrolance.net/LiquidAirWind … oLance.htm
While they are all good, my preference will be that eventually perhaps the windmill will use it's blades to radiate heat, and that electricity will not be involved, except for it's control mechanisms.  No electric generator, a liquid air generator.  But for now the above will serve nicely, thank's Santa.

3) We already know that we can have one of these: (Solar power tower)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

And we could superheat Hydrogen or Natural gas with it.
Certainly superheated Natural gas might be able to reduce the iron powder back to usefulness for powering a car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron
Obviously the people that are working on item #1 have something in mind.

So if you are using natural gas, there will be some CO2 produced in the process, but going back to this,
4) http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/OP … -Boom.html
That can be pushed in to an old oil field to bring it back to life.

So, the whole process can be almost Zero Carbon. (Of course it also allows oil to be extracted, but that is not a direct part of the process).  Therefore, we can have an alliance with the most stringent environmentalists (Not the tin foil ones),  And we can cut the sugar to the people on the planet who like to attack us, and have a nice life.

So, absolutely fabulous!

Merry Christmas!

Those presentations certainly are a good sell.

How would you like your stake done?

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 71#p126871

https://www.google.com/search?q=Vampire … gB&dpr=0.9

Fine information.  So, what the soil needs, it can get.

And we can consider air to be in part available by the means you have described.

I suggest that for that to deal with CO, you might present the mix to a volume of water where an organism that can digest CO can be grown.  It would consume some of the Oxygen, but get rid of the CO, and the biomass might have value.

I like it.  Good stuff.

Please join the conversation Robert.

Spacenut, OK, I will sidestep from the Mega Futurist Large Lake city and try to be helpful to answer Roberts question of soil with you.  It is important to provide for vigor for the first small community, so that the following much larger presence can be parented well by it.

Here I offer this.  Yes your organic materials, really as ugly as it may be even all human waste.  I am squeamish however for certain things, I would really want to see some kind of hygienic sterilization process, and then to see what we can do with mushrooms.

http://www.gmushrooms.com/MushroomInfor … osting.htm

http://nrcmushroom.org/Folder_Recycling_SMS_Folder.pdf

And really, why not?  No lights needed except to set up, inspect, and harvest.  And a contribution to food sources cannot be dismissed as unwelcome.

Later, I will return to what I was talking about, and we will see if anyone is even willing to acknowledge that I am posting the materials, but for now starter colony soil.

Well, thanks Robert.  We do clash.  Our backgrounds are skewed in different directions, and our means to objectives are different.
Often when I argue a point it may be on the basis of evidence procured from the internet, and that is not always correct or understandable.
I will take your word that those craters do indicate water.  I was mislead by what I read.

There is some benefit at least from my end perhaps to come eventually by me trying to integrate your projected methods with what I have tried to propose.  So, far, it has produced mutant ideas, that come in as impractical or impossible, but I have a feeling that eventually it will show profit.

My best projected offering I might propose would hybrid GW's mushroom houses with your structured thinking, and try to integrate them into a lake type real estate setting.  As I have said it is not read for prime time.  At the moment I am speculating on a situation where you have a "Mushroom House" with transparency on the sides.  Instead of Regolith on the top however, a bag of water.  Above that solar panels.  The entire transparency should be surrounded by a robot which is also a reflective Heliostat which can spin around that circular window it envelopes, reflecting sunlight in from the leeward side of the sun source.  The idea would be to make the mirror specifically reflective of visible light, and either absorbing of U.V. or fluorescent of it so that it converts U.V. to visible wavelengths.  I also have a flower petal design in mind where the petals on hinges can cover the windows as the sunlight moves to directly intercept them.  The petals would also be able to fold upwards to hold in heat at night.  There again, the intent would be to greatly reduce the U.V. by selective reflectance of a mirror, and ideally incorporating a fluorescent effect to add visible light to what enters the greenhouse.  In this way, I would hope to increase the lifetime of plastic films used as the transparent windows.

I think that in the age of robotics which is emerging it is not a bad pathway to investigate robot/heliostats with special reflective/fluorescent coatings for such a purpose, particularly if maintaining transparent windows with plastics is going to be such a economic load.

Anyway, back to the mushroom house structure, where I start with GW's design, and add a water tank on top, really the water tank is for counter pressure.  As for the water within, perhaps you could do something biological with it, but really its real purpose is to provide counter-pressure, and to provide temperature moderations for the day/night cycles.  The hot air in the greenhouse going to the ceiling during sunny days, and being absorbed, and at the night that heat being re-radiated into the greenhouse.  Another value of using water, is it can be adjusted to some degree, as for the load on the ceiling, if that would have value.

As for the Mushroom, I actually add a long stem which is a passage down into the lake.  Your mushroom could be pressurized to the degree you want, most likely lets say from 50-330 mb pressure.  As in a barometer, the water column in the tube will respond with height appropriately.  Your pressurization will depend on what you want to grow, and if shirt-sleeve humans/EVA Humans/Robots will work with the plants.

A polite response will be preferred, as I presented this as extremely proto-type and tentative, hoping that will be adjustable to practicality.
I have presented it for your entertainment as potential Fertilizer for the garden of  your mind, sir.
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In my other fantasy world, I am back to trying to exploit UNEARTHLY effects on Mars.  As you may have read I am attempting to find a way of harnessing the powers of corrosion of dune materials to provide resources for settlers.

One other thing I am rather infatuated with is atmospheric separations.  Apparently this has been looked into on this site and elsewhere.  On this site I recall Antius having some involvement.  Cryogenics were contemplated for that purpose.  However they require lower temperatures than I would prefer to use.

So, I would like to see if there is a way to remove the CO2 from captured atmosphere, and deal with the remnant in some other way.

For the removal of the CO2, we might consider pressurization and the night time cold temperatures.  Alternate Reverse Osmosis might be considered, (I think) squeezing all gasses out through a membrane, except CO2.  Or the reverse, pumping atmosphere into a plastic bubble which allows the CO2 only to leak out.  I believe we bumped into that potential in our conversation about ETFE which has been treated with embedded glass.  (If I have that right).

Anyway, at least I want all the atmospheric gasses except the CO2 to go into a production stream.  If the CO2 can be liquefied then it could easily be used to turn a turbine later to generate electricity, using heat from a lake, or solar energy.

I will get more direct.  In particular I want to get the Oxygen out of the mix.   At this time I am contemplating the use of Electrowinning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrowinning
Please don't consider this rude, I just want to emphasize, that I am not contemplating Electrolysis.

There seems to be a persisting confusion on that, so I want to offer clarity for what I am after.  I am not saying that I definitely understand how to get what I am after, but I do have a specific notion of what I am after.

It is obvious that corrosion will not produce free Oxygen, it will provide Hydrogen, and in the presence of a Carbon source (CO2 & CO), microbes might create Methane in the waters at the bottom of this lake.  Of course the lake bottom itself will be food, but really not much surface area is presented that way.  Adding dune grains to the bottom of the water will "Feed" the stomach of the lake.  Lots of surface area.  The food is well chewed

It may be possible to control the PH of the bottom water by the quantity of the dune material balanced against the amount of CO2 you dissolve in the water.  Of course this would be done to aid digestion of the dune materials.  My understanding is that the dune sands will rapidly alter in the presence of liquid water.  (Rapid as a unit of time is poorly defined in that description).  But if the result were to resemble the serpentinization of Olivine and the metals in the dune materials which may not be completely Oxidized yet, I would expect to produce salts of metals dissolved in the slightly acid water.  Additionally as stated before H2 should result and I also hope that CLAY will result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine
Well, here is some interesting material, not quite mentioning clay, but giving some time definition for one pathway for the decay of Olivine.

Oh, and I do believe that the reaction also creates heat, so it will help heat the lake.

Back to Electrowinning.  I believe that metals can be extracted to the cathode of the device from the lake waters.  It may be that dissolved Hydrogen and perhaps Methane can be concentrated that way as well.

In this case I am not aiming for the Oxygen we might want yet.  At this time I am contemplating the use of Electrowinning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrowinning
Please don't consider this rude, I just want to emphasize, that I am not contemplating Electrolysis.

So, we have our Cathode(s) in the bottom of the lake, and we are attempting to collect dissolved Metals/Hydrogen/Methane on the Cathode(s).

Perhaps we could try to put the Anode(s) in the upper waters, and hope to extract dissolved Oxygen.  But there will not likely be any unless we put it there.

If we have treated Martian atmospheric gasses by removing the CO2 (Or as much as suits us, since it is going to get used in the corrosion process down below), we can add other gasses, including Oxygen.

I believe that their is about twice as much Oxygen as Carbon Monoxide in the mix, and that N2 and Argon will be added as well.  So, I would hope to collect some of the Oxygen on the Cathode(s).  As for the Nitrogen and Argon and Carbon Monoxide.

The Carbon Monoxide might be digested by Micro-organisms in the lake.  They might use Oxygen, or H20 as the Oxidizer.

As for Nitrogen, I believe that in Hypersaline cold lakes an interaction occurs where Nitrous Oxide is produced.  I don't know what would be done with that or about that, but perhaps somewhere in the process you could extract both purified N2, and Nitrous Oxide.  As for the Argon, isn't that inert?

Maybe really you would subject water which has the Oxygen and Carbon Monoxide exhausted by Electrowinning or microbes, subject that to a vacuum and by Henry's laws extract a N2 and Argon Mix.

So, a cyborg ecosystem that runs on Corrosion and breaths Martian air.  (And is quite adaptable to hybridize with solar power options).

I'm tempted to mess with you but I won't.

Good work. 

I resisted because of the historical articles which indicated lava.
More recent work indicates that the manner of the freezing of the water or lava, indicates that it would not be lava.

I objected to water due to the shape of the craters in that picture.  They are bowl shaped, and do not indicate a muddy ice "splosh".
It took me a while, but it occurred to me that those craters could have been there before the water was flowed into that location.  They would have acted like dams, and very little or no water would have flowed into the craters.  So, bowl shaped craters do not ultimately disqualify the possibility that there is a frozen sea there.

Finally recent articles I have read vastly upgrade the amount ice that may be buried under ground on Mars.  This ice is fossil and was deposited billions of years ago.

With all that, sure I would say there are fair odds that the frozen sea is there.  Such a sea suits my purposes as well as yours.  It will be checked out before the settlement of Mars and confirmed or denied.  If it happens that it is an unsuitable location after all, then for my purposes, I would anticipate an eventual secondary settlement at a higher latitude, which will utilize lake methods for habitation.  Tom K. identified a giant slab of ice which can serve as a potential secondary target.

Tom K.'s alternate site:
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7288

My collected references about fossil ice in the rift valley and also the whole northern hemisphere of Mars.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7291

I think that I could easily find that they will some day prove that Mars is as bone dry as they tried to put fourth for many decades, but from  my current information, I anticipate that is vastly icy in it's Northern Hemisphere.

I prefer your site, but if it fails to satisfy, there are likely to be alternates.

Terraformer said:

I am guessing sooner or later someone here on Earth will implement such a process, in order to get some kind of "Carbon Credit", and to of course create a useful product.  We will what to watch for such things.

Some things I notice about this site, is (1) when it comes to energy and chemical processes, they think in terms of solar panels and nuclear.  This is understandable since it is high science, and also typically what the machines sent into space and to Mars use. (2) Typically they also want to recreate Earth on Mars, to the point they might bypass some factor Mars has to offer, simply because we don't do it on Earth.

To improve on #1, I suggest a greater awareness of what is going on in the world of alternative energy.  I am not an especially perceptive person to now understand that the Hydrocarbon industry as we once new it is on it's way out.  Curiously, the Gulf states might be a great place to look for advanced developments in solar energy.  They are going to be living on a leaner budget, and are apparently aware that they are going to have to seek new methods.  If they cannot produce their own innovation (I don't know if they can or can't), then they will hire it from the true East, and the West, so we will see many things develop there.  They are of course involved with the Petrochemical industry, so I would be looking for them to integrate solar of all kinds with that existing industry.  Another thing I have become aware of is that they are consuming more and more energy to produce water for their populations, and a very high cost.  We should want to look at what they are doing and see if it has application to Mars.

For #2, I think RobertDyck is to most recreationalist, while some others are more open to exploring the unearthly characteristics that Mars has to offer.  Both fields should be continued to be explored in my opinion.  One field seeks to recreate the Earth on Mars, and the other seeks to exploit what Mars has to offer which is unfamiliar.

One thing about doing photolysis by certain methods, is that you could get both a chemical and a thermal benefit from the same machine, and that suits me well.  If you want the truth, I want great benefit with small effort.  That's potentially very profit oriented thinking.

Low hanging fruit that have been identified so far are (1) Day / Night and Seasonal temperatures.  (2) Photolysis can be done with or without U.V., but I think U.V. offers a massive potential above visible light.  (3) You might note that I have been talking about sand dunes.  Apparently they can be made in part of Olivine, which under certain circumstances oxidizes in the presence of water and produces Hydrogen and possibly Clay.  That is something I am interested in.

And their will be other things.

Of course I am often bothering you guys with lakes.  It is because I see so much potential for them to serve the material needs of humans on Mars.  And that can be by unconventional means I suggest.

For instance suppose RobertDyck's frozen sea exists, and it's location is inhabited.

What is serpentinization?
http://jersey.uoregon.edu/~mstrick/AskG … rry45.html

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn … a-on-mars/

So far, I think Imperial, so: 45m= 147ft 7.653546in
This should come is as perhaps ~1.350 bars of pressure on the average bottom of such a sea/lake.

So there is plenty of room to put a layer of undigested dune material on the bottom of the lake.  The benefits I would hope to procure would be: (1) Oxidation of the material will produce provide for (a) Hydrogen (b) Clay.  (That is what I hope for).  I don't know what the rate of Oxidation at those temperatures will be, so it may or may not be a proficient method.

While my intentions for Clay are bricks, and radiation shielding, it turns out if you query for it clay is also useful for treating the body for contamination from radioactive chemicals.  Just some more information.  I am thinking that for certain situations, clothing with encapsulated wet clay (In plastic bubbles), might help to provide additional protection from radiation on Mars, as well, as even be useful to maintain body tone in the .38 g gravity field.

I also have of course other ideas about what to do with clay, for instance your Roman Arch buildings might be covered with wet clay with fibers incorporated.  If the moisture could be maintained, this may provide a very good air tight seal.  Sort of an "Air Dam" using wet clay counterweight, and also in concert with the added fibers, some tensile force to resist transient pressure deviations.

Back to the lake where you have put Olivine and other minerals from a dune on the bottom of the Lake and you presume H2 is bubbling out.  You may now compress Martian atmosphere directly into the lake in proportion to Henry's law.  There are some variables I will not go into detail here.  So, now your lake has dissolved Martian atmospheric gasses in it, and H2 from the alteration of the dune materials.  A biological system may operated living off of these chemicals.  It should also occur that if you put CO2 into the water, it should become slightly more acid, and I speculate that will promote the conversion of dune material to H2 and Clay.

Should you really want to you might choose to "Frack" the floor of the Lake, and hope to actually create Serpentization driven Ocean Floor vents.  But I would just try to use the dune material instead.

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorati … obial.html

Of course the lake bottom will not be hot like that, but I anticipate that their are bacteria which will do the job.

Anyway with just this you may have a source of organic chemistry.  Plastics, and perhaps even food.

If your lake is briny, then you may have both an anoxic warm layer on the bottom, and a colder Oxidized layer on the top.  This is due to an inversion possible from the relative lightness of a less briny cold layer over a more briny warmer layer.

So you might do this on the surface of your lake:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

So you can direct the heat from the tower into the lower layer of your lake, which will also provide a power generating ability as well, and;
you may at the same time: Do the direct photolysis of water and/or CO2 which you mentioned.
I suspect that at the ambient pressures of Mars you might get away with having the H2, Methane, and O2 mixed without serious explosion problems.  If that proves true, then you can suck the gas out and mix it with the upper cold lake water, and that will provide a second method of chemical stimulation of the lake.  The lake could have an ultimate result of the total consumption of the O2, if you just let the organisms convert all chemicals to body mass, and then let other organisms digest the resulting biomass against the O2, but if you interrupt the food web and extract the biomass, and convert it to Plastics, it is possible that you would be left with an O2 surplus in the lake, at least in the upper cold layer.

With all that, it might be nice to have a pleasant place to live.  Some of that could be in the lake, some on top of the lake.  Perhaps RobertDyck could loan us this:

Connection with the lake could be a vertical or diagonal tube from this dwelling to either the cold upper layer or the warm lower layer.  It might provide an escape path if things go wrong topside, and will certainly provide access to the resources of the lake.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/29/the-ener … =103202339

Solar Chemical Energy:
Images: Solar chemical

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Solar chemical refers to a number of possible processes that harness solar energy by absorbing sunlight in a chemical reaction. The idea is conceptually similar to photosynthesis in plants, which converts solar energy into the chemical bonds of glucose molecules, but without using living organisms, which is why it is also called artificial photosynthesis.[1]

A promising approach is to use focused sunlight to provide the energy needed to split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of a metallic catalyst such as zinc. This is normally done in a two-step process so that hydrogen and oxygen are not produced in the same chamber, which creates an explosion hazard. Another approach involves taking the hydrogen created in this process and combining it with carbon dioxide to create methane. The benefit of this approach is that there is an established infrastructure for transporting and burning methane for power generation, which is not true for hydrogen. The problem with this approach is that carbon dioxide must be produced to release the stored energy, so it does not truly give "clean" energy. The other main drawback to both of these approaches is common to most methods of energy storage: adding an extra step between energy collection and electricity production drastically decreases the efficiency of the overall process.

It is also possible to use solar light to directly drive industrial chemical reactions and applications, eliminating the need to burn fossil fuels for energy.

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

The existing environment of Mars might be more compatible with Chemical Solar Energy than Earths environment.

For instance we will not care in the same way about a "Carbon Footprint" on Mars.  In fact we might like to use to abundant CO2.
and;
At the air pressures current on Mars, explosions of H2 and O2, I think may be much less of a problem, so the process might be simpler. and;
And, the spectrum of light is broader on the surface of Mars than the surface of Earth, so we can expect more vigorous results from the U.V. portion which is very powerful. and;
Mars has many unexplored chemical potentials, for instance the materials of the sand dunes might be profitably involved.
Further;
In the case of Mars, I think that a solar tower could preform several tasks as desired.
1) Solar Chemical Energy.
2) Solar thermal energy. a) Heat, b) Electricity.
3) Terraforming.

The reason I bring all of this to the table is:  I think the economic-political setup is correct for us to parallel a Mars effort with this already evolving Earth related efforts, and very little additional cost, and with very large technological advancements.

We know that when a cancer occurs, one route to combatting it is to cut off it's food supply.  This I speak of is the interacting of the "Very Old World" with the new world.  Some people like to frame it as West vs. East, which is false, since in reality, the East is actually places like China, Japan, and Korea.  And the "East" is developing a similar relationship with the "Blighted" areas (The Middle East) that the west is.

I will stop for a moment to point out that I think my moral underpinnings are just fine.  The notion I am talking about is that given an option, just like us, China, Japan, and Korea would prefer to be energy independent, and to not have to deal with a group of peoples who have not been able to develop cultural tolerance suitable for the modern world yet.  Or will they ever?  Actually those people in the blighted areas seem to be proud of intolerance and treachery.  Granted, not all of them, maybe not even the majority, but the intolerant parts are sufficient to make the whole of those cultures unsuitable for cultural contacts, and they should be isolated and avoided when possible, made to repent of their transgressions.

So, I see the opportunity to run parallel with the environmentalist lobby, to produce a "Positive" treatment for the "Blight".  Which I think most will have to agree, is preferred to the treatment where we are lured into blighted areas to kill lots of people.  Not that that can be made to stop, but perhaps it can be reduced in necessity.

The issue of Greenhouse gasses on Earth, and "Global Warming" is not required to be proven for our purposes.  If it is real, of course we would want to consider treating it as well.   However, our concern is that there are very large social pressures existing which we can run parallel to solve national security issues for "Non-Blight" Nations/Civilizations, and that we can at the same time in a parallel way promote technology which would be useful on Mars, and yes perhaps change how our existence on Earth effects the Global Environment, perhaps in a positive way.

The above diagram I have expressed in words, describes a spherical model of human interaction.  It has the capability to bypass the blighted areas.

The blighted areas unfortunately are a regression to a previous edition of reality where the peoples in those areas were able to control interaction between the East and West, and to charge "Rents" on the transactions.  These people in those blighted areas are used to having unearned power.   Currently they have used Oil instead of such cultural blockages, but they are now it would seem in many cases rebelling against the modern world trying to regress to methods of many centuries back.  Our objective should be to bypass them and their oil, by any means necessary.

This cuts off the supply of sugar to the cancer.  Cancer is a regression.  They are regressions.

Since efforts to go to Mars involve potential space flight from Western and Eastern nations, and not much from the Blighted areas (They are interested in feeding on other humans), I will propose that there should be some actions considered about OIL, in order to protect the West and the East.

1) There is an apparent effort to destroy or damage our Oil Fracking industry.  I suggest that a new petroleum reserve be created, where the government can buy and keep capped off wells drilled, as a petroleum reserve.  This as a national security measure, and to keep our oil fracking industry more alive (It does not appear to be dying yet though).  This would also very much leverage the power of our tight oil supplies, making them last longer, and so they would exist as a tool to mess with the blighted areas.

2) I propose that parts of the existing petroleum storage infrastructure be turned into a for profit device.  Sell oil when the price is high, and empty it out to the limits of national security, and buy and fill it up when the prices are low.  This could be done to the extent that #1 fills the original purpose of #2 for national security.

3) I think Santa Clause should come to town.  http://claus.com/naughtyornice/index.php
I think all external hydrocarbon sources should be rated on a Naughty or Nice list.
a) Do you belong to a cartel? Yes Naughty.
b) Do you allow (Actually) religious freedom? No Naughty.
c) What are you doing about Terrorism?  Not much?  Actually preaching and protecting it?  Naughty.
d) Do you help a Naughty entity to sell Naughty Oil as Nice Oil?  Naughty.

Then tax the naughty oil in accordance with it's naughty rating, put that money in a pot, and allow lawsuits against it for victims of terrorism.  And of course be nice to nice oil

Is this possibly against existing trade laws?  Too bad, change it.  Those who will not walk on two paws, need to have their face slapped, and we should take their Cigar as well.

They happen to be shame cultures, shame them.

It will also be fun to know that a terrorist will know that whenever they kill and destroy, abundant money will be given to the victims.  It does not replace lost life, but it does put salt in the enemy's eye.

Now that we might have let them know that they can't take our lunch money, we can plan ahead for alternative energy to phase in as our tight oil phases out by being used up.

This can put a ring in our Military-Industrial community's nose and allow us to make them point in the direction of the future, rather than the past.  (Making lots of money all the same).

So, the opportunity for Convergence of the EcoFriendlies, the Military-Industrial complex, and Space Enthusiasts is appearing up ahead, and I think that it is from that convergence that much of what is needed for the establishment of humans on Mars may come.