New Mars Forums

Spacenut thankyou for taking the trouble.  I also have looked further into this particular restriction in the hoped method.  It appears that we might hope to appeal to the use of an "ink" with Carbon in it, to produce  conductivity on a surface which is not naturally disposed to be conductive.  Graphite perhaps.

But for the Tin Salt, might we hope that it may be present in the nasty salts that are thought to exist in the liquid water flows of Mars.  I think there are fair chances for that.

You have excellent minds, really, I quack like a duck when I try to get down to some real world situations.  Glad to have your generous collaboration on things that are very hard to make sensible with numbers and logic.  I do try to find where the hopes are, but can quite close the deal on my own.

For me, getting chemical energy from the atmosphere such as CO, might pay for the expense in initial energy, as it might allow us to do chemical manipulations, which of course might be achieved in other ways, but by the time you tally up the whole ledger, perhaps you can afford to play this game.  That is just a hopeful hunch.

So, NASA did this apparently, it is similar to what Antius and some others have proposed.  If economical very exciting.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20040196381

So, Antius should like this:
Liquid CO2, then;

Nitrogen, O2, and CO from the atmosphere.

I have no bricks for this topic today, but I am thinking Basalt fabric, impregnated with metal.  (Not as bricks).

I am desiring light weight but durable mirrors for Heliostats. (And other items after that).

From post #10 of this topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars

So, hoping to extract metal from the ores (If they actually exist).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrowinning

So, I am not sure, but most likely sulfide solutions would be used?  That has to be created.

So I am supposing that if you can electroplate to glass, you might electroplate to a Basalt cloth mesh.
Electroplating to Glass:
http://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcon … ext=theses

Iron Plating:
http://www.finishing.com/259/82.shtml

Chromium:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_plating

Titanium appears to not be that compatible with electroplating, but perhaps can be done:
http://www.finishing.com/250/24.shtml

Nickel (Not listed yet as being significant in dunes, but likely in some iron/nickel meteors, so I will also address this).
http://electroplatingpk.blogspot.com/20 … ating.html

So what I am after Spacenut is a fabric of Basalt to be the cathode to electroplate to any metal possible, of course desiring preferred qualities.

For now I am desiring light weight but durable mirrors for Heliostats.  But if that works, there should be other applications.

I am wondering if you can plate alternate coatings of Iron, Chromium, Nickel, etc on to a web of basalt fabric.  Perhaps even making a steel like metal, but would settle for a curved light weight plate that can be polished and used in a heliostat as a mirror.  Of course this is for energy and greenhouse purposes.

I am not trained in chemistry, so if you want to you can likely catch me stupid here.  I recommend you help me solve the problem instead.

Just on a guess, a key problem is to get the Chromite out of the dune.  Maybe you can try the other two ores, but Chromite is a good start, and unfortunately I don't know how to separate it from the other dune materials, since I think it is not magnetic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromite

I guess first I would remove the magnetic materials, with will contain the Iron and Titanium, but apparently not the Chromium.

I would hate to have to soak the whole remainder, that would perhaps be wasteful, unless some other metals might come out of the Basalt.
Oh well, maybe someone will learn me how it is done.

You can't say I don't swing at the ball.

Alright, Louis and Spacenut seemed to go in the direction of LED illumination for plant growth in a topic;

http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5324

I am interested.  Louis also specified Roman Arch methods to build a growth chamber.

A article here appears to go into great details about the construction of Roman arch structures I think, on Mars!
http://themarspioneer.com/PioneerHouse.html

I would like to use those specifications to discuss a version of lake methods that would deviate from the use of the general use of transparent or translucent ice coverings.  GW Johnson has historically had significant things to say along these lines where regolith might be placed on top of ice on an ice covered lake to inhibit the evaporation of the ice, therefore protecting the lake.

There is this which has been offered in the past by RobertDyck, about a potential frozen sea;
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space … frozen_sea

And it might be briny which I don't mind at all.
Tom K. has mentioned an apparent slab of ice which although at a higher latitude, is almost certainly there;
http://www.space.com/30502-mars-giant-i … y-mro.html

And then of course there are higher latitude ice and glaciers, which likely exist to a large enough extent to allow for lakes to be created, with deepness of 33 to 600 feet, which from my perspective will be just fine, although I prefer 33 to ~150 feet more or less.  Sorry for the imperial units, I am short on time.

And now this offers power supplies from salt differentials, and temperature differentials.  Power supplies that should be reliable through seasons and dust storms.  Stored power, and thermal derived power, and solar power, and really also chemical power, the chemical power will be related to the collection of solar power most likely.

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6866

So I will try to quit fooling around.  You could have plastic diving bells such as this:

Only you would be lighting it up inside with LED's perhaps powered by fuel cells.
Or, you might build a Roman Arch on the bottom of a lake and just fill the top of it with air, the rest of it with water.  In such greenhouses as that you might grow a variety of aquatic / semi-aquatic plants, including rice and wild rice I presume, and duck weed, which is marginally eatable.

And here is a reference to plants that are aquatic which might also be suitable:
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7327

As for power sources for this you can try either type of nuclear, or various types of solar.

My favorite hope is that with concentrating mirrors, and catalysts, you could split CO2 or H20 or both to generate fuels and Oxidizers.

These gases could be conducted to fuel cells under the lake, and the solar collectors could also be a source of heat and fresher water for the lake.  The heat conducted to the more salty lower layers to keep them warm, and the fresher water conducted to the colder upper layers to keep them floating above the warmer salty layer.

In this case since you would not bring light in through the surface of the lake, you might even have ice 25 feet thick to 33 feet thick, and you could oxygenate all layers of water to the point where a diver could breath by this previously mentioned method.

http://www.livescience.com/3829-inventi … -fish.html

Your water would have sufficient Oxygen for life support (But you will need the apparatus functional), and your greenhouse diving bells and Roman Arch greenhouses will bubbles in them that a human could breath from, and also you could have "Dry Houses" where people could live.

Maybe they would be Roman Arch as well, but of course if you fill them completely with air, then you have to make sure they are properly counterweighted against the buoyancy of the air inside.

But doing all this you will be able to reduce your work with plastics and concentrate on Bricks, Ice, Water, and perhaps some Metal productions, and still perhaps have a thriving and happy way to live on Mars.

O.K. I hope you are not put off by my presence.  That can make sense to me, as a starter.

It seems to me that you want to fly a match to Mars and light a fire, not fly to Mars and make a match to light a fire.

What about flying a premade unite into a lava tube that has been completely scouted out.

http://www.space.com/18519-mars-caves-l … hotos.html

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lav … &FORM=IGRE

It will be heavy, and will have to hover, and drop into the hole and get under a rooftop and set down.  But then it will be radiation sheltered, and thermally sheltered as well.  And in this case, if it is nuclear, you don't have to be as equator dependent.  Also, you don't have to bury the thing, so that's less work to start with.

So the robotic thing flies into the cave, and a transponder allows it to communicate back it's health.  If it is good, your people land, and have an instant in situ robot that helps them grow food, and extract Oxygen from the atmosphere, maybe makes rocket fuel.  And then that leaves the people to do science, and get more water as a first task.

If there were ice deposits in the tube great, or maybe there will be ground ice nearby, or maybe water from soil.

Now I will just continue.  My next preferred move if the lava tube had lots of room would be to see if CO and O2 can be harvested directly from the atmosphere efficiently.  If so then you can run fuel cells from that, and import such fuel cells from Earth at first.  Those fuel cells would have the diodes directly tied into them, so that you could put the light emitting units into new "Gardens" you would build primarily from native materials.

If you cannot get the gasses from the atmosphere directly, then perhaps you make some type of solar equipment which can.  In any case you pipe a fuel and a Oxidizer to the fuel cells with LED's.   The piping could be made of some type of low grade iron, and perhaps plastics, as your start of building materials.

From there you might try to get to the point where you can deal with some kind of transparent greenhouse glaze to promote gardens.

By the way diluted urine is a good fertilizer to start with.

Just a proposal.  Do you have something else in mind?

From:

Index
» Life support systems
» Salt, Water, Power, Crops.

Post #3; Quote:

Such a method suggests that the bottom of a lake might be a good place to assemble some large items.  How you get them out when they are completed is another matter.  (A huge water lock?)

Thanks for the improvement for my understanding RobertDyck and Antius.

Louis, yes, ice is another option and of course how could I stand in the way of many alternate methods?  It would be silly.  You might want to look in this direction and consider if you want to try to integrate something like this to a lake.  This item however must be built where it never gets above freezing:
http://www.gizmag.com/nasa-3d-printed-h … ers/39673/

It just happens that I am interested in three items at this time.
1) Lake habitats.
2) Abiotic synthesis of biochemical.
3) Plastic greenhouses receivers which use heliostats to increase the amount of lumens received.  Even in this case, I anticipate using a underground cistern/lake as a escape route in the event of a receiver puncture.

All of these three will be related to the works mentioned in this topic, but #3, the Receiver will most likely just be a rip off of the work others have done, such as RobertDyck.

As for item #1, where I have three layers where;
-The outermost layer must endure the greatest temperature cycling.
-The middle layer of plastic will encapsulate ice pans, and perhaps have a more moderated temperature cycle.
-The greenhouses/diving bells will have a rather constant temperature.
So, I can mix plastics, perhaps the outer layer being PCTFE, the greenhouses for temperature purposes can be ETFE, and the ice pan encapsulation may be one or the other or perhaps something else.

As for U.V.:

I think fretting can safely be used either on the outer layer (If you can fret PCTFE), or on the greenhouses, to protect from U.V. spectrum which is counterproductive.  My reasons are, that for the outer layer, you don't care that much about permeability.  The differential pressure is slight at most.  Further the literature about fretting on ETFE indicates that the plastic still blocks water vapor, which would be a major function of the outer layer.  As for the greenhouses in the lake water, I anticipate that it will be rather practical to control what gasses are dissolved in the water, therefore permeability will be less of a concern.

My preference is to allow the U.V. in and to absorb it somewhere in the lake water and convert it to other spectrum, such as infrared or perhaps even to fluoresce it to visible.  (That will be something to work on).

Should the rate (Over a period of time) of deterioration of the PCTFE or ETFE be too costly, then I will opt for blocking the U.V. from entering the lake at all, block it at the outer layer.

If using that conservative method, we still have the PCTFE deteriorating, then I would intend to replace it periodically, like the epidermis of the skin.  The only thing that would stifle that would be cost.  That will be unknown until later.

As for permeable webs, I actually think their might be opportunity to bend that to our use.  No specific examples yet, but I think so.

You should try it.

This link, suggests that ETFE would work on Mars.  I am not questioning your authority on this but have they misnamed something else as ETFE?  Are they just lost in the woods as well?

http://voitlab.com/courses/thermodynami … Greenhouse

I may be out of touch for a while, getting ready for tomorrow.

Thanks again.

The use of ETFE for an artificial lake
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7326
It turns out apparently H20, and O2 are not very permeable through ETFE, but CO2 is.  So that is interesting.
And the ETFE can be modified to reject certain spectrums, such as U.V.  I don't know what reject is though, is it does the ETFE reflect the U.V. or absorb it?  I prefer that it would absorb it.

So going with the notion of ETFE water balloons where the content can freeze to become a "Ice Flow" surface for a lake, and over that a shroud of ETFE film which will hold an air pressure very similar to the outside air pressure, and will retain water vapor, a lake is possible.
So those ETFE elements would be preferred to allow U.V. through.

I have mentioned the Italian diving bell greenhouses, and also talked about pressurized tubes under 25 feet of water/ice.

I will not mutate that and try something else related to it.

I have talked about "Batch Bottle" vegetable gardening before, without much acceptance from others.  Here I will mention it again. 

But the bottles will be diving bells / Bottles.

A proposed shape would be that of a single honeycomb in a bee hive.  The open side at the bottom.  The window at the top, the six edges to the sides.

A likely maximum size being: with a top to bottom dimension of say 25 to 33 feet (Whatever is sufficient). 

Smaller ones could be tried first.

If using a large size, then a permanent installation.

If using smaller, then moveable.

They will all have to have ballast in them.  Perhaps ceramic parts sintered from sand dune materials

So, if you are working with small diving bells / Bottles, you can have a Sub-Fork-Lift bring them down to the bottom of the lake where they can be moved into a diving bell where a human can plant/harvest them.

If you are talking about big diving bells / bottles, you will leave them in place like a honeycomb, just under the ice pack.  Each will have communion with the lake below with a hole large enough for humans in suits, and their equipment to pass.  Should one spring a leak a means of escape will be available by simply swimming down.  This should work, unless it would be a "Blow Out" where the whole window exploded.

So really, if these things were done, you would only have a few feet of ice and perhaps four layers of ETFE to have the light pass through.

Your challenges are appropriate, I will try to argue to sufficiently address them.

Again:
http://www.swide.com/art-culture/nemos- … 2015/09/30

You said:

They say:

I am working with approximate estimations.  Doing this I am satisfied at this point if an assertion can be considered reasonably plausible.
If the estimation errs outside practicality, there are some tools to calibrate the situation and bring it into practical limits.

The some of the tools include:
1) Improved water clarity, allowing sunlight to penetrate better.
2) Concentrating reflectors.
3) Franken Plants: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles … d-idea.htm
(They would have improved photosynthesis)

We have two underwater greenhouse designs to consider so far. 
A) The diving bells they use, where an O2 low pressure atmosphere is required.
B) A 3D grid of pressurized tubes, where the highest horizontal tubes are to be transparent/translucent.

To bring as much light and heat into the lake as possible, it may be desired to discourage micro-organisms in the water itself, except for special isolated enclosures.  This would help water clarity, and would reduce the amount of effort needed to be expended to clean transparent / translucent wet surfaces.

By way of Henry's law, the amount of dissolved gasses in the water will be low.  The water temperatures will be cold in the case of this type of lake.  There should be no intentional effort to fertilize the waters, if the water layers are static, where you have 32 degF on top and 39 degF on the bottom and no turn over, this should reduce the amount of nutrients available.  Further, if necessary a poison might be employed to discourage microbes, but I would rather avoid it.

Without the poison option, it might be possible to strain out the free floating microbes (Algae), and therefore remove nutrients from the waters.

Should it prove necessary, these items:
A) The diving bells they use, where an O2 low pressure atmosphere is required.
B) A 3D grid of pressurized tubes, where the highest horizontal tubes are to be transparent/translucent.
Could be moved closer to the surface, but it would compromise other objectives.  For "A" you would need a pressure suit to have a person gardener work in the diving bell.  For "B", the counterpressure (Base Pressure) will fall below safety margins for emergencies where if a tube is ruptured a person might use an Oxygen mask to continue working, and might be fatal for depressurization.

So, I want to try for 25 feet (Base Pressure).  3.675 psi O2 for diving bells, and 9.8 psi O2/N2 mix for the pressurized tubes.

Concentrating reflectors:
Along side of and slightly below the horizontal tubes might be placed concentrating reflectors, to improve the amount of lumens in the horizontal tubes.  (This could be done for the diving bells as well).  This is easy enough to understand.  Perhaps they will be fixed, perhaps sun following.

Then there is the "Franken Plant" improvement of photosynthesis, and also other modifications of plants to make them tolerate lower light conditions.

*It is my understanding that many plants will do rather well with 1000 lumens, where our daylight might supply 10,000.

So, I have reasonable hopes that this concept is technically feasible by utilizing necessary compensating mechanisms.

Hopefully it would be sufficiently profitable and comfortable to justify the effort.

Again;
I want to try for 25 feet (Base Pressure).  3.675 psi O2 for diving bells, and 9.8 psi O2/N2 mix for the pressurized tubes.
In the worst case for depressurization of the tubes, Oxygen masks will deploy as in an airliner (Or trained people will simply retrieve them).
Also they will have the option to exit the depressurizing tubes by moving down vertical tubes to the bottom of the lake.

*Note: I have specified a preference for relatively sterile water for the main lake, but this does not exclude the option to have a transparent water filled bag in the lake where the nutrients are purposely enhanced to promote microbe growth.  (Waste treatment / Water recycling).

Done.

Spacenut, I have skimmed through the material and this post attracted me:

I will argue that for the purpose of human use, a water column can be sliced like an onion, with layers which each have a different potential for human use.

Go below 200 feet on the Earth, and ~600 feet on Mars, and standard diving methods will have to be replaced by more expensive and troublesome methods.   So, I will consider this the normal lower limit for human activity in water.  You would have to have a very large reason to compel you to try to work at higher pressures than that, so, from my point of view 5000 feet on Earth and 15000 feet on Mars are well out of any activity I would consider in any way rational.

In the gardens of Italy, also, I will argue that we have something new.  Although we have to be concerned about efficiency, and productivity, the early results are promising, and it is a thing in it's infancy.

I have no proof, but I have a lot of reason to think now that an artificial ice pack where ice chunks are coated with ETFE plastic, and where a plastic layer overlies the ice pack as described in this thread will serve to:
-Limit evaporation, recapture evaporation.
-Reduce thermal losses.
-Allow the passage of visible and UV light into an impoundment.
To me this signifies the possibility to simulate or artificially create an analog to shallow high latitude fresh water lakes.   And I anticipate that these bodies of water can be much more photo productive than such shallow high latitude fresh water lakes, because of the potential that they can be made to exist at lower latitudes, and also that snow will not cover them.

We have seen that in Italy they are employing diving bell type transparent/translucent structures.  This is likely to evolve into other things I think.

For instance, we might ask if we could find a suitable height in the water column on Mars say for a minimum survivable pressurization, and to allow light transmission to plants.  I think on Mars that might be about 25 feet of ice and water.  For diving bell structures, this would require a atmosphere of almost pure O2.  However, I am thinking that if you had a grid of tubes instead of diving bells, and that was laid out as a horizontal grid, then you could also have tubes that are pressurized.  So your counter pressure would give you 250 mb, but your tensile pressure in the tube network might allow you to add a significant amount more.  So, you might have a tube pressure of 10 lbs maybe, with an O2/N2 mix.  These horizontal tubes would be transparent/translucent.  But I would add opaque and insulated vertical (At a 45 degree angle actually) tubes, filled air.  Those would be escape and access pathways. 

So if your lake floor was 64 feet down, in the event of a leak, it would be obvious where it was.  Adheasive tape most likely would effect a temporary repair.  But if the damage were more serious, then you could either jump into a vertical tube and drop an elivation of 42 feet which on Mars would be like dropping 14 feet, and hitting water.  (I can think of ways of making that safer.  Or you might slide down 45 degree tubes.  The point is you would get to the lake bottom, where you could further seek protection from depressurization, and cold water.  You should be able to avoid the bends.

I think you get the picture.  It is a method, and in this case the survival logic is significantly different than for that of the Earth.

The temperature of the water should be realtively constant for the tube structure, and as previously stated, a leak from the tube structure should be obvious since it will be visible, and also audable.  Means to repair can come from the inside, and also with a diver from the outside.   I suppose that under certain circumstances, you could say the same for domes, or such structures in Martian atmpsphere, but what if your emergency happens in the dead of night when it is very cold outside?  Not as easy I think.

However, even though I have suggested this pressurized tube structure in a reservoir of water, I do not intend to be restricted to it.  Indeed diving bells might be quite OK for some purposes.

In my mind this however is not an OR situation.  It will be perfectly sensible to try many different things, and to see how practical they are.

Therefore sure other things.  I do not intend to not think about biotowers with heliostats in the open air.  You try lots of things, and you find out what works.  I anticipate that a mixture of methods will be used.  That's how things work on Earth.