New Mars Forums

The link above the picture discusses some of that.  Sorry for my previous un-useful reply.

my understanding is that in Antarctica bowl shape rocks can be caused by Brine sitting in the bowl and then frost etching the rock .  the hole gets enlarged that way .

Hope I did not wreck your deal Tom.  It's just that I have been working on such thinking for a long time.  Perhaps 38 years actually.  I have a lot of materials to associate with it.

I do like the terrarium garden notion.

For instance if you were going to live above water, but wanted to use the method to grow plants, I can speculate on the following.

A pond with a clear dome above it. 

At planting time, you place your planted terrariums which would be weighted down  in a dry pond.  You slightly pressurize the dome, and you pour ice water into it.  Then you let the top freeze.

Then you can remove the pressurization, but will still need the enclosure to be vapor sealed.  The ice, if perhaps a foot thick might be very cold on top, and of course the temperature of melt water on the bottom.

During the night the ice would thicken.  During the day it would thin, hopefully mostly from the bottom, but of course some might come off of the top, and the pressure rise slightly, but the dome should hold in that increased pressure.  When the air temperatures approached the condensation point of vapors in the dome towards sunset, a pump could pull the air in, and by pressure and cooling, condense it to liquid, and that liquid could be re-injected into the pond waters.

Inside each terrarium might be a very small robot, for inspection, and perhaps to do some manipulations of the plants such as pruning, or fertalizing.

When the crops were ready, the water would be pulled out of the dome (Perhaps pumped into another), and the terrariums would be exposed to dry air, and the dome could be opened up and each terrarium pulled into a chamber where the plants would be harvested.

Of course in this scheme, the temperatures in the terrariums might get as cold as 0 degC, but some plants can put up with that.  During the day the terrariums should rise in temperature, just how much might depend on the construction of the terrariums.

The point is that you get frost shielding in the night, and it might be noticed that it should be possible to keep the terrariums from overheating as well.  Also there is some radiation protection for the plants, and your dome at max only has to be rated to hold a minimal pressure above the local ambient pressure.

You need a good source of water of course.

Some plants can tollerate a light frost.  For those, the water could be salty, and it's temperature lower than the freezing point of fresh water, and that would allow the vapor pressure of the water and ice to be below that of Martian ambient, which might be a benefit.

I did mention balast weights, and if they were inside the terrariums, they could also absorb heat during the day and release it at night, so although the surrounding water would be a liquid 0 degC (or a bit more), the inside of the terrarium might stay at perhaps a low of a few degrees above freezing, which would be helpful with less hardy plants.

Also there is the option to have liquid filled terrariums where seaweed would be grown, but typically water plants are not a well developed crop type.
Terrariums could hold fresh water or salt water.

One advantage of an ice layer on top is if there is a fault in the ice (Brakage), water rushes up into the crack, encounters colder ice, freezes.  It's self scabbing up to a point.

While I would prefer salty ice covered bodies of water, for the most part if they are generated off from say sub soil ice or the ice caps themselfs, then the probable most harmonious environment that could be most easlily created in mass would be a (Somewhat) fresh water sea, (Ice covered). 

If the ice were kept translucent then some solar energy would enter.  The temperature on the underside of the ice would be 32 degF/0 degC

Lower in the water column it would be possible for fresh water to reach 39 degF/3.89 degC.

So the bottom of the enclosure is slightly buffered to a temperature above the bottom of the ice, and of course the bottom of the ice is much more suitable to human survival most likely than is the surface.

Now if you want to build things out of plastic, do so on the bottom of the body of water where the temps are already a rather stable 39 degF/3.89 degC.

How much light can get through the ice? Depends on the character of the ice.  If it's manufactured, then perhaps a significant part.

Build a bunch of water filled tubes on the bottom?  Having done so, if the pressure there were 1 bar, then you could saturate the water in the tubes with the equivalant of 1000 bars of disolved Oxygen.  This could possibly allow for a centrifuge type oxygen extractor to allow you to breath from the water.

If you feel the light is too dim?  How about plastic concentrating mirrors floating in the water to focus the light comming through the ice.

But Nuclear is OK.

Artificial lights?  Sure.

How about air filled bottle/terrariums/gardens that are allowed to float up to the bottom of the ice.  During the day they could heat up well above 32 degF/0 degC.  In fact they might be like a thermous bottle with a vacuum insulator between two walls, but I don't think it has to go to extremes.

At night the crops either fall to 0 degC (Just above freezing water), or a cord pulls them down to the bottom where it is a bit warmer.  They could be inspected then.  When the crops were ready, take the bottle into an enclosure, harvest the crop, and replant and redeploy.  Of course water plants would be fine.  Growing on the bottom or on platforms further up.  If fresh, then maybe no bottle.  If salt then in a bottle.

Lots of fake work jobs featherbedded into the works, and I am not talking union jobs either.

As for frustration, I share it.  I would say if nothing boils up for Mars that is real in the next 10-15 years, then it is time to look at the Moon instead.  At least if there is something going on with the Moon, then it becomes a potential jumping off point that could eventually bring Mars into reach.

OK, it gives the roundheads something to do.

I would think that an eliment to consider which I don't think has been mentioned yet would be a local government entity.

Such an entity could issue bonds.  Collect property taxes, and very likely collect income taxes.

By selling bonds, large and small entities could invest, speculating that they would have a probability to get a return.

Perhaps it could be as much as 5% of a common persons retirement portfolio.

Companies set up on Mars could even consider stocks.

Companies based on Earth having holdings on Mars or busness in transfering goods and services between the two worlds would also likely have stocks.

SpaceX for instance if they bought some bonds from the Mars entity, would have every reason to want to make maneuvers that were more likely to prosper the settlement.

I understand that there are some issues about ownership of an outerspace property, but then there would be incentive for the international community to make a limited land grant to that government, with stipulations on usage and distribution.  Selling land then would also be a source of revenue for a governing entitity issuing bonds.

Of course there would be corporations international and eventually interplanetary, and they would have perhaps holdings within and under some circumstances outside of such a land grant area.

Then there would be research facilities which I would expect would have special dominion over their assets.

Thanks for the reply.

I have my own notions of a device to access the Martian environment, which would have some greater strengths than a CounterPressure Suit or a bag suit, but it also would be inferior in some ways.  Still thinking it out.  It would be more suitable for some tasks.  Would borrow some from each I suppose, just as the CounterPressure suit borrows the helmet.

Long durations in a low pressure environment might be the situation.  I guess if it were ever made, users would figure out just how long can be tollerated.

Thanks for expaining that.

I found the 95% O2 + 5% CO2 article again.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic … mage-brain

Of course this applies to stroke victims, but I would think that it might also apply to space activities as well. 

Do you know how long a person can be exposed to a 200-250 mb Oxygen dominated mix and not have health issues?

Maybe the above problem is solved just by having a lower pressure?

Tom seems to have said:

Actually it depends on what your objective is. 

It appears to me that floating habits is the only pay as you go method.  Nobody is going to invest in converting a planet to future habitation if it is not about to give near future pay out.

Once you have a Venus largely populated by a unified mesh of floating habitats, the pressure to terraform further (Assuming you got rid of the Sulphuric Acid), is greatly reduced. 

With the acid gone the temperatures should fall.  With the floating habitats reflecting light, the temperatures should fall.

At some point it should be possible to mine the surface, using presumed sophisticated machinery.

As for atmospheric mining, the objective is not to throw away CO2, but to capture it into tanks in orbit and sell it presuming there is a buyer that has use for it.  There could be no market, or some twist of the future as per technology, might make it very much in demand.  For instance rotating habitats constructed from Mercury or our Moon might be traveled to the Venus (Proximate) orbit to harvest solar energy, and maybe they would stop by in Venus orbit to be filled with CO2 and N2.  Of course H2 would have to be brought in from elsewhere.  That would provide a market that could expand wildly, and eventually draw down the atmosphere of Venus, and also provide enormous habitat for humans. 

If not then floating habits, and mining on the hot surface of Venus, but if it or something like it occured, then put domes at the poles, and contain some of the water in them.

Bring Hydrogen in?  Only if it is economical.  As for Oceans, if you have the sky mostly obscurred by floating habitats, then the thermal difference between day and night would already be moderated to a degree, and perhaps at the poles let significant light in, but other places where you still are just mining, just a little light.

Although it is great to think of schemes to terraforming, if the process involves humans, it will require a payroll, and a budget to buy goods and services to improve Venus.  Many schemes ignor that.

If it is our robot replacements doing it, then they don't require terraforming of Earth like planets, they would be likely to do well in Moon like worlds.

I don't see terraforming Venus as a process of Replicating Earth, just making Venus more useful to humans.

It's a good thing that some type of floation is availible, or Venus might be out of reach.

I might add that by capturing the bulk or all of the H2SO4 and extracting the "Water", and then keeping it in containers, such as floating cities, the process of nature converting Sulphur Dioxide back to H2SO4 would be interupted, and also the greenhouse effects on Venus would be strongly deminished.  Perhaps eventually it would cool down enough for CO2 to liquify in the night side and rain?  If so, then the cold of the upper atmosphere would be quickly delivered to lower layers, and the warmer lower layers would be displaced upward as the "Rain" boiled at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide

Maybe it could happen.

If it did then the atmosphere would turn over, and hot layers would be exposed to space, and radiate off heat perhaps, since the H2SO4 protective greenhouse vapor layer and particulated (Clouds) would be gone.

I am not sure, but I susspect that Sulphur Dioxide clouds would more reflect sunlight than provide a greenhouse effect, but I am not sure about that.

Thanks for the education.