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The simplest idea I can imagine is just a simple tower, a cable with the middle point over the tower, two identical loads in each end of the cable, and just make it rotate. The cable could be rolled up in each side, so the high of the could don't need to be too high, and with enough rotation, the cables will be near parallel to the surface.
The cables extends more and more, making the radius bigger and bigger. Naturally, when the radius extends, they will rotate slower, but the tower will push in the center more speed.
When the cables reach enough lenght, the speed of each end side could be enough high to reach orbital speed (just in opposite directions... and if it's parallel to Moon's rotation, one will be slower than the other... but could be enough to reach orbital speed in any case).
So... A not so high tower. A strong piece over the tower to push the cables as strong as needed, big cables, and probably the cables, the roller system could be a different part of the loads. It simply detach them.
In fact... with this system, because the radius is dynamic, it could be calibrate to work at a constant 1g equivalent acceleration on each side (just the radius grows until the tangential speed is reached).
I think its a very easy to build system.
For "open spaces" there is a something of a contradiction between greater illumination (which I agree is important) and radiation protection.
Complicated, but not impossible, playing with mirrors. Mirrors don't reflect dangerous radiation and I guess is more efficient than capture & create new artificial light.
And I think that artificial gravity is a requirement, at least in some places. For babies, resting places for sleep or recovery, etc.
Not necessary the whole colony, but specific places at least.
Horizontal position (resting) helps allowing smaller rotary buildings (sickness is reduced in this circunstance)
I just be happy if we will have a permanent settlement of 10-20 residents.
I agree that the numbers don't fit and we need to build likable places before start a real colonization.
Before that... just industrial and scientific outposts.
That's the reason because I think that we must do a "robotic colonization" before the human colonization.
A manned outpost? No problem. In fact, a hybrid manned/automated work could be beneficial to allow the fast deployment that allow the industrialization needed to fast build real homes.
Real homes needes...
Plenty of space.
(Fake) open spaces (big closed spaces with good illumination.
Artificial gravity.
Radiation protection at levels needed for live a whole life without high risk of premature cancer.
Good local food and water.
The level of services needed to raise a child. Healthcare, education, security, etc. etc.
If we reach that level, a lot of people could see Mars as a potential home, a place to live. If not... only adventurers and pionners will accept to go, and even less to stay there for a long time or ever.
Build a metal frame surround that can go over the whole structure and be piled up with regolith to provide [additional] radiation protection.
Under gravity, sounds like a good idea to use some kind of cement that after bind selfsupport its weight. Just to ensure you can add bigger layers and avoid structure problems that could cause some decompression.
Of course, not OUR Earth cement, based on water to bind. But there should be a good "cement-like" product for Moon.
If the goal is Terraforming, is a wasteful idea. Using to make greenhouses, for every kwh you spend into create the gases you trap a lot more from sun light. A lot more efficient any idea instead direct brute force warming.
But if the goal is to make things (massive manufacturing), certanly we could turn Mars into a gigant factory where there was so many nuclear energy as sun (fusion in the future) as much as allow the waste heat up to warm up Mars to Earth levels.
I don't know if hydrogen baloons could push a cargo so high that at high delta-v could move without important drag.
A horizontal tether could be used to launch a cargo very fast. The limit are g and tether resistance.
Using https://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/
With a cable with 250km radius (500 for both sides) at 4 g we could reach 11273 k/h. Not enough for LEO but a reasonable first stage equivalent.
So, with a balloon you put your spaceship into a tether with a equivalent weight in the other side and begin to rotate at 1g at first and accelerating. Like a gigant carousel or like a sling.
250km is a very long radius, taller than the balloon height so cable would need to be extended in the process being rolled at first and unwinded as the speed become faster and faster.
The tension of the cable should be close to magnitudes of a gravity elevator but the shorter longitud could make things easier.
louis,
You need about 2.5x as much atmosphere above you on Mars to provide the same pressure as on Earth, due to the lower gravity.
I think that it's 3, just like gravity.
But per surface unit.
As Earth has 3,5 more surface, I think that we need like 0,85 Earth atmosphere mass to fill Mars up to 1 atmosphere pressure on Mars.
I think that there is some interesting concept around this. A colony doesn't need in fact to be a human (manned) colony. It could be a robot colony.
Of course, human colony is own true goal, but a robot colony means production so it could growth mainly without direct human intervention (so, present on the planet/moon)
The idea is to decouple mass from production capability as fast as possible. Because moving mass meaning move a lot of mass, and mass implies big rockets and careful plans, this way is very slow.
When a colony machine exists, one machines could fix or change other machines, through IA or remoted controlled. We can have a remoted controlled colony on the Moon without have any astronaut there in fact, but a lot of people involved on Earth doing plans testing on simulation and trying frequently instead of use non-tolerant to faults missions.
Though that approach, we could create a exponential production capability with a constant effort (that it's what we will have on a limited Earth)
One interesting theory of pamspermia is about multiplanetary/multistellar evolution. From our limited perspective we assume that evolutions occurs in our planet but if we have a open and fluid channel of life transfer between planets and even stellar systems, then some difficult evolutions like from prokariote to eukariote could be so difficult to appear than it's more easy to receive that evolution trait than generate in the same planet.
So... perhaps planets and stellar systems are evolve as a collective. Eukariote or similar born one in a thousand planets, the rest import them though panspermia. The same could be for other difficult "jumps" like sex and some adaptations.
It that theory was correct, then a lot of planets could share a lot of DNA, just because our environments are not as closed as we thing. Even some kind of DNA transfers like alleged "DNA junk" that could be deactivated DNA by random mutations that could reactivate though inverse mutations and virus that could transfer DNA from some species to another, that could even means gene transfer though the cosmos using other ultraresistant species like water bears, bacterias and later spread in the destination planet though virus into species not capable of survive (not the entitie, of course but not even some piece of body that could make DNA to travel).
That could explain while species adapt so "fast". We were not linked to one only planet, but related with a whole galaxy that would be transfer DNA and have even more time evolving because it doesn't born with our solar system only.
That could mean that the time of emerging technological species is "recent", because perhaps sex evolution born mostly at the same biological age (from a geological perspective) in the galaxy at the same time. Perhaps even the cambrian explosion is galaxy linked, so it's possible that firsts civilizations born only some hundred millions ago.
At the same time, that hipothesis should mean that even in our solar system should be other life forms and linked to the same DNA than us.
It would be pretty hard to fake a failure, though? There ain't no stealth in space, only strategic misdirection. It would be pretty obvious if it actually succeeded, since there would be a satellite that wasn't there before.
Are you sure?
I'm not. A specially dark satellite with refrigerant to get very cold should be very difficult to see in both, light and infrared spectrum. And with a later change on orbit it could be hide as space trash.
RobertDyck wrote:Yes, there are natural nuclear reactors. There's one in Canada right now, a mine that has the highest concentration of uranium ever discovered. No one has figured out how to mine it, because it's naturally reacting. It produces heat and neutron radiation. It's so radioactive that any miner would be killed. But it's still there, no explosion, no crater.
I thought Oklo was the only one known to have ever existed in Earth's history, but in any case the reactors are rare enough to preclude an explosion from having happened in the 4.5 billion years of Mars's existence. And even if there was an explosion, there would very likely be radiogenic glass from such explosion on the Martian surface, which has yet to be found (although in all fairness the rovers can only look for so much).
As RobertDyck I think that natural nuclear detonation is impossible, at least with stable matter. Perhaps a natural reactor in a huge asteroid that though a huge impact could detonate... I'm not sure... But not spontanously.
It's different that a nuclear reactor generate a "gas explosion". Because a nuclear reactor could stop or start simply by ground movements or moderator movements (like water), a fast raise of heat could evaporate some substance and turn some solid or liquid into a gas generating a big explosion. Or other reactions that accumulate some chemical that could be later generate fast oxidation and a explosion. Just like hydrogen explosion in Fukushima.
It's not a nuclear explosion but a chemical explosion driving by a compound generated by a natural nuclear reactor. It's not the same. Or a fast phase change to gas of some substante too, like in a volcano, but with a different source of heat.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense, although for the first mission, perhaps they would go with pre-prepared integral suits.
SpaceNut wrote:Well make the suit with extra pockets to hold the extra weigh but that said we will use insitu materials as its to costly to bring it from earth....
It's probably has a extra weight than nothing on Mars, but it's not the same that gravity. The weight through this system is external pressure in some places in the body, while gravity acts equals in all points including internal fluid like blood.
At long term, rotatory buildings are a bood idea.
I think that a good structure is cilindrical, while the floor is perceived as a stair or a slope. It allows more "horizontal space" as we are habituated. More like soft cones truncated and stacked one over another.
And big radius. Not all the building is neccesary, only the ring. If the weight of the structure is too much it can be attached to a stacked external rings (viewed as underground from a person inside the rotatory building).
As we can stack in the same level as the length of the building, it would allow bigger buildings.
Probably walls would be a good idea to allow stop anything inside the building and don't fall from a high altitude. Shelves on the Mars floor direction.
It could levitate like a magnetic train, so total energy lost normally is small.
So your vision is of Titan as a City Planet like Coruscant in Star Wars.
http://www.swtorstrategies.com/wp-conte … dkabab.jpg
Not exactly my idea of what terraforming would be.
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 … udedit.png
My vision looks more like this. While we could use mirrors, we'd be stuck with a 16 day rotation period if we did. I think we could use solar power to heat up an artificial Sun. Imagine if we were to reverse the paths of light rays so that the go to a surface rather than being emitted from the Sun's surface. If we can achieve the same light intensity at the surface of the Sun, we can heat another object to Solar Temperatures. Once it is hot enough, it ill give off its own illuminations and illuminate Titan.
Well. While you use energy, it generates a lot of waste heat, and throught water exchange, a lot of vapor, so while from a infrarred the Moon could be more similar to the first image, at the visible light it should be more similar to the second.
In any case, outside aspect is not too much relevant. From ground perspective, I will do a lot of plants. A city could be integrated with plants to create a wonderful environment.
It's simple because it doesn't need a plan. It's just make dommed cities, more, and more, until the people generate so much heat that the low atmosphere reach Earth's temperature level.
Then you can focus into turn breathable.
Not need to wait for a megaproject to terraform. It's only that paraterraforming moves naturally from closed to open form when the waste hear is so high that you can warm the whole atmosphere.
I hope that far way planets could have deep atmospheres where warm atmosphere are only on low altitude and on high altitude the temperature is so low that even small moons won't lost fast by thermal escape.
A lot of reactors means redundancy too. ¿One reactor fails? ¿Ten? No problem. You have time to repair them.
The number doesn't need to be so high if we build bigger models. But I doesn't see why a high number is a problem.
Why not a simple approach. Make as nuclear fusion plants as you need, in different places of the moon, and use artificial light with the fusion energy.
Simple.
5 Petawatts could be enough. Around half million 10 GW fusion plants.
Bruteforce. But even more efficient that create a big ball of fusion that waste a lot of energy in wrong direction.
And generate a lot of energy to use as you want. Because only a small fraction is needed to be converted into visible light, the rest only is used to heat the moon, you can use this usefull energy to whatever you want.
It is some kind of open paraterraformation, where energy is artificially supplied from fusion directly created on reactors.
A terraformed Mars would have a oxygenated atmosphere. In this postterraforming atmosphere, hydrogen would bind with oxygen to form water, and water will have a frozen trap in high altitude, so I think that hydrogen will be lost very slowly.
A lot of oxygen exists in the surface with other minerals, so I think that to replesh oxygen won't be a problem. Some hydrogen will be lost in any case. Even with the cold trap, there is always water vapor that will reach higher altitude where the temperature inversion take place.
So I would have a benefit if the artificial magnetosphere is not a simple shield like on Earth but a more complex and sophisticated shaped that trap solar wind rather than deflect it. So it could be that the net effect of the solar wind could be positive instead of negative in hydrogen terms.
The only problem would be nitrogen. The artificial magnetosphere will lower the escape but periodic imports will be necessary. Ammonia comets would be probably the easiest way to import more nitrogen.
The Plasma Magnet rotating dipole field is created via a loop antenna causing the magnetic field to develope whencurrent is passed through the plasma.....
The Plasma is charged and will be held in the local field of the satelite creating the RF energy. Link these together as suggested to create a ring the we can intensify over time....
Yes. It's the idea, using a cloud of satellites that create a joint field to get advantage of the solar wind to selfreinforcement instead of propulsion of this Plasma Magnet. Using the plasma as a big electromagnet instead of the satellites directly to create a enormous torus around Mars made of plasma instead a complex infrastructure like a ring or something like that. Because plasma could be trapped from incoming plasma, perhaps we could generate a inmense magnet from "small" satellites.
I suppose that in the size ratio than Plasma Magnet, but instead of a simple magnet, a cloud of thousand or even millions of satellites.
What I am thinking of is creating an electromagnetic field via orbiting satelites that have the field pointing to creat a magentic net from the polarity add fast moving ions and the field will intensify on either side of the partial barrier that we would be creating. Those on the sunny side could be solar powered and stationary to start with the dark side could be possibly RTG powered. Once there is link up for the fields and they are capturing particles then maybe the field satelites could be nudged into motion....
We must understand solar wind and plasma interaction well. Perhaps the satellites could not only create a simple magnetic field, but accelerate existing particles to build a plasma ring around the chosed orbit, with a group of satellites that bound the particles around the ring. Perhaps we could even capture and deflect the solar wind to be trapped in the ring like a magnetic bubble (as in fusion reactors or particle accelerators), so the solar wind could feed the shield instead of pushing it.
I don't know if balloons could ascend a "railgun" enough high to allow the "ship" to be launched to orbit speeds or enough speed to allow a SSTO.
Instead of a simple platform you could ascend a group of balloons to ascend a complete big magnetic rail launcher.
Bad system for manned because the high acceleration, but it could be ok for a lot of cargo.
Which speed could be reached at balloon altitude without too much friction?
Enough to allow a SSTO with a good fraction of rocket mass/cargo?
This is a fascinating 100-page report that was just announced by the National Space Society today
I think that, in a arquitecture of multiple launches, it will be helpfull to have some ion space tugs with robot arms.
This spacecrafts could move huge mass efficiently between orbits, and, from time to time, some of the cargo could add a fuel depot for the own tug.
This should reduce a lot the cost of mass cargo between Moon or Mars and Earth
Moon could put mass on Earth orbit with a rail launcher easily and with these tugs the cargo could be put on LEO using low fuel.
Manned mission are different. Time is important and ion thrusters are too slow. But cargo for life support for a base could be moved by this tugs.
I will extend my own definition from "allow human and/or other Earth macroscopical life forms to live" to only "macroscopical life forms to live".
We could considere the possibility of alternative non actual human compatible biospheres. For example, we know that some moons has an ocean or enough ice to allow a ocean biosphere with some terraforming like changes. Even if that biosphere don't exist, we could add the changes to build not a replica of Earth but a new kind of living thriving world like a huge ocean full of life forms including new created by engineering. Perhaps including new branches of humankind compatible is this alternative biospheres or new intelligent species created by us based on ourselves.
We don't need to transform every world in the same replica of Earth. Instead, we have the chance to build a biodiversity only using the known life forms as a template not as a goal to replicate. Perhaps, in a far future, we found new life forms and we could spread this new forms too.
I see humankind has the chance to be the gardeners of the galaxy. And terraforming is a basic tool to do it.
I think that Terraforming is to build a environment that when completely built is stable or near stable without extra efforts (for example, enough to exists by thousand of years without new human intervention) that allow a human and/or other Earth macroscopical life forms to live and thrive without need of assisted technologies (so, they can breath, radiation is below danger levels and solar light and day is tolerable).
If the enviroment is not stable and technology is always required to exists we are on the paraterraforming domain. For example, if Venus require and permanent soleta to be "terraformed", then Venus is partially paraterraformed and fully terraforming is never achieved.
Perhaps neither Mars and Venus couldn't be completely terraformed in the sense of be completely selfsustained without further human intervention. Mars is the most promising because with the correct changes, atmosphere could be stable by thousand of years. Solar is enough, and with enough thick atmosphere, temperature and radiation shielding should be ok.
Venus has a bad day duration and change rotation of Venus requires an enormous energy far beyond current technology.
So Venus would require some tricks like mirrors that move Venus outside full terraforming.
There will be on near future capability to create extreme large but lightweight structures to build things really big.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/02/nasa-n … te-on.html
A mass driver from Earth to Mars will be possible with limited mass. Perhaps a ratio 5:1 with launch spaceship will be possible.
The mass driver between GEO and LEO, enough far from LEO to avoid that each launch change its orbits too much to go inside Earth atmosphere. Later, using efficient ion propulsion, the mass driver recovers the original orbit.
The spaceship will need propulsion in any case. For transfer corrections and to slow down the speed to avoid the need of very high speed reentry on Mars.
Because the launch could be high speed, ion propulsion could be used for the spaceship too.
Advantages.
Near as fast as pure chemical.
Faster than pure ion.
Near as efficient as ion propulsion.
More reusing infrastructure.
Disadvantages.
Orbit align is difficult for reuse... or more fuel will be needed losing the advantage.
No experience with this kind of technology. Unknown problems.
Do you forget chinese?
I think that the numbers of Philip Metzger are too optimistics, but it is true that robotics advance a lot faster than any space related activity (if it grows at all).
This ideas are only on paper, but there is more real and mature projects on space manufacturing like http://www.tethers.com/SpiderFab.html
