New Mars Forums

I am not trying to gloss over reality: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … ajaxserp=0  Quote:

The item I am most interested in is the claim that with 42 engines, Starship will only need 3 trips to LEO to go to Mars, not 10.  I don't know if that is 3 refilling's and 1 Starship, or 2 refilling's and 1 Starship.  Most likely the total of 4, at best, I think.

I remain optimistic over the long term for Starship like spacecraft.  Knowing one instance where the ship has a fault, is a good thing, this early in the program but at a rather high cost.

A guess I am going to make is that they may have been trying to improve auxiliary thruster method, maybe to deal with the problem of Ullage Gas Method failure in the last flight.

The video try's to be an excessive downer later in its play.  It is not as if we burned 3 people to death as happened in Apollo.  What is the thing to do?  Give up?

Of course not.  China and others will not give up and they know how close SpaceX is.

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I think that this is kind of a good find: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … 70d50110a0  Quote:

I do think that this moves in the direction of having a more healthy population.  Both the avoid the spread of things like Covid-19, and if done correctly to provide improved nutrition.

And with the possibility of lower prices, ultimately.

Although eating can often be a social event, even so, "Makers" that create food items may use a humanoid robot and a robo-taxi to deliver food to people's homes.

So, people who do not value cooking much, might not even need a kitchen, or not much of one.

I seem to recall that Romans, generally did not do their own cooking but would go and get something.  Not sure.

But rather than TV dinners, people might have delivery, which could be healthier, provided that good standards were maintained.

So, could this cut the cost of food in half?  Well maybe if you are having the food made for you.  But if you are fixing the food yourself then there is a cost of your time and labor.

But this is an interesting "Other" robot sort of thing.

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Obviously, if fusion of any kind appears, then this would be helpful for a Mars settlement.

I think that possibly terraforming will go relatively fast for Mars, at first.  An atmospheric pressure of 2 to 2 1/2 that of the now, and perhaps even some human assisted biospheres possible.

So, of course if Fusion becomes real then the more outer solar system becomes in reach.

Accessing Ceres and Vesta with Space Elevators would be attractive: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … r-AA1H1h2x

And I suppose Callisto is worth looking at.

But Titan, if it has no life, with fusion, I expect that Helium would be a byproduct.

Titan with Fusion, would really be valuable.  Floating Cities?  Helium and Heat.  Or at least aircraft that would allow passengers to view Saturn and to get above the Tholen's, perhaps to see the sunlight.

I wonder if we could devise synthetic gravity machines that could operate in the atmosphere of Titan.  I will make a basic attempt.

Here is my first try:

Spheres spinning within spheres, within a box, and with a cone in the center.  A sort of Onion Habitat.

I am supposing that Helium from Fusion will be available.  So, then by complex methods of mixes of gasses, N2/Helium more on the outside, and then getting to N2/O2 in the cone.

The reason for so many layers is to divide the speed differential of the box to cone, between multiple "Onion" shells.  I am supposing that an air bearing effect could work.  I am hoping that by dividing the task between layers, none will exceed the sound barrier.

I am also hoping that the dunes at the equator are comet dust as some have suggested.

Multiple layers may also allow the conservation of heat internally.  So using Helium and Heat the device might hover high in the atmosphere and the top of the cube would all the viewing of Saturn.

Anyway I am open to criticism.

But with this device losing air pressure to the vacuum of space would not be a problem.

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If Pluto and Triton could somehow be caused to retain a N2 dominated atmosphere, then this might be done there as well.  Also, maybe Eris and some other Dwarf Planets.

Fusion Required, however.

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We should have a concern for bad actors in all of this, as the Starships started to blow up when the Musk Hate showed up.

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I thought I might look for evidence of some of what I said in the previous post: https://www.sciencing.com/do-ocean-tide … s-5535690/  Quote:

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-libra … n-emotions
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https://shunspirit.com/article/do-new-m … full-moons
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I have had a somewhat silly theory that periodically the fertile women in a village get crabby on the same cycle and then the men that are able leave the village to go kill things because of it.  Thus, procuring animal food for the females to eat.

But of course I am wondering if a Lunar Tide could produce timing of relative abundance of food and other resource procurement that may be convenient for a womans first month of pregnancy.

Well I have something.  I was looking for low tides and high tides: https://astrobackyard.com/how-the-moon- … the-tides/  But there are two of each during one Moon orbit.

OK, due to the Sun and Moon together, this is much more complex than I had yet considered.  However I was looking for the Low Tides, and the High Tides.  At low tide people could collect food that is stranded in tidal pools, and apparently that would happen most strongly two times a month.

High tides are interesting as they might wash some things up, but I don't think quality food would come that way.  Although I recently read an article that indicated that Neanderthals may have eaten magots.  But that is disgusting but maybe a very hungry person could do that.  I don't know if that could be made safe.  Maybe somehow with fire?

https://www.science.org/content/article … their-diet
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So, then maybe dead fish as lures for insects and for magots?  Yum-Yum!

But in much later era's perhaps high tides would affect the ability to run fishing boats, although I am not educated in the details of that technology.

So, I have another sort of, maybe thing.

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OK, dead fish as a lure:

https://fishyfeatures.com/the-shocking- … -revealed/
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Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to scroll the article.

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So, for instance if you could have a throwing stick you might injure a bird that came to feed and capture it.  Similarly, perhaps other animals such as crabs? perhaps?

So, I don't really know if a high tide would provide relatively new dead fish, but maybe.

And I do not have a great deal of understanding of any kind of timing that the tides would give.  Although some types of fish traps might work better with certain types of tides.

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Some fun stuff for the Moon:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … i-AA1G4LRG  Quote:

And this other item: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … r-AA1GDRA0  Quote:

I will look into these more later as I might have time.

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Very good "Kondratiev Cycle"(th).  I will take a look at it.

One that has rumors around it is the Moon cycle.

This might have mattered for night-time activities such as hunting or procreation.

I have been told that females cycle together if they are in a building, so going from irritable and unhappy to exuberant, perhaps.

Some have said that this is due to the Moon, which never made sense to me, but a full moon, might be an opportunity to do hanky-panky which might be suppressed socially during the day.  In centuries ago, times, it was common for people to sleep in two sessions, they would get up in the night and do something.  Although this could be prayers, it might also be things that a social rigor imposed during the day would not allow.

But then the tides.  Many people have lived and do live near the tides.  This might affect nutrition, and then would be very important to time female fertility.  For instance, the first month of a pregnancy could be very important in that regard, to have a successful pregnancy.

I feel it is better to try to understand and to "See", than to bump your head on objects in the dark.

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SpaceX seems to think that they can ramp up to produce 1000 Starships a year.  That does not quite mention Superheavies.

So, some form of Aquisition of Mars seems possible.

The sub-part of the human population that we have sometimes called European divides primarily into Farmer dominant in the south, Yamnaya in the north, and remnant of hunter gatherer in the Atlantic coast.  But in reality, there has been a lot of mixing.

As a opinion of mine, I will say that I think that the Farmer weight in the north of club med, has a tendency to try to organize humans into farm animals.  And this is a sort of genocide attempt from above.  The Yamnaya, remnant has a tendency to mutual exterminations sideways.  The Hunter Gatherers I suppose just happened to leave some traces between being exterminated by these two forces.  I will not proclaim the Hunter Gatherers as "Hero Victims" nor will I look down on them either.

I mention this as because we have to deal with the mass phycology of these various groups.  This model can be expanded to the whole world, with similar classifications, I believe.  If you lived where agriculture was rewarding, then you got into vertical enslavements, as there would be those to rule and those to serve.

If you came from a more north location your existence would have to depend on the development of technology, that was not as dependent on agriculture related technologies.  But as soon as you could develop the correct technologies, you very likely would migrate to less cruel habitat.  Perhaps obliterating peoples you conquered, or taking them in like herds of livestock.

So, visions of Mars, may depend on the mentality of the group thinks that come out of these populations.

America is to some extent an extension and an expansion of this process.  Many of us resent being seen as potential farm hands for the high and mighty, or to be Cattle/Chatel for resentful groups to demand tribute from.

Where I am going to is to see Mars as a portion of a Solar System wide expansion of the human race, and seeing it from American eyes, I am not wanting to cuddle with either the High Elites Vertical Oppression, or the Tribal Horizontal Wars of conquest and exterminations/subjugations.

So, for me Mars is a steppingstone to release a portion of the human race from the power and control of either of the oppressors.

And so the urge to make Mars into a second green Earth does not push on me as much as it might on the Gentlemen Farmer classes, who simply want to meter goods to the serfs and to do the minimal amount of useful work possible.

A means to make Mars more useful to the purpose of keeping the human race from eating its brains seems desirable to me.

The urge to become ever more efficient, is also a pathway to the loss of capability.  But you must be sufficiently efficient and competitively efficient and yet competitively capable.

Due to concerns about energy needs, many new sources of energy are on the threshold of appearance to become real.  At least it looks that way to me.  Among those are fusion.

Fusion will unlock the solar system out to the Oort Cloud and perhaps beyond over a long period of time.

So, Mars modified might be considered a pathway out to that future.  And a hope of stopping the human brain from shrinking, and the human race becoming a dim-witted superorganism of specialists who exist to support a population of "Baby-Kings" above, and Mass Murderers horizontally.

So, I prefer to see Mars as not a second Earth, but its own possibly useful thing.

Heating the planet by any method, too much may be counter to that utility of Mars.  But what you have suggested, the thickening of the atmosphere, may be useful.

However, we are going to have to evaluate the situation of permafrost.  Is permafrost keeping the near surface water from sinking down into the deep cracks of the planets crust?

Mars seems to have a crack problem.  Most of the water is down there many Kilometers.  I do not know if it is saturated or not.  Could more water go down there?  If we melted large seas, would the permafrost under them eventually melt and allow the water to drain down there?  If so, then we would want to manage the water to keep it from doing that.  Small basins such as canals and lakes might be able to maintain a relatively impermeable permafrost bottom.  But this would require intricate methods of water management.

But we are somewhat in luck because even a planet Mars with Earth's atmosphere, would be a glacial planet.  Without clever tricks such as particles, you mention Calliban, or without an alternate trick, Mars would need an atmosphere of 2 bar to be as warm as Earth on average.

We would be lucky with the particles to get 2 to 2 1/2 times the current amount of atmosphere of Mars.

As you have said this would improve the radiation concern, and from my point of view assist in making things like canals and lakes.  Those likely covered in ice and/or covered in artificial enclosures.

So, such a Mars would allow for forms of agriculture, but there would be a technological demand if it is to be done.  This may help to prevent "Verbal-Violent" dumb-dumbs from ruling and breeding the human race to stupidity.

In space, where technology is required, "Verbal-Violent" dumb-dumbs will tend to damage the technological infrastructure that their lives depend on, so a sort of self-extermination.

There is some hope there.

I do favor terraforming Mars, but it may be that rather than trying to make it a second Earth, we would be better off making it into a better Mars, from the point of the human need to not loose it's intelligence and ability to co-operate.

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I would like to transfer a concept from another topic to this one: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 62#p232262

I am going to look at this for the Moon, and express opinions about adaptation of the Starship line of technology to it.

3 Ship Interplanetary travel configuration:

But I will make some changes.  The configuration does not have to be that way.

The primary idea would be to make a Starboat or a Starship-Shortie, and mate it will what basically would be considered to be a depot with Electric rocket engines.  If for the moment we ignore the idea that Magdrive or Neumann Drive can be sized up, then this version would perhaps have Argon as its propellant.  As it would not travel to Mars, solar power may be acceptable and nuclear may not be, in proximity of Earth.

So, you make some kind of a small ship, Mini or Shorty.  You give it a depot to carry with it all the way to the Moon.  The small ship will not have enough propellants to travel to the Moon and land and then fly back to the Earth, unless it has the Depot.

So, the small ship and at least one depot ship will couple and it will be possible to transfer Methane and Oxygen to the small ship.  The will proceed at a rapid rate to the Moon to orbit it, avoiding the major harms of the Van Allen Belt.  The Depot will remain in orbit, and the small ship will land.

Then when it's business on the surface of the Moon is done, the small ship will ascend, and link up to the Depot and get refilled. 

The two ships will part, and the small ship will head back rapidly to Earth.  The Depot will use electric propulsion to return over a longer period of time, using solar electric power and Argon.

The small ship might airbrake one major event, to acquire the surface of the Earth and land.  Or it might attempt to achieve an orbit of Earth.  It also might do more than one Air Braking event, but of course the Van Allen Balts are a concern for that.

Eventually it could be true that the small ship could acquire Oxygen from the surface of the Moon.  And so then not need so much of it from the Depot.

It is claimed that there is a lot of Platinum family metals available in some craters of the Moon, so the focus on the polar areas might want a modification.

https://www.newscientist.com/podcasts/1 … hyperworm/

I would speculate that with modern Robotic Labor on the Moon, the small ship I have suggested could bring some of it back to the Earth to pay for a Lunar and other space programs.

While the side braking method of Starship looks good, I want to explore another possible option.

This is not high art, but might convey some notions:

The "Shorty" would have landing legs for the Moon, that are not shown.

The triangle that says Earth Assent Cone, would be taken off from the Ship in LEO, perhaps repurposed.

In a more ideal future reality a one-time heat shield made on the Moon would be placed on it when it landed on the Moon.  As you can see, it can have a "Footprint" larger than the diameter of the ship.

If that cannot be created then perhaps and expandable heat Sheid that has been considered for the Vulcan Engine recovery might be used: https://spaceexplored.com/2022/10/27/vu … ield-test/

Maybe something like this: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/tech-demo … -the-test/  Image Quote:

So, they have the right idea.  Eventually though a heat shield from Lunar Materials and also Oxygen from the Moon.

And in my drawing I have pirated the idea for the cabin/cargo above the engines and under the propellant tanks.
You can see that concept from Blue Origin here: https://www.blueorigin.com/blue-moon
Here it is again: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-blue … ar-lander/
Image Quote:

I don't think that there needs to be that much human traffic to and from the Moon.  Most work on the Moon might be performed by robots of various sorts.

It would be a "Blue-Sky-Day" if all of these components could be joined into a good machine with acknowledgment to those who created the various parts.

Starship Superheavy is the big lifter though!

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The ship if it intends to land on Earth could go heat shield first into the atmosphere, and when appropriate might be able to drop the heat shield, or not, depending on what would be below.

The rest of the trip down it might fall sideways like Starship with Flaps and Moters.

Then finally and engine landing like Starship.

I am sort of working backwards on this due to (th).

I would suggest that if you had a thick Aluminum Foil Liner you might finish the interior of your stone domes.  Sounds flimsy, but if the Stone Buildings are weighted down enough then a liner of that sort might be OK.  I am presuming you could weld and/or glue this Aluminum Foil into a complete covering able to be air tight.  And you probably would want something like a fire extinguisher, that could spray a sealant to plug an accidental leak.

Anyway a liner of some sort also might be of poly perhaps.  Of course, Poly might burn.

The LEM, as I recall had walls that were very thick Aluminum Foil in thickness.

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I have notions for protecting Starships which have been made to be horizontal on the ground.

They are only ideas.  Perhaps useful or not.  I don't feel comfortable with the notion of piling regolith on top of a Starship.  I fear that without braces, if the ship depressurizes the tin can may collapse under the weight of the regolith.

Maybe I am wrong.

Here I do suggest heaping regolith around the lower portions.  However, as it is going to be necessary to have lots of water ice to extract water from, I suggest the above.

It would be inflatable with compressed air, and then water would be poured into it from the top and allowed for freeze into ice starting with the bottom.  The inflatable would likely be reflective and also the dust that would probably collect on it would protect it from UV light damage.

It is only an option and would be an additional expense to import the inflatable from Earth.

Once the ice was frozen, the arch might not collapse if the Starship is depressurized.  Of course, probably a depressurization is a bad thing, but if it happens and you can patch it, you might recover its former value if it has not been crushed.

Here is a revision with "Flanges" to reduce terminal velocity:

Here again I may be wrong.

Still, I will suggest the above again.

The upper side as shown would have a used one time heat shield on it, the bottom would have had thrusters to allow horizontal landing.

The Lunar Starship is supposed to have special engines to finish the landing.

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

So, in my notion above, such engines would finish the landing to horizontal using similar engines.

SpaceX has a under shield which is to protect a Starship if the primary heat shield fails.  I suggest using just that on this ship.  I am also presuming that the ship with flanges could ascend though the atmosphere of Earth with the flanges on, or they would need to be added in LEO.

The flanges are intended to spread the heat load, reducing the peak temperature in a specific place.  The Ship would be two faced.  The one side with the heat shield would be used to enter the atmosphere of Mars.  The other side would have the horizontal landing engines and any landing gear needed.  While motorized flaps could be an option, also the landing thrusters could be used to keep the proper orientation of the ship during atmospheric heating.  After the burn during entry the thing would have to roll 180 degrees to present its landing engines and landing gear to the surface of Mars.

Gyroscopes are also a possible way to orient the ship during the entry and landing process.

It is possible that this ship may not need raptor engines once it reached LEO.  They could be reduced in number or perhaps deleted.  You might want to partner it with a Starship with raptors to push it.  It would have propellants in it's tanks, that it would share with the "Pusher Ship".

I realize the limits of my ability, but you never know, the blind pig and the acorn thing.

At least I provided the notion.

It can certainly be rejected.

One other thing I like about this is if you refilled the ship, its horizontal engines may be able to levitate it off the surface, so before you embedded it in soil and ice you could move it horizontally.  The flanges might allow it to act a bit like a hovercraft.

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If you have liquid water, nutrients, and an energy source then productivity seem achievable.

The various options for water/ice reservoirs with protective cover probably can limit water losses, but not completely so.

For the temperate ice slabs then I advocate tunnels in the ice to provide ice caves and to provide make-up water.
This may apply to the Equatorial ice masses in some cases.  There seems to be one near the surface around Candor-Chaos, but we do not have much certainty of it's nature except that it shows Hydrogen near the surface for an area about the size of Holland. 

These things could be done prior to large scale terraform attempts.

To create a starter biome that would be semi-natural, I think the best bet is to melt the polar ice caps to produce ice covered bodies of water.  Earth's Antarctica has various of those, some which support Photosynthesis though the ice even.

So, in all cases we want to associate properly measured levels of energy with available ground ice.

Solar is a good one, but I think it needs a boost with nuclear fission and nuclear fusion when possible.

Also existing is the possibility of Orbital Solar with microwave energy beamed down to the surface.

In the case of an artificial body of water like this:

My thinking is that microwaves from orbit would tend to pass through the ice and would be absorbed in the water, if it can be like a microwave oven.

The characteristic of the Mars atmosphere will be important.  It may be desirable to thicken it by adding heat to the polar areas.

This has been considered before, and greenhouse gasses, and special particles are in consideration for that.

This is not to say that you could not put a rectenna on top of the ice to also receive some of the energy.

It has been suggested to melt the poles by various means such as mirrors or even nuclear bombs.

I might think to avoid surface heating.  I think that if you could send microwaves though the CO2 layer of the south pole and melt some of the water ice under it, this may conserve the heat to do the maximum evaporation of CO2, rather than for much of the added energy to simply reflect off into space.

A thickened atmosphere would likely improve the radiation problem quite a bit, I understand.  But we might not want to go so far as to not be able to use mass drivers from the mountain tops of Mars.

A thicker atmosphere would, I think, make the terminal velocity for a spacecraft landing a lower speed.

So, this would be a level of Para Tera Forming and Terraforming that could be first achievable, and later if the Martians decided they wanted to warm things up more, I guess that would be their decision.

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