Power Distribution by pipelines on Mars.

Void · 2016-11-29 12:37:19

Unless a better plan emerges, I suggest that a communication line between Utopia Planetia, and Hellas Planetia, is the way to go as an objective for Mars inhabitants, water and seasonality being the reasons.

So, in that place between places, perhaps, Hopper ports, Water canals, Hyperloop routes, Methane/Hydrogen pipelines, and even regular road systems, and power lines.

Last edited by Void (2016-11-29 12:39:15)

elderflower · 2016-11-29 13:31:25

Transport of anything out of Hellas will be quite difficult, It is considerably lower than anywhere else on the planet. The pumps would be monsters.

Void · 2016-11-29 17:39:51

elderflower said:

Transport of anything out of Hellas will be quite difficult, It is considerably lower than anywhere else on the planet. The pumps would be monsters.

That is a reasonable statement. However I see Utopia Planetia as the primary source of liquid water if such canals/greenhouses were built.

Hellas itself has the potential of glaciers to support an internal settlement, I believe on the eastern edge.

In the beginning if there were proven water resources for both Utopia Plantia (Likely), and Hellas Planetia (Not proven), then first to settle Utopia Planetia, and then Hellas Planetia.

Migration if desired done by a hopper ship. Significant danger of crashes included, but we are likely talking about a small population of relatively exceptional people for this phase.

Next moves would be to develop overland travel.
-Regular roads traversed by wheeled vehicles, supported by;
-A small resource pipeline. The pipeline very likely filled with a Methane/Hydrogen mix.

This combination would allow wheeled vehicles to tap the pipeline for energy, and water along the way.
It also would provide enhanced survival method abort locations for hopper craft, should they be involved in a forced landing or even a survivable crash landing.

Due to the availability of moisture from the pipeline and possibly from local resources, some of the abort locations might actually be small settlements in themselves, with resource storage/generation. (Food).

Next would come open hyperloop. Elon Musk has said that Hyperloop can operate in the present Martian environment without the tube. So, that if implemented would accommodate migration for an expanding population, hoppers would be used less and less.

From there, I suggest the consideration of closed or tubed hyperloop, so that materials can be transferred between settlements, materials such as Methane/Hydrogen or even water vapor (Harder). But the hyperloop tubes could also support the travel of humans as well.

As far as the water canals, that was proposed as a sort of a dream lab. How would you do it? What could it benefit you. Transfer of cargo through such canals would be different than on Earth. I would not be surprised if as you have suggested, the incline of Hellas would be too much to overcome, but if 95% of the route were functional, that would suit me just fine. There exists the other methods of travel to finish the route.

Now back to one version of a canal:
-I presume that the bottom can be sealed by various means, even employing permafrost impermeability as a contribution.
-I think I will visualize a "V" type structure. The roof of it will either be plastic pillows filled with water/ice, or as Teraformer suggested, a plastic arch with ice. If fact, I suspect that these two methods could be alternated with a good effect. In either case the interior is protected to some degree from both U.V. and hard radiation, by the ice and water.

I have typically been involved in trying to utilize counter-pressure to build life supporting habitat, but now, I am becoming interested in hybridizing this with tensile and compressive strength methods.

Teraformers plastic/ice enclosure holding a 20 mb atmosphere, to provide support for a liquid surface canal reservoir is such a method.

One thing I have proposed in the past was small terrarium farms. The scheme would involve bottles which in a batch method would be primed to grow something inside. They would utilize tensile force to hold an atmosphere. An improvement on that is to have liquid water bottles along side of them, and then a zero pressure tent over it all. The water bottles are intended to moderate the day night temperature swings.

The idea does have some problems, as each bottle has to be responsible for a ecology that shifts as the crops inside grow. And you must move the bottles around, possibly with something like a fork lift, to a planting/harvesting center.

But now I will suggest "Barges" which can be set at the bottom of the canals. They will be enclosed plastic bottles of some significant size. To anchor them to the bottom, if they were filled with air might be a problem, but not out of the question. Ballasting would be needed. But easier would be to have them as aquatic farms. Anything from salt water organisms, to fresh water organism, or even marsh organisms (Duckweed).

This would still be a batch process, but the size of the "Bottles" would be large. Transport would not be done with a forklift, but with a "Submarine" which could grasp them and lift them up to the upper water column to move to the planting harvesting area. If needed each "Bottle" might have a gardener robot inside of them. So, I think an efficient farm method.

Thermal Regulation of the Canals, and the "bottles" in them:
-Heliostats. Made of pseudo wood, with a reflective coating. The canal system would mostly travel north and south (Mostly). Heliostats on both sides of the canal, morning and afternoon sunlight deflected into the canals as desired.
-If the fill water is fresh for the canal it's bottom can rise to 39 degF / 3.89 degC?.
-The bottles lying on the bottom due to isolation and insulation may rise to temperatures suitable for the agriculture desired to be carried on inside of them.

Fish: Bottles having tensile strength can hold dissolved gasses (O2) in their waters without the gasses fizzing out. So, yes, with significant care, some type of algae eating fish could be grown in these bottles. Once mastered, rather simple. A fish that eats algae from the interior surface of the bottle.
Nifty, I think.

And with all of this, I do not dismiss that some type of non-farm cargo could be moved through the length of the canal. I am not sure how preferable it might be to other transport methods, but I leave the option open to invention/speculation.

Done for now.

Last edited by Void (2016-11-29 18:23:30)

Void · 2016-11-29 21:50:15

So, dreaming of a connected civilization spanning Utopia Planetia and Hellas Planetia, what would be next?

Atmospheric pressurization hoping to produce the following:
-Snow in both locations.
-A method to melt the south polar ice cap and direct that melt into Hellas Planetia.

The intention to create an ice covered reservoir in Hellas Planetia. Now that it is seen that U.V. can be blocked by water ice, such a body of water, even if ice water (Fresh) or salt water at below freezing temperatures, would be quite valuable.

And if I am not mistaken, there should be quite an opportunity to generate hydro-electric power, dropping water from the south pole to the bottom of Hellas.

Thanks for the useful picture spacenut.

So, generating power, and providing the first open air habitat. I am going to presume that salts underlie Hellas, and that the water would be somewhat salty.

Briny ice is quite a good habitat for micro-organisms, they can get almost to the surface of the ice, and so even if the ice is thick the sunshine will not be so wasted. And yet the U.V. should be moderated.

I have not specified how the south polar ice is to be melted. In part it would be warmed by a thickening atmosphere caused with greenhouse gasses.

Beyond that I really don't care there are several methods to nominate.

And then after that, a melted sea at the north ice cap. But that comes last in the progression.
Utopia Planetia
Hellas Planetia
Hellas sea (Ice covered)
Northern sea.

Plenty to do, much to gain.

Last edited by Void (2016-11-29 22:01:29)

Antius · 2016-11-30 06:39:48

The hydroelectric idea is intriguing. Hellas basin is 7km deep, so each litre of water dropping from its rim to the basin would release about 26KJ of kinetic energy. That may be enough to meet the pumping requirements from Utopia or the South Pole. It is dwarfed by the 400KJ of heat needed to melt the water in the first place. One thing is clear - wherever we choose to build our base a lot of nuclear heat will be needed to melt the water we need. To fill a 30m swimming pool we would need about 60MWh of heat to melt the water in the first place. That would seem to be a good argument for building our nuclear reactors close to our water sources.

Last edited by Antius (2016-11-30 06:42:35)

elderflower · 2016-11-30 11:31:10

Antius wrote:

One thing is clear - wherever we choose to build our base a lot of nuclear heat will be needed to melt the water we need. To fill a 30m swimming pool we would need about 60MWh of heat to melt the water in the first place. That would seem to be a good argument for building our nuclear reactors close to our water sources.

Another good argument is that nuclear stations all need moderators and coolant. Water does both, whether you go for light water reactors or heavy water ones. (Heavy water is much more abundant on Mars than it is on Earth)
Much of the low temperature waste heat from a reactor might be useful in melting new supplies, effectively using an ice mass as a heat sink.

Void · 2016-11-30 12:27:50

All that is good as far as an argument, but I feel it might go a bit shallow, and preclude other options I don't want neglected.

Not against nuclear power where it is helpful, but don't want my little children smothered with pillows just yet in the nursery.

Back to canals:
First of all I do not intend that overland canals will happen at all, until they are mastered in the nursery of Utopia Planetia, and until a ice body is being tapped in Hellas Planetia.

And granted, canals only if they are useful, not for a fanciful wish. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Previously I indicated and it was otherwise implied that water canals might supply each of these four:
-Transfer of water.
-Direct aquatic habitat. That is microorganisms might grow in the waters.
-Indirect aquatic habitat. You might put pressurized barge/bottles in these canals to provide agricultural value. Or with more effort you might even grow marsh and perhaps even dry land planets by a similar method.
-The transfer of goods is an implied possibility.
-*** What is implicit, is that these canals are solar power plants.

I have mentioned Heliostats for temperature regulation, but shedding heat at night and in the process harnessing it's power is a notion easy to stumble upon.

I am not biased against Fission power, Fusion power or Heliostat solar power. It is easy to see that a canal will retain heat that can be released at night. So a water canal hold values that are more than the transfer of cargo.

So, I see several uses for canals on Mars:
1) Transfer water.
2) Agriculture.
3) Power plants.
4) Move solid material goods.

While a transfer path from Utopia Planetia to Hellas Planetia is more of a struggle than to master the smooth northern hemisphere, we should be thinking about the use of human resources. Hibernation is an option during the long Martian winter, but also migration is. My view is "Hibernation when required, migration is preferred".

Now about canals themselves. I think it will be better to not do all functions in each canal. A bit of specialization will be helpful to usefulness.

Teraformer has been of assistance. The only thing I didn't like of what he offered, is a rupture of the arched canal enclosure. I feared that it would bleed pressurized content to the Martian atmosphere for any rupture in the structure. I think I have found a reasonable treatment.

For a length of such a structure it might be reasonably partitioned by a hanging curtain with weights on the bottom, and that curtain being pleated to allow a barge to lift it up to pass under it. The curtain extending below the surface level of the water. So for floating and non-neutral buoyancy barges, I am satisfied that a method is possible which is not impractical to maintain. Thanks, Teraformer!

There are many variations of the above scheme. In one extreme case you don't care about propagating farmed life, at the other extreme, you foster life by either method, and yet still facilitate the transfer of barge method traffic. Ice being the U.V. protectant presumed, but not exclusively the possibility. Such a canal if just for traffic, and water transfer, and power generation, might only need to be 6 feet deep. 9 feet is the typical for the USA, I believe.

Now, as to the canals I originally suggested with a pillow of plastic filled with water/ice. I think these will be deeper, and specifically to foster agriculture, but not precluding the passage of specialized barge traffic.

Some agricultural methods possible:
-As mentioned before algae eating fish.
-Duckweed. A bit of a bother to master, as you must have an air filled plane of I estimate some inches/centimeters in height.
-Spirulina. Requires elevated temperatures. Some extra work needed for that.
-Marsh. Growing reeds for pseudo wood. Requires a relatively large vertical air column. Some efforts required there.
-Standard Garden. Similar to Marsh, for problems.

Now, every canal can be a power plant/power storage system.

Heliostats would help to regulate temperatures up during the day, and power production at night would help to regulate temperatures down in the canals. As for the power to lift water, yes, the canals themselves will generate it, with solar energy.

Done for now. Was going to talk about melting southern ice cap. Maybe later.

Oh, ha ha, I intended this as well.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2016112 … wer-europe
Morocco is a relatively mid latitude location as is Spain. Where I live is approximately at the same latitude. So, let us not neglect the notion of Heliostat solar power on Mars.

In the above article, they mention oil as a heat carrier for localized thermal collectors. However they are thinking of going to central towers with salt storage.

In my view, these could each work on Mars, but so could a solar heliostat canal. Actually I think a solar canal on Mars has much to offer.

OK, that's it for now, really.

Last edited by Void (2016-11-30 13:23:57)

SpaceNut · 2016-11-30 23:05:50

Connecting the dots or in this case a pipeline as Void is suggesting from one place to the other.

We will need to pick initially places that are close to gether so as to begin building the network and gradually expand the distances over time.

Void · 2016-12-01 09:05:37

Very good Spacenut. Antius may be quite right about the water canals however, perhaps a task too much to bridge between Utipia Planetia and Hellas Planetia. I like a challenge however. Canals not actually necessary for the process however, pipelines, roads, hyperloop will do I would think.

Before planting the seed, I would want to investigate from your map 0 degrees latitude and 30 degrees longitude, the light blue area.

Reasons:
-GWJohnson ventured that water might be found anywhere on the low lying northern plains. Not putting him on the spot. Logical. Might. Something to probe and prove.
-Utiopa Planetia as far as I can tell does not give a good signature for water, and yet we find that there are likely deeps of ice mixed with soil/rock, with 3 to 33 feet of overburden. This being proclaimed from a specific probing with a different radar system.
-The signal on your map for 0 degrees latitude and 30 degrees longitude has previously been assumed to be from a hydrated mineral because it is on the equator. However, I want to know more. If we can presume that Mars has a variable climate, and sometimes it favors Earth type snowfall more than now, it is not out of the question that a deposit of snow was made at 0 degrees latitude and 30 degrees longitude some time in the last millions of years, and that it has not all been evaporated away yet.

But until more evidence is discovered, I will return to Utopia Planetia, but still note that the map you provided suggests that Hellas Planetia has lots of ice in it's southern portion at least (I think the whole thing will have ice).

If we can eliminate migration, at 0 degrees longitude, 30 degrees latitude, that simplifies things, migration not that useful until later in development.

If we use Utopia Planetia, then winter hibernation procedures are an option, and migration to Hellas Planetia is a matter to consider. "We" would have to weigh the cost benefits of it, in the passage of time. There may be a time where it is helpful and attainable, and some times where winter hibernation is a preferable method.

Cities and slimy canals

Since we have no proof of massive amounts of ice at 0 degrees latitude and 30 degrees longitude, I will return to Utopia Planetia, and talk about the value of minimum life bearing canals, and there possible association with centralized cities on Mars. (What I think anyway).

There is a certain efficiency to cities, due to the shortening of distances. They of course need a good water supply.

My preference would be a city built on a sandstone cliff, for reasons spoken about elsewhere, but lets presume a city built by any means. What would be the utility of canals at Utopia Planetia?

Since cities are efficient, you probably only want one at the beginning. As for needed mineral resources, I suppose you do what you must. You get what you must get, or you don't make it, or you substitute to other things where possible.

So, I suggest that canals mostly will be power systems, that also deliver water to the city, and if possible support microbial life forms if possible.

The U.V. protection is going to be an issue that has many wrinkles. For now I will presume that for a canal which has been built and is in use U.V. is being handled.

If I presume an island or shoreline bluff of preferred rock to build habitat upon and within, then I can also speculate on spokes made of canals that perforate and project into Utopia Planetia for the benefit of a city built upon such a preferred rocky position.

The canals I presume can hold water by any means available, but as per tundra ponds, we might suppose that permafrost itself will be able to provide a bottom impermeable to the loss of water.

The canal system itself and the city will inevitably suffer moisture losses, and that will have to be made up with "makeup water". I presume that that will come from areas adjacent to the canals.

The method of extraction might be hard rock mining and melting, or melting and suction into the canal from ice covered reservoirs.

Unless further snowfall can be stimulated by a terraforming process at Utopia Planetia, then the resource of Utopia Planetia must be considered finite. Therefore a calculation must be done as to how big of a city can be supported, and for what length of time in Utopia Planetia. The intention to provide the best profile for the support of a local civilization which might actually make in general the whole of Mars usable for a future expansion of the civilization.

Now as for "Slimy Canals", what might their utilities to the human race be?

The function of a "Slimy Canal" would be to:
-Input water from the hinterlands to the city.
-Provide a minimum habitat for microbial photo life, and so to provide simple bio-mass for various uses.
-Even allow transport of cargo by barge.
-Provide life support for humans and robots traveling in the proximity of the canal.
-Provide Oxygen to the city.
-Provide energy, by storing heat from the days sunshine, and venting the heat to the night sky.

Running with Terraformers suggestion of a 20 mb pressurized canal system presumably enclosed by some type of arch, I also presume some necessary protection of the canal waters from U.V.

I am supposing Heliostats in use with this system. I have to warn you that Heliostats, might crack glass, due to thermal changes. It is something that has to be overcome possibly.

I am also presuming that microbial photo life will dominate the ecology of the canals, likely producing a useful Oxygen, and a slimy biomass. I presume that the canals will be fertilized.

So, one of the boats you might run in such a canal would be a slime harvester. So, you are harvesting slime, and Oxygen and water and transferring them to the city, what can you do with them?

You can certainly breath the Oxygen, and drink the water, but what about the organic slime?

-Biodigest it to Methane.
-Grow Mushrooms in the dark in caves, using Slime and Oxygen.

I think that over time, working with science, fungi/mushrooms can be developed to satisfy more and more of human needs, perhaps even eventually reducing human needs for other nutrition sources.

That's plenty I think, except, yes, you can put pressurized barge/greenhouses in your canals and grow more advanced fish/vegetables.

Done for now.

Last edited by Void (2016-12-01 10:04:05)

Antius · 2016-12-01 14:32:20

Canals may be an efficient means of transporting goods over intermediate distances for all the reasons you suggest. It may be problematic attempting to use them for biomass production. The problem is average surface temperatures are too low to keep the water liquid. At 273K, each square metre of water will be radiating a little over 300 watts of heat into the sky. If your canal is 3m wide (a fairly minimal requirement) you would need 1MW of heat per km of canal just to keep it liquid. If you load it with salt, you lower the melting point, but heavy brines will not support plant life.

Canals would be most suitable over relatively flat terrain. As soon as you need to deal with changes in elevation requiring lockes, hydraulic elevators or gorges, it gets very expensive and slows things down a lot.

The easiest way of providing an impermeable and pressurised canal may be a buried pipeline. A pipeline can be assembled from steel or polypropylene with sections welded or flanged together. A polypropylene pipe could actually be extruded on site by melting ingots of the polymer and injecting it into a mold. The pipeline can then be covered with a few metres of regolith to reduce heat losses from its interior. This is crucial to the economics of the concept. If you need to expend electricty or build regular solar heating stations to keep the water liquid, you not only ruin the energy efficiency advantages of the concept, but significantly increase capital and operating costs. The advantages of a canal are energy efficiency and technological simplicity.

At low velocities, canal transport is very energy efficient, but is obviously fundamentally limited in speed. This limits the carrying capacity of the canal (tonne-miles per hour). This is why you don't see many small canals used for cargo anymore. They are labour and capital intensive compared to roads. If you are planning to use the canal to deliver water as well as cargo it implies a flow of water from one point to another. Does that mean your barge is attempting to go against the flow on one half of the journey?

Last edited by Antius (2016-12-01 15:29:30)

Void · 2016-12-01 15:56:07

Antius, I am afraid I will dispute what you say.

As for the utility of canals for transportation only:
http://www.financialsense.com/contribut … superpower
Quote:

Water transport has given U.S. commerce a huge advantage over other economies. Around 90 percent of international trade is transported via water, and in the United States over half of internal trade has been via water, Zeihan stated.
“The United States has more miles of navigable waterways then the rest of the planet put together,” he added.

Our internal waterways do involve locks.

Having referenced this however, if the purpose of a canal on Mars were transportation only, I would not bother in most cases.

As for keeping water in a canal properly liquid and habitable for microorganisms, I have a problem with what you have said:
Quote:

It may be problematic attempting to use them for biomass production. The problem is average surface temperatures are too low to keep the water liquid. At 273K, each square metre of water will be radiating a little over 300 watts of heat into the sky. If your canal is 3m wide (a fairly minimal requirement) you would need 1MW of heat per km of canal just to keep it liquid. If you load it with salt, you lower the melting point, but heavy brines will not support plant life.

Salt could be used, and photo life might tolerate temperatures down to -10 degF, maybe, but that is not what I have in mind. I am thinking fresh water.

I don't understand why a canal with a transparent/translucent covering and heliostats aimed at it cannot achieve 0-5 degC? How could a greenhouse do it? If you cannot have such a canal at Utopia Planetia to grow life in then you could not have a greenhouse to grow vegetables. I am quite confused.

I emphasize Heliostats. It is as if you did not see that in my materials. In intend the canals to be solar collectors, at least during the more sunny half of the Martian year.

Antius, I would really appreciate it if you would mention Heliostats in any next reply. Then I will know that we are talking about the same technology.

1) So, first value of such a canal is to grow very simple one cell photo life, collect it with a "Boat Robot" bring it to the city, and either digest it anaerobic to produce Methane, or to grow Mushrooms with it, or perhaps even to feed fish.
2) Transport water to the city. Roman Aqueduct. Kept liquid at least some of the time by "Heliostats" and a transparent/translucent tent covering. If your city were on one side of Utopia Planetia, your canal could be as long as the width of the state of New Mexico, as that is the stated approximate size of the icy patch. However, not likely necessary for a long time to go that long, because we apparently are talking about a massive reservoir.
3) Generate power. I really thought you would like this one but you seemed to have passed by it for some reason. The canal is a thermal reservoir. In some cases phase change can even be contemplated. Using heliostats to heat it up during the day, running a turbine or some other engine at night to dissipate the heat and produce power.
4) Transportation. I do not preclude the possibility of cargo transport in such canals, but for now, if there were to be only one big city at one south edge of Utopia Planetia. Perhaps the only cargos I can think of would be fabricated materials to extend the canal. You could transport them by water to the end of the canal. The only other boat activity I would contemplate is like I said, the collection of biological materials from the canal by robot to be brought to the city.
5) Oxygen. I can't believe you missed this in my materials. If there are micro-organisms using photo-synthesis, then for a canal similar to Teraformers suggestions of an arched covering a conveyance of Oxygen to the city at a pressure of about 20 mb can occur.
6) One more think. If a canal extends in a direction for say 20 miles (Not in the mood to translate it's an number I picked randomly anyway), then people in EVA suits and perhaps traveling in wheeled carts, can be near a source of water and Oxygen refill. So a canal is potentially a method to support outside activities away from the main base in some cases.

No disrespect intended at all, but I could not believe your reply. Is there a problem in our communication?

Last thing I emphasize, that cargo transport is something which might be accommodated, but it is not the primary cargo. Water is, and biological materials generated, and Oxygen.

Another funny thing. I have talked about Mushrooms over and over again, and I don't think I have had anyone ever reply back the word Mushroom, to let me know that they are seeing what I type. Could someone do me a favor and say something about Mushrooms?

Sometimes this site is just weird.

I guess I will wait for any reply, wondering just what is going on.

Last edited by Void (2016-12-01 16:28:03)

Antius · 2016-12-01 17:08:26

Apologies. I run out of time and end up skimming through posts. No doubt I miss quite a lot.

By heliostats, I take it you mean mirrors that reflect sunlight into your canal? These could either be fixed or sun tracking, dependant upon the orientation and latitude of the canal. I do not know whether this idea would be economically workable or not. Obviously it is technologically achievable, but its practicality comes down to how much it would cost. My suspicion is that it would be difficult, because it means having a long line of mirrors, each requiring an electromechanical means of aligning it with the sun. That inevitably pushes up capital cost and whenever one of them goes wrong, you have to get a repair crew out there in a pressurised rover. It is much easier in my opinion just to heat the water at one end, add whatever soluble compounds you need to lower its freezing point and cover the whole thing with regolith to minimise heat losses. Simple solutions are usually (though not always) the cheapest. By taking advantage of the canal to produce biomass, you gain an additional product, but at the expense of a lot more sophistication and capital cost. I do not know if it is worth the effort. I suspect if you want biomass, it would be better building a circular pond close to your base, as heat losses from a round pond will be lower than a long thin canal per unit surface area. It is also easier to concentrate your heliostats into a single large power plant that dumps waste heat into the pond.

As for the economics of water transport, I take your point that canals have been an economic success in the US. But we are not talking about the quaint little canals that one sees in England and Holland, plied with little one man canal boats. In most cases, they are extensions of existing river systems and are large enough to accommodate ships. But thats not to say smaller canals don't work at all, just that they are not cost optimum on Earth. Think about it, you have something the size of a truck, with a similar capital cost and a driver, but travelling at one tenth the speed. The benefits of reduced fuel consumption isn't likely to compensate for the those problems. But that is on Earth where we have other means of transporting stuff. On Mars, it could be the best option.

For transport of water, we really don't need a canal as such, just a pipeline. A relatively small diameter pipe can deliver a lot of water. If we are content to add purification at the far end, the water can be dosed with salts and chlorates, bringing its melting point down to Mars ambient temperatures.

I like the 20mbar pressure idea. That way, your canal can be a thin walled plastic tube, rather like a ribbed polytunnel placed within a shallow trench and covered with maybe a foot of regolith. You can pressurise using ambient Martian air. If you can lower melting point enough that you dont need to heat it, your canal can be built quite affordably.

I havn't responded to everything you've posted and of course what I post is only the world as I see it, from my own limited perspective.

Last edited by Antius (2016-12-01 17:46:26)

Antius · 2016-12-01 17:48:27

Maybe this could be useful:
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/12/ … boats.html

SpaceNut · 2016-12-01 21:03:01

You could always drop a used RTG into the waterway to keep it from freezing.....
Mushrooms are a unique edible plant and could as you put for be used in a digestor with the help of some bacteria to create a source of useable methane but then again any plant life that we are not eating would be put into it..
You can also make the roof covering the canal more like a lense to collect and focus the light gathered to the water with combination of mirrored surfaces along the length of the canal as well.

I recall a directional dish collector that used fiber optics (posted in the lunar topics) where the reciever or feed horn would be to bring the solar energy into a high concentration for use in a furnace or it could be used to heat the water as well.

So what would be the size of a portable water to oxygen system for mass and energy to allow for a flexible means to work or walk inside the canal area just scooping up the water as needed and using solar or a charging station to power the unit....

Void · 2016-12-01 22:47:13

Actually spacenut. Should you have such a canal. You should be able to extract water from it and Oxygen from it's atmosphere.

And if it is a power planet as well, you should have an electric hookup.

Now revisiting Heliostats in Morocco:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2016112 … wer-europe

Quote:

But normally the reflectors can be heard as they move together to follow the Sun like a giant field of sunflowers. The mirrors focus the Sun’s energy onto a synthetic oil that flows through a network of pipes. Reaching temperatures up to 350C (662F), the hot oil is used to produce high-pressure water vapour that drives a turbine-powered generator. “It’s the same classic process used with fossil fuels, except that we are using the Sun’s heat as the source,” says Bayed.

So, you should have no problem heating the water in such a canal.

I have been trying to talk about this type of solar power for some time, but get zip back. It is a genuine up and coming economical method being built on Earth, and you guys will not even talk about inventing one for Mars. I find that extraordinarily weird. Not to be rude.

As for Mushrooms, they are the fruit of fungi. The fungi live in the soil and digest biological materials, and even Carbon and Oil.

Now, lets discuss thermal losses in the canals we have discussed if we do not purposely extract energy at night.

First of all there is a glaze, the isolate the water. At night it should be likely that frost will form on the inside of that glaze and help to further insulate the situation. Also due to the thin nature of the Martian atmosphere, we should expect a low loss rate from convection and wind.

As the water in the canal would cool at night we should expect a layer of ice to form over the water at night. That ice will be a pretty good insulator, and will reduce evaporative cooling.

Finally, ice over 32 degF water which could be over 39 degF water is stratified, therefore holding in heat.
My point is you can pump in heat very well during the day, and at night you can expect a lot of resistance from the device to the loss of heat.

Now how to make such a canal into a power generating plant.

I see a framework of tubing over the top of it, possibly a balloon of inflated plastic inside that pushing against it. It is to be a night-time radiator. The plastic bubble pushing against the lattice work of tubing, and acting as radiator fins at night. The tubing serving as an additional tensile force to hold the balloons shape.

However for this type of canal we are talking about an internal pressure of perhaps 20 mb. This includes the ambient pressure of perhaps 8 to 12 mb at various locations. Utopia Planetia ~8 mb, Hellas Planetia ~12 mb in best case.

So, for Utopia Planetia the Balloon only has to hold a differential pressure of 12 mb. For Hellas Planetia only 8 mb. Rather trivial.

In this case I have specified a plastic containment, but a variation could be of glass.

So we have a night radiator which is also a structural component of the greenhouse canal.

For the "Hot" side, I intend tubing in the bottom of the canal. Obviously heating a fluid , and then we hope that heated fluid to provide a pressurized vapor to turn a generative system. The condenser mentioned previously to return the vapors to liquid form.

This is in fact one of the prime purposes of the canals. Imagine one miles/kilometers long.

Lets see what you say back.

Last edited by Void (2016-12-01 23:18:15)

Void · 2018-03-18 20:11:50

So, here is another example of how I get treated on this site.

Review the beginnings of this post, and the crap I had to put up with.

Now this!

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas … oblem.html
Quote:

This is where power-to-gas comes in. Put in very simple terms, power-to-gas uses electrolysis to break water down into its constituent parts of oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can be stored along with natural gas in pipelines, or used in fuel cell vehicles. An additional step called methanisation converts the hydrogen into renewable natural gas (RNG), which can be stored in those same pipelines to be used later in a variety of industrial and domestic applications. But just how effective is it? And how does it compare to lithium-ion batteries?

A subsidiary article:
https://www.socalgas.com/smart-energy/r … wer-to-gas
Quote:

Introduction
Renewable energy sources like photovoltaic solar and wind turbines have grown greatly in recent years, helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So much renewable energy is now being generated in California that frequently more electricity is created during the day than can be used at the time.

Robust mid-day generation is countered by sharply increased demand in the early evening, as people return home from work and school and solar electricity production wanes. Finding a way to store the excess renewable energy produced during peak generation periods so it can be used in future peak demand periods is becoming a significant challenge.

An exciting prospect for meeting that challenge is power-to-gas (P2G) technology that uses surplus electricity to create renewable hydrogen or renewable natural gas (methane) that can then be stored in natural gas pipelines and used as needed.

How does it work?
Renewable Hydrogen
Excess renewable electricity is used to convert water into renewable hydrogen by employing the process of electrolysis. Electrolysis splits water (H2O) into hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen gas (O2) in a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer that contains an “anode” and a “cathode” separated by an electrolyte or membrane.

As electricity flows through the electrolyzer the water releases oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is usually released into the atmosphere but the hydrogen is captured and can be mixed with natural gas and stored in the pipeline system.

Renewable Natural Gas
Converting the renewable hydrogen into renewable natural gas (methane) adds an additional step after the electrolysis process called methanation. When methanation is accomplished using a biological process it is called biomethanation.

In biomethanation, the renewable hydrogen is combined with carbon dioxide (CO2) and fed into a bioreactor in which single-celled microorganisms ingest the hydrogen and carbon dioxide and expel methane (CH4) to produce renewable natural gas (RNG).

The resultant RNG can then be injected into the natural gas pipeline system and can be used in everything from home appliances to industrial processes, engines and power plants.

So, everything I have been pushing. Including a potential chemosynthetic source of biological mass.

And pipelines to transfer a mix of Methane and Hydrogen.

For that proposal I made I faced harassment, and also at times on this site shunning, and rudeness.

But I was right again.

Last edited by Void (2018-03-18 20:17:21)

SpaceNut · 2018-03-19 20:02:05

post 65 Heliostats in Morocco:
Sure we can do once we have "synthetic oil" for mars of which the reflector surface will be twice as large to get the same wattage level as what they recieve on earth. They will also need to be insulated and covered to keep the heat from being sunk to the atmospheric temperature which you talk about.

On earth the hydrogen escape from a pipeline becomes water but on mars its lost and so will the methane as maven has shown. Pipeline losses are something that on mars we can not afford to have.

Void · 2018-03-20 07:22:31

Spacenut said:
Quote:

post 65 Heliostats in Morocco:
Sure we can do once we have "synthetic oil" for mars of which the reflector surface will be twice as large to get the same wattage level as what they recieve on earth. They will also need to be insulated and covered to keep the heat from being sunk to the atmospheric temperature which you talk about.
On earth the hydrogen escape from a pipeline becomes water but on mars its lost and so will the methane as maven has shown. Pipeline losses are something that on mars we can not afford to have.

Well thanks for a reply. I do question your assertion. We cannot understand the magnitude of hydrogen loss, or the relative cost of it vs the potential advantages of the system at this time. This is a classic example of the stifling of invention on this site. Pick one item, make an assertion and try to shut it down. Your purpose? Hmmm.... Either you hope to prompt me to counter propose a solution, or a pattern is emerging which says this site and the planetary society are actually saboteurs, not wanting humans, western civilization and especially Americans to achieve space capabilities.

The first notion that you want me to counter propose, is annoying as your method would be dark and unkind, and would lead to negative emotions which would not be helpful in using higher mind functions.

The second notion is paranoid, but the pattern does exist. You guys are under suspicion from my perspective. Why is it called "The Planetary" society and not "The Interplanetary Society"?

But lets consider invention. Your assertion that a pipeline would leak Hydrogen excessively is unsubstantiated. In the article I posted, they add Hydrogen to a pipeline full of Methane. This I believe slows down the leakage.

Further, I can think of at least 3 new types of pipeline which would not suffer the degree of loss of Hydrogen that you fear. I wonder why on this site very little attempt at invention occurs? Just references to existing and outdated technologies. Maybe sometimes allowing a reference to currently researched technologies.

Pipeline #1: So, now lets presume that pipelines on Mars may be of plastic, which will not hold up well in U.V. but if cover it with soil in a trench, it will potentially last 1000 years? (Probably optimistic).

Now what if I put a plastic pipeline inside of a plastic pipeline? The inner pipeline filled with Hydrogen. The outer one to catch the leaking hydrogen, and to maintain a outer pipeline pressure of perhaps just a bit above Martian ambient pressure ~+/-? 5.5 mb?

What if I consume the leaked Hydrogen for my processes at a suitable rate to minimize Hydrogen losses to the Martian environment?

Pipeline #2: Same as #1, except you put pressurized Methane in the outer pipeline, and Hydrogen in the inner pipeline. Hydrogen will leak into the Methane and to some extent through the Methane through the outer pipeline into the Martian environment, to be lost, but we do not have any calculation that says the rate of loss prohibits the practice economically. That would be something that needs to be discovered by experimentation. My hunch is that the loss will likely be minimal in cost relative to the benefits the system might provide.

Pipeline #3: Involves the use of a water canal to submerge a single layer pipeline into instead of covering it with soil. As you must know I think that ice covered canals (Which prior to Mars terraforming will require mechanical protection over the ice), in some cases will be useful for several reasons which I will not bother to relist here.

So you put a pure Hydrogen pipeline in a canal. Yes Hydrogen leaks, but micro-organisms consume the Hydrogen, and also perhaps CO2 and create Methane. We harvest the Methane and the micro-organisms from the canal. Chemosynthesis, the micro-organisms may be the creators of biofuels, or they might be a source of food to be used in 3D printed food, or both.

Now it may be possible to make plastic from Methane, but also it may very likely be possible to manufacture plastic, lubricants, and resins for fiberglass from biofuels.

So, there, I have you, and I have not even relisted the other values of the pipeline. But I will.

.....

Some of the other values:
1) A storage device. A double pipeline will store Hydrogen, or it will store Methane and Hydrogen. Losses will be minimal I think. A single pipeline will store Hydrogen under water. Losses will become petrochemical feed stock. Due to the storage capability, the stored asset will obviously be available in many circumstances even if a breakdown in the source energy supply occurs.

2) Power distribution: You must have read the article I linked to. In this case power distribution is done with plastic and not Copper or Aluminum. Will Copper or Aluminum be abundant on Mars? I think not, and if you have it, you will want to use it for motors or structures. You are most definitely going to want a petrochemical industry. And from my perspective every chance you get to benefit from Chemosynthesis is a massive plus.

3) Chemical distribution: A pipeline connecting points A...B...C... then makes available these chemicals at various locations on the route of the pipeline. So, if Chemosynthesis is my desire at A...B...C... in all cases I can do that. If I want to manufacture packaged foods for storage at point C only I can do that. It goes on an on.

4) Water distribution. I have less of a concern about this now. I think almost any location on Mars will have water obtainable from ice or soil. Still, water from a pipeline, water which would result from reacting Hydrogen or Hydrogen from Methane with CO2 may be more convenient or economical at some locations.

5) Mineral processing: It may be that some mineral extraction processes would benefit from Hydrogen, from a pipeline, or from Hydrogen extracted from Methane. We don't know which minerals. Perhaps Iron? A side benefit from that might be the production of water. But I am in deep water on #5. I think Hydrogen will have a role in some types of industrial process involving minerals, but I don't have specifics.

......

So, you see I am right. Hate to be like that but I don't like it when you just swat me down without justification and you do it a lot.

Let me give you another example: On another post I talked about putting wings on a rocket which would land like a falcon 9.

You hysterically said something like "Do you know how big those wing would have to be!".

You should have asked what type of wing, and what for.

And then later I see Elon Musk explaining that BFR will have small wings. They are not for lift but for navigation in situations of atmosphere. He said they tried not to have wings but needed to.

Now I am not bitter, but you need to modify your methods SpaceNut.

done.

Last edited by Void (2018-03-20 08:02:45)

Void · 2018-03-20 11:39:51

I don't have a lasting hostility to you SpaceNut, but only to the failure of our ability to profitably interact. Maybe we can do better in the future.

Here is an answer to the problem you pose, where the sunlight on Mars is attenuated compared to Earth, and so power will need a special concern to be sufficient.

In this case, I invoke a new type of solar cell. A high temperature one. It uses much more of the solar spectrum, and Mars actually has a broader solar spectrum than Earth.
https://phys.org/news/2016-08-high-temp … solar.html
Quote:

The photovoltaic (PV) cells in traditional solar cells convert sunlight efficiently within a narrow range of wavelengths determined by the material used in the PV cells. This limits their efficiency, as long wavelengths of sunlight are not converted at all and the energy of short wavelength light is largely wasted. Scientists have sought to increase the efficiency of photovoltaics by creating "multi-junction" solar cells, made from several different semiconductor materials that absorb at varying wavelengths of light. The problem is, such multi-junction cells are expensive to make.
Broadband solar absorption previously has been achieved using metal-insulator-metal (or MIM) resonators, which consist of an insulator sandwiched between a thick bottom and a thin top layer, each made of metals like chromium and gold. The metal components used in MIM resonators have relatively low melting points—temperatures that are reduced further when the materials are in very thin layers, as in the resonators, because of a phenomenon called melting point depression, in which the melting point of a material scales down as the dimensions of the material decrease. The metals in standard MIM resonators melt at around 500 degrees Celsius, hindering their usefulness in solar cells.
Now a group of researchers in Denmark have discovered an alternative method to capture a broad spectrum of sunlight using a heat-resistant device made of tungsten and alumina layers that can be fabricated using inexpensive and widely available film-deposition techniques. The researchers describe their work and the new material in a paper published this week in the journal Optical Materials Express, from The Optical Society (OSA).
"They are resistant to heat, including thermal shock, and exhibit stable physical and chemical properties at high temperatures," explained Manohar Chirumamilla of Aalborg University in Denmark, the first author of the new paper. This allows the absorbers to maintain their structural properties at very high temperatures.
In experiments, the new absorbers were shown to operate at a temperature of 800 degrees Celsius and to absorb light of wavelengths ranging from 300 to 1750 nanometers, that is, from ultraviolet (UV) to near-infrared wavelengths.
"MIM resonators absorbing in the spectral region from UV to near-infrared can be directly employed in different applications, such as solar TPV [thermophotovoltaic] /TPV systems and solar thermal systems," Chirumamilla said. "Other potential applications include in so-called tower power plants, where concentrated solar light generates steam to drive a generator."
"This is the first step in utilizing the energy of the sun in a more efficient way than with current solar cells," he added. "Using an emitter in contact with our absorber, the generated heat can then be used to illuminate a solar cell—which can then function more efficiently when it is placed directly in the sun."

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2016-08-high-temp … r.html#jCp

The reason I am mentioning it here is that it will use heliostats. This will provide for many benefits in my opinion. First of all I presume that the solar cells receiving concentrated light, will themselves be lower mass relative to the electricity they provide.
This will be important, if they are to be manufactured at least at first in the Earth/Moon system, and then shipped to Mars. But as I have indicated before I want such shipped solar panels to earn their keep during the voyage from the Earth/Moon system.
So we would need heliostats taken along as well, so they can focus light on these high temperature solar panels. So then that is a mass burden. However they can be quite thin I think for use in micro-gravity, and perhaps even still be strong enough for use on Mars.

However, if you do not want to reuse the heliostats as heliostats on Mars, because you can make studier ones say from metal coated fiberglass on Mars then you can recycle the metals that the heliostats are made of.

The Heliostats could primarily be made of Copper for instance, with perhaps a reflective metal coating deposited on them.

Then you would have Copper to make motors with.

During the space flight I see no need for the "Copper?" heliostats to have motors, as the spacecraft most likely can orient the whole assembly to the sun. Or, perhaps one shaft and one motor for the whole assembly if tilting relative to the spacecraft is desired.

Last edited by Void (2018-03-20 12:26:41)

Void · 2018-03-20 12:10:21

Post #69 mentions high temperature solar cells that can be used with a heliostat, and also a power tower.

For me this is perfect. Having earned their keep in a voyage from the Earth/Moon system, and having been delivered to the surface of Mars with the very thin dominantly Copper heliostats also mentioned, the some wonderful things can be done.

As you know, I am a great proponent of ice covered reservoirs on Mars. In particular my eyes are on Utopia Planitia, which is greatly characterized, and Arcadia Planitia, which apparently SpaceX has intentions for. I suspect that Arcadia Planitia is very similar Utopia Planitia. Utopia Planitia is about the size of New Mexico and has sufficient water for a reservoir of that size perhaps 100 feet deep. If so then 1 bar of hydrostatic pressure at the bottom of that reservoir.

Of course eventually the whole almost 1/2 of Mars could be covered with such a reservoir. Can you imagine, that much?

Well of course at first just a much smaller one. Certainly not the size of New Mexico until much later. And I feel that actually there will be reasons to not do that to the whole potential ice body of the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

However where you did it, this is how I think it would work and what I think you would get for your troubles:

First of all, on the surface of the ice, power towers and heliostats, and of course mechanical protection of the ice itself. Mechanical protection could be a layer of plastic film and dirt over that, or also add some Styrofoam beads to the dirt. Go wild, invent something!

I have mentioned before that I have a heliostat method that I consider better than power towers and heliostat methods for the power towers we know, but I am not passing that on at this time. Maybe I will take it to my grave.

So, for now, lets look at a power tower of the style we are familiar with. Here we go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

So, imagine you are getting direct electrical power during the Martian day from high temperature solar cells on the tower. And you can capture waste heat to inject into your reservoir.

https://phys.org/news/2016-08-high-temp … solar.html
Heat Sink on the solar cells. Maybe heat into the reservoir?

So, what do you do with the electrical power and the excess heat? Into the reservoir with both of them.

If you have copper and/or aluminum wire and insulation for them, you may route the electricity to habitats near the bottom of the reservoir. Habitats perhaps made of fiberglass, which would resist corrosion unlike metals. Of course they have to be weighted down so they do not float up.

The waste heat could turn turbines, or just be quenched into the reservoir. Your choice.

What about electricity not sent directly to habitats by conductors?
My wordage here now relates to the contents of post #66.
Electrolysis, of course. Hydrogen and Oxygen from water, more carefully Carbon Monoxide and Oxygen from CO2 of the atmosphere.

For the fuels plastic pipelines. In the case of Hydrogen, most likely a rate of leakage as warned of by SpaceNut.
But we don't care, because the leakage goes to a very good cause. Microbes eat the Hydrogen that leaks, and if we are careful we would provide the microbes Carbon Monoxide. We just don't want to poison ourselves. A safer bet is to provide CO2 so that the microbes can get their Carbon.

So, lets be safer. We inject a lot of Oxygen into the reservoir, and a tolerable amount of raw Martian atmosphere. What happens, might we guess?

Well my prediction is something different for each significant gas. CO2, Nitrogen, Argon, Oxygen, Carbon Monoxide.

The Carbon Monoxide and Oxygen will be digested by the microbes. The Nitrogen will accumulate, possibly to saturation, or be fixed into fertilizer, depending on the microbes. The Argon will accumulate to saturation. The CO2 will be metabolized by the microbes to the extent that they can be provided Hydrogen.

So now you may have (If you have done it right), a reservoir of water with Oxygen dissolved in it that you may access in hard times as necessary. A source of concentrated Nitrogen, or Fertilizer, (Or both). A source of Concentrated Argon. A biomass, which can serve as direct food per a 3D printer to humans, or as a source of fish food, or as a source of biofuels. Your biofuels may be suitable to make plastics.

And that's not all! You should have Methane. You can vent that to atmosphere as a greenhouse gas to try terraforming Mars, or you may try to turn it into plastics, or you may feed it to microbes, that have Oxygen, so that they can Oxidize it.

......

All of this microbial metabolism and their swimming will heat the reservoir.

......

Well, it is unlikely that I can have a flying car on Mars. However I could have a submarine car with wheels.

It may have the power to "Fly" though water when necessary, but be careful not to go too high or the decompression will kill you.
Ordinarily you "Drive" it on roads at the bottom of the reservoir. Where am I going. Well SpaceNut maybe does not want me to visit his fiberglass dome. Terraformer is tired of me as well perhaps. Oh well, sigh, I will go home to my own dome.

I drive up a ramp into a fiberglass diving bell yard. I open the sub-car door into air. There are apple trees, possibly in artificial light, if I am at the correct time period of the "Day" for that. Or it is night.

Entertain myself, and then go to bed.

......

Next day, I am bored, or my boss told me to get up and put on my other body and get to work!
(Nice boss, wakes me up, does not fire me for being a dork).

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dork
Quote:

noun
1.
Slang. a silly, out-of-touch person who tends to look odd or behave ridiculously around others; a social misfit:
If you make me wear that, I’ll look like a total dork!
Synonyms: jerk, schmo; nerd, geek.

So, I put on my other body. It is a telepresence pseudo robot on the surface. Virtual reality makes it fairly real.

My job today is to either repair equipment or try to take over the world, and exterminate NewMars, members.

I choose to repair equipment, as the NewMars members are people too, and who really is sane who wants to rule a world? So much trouble. I'd rather go to a movie.

So today, the mining equipment for dune material extraction into the reservoir has messed up. I fix it, the dune materials are injected into the reservoir.

CO2 mixed with water being a bit acid, perhaps this under the right conditions will generate Hydrogen, Clays, and biomass.

Tomorrow, perhaps I will repair a pottery factory that makes pottery or ceramic electrical insulators.

That is plenty I think. Hope you enjoyed it.

......

OOPS! Not Done!

Yes, I forgot about the salts that would be generated from the digestion of dune materials and the reservoir bottom. It will become salty.

Just like the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea, eventually salt will show it's presence. Not a bad thing. You can mine minerals from salt.

Texans may drill down inside their fiberglass domes, and access brine reservoirs, to access minerals. Maybe a bogger monster will show up and eat them. Not sure.

Also, if salty either from salts newly generated, or salts generated in the eons of the existence of Mars, you may then stratify the waters to the extent of a Antarctic Dry Valley Lake, and so have salty water that is at room temperature at the bottom of the reservoir.

Then you can go for a walk in your Jules Vern 20 thousand Leagues under the sea suit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Th … er_the_Sea

In fact you can put on a swim suit, a breather (You may get your Oxygen from the water, if enough is dissolved into it). But you better be weighted down or you will float up, decompress and die.

Too bad you forgot your weights. And you called me a dork.

I really am done.

Last edited by Void (2018-03-20 16:27:55)

Void · 2018-03-20 16:29:29

OK, I guess I will just drone on he said with an Eeyore voice.

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

So, as I have indicated, any motion in the water will cause heating. Ciliated microbes, fish, submarine cars.
Further the heat from my body going into my diving bell house will combine with the heat of that house to leak into the water.

And of course we will be quenching heat from power towers into the reservoir with or without running electricity generating turbines.

I did also mention protective covering for the ice. That in fact could be partially Styrofoam beads or ping pong balls mixed with dirt.
Each item will be pressurized to Martian ambient. ~5.5 mb and perhaps going up to 11 mb upon the taraform action of vaporizing the CO2 content of the Southern polar ice cap.

Actually at 11 mb, snow, snow melts, and temporary streams are possible before they evaporate, or so I have read.
Therefore, the protective covering will not be as needed, but still a good precaution to slow down evaporation of the reservoir.

However I have mentioned materials such as dirt, Styrofoam, and Ping Pong balls, mixed together, each having pretty much a dead air space of vacuum in them. Not unlike a thermos bottle I think.

Therefore maybe quite a thermal insulator.

In order not to boil the reservoir and also melt and evaporate the ice covering we must shed heat.

The solar power towers, and the heliostat structures can be considered for doubling as heat radiators. Particularly at night, but not necessarily at only night. My particular design would likely be ideal, but I am taking it to my grave.

......

So, as I have stated elsewhere on this site, we can use our energy 3 times. (So, far).
1) Primary use with waste heat. For instance running an electric motor in a diving bell home for whatever purpose. It will shed heat. The heat will go into the air of the diving bell. The heat will travel through the diving bell into the water, and cause the water molecules to vibrate more.

2) The water molecules vibrating more, of course the water is warmer. Further, some of the ice layer will melt.

3) because we don't want to excessively melt the ice layer, we will have to shed heat to the Martian sky, hopefully generating electricity while doing it.

So 3 uses of the same vibrational energy. A very happy circumstance I feel.

......

Energy Storage:
Several:
1) The melted water, stratified, if fresh up to 39 DegF. If Saline, then possibly 70 DegF max.

2) The potential to freeze water under the ice layer, that is to add ice or slush to it. This might be useful during a global dust storm.

3) The Hydrogen stored in the underwater pipelines. If they are laid down on the reservoir bottom, then the hydrostatic pressure might be ~1 bar. That should reduce the Hydrogen losses, once the internal pressure of the pipeline becomes =< 1 bar.

So in the event of a dust storm you might use this resource in a frugal fashion. Possibly using it in a fuel cell with Oxygen dissolved in the reservoir. You should not need to generate food during a global dust storm, as it should have been quite possible for you to have laid up frozen food supplies for such an event.

......

I did mention mining the salts of the reservoir, which will accumulate from historical deposits and will also accumulate from chemical reactions of water with the bottom regolith, and the dune materials you might want to add. That seems reasonable to me. Lithium? Maybe.

An easy game is to grow shellfish both for their food value and for the shells they make. I believe Calcium Chloride, possibly then then make shells from that. So then concrete maybe.

......

So, what about terrestrial foods?

I did elsewhere mention containerized gardens. The one I like most, is a combination Potato and Mushroom garden. You could do this both on the surface of Mars, and under water.

On the surface of Mars, you must deal with UV, blocking it by some method. You must also deal with the cold of night.

Under the water, under the ice window, you must also deal with UV, but the cold of night is not a problem. The attenuation of light during the day is a problem, so you must include a heliostat with your gardening robot.

The gardening robot would take the sealed canister and present it to the light coming through the specially prepared ice window.
To compensate for attenuation of light, a reflective solar concentrator would have to be included with the robot, so that the canister is in it's focus. When the crop needed planting the robot would present itself to a diving bell at the bottom of the reservoir. The canister would be opened, and most likely a previous crop harvested. (Potatoes and Mushrooms). The next crop would be planted, the canister sealed, and the robot would depart to present the canister to the daylight shine though the ice.

How the window is accomplished is covered elsewhere but if you like I can repeat it upon request.

......

The reason I choose Potatoes and Mushrooms, is symbiosis. The potatoes will give off Oxygen which the Mushrooms will breath.
The Mushrooms will break down provided organic matter and provide to the potatoes, both CO2 and nutrients.

......

And as I have said container farming could be done on the surface, but the process will be different to protect the crops from nightly frosts. Handing the containers is also likely to be tricky as well, as you are dealing with gravitational attraction of the container while handling. In the water, if properly buoyancy neutralized, gravitation is not such an issue of handling.

......

As for SpaceNut and RobertDyck's greenhouses, OK. Maybe. I don't trust the greenhouse/dome concept. I more trust inverted domes. We might look into treating the under ice container notion to an up size. Not sure how well that works. It might be worth looking into. Containers so large that humans could be in them? Why not.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … -pods.html

Quote:

Forget fields, farms could soon be UNDERWATER: Nemo's Garden project is growing strawberries, beans, lettuce and herbs in submarine pods
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … z5AKlK5IMC
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Not enough light, add an underwater heliostat with the garden in its focus. I think I will try to contact them and suggest that they experiment with it. Might make it possible to grow other crops. The Heliostat and domes I think may accumulate microbes, so that will have to be kept clean I expect.

Fantastic!

Done.

Last edited by Void (2018-03-20 17:17:37)

SpaceNut · 2018-03-20 17:55:35

Since post #68 the topic has now been expanded to including everything but the kitchen sink, oh wait a minute I see one....
I will read all tomorrow as it seems to feed the aspects of the pipelines.

Void · 2018-03-20 18:14:15

Very kind of you to respond. Really.

I included the various kitchen sink issues, in order to portray a situation for Mars, where a Hydrogen and/or Methane pipeline may make more sense than you felt was reasonable. But as a piece of a greater puzzle, I think here I have at last offered a chance that it could be contributory to the human habitation of Mars.

I am sorry it was such a rough ride.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-21 17:06:49

Starting over back a post #1 for the who, what, why we want to build pipelines. Some of which there intended purpose is straight forward with other means of using them as secondary to intent. Depending on the diameter and length we can move just about everything below the surface but it will take quite a period of time to be able to implement as the equipment for making it possible and its energy needs must be met in order to even begin putting the construction efforts forward for the mars settlers.

So even with a single point of settlement to start towards the second would be a temporary to near permanent storage use once the pipes a filled with the contents to which they will be designed to hold. With each new landing accomplishing more settlement construction you would have the first stations equipment to makes use in time to build the seconach sd location.

Each settlement location will be connected to the pipe system for a bidirectional use of the contents which could be excess or for redundancy for if the other settlement has an issue creating that item. The size of each pipe will reflect the commodity that it will transport from A to B or B to A depending on the need.

edit: to which when we add settlement site C we would be adding more pipes from B to C and C to A that way we can keep redundancy and stock piling build ups. From that point on we would be doing this same triangle piping connection and continue to grow man's foot print on Mars.

We has talked about the broad topics of:
1 Liquids
2 gaseous
3 solids
4 light
5 power
6 communications
Tunnels are just larger pipes:
7 people
8 equipment
9 heavy materials from ore to sand ect...

Void · 2018-03-21 20:02:53

Your last post is most interesting and useful.

I might add that although there are other methods to reach what lies below the ice, the liquid method is suitable because it would expose what is hidden under the ice, and also provide the various things we have both communicated about.

What lies under the ice?

I think this is rather conservative.
http://earthsky.org/space/mars-undergro … a-planitia

I have seen speculation on glacial features that the Mariner Rift Valley may be filled with deeply buried ice from the era when the Martian atmosphere collapsed or was blown away. I won't require acceptance of that in this conversation. I will run with the article which is connected to above.

I have recently read that there is evidence of an early era of Oceans on Mars. The northern hemisphere being a likely location. And there is evidence of an Oxygen atmosphere at some point. So to me that indicates that we might hope to find useful things under the ice.

For instance:
1) Sandstone: So far mostly found near the equator, but how about under the ice? What about when the poles might have been wet in ancient era's? Wind blown dust at the bottom of a sea? Ice now covering it, and deceiving us about it.
Sandstone homes? Under a body of water? Nice I think.

2) Limestone? Well if an ocean, and possibly life, then can we be sure that it's not there?

3) Lava Tubes under the ice? Well, not so many volcano's in that area, but perhaps a long time ago. Would ancient lava tubes survive under the ice? Maybe not, but if they were filled with ice since ancient times, maybe.

4) Ore bodies? Louis has made us aware of the exposed hematite deposit on Mars, but can we be sure what lies under this ice deposits?

So, then a good trick will be to use radar and sonar to attempt to get clues.

So, I really would not melt all the ice into an ocean. However I would melt locations with promise of 1-4 or maybe some other things we are not aware of.

I would also consider canals for bulk transportation. Strange canals. Instead of barges on the surface like the Mississippi river system, rather wheeled carts almost buoyant. That is traveling on roads on the bottoms of the canals, with the use of buoyancy to naturalize almost all of their weight. A necessary trick to invent is how to get them to travel through the canals without bulging the protective ice layer too much. Canals such as that could link important melt centers of the 1, 2, 3, and 4 variety into a thriving economy.

Personally I would not entertain a "Blue Mars". A thick atmosphere if possible, but leave most of the ice as ice. Go to an Oxygen atmosphere with only the greenhouse effect that serves your purposes.

Here is one reason why:

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

Quote:

Polymetallic nodules, also called manganese nodules, are rock concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization. When visible to the naked eye, it can be a small test (shell) of a microfossil (radiolarian or foraminifer), a phosphatized shark tooth, basalt debris or even fragments of earlier nodules. As nodules can be found in vast quantities, and contain valuable metals, deposits were identified as having economic interest in the 1960s by John Mero.[1]

Manganese nodule

Nodules on the Seabed
Nodules vary in size from tiny particles visible only under a microscope to large pellets more than 20 centimetres (8 in) across. However, most nodules are between 3 and 10 cm (1 and 4 in) in diameter, about the size of hens eggs or potatoes. Their surface textures vary from smooth to rough. They frequently have botryoidal (mammilated or knobby) texture and vary from spherical in shape to typically oblate, sometimes prolate, or are otherwise irregular. The bottom surface, buried in sediment, is generally rougher than the top due to a different type of growth.[2]

We don't know if Martian chemistry of a supposed ocean did something like this, but we should want to find out before we decide what type of terraform to eventually do.

In my mind I would prefer ice covered bodies of water. This gives you two "Land" surfaces. The bottom the reservoir and the ice surface. (With protective covering that would look like land).

But of course the future belongs to those who will be there. They can do as they like.

Nodules or something else? I really don't think it will be as simple as melting the ice layer. I am going to bet that the ancient ocean bottom was in many cases covered over by new and different sediments, so it would not be as simple as melting the ice in most cases. But it may be a thing to explore.

......

The other reason to go for the melt pools and pipelines, is petrochemicals.

I see a very bright future for Mars, manufacturing fuels and resins for fiberglass, to export to the Earth/Moon system and the Asteroid belt.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2018-03-21 20:28:45)

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