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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 3:51:59 PM

MalcolmNathaniel

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That wouldn't work. You'd need magnetic mono-poles - something that has yet to be discovered.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 4:12:40 PM

ARIES83

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My evil alter-ego use to be my imitation of agent smith from the matrix.

Until I found Magneto from X-Men, the older one, not the new young Magneto.
Only it's a lot harder to pull off than it seems. Haven't gotten it down quite yet.

...but when I do! There will be no stoping me...

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 4:15:20 PM

ARIES83

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Nor will they be discovered! Haha it's the stuff of free energy nuts wet dreams.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 4:27:43 PM

FrostedFlake

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My alter-ego works the crowd of a double decked bus operating a belt mounted nickle squirter and asking people for TICKETS! Can I have your tickets please?!?

It might not seem that exciting. Until you consider the buses around here have one deck. And they don't issue tickets. Or give change.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 4:34:15 PM

Kithra

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Some of the things to think about.

First is that this planet has finite resources, which are rapidly being used up. Almost every so-called "solution" requires more resources, not less. Wind turbines and solar cells require manufacturing, and those materials do get used up. Secondly, we do need new technologies to handle the problems we have (either that, or a massive die-off and then return to subsistence farming with animal labour) in my opinion.

A race to Mars, however instigated, should help to catalyze these efforts. Think about how much technology we received from the moon mission. Furthermore, the technologies developed to get to mars, should be the basis (or complete package) to get to asteroids, Jovian moons, etc. for mining those resources, not to mention moon (good source for Aluminum, Oxygen, and Titanium, along with Iron, Silicon, etc. If you read their plans for the moon colony (and, of course, plans are pretty easy to make, let's see how much they actually do...) a lot of the launch and support infrastructure will be usable for more than just a mars trip.

Lastly, I think about the 1400s. How many people died trying to reach the new land? How many died once they DID reach there? Ok, I'm sure there are many first nations people that rather wish that none of them had made it, but some succeeded. In the same vein, this particular trip to Mars may fail and may be ill-conceived, but it's a start, and it's being done by volunteers, a better system than, say Botany Bay.

Someone has to try first, and they're not looking to launch anyone there tomorrow. I believe the timetable says 2024 or so. 10 years is a long time for development. We made it to the moon in less, not even knowing if we could develop ANY of the technology that could get us there.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 4:40:40 PM

ARIES83

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quote:

ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake

My alter-ego works the crowd of a double decked bus operating a belt mounted nickle squirter and asking people for TICKETS! Can I have your tickets please?!?

It might not seem that exciting. Until you consider the buses around here have one deck. And they don't issue tickets. Or give change.

< Message edited by ARIES83 -- 3/8/2014 4:41:00 PM >

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 7:34:34 PM

MasterCaneman

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quote:

ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake

quote:

ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman

quote:

ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake

Trying to make something out of Mars is one of those things everyone knows we are going to take whack at. But the Lemmings plan is not going to work here. I mean, there.

I think the fundamental problem is the overall lethality of the Martian environment. This would go right past the sort of person who thinks the environment is something other people keep trying to get him to give a fuck about. In fact, the environment is simply the conditions that prevail. And Mars sucks. It has almost no air. And it has just a few scattered bits of magnetosphere, so the radiation count is bad enough that air doesn't matter. You have to solve both these problems to make any progress at all. To solve either of them, you need asteroid mining equipment.

Making air is not tough. Breathable air is a trick. Probably best leave that to plants. But a magnetosphere could be as simple as a Tesla tower at each pole. Each pole pumping power into the ionosphere at opposite polarity, powering every piece of equipment on the planet from two power plants, wirelessly.

Read Robert Zubrin's book The Case for Mars, and you'll see the overall plan isn't all that far-fetched. The 'no-return' option is puzzling, because there's already hardware available to make fuel for a return trip. As for the Tesla-style magnetosphere plan, it sounds good in theory, but you're talking about engineering on a truly astronomical level on a site with zero in-situ resources, such as roads, trucks, construction equipment. Raw materials are present, but you're literally have to land an entire manufacturing technology base onto the planet. Twice, since you're electrifying both the poles.

I'm in agreement this isn't a con job as much as it's a bellwether to see if the social climate is ready for the Next Big Thing, which is off-world colonization. Apparently, it is. So much the better, even if nothing further comes of this. All they're really trying to do is plant the seeds and see if they take.

You said that so well.

Suppose instead we hire the asteroid miners to make a bunch of bar magnets about the size of railroad ties. Thousands of them. Deliver half to each pole. In big foam balls that can be easily rounded up, herded around and driven to the railhead. There they get the stuffings knocked out of them, their innerds flung on a cart on a rail leading to a hole in the ground where the magnets all disappear from sight forever. Plenty of opportunities for horseplay with this project. But it might just work and once done, it's done. Unless you want to add more. A giant but finite project to deflect charged particles to the poles. A roof of a sort. No power, though. You will have to make do with a six legged lizard. It's not so bad. Six legged lizards eat big bugs.

It would probably be easier to try to restart the planet's iron core to produce a magnetic field again. Engineering on that scale is probably centuries, if not millenia away for us. While I can see colonization on Mars, it would be most likely underground, where smaller, more practical artificial magnetic shielding can be employed.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 7:45:43 PM

MalcolmNathaniel

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Question: Why is a magnetic core necessary?

Navigation? Easily solved with GPS. Actually, I can't think of any other reason. We aren't likely to take migrating birds to the new planet.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 7:50:19 PM

MasterCaneman

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The Earth's magnetic field repels most of the energetic cosmic rays and radiation from the sun that keeps us from frying, essentially. To be sure, we still experience a significant flux as it is, without it we'd die. Probably the greatest protection it affords us is protection from the streams of charged particles (solar storms, cornonal mass ejections, etc) that would play hob with the environment.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/8/2014 8:07:12 PM

MalcolmNathaniel

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Well, GM crops would be necessary. There is no way that humans would be able to walk on the surface anyhow: the gravity of Mars is too low to hold onto the amount of oxygen we need. Anything else would bleed off into space.

You could GM humans to survive, but then they aren't humans anymore.

Bear in mind that the post was about a first colony, not a planetary wide population. I can think of a few ways to create magnetic poles, but none of them are easy or cheap. All are extremely violent and dangerous.

A quote from a book that I can't put my finger on: The reason Mars has so little atmosphere is that it has so little atmosphere.

The rest of that chapter was all very dry science and rather recursive.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/9/2014 12:09:51 AM

FrostedFlake

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Atmosphere is the reason I want mining to happen around Mars. There are other reasons to NOT mine in Earth orbit, satellites being just one, but Phobos would make a great base, and dumping the rubble onto Mars is a great way to make air. Mars has only point six percent of what we are used to. A quadrillion tonnes more would be about right. Some of it should be Comets.

The first plants to introduce would be mosses and lichens. Simple plants that can break down bare rock and use it for fuel. Pioneer species able to exploit the tiniest niche and able to find it with at least a few of the billions of tiny spores cast onto the Martian winds. But before you can do that, you have to get the temperature up so they can deal. More air. After a few years, the pioneer species will have opened up some new niches. More plants.

As difficult as it is to come up with a good way to install a magnetosphere, if you are going to have a biosphere, you need protection from ionized particles. It has to be built to last. I wonder if you could drill into the iron core of the planet, then build a pair of giant bar magnets on each pole, all the way to to the top. One way to make a magnet is to cool molten iron in an electric field. All the magnetic moment arms line up, then the metal solidifies. Storing it afterwards could be a problem. You would probably want it off the orbiting factory as soon as you can package it and push.

Mars is a big project. And worthwhile because it would double the land area under human foot. It will not be done in a day. Not in a lifetime. It will take a couple centuries to start looking like somewhere someone might want to live. The tools have not yet been drawn much less built. And to work on Mars, they have to be there. So, the first steps seem to be :

1/ Come up with a workable design for a permanent magnetosphere. Come on, People! They built the Pyramids, for Steves' sake, way before you were even born. And the Chinese Built the wall, even before being discovered. And Armstrong and Aldrin strolled about on the Moon, before the digital watch revolution. Think about the profit motive! We can do this.

2/ Do the asteroid mining around Mars. I have a feeling the super rich, hyper intelligent folks leading the space mining industry want to do it right here. They seem not to be aware of what that would fuck up, and what it would fore go.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/9/2014 1:44:16 PM

mummyman321

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quote:

ORIGINAL: subfever

We haven't even learned how to get along and live sustainably here on this planet, and now we're planning a colonization experiment on Mars???

Learn more here.

I am all for it. While many people complained about NASA and the money spent for the Space Race, the technology that came out of the space race was phenomenal. Many people do not realize the technologies that came out of the space race have touched all our lives. Those technologies have saved millions of lives and created millions of jobs over the years and made our lives much easier. Below is just small list of spinoff technologies out of NASA.

To make a trip to Mars and colonize it would require similar innovations to what NASA did in the past. It would create jobs and break through technologies that would benefit us greatly.

NASA Spinoff Technologies - Partial List:
Satellite TV
GPS
Temper foam
Portable Computers
Solar Cells
Portable vacuums (dustbuster)
Telemedicine
Virtual Reality / 3D graphics
Non reflective glass used on computers and TV screen, glasses etc
LEDS
IR Thermometers/Ear thermometers
Water purification from wastewater systems
Freeze drying of foods
Aircraft anti-icing systems
Improved radial tires
Fire resistant reinforcement materials

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/9/2014 3:18:28 PM

MasterCaneman

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MalcolmNathaniel

Well, GM crops would be necessary. There is no way that humans would be able to walk on the surface anyhow: the gravity of Mars is too low to hold onto the amount of oxygen we need. Anything else would bleed off into space.

You could GM humans to survive, but then they aren't humans anymore.

Bear in mind that the post was about a first colony, not a planetary wide population. I can think of a few ways to create magnetic poles, but none of them are easy or cheap. All are extremely violent and dangerous.

A quote from a book that I can't put my finger on: The reason Mars has so little atmosphere is that it has so little atmosphere.

The rest of that chapter was all very dry science and rather recursive.

I believe it came The Case For Mars by Robert Zubrin. Any colony on Mars would be more akin to the research stations at the Poles here. With only 38% gravity of Earth, the following generations would be considered more 'Martian' than 'Human' simply because they wouldn't be able to handle our gravity. Not saying we shouldn't do it, for anything it would mean more science and understanding about planetary evolution, as well as any commercial exploitation that could arise. It would start to kick our species out of the cradle before we all end up dying on this rock.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/10/2014 12:26:51 AM

MalcolmNathaniel

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If it wasn't "The Case For Mars" it could be "Mining the Sky."

Either way, it's the lack of gravity (including the mass of the atmosphere) that makes a survivable atmosphere not a reality just yet. Good point about the magnetic poles though.

It would require a cataclysmic event to make surface survival more likely.

That isn't to say that that it's impossible to create a colony there. Before the invention of the house (I have a really neat book on that too called "The Evolution of the House." - I can't even find it on Amazon, it's that rare) we were all troglodytes living in caves. Modern techniques could quite easily create man-made caves.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/10/2014 1:03:13 AM

MasterCaneman

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With lower gravity and near-lack of tectonic activity, the caves could be made both larger and more stable than subterranean structures here on Earth. And once there's large underground structures in place, extremely deep drilling could tap into what's left of the geothermal (or would that be areothermal?) activity for power and heat.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/10/2014 1:13:38 AM

DaddySatyr

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I wouldn't go, myself but I'd be all for selecting a dozen or so posters from here to make the trip

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/10/2014 1:27:16 AM

MasterCaneman

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I hear that a lot. "I wouldn't go, but I'd send..." I read Pournelle's CoDominium series, and this is the first step towards creating a new Siberia/Australia for our undesirables.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/10/2014 8:31:05 AM

MercTech

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I went to lunch with two of my daughters Friday and G. popped up and asked if I would go to a Mars colony.

I had to be honest. As a 50 something I may have skills that would be very useful but physically I would no longer be up to it. If I were still a 30 something; I would jump on it.
B. had a good thought in that "How many volunteers don't really want to go to Mars but to Barsoom."

Mars has a much shallower gravity well than earth, resources, and location. This would be a wonderful place for a support base for mining asteroids and exploration further out in the solar system.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/10/2014 9:33:39 AM

MasterCaneman

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There's still a gravity well to deal with, albeit a shallower one than Earth. It would be far more conservative and cost-effective to base the asteroid-mining infrastructure in free orbit, where the materiel gathered would actually be used. In microgravity, it would take much less energy to change orbits to move objects/people than it would on a planetary surface.

For the comfort and convenience of us gravity-addicted humans, Clarke-style wheels would be the habitat of choice, as this would supply near-normal 1g for daily living activities while at the same time, permitting them to go and work in the microgravity environment where the large structures we'll be needing for the 'next step' will be fabricated.

I'm all for sending a manned flight to Mars, and even a small 'colony'/research station for the near-term (50-100 years), but the real meat and potatoes is going to be in orbital infrastructure development. Everything from orbital solar power stations to orbital manufacturing to large-scale human habitation are what's really the goal here. Even deep-space research would benefit from launching from a point in space, as it lowers the overall cost because the mission doesn't have to claw its way from a planetary surface.

And there will be some processes that will require gravity in order to work (casting metal is one example I can think of off the top of my head), but that could just as easily be accomplished on the Moon, with an even shallower gravity well and zero atmosphere to deal with. However, all of this is just a pipe dream until we can figure out a more cost-effective way to climb out of our own gravity well.

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RE: One Way Ticket to Mars - 3/10/2014 9:26:50 PM

LookieNoNookie

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quote:

ORIGINAL: subfever

We haven't even learned how to get along and live sustainably here on this planet, and now we're planning a colonization experiment on Mars???

Learn more here.

Well, I'm sure I wasn't, nor will be the first but, I have a proposed list.

That aside.....I think it's both insane and awesome that people are willing to sign up.

How many will stand on deck, go through the training, is another story but....we gotta go.

We have to go.

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