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#201
That video almost makes you wish Mars was slightly more alien then Earth. I mean, Mars is definitely different to Earth but some of the pictures could easily be from our deserts; while if it was a lander on say, Venus... who knows what it would look like. definitely cool either way though.
Damn seeing pictures like that of another Planets surface are just so amazing; its put a smile on my face
(Formerly "The Herald")
"The bible is like an EULA. People just scroll past everything and click "I agree" without reading it."
-Moe
Its simple. We should build a massive starship. One that looks a bit like a banana, with say... half a million colonists. Hyper to Mars. Job done. How do you know they haven't built flying saucers with the black budget and are already on Mars building bases with YOUR tax dollars!? Fnuckin rocketships is not the wayto go. The science of framedragging and flying saucers is real and about 100 years old. Rocketships lol. Warp speed Number One!
Well that was the quickest mission ever
But seriously, The pictures coming in are pretty amazing. They have a strange sort of mystic quality to them, what with the mountains fading out of view. I wonder what NASA uses to stitch the pictures together.
#205
Y'know what's actually really cute when you think about it? In science fiction, the probe devices/robots/whatever all land quite dramatically (and hey, Curiosity managed to pull that part off!), but as soon as they land they're immediately off to investigate the nearest hillbilly's anus or what have you. Curiosity? Well, it's gonna sit there for a few weeks and take its time thinking about where it might go. If it gets really bored, it can play with some of the dirt next to it. If there were any native Martians terrified by the otherworldly robot, they'd lose interest in it out of boredom before it even started moving.
Sorry, I just think it's cute because I anthropomorphise everything. Sorta picture Curiosity knowing about what sort of exciting action we, the public, are expecting of it, but it's being forced to sit and wait for NASA operators to ensure it's 100% safe to do so much as 'go forwards a bit'.
(Not that I don't understand the need for that sort of caution; being the operator who accidently got the rover jammed in a pothole because they didn't thoroughly examine the terrain ahead of it would not be a fun spot to be in, and would be a great way to ruin a multi-billion dollar project).
Dammit, not again!
I seem to recall the last rover getting stuck for several days because a crust had formed on the soil and it cracked under the weight of the rover, collapsing like a whole two or three inches. So yeah... gotta be careful.
Add me on Steam - ArbitUH. Don't EVEN bother adding me on GFWL
Where's me squig ointment reference in my sig... oh
Curiosity is the size of a large SUV, whereas the last rovers could fit in an SUV. I don't think that's going to happen.
#208
Eh, SUV's get bogged all the time. I mean, yeah, curiosity's probably designed a tad more robustly than the average 4WD, but you still don't want to run the one-in-a-thousand chance of it getting into a situation it can't get out of on its own (e.g. getting a wheel jammed in a crevasse or on a large rock or something, or god forbid, flipping itself on an incline)
#209
We do. The Russians were landing stuff on Venus around 25-30 years ago and they got some (admittedly, not amazingly detailed) images.Originally Posted by Akra
http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm
Agdune: Oh, I wasn't disputing that they had to be careful, but don't think it's going to get bogged down in just dirt like the last ones could.
So after having seen it mentioned in this thread several times i did some research into the VASIMR engine. Very cool stuff, they plan on testing a pair of these on the ISS for altitude correction as the ISS needs to occasionally adjust its altitude due to atmospheric drag, the expect to have the VF-200 affixed to ISS sometime in 2015.
However the mention of it being used for a hypothetical mars mission has brought one major problem to the table. In order to make VASIMR viable on that large a scale they are claiming that they would require a high power low mass electric power source, the example given being a nuclear reactor. With the way people treat nuclear technology nowadays I imagine getting a full size nuclear reactor into orbit would be next to impossible.
On a more on topic note, I cant wait until curiosity starts moving around and sending some more pictures and data back. There is just something magical about gazing onto another world.
But yet they're okay with sending smaller ones at other planets in our solar system.With the way people treat nuclear technology nowadays I imagine getting a full size nuclear reactor into orbit would be next to impossible.
To my knowledge the only HOT reactor ever launched by the US was the Snapshot mission, everything else has been using Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators. The soviets however had launched numerous nuclear powered satellites and probes that possessed hot reactors and those all left considerable nuclear material orbiting our planet by design.
I should also mention that SNAP-10 had a possible collision and may have released nuclear material in its orbit. So that doesn't bode well for the grand total of one reactor that we put into orbit.
#214
Not everything is about money but in the long run I don't see how space exploration and exploitation is unprofitable.
It's just not as immediately profitable as sponsoring sports to sell your nasty ass cardboard burgers. No Names.
Plus the amount the US wastes on it's defence budget to no profit shows that large sums over long periods can be 'blown into the wind' for other reasons than immediate return.
Aside from what Fisher said, robotic missions are basically the scouts for human ones, doubt you're going to find many NASA engineers and scientists who say "Jee I hope these missions don't lead to a manned mission someday".
A lot of people dislike a lot of things but idiots rarely get that kind of veto on high technology endeavours. I actually found it funny Germany got scared of nuclear reactors, always thought Merkel and German's in general were smarter than that, guess the I.Q. dropped since Moe left?
Or more likely it was a reactionary decision which will probably get turned around at some point, world needs clean and efficient energy? Nuclear is as good as for now and childish scare stories aside safer and takes less lives than fossil fuelled plants. People are more scared of being turned into a Glowing One than dying of respiratory failure/disease/cancers they risk just by living in a modern city.
It's still amazing how Fukushima is considered a nuclear disaster. It was a big-ass Earthquake and tsunami, and last I checked the evacuation aside the area didn't turn into (ironically now I think of it) a Martian type wasteland.
Edit: Those Venus probe images are cool, looks like somewhere on Earth but not and like...deadly.
Fuck you Venus for going all global warming....you could have been our sister planet and shit but you had to go get a temper. :<
As far as I know nuclear power has come under suspicion not just for public scaring events like Fukushima, but also because of the hidden costs of them that are coming into the political eye. Nuclear plants cost more to build than coal or gas, but the fuel is significantly cheaper and they produce no atmospheric pollution so they initially seemed far more attractive to governments. However they've started to realise that the massive cost of decommissioning old reactors and storing waste far outstrips the savings on running costs and, crucially, it's normally all paid for by the government in perpetuity.
The Germans are just sensible enough not to sling that millstone around their publics' neck, nuclear power being generally unpopular with said public is probably just a bonus.
It doesn't look like there's any alternative in deep space though, unless we want to hamstring ourselves into dicking around in orbit forever we're going to have to trust they can get the fuel up there in a way that would survive even a catastrophic failure of the rocket.
Last edited by Jonny; 10th Aug 12 at 3:58 AM.
#216
#217
You actually will find a lot, because robotic missions are always cheaper, safer, and more efficient than sending sacks of meat into space. Meat is extremely inefficient at doing science. Everything you can get out of manned mission can be achieved by an unmanned mission that returns.Aside from what Fisher said, robotic missions are basically the scouts for human ones, doubt you're going to find many NASA engineers and scientists who say "Jee I hope these missions don't lead to a manned mission someday".
#218
ROBOTS CAN'T WRITE POETRY, BLACK.
#219
what if ancient alien artifacts are buried on mars and they are programmed to respond only to biological beings?
I'm personally hoping for buried alien mummies.
Oh yes they can.
Behold!
The FUTURE!
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi
Now I'm wondering, could a human withstand a martian atmosphere? As in, hold their breath for a short while and stand on the surface without a suit. Or remove their helmet in the atmosphere for a moment. Or some crazy stunt not unlike what happens at the south pole here.
You send people to get funding, but you only need that funding because you're sending people. It's pretty much the basic principle that all government agencies operate on.
Also,
How about work without direction?
How about identify with the phrases "that's odd", "that's interesting" or "what happened there?"
How about smelling?
How about catching something out of the corner of your eye?
How about looking up at just the right moment to see something unexpected/unexplained?
How about intuition?
How about bungling something and making a discovery through it?
How about climbing that ridge... just because it's there?
How about waking in the middle of the night with just that most awesomely brilliant idea due to emotional and psychological stimuli working on the human due to their completely alien surroundings?
Sorry, but there are many more things humans can do that would be beneficial that far outweighs what a rover can do. Try pulling the other leg.
It takes a lot of argument
to convince most people
that they are lying.
#225
Human can survive being exposed to the vacuum of space for a short period of time, so I would say Mars would be no different. But I wouldn't want to volunteer for that.Now I'm wondering, could a human withstand a martian atmosphere? As in, hold their breath for a short while and stand on the surface without a suit. Or remove their helmet in the atmosphere for a moment. Or some crazy stunt not unlike what happens at the south pole here.
#226
THE FUTURE!You've got me wondering, is Curiosity fully autonomous or do we have some limited control over it?
Last edited by Starblade; 10th Aug 12 at 3:56 PM.
My Interceptor is better than your Interceptor.
It's 90% CO2, so it wouldn't melt or poison you like Venus' atmosphere. It's really, really thin though and apparently ranges down to around -120 celsius depending on where you are and the time of year. Possibly it'd be similar to vacuum exposure? While there is some air pressure the air would conduct your heat away faster than you'd radiate it in a vacuum, so you'd suffer more damage from the cold but slightly less from the low pressure.Now I'm wondering, could a human withstand a martian atmosphere? As in, hold their breath for a short while and stand on the surface without a suit. Or remove their helmet in the atmosphere for a moment. Or some crazy stunt not unlike what happens at the south pole here.
Starblade: There is some control, but it's scheduled and planned out and nothing spontaneous. It's also on a long delay.
Having humans there would not only speed up any discoveries made, but open up the possibilities for many, many more things to be done/discovered.
Black's statement is just flat out wrong. It doesn't matter if a machine can do things more precisely, more routinely or more efficiently.
The human (read: sentient) factor is just too large to dismiss so casually.
#229
Total Recall, the font of all science, says no. Are you going to question pre-government Schwarzenegger?Now I'm wondering, could a human withstand a martian atmosphere? As in, hold their breath for a short while and stand on the surface without a suit. Or remove their helmet in the atmosphere for a moment. Or some crazy stunt not unlike what happens at the south pole here.
(man, I remember when finding a simple clip on youtube was easy. Does no-one want to preserve the awesomeness of the head-exploding scenes?)
#230
It would, once we develop the means to get ourselves there. For the moment we'll just have to settle for our rovers, satellites, and probes. But I'm not interested in repeating that with you; I was just curious.Having humans there would not only speed up any discoveries made, but open up the possibilities for many, many more things to be done/discovered.
e: \/\/ Seemed to be both of us, not that it matters.
Last edited by Starblade; 10th Aug 12 at 6:54 PM.
I'm pretty sure the having humans there statement was directed at Black who maintained that humans were unnecessary to exploration when drone solutions are available. Not that hes trying to disagree with you again.
I think a combination of drone and human is the best option. having a human on Mars operating a rover or camera drone etc. would be much better than the current delay that NASA has to deal with.. that way the explorers only need to leave the habitat for the REALLY cool stuff!
I honestly can't bring myself to care all that much about it. It's not going to really bring about any practical tech that I'll be able to use in my every day life, chances are it's not going to find anything worldview shaking, and it's the way I felt when people went 'lolevery1freakout tehy found teh FTL particle!' where I knew they'd spend decades just trying to replicate the damn thing, and I'd be long dead before they even exited the research phase of the project. Maybe I'll change my mind on the stupidly remote chance they find proof that complex life may have existed on Mars, but until then, I just don't really give a shit about it.
And for people that might go 'but think of teh futrue of teh species!!1'...Well, fuck the future of the species. Once I'm dead, the fucktards of the future can irradiate the planet for all I care. I'm going to be dead and I won't be around to suffer through the mistakes of a overcrowded planet run by people who only want to get richer at the expense of everyone else.
Those Halcyon Days...
#233
It's fairly commonly dismissed by experts, though. The sad fact is that even if you put a human on mars, every single test they run will be by a machine. All they can do is feed stuff into receptacle X, and they would only do so under strict guidance from mission control. The cost of getting a human there and keeping them there is way too high for the marginal benefit of having someone be able to see the test result 14 minutes earlier. The rest of your stuff... well, yeah, maybe, once we have a truly autonomous colony there with people routinely walking around. I doubt anyone is going to be smelling Mars any time soon regardless of how much money we spend, and while the rest of it is nice to have, it's not really necessary if you're willing to spend more time and be methodical. Rovers are simply vastly more cost-efficient, and that's what matters at the moment.The human (read: sentient) factor is just too large to dismiss so casually.
#234
Have you ever used anything that attaches with Velcro?
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that
heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov
On that subject, what is this rover going to tell us that the other rovers we've sent to Mars haven't told us? Or was it just to experiment with the rocket crane lander thing?
#236
Actually Geoff, NASA didn't make velco.
But this sight shows stuff they did - http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/nasacity/index2.htm
Humans are far faster than any rover ever sent. Curiosity has a speed of 90 meters an hour, whereas any human could walk 44 times as fast. Even Opportunity has only covered some 18 miles (as of last year), which could be covered by humans within days. Sure, there's going to be guidance from mission control, but no one there is going to sit around for a half hour to wait for them to say 'alright, analyze that rock that you've come across'. There's probably a dozen other reasons to send humans as well. And humans can also bring home souvenirs such as rocks.
souvenirs!
#238
Not being familiar with the specifics of them, I'd bet Curiosity has different and more advanced sensors and will be running tests the others haven't.On that subject, what is this rover going to tell us that the other rovers we've sent to Mars haven't told us?
#239
Umm?? We don't know what it's going to tell us of course... that's kind of the whole point of this "explore" thingy. We don't know what's out there so let's go take a look.On that subject, what is this rover going to tell us that the other rovers we've sent to Mars haven't told us?
It would be a waste of time and effort going if we knew what we would find.
True, but nobody had identified a real use for it until NASA needed a way to easily hold things in place in microgravity and be able to quickly take them down, use them, and stick them back in place.Actually Geoff, NASA didn't make velco.
Let me rephrase my question then, what could this rover tell us that the others could not, like, what would these more advanced sensors tell us that the other more primitive ones couldn't?
#241
Except you know, those machines don't exist without humans.
We build them, we maintain them, and we out-think them creatively.
Yeah machines are efficient but they're tools, they don't replace us in the grand scheme of exploration and exploitation.
Plus we can coat the entire surface of Mars in probes and rovers, isn't going to hedge our bets or otherwise solve scarcity down here.
also today's APOTD:
Spoiler
Last edited by Nurizeko; 11th Aug 12 at 11:11 AM.
#242
Regarding humans vs rovers, yes it is safe to say nearly everything that a human on mars would do would likely be fed into some piece of machinery, but the ability to view stuff from different perspectives and manupilate things to a higher degree then a single rover are some of the things humans can do better then a rover. Yes we could send multiple rovers to the same location and have each of them specialized to get the same results a single human may be able to do on mars. Odds are any manned mission will come with sciency gear and likely dig or search further below the surface then what the rovers are currently exploring.
Now one can counter with "send a better rover" which is perfectally fine, but at what point does the better rover not effective enough compared to a human. Or does the budget not permit the variety of tasks a human could do. We can always get a better and better rover, but cost aside a human would likely perform better then a generic rover, simply because we can look three inches over then the target spot and if it seems better go there instead. The curosity isnt going to be doing mass sampling on mars is it? Laserbeam a rock, decide if we want closer inspection, etc. The human would likely be able to test far more objects and have the prospect to bring them back for further analysis.
Is a mars mission going to happen tomorrow? No. Could it get started tomorrow? Yes. I think that is the crux of the issue, but unfortunatly world economic crisis will likely delay any realistic planning for manned missions to mars, let alone the moon. Lets just hope that we live long enough to see a return mission to the moon if not a first mission to mars. If not by the west, perhaps some glorious commies on the moon.
Those who walk through the shadows, seek not the light.
If you disagree with a moderational decision, follow this.
#243
Somewhere around where the cost to send a rover equals that to send a human. There's a significant margin for improving rovers before we get there.but at what point does the better rover not effective enough compared to a human.
Again, until humans are full time employed on Mars for years, the fact that they can walk faster is rendered moot by the fact that Curiosity will be running for years. It can afford to be slow and methodical. Walking faster doesn't make for better science, and it doesn't make up for the added cost and risk.Humans are far faster than any rover ever sent. Curiosity has a speed of 90 meters an hour, whereas any human could walk 44 times as fast.
You forgot the part where those creatively out-thinking humans are the ones driving the rover. It's telepresence. Humans aren't out of the loop, they're completely involved in every single thing the rover does. They don't need to be there to get an incredible amount of stuff accomplished.Except you know, those machines don't exist without humans.
We build them, we maintain them, and we out-think them creatively.
#244
Whatever's in your spoiler is broken, it seems; it's empty.also today's APOTD:
#245
Fix'd.
Okay, so much to say.
First and foremost. Could we build and assemble in LEO a spacecraft capable of transiting to mars with our current tech.
The answer there is clearly yes. We know how to create a fair range of tools in space. It would be trivial to ship up a number of ISS like modules and fix them together. At that point all we need is some girders to server as a framework around them, some bolts to fasten them together, some radiation shield sections, (and again stuff to bolt them to the girders), and a set of engines and fuel tanks to again attach to our girder framework. We've got existing elements of much of this on existing spacecraft. True we've never tried to put anything this big together in space and I’m not 100% sure we've actually bolted girders together like that. But we have done bolting of other things, (to my knowledge a number of ISS components required bolts to secure them). We might not have an actual design laying around, but that’s a matter of sitting someone down in front of a computer and designing it, not one of new tech design.
The issue is it's still going to be big and heavy compared to a custom built single piece item assembled like a spacecraft on the ground, (but in space). You’re making weight tradeoffs for ease of construction. This means a slower trip out there or less payload. The radiation shielding is a particular issue in weight terms due to the inevitable bulk. I don’t see plasma or electric shields making it into any of these spacecraft. Apart from the need to test them in real situations to be sure they meet expectations there's the simple issue that such a long term, mission as being proposed here needs a low maintenance solution.
For those curious about Apollo, (I know someone will bring it up if i don't), they didn't have radiation shielding, at the time solar storms where basically not even known about. No one had figured it all out, (they'd only recently accepted that the solar wind existed after years of ridicule of the theory in the pre-space-age era). Had there been a severe solar storm during the missions, the astronauts would have died. Despite getting lucky studies indicate they may have lost as much as 0.01% of their non-replaceable neurons, (i.e the stuff that makes up your brain and spinal column). As such a simple emergency shelter for when flares strike is totally inadequate. Permanent protection against both the most energetic flares and day to day levels must be arranged. To achieve levels like that you need the equivalent of about 5 and a half tons of material per square meter, (denser materials do produce slight weight savings, but only slight, it's more the volume savings that make them poplar in radiation shielding). That's not lightweight.
EDIOT: @TDG: Actually we have the radiation problem solved, just put a big thickness of material between the necessary shielded area's and space. It's not hard to do, just heavy.
The design also has the flaw of not really allowing for artificial gravity induced via rotation. Which represents a long term issue.
That said such a spacecraft will eventually get you and any payload you care to add on there. It may take a while and it won't be pretty. But it will get you there.
The biggest issue by far with building it is going to be lifting that kind of mass to orbit. I would expect such a spacecraft, (assuming really serious payload capacity), to weigh in at several thousand tons. Every KG of which has to be lifted from earth. Even with economies of scale cheapening launch costs your looking at a multi-hundred billion dollar investment.
Once we've got there is where the issues come in. If it was some kind of rotating structure that produced AG you could just park it in orbit and set up an orbital habitat right there. Since it's not, getting ground side where there's at least some gravity is necessary. That said the first spacecraft would pretty much have to be left intact in orbit, there's a need for a high power antennae for earth /mars transmissions and you actually would want and need to put up a bunch of sats over mars to monitor several things, so an orbital maintenance and repair facility is useful.
The first and most important thing to throw up would be a set of solar observatory satellites. Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field, (to speak of), and it's atmosphere is still pretty darned thin so radiation on the surface, whilst better is still a concern, and the fact that mars doesn’t spend all it's time lined up with earth would make an earth based warning system rather pointless as sometimes the mars side of the sun would be blocked from earths view, (their on opposite sides sometimes), and even if they can see it, depending on the respective positions of mars and earth the signal from earth might not reach them before the flare does. Once detected anyone outside would have only minutes to reach safe shelter. That means that any manned rovers must be radiation hardened and supplied to be able to act as radiation shelters for a while. It also means that after you drop your prospective pre-fab colony modules you have to cover them over with soil via remote operated machinery before anyone can go down. You literally have to be able to remote assemble the whole thing from orbit.
Power is also an issue, again if your going long term you want something that requires minimal maintenance and has a very high reliability with a long active life between replacements. A quick search suggest that whilst heavy, the ideal design would probably be a sterling based RTG system. Such a system has a very high reliability (according to wikipedia ground based experiments have shown the system operating for years without appreciable wear,) and the use of a suitable long half life isotope would allow for decades, (or more), of effective operation. NASA has even studied designs with design lifetimes of a 1000 years for use in interstellar probes. A bit much for a mars colony, but puts the state of the art into perspective.
Some people will ask why not use a full blown nuclear reactor or even solar panels? Several reasons. First and foremost a full reactor is complicated, even if you use several for redundancy your still going to need a regular supply of spare parts, and a major accident could ruin a reactor totally meaning you need a new one shipped out. RTG's are relatively accident proof and as noted very low maintenance. Solar panels, at least for the spacecraft is a far more sound, but they will still degrade over time and you need much larger panels for a given power in mars orbit than you do in earth orbit, if you can use a solution that will function longer without re-supply it is ideal. Though I’m not discounting solar panels as an extra for the spacecraft. On the surface however the global dust-storms make them a no go, they can persist for months, possibly more, rendering them useless. In addition to abrasive effect of the dust on the panels would undoubtedly degrade their surface clarity over the course of several storms.
The storms represent a lot more issues. Whilst it may be fine for a radiation hardened rover on say the moon to have to shut down during the solar flares. These rovers need to be able to handle the combination of storms and radiation at the same time and still safely return the rover to base, since the storm may not abate within the supply capabilities of the rover. It also needs to be possible for one rover to recover another in the event one becomes stuck or otherwise disabled mid storm. An internal garage is also essential as it is unlikely that stepping outside, even in a well built suit, would be especially safe. By the same token all habitable area’s need internal interconnection, with full airlocks between them, (and adequate suit and backup life support in all area’s), to account for the possibility of breaches. Getting cut off from the only long term source of food and oxygen in the middle of a multi-week dust storm is not acceptable. Multiple interconnections is especially vital.
Measures also have to be taken to ensure any soil placed over the habitat area’s cannot be blown away. Over time it will probably compact down to a firm top layer that isn’t easily disturbed. But you can’t risk the colony on the chance that such an early storm won’t occur. Possibly, (speculative on my part here), using a soil blower to deposit it whilst mixing it with a small amount of some form of liquid cement solution would be best. The result would produce a fairly hard covering. Erosion might still be a concern though. Burying the habitats in dug trenches and covering them over might work better in that respect, but is more work intensive. It’s also important to ensure that exterior access points are suitably shielded in a way that doesn’t allow them to let radiation in. A simple U shape access corridor should work for personnel locks, and the same should work for the rover garage. (remember 2 rovers fixed together, one being towed might have to fit through that), this is especially advantageous in dust-storms for the rover garage as the exterior access hatch and the interior parking area could be air-locked from each other, thus preventing excessive amounts of dust from entering. (More on this in a moment).
Another issue is that it’s believed that during large dust storms the particles bouncing off each other generate huge amounts of static electricity. There’s serious danger of super intense electrical discharges resulting that could fry electronics, and dust caking of potential transmission channels would only result in greater chances of it striking a vulnerable components. Proofing basically everything against catastrophic damage in the worst case scenario of a discharge reaching an area it was designed never to get to is vital. Re-supply is not going to be easy, so there’s very littlie room for any kind of catastrophic failure. Minimizing the risk thereof is vital.
In addition post storm dust precipitation will cover everything in a thin layer of dust. This has been shown to impede solar panels of rovers, and I would expect similar results with radiators. These components need to be designed to continue to function with such coverings. Or even, (if the Martian soil is up to the job), design them to be buried from the start, exuding their waste heat into the Martian soil itself.
The life support systems required to allow habitation within the colony buildings and to provide basics like CO2 and other waste reprocessing, food and drinkable water, and the provision of removal of contaminants are far from east. Especially for long term habitation with minimal re-supply.
Before dealing with specific area’s it is important to note Martian soil as a particular issue. Not only may it be both highly corrosive and highly toxic. But it is also rather fine in nature, (possibly as littlie as 3um according to some stuff I’ve read), this makes it very difficult to remove at all stages. Nonetheless it is important to minimize the amount of dust that passes into the interior, this would require a fairly novel airlock design to remove. At the same time however there must be procedures to deal with a large amount of contamination entering. There are several obvious scenarios that could result in a large contamination entering an area of the habitat, and doubtless many more you can’t plan for with the same result. Interconnecting airlocks within the complex for example would require decontamination equipment to account for breaches that require their use letting dust into the breeched area which could then be transferred elsewhere. The dust has both medical implications, but also implications for the rest of the support systems.
Work on space habitats has suggested that the ideal way of dealing with atmospheric toxins is via a catalytic burner, whilst solids and wastes should be subject to the wet oxidation process, (also known as the Zimmerman process). These however require that certain chemicals be excluded. If Martian soil contains sufficient trace amounts of these, such measures may be unviable. Even if they are the relevant items must be capable of sustained operation with minimal maintenance and spare part requirements. Even then we are left with a large amount of CO2 that must then be processed. This leads into plant life and food production.
Starblade is correct in saying that we haven’t yet achieved a workable closed cycle environment. But at the same time none of the experiments I’ve read about, (the eden project experiment comes to mind as a great example), are really practical in space anyway even if they did work as they attempt to re-create an earth like biome rather than a true space realistic environment. In space you have a few basic requirements.
1. You need to have a system in place for re-processing wastes back into usable material. This is where the just mentioned catalytic burners and Wet oxidation processes come in as the main output, of, (for example), the wet oxidation process will be phosphate ash and water, (obviously what comes out varies with what goes in), plus CO2. The ash is basically fertiliser. The water with basic filtering is now available to drink. This basically gives us 3 key colony resources for food growth and human survival. It’s key to ensure that we have processes that can reprocess everything, anything we can’t effectively becomes lost resources which then have to be replenished from earth. A key part of this will naturally be the banning of a fair range of materials that don’t easily recycle as they wear, decay, or are otherwise used up. Which is far less easy than it sounds.
2. You need a high density method of growing food with sufficient verity to meat dietary needs. Neither natural earth methods nor modern high intensity agriculture is up to the task. That said this has been the area of greatest research and theory in the past and so is probably the most easily solvable issue of the lot.
3. You need an adequate method for the reprocessing of CO2. This is kind of a variation on point 1, but needs to be mentioned separately as it’s probably the biggest challenge of the 3. The main issue is that when space colonies and the like where first seriously studied plants where believed to be far more efficient at this than they actually are, the role of sea algae was not well understood. Of course of we can somehow grown intense blooms of said algae in a concentrated form it may not be an issue, but if it where that simple I’m sure it would have been done.
Point 1 has a particular issue with needing to deal with every known and possible contaminant mars could introduce. Both in limited trace amounts, and the inevitable “big” incidents.
The biggest requirement however is the principle I’ve been throwing down from the start. Every aspect needs to be backed up with every element of the colony able to function as a lifeboat from which the rest can be repaired, even when the exterior of mars is unsafe to move on. This means every module need it’s power, life support, and interconnectivity, (even in the event of it being the only safe place for unprotected humans), and anything else you can think of to function as independently of the rest of the complex as possible and to provide at least some form of long term backup in all area’s in the event of the worst case scenarios. Things which cannot be present freely in every single modules, (e.g. recycling and food production for example), need to be decentralised with no one part of the complex providing everything, (and with the separate section separated sufficiently to prevent an accident in one, (say an explosion in waste processing), affecting another module. It’s no good having 4 food growing area’s if one accident can destroy or cut off all of them at once for example.
The human element is another key factor. It’s going to be important IMHO to produce as large a working environment as possible so that it’s relatively trivial for people to go and find a quiet corner away from everyone else for extended periods. In that vein a suitable excess of personnel must be present to allow for people to take regular several day “breaks” where they can effectively chill out and relax. The aforementioned sexual harassment issues may or may not apply. From what I’ve heard low gravity tends to inhibit libido which may deal with the issues. But honestly the best answer would be to find suitable couple which have lasted for a period of time and have a history of working well together. Though enforced reversible sterilisation would have to be used for a fair while. It’s going to be a long time before the colony is large enough, well equipped enough, and the long term medical facts well enough known for children to become viable there.
Medical matters are another issue, weather produced on base, (difficult till the colony is relatively large), or shipped out at regular intervals the problems will be the same. Namely that they represent various compounds, and thus resources that are locked away inside them. They may also present issues for the recycling systems, either directly or via their breakdown products, (the same applies to bacteria and virus’s too). Potential mutations and serious accidents would represent further problems as the initial colony would be very poorly equipped to research their own cures and produce them, and serious injuries may prove very difficult to treat due to limited medical personnel and supplies. A large blood bank would be especially hard to maintain, crew selection thus might be partly determined by ensuring everyone has compatible blood types.
Colony expansion represents very serious problems as well. Mars clearly has lots of iron but where not clear on what else it has. It may also be lacking in sufficient trace elements, (carbon is the obvious exception as the atmosphere is full of the stuff), for effective alloying and if the soil really is corrosive many steel’s may be totally unsuitable. The relative lack of hydrocarbons also means no plastics. Besides the hydrogen will be too important for water production and the carbon too vital to biological needs for use in mass construction. The moons or mars aren’t much better being, (apparently), mostly silicone and hydrocarbon compounds. And I’m not sure anyone would appreciate the colonists destroying them, (their much smaller and lighter than earths moon and would be significantly impacted over time by mining). A combination of moon mined materials and/or asteroids moved into Mars orbit for consumption will probably work best of all, but that requires that someone else to handle the mining and transport, increasing costs.
Beyond that you’re talking the gas giants and their moons, which in addition to being much further away have truly horrific radiation. Based on comparisons between Jupiter’s Van Allen belts and earth’s values and some stuff I dug up on an estimation of the Apollo astronaut exposure your looking at an average values of about 130Sv an hour and rather a lot more n peak area’s. 4Sv will be severely debilitating in short order with a small chance of death, (if treated), 6Sv is more debilitating and acts sooner, plus has a moderate chance of death, 10Sv is virtually guaranteed death. That means you’ll be badly exposed with a small chance of death in 2 minutes, moderate chance of death in 3.5, and a lethal dose in 5. I’m not sure how long it would take for a dose so high that you just keel over on the spot to accumulate. But suffice to say your not surviving without massive protection. And the radiation would dictate everything had to be protected. An average elliptic orbit satellite in earth orbit gets about 25Sv a year. Every probe we’ve sent by has suffered at least some problems, even the specially hardened Galileo probe, (which avoided the worst area’s 99% of the time), got charred around the edges. The other gas giants are more forgiving, but that doesn’t make them any less hefty. Basically: Don’t screw around with a gas giants magnetic field.
The lack of resources and easy options for acquiring them are amongst the most likely reasons to kill a long term colony on mars IMHO, if everything has to be shipped from at least earth orbit, (if not earth side), then it gets very expensive to grow the colony.
The final issue is that until we build ourselves a great big honking centrifugal station to test with we just don’t know weather human can survive in mars’s reduced gravity without unavoidable health degradation.
Realistically a base on mars for scientific purposes makes sense, but there are many superior locations for colonies, none of them on a planetary surface. Orbital habitats are far superior overall, and near earth orbits, (especially the langrage points), represent the best locations as they can take advantage of lunar resources easily whilst being close enough to earth if it becomes totally necessary.
Sorry for rushing through the last few paragraphs btw, been writing this for 2 days and in a hurry to finish off, plus it was stepping more and more outside my area’s of knowledge.
To pick up on some other stuff:
@Jonny e.t.c.: Radioactivity is a concern with reactors, but mostly because of their cooling requirements. The Apollo 13 lunar lander RTG re-entered earths atmosphere and landed in the ocean without releasing a drop of radiation, but it doesn’t need constant cooling to the same degree as a reactor, this is especially true in an emergency that causes a re-entry without adequate time to place it in cold shutdown.
@Black, Starfisher, et.c.: he manned vs unmanned debate has been going on for a long time and I doubt we’ll settle it here, however I want to dissuaded a notion off the bat that’s been raised. Based on the pattern seen in the latter moon missions the astronauts would be given appropriate science training and a full mission brief from which they will work. NASA isn’t literally telling them what to do every single second. This is where the advantage of the Mk1 Eyeball and the Mk1 Brain come in. They can effectively scan and analyse a large area fairly accurately at high speed. They can also take advantage of their ability to use their “intuition” as well as superior mobility, (both speed and the general ability to get in and out of nooks and cranny’s more easily, even get places rovers can’t), to find things the rovers will miss. Rovers are always limited by the limited number of views their bandwidth can transmit back, as a result examining every area from multiple angles takes time and can’t always be done. Their inferior mobility also dictates much slower rates of progress. And of course if your sending a bunch of 80KG humans along it’s rather easier to send a lot more experiments along, (smaller % of total mass by many orders of magnitude), allowing for more samples to be tested in more ways, and more material to be returned for further earth side testing. Humans bring economies of scale there.
In short a rover is totally capable of doing more work for less money. But it does it at a much slower rate. A group of a couple of dozen people on mars, (with a suitable base dropped in place for them), could achieve in a week more than we’ve done in the whole of human history to date Sure given enough probes and enough time we could match that, but will we do that before our great grandchildren are old and grey? If we want to learn about other solar bodies in detail sooner or later sending manned missions is vital if we don’t want to spend the next 1000 years doing it IMHO.
For me the biggest advantage of manned mission to places beyond the moon is in what it would force us to do in terms of orbital infrastructure. It would pave the way for far more than just that one manned mission, and the possibilities that brings are truly enticing in the extreme.
I don't know what i'm talking about, ignore me.
Thousands of years ago, Egyptians worshipped what would become our ordinary housecat. The cats have never forgotten this.
#247
Do you think perhaps you could consolidate that post into something a bit more easily readable? A few short books, perhaps?
Doltmarines, for the Emprah: the place to play Dawn of War: Soulstorm
"The ecosystem! We destroy that and this is ovah! CHAAAARGE!" - Lomax
Blood and Balls: the Relicnews Doltathon Blood Bowl Blog (awaiting renovation)
"I'd probably lose my shit if I saw a mushroom with a mouth, eyes, and legs walking toward me in real life. That doesn't make me afraid to play Mario." - Starblade
#248
I'll come back and read all that when I have a free half-hour.
Expanding on this, I'd say it comes down to a few factors.In short a rover is totally capable of doing more work for less money. But it does it at a much slower rate. A group of a couple of dozen people on mars, (with a suitable base dropped in place for them), could achieve in a week more than we’ve done in the whole of human history to date
- The invested cost per unit of conducted science. I'd expect that rovers would be far cheaper for the hard science elements like geology and chemistry where the desired test or analysis is known in advance.
- The probability of successful mission completion. Robots win this hands-down until a lot of current problems are solved. Plus for them a failed mission is not fatal.
- The scope and completeness of conducted science. Easily goes to a human team. Autonomous robots can't do the "human" sciences at all and it'll be a while before they can innovate on the spot. The always-functioning human eye can "notice" things that a relatively-low-bandwidth machine cannot, so more opportunities for science can be realized if they are on the spot. An example is the Leakey family's anthropology discoveries in Kenyan canyons, where their trained eye picked out skull fragments in the sand as they ambled around. They most likely missed some, but I'm not sure a robot's camera would have found any at all unless humans were running it using form of high-quality telepresence, which would require a lot more bandwidth.
- The compared speed of discovery. True, humans would get the work completed MUCH faster, but what, honestly, is the reason for a hurry? It's unlikely that anything learned by such a manned trip would be life-improving for the rest of the human race.
- The psychological impact of putting a footprint vs. a robot's wheel track in the sand on Mars. This is actually huge. There's tremendous value in the national pride and demonstration of technological superiority that such an event would create. The US is still known as the first - and only - country to put a man on the moon.
Who the hell thought "erectus" was a good species name for our ancestors?
#249
A lot of the issues involved with a Manned Mars Mission go away if we had better Engines/Thrusters. It cuts down on mass of human consumables, radiation exposure times, long term debilitating effects of a weightless environment, human social issues etc.. Ion thrusters have been in use for years in satellites, plasma and fusion thrusters have not been tested in space. A large cluster of thrusters or a few large thrusters of one of these types would generate sufficient thrust that the trip would take 8 weeks instead of 8 months.
Right now the emphasis is on building the maximum survey package to send to Mars. The project maxes out the cargo dropped onto Mars and consider any additional mass sent into space from Earth as an engine speeding the trip to Mars as wasteful. It would be better instead of one shot designs to Mars if they design and build a space ferry that makes a powered flight between Earth and Mars. They could have it picking up probes and landing craft from Earth orbit shuttling it over to Mars in weeks and dropping it off in orbit and coming back. This would increase our landings on Mars to 2-3 every year and allow for a specimen return vehicle. It would also help develop the technologies required for a two way manned mission to Mars.
@Kirjava: sorry for the size, i just sat down and wrote as much on every issue i could think of as i knew.
@Retro: I'd disagree on the timescale stuff. Unless we suddenly have an Nth generation rover design show up that drastically up's the exploration rate we'll still be trying to answer vital questions about the solar system a centaury or more from now. Understanding the planets in ever more detail has helped us understand how the solar system formed, and at times how the earth formed and how it works. It doubtless has many practical applications that I can't think of that an expert could. There's also the countless myriad applications that the support infrastructure, (assuming you don’t plan on hauling everything up from the surface), could also be put to in space, it makes every other manned space venture that much easier and simpler which opens up vast ranges of stuff from other pure science stuff, to more mundane things with immediate applications.
@Stripe7: The radiation levels during a solar flare are intense enough to be lethal in a matter of hours for the stronger flares. Reduced transit time in no way alleviates the need for a complete and total shield. Especially if you plan to use it as your staging point for all mars orbit operations.
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