Terraforming Mars

[Tom Ligon]

With a day less than 25 hours Mars doesn't spin much slower than Earth. A space elevator there should be easier than on Earth, at least once you get Phobos with it's 7 h 39.2 min orbit out of the way. An EM catapult up the side of Olympic Mons seems to me an easier option. Shorter term SSTO from Mars is a lot easier than from Earth.

Either one is a major capital project that the first handful of colonists won't be able to handle.

The idea of a catapult up the side of Olympus Mons is intriguing, and I actually mentioned the possibility to someone a couple of years back. There's a project proposed some years back to run such a catapult up a mountain on Earth, with the idea of launching to low Earth orbit. The problem is that our mountains are not tall enough. The proposal had an evacuated tube but when the craft exits the tube at, say, 20000 ft (I think that was the height of the mountain proposed) the air density is still way too high to get away with Mach 20-ish. You might launch a Mach 5 scramjet that way but it won't work for orbital velocity on Earth.

Another SF author, Bud Sparhawk, some years back figured out that if you stood on top of Olympus Mons and looked down the sides, the bottom of the mountain is the horizon! Plus, the air pressure at the bottom is 1% of Earth sea level, and at the top you're essentially in space. On such a world and such a mountain, the catapult has a chance to work.

However, as a die-hard L5er and asteroid belt enthusiast, I do wish to point out that on any given asteroid with a modest spin, you could rig a space elevator with hardware store rope, and instead of an EM catapult you could use a Medieval trebuchet. You don't have to worry about a hypercorrosive environment (which Mars is). Commercially, this is a lot more attractive. And the presumption is, you're there to send materials back to Earth, so it is not a one way trip.

[Diogenes]

With a day less than 25 hours Mars doesn't spin much slower than Earth. A space elevator there should be easier than on Earth, at least once you get Phobos with it's 7 h 39.2 min orbit out of the way. An EM catapult up the side of Olympic Mons seems to me an easier option. Shorter term SSTO from Mars is a lot easier than from Earth.

Yeah, i've been pondering that Phobos problem. Crash it into the planet or boost it to rendezvous with Deimos?


Mars needs more mass, but it also needs a large moon to stabilize it.


I think any real effort to terraform Mars is going to require automated space tugs and something like the Mach thruster to push space icebergs and rock towards the planet.

[williatw]

I think "Reality Television," as currently practiced, is a bad idea. "Survivor Mars" would be the worst idea ever ... unless ... Jeff Probst were sent one-way to Mars. That would be a step in the right direction.

I think getting Americans to think seriously about Mars is a GREAT idea. And I think a show about how one actually survives in a strange place would be a refreshing change. And it is NOT done by voting people off the island.

This is not all that different from what the Artemis Society had in mind for the Moon, but it is getting far more press.

Remember the Artemis society but don't recall how far they got but they were pre Elon Musk. Wonder if the arrangement with the Mars One people might be something along the lines of establish the colony with your ~ 6 billion give or take. Show that you are viable as an off-world sovereign independent of earth society, made up of people renouncing their citizenship of whatever country they currently have it in. Perhaps then the investments will flow in from wealthy individuals/consortia looking for the ultimate tax shelter. Maybe there is some such understanding between the Mars One group and potential large investors via Musk. The issues of long-term survivability would be greatly reduced with a big enough bank account. Just import more supplies/equipment/personnel; given the financial backing that would seem doable; for allot less than NASA 250billion to a trillion just for an initial manned mission, let alone a colony.

[Tom Ligon]

I don't think the Artemis Society got much past the paper stage, but liked their style. Their approach was pure poor-boy and the proposed business model was rather thin as well. They tried to make money by establishing a SF magazine for a while. I've lost track of how they are doing, if anything.

As an example of how bare-bones their approach was, they had a design for a single person vehicle from the Lunar surface to lunar orbit, which is best described as a lawn chair with a rocket under it. The thinking was, you had to be wearing a space suit to go outside anyway, so why fool with excess mass to put a cabin around the passenger? That would certainly be an E-ticket ride!

Which approach is better, the poor-boys, Musk, or a big government?

The Pilgrims pretty much poor-boyed colonization of Massachusetts. Their planning was poor, most of them died, but in the end they made it. They had no business model other than to get away from what they thought was ungodly religious influence in Europe. Had they stuck around, they might have seen the religious/political upheaval in England in the middle of that century, wherein puritanical killjoys gained power temporarily. It was not long before England had enough of THAT.

Compare this to the carefully planned business venture that was Virginia. Stock was sold for the Virginia Company, which carefully formulated the voyages and intended to make a profit. The first batch nearly starved, most of them died, they never made a farthing for the investors. But people kept coming because the slick brochures told a lot of lies about healthful climate, friendly natives, etc. Eventually enough lived to make it work. My ancestor, believed to be a second son of an estate holder, who would have inherited squat, wound up with far more land than his older brother. And he managed to miss all the fun with civil wars back home. (I think he was probably a closet Catholic, so maybe he bailed to avoid the unpleasantness.)

Government can only do any of this with visionary leadership, which has pretty much been lacking since, oh, 1962 or so. The present US system can't commit to anything long enough to make a viable program. We could, however, wake up one morning and see the plumes from the Chinese rockets as they take the first colonists to Mars.

I also prefer a sound business model formulated by someone with the vision and resources to pull it off. Musk is the most obvious candidate but not the only one who could do it. If they're after a business return, I fully expect asteroids will be the target, although the discovery that the Moon is not as dry as we used to think means it is a lot more useful, and there's a good chance we'll see business up there first. But I don't think it hurts to have a small army of fools chomping at the bit to go. I might be one of them if I could talk my wife into it. RWB would have been the guy planning this if he'd made a fortune with fusion.

[williatw]

Which approach is better, the poor-boys, Musk, or a big government?

I would go with choice one or two (or a more likely mix of both); choice three (gov) and you can forget about any independent society free to go its on way accepting donations/investments tax free to use and invest back on earth as it sees fit. That is the only path to an independent branch of human civilization on Mars; (other than gov establishes it and some sort of 1776 style revolution down the line). Its also the path that IMHO gets them (the colonists on Mars) developed the quickest.

[Tom Ligon]

Our buddy Alan Boyle just posted an article on Ceres. Dawn just snapped a nice pic on it that shows a couple of bright spots in a crater, with speculation that it might be ice.

Ice is expected in such a body, of course, but it sure is nice to be able to see it from a distance, and not have to drill a hundred meters down to find it. The availability of ice and other volatiles is absolutely critical to any exploitation of space resources. This scores points for any permanent presence, be it colonization or business.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/da ... ce-n312831

[GIThruster]

Looks like someone left the porch lights on.

[choff]

Ceres might be a nice asteroid for homesteading, but either Mars or an asteroid, I'd want to dig as deep down as I could get. With Mars digging in deep lets the thin atmosphere pool up at the bottom and gets you out of the radiation.

[Tom Ligon]

Absolutely. Dig We Must.

But with an asteroid, as soon as practical I'd want to build myself a nice rotating cylinder habitat out of iron, with a few meters of crushed spoil on the outside to catch the radiation. I don't see that happening with a few photovoltaic panels ... my whole plan is to take a few Polywells with me. So, Jaeyoung has some work to do first.

[GIThruster]

You don't want to use iron. When struck by cosmic radiation, metals like iron give off alphas that will ionize your blood. You want to be in a composite structure, covered with soil that has low metals content.

[Tom Ligon]

Agreed, for the first surface, except that nickle-iron is what you have available up there in quantity for the main structure. I read the hazard more as x-rays than alphas, but it is a matter of wall thickness. For a thin metal wall I might expect secondary alphas or other heavy charged particles, but they won't travel more than a few millimeters in any solid. However, the energy has to go somewhere, and electrons will be violently displaced all over the place, so bremsstrahlung becomes an issue.

You can still build out of ferrous metals, but you want the charged particles to hit the lowest Z material you have available. Polyethylene might do it if it can be made up there and is stable enough under that sort or radiation bombardment. I did a quick study a year or so back to see what's available. The raw materials for Bakelite (urea formaldehyde) are probably present, without too much chemical processing. Fiberglass reinforced urea formaldehyde would be fairly low Z and might do the job for an outer layer over crushed rock and dust. Then nickle iron for the underlying structure.

[GIThruster]

Ooops. . . http://spacenews.com/mars-one-loses-television-deal/

[Tom Ligon]

That was premature anyway. If they had hardware on the pad ready to launch, the time it takes to get from Earth to Mars would be sufficient to put a program on the schedule.

Somebody would carry it. The question is, who, and what kind of money would it generate. I mean, darn, have you guys looked at the programming on cable lately? History is having all-day marathons of crap like Swamp People and Pawn Stars. I could put a camera on my cats and it would be better TV.

The better-designed the mission is, the less interesting programming it would be. If you have any questions about this, watch Apollo 13 again.

[choff]

There is evidence of a thin atmosphere on Ceres, with Mars, if the hole went deep enough I'm thinking the atmospheric pressure on the bottom could get to where it becomes earthlike, then you can grow plants in the bottom, if the oxygen they breathe out gets high enough, then maybe?

[choff]

Which reminds me, some alien on Ceres forgot to turn the light off when the probe turned up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -spot.html