boostrapping a mars colony

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Tom Ligon
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by Tom Ligon »

vasimv wrote: Biggest problem of chips with BGA is lead-free solders used because ecology requirements. It tends to lose contacts with these because their temperature and mechanical characteristics, too fragile. I hope they will make special chip series with old fashioned Pb-based soldering for the mission.
Aaaargh, lead free solder. Don't get me started. Oh, wait, too late, you got me started.

I'm still nursing a couple of 40-year-old spools of Ersin Multicore I bought back in the last millennium.

The difficulty is, now it is getting hard to find parts that are not RoHS, i.e. lead free. Frequently the leads are tinned for compatibility with lead free solders, and don't work reliably with lead-based. I've had a job recently where I had to re-tin all the leads by hand in order to solder reliably. There are issues with gold plating, as well. Light gold platings are OK, heavy ones are not.

Tin solders used to be common in the early days of vacuum tube electronics. That's when it was discovered that tin solders make whiskers. Lead-tin solved the whisker problem. But now with lead removed, we're back to whisker problems, and with high component density and miserly contact spacing on boards, whiskers are more of a problem than ever.

Thus, we have yet another incentive to manufacture electronics on Mars ... that no lawyers angle means we could go back to reliable parts and solders.

Tom Ligon
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by Tom Ligon »

happyjack27 wrote: I'm reminded of stories about the early punch card university computers where you had to wait in line to have your code run, and then when you get it back a few days later all you got back was "syntax error", and then you had to wash, rinse, repeat. This is not the kind of system you want to have on a mars colony. There's something to be said for in-situ testing. (though you probably want to avoid it on e.g. life support systems if you don't have to.)
Worse than that, I learned FORTRAN in high school circa 1968, when that just was not done. We used a Blue Cross/Blue Shield IBM 360-30, which we never laid eyes on. We had an IBM-26 keypunch (a real relic even then, with vacuum tubes, IIRC). The teacher took our punched cards in to BCBS. They would run them and a couple of days later he would pick up printouts. The early ones typically failed due to syntax errors. A couple of passes got those worked out and we got the real errors, things like division by zero, etc. The advantage was that you saved time by thinking like a computer, single-stepping thru the code in your mind to spot your error. This affected my approach to programming ever since, and is a big reason I have such a low opinion of sloppy code.

Program 4 was ordering an array. I contend that if you can order an array, you've got programming licked. If you can't do it, find another field. I think it took us a couple of months to get to that point, most of which was spent waiting to get printouts back.

In college, there was a room with several IBM 29 keypunches, a batch file card reader, and a printer, on a dual IBM 370-158 mainframe we could actually look at thru a window. There might be some line but at least we got results in minutes. Most of students I tutored in CS201 got to Program 4 in a couple of weeks. I still have some card decks I ran on it, simulations of a time of flight mass spec, and maybe another on shock tubes.

Upon getting the TRS-80 Model III, I realized you could get to ordering an array, starting with no programming knowledge, in a single evening. Hit the key, and the results were ready in milliseconds.

paperburn1
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by paperburn1 »

:D :D We all sound like a bunch of old geezers , I had to code uphill both ways when i used to write code. :D :D
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

happyjack27
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by happyjack27 »

Tom Ligon wrote:
paperburn1 wrote:What about antibiotics and medicine.
It does occur to me that even if the bootstrap crew had no access to medicines, they'd be no worse off, and probably ahead of, early European colonists to the New World. Those early colonists didn't have antibiotics, and their medicines were essentially medieval cures. The Mars colonists will be in nearly perfect health when they ship out. Disease may not be a big problem for them for quite a while.
There is always blood-letting. Helps get the humors back in balance.

More seriously though, probably nice to have a space first aid kit for the most common / serious conditions.

* bandaging - bandage and scissors
* immobilization - splints (from finger to wrist to leg to back)
* freezing/heating - ice packs / hot packs
* and a new one just for space: hypoxia treatment - which would just be an oxygen mask.
* forceps, scalpel
* something to cauterize (laser welder?)
* instructions!

krenshala
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by krenshala »

You forgot the quick-patch kit from your list. Thats to let you get the injured into a sealed environment so you can have a chance to use all the rest of it. :)

happyjack27
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by happyjack27 »

Hydration - even just a glass of water.

One of the first things that happen in the vacuum of space is, due to the phase change curve with temperature and pressure, and the extreme vacuum, the moisture on your tongue evaporates right away.

Quickly filling your mouth with water could help prevent - or at least minimize - permanent damage.

Eyes would probably a close second, if not a tie.

TDPerk
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by TDPerk »

happyjack27 wrote:Hydration - even just a glass of water.

One of the first things that happen in the vacuum of space is, due to the phase change curve with temperature and pressure, and the extreme vacuum, the moisture on your tongue evaporates right away.

Quickly filling your mouth with water could help prevent - or at least minimize - permanent damage.

Eyes would probably a close second, if not a tie.
I'm not sure how that works. water would want to escape from the lips until it had lost enough from evaporation to be ice, so I think you're looking at at a mouth full of frost and eardrums blown out with snow. Ice-glaced tongue my be a best case.

There aren't too many accidents where people have been exposed to hard vacuum.
molon labe
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happyjack27
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by happyjack27 »

TDPerk wrote:
happyjack27 wrote:Hydration - even just a glass of water.

One of the first things that happen in the vacuum of space is, due to the phase change curve with temperature and pressure, and the extreme vacuum, the moisture on your tongue evaporates right away.

Quickly filling your mouth with water could help prevent - or at least minimize - permanent damage.

Eyes would probably a close second, if not a tie.
I'm not sure how that works. water would want to escape from the lips until it had lost enough from evaporation to be ice, so I think you're looking at at a mouth full of frost and eardrums blown out with snow. Ice-glaced tongue my be a best case.

There aren't too many accidents where people have been exposed to hard vacuum.
Maybe a space sauna then.

:D We've justified it. There are sound medical reasons. :D

paperburn1
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by paperburn1 »

Somehow I do not think I would be using my last 20 seconds of useable brain power to find a water fountain, maybe something more relevant like saving by backside. :lol:
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

JoeP
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by JoeP »

Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

happyjack27
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by happyjack27 »

These are both good points, but ones that we do not have to put in our proposal for a zero-G sauna.

Tom Ligon
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Re: boostrapping a mars colony

Post by Tom Ligon »

One of the perks of working for R. W. Bussard circa 1998 was that it was usually just the two of us, and some days he just wanted to talk about Mars with a science fiction author.

We had some long chats leading up to me writing a fictionalized account of us succeeding with fusion and going to Mars. The rules were, he had veto power over the story. One of the founding rules was that I could have nothing go wrong with the mission to Mars. His reasoning was, if I could anticipate a problem and he had not taken it into account, people would think he was an idiot. If he did not say that exactly, it was pretty close.

This rather seriously limited the potential for drama in the story. But it would have limited the potential for drama in the actual mission, which was his intent.

One of the potential sources of drama was not knowing exactly where to find water. His premise was, if he was going, he'd first know exactly how and where to find water on Mars.

OK, that source of drama is now dealt with: Huge Underground Ice Deposit on Mars Is Bigger Than New Mexico. As Dr. Bussard was a long-time New Mexico desert rat, I'm sure the headline would please him.

http://www.space.com/34811-mars-ice-mor ... erior.html

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