Life on Mars?

[Max™]

You are worried about resources running out on Earth so you want to move us into spaceships with limited resources?

Wouldn't it be easier to just bring resources back to Earth?

Wait.. what?

What exactly do you think we can't get/manufacture in space?

[Demosthenes11]

china's one child policy has been wildly effective. Resources and population should never be a reason to leave earth. I say resources because logically there is nothing we can't get here that we can get elsewhere without going 395358908345839578934 years in one direction

[Max™]

I'll answer my question up there.

You can crack ice into hydrogen and oxygen, you can harvest carbon compounds for organic materials, tons of metals, minerals, platinum, iridium, gold. Gobs of energy from the sun, etc.

[Stilzkin]

Wait.. what?

What exactly do you think we can't get/manufacture in space?

The amount of resources to build a giant spaceship would be huge. If for whatever reason we ever need more resources it would be easier to bring them to Earth. Earth running out of resources seems like a bad excuse to move into a giant spaceship.

Isn't the world population supposed to stop growing around 2050?

[kuronosan]

No, the real year is about 2012. 2050 was an exaggeration by the man.

[Max™]

Ceres, one asteroid, could build enough colonies and ships to hold 100 times the habitable area of the Earth.

You've been misinformed.

[AoE]

http://www.iwritenewyork.com/jan07/micebiker.jpg

[Takedown3]

Ceres, one asteroid, could build enough colonies and ships to hold 100 times the habitable area of the Earth.

You've been misinformed.

where is this magic asteroid? and according to your posts you think we can do all of this with tech that we have today? all it takes is some spare parts from NASA and Virgin records?

yo dude im all for getting out and doing ANYTHING in space but i just think mars is far easier.

Talking about mining and smelting in space from orbiting platforms in a large enough scale to actually prototype and build ships and stations seems a little bit far fetched right now. i don't think its within our grasp.

now in 10-15-20-50 years i'm sure we will be a little bit closer to this kind of thing (i hope).

max i want to live your dream, today, now, i don't want to be in the grind down here making that cheese. i want to be in space doing some no man has gone before shit but alas i dont think it will happen for me, maybe one of my grandchildren will have a hand in making it to a sustained environment in space be it mars or some form of luxury space cruiser with photons and FTL

[Max™]

where is this magic asteroid? and according to your posts you think we can do all of this with tech that we have today? all it takes is some spare parts from NASA and Virgin records?

yo dude im all for getting out and doing ANYTHING in space but i just think mars is far easier.

Talking about mining and smelting in space from orbiting platforms in a large enough scale to actually prototype and build ships and stations seems a little bit far fetched right now. i don't think its within our grasp.

now in 10-15-20-50 years i'm sure we will be a little bit closer to this kind of thing (i hope).

max i want to live your dream, today, now, i don't want to be in the grind down here making that cheese. i want to be in space doing some no man has gone before shit but alas i dont think it will happen for me, maybe one of my grandchildren will have a hand in making it to a sustained environment in space be it mars or some form of luxury space cruiser with photons and FTL

We got to the moon on a rush job, with government operation clogging the works up.

It is easier to deal with objects in space without deep gravity wells, think about how an automobile factory runs, all those bots with their specific tooling and range of purpose.

How much harder would it be to build a bot that only had to build automotive manufacturing robots?


Send THOSE up, along with companion machines that prospect, relocate, and begin clearing the unwanted materials away from the desired ones (don't think like you're in a gravity well, if you're holding a rock in your hand that is covered in mud, is it easier to dig it out of the mud in little pieces, or knock the mud off?) for mining.

We think mining means digging a hole, climbing down into it, freeing pieces of material, then bringing them back out of the hole.

In space it would be easier to just dislodge the stuff you don't want, collect it if it has any secondary/tertiary use, then send the useful materials in whatever state they're in when exposed to another location for further processing.


After you free up and sort useful ores, you can transfer them to smelting facilities that don't have to worry about the energy limitations we have down here, fucking literally Thordamned huge amounts of solar radiation available, use whatever process works best for the energy you can collect, instead of which one works best for the fuel you have to use to get the energy to do the work.


In between using energy for smelting, you can have the machines send it via microwave, or laser, or something to another platform, then have that one which is already collecting solar energy and beaming it down get the benefit of buffer for load demands.


The difficulties in doing this are as follows:

1. Design and build the initial multipurpose construction machines, and initial prospect/mining machines.

2. Get them into space where they can begin heading towards the Lagrange points to do useful work in a stable environment near the Earth.

3. Possess the ability to plot geodesics through various gravity wells, and to convert them into orbital intercept trajectories. A compass, slide rule, and some scratch paper may be necessary. I'm hopeful we can overcome those insurmountable requirements some day. Perhaps we could construct a device that... calculates things... but that's foolish, the dreams of a madman.

4. Let them do their thing, most of this could be fully automated, with telepresence operation capabilities included on top of the automation, so a human operator can take over, but the bot won't fuck everything up if connection is lost.

5. Get people into space after sending up a different type of construction machine, which builds machines that make the structures needed for orbital habitats, and letting them build them.

6. Don't forget that you can send back little payloads of incredibly valuable stuff like platinum/iridium ($1,200~/$440~ per ounce vs gold at $1,000~/per ounce), which is incredibly useful for electronics and such.


Launch Loops:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...chLoop.svg.png

A launch loop would be a structure around 2,000 km long. The loop rises from the earths surface to a height of 80 km; runs along at 80 km above the earth for 2000 km then descends to earth before looping back on itself rising back to 80 km above the earth to follow the reverse path then looping back to the starting point. The loop is in the form of a tube, known as the sheath. Floating within the sheath is another continuous tube, known as the rotor. The rotor is an iron tube approximately 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter, moving around the loop at 14 km/s (31 000 miles per hour).
Although the overall loop is very long, at around 4,000 km circumference, the rotor itself is thin, around 5 cm diameter and the sheath is not much bigger. The rotor is made of ferromagnetic iron and is in the shape of a pipe or tube, but with lengthwise expansion joints every meter or so. The rotor is spaced from the sheath by servo-stabilised magnetic bearings. The sheath is air-tight and maintains a vacuum to minimise drag on the rotor.
When at rest, the loop is at ground level. The rotor is then accelerated up to speed by a linear motor which consumes several hundred megawatts. As the rotor speed increases, it curves to form an arc. The sheath forces it to follow a curve steeper than the rotor's natural ballistic curve, which, in turn, exerts a reactive centrifugal force on the sheath, holding it aloft. The loop is shaped and restrained to a maximum height of ~80 km by cables anchored to the ground beneath. Using a 300 MW power generator, it would take about two months to reach full speed. Once fully commissioned, the rotor would take approximately 5 minutes to make a complete circuit of the loop.
Once raised, the structure needs some power to deal with power dissipated in the magnetic bearings, to stabilize the structure, and to deal with losses due to the imperfect vacuum in the sheath; overall this requires around 200 MW. Additional energy would be needed to power any vehicles that are launched.

You could put one across the Pacific Ocean, for example.

Launch loops in Lofstrom's design are placed close to the equator and can only directly access equatorial orbits. However other orbital planes might be reached via high altitude plane changes, lunar perturbations or aerodynamic techniques.
Launch rate capacity of a launch loop is ultimately limited by the temperature and cooling rate of the rotor to 80 per hour, but that would require a 17 GW power station; a more modest 500 MW power station is sufficient for 35 launches per day.

That would have to cost like, a trillion dollars though, right?

For a launch loop to be economically viable it would require customers with sufficiently large payload launch requirements.
Lofstrom estimates that an initial loop costing roughly $10 billion with a 1 year payback could launch 40,000 metric tons per year, and cut launch costs to $300/kg, or for $30 billion, with a larger power generation capacity, the loop would be capable of launching 6 million metric tons per year, and given a 5 year payback period, the costs for accessing space with a launch loop could be as low as $3/kg.

$300 or so to go into space sound good to you?




Naturally it has potential downsides:

A running loop would have an extremely large amount of energy in the form of linear momentum. While the magnetic suspension system would be highly redundant, with failures of small sections having essentially no effect at all; if a major failure did occur the energy in the loop (1.5×1015 joules or 1.5 petajoules) would be approaching the same total energy release as a nuclear bomb explosion (350 kilotons of TNT equivalent), although not emitting nuclear radiation.
While this is a large amount of energy, it is unlikely that this would destroy very much of the structure due to its very large size, and because the energy release would be spread out over several minutes. Steps might need to be taken to lower the cable down from 80 km altitude with minimal damage, such as parachutes.

Compared to RIDING an explosion into space though, and the extreme difficulties as you attempt to move more payloads?




You could also place these:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...untain.svg.png
Space Fountains, at other locations away from the equator for other payload needs. These work like juggling a series of objects by flashing them hand to hand and up into the air, then have another juggler at the top, upside down, doing the same thing. The energy you spend tossing them up is pushing down against the ground, but the energy he spends turning them back down towards you is much smaller, and the momentum of your tosses lifts him up.


Do this with an open loop of magnets, one end bent so it is aimed vertically, then place the other end of the loop so it just rests on the structure. When you cycle weights through it, the loose end rises, you can then tie it down in stages, effectively hanging a sheath around the weights as they travel, letting you haul payloads up and down it.



If one of those failed, it would keep cycling the weights, just not maintain their velocity, so it would gradually lower itself back down to the ground.

In contrast to a traditional space elevator, which must be built from space downward, a space fountain concept can be built slowly from the ground up. The driver loop and the bending magnets at the base would be constructed first, then the top station with its turnaround magnets would be constructed right above it. The system could then be loaded with projectiles and turned on at low power, lifting the top station off the ground. The vacuum tube would be built as the top station rises, with the power increasing and more projectiles being added to the loop as the tower gets longer. The rate of construction is entirely controllable, and can be halted at any height. The tower would be capable of lifting payloads throughout its construction as well, including its own construction materials.

You could use this to build skyscrapers and shit too.

[yayaok]

what the fuck

[Khamsin]

how the fuck do you land on a asteroid? lol (here comes bruce willis.)

Three thousand problems with this.

1) The average asteroid travels roughly 50 to 70 THOUSAND miles per hour in the vacuum of space. First problem would be to slow the 'mining bot' (lol I know) down enough to where it is right side up, stable and can do its job in a timely fashion.

NASA's already landed on an asteroid, it didn't seem like a particularly significant event. It didn't even need to grab hold of anything, it just plunked down and came to rest. I doubt it will be a hurdle for mining bots. The real challenge would be your other points, namely getting everything back to Earth.

[GRT]

http://www.sc2armory.com/img/terran/units/scv.jpg
SCV good to go, sir.

[Max™]

what the fuck

lol

I'm not your typical geek with the "ZOMG STAR TREK" or "YAY FIREFLY" fantasies.

I studied this shit, I've been fretting for years because a space elevator is so unfeasible, you would have to produce materials which only hypothetically exist at this point.

Maybe something like lased matter (violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle, electron shells collapse to ground states, releasing a shit ton of energy, and bunch themselves up into shapes built around something the size of an atomic nuclei, rather than electron shell to shell interaction. Basically wringing the empty space out of matter, the only way I can even begin to suggest producing this shit would be if GUT type theories are correct, and you compressed matter to form a GUT state, then allowed it to decay in a controlled manner to harvest it.

Though, if you could get a GUT power generator working, and tuned it to produce say, sheets of this stuff, it would actually be a waste product, as the GUT decay + pauli violation would both release gobs of energy, leaving the "useless" PVWM (Pauli Violation Waste Material) as "ash".

Carbon Nanotubes, even a single reinforced diamond, would not be hard enough to withstand the stresses of both the weight/orbital platform, the magnetic fields, the atmospheric turbulence, micrometeorite impacts, major impacts, AND the strain of payloads. Requiring constant rebuilding with arbitrarily advanced nanotechnology that we don't have.


So yeah, the elevator thing ain't happening, beyond unfeasible even with far more advanced technology than we have. It isn't even certain that GUT theories are correct, though if they are, it could be possible in principle to "tune" the waste material into PVWM. You'd need energies on the order of those released when you collapsed all those electron shells in order to dislodge them again, so we're talking nuclear impact resistant materials here. Awesome to daydream about? Fucking hell yeah!

Likely to happen in the near future? Hell no.

Spoiler: show

A guy can dream though... a sheet of that an inch wide, about 3 feet long, with some way to mount a handle on it (chemical reactions occur because of electron shells, a significant amount of the friction between objects is also because of them, a sheet of non-reactive material like this would be smoother than you can imagine. Sharper too, a single layer would be little thicker than an atomic nucleus, invisible to the naked eye, but stronger than Thor nonetheless.

Suffice to say if you had it formed with mounting holes you could clamp a grip in place with (using bolts of PVWM so the edges of the mounting holes don't slice through them, loosening the grip so you're hanging onto the sharpest scalpel you can imagine... barehanded), that should work well enough, and it would be the best goddamn sword I can think of within the laws of physics.

[Qalbert]

Suffice to say if you had it formed with mounting holes you could clamp a grip in place with (using bolts of PVWM so the edges of the mounting holes don't slice through them, loosening the grip so you're hanging onto the sharpest scalpel you can imagine... barehanded), that should work well enough, and it would be the best goddamn sword I can think of within the laws of physics.

Make the handle small enough to conceal in your hand, and you have crazy magic powers.
"Wanna see me cut that tree in half with my mind?" *Swoosh* *Crack* *fall*
Yeah pretty badass.

[Jotaru]

Would you even need to exert force with something like that to cut through things? Would be ridiculous.

[Max™]

You wouldn't have to exert much, that's for sure. Hell of a sword though huh, based on realistic implications of GUT theories, should they prove true.

[Kaylia]

NASA's already landed on an asteroid, it didn't seem like a particularly significant event. It didn't even need to grab hold of anything, it just plunked down and came to rest. I doubt it will be a hurdle for mining bots. The real challenge would be your other points, namely getting everything back to Earth.

Obviously, you just need to match your speed to it if you want to stay close, but unless the gravity is strong enough, a tiny movement could push the shuttle away, and gripping to it would offer you more stability when you're loading up the shuttle.

[Max™]

I said lasso/cable/winch for a reason, it's INCREDIBLY low tech, and yet a wonderful solution.

Oh, that PVWM could be called condensed matter also, remembered that term too.

[Kaylia]

I said lasso/cable/winch for a reason, it's INCREDIBLY low tech, and yet a wonderful solution.

Oh, that PVWM could be called condensed matter also, remembered that term too.

What the fuck is a PVWM? I never saw anything remotely close to this in any theories related to GUT, and I don't understand how you can reach such conclusion from what we know.

If it's another one of your theories, please label it as such when you attempt an explanation.

[Max™]

Wasn't my idea. It is an implication of some GUT theorys with Quagma postulates. The effect would be akin to cosmic string/domain wall effects, which would result from false vacuum decays in different regions. If the same sort of effect were induced on a soup of quagma material as it cooled, such that different regions of cooling met unevenly in a given set of conditions, the analogue of a string/domain wall shows up in some models.

As quagma cools, quarks congeal into hadrons, and electrons settle into shells. If the hadron freezing was highly asymmetric about the lump of material towards a single plane, with the right conditions it should produce a plane of quagma-like material which is unable to congeal into hadrons/baryons by cooling.


I said specifically that it is extremely hypothetical, though the spacetime and thus GUT level freezing are both similar at levels where things like Groenewold-Moyar type effects may become important.

A more rigorous proof was provided by Freeman Dyson and Andrew Lenard in 1967, who considered the balance of attractive (electron-nuclear) and repulsive (electron-electron and nuclear-nuclear) forces and showed that ordinary matter would collapse and occupy a much smaller volume without the Pauli principle.

Checking up showed I plucked the wrong term, Condensed was the wrong word, this would be Superdegenerate Matter, as Degenerate forms are held up by the Pauli principle alone.