On Thursday, August 8, 2013 1:03:09 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wednesday, August 7, 2013 9:11:05 PM UTC-4, Martha Adams wrote:
On 8/7/2013 7:01 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
wrote:
On Wednesday, August 7, 2013 6:03:01 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wednesday, August 7, 2013 1:29:11 AM UTC-4, wrote:
And Mookie mooks on, making a mookery of intelligent thought.
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I like his chemistry and math *much* better than the above wordplay,
because getting to Mars is a thing we need to *do* not game around with..
I do have a problem on one point, however. The CO2 atmosphere pressure
on Mars is about what you see in a white neon sign (using CO2) which
says to me, the supply on Mars of CO2 is small. As soon as you begin
doing anything major, the pressure of what remains will fall, which
brings in a host of problems including that of landing on Mars from
interplanetary altitude and speed.
Titeotwawki -- Martha Adams [Wed 2013 Aug 07]
The atmosphere on Mars is 25 trillion tonnes compared to Earth's 5,148 trillion tonnes. At 400 ppm Earth's atmosphere contains 3.1 trillion tonnes of CO2. At 95.32% CO2 Mars atmosphere contains 23.8 trillion tonnes of CO2, 7.67x more than Earth.
The process described above would need to make 7,582 billion tonnes of acetylene and 25,996 billion tons of oxygen using 9,749 billion kiloliters of water and 12 weeks of sunlight falling across Mars. The action of photosynthesis makes an even larger biomass available. As pointed out, the Earth's biosphere covering a much larger planet has 1/8th the CO2 of Mars. So, there is sufficient CO2 to support a rich and diverse biosphere on Mars, when combined with the water.
An area of 200 sq meters landed on Mars that is capable of autonomous self-replication once a week would take 39.4 weeks to cover the entire surface.. Another 12 weeks would process ALL of the CO2 to polymer, approximately 1,000 tonnes for every man woman and child on the Earth today.
Doubling periods for plants and animals would proceed more slowly, and take a few years to establish themselves.
Taking the 675 billion tonnes of nitrogen and mixing it with 190 billion tonnes of oxygen along with 8.65 billion kiloliters of water vaporized, and 247 million tonnes of CO2 for plant growth, is sufficient to cover the entire surface of the planet with an atmosphere equivalent to that of Earth's 5 meters deep (held in place by a plastic film). Reducing pressure to that found in Denver Colorado increases depth of the planetary roof to 10 meters.
Above this roof would be a thin atmosphere of pure oxygen largely devoid of CO2.
At the crop densities achieved in aeroponic equipment the area of Mars transformed in this way is sufficient to support a population of 556 billion over 100x the carrying capacity proposed for Earth by Malthus and his followers.
There is still over 10 tonnes of plastic per person!
For 10 people to grow to this figure at 1.14% per year growth rate requires 2,182 years.
For 7 billion people to grow to 556 billion people at 1.14% growth rate requires 386 years.
The table below shows that 5.25 billion kiloliters of water exist in the Martian atmosphere. This is small compared to the 505 trillion kiloliters of water have been identified on the surface of Mars. Enough to cover the entire planet to a depth of 35 meters!
More water is likely to be locked away beneath the surface. Bringing it to the surface provides a superabundance of water for Mars.
Gas Abundance Gigaton
CO2 0.9532 23,830
N2 0.027 675
Argon 0.016 400
O2 0.0013 32.5
CO 0.0008 20
H2O 0.00021 5.25
NOx 0.0001 2.5
Neon 0.00000250 0.0625
HDO 0.00000085 0.02125
Xenon 0.00000008 0.002
Mars surface pressure is 600 Pascals (0.087 psi) vs Earth's 100,000 Pascals (14.69 psi) the energy required to increase the pressure of Mars' atmosphere is a small fraction of the total energy required for the processes described above.
http://archive.org/details/electrodeposition00wattrich
Photovolatic driven electrodeposition of materials leached from surface rocks is another powerful means to obtain materials useful to human needs from the surface of Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PI...s-20121203.jpg
Oxygen, Silica, Silicon, Aluminum, Magnesium, Sodium, Salt, Chlorine, Sulfur, Potassium, Calcium, Titanium, Chromium, Manganese, Iron, Nickel, Zinc, Bromine, all appear universally available and easily extracted using photovolatic energy sources or hydrogen derived from these sources.
Hydrogen and Chlorine makes hydrochloric acid. Hydrogen and Sulfur and Oxygen sulfuric acid. Nitrogen and hydrogen, nitric acid. Carbon and Nitrogen, cyanide. All these are useful in creating leachates and electrolytes on Mars with which to process soil into useful products including refractory metals. Soil processed in fused silica pipes produce not only the items mentioned, but also result in purified clays, sand, that when mixed with a growing organic component permit the synthesis of soils suitable for human society and agriculture.
A similar setup on Earth, would provide a decent living standard for people here. Of course, on Earth, we're competing with a biosphere with our technology. Leaching materials from rock with nitric acid, even if cleaned up, and done with solar panels, is a no no on Earth.
I mentioned elsewhere that an 85 kg person carrying 85 kg of equipment and consumables, when undergoing suspended animation, can be sent to Mars. A one way trip requires a hyperbolic excess velocity of 4 km/sec. This is a delta vee requirement of 11.88 km/sec. Adding 1.29 km/sec for air drag and gravity losses during ascent, we have a total delta vee requirement of 13.17 km/sec.
With an exhaust velocity of 4.3 km/sec this requires 95.33% propellant. Dividing this into three stages of 4.39 km/sec requires 63.98% propellant. With a structure fraction of 12% we have a payload fraction of 24% per stage.. So we have
Passenger: 170.00 kg
Stage 3: 708.33 kg 85.00 kg structure 383.47 kg propellant
Stage 2: 2,951.39 kg 269.17 kg structure 1,888.30 kg propellant
Stage 1: 12,297.45 kg 1,121.53 kg structure 7,867.91 kg propellant
TOTAL 1,475.60 kg structure.
To make hydrogen and oxygen needed requires 14,136.09 liters of water. To break this down requires 222.72 gigajoules of energy. Gathered by solar collectors over 2.15 year synodic period requires energy is collected at a rate of 3,282.62 Watts.
A solar panel operated on Earth that's 65% efficient overall in producing hydrogen and receives 1,753 hours of sunlight per year must intercept 25,251 Watts of solar energy and cover an area 25 square meters (5 meters (16.2 ft) on a side).
A comparable area is required to process the 30 cubic meters of rock and soil to build the spacecraft. (3.1 meters (10 ft) on a side)
A doubling period of 3.5 weeks means that starting with one self replicating rocket similar to that described here, we would have 7 billion of them in 2.15 years. It would take another 2.15 years for all to be ready. The first ones would deploy the 200 sq meter self replicating solar panel described previously, and within a year the entire surface of Mars would be rendered habitable. By the time the second synodic period arrived, all 7 billion people would be dispatched to Mars, leaving the Earth uninhabited.
7 billion leach pits each 10 feet square beneath 500 square feet of solar panels, would remain. The machinery that remained would be programmed to clean up after itself and clean up the other remains of human habitation on Earth if desired.
So, this is within the realm of possibility.
Of course Eudaimonism would suggest we use this capacity to make life joyous for all folks on Earth using resources here, and then provide the means for all those who have an interest, to travel to Mars if they desire.
The needs of the ruling oligarchy, and their enforced artificial scarcity, applied due to their superstitious adherence to outdated notions of animal husbandry applied wrongly to humans, prevent this or anything like it from occurring in the present day.