Mars is kind of short of nitrogen

Ool wrote:
"Sander Vesik" wrote in message ...
John Savard wrote:

One of the objections Dr. Zubrin gives to O'Neill colonies is that a
mirror area comparable to the crop area is required for agriculture.
As it would seem to me that aluminized Mylar is easier to construct
than the *land area of the colony itself*, that seems to be an odd
objection.

It appears to be bar far better to use solar batteries and artifical
lightning combined with hydroponics.

"Lighting."

The problem is that with the efficiency of these, which is limited by
the laws of physics, you'll always lose at least around 80% of the
original energy by converting light to electricity and back.


So? Thats a quite unintersting figure. Plants don't use all of incoming
solar energy either. Furhermore, you are not really area or mass limited
with those solar cells as they would be attached to something gobsmacking
large - a O'Neill's anyways.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Sander Vesik wrote:
Mike Combs wrote:
"Sander Vesik" wrote in message
...

It appears to be bar far better to use solar batteries and artifical
lightning combined with hydroponics.

I could believe this if I could believe that on a square-mile to square-mile
comparison, solar panels and electric lights were comparable in price to
aluminized Mylar and glass.

covering square kilometers with thick layers of ultraclear glass so that you
both have radiation protection and not too bad light losses won't probably
be cheap either.

Then again, by complicating the mirror design a bit, you can pump all the
light through a hole that's radiologically negligable.
If you'r feeling really clever, you can even bounce it round using
mirrors once it gets inside, so that no radiation gets in.

Ian Stirling wrote:
Sander Vesik wrote:
Mike Combs wrote:
"Sander Vesik" wrote in message
...

It appears to be bar far better to use solar batteries and artifical
lightning combined with hydroponics.

I could believe this if I could believe that on a square-mile to square-mile
comparison, solar panels and electric lights were comparable in price to
aluminized Mylar and glass.

covering square kilometers with thick layers of ultraclear glass so that you
both have radiation protection and not too bad light losses won't probably
be cheap either.

Then again, by complicating the mirror design a bit, you can pump all the
light through a hole that's radiologically negligable.
If you'r feeling really clever, you can even bounce it round using
mirrors once it gets inside, so that no radiation gets in.


Sure - but now you are talking about lots of mirrors and complicated designs,
instead. I still favour "compact", hydroponics and artifical lighting based
design. While you could use mirrors in compact designs it will very fast start
looking pretty crazy.

I'm afraid I'm terribly bad at producing "viewgraphs" and well presesented
numbers - but I will try to get some of this stuff on the web soon.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Sander Vesik wrote


covering square kilometers with thick layers of ultraclear glass so that you
both have radiation protection and not too bad light losses won't probably
be cheap either.

I'm quite sceptical of designs that have there be rolling fields of
agriculture hapenning inside O'Neill colonies - it seems like both not overly
thought out and very wasteful of space.

Yes.

What are the plants for? Mostly, to recycle CO2 and provide food. You might
also want a few to look pretty, or for gardens or parks.

But the food/ air crops don't need protection from radiation - you could
just grow them in, oh say big bubbles of clear plastic. Tie the bubbles on
pieces of string and put them out in the sun for a month, then bring them
back inside to harvest the food and air. You'd probably have to raise seed
seperately.

That would leave the expensive radiation-protected space for people.


--
Peter Fairbrother

Good grief folks; besides investing hundreds of billions, as in having
to import nearly everything into Mars (including body bags), if not
taking a trillion+ for the likes of Mars, plus at least another decade
as best, I do believe it's time (way past due) that you all refocused
a wee bit closer to home. There's been life on Venus (could still be
happening) and most certainly of whatever is left of life on Mars,
whereas all three of us being influenced if not entirely terraformed
by the likes of Sirius.

Another little thing; there essentially NO energy to being had on
Mars, but Venus has way more than it's fair share of energy.

This following rant is just another update, along with a link to the
most recent page that pertains mostly to Venus, but also reflects upon
Mars and of what Sirius has to do with Mars, Earth and Venus.

I'm still one of those nice guys that's all for getting onto the moon,
and the sooner the better, though it's become rather interesting that
official "spin" and "damage control" folks like "Gordon D. Pusch" and
perhaps yourself, that continually claim to know everything there is
to know, however besides your leaving out specifics for your side of
these arguments, you seem to be getting miffed about what's so easily
had upon our moon, as well as anything pertaining to Venus, and of now
anything pertaining to Sirius is supposedly off-topic. The prospect of
the LSE-CM/ISS utilizing the affordable basalt composite tether(s) has
also become too much for these folks.

I obviously can't do everything, nor can most common folks, though
others can certainly pitch in with whatever their expertise, as even
odd notions along with whatever mistakes is allowed, as long as those
mistakes are not of the sorts of intentional flak like I've been
receiving for the past three years.

The question often asked; "they (NASA/ESA) must be able to do
something" simply has gone answered, though as for their first-off
negative stance about nearly everything under the sun pretty much sums
up the sorts of "can do" or can't possibly do" issues as most of our
NASA/ESA folks see them; "where's the money?"

Too bad I'm not sufficiently rich nor polished at my saying "I told
you so" or perhaps "finders keepers", as I'd certainly have liked to
have involved others, along with at least matching funds, and to
insure the absolute fullest of credits on their behalf. As far as
"where's the money" goes, I believe this is a self enterprising
opportunity of folks simply doing whatever's right, as even if we
continue making our human mistakes, chances are that whomever survived
Venus is going to have something we need, and vice versa, and thereby
perhaps our resident warlord(s) can summarily take whatever from them,
or we might consider being nice and accommodating for a change, as
lord only knows, they might make their initial mistake of thinking
we're not so bad to deal with, as all we'll have to do is keep the
likes of Osama bin Laden from speaking with them, or perhaps even
those Dogon folks should be excluded, since they haven't developed the
necessary levels of greed and snookering to the degree that we've
managed through our in-your-face carnage-R-us policies.

What's needed are for these folks opposing just about everything under
the sun, to start telling us specifically why it's supposedly so damn
difficult or even impossible as to deliver a sufficient laser beam,
onto and thereby sufficiently penetrating those nighttime clouds of
Venus. Even placing a serious long distance laser packet on it's way
toward Sirius can't be impossible, especially with the 0.1 milliradian
and 100 MW class delivery of those two death-ray outfitted ABLs.

Then perhaps thay can also be informing us village idiots as to why
the likes of TRACE can't seem to image upon the nighttime portion of
Venus.

Another question that needs answers;
What's so damn hard, or even spendy about establishing a Venus L2
stationkeeping platform?

Venus style aerodynamics is almost too good to be true, so why not
simply place an interactive communications kiosk onto their tarmac?

Here's the latest deliveries upon "what's new and of what's hot", as
offering a little more of my three brain cells worth on behalf of
Sirius terraforming the likes of Mars, Earth and Venus.
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-earth-venus.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-sirius-trek.htm

Calling Venus;
If you're perchance interested in the hot prospect of achieving
interplanetary communications, as for that quest I've added lots, if
not a little too much, into this following page;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

BTW; There's still way more than a darn good chance of there being
other life of some sort existing on Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm

Some good but difficult warlord readings: SADDAM HUSSEIN and The SAND
PIRATES
http://mittymax.com/Archive/0085-Sad...andPirates.htm

David Sereda (loads of honest ideas and notions upon UV energy), for
best impact on this one, you'll really need to barrow his video:
http://www.ufonasa.com

The latest round of insults to this Mars/Moon/Venus class action
injury:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-what-if.htm

Some other recent file updates:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-gwb-moon.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-illumination.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-moon-02.htm

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA


lid (John Savard) wrote in message ...
but, as Robert Zubrin notes, it does seem to be the best place to set
up a colony.

However, are there any other alternatives that might be even more
attractive?

One of the objections Dr. Zubrin gives to O'Neill colonies is that a
mirror area comparable to the crop area is required for agriculture.
As it would seem to me that aluminized Mylar is easier to construct
than the *land area of the colony itself*, that seems to be an odd
objection.

But the mirror area could be smaller if the colony was closer to the
Sun.

Venus' atmosphere has about the same percentage of nitrogen in it as
Mars', but it is many times denser. A well-shielded O'Neill colony - I
have a design for one, shaped like a wine bottle, with a further
shielding slab out past the mirrors putting light down the neck of the
bottle, where the shielding doesn't rotate - in orbit about Venus
might have access to a good source of biomass feedstock. (Metal and
rock would be sent from the Moon.)

Since the gas giants have very deep gravity wells, comets and Pluto
seem to be the other potential non-terrestrial sources of nitrogen in
the Solar System.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

places to go and explore in rovers etc.. depressing living in a spam can in
space

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 12:26:20 -0600, "Mike Combs"
wrote:

So aside from "the ground under your feet", what else does Mars provide that
must be provided artificially in an orbital habitat?


Herm
Astropics http://home.att.net/~hermperez

Ian Stirling wrote:
Sander Vesik wrote:

Ian Stirling wrote:

Sander Vesik wrote:

Mike Combs wrote:

"Sander Vesik" wrote in message
. ..

It appears to be bar far better to use solar batteries and artifical
lightning combined with hydroponics.

I could believe this if I could believe that on a square-mile to square-mile
comparison, solar panels and electric lights were comparable in price to
aluminized Mylar and glass.

covering square kilometers with thick layers of ultraclear glass so that you
both have radiation protection and not too bad light losses won't probably
be cheap either.

Then again, by complicating the mirror design a bit, you can pump all the
light through a hole that's radiologically negligable.
If you'r feeling really clever, you can even bounce it round using
mirrors once it gets inside, so that no radiation gets in.


Sure - but now you are talking about lots of mirrors and complicated designs,
instead. I still favour "compact", hydroponics and artifical lighting based
design. While you could use mirrors in compact designs it will very fast start
looking pretty crazy.


For the simplest case, you'r looking at something like a cylinder,
with a parabolic mirror at one end.
The cylinder is pointed at the sun, and the mirror is coaxial with it,
with a secondary mirror to bounce the light through a hole in the endcap.

http://clowder.net/hop/etc./CylMirror.jpg

This was for a colony at 3 A.U. IIRC, where the collecting mirror's
surface would need to be greater than if it were 1 A.U.

This has 3 mirrors. The third mirror within the cylinder seems omitted
from some of the schemes I've seen. But you need something to send the
imported rays to the walls of cylinder.

Why do you want compact?

Some equate non-compact with massive. But a large mirror may have little
mass.



--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

Sander Vesik wrote:
Ool wrote:

"Sander Vesik" wrote in message ...

John Savard wrote:

One of the objections Dr. Zubrin gives to O'Neill colonies is that a
mirror area comparable to the crop area is required for agriculture.
As it would seem to me that aluminized Mylar is easier to construct
than the *land area of the colony itself*, that seems to be an odd
objection.

It appears to be bar far better to use solar batteries and artifical
lightning combined with hydroponics.

"Lighting."

The problem is that with the efficiency of these, which is limited by
the laws of physics, you'll always lose at least around 80% of the
original energy by converting light to electricity and back.



So? Thats a quite unintersting figure. Plants don't use all of incoming
solar energy either. Furhermore, you are not really area or mass limited
with those solar cells as they would be attached to something gobsmacking
large - a O'Neill's anyways.



I believe 90% loss is a more practical estimate for light to electricity
to light
(economics and engineering don't always allow you to reach the limits
from laws of physics)

This means the photovoltaic arrays would need to be 10 times the area of
a collecting mirror.

And per square meter, it seems to me aluminized mylar would be cheaper
than photovoltaics.

Also expensive would be the artificial lighting. Artificial lighting is
OK for homes and offices. But providing enough light to grow crops is a
much harder task.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

Mars is not only seriously "short of nitrogen", it's pretty much short
of nearly everything except CO2, and damn if even most of that isn't
in a frozen form.

Even though I seem to keep running smack into other fellow village
idiots that seem only to oppose life itself, such as a recent village
idiot moron that actually doesn't wish to consider the available
energies of Venus worth squat, much less the greater yet energies
available to whomever might have originated about the likes of
Sirius/abc. It's most interesting in how their skewed laws of physics
can be so pathetically conditional, if not outright bigoted. I'll
suppose they even think it was a darn good thing that the Pope
exterminated Cathars.

Here's yet another instalment of what many consider absolutely
impossible.


Terraforming other planets via synchronized moon

Here's another bigger "what if" that's pertaining to the likes of
Sirius taking a fairly long shot at terraforming a few planets.

Lets just presume that the absolute closest Sirius ever gets itself is
the 0.01 ly, and that of the loop or orbit route offered them a
plausible near fly-by working timeline that's within this range/zone
of up to +/- 1 ly, down to the otherwise absolute minimal (0.01 ly)
distance, which then suggest an overall maximum range of Sirius travel
time being worth roughly 2 ly.

If sirius was trekking itself along their pathway at the rate of 80.5
km/s, I believe that offers 7450 Earth years worth of being within
this +/- 1 ly zone, though we might have to reconsider that their best
effort at to/from commuting was utilizing a 30,000 km/s (0.1 ly)
capability, thus a more reasonable window of opportunity falls down to
the capability of +/- 0.1 ly, or a Earthly timeline of 745 years worth
of encounter, which obviously doesn't give all that much room for
terraforming error, but none the less, for a sufficiently advanced
race, perhaps 745 years worth could have done the trick, unless
something goes terribly wrong.

Gee whiz; what could possibly go wrong, much less with doing three
entirely different planets at the same time?

One of those nagging if not pestering thoughts has always been; what
if we were those smart souls from Sirius, going about attempting our
hand at this sort of task, assuming that we mastered at least the rate
of traveling about at 30,000 km/s, thus being our maximum 0.1 ly
commute from Sirius (one-way) was at most going to take us roughly a
full year (give or take the 80.5 km/sec factor), and obviously lesser
time as our mutual junctions close in on the 0.01 ly differential.

In order to offer some reassurance of providing our teams with a
survivable outpost (pitstop) that wasn't directly associated with
either of the three planets that we had intended to terraform, it
seems like it would have been a damn good notion as to placing an
unusually stable moon about the central planet, though a moon having a
thermal nuclear core of energy reserves as to best accommodate our
terraforming teams. In this manner the three worlds of a given solar
system (such as this solar system) could have been safely tampered
with, and otherwise manipulated with the least possible contact and/or
contamination by our own kind, as well as for our teams having sort of
camped out on a reliable home away from home, that wasn't going to be
nearly as difficult for ourselves and items being delivered to in the
first place, and/or for subsequently extracting everything for the
eventual return flights back home. In other words, making a crew
change at least every 25 or so years becomes entirely doable, mostly
for our physiology benefits and of certain other needs that might be
in order, such as retirement, though some of the most dedicated folks
might pull a double shift, and/or later return for another 25 year
stint.

Keeping in mind, that most of the bulk substances sent from Sirius/abc
are not those having to be deposited onto the moon, but rather
established into orbit about the intended planet, whereas the
terraforming teams stationed onboard the moon would then go about
overseeing those package deliveries, as for perhaps directing their
final decent onto the surface, whereas whatever was released and/or
having to be transported about the globe for accomplish their intended
goal, this would then have been at the discretion of the team(s)
charged with such responsibilities.

As well accepted by our NASA and their loyal huggers, everyone seems
to be aware of and in reasonable consensus upon the initial
difficulties of just getting ourselves to another planet, even though
this task is entirely dwarfed by any further notions of having
whatever it takes as to getting ourselves back off that other planet,
at least with any dignity. In other words, not having to utilize a
body bag, like what's most likely going to happen upon Dr. Zubrin's
return from Mars.

Thus it seems by having yourself the benefits of delivering and/or
creating a sufficiently nearby and relatively low gravity outpost,
that's entirely stable, as well as the one and only having a
synchronized rotation, and actually performing as a rather unique
moon, that's providing an essential home sweet home remote platform
for all of your terraforming teams, is a rather grand solution if
there ever was. As then, only when and if it's absolutely necessary
for making a personal visitations onto the surface of Mars, Earth or
Venus, not only is your to/from commute travel time a snap but, you'll
never have to spend the night away from your underground lunar
laboratory and adjoining lunar abode. Therefore, if the environmental
conditions on your planet aren't right, and/or something you had
previously created for the planet was attempting to eat you, lo and
behold, you would just pack everything up and leave on your fleet
scout ship (offering perhaps 3,000 km/s), and that would be that.

Without any doubt, this is about as far outside the box as I've
managed to get myself, thus as such plots thicken as to how certain
terraforming sorts of things could have been done, it seems just a
plausible for this one to fly as not. Obviously I've left out numerous
details, and I haven't covered many issues that would seriously have
nailed our hides to the barn, at least with any respect to what's
currently accepted or even on the books for the future potential of
ways of doing such things, of which obviously isn't nearly sufficient
nowadays, nor will it likely become doable within the next few
decades. Thereby this avenue of terraforming remains for the likes of
folks a whole lot smarter than us.

Of course, not every well intended effort at terraforming is going to
work as planned, as variables and unknowns are going to impose some
degree of risk if not outright horrifying results. Although, if future
missions of longer range capable probes are continued, chances are
certainly better off than not for your terraforming workmanship to
survive, even though there may come a time when it's apparent that
only an entire "RESET" is going to save the day, and after all, the
creatures now living on those planets you terraformed were just petri
dish clones of something you felt was necessary, so there's obviously
little if anything to being lost if it should become necessary to wipe
the slate clean, and attempt to start over, as it certainly would be
cruel and immoral to intentionally shift the odds by give one of your
creation groups the technological and/or biological advantage over
another. I'm assuming that the "all knowing" God by which Sirius obeys
will NOT have been pleased if such terraforming runs itself too far
amuck, as I'm assuming that would be considered sacrilegious.

Perhaps we should try to realize that I'm not suggesting anything
"Star Wars", as more likely "Star Oops" if you'd honestly consider the
sorts of DNA/RNA running amuck that created the likes of GW Bush and
of a few dozen others. In fact, why even give these Sirius folks any
benefit of doubt, as they could be the mirror image of "dumb and
dumber", which might account for why Earth has been so screwed up in
the first place.


However, this could soon become the very foundation or eventual road
map of what our NASA and Halburton have been planning all along, with
the notions of either terraforming another world for our eventual
benefit, and/or simply pillaging and/or harvesting that planet's
resources for our immediate benefit, and perhaps regardless of
whatever the consequences. Obviously by the standards of what our
administrations have already accomplished and/or allowed far worse
things with entire disregard for those consequences, and "so what's
the difference", what's even better than our indiscriminate open-pit
mining of some other world?

Here's the latest deliveries upon what's new and of what's hot, as
offering a bit more context into what my three brain cells can deliver
on behalf of Sirius terraforming the likes of Mars, Earth and Venus.
*** http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-earth-venus.htm
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-sirius-trek.htm

Calling Venus;
If you're perchance more interested in the truly hot prospect of our
achieving interplanetary communications, as for that relatively simple
quest I've added lots, if not a little too much, into this following
page;
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm

Regards. Brad Guth / IEIS~GASA

Herm wrote in message . ..
places to go and explore in rovers etc.. depressing living in a spam can in
space

Any worse than living in a smaller spam can on Mars, with an
inconvenient level of gravity and no easy access to zero-g, abundant
energy, Earth maerkets etc?

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 12:26:20 -0600, "Mike Combs"
wrote:

So aside from "the ground under your feet", what else does Mars provide that
must be provided artificially in an orbital habitat?