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#541
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
John Schilling wrote: Right, the way when you pick up a magnet, it sticks to your hand because of all the iron in your blood. Iron, as it turns out, is only ferromagnetic in crystalline form. And while there are some iron oxide minerals that can form ferromagnetic crystals, that is somewhat unusual and it clearly isn't what Mars is doing with its iron. Else we'd be calling it the "Blue Steel Planet", rather than the "Red Planet". No, it's rusty, and that's why it's orange in color: http://www.marslab.dk/ResearchSoilMineralogy.htm Mars Pathfinder carried magnets which attracted Mars dust: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/science/magnetic.html The Viking landers carried magnets on their soil scoops, which quickly became saturated from contact with the soil: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten.../278/5344/1768 Getting the iron by running magnets over the soil would be far more effective than waiting for it to accumulate on top of the vehicle, but that is at least theoretically possible. You might want to put the top magnet test version in a area where the dust devils are prevalent, to see what happens. Pat |
#542
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:33:53 -0800, John Schilling
wrote: Right, the way when you pick up a magnet, it sticks to your hand because of all the iron in your blood. ....If only that were the case. Imagine what the clothing industry could do with that! OM -- ]=====================================[ ] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [ ] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [ ] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [ ]=====================================[ |
#544
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Erik Max Francis skreiv:
Eivind Kjorstad wrote: I think my point stands: there is no clear separation. Certainly no universally agreed upon separation. I think the nitpicking is getting pretty silly here. It's pretty obvious from context what he meant: A robot can do its job without human assistance, but a mere machine cannot and only serves to help humans get the job done. If the job can't get done without constant, direct human intervention, then a robot is not at work. I don't think it's silly or nitpicky in the least. The entire premise of the thread is that *if* we ever have mining or other large-scale industrial activities in space, it'd seem there's three main ways of doing it. Having a human crew that works for a while, then returns to their families on earth, the oilrig model. Having a human crew that -live- close to the work-area, in space-stations or planetary bases. Having robots do the work. My point is that -more- capable machine leads to -less- needs of a human crew. A smaller crew makes a difference. If your mega-mine on mars needs 10 human beings to be around and handle the corner-cases, that gives quite different logistics to the situation if you need a crew of 1000 to do the daily work. Is a machine that can work independently for a minute, but then needs human instruction a robot ? How about one that can work for an hour, a day, a week or a month ? Even without truly unmanned mines, a mine that has such a high level of robotics, or machinery, whatever you call it, that it needs only say 1% of the staffing of a current typical mine seems very much possible to me. Furthermore, if the tasks that need human involvement are rare enough, then you can live with doing those tasks in an inefficient matter, such as doing a uncommon repair by remote-control with large time-lag. That would be impractical if the situation came up frequently. Eivind Kjørstad |
#545
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message ... Considering the amount of iron oxides and compounds on Mars, it could be something as simple as a magnetized conveyor belt on top of the device that rotates around once every couple of hours and scrapes off the accumulated dust that sticks to it into a hopper on its underside. Channeling that getitonyourown guy who's always posting is napkin drawings on his website and later claims that the big, bad, aerospace companies are stealing his ideas? I know I have his name wrong, but he's killfiled, so I don't remember the exact name. Jeff -- "When transportation is cheap, frequent, reliable, and flexible, everything else becomes easier." - Jon Goff |
#546
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Jeff Findley wrote: Channeling that getitonyourown guy who's always posting is napkin drawings on his website and later claims that the big, bad, aerospace companies are stealing his ideas? I know I have his name wrong, but he's killfiled, so I don't remember the exact name. Unless you were in a major dust storm this concept wouldn't be too effective, but using magnets to gather iron ore off of the surface is a very workable proposition. Pat |
#547
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message ... Jeff Findley wrote: Channeling that getitonyourown guy who's always posting is napkin drawings on his website and later claims that the big, bad, aerospace companies are stealing his ideas? I know I have his name wrong, but he's killfiled, so I don't remember the exact name. Unless you were in a major dust storm this concept wouldn't be too effective, but using magnets to gather iron ore off of the surface is a very workable proposition. Possibly, but I'd like to see a bit of R&D done on this, and obviously a prototype actually flown to Mars to try it out, before I'd bet the farm on it. If you use permanent magnets, I wonder how you'd get the material off of them. If you use electromagnets, I wonder how you'd power them (they're pretty power hungry). Jeff -- "When transportation is cheap, frequent, reliable, and flexible, everything else becomes easier." - Jon Goff |
#548
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Nov 13, 8:41 am, "Jeff Findley"
wrote: "Pat Flannery" wrote in message Unless you were in a major dust storm this concept wouldn't be too effective, but using magnets to gather iron ore off of the surface is a very workable proposition. Possibly, but I'd like to see a bit of R&D done on this, and obviously a prototype actually flown to Mars to try it out, before I'd bet the farm on it. If you use permanent magnets, I wonder how you'd get the material off of them. If you use electromagnets, I wonder how you'd power them (they're pretty power hungry). The way recycling does it is to have a belt and a permanent magnet. Magnetic stuff is lifted up against the belt by the magnet. The belt is moving, so it moves the stuff stuck against it. Once the stuff is moved beyond the region where the magnet is, it falls off the belt. Isaac Kuo |
#549
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Nov 14, 2:05 am, IsaacKuo wrote:
On Nov 13, 8:41 am, "Jeff Findley" wrote: "Pat Flannery" wrote in message Unless you were in a major dust storm this concept wouldn't be too effective, but using magnets to gather iron ore off of the surface is a very workable proposition. Possibly, but I'd like to see a bit of R&D done on this, and obviously a prototype actually flown to Mars to try it out, before I'd bet the farm on it. If you use permanent magnets, I wonder how you'd get the material off of them. If you use electromagnets, I wonder how you'd power them (they're pretty power hungry). The way recycling does it is to have a belt and a permanent magnet. Magnetic stuff is lifted up against the belt by the magnet. The belt is moving, so it moves the stuff stuck against it. Once the stuff is moved beyond the region where the magnet is, it falls off the belt. Isaac Kuo Seems a pretty energy-inefficient way to mine dust. The amount of dust suspended at 0.3% of earth's atmospheric density would be somewhat trivial, unless you're talking about massive magnetic fields. I can see this as a way to scoop up windblown dirt in the upper Venusian atmosphere, but on Mars why bother? What happened to good old shovels? |
#550
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Nov 13, 6:35 pm, Troy wrote:
On Nov 14, 2:05 am, IsaacKuo wrote: The way recycling does it is to have a belt and a permanent magnet. Magnetic stuff is lifted up against the belt by the magnet. The belt is moving, so it moves the stuff stuck against it. Once the stuff is moved beyond the region where the magnet is, it falls off the belt. Seems a pretty energy-inefficient way to mine dust. The amount of dust suspended at 0.3% of earth's atmospheric density would be somewhat trivial, unless you're talking about massive magnetic fields. I can see this as a way to scoop up windblown dirt in the upper Venusian atmosphere, but on Mars why bother? What happened to good old shovels? This wasn't for mining dust in the air, but regolith from the ground underneath a (slow) moving vehicle. I found a reference on how much dust there is in the Martian atmosphere and the amount isn't enough for practical "filter feeding" mining. But rolling a magnetic conveyor belt over the surface could pick up lots of regolith. Isaac Kuo |
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