Time for the U.S. to Colonize the Moon and Mars.

I truly wish them luck. The more the merrier and the more we will learn from each other's mistakes.

But what does Mars have to offer that is worth the vastly greater complexity and cost?

The Higher Gravity?

The Greater Room? ( as if we come anywhere near "Filling" the Moon in the next 100 years )

The greater distance from the corruptions of EARTH ( Obama and the Lefties et al )?

The higher gravity well is both a blessing and a curse. Once you drop something, it is not cheaply coming back up. Its not enough more gravity to eliminate the need for spin train car cities a requirement for good, body strain and conditioning health.

There is less in the way of markets for any metals you might develop.

Why bother?

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The Giant Leap, Adrian Berry, Headline, 1999, ISBN 0 7472 5724 8 is a fine work on the feasibility of starships and space colonisation, coming from a perspective of informed speculation. Well worth reading.

 

When it becomes economically feasible private enterprise will colonize the moon and there are huge advantages in using a moon base (i.e. 1/6th the gravity) for Mars exploration. I actually believe we'll begin asteroid mining well in advance of moon colonization although the moon also offers the same advantages related to asteroid mining. I'm guessing were about 100 years away from that actually happening though. We might have a moon outpost for asteroid mining but actually colonizing it is much more complex. I also see the future terraforming of Mars so that it is habitable but that's probably 1,000 years or more away from happening because it's such a huge undertaking that will take hundreds of years at the very least to accomplish.

The fact is that the government doesn't have nearly enough capital (money) when compared to private enterprise to accomplish any of this.

 

The U.S. will first have to make competent rockets that can supply the ISS .

Why would anyone wanna go and live in a place far worst than Antarctica ?
The idea of colonies is bad , in the future humans will be drifters traveling inside space cities living on their own rules .
People in Terran colonies revolted after a couple of centuries under metropolitan control with the overlord living only a month away , think what will happen if pioneers are left to socially evolve in another world three years away.

 

I'm glad I'll be long dead before HoneyBooBooLand spreads any further than this despoiled paradise.

 

wouldn't a colony on mars be socialism

would republicans only give air to those that could afford to buy it? or would they expect the government to provide it for everyone?

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Given the track record of Big Government on Old Earth, why would anyone talented, smart and hard working enough to actually get to the surface of Mars or the Moon rely on Government for any as essential as breathing air.

Get real. Most would hire a trusted and competent Corporate Provider, or better yet, design, assemble and maintain their own holds systems.

Good Gods! Never trust Government for anything essential!

If they didn't just botch the job, they'd charge you 10X a reasonable price for a shoddy product, or worse, they hold your BAir Hostage for Votes.

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The track record of big government on Earth includes NASA.

 

I was disappointed by the cancellation of the Constellation program, but I'm still optimistic. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have shown that public/private space exploration is promising. They've started their own private space race.

I'm a long-time NASA fan, but I hope competition between private enterprises will eventually leave government inefficiency in the dust--of earth. There are already private plans to colonize the moon and mine it. The Artemis project is one. Newt Gingrich is on the board of another serious project (can't remember the name).

I think the obvious reason Mars is attractive is that it can be terraformed. With present technology it's feasible, but it would take a very long time. Nonetheless, projects like Mars One should be encouraged and supported. We'll discover new technologies along the way, probably much sooner then imagined

Elon Musk actually plans to go to Mars himself. He wants to die on Mars. We all have to die anyway. Why not die as a colonist?

Why bother?? The long term survival of the human species is precarious if we limit ourselves to one planet. Mars is the obvious place to go next.

 

yeah, I would trust a corp that put profits over people to control my air supply... NOT

 

I totally agree. But there is allot more to survival than just a beating heart and drawing breadth.

Today, the world is suffering from the spirit stifling, power greed driven corrupting quest for a one-world, leftist authoritarian government.

If they succeed, it will be every bit as thorough a destruction of humanity, as the planet killer asteroid striking Earth, and canceling every beating heart.

We need to diversify where humanity exists to preserve its Culture, Spirit and FREEDOM every bit as much as the need to keep physical bodies of our geneotype eating and breathing.

The Left knows that by far the biggest threat to their long term, absolute power, is the existence of any society, anywhere, which shows the example of the benefits of FREEDOM!

This is why they needed to destroy and rewrite the history of the American Shining City on a Hill into 8 Trillion in new debt, vast expansions of racial preferences, and the ObamaCare Fiscal/Healthcare Wrecking Ball.

Sadly, it is too late to save America. But it is not too late for a few of the best to escape to keep the dream alive.

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So, having said that diversification is essential to preserve what is best and most important of Humanity...

Why Mars? At least in the near term? Terra-forming would take 100s if not 1000s of years.

The deeper gravity well is a least as much a liability as a benefit. It is enough farther from Sol to have significantly less ready solar flux energy resources.

It has no significant material resources not avail on the moon, just with the problems of getting in and out of the gravity well and without the free energy.

Mars is one hell of a lot further from our seed resources on Earth.

Its also too far to make any possibility of a care package or rescue mission to be an option.

But if the Moon colony already existed, creating the initial Mars colony mission would be significantly easier and less expensive.

Why colonize Mars with terrestrial silicon, steel and aluminum ships, when you could do it with lunar sourced silicon, steel and aluminum?

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Well I don't think you need to worry about it. The type of person concerned about getting national air care before even leaving the planet is unlikely to ever leave.

The brave Chinese who eventually settle the solar system will have to be made of tougher stuff than that.

 

I don't think it's a left-wing right-ring thing, because neither one of those wings will get us anywhere. That's just a sideshow to keep us busy being stupid. The real battle is against environmentalism, and I'm not talking about the kind of stupid environmentalism that Obama shares.

I was at an informal meeting a few days ago when the subject of Mars colonization came up. Someone asked, "We already have this place messed up so bad! Why do we want to go someplace else and mess it up too?" It was all I could do to prevent myself from starting the mother of all arguments. The person who asked that question actually has a Phd, but there is nothing as boundless as the stupidity of a stupid environmentalist.

The environmentalists I worry about are the ones who have power and wealth like Ted Turner, Bill gates, and Alexander King.

However, I have a way to stay optimistic. I'm against the "New World Order" as much as the next guy, but I also realize that 'globalization' is inevitable, and it should be. The Kardashev scale is insightful.

Type 1 civilizations use the energy of a planet.
Type 2 civilizations use the energy of a star.
Type 3 civilizations use the energy of a galaxy.

We are a type 0 civilization, and if have any chance of doing better, we'll have to educate the stupid environmentalists, and defeat the powerful ones. when we're using the energy of our entire planet to get us out there and beyond, the left-wing as we know it will disappear along with the right.

 

As I said, I was against the cancellation of the Constellation program. I'm also for developing the moon, but the technology exists to put a colony on Mars. There are plans to do it. I'm for it. I wouldn't hold those plans hostage to the moon. I think Zubrin, for example, was wrong to push the idea of getting to Mars on the cheap, but I think we should just keep moving forward in spite of any setbacks.

I like to ask "what if something good happens?" instead of "what if something bad happens?" Even if something bad happens because we cancelled the Constellation program, we'll give ourselves the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. If it turns out we really needed the moon before Mars, then we'll have evidence.

Final thought: Readily available resources are obviously nice, but when we figure out how to make a fusion torch, we can get all the resources we need just about anywhere. I hope a fusion torch is not too far off.

 

I understand that the Chinese have the money, and the need for more space (*sic), but why should they be the only people to make it to space?

America still has a number of very wealthy business moguls. Those moguls are about to loose all of their wealth to the Obama Transformation. If they spend that wealth on drive to establish a colony on the Moon, their wealth will be secured in a location outside of the control and jurisdiction of the Obama redistribution tax men.

Why Not?

If you are an American, and you have real wealth, Use it or Loose it!

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well you go ahead and depend on that corporate air.. be sure to check if they offer a good relocation package if they fire ya

 

I worked for seven years, at the end of 27 year career in military R&D, at a national lab setting up and executing fusion experiments.

I cannot go into details in the slightest, but I would say that my take is that we could have very crude fusion power plants tomorrow, but you would not want them for the cost and environmental impacts.

You could have less crude, but effective Helium 3 fusion power in two decades, but ONLY if you have a Moon Colony. Its one of the strongest arguments for making the Moon Colony.

We, Humanity, will not have D-D or D-T fueled Fusion power plants in the next 200 years, and even when you do, the scale will be so large, because of basic physics limitations and reaction rates, that the included volumes and mass at energetic temperatures makes the systems a monumental hazard far worse than the worst of the sloppy built soviet weapons breeder heavy metal reactors.

Sorry, but any atomic weight fuel below He3 is just impractical in planetary gravity wells. In space, it could be done well away (1000Km+) from People and Facilities, with the resulting energy piped over, but then in space, you've got effective solar fusion, so why bother?

That said, there are other technologies, including plasma based heavy metal reactors which would be far safer, and produce significantly less toxic and radioactive waste than our standard, current out-dated technologies.

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I'm more interested in finding out which planets have the most useful resources. Whichever is the least useful, find a way to store our depleted uranium there. Nuclear energy is by far the best. Short of unnecessary regs, its the most efficient energy and it has no CO2 emissions, no harmful waste - except the depleted rods. Stashing them on some useless planet would be great.

Also not trying to derail the discussion towards energy, I just see that as an obvious fix to some of our own problems.

 

My guess is that you don't really know about the fuel rod cycle and rod reprocessing?

When you manufacture a uranium fuel pellet, about the size of a wooden pencil eraser, at the time of manufacture, about half of the uranium is already an isotope which is very stable. This is what we refer to a DU or Depleted Uranium. The DU will never be "Burned" by the nuclear power plant, the isotope is too stable. It doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt either. Some of the DU will get hit by just the right nuclear reaction bullet and turn into something else, which MIGHT be useful for either weapons, or new fuel pellets. Hence a Breeder Reactor.

There are also several other isotopes of Uranium in a fuel pellet. These isotopes are in smaller quantity, and even a small amount of weapons Uranium exists. These are the forms of Uranium in the mass of the pellet which might be "Burned" by the power plant.

But when 6-7% of that fuel is "burned" the process creates Trans-Uranium Waste products, those atoms which are formed when the Uranium atom breaks apart. Most of these atoms are highly radioactive, but also low enough in atomic number, to be a type of atom that biological units, be it cockroaches or people, can use. This is the Dangerous Radioactive Waste. Because it will be absorbed and put to use by your body, were Uranium, if you ate it, would pass on out, because your biology has no use for it. Because it stuck inside your body, when it emits radiation, it blasts apart your cells doing great harm.

But those Trans-Uranium Waste products are often, but not always, toxic in another way. They tend to absorb or over moderate the neutrons produced by the still fissioning Fuel Isotope Uranium is producing, blocking the needed stimulus to keep the reaction going. So when as little as 6-7% of the Fuel in the Pellet has been "Burned", it will no longer be usable as a fuel pellet, in a fuel rod, of a power plant.

So, these "used up" pellets are taken out to a Cooling Pond for storage. But they still contain 93%+ of their original FUEL! The last thing you want to do is throw them away, or even move them from the power plant site.

You want to reprocess them, removing the Trans-Uranium Waste products, and make new fuel pellets from them. For every 100 you process, you get about 90 new pellets.

The mass equivalent of roughly 10 pellets is separated to form highly toxic, highly radioactive, and highly dangerous Trans-Uranium Waste. That's what you need to get rid of...

Of coarse, if you built and implemented an Ion-Plasma heavy metal reactor, you only load one pellet per day into the reactor, and you have real time magnetic waste separation, so you need never shut the plant down to refuel, you just take away the cold traps filled with the waste.

Also, because you only have 19 grams of Uranium in the plant at any given time, the plant could be completely destroy by a meteor or other, and there is not enough radioactive material present to pollute more than a couple of football fields.

It is insanity that we have not already converted our existing, antique design, heavy metal reactors to Ion-Plasma Reactors.

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A Martian base would have obvious advantages over an Earth base for exploration of the outer Solar System.

The best way I can see is use a combination of Mars Direct and Mars To Stay. I say both because better research facilities exist here on Earth for examination of samples.

First, one MD mission is sent to a location that Curiosity says is the best candidate. Halfway through the first MD mission, three more are sent so as to form an equilateral triangle centered on the center on the first landing site. The three outer sites would be within Rover driving distance of the first site, which at this point, if deemed a prospect for future colonization, would be sent extra habitation modules to prepare for the first MTS mission.

It is honestly unrealistic to expect that the human population on Mars will be any higher than 50 people within a century of humans setting foot on Mars, but within three centuries, the population could explode.

I do see the potential of having a spacedock in LEO and LMO for spacefaring cargo vessels the size of Liberty Ships, but construction of a spacedock or a ship of that size would have to be on-orbit, and thus would require a SSTO spaceplane that was almost entirely reusable and able to be turned around in a matter of 8-24 hours.

As for nuclear waste, shoot it into the Sun or onto Mercury.

 

Oh good grief...

 

Yep, hugely wealthy corporations collapse and disappear all the time. Enron? If your prime funder fails, who is going to pick up the pieces of a bankrupt organisation?

Then there's politics; space expert, John S. Lewis, "Most politicians [in the United States] see basic research from the perspective of industry, which has become increasingly obsessed with the current quarter's balance sheet. Many industries see that basic research is a major expense this quarter, and that this year's basic research will not result in a single new product this year. They therefore have chosen to 'improve' their ledgers by cutting funding for basic research.

That such behaviour is suicidal in the long run is not at all obvious to them, nor does it address their short-term needs...The most astute critic might see the single cause at the root of these difficulties: the ascension into top management of a generation of managers whose education trains them to count beans but leaves them perfectly ignorant of where future crops of beans come from."

 

Try to think things through just a little, itty bit...

What happens if this Launch goes bad?

Not a good Idea to be taking the most hazardous substances known to man, and putting them atop big stack of high flying explosives...

Maybe put it in very durable triple walled barrels, and then bury it in the bottom silt in a deep sea crustal subduction zone, and let it get sucked down into the mantle, where it won't be seen again for several half-lives.

Or perhaps just sticking it into a dry, abandoned salt mine with gates, guards and monitors. Go Figure.

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We should probably establish fusion power before we colonize our solar system.