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Post by littlerift on Mar 9, 2017 13:44:50 GMT
I wonder what timescale are you talking about, mentioning 'NEAR'. By 2100, there would be manned extraterrestrial bases, of course, but I doubt there would be any before that. Like Buzz Aldrin, I believe that China would be the next nation to successfully send humans to Luna, but according to their plan, they will establish a lunar base shortly after that, so I guess it's happening. I know this said base is for scientific values and not habitation, but eventually. Sure there will be more than one research on the moon and/or mars by 50s , but colonization? I doubt it... I'm not so certain we'll even have any serious manned research bases, perhaps a very small and vocational one on the Moon, but even then I'm not sure. It's been 50 years since mankind first stepped foot on the Moon and 45 years since we last did so, and we're not much closer to a Lunar base today than we were back then. The priorities of mankind have, rightly (and hopefully) changed towards trying to protect the Earth rather than landing people on other bodies. Perhaps once we have navigated through the treacherous next half century we will be able to renew the human diaspora, but I'd be amazed if we have functional Lunar bases any time soon, and Mars bases are well beyond our current technology (unless you count a suicide mission as a proper base). The logistical challenge of establishing a base on the Moon will be absolutely massive - you need fresh water deliveries, food deliveries, atmosphere deliveries, habitation, radiation shielding, medical supplies, etc, ad nauseum, unless we invent some way to create enough water, food, and atmosphere in situ, which is well beyond us at the moment.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 9, 2017 16:53:27 GMT
Radiation shielding can be underground bunkers, water is ice and there is ice on the moon, food is farms, atmosphere is also farms and electrolysis of water
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Post by littlerift on Mar 9, 2017 17:57:12 GMT
Radiation shielding can be underground bunkers, water is ice and there is ice on the moon, food is farms, atmosphere is also farms and electrolysis of water Right, so you need heavy excavation equipment to clear out the bunker, as well as structural materials to support the roof. You need fuel for heat, lighting, and to melt ice, and you need some kind of system that can draw 5 litres of water per person out of the surface ice every day, as well as more water for other uses. You either need to create an entire soil biome, and thus will require continual supplies of nutrients, or you need a hydroponics farm which requires both nutrients and more water and more electricity. Unless you're going to maintain around 500 plants per person plants will not be enough to even begin to generate a viable atmosphere as plants respire too, and they don't draw enough CO2 out of the air to prevent a lethal build up. You can get around the latter problem by having some kind of air conditioning system, which will require more electricity and thus more fuel. You can use electrolysis to get oxygen and hydrogen. However, neither of these methods will provide you with the right levels of oxygen, meaning, again, you need to use a fuel-expensive air conditioning system so as to prevent hypoxia or oxygen intoxication. Having oxygen levels dependent on air conditioning also presents a major fire risk. The daily fuel cost of such a base is going to be massive. You could use solar panels instead, but that comes with a whole host of other issues (maintenance and inconsistency being the main ones). Regardless of how you power the base, you're going to need continuous supply runs, which means a massive increase in terrestrial rocket launches. For the Moon the supply missions would be incredibly expensive but relatively feasible, but there's almost no chance whatsoever that we could maintain a supply chain to Mars. We don't have the propellants or engines at the moment to reorbit from Mars, which means your supply missions need to be dropped off by some kind of orbital drop, which is incredibly costly, but further than that we don't have an engine that's anywhere near capable of entering Mars' orbit and then returning to Earth, which means your spacecraft are all going to be wasted material. You also need to somehow get around the problem that if one supply missions misses its schedule then it's quite possible that everybody on the base will die, as it will only take a day or so without air conditioning before people start dying. This is due to two things: CO2 buildup causing direct poisoning, and the CO2 buildup causing your plants to reduce their oxygen production. However, that probably doesn't matter as a day without heating will kill everybody too. The engineering challenge of maintaining extraplanetary bases is massively beyond the capabilities of our infrastructure and technology at this time. Maintaining the ISS is orders of magnitude less expensive and easier than maintaining a planetary base will be. I'm not saying we're never going to do it, just that we're nowhere near capable of it at this time. The main kicker, though, is that there's almost no reason whatsoever to even attempt to establish an extraplanetary base at this time.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 9, 2017 18:07:46 GMT
why would fuel cost be high? a Chernobyl type reactor uses unenriched uranium, safer reactors use enriched fuel and you can send more every decade or so. you can recycle most things, CO2 is fairly heavy so you can vent it into space easier then other gases or break it down into carbon (structural materials) and oxygen (air). you would not be building the whole base underground just the storm cellar. plants can be a supplement other means also food from plants.
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Post by littlerift on Mar 9, 2017 18:39:13 GMT
why would fuel cost be high? a Chernobyl type reactor uses unenriched uranium, safer reactors use enriched fuel and you can send more every decade or so. you can recycle most things, CO2 is fairly heavy so you can vent it into space easier then other gases or break it down into carbon (structural materials) and oxygen (air). you would not be building the whole base underground just the storm cellar. plants can be a supplement other means also food from plants. You want to take a nuclear reactor with you? Well that complicates all of your health and environment concerns massively. Lets ignore that though and just stick with logistics: you're going to need a reactor coolant, whether you use water (which means you need to draw a massive amount out of the ground) or other coolants that will require supply drops. You also need a massive amount of water to actually run the turbine. You'll need stockpiles of every component of the reactor just in case something goes wrong. You're also going to need a major transforming station in order to make the reactor's electrical output usable, and that will have to be built outside because transformers generate a lot of unwanted gasses. You also need to keep the transformer station protected from environmental effects because losing your power will kill you. If the transformer does fail for some reason and it is outside then you better pray to God that the environmental conditions outside permit of a repair operation. Also, how are you even going to construct all of this equipment on the surface of the Moon or Mars? You can't take a live nuclear reactor with you, so you're going to need to build it when you arrive. The same is true of the entire habitation ring, and until the systems are all operational you can't put people there in any case. Will you get robots to construct it? We don't have the technology to really accomplish that yet, and robots have a fairly short lifespan on extraterrestrial planets. Unless you're going to invent strong AI any time soon you're going to need a new generation of satellites both above Earth and above whatever body you're colonising in order to transfer enough data between the robot and the operator. Venting the CO2 means having an air conditioning system which requires air conditioning fluids and replacement panels, unless you literally want to just use gravity to vent it, which is going to lead to venting a lot of oxygen as well. If you do vent the CO2 near your base you may also run into the problem that you begin to increase the CO2 levels in the water ice that you're drinking, which makes the water purifying process less efficient. You need an air conditioning system anyway in order to remove water from the air. You can't break down the carbon into construction materials without some silly sci-fi gibberish, or if you're going to massively increase the power requirements. If you build just the storm cellar underground then you still have a radiation shielding issue. Food from plants relies on good harvests and keeping a vast amount of crop (which will have to be highly varied in order to provide food all year round, and will almost certainly have to be genetically modified in order to have higher crop yields, vitamin enrichment, and to be more survivable in the atmospheric and nutrient environment you're going to have, and to maintain the quality of those GMO crops you need new seeds every time you plant them. There's also a lot of mundane issues. If you're on the Moon then you need to deal with the negative effects of low gravity living, or rotate people out regularly. Radiation will necessitate crew rotation under any circumstances unless you literally keep the crew stuck in a radiation-bunker the whole time. If you do do that though then you increase the likelihood of social and mental health problems emerging, which will be a major issue. If you're on Mars these issues become almost impossible to solve as we cannot get people off of the planet. Well, we could, but in order to do that you need a construction facility and fuel depot in orbit above Mars in order to repair and refuel the rocket your using to achieve LMO. How are you going to deal with human waste? What about dead bodies? What if one of the residents get pregnant? What if there's a radiation leak? What if there's an oxygen leak? How do you deal with micrometeorites? How do you deal with disease? What do you do if you discover that there's bacterial life on the Moon or Mars and you've contaminated the ecosystem? How do you deal with the massive environmental cost on Earth? Etc, etc.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 9, 2017 19:32:10 GMT
The Soviet Union, however, launched 31 BES-5 low power fission reactors in their RORSAT satellites utilizing thermoelectric converters between 1967 and 1988. Shortly after, the Soviet Union developed TOPAZ reactors, which utilize thermionic converters instead. In 2008, NASA announced plans to utilize a small fission power system to be used on the surface of the moon and Mars, and began testing "key" technologies for it to come to fruition. - WIKIPEDIA you can recycle most things in a reactor, except for fuel, you may lose some coolant but you have spare coolant in case you run low, as for the transformer, stick it a armoured shed outside and you're fine also backups.
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Post by bigbombr on Mar 9, 2017 20:16:09 GMT
Wouldn't lunar bases rely more on solar than nucleair power? It can be shipped in smaller sections, people are less likely to make a fuss about launching it, and once you start your local manufacturing there is plenty of material (Si) lying around. You can recycle damaged or aged PV panels so further minimize dependency on imported materials (which would be a lot harder with nucleair power). Furthermore, water ice is located near the poles, so that's where your bases will be. Build a ring of PV panels around the perimeter of your base and you have a steady supply of power.
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Post by littlerift on Mar 9, 2017 20:44:19 GMT
The Soviet Union, however, launched 31 BES-5 low power fission reactors in their RORSAT satellites utilizing thermoelectric converters between 1967 and 1988. Shortly after, the Soviet Union developed TOPAZ reactors, which utilize thermionic converters instead. In 2008, NASA announced plans to utilize a small fission power system to be used on the surface of the moon and Mars, and began testing "key" technologies for it to come to fruition. - WIKIPEDIA you can recycle most things in a reactor, except for fuel, you may lose some coolant but you have spare coolant in case you run low, as for the transformer, stick it a armoured shed outside and you're fine also backups. Putting a fission reactor in orbit is not the same as landing a fission reactor on a stellar body. But fine, you have power. You still are incredibly unlikely to be able to create sustainable food, water, and atmosphere of sufficient quantities to maintain anything for very long. You still have to deal with radiation and crew fatigue and micrometorites, and you still have to deal with the high likelihood that at some point there will be a catastrophe that completely wipes the base out. And ultimately, what's the point? We gain almost nothing by putting humans in space or on other planets, and the benefits that you do get are completely obliterated by the cost of actually sustaining human life outside of Earth. It's incredibly expensive and difficult to maintain polar research stations, and Earth's poles are far more amenable to human life than any other planet or body we're aware of. This cost/gain difference will not always be the case, but it's going to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. It's certainly possible that we will make technological leaps within the next half century that make extra-planetary bases far more reasonable, but we can't predict such leaps with any accuracy. And I do agree that we could build some ramshackle outpost on the Moon or Mars, but to call some inefficient and pointless proof of concept proof that we can establish extra-planetary colonies is a little like claiming that Da Vinci created a helicopter.
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Post by ross128 on Mar 9, 2017 20:55:55 GMT
What, so you're saying that because it's hard we shouldn't do it? All of the hurdles mentioned are well-documented and pretty much solved. Expensive, sure, but any large-scale construction project is. What's important, however, is that the challenges of space are getting cheaper and easier to overcome every day. At the same time, we are continuing to discover mind-bogglingly vast untapped resources all around us, just outside of low-earth orbit. The cost is going down while the benefit is rising, and sooner or later they're going to cross paths. Of course, "just outside of LEO" is a fairly broad term, because once you're in LEO you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
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Post by littlerift on Mar 9, 2017 22:24:47 GMT
What, so you're saying that because it's hard we shouldn't do it? All of the hurdles mentioned are well-documented and pretty much solved. Expensive, sure, but any large-scale construction project is. What's important, however, is that the challenges of space are getting cheaper and easier to overcome every day. At the same time, we are continuing to discover mind-bogglingly vast untapped resources all around us, just outside of low-earth orbit. The cost is going down while the benefit is rising, and sooner or later they're going to cross paths. Of course, "just outside of LEO" is a fairly broad term, because once you're in LEO you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system. No, I'm saying that because it provides absolutely no benefits at the moment we shouldn't do it. When the cost/benefit equation shifts toward the latter then sure, but all technology is best deployed carefully and in a limited way until it has matured. Also, I think mining asteroids and the like is a very intelligent idea, although I can't see any reason to put humans in space to do it. It's planetary colonies that I think are pointless.
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Post by beta on Mar 9, 2017 23:48:29 GMT
Forward thinking. Instead of waiting until you need to get people living off the planet, solve the problems before. Why did we go to the moon? Was there any economic benefit to having astronauts wander around the Lunar surface and bring back a few pounds of rocks? Nope. Same reason for going to Mars. To go to Mars you need a more permanent settlement because you generally want to wait for ideal orbits. To return from the Martian surface, methalox rocket engines which are to be refueled in situ are already being developed ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family) ). Resupply would be handled much like the ISS is currently, resupply missions that contain food, small amounts of water (large majority comes from recycling), goods, experiments, and new crew. A Lunar colony would simply be more costly to resupply than the ISS. A Martian colony more so. The ISS receives approx. 6000 meals a year for it's 6 crew. Couldn't find any specific information about average mass per meal, but 1kg is a reasonable starting point. Resupply flights are attempted to be scheduled roughly quarterly, so 2 tons of food per supply mission. Powering a Lunar colony could be done with nuclear power, solar power (thermal and/or photo voltaic), hydrogen fuel cells, etc. You don't have to burn rocket fuel to power something. Martian colonies can be powered with similar tools, potentially adding methane-oxygen. The current plan by NASA is to use a turbo electric nuclear reactor ( www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/news/pressrel/2008/08-042addm.html ) because it is light, reliable, and small in volume. The idea that you would need constant deliveries of fresh water and atmosphere is absurd - this is why space agencies have run space stations for the last 30 years, to solve those problems 30 years ago so they would not be constraints for future plans. Much like creating manned terrestrial bases would do in the future.
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Post by matttheczar on Jun 10, 2017 10:08:34 GMT
Precious metals would be a very good reason to go into space. A ton of gold gets you about 38 million dollars, and there are asteroids out there with more gold than ever mined by man.
As for automation, things break down all the time in a mining operation. When some machine that your company depends upon for survival is on the other side of the sun, and has a breakdown, you'll want someone there to monitor it and repair it as necessary.
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Post by Enderminion on Jun 10, 2017 12:53:17 GMT
Precious metals would be a very good reason to go into space. A ton of gold gets you about 38 million dollars, and there are asteroids out there with more gold than ever mined by man. As for automation, things break down all the time in a mining operation. When some machine that your company depends upon for survival is on the other side of the sun, and has a breakdown, you'll want someone there to monitor it and repair it as necessary. mission to psyche 16!!!
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Post by The Astronomer on Jun 10, 2017 12:56:06 GMT
Precious metals would be a very good reason to go into space. A ton of gold gets you about 38 million dollars, and there are asteroids out there with more gold than ever mined by man. As for automation, things break down all the time in a mining operation. When some machine that your company depends upon for survival is on the other side of the sun, and has a breakdown, you'll want someone there to monitor it and repair it as necessary. mission to psyche 16!!! PSYCHE!!!
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Post by randommechanicumguy on Jun 11, 2017 6:58:52 GMT
ah real life spacecraft will always be better than even the coolest fictitious ship ever
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