/sci/ - Science & Math

>implying you're an astronomer

No, it doesnt.

The presence of iron oxide has no implications for oxygen in the atmosphere.

And even if it did, wouldnt that mean all/most of the oxygen present would now be trapped in the iron oxide?

>>1877755
You failed inference. There is potential for oxygen in the atmosphere because we can harvest the oxygen trapped in the soil. OP was asking whether the oxides could be in principle released.

>>1877778
yea you got it (bro fist)

it just seams like a good idea if some one decides to colonize mars and since there is ice on the poles as well what the heck are we missing?

the only problem i see would be getting there and getting supply's back and forth but as far as i can tell artificial soil with native water supply from mars and oxygen from oxides in soil should be good enough for living conditions

>>1877755
What would be some good ways to split the iron and oxygen efficiently on a large scale?

>>1877810
need a chem fag for this =/

>>1877810
heres a start

by turning it into iron sulfate you would release the oxygen from the iron but you would need a large amount of acid

>>1877810
>>1877838
From what I understand of the research from the various planetary engineers, we start with asparagus farms. The beauty of Mars is the rich carbon and nitrogen atmosphere and the iron and nitrogen rich soils. The main problem would be keeping the plant life warm for the duration, but there are ways to deal with that like redirecting solar radiation via satellites or massive green houses.

Plants would help to liberate oxygen from the soil through absorption and respiration.

>>1877718
Why would you want to get oxygen from the iron oxide soil? It would be easier to get it from the atmosphere, which is 95% CO2, or from water.

If you want to inhabit mars, the first step is to set up greenhouses to turn CO2 and H2O into food and oxygen. Ideally, we would design plants which are comfortable with martian gravity and which like a low-pressure, CO2-rich atmosphere.

The biggest problem is that mars doesn't seem to have a lot of phosphorus (it has plenty of H,C,O, and N), so that would need to be shipped from earth.

Once you've taken care of the food supply, you can use plants to produce cellulose for polymers, and charcoal for smelting iron oxide to make steel (although for the last one, sulphur-based reducing agents might turn out to be a better bet).

>>1878846
>the first step is to set up greenhouses to turn CO2 and H2O into food and oxygen
Wrong. Bring 1000 kg hydrogen. Build a Bosch reactor (Heated iron pipe) to make water. You just have to scrape the graphite off occasionally. Use 10800kg CO2, get 8920kg water and 3000kg graphite. The graphite is a problem - so is removing nitrogen from the martian air to avoid syngas.
Alternately, Sabatier reactor, same setup and problems, nickel plated iron pipe, get 2582 kg methane and 2319kg water.

1000kg water gives 900kg oxygen and 112.5kg hydrogen - which can be processed by Bosch or Sabatier reactor again.

NOW you have enough oxygen to survive while you set up the greenhouse, and enough water for temporary radiation shielding while you dig. Yes, dig - your greenhouse won't get enough sunlight anyway, and the dirt is good for radiation shielding.

>>1877810
Thermite this bitch up

>>1878920
Flawless victory, Finish him!

>>1878987
This thread is full of fail, sadly.
>>1877718
Rust is a bitch to reduce. Use CO2.
>>1877755
Right then wrong - Carbon DI oxide, bitch.
>>1877807
Needs moar magnetosphere.
>>1877810
Pic related.
>>1877838
Good fucking luck with that - 6:1 ratio for mass from low earth orbit to the mars surface.
>>1878239
Redirecting solar radiation by satellites - for a colony? How? You'd need an equatorial belt. Also radiation.
>>1878846
I called you out, but you're close at least. And props on the plant chemistry cycles, there's something like 9 or 15 to maintain or they all die. Fortunately, studies have shown that it only (!) takes about 30 metric tons of plant life to support one person's oxygen use indefinitely - about 2x the food supply and 4x the waste processing capability in that volume. But the greenhouse structure would probably have to be built there. We need HG Wells' Handling Machines to create good metal from mere earth.

>>1878920
> Bring 1000 kg hydrogen
Why? Use solar power and water to make hydrogen if you need it.

> NOW you have enough oxygen to survive while you set up the greenhouse,
Use robots to set up the greenhouse before the humans arrive.

The thing is, people have been looking at Bosch/Sabatier for this purpose since forever, but (AFAIK) it has never been put into practice, which suggests that it's not as straightforward as it looks.

Of course, everything would go a lot smoother if someone discovers tabletop fusion. Most problems have easy solutions if you have unlimited energy.

>>1879064
Because you want oxygen when you land, not after you find it and gather it. Robots are the way to go, but automating assembly is a BIIIIIITCH. You needn't bring 1000kg H2, that was more for proportions. Solar power doesn't work well on Mars. Look at Radio-isotope Thermal Generators (RTGs), especially the newer Stirling ones. About 100 kg/kW for the first 90 years.

>The thing is, people have been looking at Bosch/Sabatier for this purpose since forever, but (AFAIK) it has never been put into practice, which suggests that it's not as straightforward as it looks.
The reactors have been built, but they are a righteous pain to get right. That syngas I mentioned is leftover junk at every intermediate stage of each reaction (3+ steps). Separating it all to keep nitrates out of your oxygen is tricky.

Tabletop fusion would be nice, maybe then you could crack the CO2 out by zirconium electrolysis, and pull nitrogen out of the air by refrigeration, etc.

> Robots are the way to go, but automating assembly is a BIIIIIITCH.

It's something that we're really going to need to learn if we're serious about space exploration. To be honest, I think that we'd progress a lot faster in the long term if we scaled back manned spaceflight for a while and put the resources into robotics instead.

> Solar power doesn't work well on Mars

Power density (W/m^2) is crap, but real estate is dirt cheap. What I haven't got a clue about is how robust the panels (or reflectors) would need to be to withstand martian winds and dust.

Regardless of alternative approaches for generating oxygen, we still need greenhouses for food. If you can grow food for the stay on mars and the return journey, that cuts down on the launch mass significantly. I really can't imagine (and/or don't want to imagine) reprocessing "solid waste" into food on board.

> Tabletop fusion would be nice
Of course, the other side to the "fusion" coin is that if we had it, shipping thousands of tons of hardware and supplies to mars wouldn't be a problem either.

> pull nitrogen out of the air by refrigeration
Can't we use rhizobia?

>>1879022
Sun light is always available from some point in space. If you wanted to, you could reflect light from space to a point on the surface of the planet via a orbiting satellite. Think of it like a sophisticated grow light.

even if you get enough oxigen for your mars atmosphere, i wonder where you'll get all the nitrogen from for a breathable atmosphere

>>1880056
or enough gravity and a magnetic field to keep hold of it?