/sci/ - Science & Math

>>8213661
Because colonising shitty planets is cheaper.

It takes considerably less resources and until we can asteroid mine O'Neill cylinders won't happen.
Far too expensive to haul all that stuff into space. We need a Moon base or spacestation factories.
Or a space-elevator.

>>8213801
You can't colonize any other planet in the solar system. All of them have something highly unlivable on them. The longer you try to live on them the more the degrade your body. Having children on them is a death sentence.

>>8213661
We do not have anything near the capacity to transport that many people into space nor launch that enormous amount of mass it takes to build these. Most likely you would need to launch mass from the Moon and then you frist need to build a complete Moon base. Even so it is likely that O'Neill cylinders would be far from the top priority. Making huge amounts of solar power satellites would be closer to the top of the list of priorities.

>>8213801
>>8213902
Launching stuff into space is easy peasy. It is done pretty much every month now.

>>8213921
For small unmanned satellites in low Earth or geostationary orbit, sure. Manned launches have a rather grim statistics.

>>8213933
Spacex will be launching astronauts as soon as next year.

There's been 48 manned flights to the ISS with a total of 100 astronauts aboard mostly STS and Soyuz.

It seems like the stumbling blocks are mostly over now.

>>8213892
Yeh but nobody really cares. Anyone with a brain knows any real colonisation effort is stupid, it's just for the bragging rights.

>>8213921
Doesn't make it cheap and because fuel it won't ever be cheap enough.

>>8215956
>Doesn't make it cheap and because fuel it won't ever be cheap enough.

Colonizing another planet would be more expensive than making an O'Neill cylinder, for a plethora of reasons.

>>8213892
>You can't colonize any other planet in the solar system.
Very much depends if long term living at .1g is sustainable
Even then, you could just build centrifuges live in.

Mars and Venus should be fine for initial mass colonization

From there, jupiter/saturn/uranus systems would have all the resources needed for human colonization.

The issue has always been launch costs from earth
Something SpaceX seeks to solve

>>8216161
>for a plethora of reasons.
State them retard
How is shipping tonnage to an orbital destination, which will ALWAYS be more delta V than going to a planet with atmosphere, cheaper than shipping machinery to mars or venus or europa/callisto/titan

This machinery then allows you access the millions of tons of useful material on the planet.

>>8216244
>State them

You do realize a Mars colony will need more than a few tents, right?

>>8216267
You realize a mars colony will need less tonnage than an o'neil cylinder
Have access to a whole WORLD of resources
And be easier to reach as long as your space station is somewhere outside LEO
???

>>8216272
Honestly, I can't imagine any legitimate colony on Mars, even one that isn't designed to be generational, before asteroid mining is achieved.
Once we can aquire resources in outer space and find a way to manufature stuff then there's literally no good reason no to just colonize in spacestations.

Planetary colonisation is a myth within this century.

>>8213661
If we can build these, we can build rotating slanted rings on Mars.

The question is whether mining is cheaper on Mars or in the asteroid belt.

>>8216318
??
Why do you believe mining on asteroids is easier than mining on mars
When you could have automated trucks, railroads, diggers, etc bringing iron ore to refineries on mars.

Do you not understand what "delta v" means?

The asteroid belt is very hard to get to

Mining on near earth asteroids, which are easier to get to, would be for bringing tonnage back to earth, not to aid any martian colony.

>>8216340
There's nothing standing in the way of automating asteroid mining.

Just like with Mars, once you've gotten the utility there you can leave it alone.
Especially if it's self-sustaining.

The reason I say that asteroid mining is likely to be realised before a 100+ people colony on Mars is because by the time we've gotten around to sending that many people there someone's going to realise it isn't much harder to send bots on solar sails to the asteroid belt and refine the materials on site.
From there you can send them wherever and start building a station.

Sending materials back to Earth is just the first, short-term stepping stone.
Sure re-entry is as hard as attaching a parachute module and to hell with the burnt off material- it's plentiful, afterall but solar panels charging lasers that melt the ore and allow for 3-d printing metal structure within a lattice-framework spacefactory? Now that's just too cool not to be implemented.

Can you imagine over a dozen people in a Mars dome this century?

>>8216409
Except you conveniently dodge the fact that it takes double the delta v to reach the asteroid belt, as compared to mars. Along with a much longer travel time.

That never goes away
For the foreseable future, all outer solar system missions will be exploratory.

Production of things is a little more involved than just "3d printers"

>>8216421
Except I'm not sending people to the asteroid belt. No life support systems. Not care about g-forces that are pitifully low. And most importantly absolutely no concern whether it takes 2 months or 10. Oh and because losing a drone or 10 is nowhere near as bad as losing a person there will be more attempts because lower saftey margins.

We're very good at getting around "a little more involved"

We should do both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnX-D4kkPOQ

If you love America, you throw money in its hole.

>>8216428
Go to an investor, and ask them whether return on investment is "absolutely no concern"
Trips to the asteroid belt will be 3+ years.

Why invest this money in the belt for mining, when there is unused land/ocean here on Earth?
Why send it to belt instead of mars? or the moon?

All of this shit needs to be profitable for it to be done, not a government makework program.

>>8216436
A Mars colony is not and will not be profitable. It cannot be profitable this century. They're gonna have a hard time being self-sufficuent for the first few decades after establishment.

Asteroid mining might take more time but it is 100% more likely to be profitable sooner.

>>8216441
First of all: Yes I expect it will be profitable, or at least it can sustain itself.
Secondly: Musk will finance & do it all himself so that doesn't matter.

Musk has no interest in going to the asteroid belt, unless someone paid him.

>>8216272
>Have access to a whole WORLD of resources

You are forgetting something here. Those resources have to be mined and refined. Then they need to be manufactured into usable things. To do all that you need factories and a massive support system. For Mars, you have to transport factory pieces first. That will take an absurd amount of time and money.

Earth already has all that and more ready to go. The resources are already refined. The factories are already built. The parts can be flown up already created for the end result.

That is why it is cheaper to make an O'Neill Cylinder than to build a colony on Mars.

>>8216448
Even Musk doesn't have that much money. Though he might after SpaceX but he wants to nuke the planet first. Personally I think crashing Phobos into it would work better.

It's far easier to make an automated mining facility that profitably returns resources to Earth on one of Mars' moons in which case a spacestation nearby is simply a better option if you absolutely must have human beings nearby.

>>8216436
>spend a few billion $ to mine make even more billions beyond that
>do it with automation

http://www.asterank.com/

>>8216453
>Sum of material to build O'Neill cylinder >>> Sum of materials to build functional factories on Mars including extraction and refining

Without a spaceelevator it's unfeasible to construct a colony sized spacestation with material fr Earth. If anything, we'll mine our Moon first

>>8216455
>crashing Phobos
And this is why it needs to be illegal for madmen to gain space access, even if they pay for it themselves.

Screwing up the solar system, weaponizing the gravity well, obviously this needs to be illegal.

>he wants to nuke
topkek

>>8216463
>http://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-clarifies-his-plan-to-nuke-mars-1734457751
Close enough

Crashing Phobos will do the same job and add some mass to Mars.
What's the worst that can happen?

>>8216461
Incorrect. It doesn't need to be absurdly massive. A colony doesn't need to be very large to be a colony.

>>8216466
Doesn't change my statement.
Still way more resources

>>8216455
He is well past the point where he any limits on his financing
Now his companies are growing as fast as they can hire/build factories.

He now essentially has a monopoly on electric cars
Soon he'll have a comsat constellation.
I'm sure he'll have plenty of business for his super heavy rocket that'll allow him to do mars launches with the profits.
I think his batteries and solar panel companies are doing well too

All profits from these businesses will be going to the mars colony.

>>8216465
>>8216463
>>8216455
Actually it is already illegal to do something like that. Most countries signed a treaty that prevents such changes to off world bodies.

Besides, even crashing both moons into Mars won't help terraform it very much. You'd need to start a bombarding program that would last 1000s of years and throw so many moons and asteroids at Mars that it would increase the mass, create an atmospehre, restart the core, but at the cost of needing to wait at least 100,000 years for all the debris around it to enter the atmosphere to the point where we could get craft to it.

Oh, and another few 100k years to terraform it to our needs. Only by that time, humans won't exist. What ever we evolve into would have to do it, if humanity lasted that long enough to even evolve that far.

>>8216469
None of that makes a Mars colony any more profitable.

He's doing it becausw he wants to forcefully shove the human race into space and he chose a mars colony as his flagship because that inspires the most emotion on people and subsequent support, not because it's the best idea.

>>8216467
It isn't. You want a colony on Mars. You want them to breed and expand. They can't unless they literally build massive spinning rings on Mars to combat the lack of Earth-like gravity. You also have to combat the environment trying to wear at the things you've built.

That takes even more resources and time.

>>8216470
If we last that long we're almost cetainly going to be a digital hivemind species on our way to constructing a dyson-sphere type structure because efficiency.

Terraforming is a meme

>>8216472
Mars is going to be a self-contained colony
If all it takes is 10 billion dollars a year worth of imports, plus people donating assets to make one way trips there, it can very well be a profitable organization.

Most of mars development will be done by people on mars, getting paid in martian currency, engaging in the martian economy.
In the early days, likely they will be professional astronauts from various countries who will go back after 5-10 years.

>>8216475
Agreed. There's no need for it. It is more efficient to contain your environment as small as possible.

>>8216477
Humans can't live out their lives on Mars. There's not enough gravity.

>>8216474
>You want a colony on Mars
No I don't. It's a token gesture at best.
A shout of "look we did it!" Like the moon landing.

But an automated factory on Mars is a better option than shipping the resources from Earth and if you're doing that just put the same thing on Phobos or Deimos instead for smaller gravity well.

>>8216477
You seem to be under the delusion that a function society is by default profitable.
Da hell are they exporting that can't be better achieved by sending drones to phobos?
Everythibg is done by machines anyway and the gravity problem has to be tackled eother way.

>>8216480
>Humans can't live out their lives on Mars. There's not enough gravity
Cite your source showing that living at 40% of a G will result in fatal complications.
Cite your source that it would be impossible to build some sort of slanted circular track which would provide 1 g, IF it were needed.

>>8216485
You seem to be under the delusion that a mars colony wouldn't be essentially self-sufficient within 20-30 years

Any advances in automation on earth can also be applied to a mars colony.

>>8216481
If mining is all you want to do, mine the moon first then some of the near Earth asteroids.

Also, a token gesture being a colony on Mars is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot to get a medal.

>>8216486
It is called bone density loss. It is 38%, not 40%. It is a hell of a lot better than 0g/microgravity, but anything less than 1.0g will bring bone density down correlatively. Macrogravity will be the number one health concern for longevity on Mars.

>let's build an O'Neill Cylinder on Mars to combat gravity.

That's essentially what you want to do. Only you have to keep it spinning, at cost. In space at least you don't have to lose reaction mass to keep it spinning.

>>8216489
At the very best, it will be a "base" with rotating staff, just like the ISS, not a "colony".

>>8216489
>a functional society is profitable

You must lack reading comprehension. It's the only explanation.

If there are two options that produce the same goods and require the same effort to set up but one is easier to get the goods from which braindead single-minded fool is going to keep banging his head on the harder one before someone else decides to set up their own operation on the spacerock that has a lower gravity and undercut him?
It's not even unfeasible to build a spaceelevator on Deimos woth today's technology, unlike Mars.

>>8216494
>mine the moon first
Probable location for first off-world factory imo
>near Earth asteroids
Would it be easier to just throw them into the Moon first?
Or attach giant parachutes and send them down to Earth?

>>8216486
>Cite your source

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast02aug_1/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body#Bone_and_muscle_deterioration
http://www.mars-one.com/faq/health-and-ethics/how-will-the-mars-mission-physically-affect-the-astronauts

Now, imagine it being 38% healthier for you than living on the ISS. Still pretty shitty.

>>8216501
The Delta-V required to move something that massive just isn't in the books. It is easier to toss some mining robots at them and wait for the ore exact ores you want to return.

>>8216502
>bone density
>muscle deterioration
Wouldn't that only matter if you plan to come back to Earth.
Assuming you spend the rest of your life at .38g why would weaker bones / muscles matter except for impact injury?

>>8216506
Children being born on Mars in macrogravity won't develop properly. They won't even be normal looking. I'm talking having bones so brittle that hugging a child could break them.

>>8216494
Why would you need "reaction mass" to get something moving on mars

A colony needs to have resources it can extract & utilize.
Look at the sort of architecture Musk has chosen for his mars mission, direct to mars no fucking around in orbit beyond LEO, this is what makes economic & physical sense. Not large space stations.

>but anything less than 1.0g will bring bone density down correlatively
Has there been any science or study showing this? No
Obviously Musk does not think its an unsolvable problem, or he would be talking about a Venus colony.

>At the very best, it will be a "base" with rotating staff, just like the ISS, not a "colony".
No it will be a colony of 10's of thousands of people.

You talk about autonomous asteroid mining, but thats just hand waving assuming some sort of magic tech development that noone has done and noone is working on.
Musk talks about a man on mars for 2025

>>8216502
All of our experience is in microgravity
Where does 38% fall on the scale between microgravity and 1 g? Impossible to say until we do it. This is something that SHOULD have been tested by NASA a long time ago but whatever.

>>8216505
Some of these near earth asteroids can be moved to earth orbit with very little delta v, actually.
Throw a big ion engine grid out to one of em, and pilot them back to earth orbit.

>>8216510
>hugging a child will break them
If an Earth born person does it sure. If the muscle loss is relative it would make them able to hug each other fine, no?
I'd say something about evolution adapting to the circumstances but by the time that could happen we'd probably be good enough at genetic manipulation to do it ourselves.

There is another consideration about lowered gravity on Mars. Eyesight. On the ISS, astronauts eyes deform. The backs of them flatten and vision starts to get blurry. This happens in as little as 6 months for most astronauts. It doesn't correct itself when they return to Earth.

A mission to Mars is estimated to be 7 months one-way.

>>8216510
>implying Mars colonists will hug their children
They will be brainwashed and instructed to become maximally efficient Musk worshippers and equipment producers.

>>8216524
Transit will be 100-120 days

Spinning/rotating for artificial gravity is very possible/doable.

>>8216521
It doesn't work that way. Brittle bones means...brittle. If they fall they break. It doesn't work like how you think it works. It isn't like comparing human bones to say mouse bones. It is like comparing human bones to chalk.

>>8216528
What about on Mars though? Less gravity is going to have a profound effect.

>>8216520
>'A colony of 10s of thousands'
>sending that many people to Mars
>totally okay
>'Asteroid mining requires magical tech'
>completely rational statement

Are you sure you're not retarded?

>>8216520
Jesus, dude. gb2>>>/x/

>>8216531
Doing completely new things that noone else has done before costs money
How many billions will your autonomous mining tech cost? How much will it produce? What sort of return on investment will you get? How does it bring large tonnage back?

Of course you also ignore that its easier to get to mars than the moon or any other asteroid, by handwaving about some solar electric drives which also don't exist & have never been done.

>>8216524
VIIP is from pressure buildup. The lack of gravity does that. Some form of VIIP will most likely occur in 0.38g.

You know those old sci-fi movies about little green men from Mars? That will probably be us if we try to live there. lol

>>8216538
If getting useful product from the moon or Asteroids is hard then getting it back from Mars is inconceivable. Literally those are the scales you're on.

FYI stuff from asteroids can be send back by small drones and from the moon by railgun.

>>8216545
You do mining on mars for the needs of martians, not to ship it back to earth..
There is no scarcity in materials on earth

>FYI stuff from asteroids can be send back by small drones and from the moon by railgun.
More hand waving about stuff that doesn't exist & hasn't been done before

>>8216548
>for the need of martians
So where is the profitablility?

Railguns exist.
Proof of concept for asteroid mining drones also exist.

>>8216550
>So where is the profitablility?

Possibly in rare metals, possibly in diamonds or gems or something else worth bringing back.
Mars colony is not being done for business purposes, the only "profit" it needs to make is enough to pay for the imports it needs to survive.
We live in an era where youtubers make make millions annually, how much will the "Life on Mars" TV show make?

The Mars Colonial Transport will bring back some low amount of tonnage from mars every trip.

Companies like Amazon make no profit, but they continue to exist. Musk is not doing mars because he expects to become rich from it.

>>8216556
>>8216556
>mining on mars isn't to send resources back to earth
>earth doesn't have a resource shortage
>profit will come from sending resources to earth

Well done. You've come full circle.

A "Life on Mars" realoty show will lose viewers faster than the new Top Gear. No variation, see.

It's much cheaper to send back stuff from the moon than mars.
There's no chance of Mars->Earth shipping
Mars has nothing of such great value that can't be found elsewhere and much easier.

Musk wants space. People connect with the idea of Mars colony best. That's why Musk chose Mars. His colony idea will die with Mars One and everyone will move on.
He knows this and the hope is that Space will be seen as normal enough that other, less exciting, projects can be done without a societal "what a waste of money!" While investors realise the capabilities are there. All investors already know the potential exists in space.

>>8216567
>There's no chance of Mars->Earth shipping
Every MCT will be coming back from mars immediately, thats his architecture.
It will be designed to carry some amount of tonnage like 25 tons, single stage from mars to earth.

I don't think you quite understand that the mars colony will exist for its own sake.
The production of resources on mars does not need to compete with the production on earth.

Assuming Musk or governments don't directly fund the Mars colony(which you can bet they will), Mars will engage in trade with Earth to purchase the stuff they can't make themselves.

Kinda like how every country exists on earth.

>>8216572
Even if you're right.
Even if it works out that way.
Even if by some miracle the Mars colony becomes self-sustaining.

It's still going to take more time for it to have '10s of thousands' than it will to set up mining operation in the moon.
It'll take less time (and money) to make drones that mine asteroids and send back the same material as your Mars colony in larger quantities faster.

It'll possibly even take less time to start construction of an actually habitable spacestation (probably for touristic purposes) than create a real colony on Mars and not just a robot base with token humans.

In your best case scenario you almost certainly still end up losing the 'who made it first to full-scale' race.

>>8216582
>It's still going to take more time for it to have '10s of thousands' than it will to set up mining operation in the moon.
Considering it takes less delta v to get to Mars, than to get to the moon.
I don't see how this is accurate.
What lunar mining will be profitable in comparison to Earth mining?

The Mars colony will exist for its own sake, and the things it sends back will be for its own profit, which it will then use to buy goods for Earth.

Musk is building a reusable super heavy for mars colonization, not for mars or asteroid mining.
Who is going to pay him to do that?

>>8216597
>Less delta v to get to Mars tha. Moon
>http://www.asi.org/adb/j/02/less-fuel-to-mars.html
Aaand I'm done
Keep living the dream buddy

>>8213661
Because you can't mine vacuum.

The moon is the best first colony because its close (3 day Holman Transfer) and lunar regolith is 5% water ice by weight.

Mine the regolith for minerals and water. Suddenly you don't have to supply the colony with air or water.

With a space station you must always send supplies.

>>8216340
delta v -wise the asteroid belt is closer than Mars, because you have to enter/escape Mars's gravity well.

>>8216603
Your page ignores the fact that they will be generating the fuel on mars

>We can't assume aerobraking to the surface of Mars
Also ignores the fact that the whole fucking reason Mars is easier is because of aerobraking
Whcih then also ignores that you can do quite a faster trip if you just accept more aerobraking.

>We designed our Lunar Transfer Vehicle to fly from Earth orbit to lunar orbit and back again.
>We're not landing
And they also ignored the whole reason why the moon is harder, since you can't aerobrake to land on the moon.

These sorts of retarded mission architectures is why space exploration has gone nowhere for decades.

>>8216609
Except you can aerobrake at mars
You can't do that at an asteroid
This adds a LOT of needed delta v

You are refueling at mars, so the needed delta-v to return to earth is essentially free.
Can you refuel at asteroids? Not any time soon, maybe for some sort of electric drive, but then we are talking about really long mission durations.

>>8216567
Mars One isn't part of SpaceX or Musk's plan.

>The Falcon Heavy from SpaceX was the notional launcher in the early Mars One conceptual plan,[74] which included the notional use of SpaceX hardware for the lander and crew habitat, but, as of May 2013, SpaceX had not yet been contracted to supply mission hardware, and SpaceX has stated that it did "not currently have a relationship with Mars One."[75] By March 2014, SpaceX indicated that they had been contacted by Mars One, and were in discussions, but that accommodating Mars One requirements would require some additional work and that such work was not a part of the current focus of SpaceX.[76]

>>8216614
>generating the fuel on mars
>aerobraking
>refueling at mars
>delta-v is free

...

>Can you refuel at asteroids? Not any time soon

>>8216640
CO2 atmosphere
Huge amounts of water
= easy creation of methane fuel & liquid oxygen on mars

Can you do that on the moon? At asteroids? Be quite a bit more difficult/tricky

Your link ignored the whole reason why Mars is preferable to make a claim that the moon is better.

>>8216670
>Your link

I didn't post a link, kid.

You're fantasy land magical fuel making is going to be worth shit in actual application. It will take years to manufacturer that much fuel.

>>8216705
>hurr you can't do it because I am ideologically committed to my special snowflake strategies

>>8216725
>>>/x/ is where you belong.

>>8213661
>Why aren't people working on these instead of trying to get to and colonize shitty unlivable planets?


Because those planets are rich in resources and will teach us more about long term off world sustainability then some shitty O'neill Cylinder which requires a SHITTON of resources that on earth are stupidly expensive. Not to mention we have a hard enough time running one ISS, imagine a neill cylinder.


Shit should happen in this order
1. Colonies mars with small groups of scientists/miners
2. Understand limitations of living off world
3. Correct limitations or come up with solutions
4. Mine the fuck out of rare metals
5. Begin building long term and long distance space stations

>>8216640
With 40% of the gravity escaping mars is much easier than escaping earth. Not to mention mars can burn up micro meteors, where on an asteroid it's anyone's guess why you bang into something else.

>>8216470
>Most countries signed a treaty that prevents such changes to off world bodies.
>thinking the space or moon treaty will mean jack shit when countries actually start getting serious about colonization

It was a measure to prevent further escalation of the space race; nothing more, nothing less.
The USSR doesn't exist anymore.

>>8217060
>we have a hard enough time running one ISS

We aren't having a hard time doing that.

>>8217076
Mars is 38% 0.38g. You can't live on Mars forever because of that.

>>8217141
The treaty is still in effect regardless of the USSR being the Russian Federation now. I mean 104 countries signed it after all.

>>8216556
Profit will always be from Mars to Earth selling/buying. The biggest problem here is that there's nothing Mars can sell Earth that would actually be profitable. Mars is like that old house you sink money into to try to fix up. Only in this respect, you eventually die.

Is there any space company or government program that is even designing or studying O'Neill cylinders or like structures?

I just realized that O'Neill cylinders bypass most of the crap in the Outer Space Treaty, just so long as it doesn't have any WMDs or fiddles with other parties' space travel or equipment.

But they are governed by the state that oversees their approval.

>>8213661
Yes lets take some metal and then build it into giant cylinders, and aftewards work on ways to produce enough oxygen so everyone doesnt die thats brilliant OP.

>>8220994

>musk's scheme is a wacky sci-fi fantasy in the first place
>therefore we don't have to account for shipping costs
>therefore diamond mines on mars will be profitable

Profit from space shit has always been from inventions and sending up telecom shit.

>>8221029
You laugh now
Then in 10 years from now he brings back the first shipment of Mars Diamonds
Will almost cover the price of his divorce from amber heard.

>>8221134
So you're saying the diamond prices will drop to nothing when that happens.

>>8221997
oh no, muh economy, how can companies hording and slowly releasing diamonds keep control of the market if it's flooded

(faggots)

>>8222000
There's already more diamonds on Earth in possession than what people could ever want or use. The cartels just make sure they don't get released.

>>8222024
And it's for absolutely no reason other than greed, I can't wait till retribution arrives desu.

>>8222028
>I can't wait till retribution arrives

>>8216244
>europa/callisto/titan
What's wrong with Ganymede faggot

#AllMoonsMatter

>>8216227
>Venus
If you can withstand the heat, you mean

>>8222984
>Ganymede receives about 8 rem of radiation per day
Could be doable, but no point going there first

>>8223004
Look into some proposals for colonizing Venus, bud. The upper portions of the atmosphere are survivable to humans both in terms of temperature and pressure.

Though constructing enough aerial habitats to support "mass" colonization would be ridiculously labor-intensive.

>>8223025
>Though constructing enough aerial habitats to support "mass" colonization would be ridiculously labor-intensive.

I think that to begin with, you'd live in habitats sent over, but we're getting good at working with carbon so you can just keep expanding the habitat with carbon fibers/composites

>>8223032
>>8223025
>>8223004
I think the problem won't be heat or pressure. It will be hurricane force winds. 210-370 km/h winds at 45km to 65km above the surface are no joke. The lower you go the slower the speeds, but where is the elevation where the pressure allows you to "float" around so to speak?

Category 5 hurricane winds start at 251 km/h. Peak winds for C5 hurricane "Allen" was 305km/h and caused $1 billion USD in damages in 1980.

Do we really think a floating habitat, let alone a colony, will be able to "float: in the right zone and still work against those types of winds?

Why isn't there any experiments in using centrifugal force for artificial gravity? It's one of the larger hurdles of space based living and even somewhat increasing the amount of gravity within a space station would be great for the astronauts. I'm probably ignoring a lot of factors

>>8223174
I'm googling and finding this,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus-X#ISS_centrifuge_demonstration

>The Nautilus-X design concept did not advance beyond the initial drawings and proposal.

That seems to be the most recent thing NASA has done. Also,

>NASA has never attempted to build a rotating wheel space station, for several reasons. First, such a station would be very difficult to construct, given the limited lifting capability available to the United States and other spacefaring nations. Assembling such a station and pressurizing it would present formidable obstacles, which, although not beyond NASA's technical capability, would be beyond available budgets. Second, NASA considers the present space station, the ISS, to be valuable as a zero gravity laboratory, and its current microgravity environment was a conscious choice.[3]

>>8223163
Planes manage to survive thousands of hours flying around at hurricane force winds
As long as the surface is properly designed for it, then those hurricane force winds is literally unlimited wind power + lift for your habitat.

Otherwise you would just be floating along with the wind, so the net wind force is 0mph for you.

>>8223185
That's a shame

>>8223187
I was thinking more about turbulence problems. Movement = stress and those winds represent lots of potential movement constantly. The speed increases/decreases by about 0.008km/h for every meter you go up and down, but there may be areas where there are sheer forces at work.

>>8223190
Since it seems to be a funding issue, there's some hope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Authorization_Act_of_2010

Does anyone else find the idea of terraforming Mars, creating varied ecosystems and eventually dropping off humans somehow reduced to a state of paleolithic culture much more interesting than simply wanting to colonize it?

It would be like a form of insurance

>>8223205
It's fascinating.

Sadly:
>No spinning core
>= no magnetic field
>= solar winds + radiation
>+low gravity = no way to maintain atmosphere indefinitely (although the effect is relatively low)
>Legitimate terraforming would talk thousands (1000s) of years before workable, stable biosphere was established
>low gravity
>= very bad for human bones (any children born there would not develop properly at all)

Theoretically by the time Mars is made liveable we would probably have the technology to genetically engineer a version of humans that could live just fine on Mars, assuming we're not all dead by then.

It's considerably easier, cheaper, quicker and possibly even safer to just build giant O'Niell cylinders.

>>8223218
Also theoretically, if you had enough power you could generate your own artificial electromagnetic shield against solar winds.

Nothing can be done about the gravity though shy of making Mars heavier.

>>8223205
Yeah, it is really a nice idea. Read the Red Mars series of books about that very thing.

It is too bad no feasible terraforming could be done within the span of time humanity will exist. That's nearly half a million years worth of planetary bombardment via asteroids/comets to restart the core and add mass. Just starting the process may make the solar system unsafe to navigate for any missions until around 10k-20k years after the last bombardment.

>>8223205
Maybe we already did that. Maybe we once lived on Mars and as it became a red desert we dropped people off onto Earth.

>>8223263
>Read the Red Mars series of books about that very thing.

Well, I missed the word paleolithic, so...

>>8223218
Venus is the best bet in my opinion.

>Plenty of easily accessible energy (wind + solar + thermal)
>Air is buoyant in its atmosphere, less dense mixtures are also feasible, weight lifted scales very well. Will be ideal temp + pressure + gravity at 50 km
>radiation shielding
>can scrape resources off the surface for processing
>surface asphalt can be used for nutrients for plants, asphalt is used on earth as fertilizer.

At 50 km SO2 levels are at about 350 ppm, there is some sulfuric acid cloud haze but its a minor difficulty.

Mars and surrounding space in my opinion is a more strategic point to start with however. It opens up a brand new economy, being able to obtain resources in space and have the necessary infrastructure for advanced processing on low g moons before giving it a well calculated nudge across the solar system to be used elsewhere.

Both Venus and mars will have small long term colonies on them by 2100, Venus will have cities on it by 2200, mars not.

>>8223267
Each time I see this picture, there's yet another ridiculous addition to it

>>8223982
Humanity is rediculous.

>>8224234
that is actually pretty kuhrayzee
>tfw you want to believe

>>8224234
So every god was the same group of aliens fucking with humanity.

>>8224246
More like the tiny amount of original humans had one set of myths and legends and when they spread out over the globe they took these ancient myths and legends with them but they morphed and changed over time.

>>8224262
Anon you cant explain Ecuador having the same being though since its isolated from the Old World.

>>8224272

>>8224272
When humans started out in one place in Africa, yeah you can.

bump

Bump

>>8224234
The Ecuador "find" is a 1960s hoax.

And the claim was that Sumerians had visited and colonized Central America, not that there were somehow highly-specific common elements of Sumerian and indigenous Ecuadoran religion, without Sumerian ocean-crossing. The artifacts were (superficially) highly consistent with Sumerian style.

>>8213661
Because cosmic radiation is absolute shit, and unlike planets, you can't just digger deeper and bury yourself in more mass to compensate. Unless you want to pay for that mass, one way or another.

>>8213801
>until we can asteroid mine O'Neill cylinders won't happen.
>We need a Moon base
Lunar mining should be enough. It's way, way easier to send stuff from the moon to orbital space (to lunar orbit, to a deep-space departure mustering site like a lagrange point, direct to an asteroid, or aerobraked and circularized to LEO) than from Earth.

What you need is a catapult of some kind, like a gas gun or electric train. Rather than the outlandish 9-10 km/s speeds that have to be achieved by an Earth rocket, which is a mass-sensitive device which then has to undergo some dramatic recovery operation to be reused, speeds ranging 2-3 km/s (equivalent of mach 6-9 speeds in Earth atmosphere) are all that is needed for launch to LLO, LEO, a lagrange point, or Earth escape, and a catapult is stationary and mass-insensitive, so it can be built ruggedly and simply reloaded and fired again. Conveniently, the moon is also tide-locked with the Earth, so a stationary catapult pointed in a fixed direction will have the same aim in relation to destination in Earth-Moon space (though not for direct departures).

If a highly reusable rocket is like an airliner to LEO, then a moon catapult is like a freight train to LEO.

Even undifferentiated regolith would be a highly useful resource in LEO. It could be processed into oxygen, aluminum, iron, glass, and ceramics, providing structural material, radiation shielding, propellant, material for electric and mechanical systems, etc. However, the moon also possesses rich resources in polar volatiles and more concentrated mineral resources, even just on the surface. I suspect deep drilling and strip-mining will reveal much more.

The moon is the natural place to get the raw materials for space industry, and setting up a catapult system there should be our second highest priority, after building highly reusable rockets.

>>8227716
I don't see much point for doing orbital stuff, neither does Musk
Automated mining depots supplying LOX to LEO might be ok tho
And possible other resources, though its hard to imagine what you would use raw materials for in LEO

>>8227557
That problem was already solved in the 1960s.

>>8227716
The moon regolith has a shit ton of iron right? Logistically, how much material would Earth have to send up on a routine basis to extract needed materials to smelt then manufacture this stuff into something usable?

>>8227729
>its hard to imagine what you would use raw materials for in LEO
I think you meant to say, "I have no imagination whatsoever."

>>8227739
You don't need to send consumables up to smelt iron. You just need tools and the energy from sunlight (note that it's far easier to concentrate sunlight in space, where you can set up an aluminum foil mirror and there will be no wind, gravity, rain, or oxidation).

For instance, you can make aluminum by electrolysis, then make iron by a thermite reaction. That's more of an existence proof than a practical suggestion. Efficient methods would have to be worked out by engineers, and based on actual experience.

>>8216614
wow, all you knowledge about spacefaring comes from playing KSP

>>8223025
>>>/x/

>>8227801
The process of smelting isn't just melting stuff. The chemicals involved are the consumables like coke and various types of fluxes (Limestone, silica, dolomite, lime, borax, and fluorite. The reducing agent is normally carbon monoxide, formed by reaction of carbon in the coke with oxygen in the air of normal blast furnaces.

>>8216614
>Your page ignores the fact that they will be generating the fuel on mars
No it doesn't. It's just not relevant.

They're just talking about the trip to Mars, not a return trip.

Most of the argument is the habitat for the trip. To keep guys alive on the way to the moon, you need a can of air, a cooler full of drinks and sandwiches, and an overnight bag with fresh socks, toothpaste, and ziplock baggies to poop in. It just takes long weekend to get there.

Mars is half a year or longer. You need to throw a fucking space house.

The Apollo lunar descent stage was about double the mass of the stuff on top of it. The whole lunar module was about 15 tons, including the ascent stage that could return the astronauts to low lunar orbit.

Dragon V2, a plausible Mars lander, is at least triple, and probably six times, the mass of the stuff you can put in it. They're talking about throwing 13 tons at Mars with Falcon Heavy to land one or two tons of payload on the Martian surface. Aerobraking's a non-trivial challenge, especially when you want a precision landing.

In practice, there isn't going to be any significant mass advantage for a Mars lander alone over a moon lander alone, while the necessary transit habitat is going to be at least an order of magnitude more massive for a manned Mars mission.

Send ten guys to Mars, or send a hundred to the moon.

>>8227907
>>For instance, you can make aluminum by electrolysis, then make iron by a thermite reaction.
>The process of smelting isn't just melting stuff.
You should look up what a thermite reaction is.

>The chemicals involved are the consumables like coke and various types of fluxes
There are many ways to smelt iron. The way we do it on Earth is based on what's convenient, and therefore cost-competitive, on Earth.

Recreating that process exactly in space would make little sense.

>66666666

>>8227910
6 months to get there.
18-20 months on Mars waiting for the next launch window for returning.
6 months return trip.

Just over 2.6 years total.

>>>66666666

>>8227918
Where are you getting the consumable materials to make the aluminum? How are you going to get the iron(III) oxide or iron(II,III) oxide? Iron on the moon is mainly iron and iron(II) oxide. Even FeO may not burn in a thermite reaction at all.

>>8227921
We're not talking about return trips. We're just talking about the one-way trip.

For one thing, in any serious base-building effort, there will be a bunch of cargo launches. Nobody's bringing that stuff home. For another, when you land people on another planet, you want them to stay a while, or you're just doing a PR stunt or tech test. It's not desirable to minimize the stay length.

Anyway, once you're there, you can make all sorts of arguments about living off the land.

The basic claim was that getting to the Mars surface is cheaper and easier than landing on the moon surface, thanks to aerobraking, but it's really not. Not if you want precision landing, as you would need to assemble a base.

For more data points on that (in case the guy pushing the "Mars is easier" line is still not convinced), there's the Curiosity rover: launch mass was ~4 tons, landed mass ~1 ton, and Spirit: launch mass ~1 ton, landed mass 185 kg. Mars landers have consistently had poorer mass ratios than the Apollo lunar descent stage.

>>8227930
No chemical transformation inherently relies on consumables. It's always possible to recycle everything that wasn't present in the feedstock you want to transform. We just use consumables when it's easier and cheaper.

>>8227967
Good luck with that in usable quantities.

I posted these:
>>8227910
>>8227957
...and I should admit I made a mistake in my reasoning, which makes my claims a little unfair.

The Apollo lunar descent stage didn't take the lunar module all the way from the moon approach trajectory to the moon surface. It was first circularized into low lunar orbit by the CSM, a ~1.4 km/s maneuver which (using pressure-fed hypergolic storables) requires a propellant mass fraction of about a third (optimized hydrogen/oxygen rockets would require about a propellant mass fraction of a quarter, or around 45% for the full maneuver from transfer trajectory to the moon surface).

This makes the mass ratios much more similar to that of the Mars landers.

>>8227983
The analysis actually looks pretty promising for making oxygen and mixed metals from lunar regolith by electrolysis.

Once you have the metals, you can separate them by a variety of chemical processes.

It takes more energy, but there's lots of energy to be had in space.

>>8227910
>Mars is half a year or longer.
Musk is talking like 100-120 days
Fast trips so he can come back in the same synod with his MCT

>Dragon V2, a plausible Mars lander
It's not really a "Mars lander", its an universal lander made to work on basically any body in the solar system.
It's about cost optimization, not whatever arbitrary categories others have used.

>while the necessary transit habitat is going to be at least an order of magnitude more massive for a manned Mars mission.
Of couse it will need to be big, Musk isn't doing a flags and footprints mission, he's doing a colony, which will involve thousands of tons of cargo shipped to mars.
And since we're talking about a Colony, mars is where you want one(though I would prefer venus)

>>8228002
>by electrolysis

What are you using to do that with?

>>8228003
>>Dragon V2, a plausible Mars lander
>It's not really a "Mars lander", its an universal lander made to work on basically any body in the solar system.
That's puffery. It's a LEO capsule which, by virtue of the similarity of the task and some serendipity in the ways its overbuilt for reusability's sake, is capable of landing on Mars unmodified (although not with the safety backups it has for an Earth landing). It would require major modifications to land on the moon, to such a degree that if you claim Dragon V2 could do it, you've got to say any capsule could do it.

But my point stands: aerobraking and landing on a planet with such a thin atmosphere and relatively significant gravity is pretty hard, so you're not going to save a lot of mass over just carrying enough propellant to land on the moon.

>since we're talking about a Colony, mars is where you want one
Were we talking about a "Colony"? I don't see why we'd prefer to develop Mars first, when the moon is much easier to get to (in scheduling and travel time if nothing else) and far more useful for developing orbital industry and as a stepping-off point to deep space.

>>8228008
Don't expect answers to stupid, vague questions.

>>8227739
>> how much material would Earth have to send up on a routine basis to extract needed materials to smelt then manufacture this stuff into something usable?
Once you have enough of an industrial base, nothing at all.

You can make everything needed to mine stuff from stuff already up there. That was the conclusion of NASA's 'Advanced Automation for Space Missions' study at least.

>>8228048
>Utilizing Falcon Heavy, Mr. Musk stated that Dragon will be capable of transporting two to four tons of payload to the surface of the Red Planet, with varying options for other destinations.
>“Dragon, with the heat shield, parachutes and propulsive landing capability, is able to land on a planet that has higher entry heating, like Mars. It can also land on the Moon, or potentially conduct a Europa mission.”

Comparing payload fractions vs earth departure size of 2 vastly different vehicles is pointless
and if it could do 4 tons or more to Mars, then your calculations would be quite incorrect.

>>8228056
I want to play Old World Blues.

>>8228048
>Don't expect answers to stupid, vague questions.

Stupid questions like, "where are you going to get all the solution chemicals needed for electrolysis?"

>>8227801
>>8227918
Seems you don't know shit about chemistry.

>>8228077
>if it could do 4 tons or more to Mars, then your calculations would be quite incorrect.
>4 tons or more
>quote gives 4 tons as the top of a speculative range
If the cargo capacity was 4 tons out of a 13.6 ton Falcon Heavy capacity, that would still make the lander close to two and a half times the mass of what it's landing. Not a lot better than my "at least triple".

You should consider as well that on the moon, the problem of lifting off is very similar to the problem of landing. This means that, as soon as there's propellant production on the moon (even partial production, oxygen only), it's quite simple to have a reusable surface shuttle. Even a low-Isp system (200s) using something like gelled oxygen/metal fuel, or a nuclear-thermal oxygen rocket, would only need a quite-workable propellant mass fraction of about 75% for the round trip to low lunar orbit and back to the surface. If water is mined from polar regions, the propellant mass fraction with hydrogen fuel is comfortably similar to the fuel mass fraction of an intercontinental airliner, and not much worse for hydrocarbon fuel (carbon compounds are available in the same sources of volatiles).

An Earth-Moon reusable shuttle system could be fully cycled every week, unlike a Mars shuttle system, which would take years per cycle, drastically reducing the benefits of reusability, and special-order spare parts from Earth could be delivered as needed to keep it in working order.

>>8228124
First of all, that's not what you asked. Secondly, this is still a stupid, vague question.

You don't get to hand out assignments. If you think there's a problem, explain what you're imagining in detail so we can laugh at your ignorance.

>>8228125
Feel free to go on being garbage, but please do it somewhere else.

>>8228157
Still better than the moon, which is was the whole point, that the moon is not easy just because its close

>>8213661
>Why aren't people working on these instead of trying to get to and colonize shitty unlivable planets?

Because if you can't colonize a planet like mars then you have 0 chance of making a Cylinder

>>8228193
>Still better than the moon
You mean, "The highest claimed speculative numbers for the latest high-tech Mars lander, which isn't complete in any form and won't be tested in that role for at least three more years are still a little better than a demonstrated example of a first-try moon lander using 1960s technology developed on a rush schedule."?

Even during the Apollo mission, it was known that far better lunar lander performance was possible. Did you know that the high-Isp lox/h2 RL10 engine, still in use in its modern form on the upper stages of the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, and demonstrated in VTVL applications with the Delta Clipper project, was originally developed in the 1950s for the Lunex lunar lander?

It was designed for a direct landing, direct return mission, leaving nothing behind on the moon. With an Isp of 450, it would have needed only a propellant mass fraction of about 72% to go from TLI, the moon surface, back to the Earth surface.

The Centaur upper stage built around it has a mass only about 12% that of its propellant. A one-way lunar lander based on the RL10 and Centaur could easily have a lander mass under 1.5 the mass of its payload, handling all the deceleration from TLI. Note as well that a translunar insertion is a significantly lower delta-V (nearly a km/s) launch than a minimum-energy trans-Mars insertion (allowing roughly an additional quarter to a third LEO-departure mass), and a *considerably* lower delta-V launch than a fast Mars transfer.

>>8228300
SpaceX expects to get similar performance using methane, as anyone else gets from LH2 due to much lower dry mass fraction.

6 km/s from low earth orbit to lunar surface
vs
4.5 km/s burn in low earth orbit for fast martian transfer, followed by aerobraking, and 500-1 km/s propulsive landing

Possibly we'll see some sort of magic reduce the delta v needs for propulsive landing on mars.

Once you are there, it is definately easier to plan for ISRU on mars than the moon, as it'll have an atmosphere to get your carbon from, and frozen water to get your hydrogen from, both giving you excess oxygen.

>>8228362
>it is definately easier to plan for ISRU on mars than the moon
>it'll have an atmosphere to get your carbon from
I don't think you appreciate how near to vacuum the Martian atmosphere is. Compressing it will take big pumps and lots of energy.

>and frozen water to get your hydrogen from
That's on the moon, too, great big dusty lakes of it in polar craters. And it comes with carbon and nitrogen in various forms. Not all CO2. There's carbon monoxide and ammonia and elemental carbon and hydrocarbons. All of which means less energy is required to produce fuel (rocket propellant should be a lean mixture, not stoichiometric). In fact, the FeO common in lunar regolith is oxygen hungry enough to pull oxygen out of water, releasing hydrogen.

You don't need nearly as much propellant on the moon. Launch to low lunar orbit only takes 1.4 km/s (another 1.4 km/s to return to Earth, although there's little reason for the return vehicle to be the same as the lander/ascent vehicle, but it might be bringing propellant up to fuel return trips). There's no heat shield to carry up, either: landing and taking off are essentially the same, purely propulsive operation.

Launch to low Mars orbit takes 4.1 km/s, and another 2.5 km/s if you're returning to Earth, and if you're reusing what you landed with, you've got to take all of your heat shield mass with you. On top of that, the higher Mars gravity means you need twice as much thrust in relation to the take-off mass.

The job that takes one ton of ISRU propellant on the moon will take ten on Mars. When you factor in the availability of spare part resupplies from Earth and a short design-launch-test cycle for improving based on experience, it seems extremely unlikely that ISRU for rocket propellant to return to Earth will be easier on Mars than the moon.

>>8228400
>In fact, the FeO common in lunar regolith is oxygen hungry enough to pull oxygen out of water, releasing hydrogen.
I should clarify that this process only takes place at elevated temperatures (around 600 celsius). The FeO2 can be restored to FeO, with release of oxygen by heating to a higher, but still reasonably achievable, temperature (can be as low as 1200+ C, depending on the presence of other metal oxides which can serve as catalysts).

FeO is also present on Mars, though in lower concentrations. Martian soil also features significant nitrate and perchlorate content, which can be thermally decomposed to oxygen, or nitric oxide which can easily be converted by combination with oxygen to NTO. I believe CO2 (which often freezes on Mars) is better gathered from the soil than from the air, and I would be surprised if there are no useful deposits of hydrocarbons on Mars.

>>8228003

>musk
>musk
>muskmuskmusk

Can you please stop referring everything you say to musk? Make up your own mind sheep
Also its fucking anoying as hell

>>8227868
Are you fucking retarded. This thread is about giant spinning tubes in the sky, which is every bit as hypothetical as aerostats on Venus.

>>8228400
After sleeping on it, I have some more for the "Mars is easier!" crowd.

You're counting on Musk's MCT, right? Great big methane/oxygen fuelled, aerobraking, propulsive landing, highly reusable upper stages with cargo bays / passenger accommodations, launched from Earth on top of highly reusable lower stages (possibly with in-orbit refuelling for departure) and back from Mars just as single-stage vehicles?

Imagine applying this technology to travel to and from the moon. The same "MCT" travels to and from a low-lunar orbit space station (after building it, possibly in as little as one launch). It brings reusable landers, and initially propellant for them, but eventually the propellant is produced on the moon.

It doesn't need refuelling at lunar orbit to return to Earth, because the delta-V requirement for this is low. They are returned to Earth in a week and can be reused as soon as they're mechanically ready for it. Since long-term life support, supplies, and radiation shielding aren't needed, far more passengers can be carried per trip.

If the technology is efficiently reusable, you only really need to maintain one such "MCT" at a time to build a magnificent lunar colony. Launching once per week, rather than once per two years, one travelling to the moon could do the job of a hundred travelling to Mars.

>>8228174
You can't do what you want to do on the moon to mine, refine, and manufacture parts to make anything without a shit load of consumables from Earth. Christ you don't even have water on the moon in any quantity worth anything at all.

The shit you've spouted has been called out and you are limp.

>>8229291
>You can't do what you want to do on the moon to mine, refine, and manufacture parts to make anything without a shit load of consumables from Earth.
You have nothing to support this claim, which goes against common sense, basic knowledge of chemistry, and the conclusions of NASA studies.

>Christ you don't even have water on the moon in any quantity worth anything at all.
There's loads of water on the moon.

Anyway, water's only a "consumable" for many processes on Earth because it's abundantly, conveniently, and cheaply available. And even then, it's not really "consumed", it's just that natural processes conveniently recycle it for us.

>>8229110
And Musk has said he'll gladly do the moon if only someone would pay him

Really, it probably will be used during the downtime between mars windows.

>>8229365
I dunno. I think they'll start doing moon and manned LEO stuff, and the Mars stuff will kind of fall by the wayside.

With reusability and ISRU, transport to the moon is going to be hundreds of times cheaper than Mars (compare renting an airliner for two years vs. chartering it for a week, then factor in dividing the cost among a thousand people vs. a hundred), with results tens of times faster and actual profit opportunities.

Furthermore, for a billionaire like Musk, the moon is a place he can visit for a vacation with his kids, and workers can be hired knowing they'll eventually come home, whereas Mars is a long-term emigration.

>>8229353
God, you are such a fucking moron. Try doing your own research now. I'm not your fucking mother and I'm no longer going to spoon feed you.

Mining the moon is one thing. Mining strictly for making stuff on the moon is a fucking >>>/x/ tard sci-fi fantasy.

>>8229411
>I'm no longer going to spoon feed you.
...from the guy who hasn't offered any support for his position in the whole thread.

>>8229403
If you've ever watched Musk speak, you'd know he's massively autistic
And his autism forces him to focus on Mars

Everything they do at SpaceX is around mars
Starts Tesla, Solar city, Battery town because thats whats needed on Mars.
Working on auto driven vehicles/AI development because he needs autonomous machinery on Mars
Building Hyperloops which is a train that operates at low pressure because Mars atmosphere is low pressure

>>8229421
Every single bit of information was ignored. When questioned, you refused to answer even the most simple of questions. Instead you do hand waving about shit you have no clue about.

>>8229449
When they started the Falcon series of rockets, they talked a lot about using parachutes and splashdown recovery. It was easy to visualize and seemed plausible, and recovery is recovery, so it seemed like it was a good thing to aim for.

They gave that a couple of tries, noticed propulsive landing would be way better and they could probably do it, gave up on parachutes, and did flyback instead.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that flyback is way better than splashdown landing, but at the time, it wasn't obvious at all.

I think the same thing will happen with Mars and the moon. Mars looks like a better place to live. The challenges of reaching it seem like they can be overcome. It's easy to visualize building a Mars colony, it seems plausible, and a colony is a colony, so it seems like a good thing to aim for.

As they get closer, though, it's going to become increasingly obvious that the moon is way better than Mars for the first major off-planet development.

I believe they're going to notice that and simply change what they're aiming for, as they've done before.

>>8229461
>Every single bit of information was ignored.
You mean like the NASA study? >>8228056

Yeah, this is a pretty good description of how you've behaved.

>>8229465
That very closeness and ease of access to the Moon means that the Moon will never be politically or economically independent of Earth

Just another reason for Mars

Changing the means of booster recovery is a little bit different from changing the whole driving purpose of Musk & his company for the last 15 years

>>8213661
>has to rotate about 28 times an hour in order to simulate Earth's gravity
And how, pray tell, will this be powered? Solar?

>>8229483
>the whole driving purpose of Musk & his company for the last 15 years
Uh... they started out just wanting to buy some launches with Musk's PayPal money, to send a lander to Mars with a camera, a window, and a potted plant, for inspirational purposes.

Then he noticed that the prices were so high in relation to the actual challenges of orbital launch that it didn't make sense. He decided that rather than more inspirational demonstrations, cost-effective launch services were what was needed to enable mankind to move into space.

The Mars colonization plan has been less of a "driving purpose" and more of a handwavy sketch of what the cost-effective launch services might be good for.

>>8229491
Do you at least understand that once you get something spinning in space, little to no further power input is required to keep it spinning?

>>8229516
Despite all that it's still an unfeasible idea

>>8229521
>I don't have reasons, but it wouldn't make money today if nothing else changes, so nobody will do it ever.

>>8229521
Really now. What factors making it unfeasible have you observed that physicists and engineers discussing the concept for 40 years have missed?

>>8229535
I retract the matter. After reading all of the wiki page I can see it being a sustainable habitat for humanity, there are still some matters that the article didn't discuss, like impacts from comets or meteors. The main problem I was wondering about was shielding from comic radiation.

Blame OP for being vague about the O'Neill cylinder in the first place.

>O'Neill cylinder aka the Citadel from Mass Effect

>>8229542
>impacts from comets or meteors
You only really need to worry about micrometeorite impacts, because modern observation equipment can spot anything larger than a car approaching from a long way off. How they'd be protected from micrometeorite impacts, I frankly don't know. Possibly point-defense systems of some kind.

>>8229553
Micrometeoroid*

I must commit sudoku now.

>>8229553
Probably since they would only be traveling in a straight line for the most part it shouldn't be a matter to destroy them, unless they are unusually large. Like you said micrometeorites or small debris would be the most dangerous problem.

>>8229559
Micrometeroid and micrometeorite, both would be a problem honestly.

>>8229508
Yea, started on mars and continues on mars
Always about mars, always about other planets.

I think Venus could be better than Mars but whatever

>>8229568
>I think Venus could be better than Mars but whatever
Can you state your case?

>>8229573
.9 of a g
breathable atmosphere is a lifting gas
1 atm & 0-50 degree temperatures at 50~ km altitude, so people would live in floating/flying colonies
Closer to the sun means more solar power
Unlimited wind power

Takes less delta v than mars, shorter synod, shorter trip.
Much bigger planet means more of everything availible.

>>8229483
>That very closeness and ease of access to the Moon means that the Moon will never be politically or economically independent of Earth
Like the Thirteen Colonies will never be politically or economically independent of England?

Anyway, we're not talking about whether to colonize Mars or not, but whether to colonize Mars before the moon is developed.

LEO is by far the easiest space location to reach from Earth, but there are no raw materials, only what we take up there, and taking stuff up there is costly even in the theoretical minimum energy requirements.

The moon is the nearest source of raw materials and it turns out to be a physically convenient place to launch those materials from.

It's overwhelmingly advantageous to develop the moon as a source of materials, and build up substantial industry in Earth-moon space, before pursuing any ambitious undertaking in deeper space.

>>8229608
>Unlimited wind power
You can't just be floating in the wind to generate power from wind, you have to have an anchor.

Venus would be more comfortable and Earthlike in many ways, once developed, but it's also much harder to develop. Carbon is superabundant, but hydrogen's in short supply, mostly as water at ppm levels, and sulfuric acid clouds. Mining the surface would be a bitch, as would launching back into orbit.

It would be very hard to develop into a fully independent colony, and it's too far away for convenient resupply.

>>8229637
>but hydrogen's in short supply
Still ample amounts at 20 ppm + whatever can be found in sulfuric acid clouds, since the colony would be right in the middle of them.
I have to imagine that some surface source of hydrogen would also be found.

Definately there are other difficulties involved compared to mars.
I don't think mining the surface will pose too much of a problem, a commercial oven can handle the temperature at the surface, the issue is all in keeping the electronics cooled.

>>8229637
>Venus would be more comfortable and Earthlike in many ways
I agree and he's right about it being closer. In my opinion Venus would make a far better trial colony than Mars would. The moon is probably better than both as a trial colony though.

>>8229613
>Like the Thirteen Colonies will never be politically or economically independent of England?
7 weeks away from Britain is a pretty long trip
If it was 2-3 days, would have been a different story.

>and taking stuff up there is costly even in the theoretical minimum energy requirements.
In terms of straight energy costs, its actually not that bad
A 787 fills up with 220,000lbs of fuel after all, and tens of thousands of them fly all over, the most common passenger being a tourist.

>>8229657
>I have to imagine that some surface source of hydrogen would also be found.
I kind of doubt that.

It's very hot on the surface, and Venus is hydrogen-poor because of the high temperature, which has caused the hydrogen to be lost to space.

There won't be anything like the ice in the ground on Mars or the frozen lakes in the polar craters on the moon.

>I don't think mining the surface will pose too much of a problem
Probting the surface is one thing, mining it is another. It's not just the temperature, but also the pressure and corrosive atmosphere. The lack of light means you can't get solar power down there and nuclear's more difficult to get power out of because of the high temperature and pressure. You'll probably need to produce chemical fuels at altitude and send them down. Plus it would very hard to keep humans alive down there, so it would probably all be teleoperation. It's certainly not impossible, but it'll be challenging, especially if you want to bootstrap it from a small initial supply of equipment.

>>8229679
Even with perfect future airliners where the only cost was fuel, intercontinental flights would be a terribly expensive way to bring all of your construction materials, fuel, water, air, etc. to a site.

You want something more like a freight train or cargo ship, or at least a fleet of trucks. That's what a lunar catapult can be like.

>>8229682
>There won't be anything like the ice in the ground on Mars or the frozen lakes in the polar craters on the moon.

Sure, however there may be subsurface hydrogen sources, or vents/volcanos that could be capped & collected.
Hell, I'd bet 100 bucks they exist in huge quantities.

For power on the surface you'd likely do a combination of a tethered flying habitat with solar panels/wind turbines that sends electrical power down, and the machinery on the surface would charge their batteries at the surface anchor.

>>8229693
>all of your construction materials, fuel, water, air, etc. to a site.
You would be producing all those things on venus or mars anyways.
My point is, launches to orbit are not massively more expensive in fuel/energy costs than intercontinental flights.
So the costs of shipping tonnage to anywhere in the solar system needs not be prohibitively expensive.

>That's what a lunar catapult can be like.
I think you overestimate how much you could get from the moon, while underestimating how difficult/costly it would be to set up.
Even just producing the gun to fire payloads at 4 km/s would be extremely difficult.

>>8229761
Oh yeah, wind power would be good for power on the surface.

>there may be subsurface hydrogen sources, or vents/volcanos
I'm sure there's subsurface hydrogen, like there is on Earth, but it's almost certainly way too deep and encapsulated to be practical to access, since hydrogen leaks so easily through any tiny crack. Harvesting it from volcanic vents doesn't sound easy.

>>8229778
>>all of your construction materials, fuel, water, air, etc. to a site.
>You would be producing all those things on venus or mars anyways.
Only after you sent enough equipment and people to establish an industrial base.

For interplanetary flight, you don't want typical LEO/Apollo thin-walled tin cans to ride in. You want great big heavy thick-walled vehicles to block the space radiation. You don't want to build (or fuel) those with material sent up on something that costs even more than intercontinental air shipping.

>Even just producing the gun to fire payloads at 4 km/s would be extremely difficult.
It only takes 1.4 km/s to put it in low lunar orbit (with a small amount of circularization thrust needed at apogee). That's the equivalent of mach 4. Ordinary rifles shoot stuff at nearly 1 km/s, and the WW I German "Paris Gun" shot 100 kg shells at 1.65 km/s. 2.75 km/s to throw it directly on an Earth aerobraking course.

People have analysed this, and you can do it pretty easily in a lot of different ways. It's significantly easier in a vacuum. When you get into hypersonic speeds, pushing air through the barrel is a problem.

>>8229761

>mission will costs in the
>hundreds of billion dollar

>sure i bet 100 bucks

Hahahahaha how old are you?
This thread is about a first step into interplanetary space not some thread about a trillion dollar drug lord's journey to find his new home in 2166

>>8229817
Whoops, looks like the delta-V to get from the moon surface to low lunar orbit is at least 1.6 km/s, not 1.4 km/s, and you'd probably want something that can do close to 2 km/s for a practical catapult.

So what kind of power source are we looking at on a hypothetical Lunar/Mars colony?
What about the O'Niell cylinder?

Solar power doesn't seem like it'd be enough to efficiently power a whole base. You'd need too many panels.

Would a nuclear reactor work considering low refueling requirements?
The excess heat can be used throughout the base.

Something like an electromagentic cannon on the Moon firing packages often would need a heck of a lot of power.
Any kind of mining drone on the surface also can't get by with a few batteries and panels.

Is space colonisation going to revolutionise miniaturisation in nuclear power?

>>8232476
Of the energy technologies currently existing or very closely in sight, thorium fueled molten salt reactors would probably be the best bet for powering any off-world colonies. IIRC Kirk Sorenson got started with his career of shilling LFTRs after he came by the concept while modeling lunar colony proposals for NASA.

If we move beyond what's currently possible, then fusion reactors, since the Moon has fairly easily accessible Helium-3 deposits.

And miniaturisation of nuclear power is probably going to happen before space colonization if LFTRs go anywhere. Thorium reactors have pretty excellent scalability.

>>8232476
Solar and RTG are pretty much the only thing you can use on anything in space, due to waste heat being a massive problem.

On planets with atmosphere it doesn't matter.

On places like the Moon that have no atmosphere, waste heat again becomes a major problem. So, no thoriumeme salt reactors on the Moon like the kids tell you.

>>8232813
Right, because you can't dissipate heat into the ground.

>>8232841
There's a limit to that. Which is why drills overheat and break when drilling into the Moon's surface. Moisture is a huge factor in conducting heat away from anything you bury and into the surrounding ground.

>>8232868
There's no limit, it's just slower. The drills overheat because the rock conducts heat away from the drilling spot at a slower rate. You would just need to scale up the heat dissipation mechanism to compensate. For example, if you were getting rid of excess thermal output from a reactor with buried heat exchange pipes, you'd just have to build an extensive enough pipeline.

And this is only a consideration for industrial processes that produce a significant amount of waste heat. If space stations can get rid of waste heat generated by activities related to normal human habitation, there's no reason why Lunar colonies couldn't.

>>8232975
>If space stations can get rid of waste heat generated by activities related to normal human habitation
With radiators, specifically. Which, to add, are a hell of a lot more inefficient than any mechanism based on conduction.

>>8232975
>it's just slower

That is the limit. It means you can't remove heat as fast as is required.

Just use solar panels. That removes a shit load of problems right there.

>If space stations can get rid of waste heat generated by activities related to normal human habitation, there's no reason why Lunar colonies couldn't.

We are talking about a nuclear power plant. Unless it is a small RTG, you will have massive waste heat problems.

>>8232476
>Solar power doesn't seem like it'd be enough to efficiently power a whole base. You'd need too many panels.
There's basically no limit on how many you can set up, and there's no option that gets you more energy per unit mass. They're great in space. 24/7 power, and no wind, corrosion, or stuff growing in the way, plus more light gets through.

They also tend to fail gracefully, reducing output rather than completely failing and making a mess.

That's why people talk about building solar power stations in Earth orbit for power on the ground. Put up a square kilometer of cheap, paper-thin panels in geostationary orbit, and you've got a near-constant half-gigawatt of electrical power in a fixed position above the Earth. Night and day don't matter (geostationary satellites only rarely and briefly pass through the Earth's shadow, and then, it's only penumbra, it never dips below 80% of peak output), weather doesn't matter, industrial aerosols don't matter, volcanic dust doesn't matter, nuclear winter wouldn't matter (microwave power transmission passes through all of that with no problem).

Nuclear reactors, on the other hand, are hard to use in space. They have minimum size issues. They're mechanically complicated. Because there's no air or water to take the waste heat, they require large black-body radiators, which should be kept out of the sun and facing the blackness of empty space, a problem quite similar to that of deploying more area of sun-facing solar panels to get more power. The only thing they have going for them over solar panels is that you can run them out of the sunlight.

>>8233076
>just use solar panels

No. That might be a temporary fix but without some way to dissipate heat efficiently mining can be excluded.

With no mining there's no more motivation to actually go anywhere and we're back to hauling asteroids back to Earth for processing.

Just because it's slow doesn't make it unfeasible.
Mining speed is continuous and variable.
If power is free (solar) then really damn slow isn't necessarily unprofitable.

Alternatively, drilling isn't the only method for extracting material from the ground.
In the low gravity and no atmosphere we could always just blow chunks of rock out of the moon with explosives and drag them back to the facility.

>>8233095
I mentioned drilling because it is reference to what astronauts who landed on the Moon found out first hand when trying to drill for samples. Waste heat is a massive problem in a vacuum.

As far as waste heat goes. These white squares are the waste heat radiators used on the ISS. That gives you a bit of an idea.

>explosives

Those need bore holes too.

I personally think that practical mining in the vacuum of space is a bit of a pipe dream. It may be great for when you absolutely must attain x resources and you can't do it anywhere else. It is terrible when you have far better places to go to and methods to use.

>>8233093
Good points. Photovoltaics are also getting more efficient thanks to perovskite compounds.

>>8233106
>>8233095
Why couldn't you cool the drill with liquid oxygen? Infinite amounts of oxygen on asteroids/moon.

>>8233252
Rapid temperature alterations like that would fuck up your equipment pretty quick unless they're made of unobtanium.

>>8233252
It's really not the problem he's making it out to be. Among the technical challenges of establishing industry in space, cooling drill bits is an incredibly minor one.

It was just a minor fuck-up in the Apollo program, where they went out there with some drills for taking samples, and didn't take into account what drilling in a vacuum would be like, and they had some tools that they had problems with in what was literally the first few hours working away from Earth.

>>8233270
>cooling drill bits is an incredibly minor one.
>on the moon

Source?

>>8233252
>let's use A, which is made from B, which needs C and D which need E, F, and G, the latter of which we can only get on Earth.

Sounds like a great plan.

>>8232476
>>can't use solar power for an O'Neill cylinder
in space there's no night*, removing 90% of the difficulties associated with solar panels.

Plus, because of microgravity you can have fuck huge arrays of gossamer solar panels

>>8232978
radiators still fucking work though, even if they are inefficient

*at L2 there is like 1 day a year you get night, that's about it

>>8233095
>>8232975
>>8232868
For mining the moon, one doesn't need to do any drilling, the surface of the Moon is covered fine dust, which is easily extractable. You don't need to drill so much as scoop it up.


>>8232792
>>helium 3 mining on the moon
is a fucking joke. You have to sift through and heat up HUGE amounts of regolith to get tiny amounts of helium 3. Because of the requirement to heat up huge amounts of regolith, the energy return on investment isn't great.

>space mining apologists

How much energy does it take (on average) to produce 1 kilogram of the following materials?

Wood (from standing timber): 3-7MJ (830 to 1,950 watt-hours).

Steel (from recycled steel): 6-15MJ (1,665 to 4,170 watt-hours).

Aluminum (from 100 % recycled aluminum): 11.35-17MJ (3,150 to 4,750 watt-hours)

Iron (from iron ore): 20-25MJ (5,550 to 6,950 watt-hours)

Glass (from sand, etcetera): 18-35MJ (5,000 to 9,700 watt-hours)

Steel (from iron): 20-50MJ (5,550 to 13,900 watt-hours)

Paper (from standing timber): 25-50MJ (6,950 to 13,900 watt-hours)

Plastics (from crude oil): 62-108MJ (17,200 to 31,950 watt-hours)

Copper (from sulfide ore): 60-125MJ (16,600 to 34,700 watt-hours)

Aluminum (from a typical mix of 80% virgin and 20% recycled aluminum): 219 MJ (60,800 watt-hours)

Silicon (from silica): 230-235MJ (63,900 to 65,300 watt-hours)

Nickel (from ore concentrate): 230-270MJ (63,900 to 75,000 watt-hours)

Aluminum (from bauxite): 227-342MJ (63,000 to 95,000 watt-hours)

Titanium (from ore concentrate): 900-940MJ (250,000 to 261,000 watt-hours)

Electronic grade silicon (CVD process): 7,590-7,755MJ (2,108,700 to 2,154,900 watt-hours).

>not taking into account all the shit you need to refine it and make it into something useful

>>8233432
We just discussed this Anon.
Solar power in space is basically free energy.

Besides, we're only talking about bringing raw materials because they're easier to access than back home.

Nobody is talking about making silicon circuit boards from asteroids, yet.

>>8233427
>>8233432
We need to know more about the deep soils of the Moon as there may be higher concentrations of resources than the dust on the surface.

If you want to put it into money terms, as most companies/governments do, how much does it cost to get X pounds of Y fully manufactured part up to the moon/O'Neill cylinder shipyard compared to all the expense of mining, refining, and manufacturing the same thing on the Moon?

Because if it is more expensive to do that on the moon then just ship it up. With SpaceX already this far along, this cheap, and NASA with another line of reusable shuttles and whatnot coming out, cost per pound going into space is dropping pretty quickly.

We may find that wrangling the Delta-v for near-earth asteroids may be the best option.

>>8233432
aaaaaaand you're point is what?

Here have a detailed study on the material and power requirements for an orbital solar cell factory:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790025058.pdf

>>8233412
>Source?
>I can just assert things. Crazy things. Whatever I want. But if you want to call bullshit on me, you better be able to dig up an expert debunking my exact, specific bullshit.

>which need E, F, and G, the latter of which we can only get on Earth.
>See what crazy things I can assert? I love being me, the only being that has this privilege of arbitrary assertion.

>>8233438
This isn't an either-or situation.

The most cost-effective solution is eventually going to be mining on the moon and shipping back to Earth for processing.

>>8233448
That's biting bait.
Equality in Science means you just have to ask for his sources.

I think there are plenty to show how many things are required to produce liquid oxygen.

The idea was fairly stupid to begin with. You have to cool the oxygen down first.
Unless you plan to do it with lasers, and laser cooling is a very poorly developed field, you have to heat something else up which brings you back to square one.

>>8233437
>not taking into account all the shit you need to refine it and make it into something useful

This plus factory-scale power needed for this stuff is pretty massive.

Every single pro-mining person ITT is seriously over estimating this stuff.

>>8233446
Great source, I read that some time ago. Unfortunately, it is rather antiquated and costs over triple their projections now. There's no net gain for that cost margin.

>>8233448
>>8233462
You were giving something that has a source, one that people who are in this discussion should know about. You on the other hand can't give a source.

Sources are needed because "I think maybe" just doesn't fucking cut it, kid.

>>8233456
>The most cost-effective solution is eventually going to be mining on the moon and shipping back to Earth for processing.

There's literally no reason to do that. Just ship up finish parts instead. We have plenty of resources on Earth to do everything humanity wants to do in space.

>>8233469
> We have plenty of resources on Earth

>>eventually

Some day it'll be cheaper to get it from the Moon than from Earth.
Plenty is not infinite and not even close enough to satisfy indefinitely barring our species becoming a hive-mind computer conscience.

>>8233475
>handwaving magicks

>>>/x/

>>8233480
No point mining Earth if it's harder to get at the resources than outside

What's your solution to the cost-benefit dilema?

>mining the moon will be more cost effective

ISS costs about $3-$4 billion USD a year. How much do you think making a moon base and upkeeping it will cost per year?

You could have an O'Neill Cylinder made from Earth-shipped materials in a 10th of the time you'd have a fully functioning moon base for mining.

>>8233485
There's no technical reason standing against full automation

>>8233502
see
>>8233480

>>8233508
It's all witchcraft until it's prototyped

>>8233511
On 4chan you fucking bet your ass it is.

The last thread we had about this shit there was a big hoopla about 3D printed nano mining bots that replicate themselves as they mine then turn themselves into a big rocket to where ever the resources are needed. This thread is a bit better. Far less >>>/x/ to reach Y.

>>8233469
>You were giving something that has a source, one that people who are in this discussion should know about.
>I didn't give a source, but there is one, and if you're talking about this, you should know this already!
>It's a real, totally for real source, that you absolutely should know about to even be qualified for this discussion!
>No, I'm not going to give it to you or even tell you what it is, I'm not going to spoonfeed you!
>I can claim absolutely any crazy, stupid thing and you should assume that there's a source and that's the same thing as giving a source!
>If there's anything wrong with the thing I'm claiming, you should be able to give a source for an expert debunking of this highly specific exact claim that I just made up!

Your position here is that you don't need to produce a source for the claim that drill bit heating is an insurmountable obstacle to off-Earth mining, because everyone should just know there's a source (somewhere), but that someone claiming that this is nonsense needs to produce a source for the claim that this single narrow technical issue, which common sense tells us can be dealt with in any number of ways, is NOT an insurmountable issue.

In conclusion: take your meds, stay out of /sci/, be crazy somewhere else.

>>8233524
>reading out of context
>inability to follow a conversation
>making up stuff
>cherry picking
>logical fallacies out the ass
>giant ass rant

Sure thing, kid.

>>8233548
Yeah, of course you post something like this, and not take even a second to reflect on the utter garbage you've posted in this thread.

This is why we can't have a decent thread in /sci/. We've got seriously mentally ill people just sitting in here all day, trying to convince themselves that they're actually highly capable by winning technical arguments (by their own insane standards), and it's just society being all wrong that's holding them down.

>>8233595
>/x/ horseshit isn't garbage

Good luck mining enough Helium-3 to make your Moon mining program even remotely break even.

>>8233595
>decent thread in /sci/
>colonizing space

Another one to add to the list.

>>8233623
>>8233620
This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

Mentally ill people trying to convince themselves they're the reasonable ones by coming into a thread meant for discussion of cutting edge and emerging technology, and just shitting all over anything that's not already a completely established, mature technology, as if it's a physical impossibility.

"Ha ha! See? I'm not the crazy one! They're talking about something that's outside of everyday lived experience or fully settled expert opinion! That means *I* get to call *THEM* crazy! See? I'm just as good as the guys who tell me that the elves I talk to aren't real!"

No ability to distinguish reality from delusion, so they try to pretend they have it by superficial imitation. They're at home on psych disability or supported by their families, so they can outpost anyone with a decent contribution to make ten to one.

We have to do something to get rid of them, or good threads on /sci/ are just going to get more and more rare.

>>8233643
But Anon... there's been no mention of cutting edge technology.

This whole thread is full of wishful dreams by people who've never studied in the field piggybacking off over-hyped media in the vain hope of convincing others that their pipe-dream might come true some day.

All the technology we need is known of. There is no impossibility in the subject. Logistically most of it is insanity lost in the depths of inefficiency.

The difference between /x/ and /sci/ is that /x/ is okay with "it's not technically impossible" while /sci/ demands at least "it would be good".

The whole point of a discussion is for each side to be poked with as many holes as humanly possibly and whichever swiss-cheese still floats is the path to follow.

So don't begrudge my fellow /sci/entists their nitpicking. They do it out of love. Love of all things true and beautiful. Such things that are born only in the darkest pits of scrutiny.

Every post about the meta is of equal shitposting value to any unsourced bollocks.
Stop shitposting Anon.

>>8233643
As the OP of the thread. I made this thread to expose just how moronic you pro-tech, pro-space people are.

You think with dreams and completely ignore everything else completely. Humanity will not colonize anything off Earth. It will sit here and rot until there's no humans left. There will be no colonies, no human travel between stars, we will never pass Go and never collect anything.

We are completely doomed, we always have been and it isn't even our "fault", that's just how life rolls.

Not 1 thing good came from anything related to space travel and it never will.

>>8233670
>Not 1 thing good came from anything related to space travel
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many technilogical advancements it's not even funny.

> Humanity will not colonize anything off Earth.
Barring pre-mature extinction, Humanity will inevitably become as gods. The drive is too strong and self-propagating. The stream always conquers the mountain, given time.

>>8233682
>technilogical advancements

None of which are worth mentioning in the slightest.

>Humanity will inevitably become as gods

4chan is an 18+ only website.

>>8233714
Well, if you discount all advancements that could also have been achieved if we only focused on satellites that leaves very little actual work done towards space travel in general.

Can't claim something is useless if it's only begun.

Your fatalism is misplaced Anon, whether it takes a hundred years or a hundred thousand, eventually there will be beings that descended from us who live forever and travel the stars.

If that desire was not imprinted so deeply within humanity we would not have gone to the Moon to begin with.

>"scientific advancement" as a one dimensional quantity
Wow you must really know what you're talking about

I'm not even reading the thread, don't give a shit about space...

>>8233739
You deluded child.

>>8233795
You're just hopelessly lost in your own mortality.
Don't worry. Your death will be as meaningless as your life for the future of the human race.

>>8233827
>he thinks life has meaning

>>8233888
Only what we place in it.

No intrinsic meaning is necessary to assign yours as worthless.

Nothing less than this will do:
A mostly automated "shipyard" capable of creating habitats that pays for itself. a complete system that includes every step from finding metals to the finished product ready to move in.

Because there's no reason to make an O'Neil cylinder. If someone wants to make a fuckhuge space station, they are better off using a big asteroid as it has a sum total of zero (0) moving parts, and is already in space.

>>8216470

Terraforming Mars, within a reasonable amount of time, is probably possible. There's just not enough data on it yet.

A greater magnetic field could probably be produced by detonating nukes deep inside the planet, in order to heat up it's outer core. Assuming it works, an atmosphere can then be obtained. Then all we'd have to figure out is how to turn Martian dirt into O2 and CO2, which would bring up the atmospheric pressure above the Armstrong limit which would remove the need for space suits.

However, it's all theoretical. Hopefully in our lifetimes there we'll be able to get enough data on it so a real plan could be put into action.

>>8233670

you're just a pessimistic asshole, some of us live in countries that have space programs

>>8233666

>This whole thread is full of wishful dreams by people who've never studied in the field piggybacking off over-hyped media in the vain hope of convincing others that their pipe-dream might come true some day.

Superstructures in space are more than possible once we actually figure out how to build things in space. It's trivial to get things off the moon and into a high earth orbit. Nature has given us the perfect orbital construction yard. However, it'll remain held back until advances in propulsion are made. Advances that are more and more likely to happen as investment in earth orbit and the moon increases.

As for terraforming, we're doing it right now here on earth through climate change. We can easily do it on other planets.

>>8234055
Many things are possible. That doesn't make them feasible.
There's nothing perfect about the moon as a factory facility. Merely its convenience to space.

Terraforming on Earth is not equivalent to what you'd need for Mars.
You're watching at a car tune-up in LA and saying how easy we could add 600 horse-power to an unrefined lump of iron ore out in Nevada.

>>8234055
>>8234525
Actually, it's pretty much all just a matter of money. NASA's budget sucks major dick right now, and will for the foreseeable future.

>>8234550
>All about the money money

Yes and unless it will make more money than it costs it wont be done on a large scale.

>>8233516
>self replicating machines
are a legitimate solution to the problem of industrializing space. No, we don't need nanotech to make them. You don't need nanotech to make a big automated factory capable of making a copy of itself.

NASA has investigated the possibility of making robotic factories on the moon capable of manufacturing copies of themselves from lunar regolith and found it to be plausible. The only 'resources' the factory uses are sunlight and lunar regolith. One could have said system construct rockets(magnesium+waste oxygen from reducing regolith), but in literature electromagnetic launchers are preferred.

www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/880Chirikjian.pdf

This has the potential to severally decrease the amount of mass we need to launch from Earth, all we have to do is put one self-replicating factory up and we're set.

However, in the near term it's much more realistic to send up the components that are difficult to make and manufacture the heavier components from mass that's already up there.

It has been shown that it takes about 27 years for a very basic lunar mass driver to payback the launched mass of it's linear motor. Much of the mass of the motor is simple stuff which we could manufacturer in-situ. We need iron for the stator and frame, aluminum for the windings, and glass for insulation(if we really want to get fancy, just ship plastic insulation from earth). All of that is available from lunar regolith.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110007073.pdf

>>8234555
Yup
Cars were a stupid burn of money when it arrived.

>>8224272
See
>>8227490

>>8235629
Shitty logic.

>>8234055
>We can easily do it on other planets.

Complete ignorant moron.

>>8213921
>The Falcon 9 computers have taken control of the countdown

ABORT ABORT

THE COMPUTERS ARE TAKING OVER SPACE

>>8235763
>>implying they haven't already

Bump

>>8228174
Can you take that dick out of your mouth for, like, one second?

>>8235619
That's real fokin interesting m80.

If self-replicating factories work on the Moon, would it be much harder to adapt for Mars or other moons?
At that point it's just a matter of initial investment and someone's always going to have more money than vision.

Still, if the idea is to send up a few crates and leave it alone for a few decades can we really call it conquering space?

>>8237849
If you can do it on the Moon, you can do it anywhere there is enough materials for the job.

If we have these things running and humanity dies out, they will be the only thing left that will be able to evolve and conquer space.

>>8237951
Evolving AI? To what end?

Maybe it'll decide tor resurrect us after discovering the intrinsic meaningless of reality.

Instead of that, propel spacecraft from Earth via giant solar satellites and microwave lasers

>>8237965
You want to overcome Earth's gravity with a laser?
Through clouds and wind and turbulence?
In a water-rich atmosphere?
And you want to do this to a whole satellite?

With that kind of power output just stick the fucker onto a railgun and blast it with lasers after LOE.

Atmospheric emissions would kill us. In order to make space travel mainstream, eliminate the least necessary part: time.

Bamp

>>8213892
>You can't colonize any other planet in the solar system.
le citation needed

>>8239777
>you can't colonize the sun
>le citation needed

KYS

>>8237849
Mars is a bit harder because it has an atmosphere. Because the Moon has an extremely high vacuum, a number of important industrial processes become easy. For example, because you have high vacuum you can do vacuum deposition, doping, and other fun high vacuum processes, which means you can pave solar cells on the Moon:
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/annual/jun00/433Ignatiev.pdf

>>can we really call it conquering space?
It's more of conquering space than sending some meatbags up, planting a flag, and leaving. If we ever want to live in space, we will need to industrialize space.