Author Topic: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats  (Read 869929 times)

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1120 on: 03/12/2017 04:20 pm »
Concrete will be tricky on mars, no limestone.

It could be marscrete. A material made from local resources, not limestone. It needs less energy to produce, too.The material is even better than normal concrete except it is not very resistant to water. Not a concern on Mars.


This stuff sounds like a real winner for Mars. Multiple potential raw materials (at least some already confirmed on Mars, hopefully the ideal source will be as well). Minimal water usage. Substantially less energy and physical properties as good as (or maybe a bit better) than conventional Portland cement. Sticks to almost anything so good for air sealing caves as well.

It's water stability may be a slight issue. Obvious ideas would be to make it the external structural shell for a pressure tight internal membrane (so all the rest of the regolith can be scooped on top of it. Or the surface can be sealed with some kind of watertight  coating (essentially high tech paint).

Energy wise this sounds like it would be a much better idea to do focused solar rather than the trouble of PV arrays to electricity to heat.

It sounds like you could build hardware on a viable scale for Mars that could really do this, provided you can land somewhere near the necessary supplies of raw materials.

[EDIT I'll note this is V 0.1 technology, hence the large proportion of trapped air. On Mars I would not expect this to be a major issue, with a near vacuum available at the opening of a tap to the outside, if the use of a vibrator is not enough ]
« Last Edit: 03/12/2017 04:38 pm by john smith 19 »
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Paul451

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1121 on: 03/13/2017 03:22 am »
Energy wise this sounds like it would be a much better idea to do focused solar rather than the trouble of PV arrays to electricity to heat.

Atmospheric dust scatters sunlight amazingly well. Even on a bright clear day on Mars, you can lose 30% of direct light. Concentrator-mirrors can't work with scattered light, but solar panels are barely affected. Additionally, solar panels produce general purpose electricity (obviously), which can be diverted to any use, especially in an emergency. Solar furnaces will be single-purpose dedicated systems, nearly worthless for backing up other systems.

So, IMO, even with the loss of efficiency with solar PV, the net benefits vastly outweigh the costs.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1122 on: 03/14/2017 10:21 pm »
Energy wise this sounds like it would be a much better idea to do focused solar rather than the trouble of PV arrays to electricity to heat.

Atmospheric dust scatters sunlight amazingly well. Even on a bright clear day on Mars, you can lose 30% of direct light. Concentrator-mirrors can't work with scattered light, but solar panels are barely affected. Additionally, solar panels produce general purpose electricity (obviously), which can be diverted to any use, especially in an emergency. Solar furnaces will be single-purpose dedicated systems, nearly worthless for backing up other systems.

So, IMO, even with the loss of efficiency with solar PV, the net benefits vastly outweigh the costs.
The trouble with any sort of bulk material processing (and if people are serious about mass settlement that's what's needed) is they are going to need a lot of raw heat energy.

Multi junction PV's can give 46% efficiency but IIRC they use (focusing) concentrators anyway. OTOH thin film systems have hit 20%+, although less in complete modules. However either ends up dumping the rest as heat. On Mars this should be quite valuable but it won't be anywhere near the temperatures needed to process minerals.

BTW a focused system may lose 30% due to dust scattering. That leaves 70% as usable energy. The reduced gravity also implies you can build large reflector structures with less material to give the same stiffness as Earth.

My instinct is you will need a PV power array but also some focused heat system for multiple materials processing tasks. This is the simplest way to harvest energy from the environment. It has a good TRL and it's much easier (in principal) to build out than PV arrays (excluding possibly thin film types).
In complexity terms it would be this, then biogas then geothermal, then PV, with nuclear a long way down the road.

It's only when you start digging into this stuff you realize how convenient a really large supply of coal or a hydroelectric dam is.  :(
« Last Edit: 03/14/2017 10:25 pm by john smith 19 »
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline ThereIWas3

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1123 on: 03/14/2017 10:24 pm »
Do high-temp solar furnace processing on Phobos?

Offline MickQ

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1124 on: 03/16/2017 07:47 am »
Do high-temp solar furnace processing on Phobos?

I see a problem there.  Isn't Phobos tidally locked to Mars ?  At the speed it orbits at you would have a hard time keeping anything focused.

Offline Oersted

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1125 on: 03/16/2017 10:54 am »
Hmm, photovoltaics deployed on the surface of Mars will most probably be less complex than a system that involves flying back and forth between Phobos and the Martian surface.

Roll-out thin-film PV sheets (tied down to the Martin surface so they won't lift off when a cleaning dustdevil passes) are basically maintenance-free and highly dependable. I am quite sure they will provide the energy needed on Mars.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1126 on: 03/16/2017 01:37 pm »
Hmm, photovoltaics deployed on the surface of Mars will most probably be less complex than a system that involves flying back and forth between Phobos and the Martian surface.
True.
Quote from: Oersted
Roll-out thin-film PV sheets (tied down to the Martin surface so they won't lift off when a cleaning dustdevil passes) are basically maintenance-free and highly dependable. I am quite sure they will provide the energy needed on Mars.
I wouldn't bet on that. Roughly speaking Sunlight at Mars surface is about 59% of Earth at SL. Lab scale thin films have hit 20% efficiency and should be available by the time of a landing but that gives you about 120W/m^2 of surface, rather than the close to 200W/m^2 you can expect at the Earths surface.

That might be fine for electricity use but will cause trouble once you get into "bulk" energy use, like driving rock breaking, rock moving and materials processing. Some of those are just better suited to having the heat generated directly and applied to the problem.

For radiation shielding the best habitats are likely to be either underground or in a cliff face.

However that does not necessarily mean they have to cramped and/or badly lit.  :(
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Oersted

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1127 on: 03/16/2017 02:44 pm »
Thanks for your reply, John. However, I don't understand what the problem is. If you need more electricity for energy-intensive construction work you would just lay out more PV film, wouldn't you? It is not as if they lack real estate on the surface. Or is there a problem with having a lot of PV sheets generating electricity without "tapping it off"? Sorry, I just don't know.

I totally agree that tunneling is the way to go for the initial habitats and internal space. That has been quite conclusively proven in this thread, I think, and Musk seems to have arrived at the same conclusion it seems, given his new-found interest in the subject.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1128 on: 03/16/2017 09:06 pm »
Thanks for your reply, John. However, I don't understand what the problem is. If you need more electricity for energy-intensive construction work you would just lay out more PV film, wouldn't you? It is not as if they lack real estate on the surface. Or is there a problem with having a lot of PV sheets generating electricity without "tapping it off"? Sorry, I just don't know.
Electricity is useful for some things and the substantial losses (roughly speaking Mars surface at Noon will give you 12% what the same 20% efficient thin film array would give you at the Earth's surface) IOW throw away 88% of the available sunlight from Earth orbit.

In contrast using solar concentrators (imagine or non imaging) may lose 30% due to dust scatter. That leaves 70% as available energy that can be used to process materials.

One conversion process leaves you leaves you with <20% of your input power (at Mars orbit, which is 41% down on Earth). The other leaves you with 70% as concentrated sunlight.  Neither works after sun down and bulk power storage remains difficult.

In general when it comes to bulk mfg people tend to avoid electricity as a heat source unless there are issues with purity (such as chip mfg) or the most efficient method is electro chemical (for Aluminum smelting). They prefer to work with direct combustion of either a fuel or the raw materials themselves. Without coal or coke you're left with biogas, solar PV or solar thermal.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline biosehnsucht

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1129 on: 03/17/2017 09:52 pm »
Why not both? Mirrors to concentrate more sunlight into panels?

Offline Chris_Pi

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1130 on: 03/18/2017 03:28 am »
Why not both? Mirrors to concentrate more sunlight into panels?

Scattering from dust/haze in the atmosphere. The panels themselves don't care what direction the light comes in from but reflectors do. If a large percentage of the light delivered to the panels comes off the reflectors there's a huge drop in power output whenever the weather isn't clear.

Works wonderfully when it does work but a lots of panels approach does better in less than ideal conditions. And anything needing lots of power is probably going to work better with a smaller but less variable supply.

Offline Paul451

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1131 on: 03/18/2017 08:08 am »
In contrast using solar concentrators (imagine or non imaging) may lose 30% due to dust scatter. That leaves 70% as available energy that can be used to process materials.

That 70% is best case, on clear mid-summer days at noon, during low-storm years. It's generally much worse. The MER rovers have seen numbers under 2%. (Oppy under 0.5%.) Concentrator-reflectors are a bad idea on Mars.

For example: At Opportunity's site, transmissivity hasn't gotten above 60% for the last 11 months. And is currently at around 20% direct light.

The efficiency of concentrator reflectors directly correlates with focused sunlight, hence will correlate directly with transmissivity. Can an industrial process even operate if it's receiving 20% of it's rated heat? I mean work at all, there will surely be a minimum before the process doesn't work. Boltzmann's law and all that.

PV panels are happy with indirect sky glow. Oppy's solar panels are currently (with ~20% direct transmission) at 2/3rds of the capacity they were 11 months ago (with~60% direct transmission), with roughly similar levels of dust on the PV-array. PV arrays are more consistent and reliable. And during really bad times, you can turn off the heavy-industry production and divert that extra PV acreage to essential services. It's just electricity through wires. You can't do that with concentrator reflectors, they are site-specific, hence task specific.
« Last Edit: 03/18/2017 08:25 am by Paul451 »

Offline Dao Angkan

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1132 on: 04/11/2017 08:52 am »
Nylon would be a really useful material for clothing (even spacesuits) and 3D printers. Maybe with a big enough 3D printer habitats could be printed.

This would seem to also have a possible application for Mars;

Quote
Can Nylon Be Made From Water, Sunshine and Plant Waste?
— April 09, 2017

Currently, many types of fabrics, including nylon, are made in an energy-intensive, unsustainable process that uses fossil fuel. Now, NYU Tandon School of Engineering Assistant Professor Miguel Modestino, of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is proposing a method that eliminates oil from the equation, employing water, plant waste and solar energy to deliver a material identical to the nylon now widely used in the fashion industry and in other commercial applications.

Modestino and his co-researcher, Sophia Haussener of the École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL), have garnered a 2017 Global Change Award of €250,000 ($267,000) from the H&M Foundation, the non-profit arm of the retailing giant. The first such initiative by a major member of the fashion world, the Global Change challenge attracted almost 3,000 applicants this year and aims to support early innovations that can accelerate the shift to a circular and sustainable garment industry, in order to protect the planet. The awards were presented in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 5.

The researchers chose to focus on nylon because of the large market for the popular polymer, which they estimate to be more than 6 million tons per year, with a value of more than $20 billion. Their proposed process uses photovoltaic arrays, which generate electricity directly from the sun, to drive the electrochemical reduction of acrylonitrile (ACN) to adiponitrile (ADN) and hydrogen (H2), which will, in turn, be synthesized into hexanediamine (HDA), one of the existing precursors to nylon.

Because ACN can be derived from plant waste, only sun, water and carbon dioxide will be required as inputs, and the new process will represent a new scheme for carbon capture, where greenhouse gases will be bound into the fabric, rather than releasing them into the air.


Offline Dao Angkan

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Offline Oersted

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1134 on: 04/27/2017 07:52 pm »
Martian bricks will seemingly be very easy to  make by just compressing the soil:

http://www.realclearscience.com/quick_and_clear_science/2017/04/27/martian_soil_could_be_used_to_build_a_colony.html

"Creating the bricks was surprisingly simple. Yu Qiao, a Professor of Structural Engineering, and his team dried out simulated Martian soil, compressed it at high pressures in steel molds, and then subsequently allowed it to dry again. The resulting blocks were incredibly strong and had a permeability similar to dense rocks. This latter feature is important, because it means a structure built with the bricks could be adapted to hold an atmosphere [...]"

"The secret ingredient allowing for the formation of these bricks seems to be the iron oxide that gives the Martian soil its patented red hue. Under crushing pressure, the iron oxide morphs into a denser form, binding the surrounding regolith together in the process."

Article in Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01157-w

Offline docmordrid

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1135 on: 04/28/2017 06:06 pm »
From MIT: Digital Construction Platform,

Quote
It can be fitted with a range of different tools, including a foam insulation gun, a welding attachment, a “thermoplastic extruder” that squirts out melted plastic, a glorified squirt gun, and even a simple bucket.

The Verge....

« Last Edit: 04/28/2017 06:08 pm by docmordrid »
DM

Offline Hotblack Desiato

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1136 on: 07/31/2017 03:57 pm »
Regarding 3D-printing large objects:



The US Navy has released this nice video regarding printing entire submarine hulls.

They need to be tight (if they want it to be crewed), and need to be able to withstand a substantial pressure difference inside - outside (just the other way around of what's needed for a station on Moon, Mars, or in space itself).

So, it is possible to directly print the main structural parts of a surface module.

Offline Chris_Pi

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1137 on: 08/07/2017 09:25 pm »
It's probably a free-flooding design - Flat sides like that aren't much good for pressure vessels. Diving gear for everyone anyways to get in/out. Mostly a frame for a motor/batteries, seats, gear storage and a bit of electronics with an outer shell around those. Think underwater golf cart more than submarine.

Offline sanman

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Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1138 on: 08/28/2017 08:13 pm »
Some company called Tenfold Engineering makes these building structures which unfold:



Could this be a way to build living quarters on Mars? I wonder if their technology resulted as a spin-off from space hab research?

I would've preferred Thunderbirds theme music, btw.
« Last Edit: 08/28/2017 08:17 pm by sanman »

Offline whitelancer64

Re: Envisioning Amazing Martian Habitats
« Reply #1139 on: 08/28/2017 08:50 pm »
Some company called Tenfold Engineering makes these building structures which unfold:

**Youtube Vid**

Could this be a way to build living quarters on Mars? I wonder if their technology resulted as a spin-off from space hab research?

I would've preferred Thunderbirds theme music, btw.

It's nice, but remember, all that would need to be unfolding inside a pressure vessel.
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