Author Topic: Other than earth where is the best place to live?  (Read 44137 times)

Offline yinzer

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #80 on: 06/25/2009 10:07 pm »
Would it be possible to use the terrain to our advantage on the Moon or Mars?  For instance, could a small crater on the moon be "capped" with a dome and serve as a habitat?  Would it be possible to irradiate the lunar regolith and reduce the dust?  Would it be possible to break down the O2 in the soil enough to make a biosphere in the dome? 

That way you do not have to "live indoors" all the time.

What do you think?

Pressurized domes are more difficult than they appear.  The force of atmospheric pressure tries to lift the dome off the surface, so it has to be very securely anchored to the ground around its perimeter.  If you do the math to find out how securely, the numbers get very ugly.  When you realize that planetary surfaces are not very strong in tension, it's even worse.
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Offline HarryM

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #81 on: 06/25/2009 11:31 pm »
If you insisted on having a dome type of structure, it would make more sense to make a giant inflatable sphere, the upper part clear, the whole thing resting in a crater. You could even make some sort of spherical girder like structure that you would inflate the sphere within to add some extra rigidity.

Offline mlorrey

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #82 on: 06/26/2009 01:06 am »
If you insisted on having a dome type of structure, it would make more sense to make a giant inflatable sphere, the upper part clear, the whole thing resting in a crater. You could even make some sort of spherical girder like structure that you would inflate the sphere within to add some extra rigidity.

Yeah, and have the bottom part be a big pond to raise trout or other fish in, along with algae ponds around the circumference to process wastewater.

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Offline Vacuum.Head

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #83 on: 06/26/2009 02:35 am »
Would it be possible to use the terrain to our advantage on the Moon or Mars?  For instance, could a small crater on the moon be "capped" with a dome and serve as a habitat?  Would it be possible to irradiate the lunar regolith and reduce the dust?  Would it be possible to break down the O2 in the soil enough to make a biosphere in the dome? 

That way you do not have to "live indoors" all the time.

What do you think?

Something like this:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/LANTR.html
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Offline NUAETIUS

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #84 on: 06/26/2009 03:04 am »
Would it be possible to use the terrain to our advantage on the Moon or Mars?  For instance, could a small crater on the moon be "capped" with a dome and serve as a habitat?  Would it be possible to irradiate the lunar regolith and reduce the dust?  Would it be possible to break down the O2 in the soil enough to make a biosphere in the dome? 

That way you do not have to "live indoors" all the time.

What do you think?
I especially like Stickney crater on Phobos. The crater walls provide lots of protection. Phobos is tide locked with Mars, so Mars always hovers in the sky above Stickney's eastern wall. Since Mars is so close, it's large in the sky and also provides some protection.

Sink holes have always been my favorite.  Easier to install a dome on because the forces can be expelled into the walls, better radiation resistance than a crater.  Depth makes it easier to tunnel for expansion without worry of out gassing.   Depending on depth of hole, you might be able to keep hundreds of people based it one.  Walls can act as a heat battery so that the habs to not need as much insulation.  Sink holes are not uncommon on both Mars and the Moon.
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Offline GI-Thruster

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #85 on: 06/26/2009 03:05 pm »
We're so accustomed to thinking we need to stay shielded and away from fission reactors, I wonder if this has created a blind side.  Is it possible to live right on top of one?  Put enough shielding over it to keep everyone safe but put a dome settlement right on top of the reactor and use the dome floor as the heat sink, so the entire dome is heated from below ground.  Now you can grow your asparagus and Lunar Salmon.

Is cooling a fission reactor like that possible?  I remember Vanilla making a stromng case about how difficult radiator cooling on the Moon is to begin with so perhaps conductive cooling like this would be more efficient?

Offline Cinder

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #86 on: 06/26/2009 09:41 pm »
Hasn't there been evidence that particle hits on the surface of the Moon could be very common?  That would rule out transluscent domes.
« Last Edit: 06/26/2009 09:41 pm by Cinder »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #87 on: 06/27/2009 03:21 pm »
Could there be a dome within a dome?  The outer one in vacuum for radiation and particle hits, and translucent for some light.  The inner one for atmosphere, securely anchored.
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Offline NUAETIUS

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #88 on: 06/27/2009 07:31 pm »
Could there be a dome within a dome?  The outer one in vacuum for radiation and particle hits, and translucent for some light.  The inner one for atmosphere, securely anchored.

Yes, anything is possible, but you are talking about a lot of construction there.  Building a dome larger than the Bird's Nest in China, on Mars, will be a little bit of a challenge. 

Simpler and smaller is more likely in our lifetime.
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Offline jongoff

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #89 on: 06/27/2009 11:09 pm »
I ask again, is there hydrogen in the atmosphere of Venus? It's pretty essential for humans you know, and Mars has it.

There is in the form of sulphuric acid.  Not the nicest chemical in the universe, but between that, the nitrogen, and the CO2, you have the vast majority of the material you need to build rather big colonies. 

I've always liked the point that the exterior shell of the colony isn't actually a pressure vessel (since the dP across the wall is basically zero).

But you have almost all the building blocks you need for plastics, composites, nanotubes, etc.  You still need some source of metals, but likely far less than you'd need to import to get mining, refining, and processing going on some place like Mars or elsewhere.  Think of it as a carbon-fiber composite (with sulfurcrete) city, with metal mostly being for wires, and things that have to be metal.

~Jon

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #90 on: 06/28/2009 02:46 am »

But you have almost all the building blocks you need for plastics, composites, nanotubes, etc.  You still need some source of metals, but likely far less than you'd need to import to get mining, refining, and processing going on some place like Mars or elsewhere.  Think of it as a carbon-fiber composite (with sulfurcrete) city, with metal mostly being for wires, and things that have to be metal.

~Jon

Graphite and Carbon nanotubes can be good conductors of electricity.

Offline GI-Thruster

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #91 on: 06/28/2009 04:55 am »
If USG ever get serious about energy policy, we may see real investment in ultra-conducting polymers.  It's a long time now that we've known cheap garbage plastic can be made to ultra-conduct, meaning not a real superconductor but able to conduct 100,000X better than copper and weigh a tiny fraction as much.  Trouble is, we only know how to make it in sheets and the stuff is highly anisotropic.  It will take a couple tens of millions to turn it into wire but that would eliminate many of the needs for metals.

On the other hand, non-conducting glass metals might end up finding much higher use.  So in a sense, metals and plastics could easily change places.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #92 on: 06/28/2009 03:45 pm »
I was thinking that an early colony wouldn't have a dome any larger than the Bird's nest.  And I like geodesic domes becaue the different strut sizes are limited in number.  Part of the bootstrap process may be that the struts are launched from Earth, and the glass made on site.
« Last Edit: 06/29/2009 02:25 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Zachstar

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #93 on: 06/28/2009 07:33 pm »
By far the best idea is self building colonies in orbit.

By the time we are actually ready to send more than a few astronauts out. Robotic technology will have grown astronomically. To the point where tiny robots make other tiny robots. (This is not going to become a conversation about the ethics of "grey goo" btw)

What will start as self building towns growing from beaches leeching materials from the seafloor and seawater will predate colonies in orbit converting any material delivered to it into living space and facilities.

If you have not noticed yet. This is stuff atleast 50-100 years away. There is just so many problems to address. But it to me is far more realistic then trying to build a colony on mars using traditional methods.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #94 on: 06/29/2009 02:28 pm »
Well, avoiding the idea of nano-machines building the colony, what about robots building, say, the struts and glass panels for these various geodesic domes?  Get the big, heavy, repetitive pieces done robotically.  Then the humans come and install the air conditioners and lounge chairs.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Zachstar

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #95 on: 06/29/2009 08:19 pm »
Because that simply will not be the norm. You don't pay somebody to install an air conditioner when a robot can do it perfectly every time.

And its kind of hard to ignore nano-machines when they already exist now. Yes they wont be building anything big for a few decades but its not like they are just going to go away.

I see lots of attempts to "make-believe" robots will just go away and not change the workforce. Such thoughts are BS for if we don't use them China will.

And Geodesic domes? A bit too much science fiction there no? Maybe in a fashion colony but I do not see that being the norm for the average living colony where people will spend part of the day with the hardest work maybe fixing a few robots because the normal repair systems are busy. Then going back to playing that times version of X-box for the rest of the day. Its actually hilarious that people think that any colony is going to be lush in fields or scenic views when your average joe would not give a heck about them. With population growing at an extreme rate there is going to be very little care about scenic views.

Offline GI-Thruster

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #96 on: 06/29/2009 08:28 pm »
The trouble with nanobots is their very limited energy.  There's lots of fiction going back decades concerning nanobots building stuff.  But you need to remember, they need to get their energy from somewhere and when it comes right down to it, moving so much material requires so much energy and you can't avoid this.  Fact is machines built on the nanoscale are going to have serious power limitations.  Getting one to lift and position a grain of sand intelligently is likely NEVER going to happen.  Making things small mostly means making them stupid, and who wants a stupid construction engineer?

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #97 on: 06/29/2009 08:58 pm »
{snip}Making things small mostly means making them stupid, and who wants a stupid construction engineer?

The construction engineer does not need to be the same size as the construction worker.

Queen ants are bigger than worker ants.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #98 on: 06/30/2009 03:01 am »
About the air conditioners.  Maybe I shoulda just said, lounge chairs.  And maybe the robots install those also.  After all, the movers put the lounge chair in your house, then you arrange it where you want.   So the robots do all the work, and what again, do the people do?  This gets back to one of the big objections to colonization anyhow... What do the people do?  Which makes me wonder what is it that people do here on Earth?  Which makes me start thinking about a new thread along these lines.

But I don't think nano-machines are going away either.  Maybe in fact, they build the geodesic struts, and the robots assemble them.  And from what I've read of Freitas' work, power distribution and heat dissipation are big problems for macro scale items.  Without getting too into nano-construction, maybe a strut is "grown" on a conveyor belt, radially from the inside out.  As the diameter increases, more nano-machines can access the growing surface and apply their bits of metal and plastic.  When it's done, the conveyor takes it to the robots, who assemble the struts.

I could see nano-machines being used to fuse large landing pads, building in lights and other accessories within the regolith.  Don't know how, tho.

Part of the schtick here is the "fashion" colony.  Or at least the "hotel" part, where the ultra-rich tourists who are helping to pay for all this can visit.  It is interesting to note that tourists care about the views, and the regular joes have all the blinds dropped on every window in the house.

But Zachstar, what do you mean when you say:  "With the population growing at an extreme rate..."  The population of the colony?  Earth?
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline khallow

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Re: Other than earth where is the best place to live?
« Reply #99 on: 06/30/2009 11:51 pm »
Because that simply will not be the norm. You don't pay somebody to install an air conditioner when a robot can do it perfectly every time.

Sure you do, when the human is a lot cheaper than the robot.  That's probably not going to be the case anywhere where human space is extremely scarce (eg, the Moon), but it is worth remembering for the next comment I'll make.

Quote
I see lots of attempts to "make-believe" robots will just go away and not change the workforce. Such thoughts are BS for if we don't use them China will.

China has roughly a sixth of the world's supply of relatively cheap labor. They have no incentive to invent such robots. Japan is the one to watch on this front.

The trouble with nanobots is their very limited energy.  There's lots of fiction going back decades concerning nanobots building stuff.  But you need to remember, they need to get their energy from somewhere and when it comes right down to it, moving so much material requires so much energy and you can't avoid this.  Fact is machines built on the nanoscale are going to have serious power limitations.  Getting one to lift and position a grain of sand intelligently is likely NEVER going to happen.  Making things small mostly means making them stupid, and who wants a stupid construction engineer?

GI Thruster, you're made out of stupid nanobots. The key is collective behavior. A single nanobot, for example, a single human cell, simply won't be very effective for the above reasons. A few trillion nanobots (the human body happens to contain somewhere around 10 trillion cells) operating in concert can be far more effective at obtaining enough energy, doing things, and even engaging in various forms of thinking and reasoning. That's the difference between a human cell and an effective, durable human body.
Karl Hallowell

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