Water extraction on Mars for an expanding human colony
fermatslibrary.com
fermatslibrary.com
1) Drinking, hygiene, "everyday living": 0.07 kg/hr/person
2.1) Regolith processing: negligible.
2.2) Manufacturing: 0.04 kg/hr/person
2.3) Perchlorate remediation: negligible.
2.4) Plant growth: 0.003 kg/hr/person
2.5) Habitat maintenance: 0.01 kg/hr/person
Total: 0.123 kg/hr/person
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In-situ sources:
3) Atmospheric processing (MARRS): 0.02 kg/hr/person
4.1) Robotic extractor (MISWE): 0.2 kg/hr
4.1) Bore hole digging rover w/ microwave heating: 0.3 kg/hr
4.2) Hothouse: 2.08 kg/hr (implied from Table 3)
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Questions abound. Why are important quantities such as 2.2) and 3) estimated per person when their link to population size is very unclear? Why is the reserve in Fig. 1 an afterthought (sufficient for 6 months minimum consumption at best) when mission frequency is stated to be two years? Etc.
The answer for 2.2) seems to be that this water would be mostly related to concrete production for habitat construction/maintenance. More people means more construction/maintenance.
See: "Concrete production will most likely use the most water out of all the manufactured materials because that water isn’t easily reclaimed. And, although there may be more need for manufactured products towards the early stages of the colony, the amount required will be normalized to the amount of people in the colony."
The explanation for 3) appears to be that this water is a byproduct of oxygen production, which occurs in proportion to oxygen consumption, which should be proportional to population size.
See: "This amount relates to the water that would be extracted from the atmosphere during the process of extracting the required oxygen for breathable air (Wieland, 1998)."
2.2) New construction should depend on population growth not population levels. In table 1, the population growth rate varies between 20% and 100% per mission, so it's hard to see the ratio (new construction)/population staying constant.
3) This assumes that a) all oxygen is produced from the atmosphere, none from the soil, plants etc. b) there will be no oxygen demand from manufacturing etc. Both assumptions seem quite tenuous.
> "The amount of water needed for extended human survival is around 0.6 kg/hr/person which includes water for consumption, hygiene, and everyday living in space (Bobe et al., 2007; Horneck et al., 2003, 2006). This estimate is based on space station living and, assuming water consumption is less in a micro-gravity environment, would increase up to 0.7 kg/hr/person to account for living with gravity. The amount required if demands from a growing colony (regolith processing, manufacturing, perchlorate remediation, plant growth, habitat maintenance, etc.) are added to human needs is estimated at 1.2 kg/hr/person."
It is the single most beneficial act to the survival likelihood of the human species that seems available to us.
If your Mars colony is just a PR^H^H national pride game - you've got a handful of people, some high-school kids' plant experiment and the Little Box with the Antenna some TLA agency asked you to leave behind - then sure, it would be no more expensive than the SDI, the Libyan war or any other stupid boondoggle we can apparently afford.
If you want an actual self-sufficient colony, you've got a much bigger project. I don't think we know what is actually required to create a self-sustaining technical culture in space, because we've only really done it by accident and not in space. But this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic... is as decent a hand-wavey starting point as any. And it is quite a bit more resource-intensive than a few kilopeople/few percent of organized human output.
Good point. And arguably that's actually happening.
Diversity of thought and culture is a huge survival benefit, and to fulfill the western fantasy of poverty eradication we would have to impose a new set of values and thoughts upon all those affected. It would have to be built on the destruction of diversity that is of higher utility than those people's welbeing.
But this is admittedly, from a perspective that would be cruel to a great many people.
I can see strong arguments for modifying cultures worldwide to lower poverty, but only in ways that promote that they find their own varied and unique solutions to the problems, rather than imposing a single solution.
(For example, think about genetically modified super-disease. And consider how much easier it could become to make one.)
And what feeds terrorism? Poverty and injustice.
Frankly, I guess I'll sound like a broken record, but if we're worried about the future then there's no bigger imminent threat than CO2. Left unchecked, every major coastal cities in the world will be underwater by 3000.
* Besides, are you seriously saying that "non-Western" cultures should remain poverty-stricken so that the "Western culture" can benefit from the resulting diversity? This is wrong on so many levels.
You hit the nail on the head here. The problem is not that we should or should not be helping them, but rather that we ACTIVELY and WILLFULLY base our economy on their continued poverty.
I think the best thing the US could do to end poverty is exit the world economy. The problem is that our standard of living and way of life is built upon the cheap labor of impoverished countries to produce the goods we consume.
I don't think western culture would benefit from such diversity. In fact the idea of diversity being a benefit is hinged upon the understanding that if western culture is not the most fit strategy, that there will be other cultures to rise when it falls.
The reason that I promote colonization as a more effective strategy then trying to fix problems here is simple:
- Attempting to fix problems here slightly improves the state of affairs, and reduces one of many possible causes for local extinction.
- Adding even one viable colony squares the chance of loss (that is an awesome improvement) and every additional colony exponentially improves on our likelihood of survival.
I don't want to save my ideology, i want to save the existence of any ideology.
Even if we assume one of the worst case scenarios of a massive asteroid impact, the earth would still be more habitable than decades of development on Mars and without massive resource outlays to get it there.
I think we should be focus on building self-reproducing tin-cans that contain a minimal human-supporting ecosystem (and humans). The problem is not finding better planets, it is about being planet-bound at all.
> people assume that their pet ideas should be everyone's.
It's not exactly a pet idea, but it is against the grain of most Human thinking, which is far more geared for tribal thinking than thinking at the species level, which is why it doesn't "boggle my mind". That said, I think is important, and arguing it's not selfish[1] by definition, as it puts one's personal, community, national, continental and/or world interests above the interests of the species, which ultimately is survival. Off-world colonies is procreation at the species level, and is the only way to prevent an extinction level event of the type that we know happen occasionally on earth.
1: I'm not trying to imply your statement is selfish as much as make a general point.
Heck, we could maybe use the same tech to both robotically plaster the deserts with solar panels. Then send those finely tuned bots up to Mars to do the same thing there.
To be fair it doesn't prevent an ELE at all, it just means that one would destroy 99.9%+ of the human species instead of 100%.
Shotgunning even a few tens of thousands of people in all directions would not meaningfully change the end result of an ELE on Earth unless you wound up with 100-200 of them on the same hospitable rock.[0]
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-number-for...
That is the difference between extinction and non-extinction. It changes what would previously have been an extinction level event into a non-extinction level event. That is, it doesn't prevent the event, it prevents it from being extinction level, which is the whole point.
> Shotgunning even a few tens of thousands of people in all directions would not meaningfully change the end result of an ELE on Earth unless you wound up with 100-200 of them on the same hospitable rock.
The point isn't to just send people to other locations, but to eventually create self-sustaining colonies. That doesn't happen without first getting people there. (and hospitable is relative).
What we could be doing is manufacturing and launching panspermia spores.
K-strategy is fine. We can launch generation ships as well. But in the absence of any conclusive evidence that a life-like complex of self-propagating chemical reactions exists anywhere else in the universe, r-strategy seems best. Assemble the minimum viable package for propagation of Earth-style life, and manufacture copies until you run out of mass.
We don't actually know whether all life in the universe could be exterminated by sterilizing just one planet. Using a similar amount of resources, we could create about 140k reasonably stable human colonies, or we could send 5 kilograms of spores towards every star in the galaxy, instructing the probe controller to shoot off a few any time it can detect liquid water.
That way, if humanity fizzles out anyway after an eon or so, there will eventually be other species to try their grasping appendages at space colonization.
We've never been back since. A moonbase is the obvious place to experiment, develop and benefit from 1/6th gravity as a staging post to Mars. We should have been there for the last 40 years.
It saddens me we're so short sighted. No votes in it?
Could we even organise a global effort? The governments would spend decades arguing over who got to make which bit.
I'm much more hopeful of the private efforts to be truthful.
There are things that make the Moon interesting, but none of them are Mars.
Mars DRM 5.0 is still for direct launch, but they keep on talking about side projects as being essential to Mars because mumble.
Also : we're all going to die. We learn to live with this idea. Why the perspective of our end as individuals could not be extended to our end as a whole?
Also : if you want to ensure humanity's long term survival, spending hundreds of billions to go live on a desert, rusty planet with an oxygen-less, tenuous atmosphere is a weird idea. If you're afraid of asteroids, build a shelter and store food.
Maybe you could argue that they're just worried about their own particular genes (i.e. the Selfish Gene), but some people certainly care about ensuring that humanity survives.
Not with that attitude.
It's not so much that we "can't agree" but more that the main argumentative mode these days is sneering and insults, occasionally backed up by mob violence. No wonder people get stubborn about sticking to their positions.
(And since you brought up the topic of sneering and insults, frankly, the only time I've felt insulted at at on this site recently was your "Not with that attitude" comment. Perhaps you're assuming some kind of ill will or political motivation on my part that was not in fact there. Regardless, your comment still reads like a sneer to me, three days later.)
So how can we change what people value, without destroying that which we are attempting to preserve?
The most universally accepted argument is that one has an obligation to one's own ancestors to maximize their chances of survival.
I consider it to be the asymptotic biological imperative. I've decided not to have children, thus I have an obligation to ensure that everybody else's children have better odds of survival.
You are also forgetting how hard it to maintain that 1g of acceleration for a long period.
What single 'world economy' is there?
It's not as if establishing an off-world colony will solve any of our actual, serious challenges (mankind's aggression, our lack of empathy, our disregard for environments around us). If anything, it will only further spread the disease known as the human condition.
It's an escapist nerd fantasy and I say this as someone who sleeps next to a copy of Dune.
- Why do humans today work so hard so that some other members of homo sapiens species can inhabit another planet? Those creatures, you, everyone you know and the entire species will be gone. Why bother to do that or anything at all? What is the end game?
- Is the decision to care about humans going to Mars made by careful & rational consideration which resulted in conclusion that members of homo sapiens species should be on Mars and that there is an objective moral duty to do so? Why pick homo sapiens species instead of some other animal species? Is it objectively true that a bio-chemical process known as a homo sapiens has intrinsic value and that everyone should work to sustain it?
And if you really feel that mankind is on the same level as every other animal on the planet, despite no other species having built skyscrapers, gone to the moon, or printed their language, then that's not even really a conversation worth having.
We can define greatness however the fuck we want, because as far as we can tell we're the only self-replicating assemblage of molecules that knows or cares what greatness even means. So if, during whatever time we're not spending making more copies of ourselves, we decide we enjoy shuffling molecules into a particular arbitrary pattern, who the fuck is going to tell us that isn't greatness? When you ask why we should bother making copies of ourselves on a different pile of dirt than the one we're currently on, you might as well be asking why we should go on making copies of ourselves at all. There is no endgame. There is only doing interesting shit, doing boring shit, and death. I choose interesting shit.
'We can define greatness however the fuck we want, because as far as we can tell we're the only self-replicating assemblage of molecules that knows or cares what greatness even means.'
'So if, during whatever time we're not spending making more copies of ourselves, we decide we enjoy shuffling molecules into a particular arbitrary pattern, who the fuck is going to tell us that isn't greatness?'
'When you ask why we should bother making copies of ourselves on a different pile of dirt than the one we're currently on, you might as well be asking why we should go on making copies of ourselves at all.'
'There is no endgame. There is only doing interesting shit, doing boring shit, and death. I choose interesting shit.'
I'm not convinced. The majority of humans are not explorers. The majority of humans like things to stay the same and like to keep doing what they've always done. The majority of humans throughout history die pretty much where they're born. Even today the majority of humans don't even move across their country. To say that humans are a race of explorers because a very small proportion of them are seems wrong.
Imagine saying that humans can't live and thrive in radioactive environment, like some fungi in Chernobyl do and therefore they are not great. Greatness means being able to live in radioactive environment.
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If I read you correctly, you are raising two arguments:
1. what does an individual gains from participating in the project
2. objectively, why homo sapiens?
Regarding 2, I would say that there is not much to say aside from that we are not objective, and would prefer it if it was “us” who got to get to Mars.
I find point 1 much more interesting, especially what it says about society. Some individuals are very interested in the colonization of space, but not all are ready to directly work on it, and others are just uninterested.
However, having a structured government and a tax system allow us to make better use of individual skills, even that of those who are not directly interested in the project. Additionally, this is the kind of project where the ROI would be very long term and hard to estimate. Large scale coordination (governments and international institution) allow to make use of the "surplus workforce" that automatization is slowly making grow.
That's standard operating procedure around here.
What's really bad is that, unlike Reddit where anyone has the ability to down-mod, on here only people with high karma (over 1000) can down-mod, yet in my experience you're much more likely to be down-modded to oblivion here for having an unpopular viewpoint, whereas on Reddit you'll get both down-mods and up-mods and generally stay neutral.
So if you think about it, the set-up here reinforces the "hive-mind" dynamic: because only high-karma people have down-mod ability, people who are popular get modded up more, and down-mod people they disagree with, and this creates a feedback loop which silences any unpopular or dissenting opinions. Over on Reddit, even though people complain a lot about a hive-mind mentality, anyone can create an account there in seconds and then has the same up-mod and down-mod ability as anyone else, as long as they don't get restricted or banned by moderators, so it's far more democratic. (And if they do get banned, they can just create another account in 10 seconds...)
My main gripe about Reddit is the sheer amount of low-value comments, with repeated remarks, jokes and puns trumping constructed and sourced arguments. It is obviously hard to find a good compromise.
But I definitely do feel the hivemind effect is greater here, at least in my personal experience (however I do not frequent /r/programming so I can't speak for that subreddit specifically). I constantly see posts down-modded here for no good reason, other than that someone doesn't like them because they go against the viewpoint of the elites here. I feel this is inevitable where you have a system where some people are "more equal" than others, as it is here. It might seem better in one way, with fewer "low-value comments" and jokes and memes and such, but it also turns into an echo chamber with misfits forced out.
A downvoted post needs someone to downvote it, and then for nobody else to upvote it.
People shouldn't downvote for disagreement, but they do. It's probably more important to upvote grey posts than complain about downvoting.
People want to leave their mark on the universe.
There's some solace in thinking about how after everyone you know and your entire species is gone, something may come across traces of your existence and give thought to who was responsible for it.
It's the same reason people draw dicks on things.
I'm referring more to when the Sun explodes and wipes out Earth or when universe goes cold, becomes inhabited by black holes, which will also be gone - a dead universe.
Definitely not within my lifetime.
Probably not within the lifetime of anyone alive today.
Politicians would rather spend money on wars.