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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:01pm PT
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Mars will be the central processing and manufacturing area. The 22nd century China if you will. Concentrated ores will be launched from the mining operations on asteroids with rail guns to either mars orbit or in ballistic containers with parachutes to Mars surface . Processed goods can be launched via the same rail gun method to earth or any other outpost in sol's system.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:06pm PT
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such a romantic, Rick... but there's a road I go down every day to work, Tesla Rd.
In the quaint, and practical manner of 19th century road names, Tesla Rd. heads out of Livermore to the town of Tesla, up in the hills to the east of Livermore. The town is abandoned over a century ago, but was the site of the first coal mine in California...
http://www.teslacoalmines.org/Tesla.html
It's odd that they couldn't make it financially viable, of course there were no roads in and out of the area, and the rail came close by but not into the canyon. And that little bit of difficulty made the coal mined there costly, more than shipping it on schooner, around the Horn from Czechoslovakia. Imported coal was easier to get than overcoming the logistics of moving Tesla's coal from the hills that are now an easy bike ride to get to...
The raw materials were sitting there, and they were valuable to the people of the San Francisco Bay area, and various captains of industry tried to make it work... but for the economics of something as banal as moving the coal out of those rugged hills...
I cannot think of one mineral that you could extract on Mars that wouldn't be much much less expensive to extract on the Earth. And aside from running out of minerals on the Earth (which I believe you have indicated is an absurd premise from past discussions we've had, in which you stated your belief in the infinite bounty here on Earth) there doesn't seem like much of a reason to get if from Mars.
You can't even get coal to market from the Livermore Hills to the Bay Area.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:13pm PT
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If they found a Diamond Mine on the Moon
that had Huge flawless diamonds just sitting there and the Astronauts could fill buckets of them,
and they sent 1000s of lbs of them back to earth
The cost of those diamonds would be 1000s times the cost of regular diamonds
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:19pm PT
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In the 22nd century Mars will gain independence from Earth. No war will be fought over it's rejection of it's colonial status because as Ed points out it is simply to expensive. The Martian population will grow in leaps and bounds and, never abandoning their frontier spirit, will quickly colonize the rest of Sol's system. The first interstellar ships will be launched from Titan or Europa sometime in the 23rd century. By this time Earth will be populated with nothing but can't do crybaby losers with their thumbs up their butts.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:21pm PT
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....will their Mom's ask the Earthlings to send snacks?
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:24pm PT
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Certainly space mining for local consumption by settlers will be critical to the success of settling.. but trade with other planets? Hard to imagine something worth it.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:30pm PT
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Necessity is the mother fooker of invention. With the abandonment of Earth and it's loser population Mars will be manufacturing central. Considering it's low gravity, freight will be exponentially cheaper to deliver from there over export from Earth. And the Bundy's will still be in Malheur supported by the kindness of tourists throwing snacks to the oddballs that managed a multi generational protest.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:40pm PT
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Name a material with enough value to make even looking for it out there worthwhile.
Antimatter. $300 trillion per gram. pretty Big Bang for the buck.
Taaffeite, a gem mineral, $20,000 per gram. pretty purple color.
Tritium, $30,000 per gram. Exit lights use it.
Californium 252 $300,000 per gram. Produced in the lab or supernovae. Used in detectors. The largest ammount ever produced is 10 milligrams.
Diamonds. $65,000 per gram. Bling.
Painite, another gem, $300,000 per gram. Also purple.
All of these make Rhino horn, plutonium, platinum, gold, LSD, and crack cocaine seem like chump change.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 11, 2016 - 07:56pm PT
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It's entertainment, or should be seen as such Moose. Certainly better than wandering around in paranoia expecting the sky to fall, or the pissing matches and endless name calling on the political threads...although that can sometime be fun to.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:06pm PT
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Agreed Moose. Though let me add, vision is a prospect of the frontier(s). To the rest of you prophets of doom: Put away your angst for a moment in time and instead of reasoning why it can't be done theorize over how it can be done.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:08pm PT
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I have a specimen of Painite, several carats
The rarest gemstone according to some
I do want a crystal of Taaffeite, so rare, so desirable
I collect rare minerals, so have many of the rest
no anti-matter or tritium
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:11pm PT
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we only have so many hours to live and then we are dead...
choose your dreams wisely
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:20pm PT
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Craig, we'll sling shot you a huge and perfect specimen from the belt. But wear protective gear as you open the asbestos capsule.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:22pm PT
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I won't hold my breath rick
But get this!!
I have a chunk of the Russian Chelyabinsk meteor
the one that blew up over Russia a couple years ago
and this new info about some tektites I have being from the Moon!!
So much great stuff here on the earth, why go anywhere else.
You know what's scary? Being in outer space in a tin can.
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clifff
Mountain climber
golden, rollin hills of California
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:35pm PT
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By using the same type of gravity assists that are used to speed space probes to the outer solar system; planets can be moved. Mars and Venus could be moved into Earth's orbit (there's plenty of room with 580 million miles of orbit). And when the Sun heats up, all 3 planets could be moved further out.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14983-moving-the-earth-a-planetary-survival-guide/
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:43pm PT
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So much great stuff here on the earth, why go anywhere else
+1
But you know, it's a bureaucratic way of leveraging more funds.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:51pm PT
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Without a vision (even not very realistic) we are as good as dead.
This is what all old people start realizing. That is atleast the ones that don't know there is a plan.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan 11, 2016 - 08:56pm PT
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Certainly space mining for local consumption by settlers will be critical to the success of settling..
Oh no doubt, and they'll certainly find the ingredient to cure cancer. SO WE'LL HAVE TO GO.,HA
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jan 11, 2016 - 09:23pm PT
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We have to first decide that we are not just exploring the red planet, but rather colonizing it. This dictates maximum efficiency in every payload we send there. For example; after a number of robotic scouting missions to identify the wettest of the orbitally located wet areas the machines should converge at the chosen location for future surface transport/prospecting. The first habitat mission could be a nuclear powered tunneling machine. The tunnel length should be long enough to isolate the reactor from habitation zones. The tunneling equipment could be designed for disassembly and reassembly into airlock, habitat structure, and the all important electrolysis apparatus to produce fuel and oxygen for combining with other Martian atmospheric components into breathable air. The nuclear reactor should be sized to provide ample power for all operations.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Jan 12, 2016 - 02:09am PT
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I think the nuclear reactor is harder than at first glance. An ordinary reactor would require lots of heavy shielding or fry the electronics on a robotic mission. No way it would fly with humans on board.
Right now what we send into space Are Peltier thermopiles surrounding a chunk of Plutonium 238, which mostly emits just alpha particles that are easy to shield. Aluminum foil will do it. Even skin will stop Apha particles. Breathing them in though, is pretty bad.
Trouble is, there's only a couple hundred pounds of it in the World as a byproduct of refining pu 239 for bombs. We have maybe 90 pounds ( 2/3 reserved for spy missions) and the Russians have the rest, mostly from re-refining their scrapped warheads. There aren't reactors currently in use that make plutonium. And most of what we have is already spoken for for future missions. We bought some from the Russians for the 11 pound pile on the curiosity rover.
http://www.popsci.com/nasa-can-make-3-more-nuclear-batteries-and-thats-it
And making the stuff is messy. We have $100 million committed to researching making more in Idaho or Savannah by cleaner methods, but it's not like the Halcyon days at Hanford. I probably should have put it on the list of expensive stuff worth leaving the planet for.
Also, the energy density of those batteries isn't very high. The Curiosity rover 11 lb. pile only produces 125 watts.
Solar might be a better option on Mars even with long nights in winter.
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