221–230 of 393 posts
The dangers of radiation on Mars are greatly exaggerated. The dangers of low gravity on Titan and elsewhere are greatly understated, as is the immense distance between Mars and Titan. A floating habitat on Venus is harder and less attractive in every way than a rotating space station, which is clearly our next milestone in space. In terms of planets though, there's a reason Mars gets the most attention: it's obviousl…
The dangers of radiation on Mars are greatly exaggerated. The dangers of low gravity on Titan and elsewhere are greatly understated, as is the immense distance between Mars and Titan. A floating habitat on Venus is harder and less attractive in every way than a rotating space station, which is clearly our next milestone in space. In terms of planets though, there's a reason Mars gets the most attention: it's obviousl…
Unless you think that the Moon is the obvious next milestone in space.
Am I missing something here? "On the surface, vast quantities of hydrocarbons in solid and liquid form lie ready to be used for energy. Although the atmosphere lacks oxygen, water ice just below the surface could be used to provide oxygen for breathing and to combust hydrocarbons as fuel. " [my emphasis.] They are proposing splitting water to get oxygen for burning hydrocarbons to produce energy - but splitting water…
Say you split some water ice using energy from you nuclear reactor (or possibly even a turbine in your methanoelectric dam!) and store the pressurized oxygen.
Then you can use the stored oxygen with methane from the atmosphere to provide a lot of energy where needed, possibly far away from your main nuclear reactor, dam on a liquid methane river or other non-portable energy sources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you think that the Moon is the obvious next milestone in space.
The only thing going for the moon is its proximity to Earth. Mars has more than double the gravity of the moon, an atmosphere, nearly earth-like day night cycle and satellites have a much easier time orbiting mars
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Exactly. Very few people get this. Fahrenheit is better for communicating temperatures in daily life. Literally the entire rest of the world disagrees with you I've never needed a less than 1 degree unit for describing temperature, except in scientific contexts, where using 2 decimal places is fine I don't see why "100 ~= body temperature (with fever)" is a useful scale point. Or why 32F = freezing is useful in dai…
Normal body temperature was defined† in Celsius, at 37ºC; this explains the decimal when used in Fahrenheit (98.6F). So even that argument of convenience doesn't hold. † Yes everyone's baseline temperature is slightly different, but that just makes the decimal on the Fahrenheit scale look even sillier. And fever definitions are also keyed off of Celsius: 37º to 38º is "low grade". Sure, it's an arbitrary convention b…
But why is 100 ~= body temperature more useful than 100 = boiling water?
Why is 50 being kind of cold more useful than 10?
I don't get this "Fahrenheit numbers are more useful/convenient/understandable" argument
Two thoughts on this topic: 1. The film Gattaca (1997), in addition to being an excellent, inspiring film all around, centers on an aspiring astronaut's upcoming trip to Titan. Highly recommended. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA 2. The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization, but…
Venus has the very big advantage of having allmost earths g. That is a big deal. The very big disadvantage except the atmosphere is the lenght of a venus day: 116 earth days and 18 hours. So a science fiction solution is asteroid bombardment to make venus spin faster ..
This reminds me of Wanderers, by Erik Wernquist. https://vimeo.com/108650530 There's a scene at the end when one of our future generation looks at the surface of Saturn while standing on a station floating atop a Saturnian moon. Very motivational. Other videos by Erik Wernquist are motivational too: New Horizons: https://vimeo.com/132183032
The rings would be much too big to be seen like this from Titan, not to mention the Titan atosphere being pretty hazy.
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Why not do both?
Building an outpost in Earth orbit that requires constant maintenance and supplies from the ground is just barely achievable right now and cost billions of dollars. We call it the ISS. The horizon to a self-sufficient orbital settlement is still decades off. A self-sufficient colony on any other planet or moon is way beyond that capability. It's not about doing one thing or another, it's one thing is a fantasy in the…
We now have something much closer true reusable rockets from two private, competing companies that are both squarely focused on dropping the cost of launches. If a single party were to utilize them to build an ISS equivalent today, it’d undoubtedly be much much cheaper, and that’s just today. These companies have rockets on the horizon that would make space stations cheaper to build than settlements in some places on Earth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you think that the Moon is the obvious next milestone in space.
The only thing going for the moon is its proximity to Earth. Mars has more than double the gravity of the moon, an atmosphere, nearly earth-like day night cycle and satellites have a much easier time orbiting mars
Solar power and batteries should work assuming you're willing to build your base among the "peaks of [near] eternal light" which get sunshine nearly ninety percent of the time.
The dangers of radiation on Mars are greatly exaggerated. The dangers of low gravity on Titan and elsewhere are greatly understated, as is the immense distance between Mars and Titan. A floating habitat on Venus is harder and less attractive in every way than a rotating space station, which is clearly our next milestone in space. In terms of planets though, there's a reason Mars gets the most attention: it's obviousl…