Has anyone else heard that we are going to try to send greenhouse gases into the near future to Mars, and try to heat up the Atmosphere so the Ice Caps will melt and create life? Then it would be inhabitable by humans and we will become martians 8)
The near future sounds rather hopeful. I suspect it’s a problem of infrastructure rather than technology.
Commercial interests seem to be the best way of improving ‘local’ space travel. Commercially successful orbital and sub-orbital flight, even if only for the very rich, will pay for developments in the relevant technology. I think (and hope) that space travel will follow a similar development pattern to commercial aviation. The major difference is that there will be far less military contribution towards manned space-flight than there was for manned flight. However, the military influence on satellite development is tremendous.
This is the kind of thing one of my lecturers was well into. Basically, it’s fairly accepted that sooner or later, if we expect to continue to exist on this planet, we’re boned. So we should really be thinking about building the space infrastructure to move, or more likely, share the burden of supporting mankind.
Terraforming I suppose would be pretty tough - so why not move all the dirtiest industries on the planet off to the Moon, Mars or even just plain old orbit.
One idea for power generation - built a huge (many kilometres long) solar array in orbit, and beam the power back by microwave to a ground station. Clean, sustainable (as long as the sun keeps burning!) energy.
Polluting industries? Do it in orbit or on Mars or the Moon. No atmosphere to pollute anyway. Or better still - use the near endless supply of electrical energy attainable with large solar arrays to run closed loop processes. Look at the life support systems on Mir and the ISS. You can use the Sabatier process to get oxygen back from CO2 quite nicely. (on Mir they also used to do electrolysis on their own piss to get oxygen for the crew to breathe…)
Need minerals? Don’t go to the expense of launching them from Earth - mine them from the moon or Mars themselves by the hundreds of tons.
Of course, all of this is prohibitively expensive but surely a far better idea to preserve the existing atmosphere on Earth than go to the expense of creating a new on Mars. The technology to put industry in space is probably far less involved than that for terraforming Mars!
But hey, putting industry in space and on other planets first (in as CLEAN, sustainable way as possible) would be a good stepping stone to yes, eventually terraforming Mars. I mean, heck, why not?
I’m not a scientist who can understand such things as creating a new atmosphere, but I’ve sat through enough lectures listening to evangelising about, and passed enough exams on, space infrastructure to know it’s going to need a lot of infrastructure to even reliably get to Mars on a regular basis, and terraforming should probably the ultimate goal (if physics allows) but not achievable in the near future. But maybe a good time to start building towards it is now, since if we keep going the way we’re going with this planet, we’re boned.
In the mean time, let’s have a big rotating space station (for aritifical gravity) to screw rich people out of their tourist dollars to pay for all this!!!
Is that possible?
Physically? Maybe so although obviously nobody has ever done it! The lecturer knows his stuff and the idea has been proposed by serious scientists so make of that what you will.
But of course, the infrastructure does not exist to put so many sections into space to make such a large structure. And at the rate NASA is going (and hey, it’s not just their fault since nobody else is even in the game anymore) I doubt the infrastructure will exist to support the ISS for much longer, nevermind the construction of a prototype solar array. But it’s a tempting thought. With enough clean electrical energy, you can do all sorts of good to clean up your other industrial processes. Given enough power, we could do away with petrol and diesel and run vehicles off fuel cells. And the energy needed to make the fuel cells will of course be entirely clean! We could run Sabatier reactors to turn CO2 and H2 into O2 and CH4 (not sure you’d want or need to but the option’s there!). We could turn H2O into O2 for not cost in pollution. Basically, with enough electrical energy, you can make things closed loop - you just provide the food! 
Of all of the things you can do in space, I think “clean” energy is the most tempting because it allows you to do pretty much anything you want. In the dire situation we’re rapidly heading towards in the next hundred years or two, it HAS to be worth a try, doesn’t it?
BLIMEY! There’s even patents out on it…
Ironman probably invented it so it MUST work. 
Cheers for that, you live and learn eh?
As Clarke pointed out, as soon as everybody stops laughing and thinks “Hmm, a space elevator really might not be a bad idea…”, off-world industry will probably take off. Once you’ve got past the enormous initial investment of actually setting up the initial infrastructure many things should become cheaper. For example mining asteroids for ore and then refining them, an anaerobic environment could make production of pure metals easier - no oxidisation.
Assembling major spacecraft in moon orbit rather than earth orbit also makes a lot of sense. Once you’ve paid for the infrastructure (really big railgun) it’s practically free to launch spacecraft from the surface of the moon into orbit. Plus I rather suspect the escape velocity needed from the moon will be substantially less than from the earth.
Right.
-
Taking gases to mars - that’s a no-goer, simply due to the volumes and times required. Mars has a thin atmosphere made from mostly CO2.
-
Mining on the moon - the issue is transporting thousands of tonnes of stuff back to Earth - it´s just not feasible.
-
Solar power microwaved down to Earth - yes in principal but the issue is what happens if the beam is misdirected and fries a major metropolitan area?
The Russians tried the mirror thing, I don’t think it panned out.
There is a similar system in America with guided mirrors all pointing at a single point to produce power, that made less power than was needed to power itself!!!
Although in the Pyrenies there is a solar furnace which is basically a concave mirror directing the light to one point for heating up test metals and similar experiments.
As has been said, if the beam swung away from it’s touch down point…Well.
And would any one allow this potential weapon up there!!!?
Having read the (suprisingly informative!) Wiki on the subject, it seems the antenna array for the microwave “downlink” is actually rather large, and there is mention that you could continue argricultural activity beneath it. Presumably the power densities are as such not quite “weapons grade”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Power_Satellite#Safety
Safety
The use of microwave transmission of power has been the most controversial item concerning SPS development, but the incineration of anything which strays into the beam’s path is an extreme misconception. The beam’s most intense section (the center) is far below the lethal levels of concentration even for an exposure which has been prolonged indefinitely. Furthermore, the possibility of exposure to the intense center of the beam can easily be controlled on the ground and an airplane flying through the beam surrounds its passengers with a protective layer of metal, which will intercept the microwaves. Over 95% of the beam will fall on the rectenna. The remaining microwaves will be dispersed to low concentrations well within standards currently imposed upon microwave emissions around the world. However, most people agree that further research needs to be done on the effects of these stray microwaves upon the environment. Likewise, more research upon the effects of microwave transmission has upon the atmosphere needs to be carried out extensively.The intensity of microwaves at ground level that would be used in the center of the beam can be designed into the system, but is likely to be comparable to that used by mobile phones. The microwaves must not be too intense to avoid injury to wildlife, particularly birds. Experiments with deliberate irradiation with microwaves at reasonable levels have failed to show any negative effects even over multiple generations.
Some have suggested locating rectennas offshore, but this presents problems of its own.
A commonly proposed approach to ensuring fail-safe beam targeting is to use a retrodirective phased array antenna/rectenna. A “pilot” microwave beam is emitted from the center of the rectenna on the ground to establish a phase front at the transmitting antenna, where circuits in each of the antenna’s subarrays compare the pilot beam’s phase front with an internal clock phase to use as a reference to control the phase of the outgoing signal. This allows the transmitted beam to be centered precisely on the rectenna and to have a high degree of phase uniformity, but if the pilot beam is lost for any reason (if the transmitting antenna is turned away from the rectenna, for example) the phase control system fails and the microwave power beam is automatically defocused. Such a system would be physically incapable of focusing its power beam anywhere that did not have a pilot beam transmitter.
It is important for the system that as much of the microwave radiation as possible is focused on the rectenna as that increases the transmission efficiency. Outside of the rectenna the microwave levels rapidly decrease, nearby towns or cities should be completely unaffected.
The long term effects of beaming power through the ionosphere in the form of microwaves has yet to be studied.
I think the idea is to create it over there - some combination of thermonuclear weapons and carbonate rocks rings a bell.
The Idea is not impossible, nothing is immpossible except for understanding women.
Well i think that will be in the very far future , do you have any sources or ideas on how they will send the green house gases to mars ?
If the down link isn’t that strong then…wheres the benefit?
Where did you hear this ? , because alot of scientists and meteorologists say they will do things and experiments or even predicting space disasters but it never happens… :lol: 8)
Several gigawatts of power!!! But because the area of the receiving antenna array (lots of poles joined by wire, rather than a big dish, much like that weird radio telescopey place on the West edge of the M1 in the Midlands I presume) is over several kilometres, the power intensity is reasonably low. Intensity low. Total power - huge!
Several gigawatts of power!!! But because the area of the receiving antenna array (lots of poles joined by wire, rather than a big dish, much like that weird radio telescopey place on the West edge of the M1 in the Midlands I presume) is over several kilometres, the power intensity is reasonably low. Intensity low. Total power - huge![/quote]
If it’s 1GW per km^2, that’s 1kw/m^2. If you lie down, you’re covering an area of about .75m^2, so are receiving power at 750W. This is your average microwave oven, and would make you toasty warm and kill you. Would you sit in a microwave oven?
Erm, in light of what you just said, I wont be doing any more.