Page:
The Real Fryed FishGod's illgitament son
1,489 posts
Location: state of confusion


Posted:
Ok so I just read an artical on mnsbc that stated some scientists think that we can "remake" Mars. Now they ae saying we can use the green house affect that is killing our planet to revive Mars...........I don't want to get into weather the method is wrong or right (but I'm sure someone will wink ) My question is do you think it is right to try and make Mars livable? I know some say it was once a living planet and so on. Personaly I'm still up in the air about it.........so yes or no and a supporting statement please.........

You can't avoid pain by fencing yourself from it.
Some times you need the help of others more than anything else
But you have to let them close enough to help......
People want to be needed, I found that out too


AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
Good luck Dave! wink It makes for interesting contemplation.
Human type consciousness without a human nervous system and brain.....hmmmmm. Maybe not! But who knows.
Apparently, there are more neuronal connections in the human brain than there are positive particles in the entire universe. How cool is that?
There are scientists out there that are just making baby steps in neuro-science! But yeh, down the road it might be possible. Who knows what the Buddhaverse holds! wink
Cheers! smile

onewheeldaveGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,252 posts
Location: sheffield, United Kingdom


Posted:
If you ever get a chance to read Frank Tiplers- 'Physics of Immortality' I recomend you do so.

A lot of it is about the computer intelligence issue.

At one point he brings up a bit of quantum physics that basically sets a limit on how much information can be stored in a given volume of space.

Then he calculates how much info a 2 m sphere can contain, thus determining the absolute maximum amount of info a human body, brain and mind could hold.

Essentially, once computers can hold and process similar quantities of data, they can achieve the kind of complexity that makes consciousness pretty much an inevitable by product.

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!


AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
Cool! I'll look for it!



You might want to check out any of the following:



Francis Crick's, "The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search For The Soul"



"Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind" by Gerald M. Edelman



"Evolution of the Brain – Creation of Self" by John C. Eccles.



Cheers!

snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
So, if we plug all our brains into a computer, or whatever. Who exactly is going to maintain the mainframe? provide fuel for electricity? fight off alien invaders? etc etc..

I suppose we could have robots for all this, but honestly, at this point it has become far more immense then the simple problem of collecting enough fuel to rocket [censored] to mars. The big question is can you terraform a planet. I think if you can, it would most likely be done via steering lots of comets into mars, to litter the surface with water, and oxygen and whatnot so you have an enviroment where plant growth can more likely succeed.

Bretchenthusiast
247 posts
Location: Cork, Ireland at present


Posted:
Sorry, havne't read all this tread, but, if we get there, will the first one 'own' it... then that creates a whoel new ball game!!!

I used to be indecisive, but I'm not so sure now.....


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
I suspect that Mars (or the Moon) would probaby wind up being a bit like antartica in that respect - no claim of ownership, but different bases with different allegences. Actually it may be far enough in the future, and getting set up there enough of a problem, that the whole colinization of Mars is such a multinational cooperative effort may just be seen as an "Earth colony". I'm pretty sure that it will present some interesting developments in how humans view each other and identify themselves with the land they live on. I'm also pretty sure that it wouldn't take too long before Mars colonies decide they have more in common with each other than any parent nation and declare their own soverienty.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
Vanize then earth sends weird cybernetic geneticaly enhanced super agents to squash the rebellion. But mars has it's own cybernetic genetically enhanced super punks! WAR IS ON 2055!

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
the biggest problem with terraforming mars is its lack of a significant magnetic field. planetary magnetic fields do nifty things like keep the atmosphere from being striped away quickly by the solar wind and stopping super harmful charged particle radiation from the sun.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
Written by: Patrick the Bonsai Badger


Have to say I agree with Socks on this one. We need to learn to live on this planet before we go screwing up another.





ACtually I beleive the inverse - that we are never going to properly understand the ecosystem we live in until we try to build one for ourselves - then we will finally start to see the true intricaies of balance and the value of moderation.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
But what about the time scale for terra-forming? Will we be able to breathe our own air here by the time Mars would be ready?

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
well, guess we better get cracking then just in case!

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
Yeah, make sure we solve our problems here and not spread like a cancer or locusts throughout the universe. wink

But just out of curiousity? How would you suggest we deal with the radiation on mars?

snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
Lead hats.

onewheeldaveGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,252 posts
Location: sheffield, United Kingdom


Posted:
Written by: snork


So, if we plug all our brains into a computer, or whatever. Who exactly is going to maintain the mainframe? provide fuel for electricity? fight off alien invaders? etc etc..







I'm envisiging that technology will progressed to the point that digital systems will use no moving parts (an analogy in present technology is hard drives versus RAM type storeage: hard drives will require maintenace and will wear out, while RAM will require very little maintenance and will last much longer).

Also that unimaginable quantities of data will be storeable on a system occupying very little space in the physical world (as an analogy, a single MP3 player can probably hold way more data than all the computers that existed 20 years ago).

Also, let me clarify something- I'm not talking about plugging brains into mainframes in a kind of 'Matrix' scenario. At best I'm talking about downloading minds onto digital systems (no need to then maintian bodies and brains); whilst acknowledging that that may not be possible in the near future, and quite possibly will never be possible.

If it's impossible, then it's a matter of intelligences that were born on digital systems (ie they never possessed bodies/brains) who live their whole lives in that virtual world.

The actual hardware would require very minimal maintenance and any that was necessary could be done by trained intelligences in the virtual world operating small robot repairers in the physical world.

It would require very little energy (compare the energy a filament bulb uses to the minimal energy used by an LED). Humanity is already in big trouble over itjhhnas collective use of energy, for it to survive to the point that the 'virtualisation'of humanity is technologically feasible, it will of necessity have to have become master of energy conservation.

Given that at that point it will be sustaining a race of physically embodied (and hence resource and energy usage will be considerable), when it switches to a virtual world that entire system will probably be able to be run for aeons on a millionth of the energy resourses that were necessary to sustain the non virtualised race.

It's unlikely that there would be a need to fight off alien invaders as:-

1. the difficulties that make extensive space travel/colonization impractical for humanity would equally well apply to alien races

2. the actual hardware which holds the virtual world would be physically very small; it's unlikely that aliens will stumble across it in the first place

3. as part of the point of moving into a virtual world is that humanity would no longer need to use scarce resources to exist, there's no real reason for aliens to make war- no resources to steal, no threat to them etc etc.

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
truth be told, I think that radiation management will be the toughest practicle problem involved, given that mars global surveyor has found there is plenty of water in the form of permafrost.



a meter of soil on top of your living habitate is enough to give the same protection as the earth's magnetosphere, even during the heaviest solar storms, but that doesn't solve the problem of needing sunlight to grow plants and such, which will also be damaged by the radiation and also be irradiated and therefor more dangerous to eat. Also a solar storm can mean death within hours of exposure for someone caught in a spacesuit on the surface of the planet.



so you could use solar power to light indoor farms. not a great solution - but remember the sunlight on mars is dimmer than on earth anyway - it is 2.5 times further from the sun, making the light about 1/6th the intensity. So earth plants will need a suplimental light source anyway. of course the dimmer light also means solar power will be similarly less efficient.



this low light level may actually mean using clear domes is not particularly useful and not worth the expense. best thing to do would be to have non-sunward (north or south) facing windows so that you can see out but not allow radiation to shine in directly through them. A mars base would probably wind up looking a lot like a hobbit house actually, with soil piled on top and windows jutting out of hill sides.



actually, the radiation is not so bad most the time - it would take many years of exposure to cause cancer at normal levels on Mars, it is just those pesky solar storms that can happen at random (but much more frequently at the solar maximum part of the sun's 11 year cycle) where radiation levels can jump to 1000 or 10,000 times normal. You will definitely need the equivilant of fallout shelters and an early warning system (a monitoring satellite at the martian-sun lagrangian point) to protect people working outside the base.



if you do insist on the clear dome, then what you could do is surround the base with a very powerful network of electromagnets (preferably superconducting - the cooling for which would not be so difficult to acheive on Mars actually). the base's artificial magnetic field (magnetosphere) could then repel most the high energy electrons and gamma rays (which are actually also hypervelcity charged particles) within its sphere of influence, and you could ramp up the strength when solar storms hit. you would still need lots of energy to run this system though, in addition to the supplimental lights the earth plants would need, so you gain little and add lots of hassle and expense by doing it this way. Some people also think that strong magnetic field can cause health problems, though this is not really well documented and is exceedingly hard to prove apprently, so may, in fact, not be true.



genetic modification to food plants to enable them to grow properly under the dimmer martian light would be extremely useful. it may also be possible to modify them so that they grow with a considery less dense atmosphere, though you would still have to thicken the martian atmosphere a fair amount before reaching a realistic target density for this.



using the martian permafrost to creat a martian atmosphere is possible, but extremely wasteful - you would expend all of the martian water researves to make the atmosphere, and then have to import more water. and then that atmosphere would be wisked away by the solar wind in the course of a few million years. A long time for humans yes, but not so long for life and ecosystems in general. It is a much better idea to conserve that water for direct use by the colonies, as that sort of reseviour, if recylcled, could last even extremely large settlements indefinitely.



Note that some people think that mars is too small and does not have enough mass to keep an atmosphere even if it had a magnetic field. but if you look at titan, one of saturn's moons that is recently newsworthy (due to the success of the Huygens probe and cassini mission), which is MUCH smaller than Mars but has a significant atmosphere, you can demostratably see this is wrong. The difference is, titan is protected from the solar wind by Saturn's very strong magntic field.



er... uhm.... I kinda lost track of where I was going with all this... :embarassed:

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
Why couldn't you have clear domes with an LCD type film on it that can be adjusted/turned on or off to screen light spectrum radiation (and radiation close to the light spectrum) and in addition, you could make the dome double pane, in the space between the panes you could pump a sollution of metallic salts and liquid into it, to block the radiation not stopped by the screen. Say if a solar storm was comeing, turn on the pumps, when it goes drain it.

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
gamma rays are not like UV light - they'll go right through a 1/4 inch of lead without even slowing down much. and in truth, it is better to have no protection from them rather than not enough due to the cascade (shotgun) effect one has when it his an atomic nuclei - blowing out all sorts of other exotic and harmful radiations.



edit: note that one way thought of to protect astronauts traveliing to mars from solar storms is to encase their living quarters within the fuel and water reseviours - with a couple of meters of water and fuel (liquid hyrogen and liquid oxygen most likely) around you, you'd be pretty safe - or at least have a bunker in the spacecraft inside this area so the crew can go wait out a storm (which may last as long as several days).
EDITED_BY: vanize (1108053336)

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
Thanks for the info Vance!

I understand that solar bombardments can last for a week or so. During that time you'd definitely need protection. Imagine the hassles involved if you were trying just to get underground shelters started and solar storms started?

NASA has determined that a three year stint on Mars would likely expose an astronaut to what over a lifetime would be considered acceptable (safe) levels of radiation. And that any astronaut would need a shelter to wait out any storms.

So I'm wondering.... would they need to hide out in their ships if a storm happened. Or would they first be able to send ahead robotic drones that could build shelters for them?

And on a side note. What would be the effect of huge superconducters be on humans? I know there is some evidence of powerlines and such causing health problems.

Cheers!

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
see above post edited for spacecraft crew protection ubblol

was editing when you posted.



no direct evidence exists on the whole powerline/strong standing EM field and health issues thing, so hard to say, but perhaps it is worth considering more closely in the future!



aside: BTW, I have finally become convinced that the microwave radiation from cell phone transimissions can cause brain tumors in the region around the ear, but this has nothing to do with supposed power line health issues.
EDITED_BY: vanize (1108053497)

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
So a bunch of fuel will protect them, but a bunch of iron salts in liquid wont?

AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
Maybe if we can convince Bush that the martians have WMD and want democracy????? wink

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
Written by: snork


Why couldn't you have clear domes with an LCD type film on it that can be adjusted/turned on or off to screen light spectrum radiation (and radiation close to the light spectrum) and in addition, you could make the dome double pane, in the space between the panes you could pump a sollution of metallic salts and liquid into it, to block the radiation not stopped by the screen. Say if a solar storm was comeing, turn on the pumps, when it goes drain it.




actually the double pained dome, while exceedingly expensive, is not a bad idea - give yourself a couple meters between panes and fill with water - would be heavy, but it would be clear. just pray you don't make a huge magnifying glass out of it and fry all yuor inhabitants! ubblol

but wait (just thought of this)!!!
do make a huge magefying glass out of it, design it such that it focuses on a series of water pipes (arranged so that the shifting focal point for the sunlight as the day progresses always hits pipes), and use the resulting super heated water in a steam turbine for power!

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
Written by: snork


So a bunch of fuel will protect them, but a bunch of iron salts in liquid wont?




yeah, sorry - was imagining a thin double pain and not a couple meter thick one till I thought about what you said more.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
I like the idea of a bunker somewhat. But what would you do as fuel was used up? The level of protection would decrease?

spritieSILVER Member
Pooh-Bah
2,014 posts
Location: Galveston, TX, USA


Posted:
I've heard talk of human waste being transformed somehow into energy. In theory, I think it's a great idea because our bodies are going to produce it whether we want them to or not.

vanizeSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,899 posts
Location: Austin, Texas, USA


Posted:
yeah, but you are going to have to have a considerable amount of useable water even after you arrive on mars anyway, plus your fuel cells burn hydrogen/oxygen (not just the rockets) and the waste from that is still water - you can choose to cart several extra tons of water around, or a few extra tons or otherwise worthless led - your choice. If I'm on the ship, I'd want it to be water, just in case.

-v-

Wiederstand ist Zwecklos!


Tao StarPooh-Bah
1,662 posts
Location: Bristol


Posted:
i have the solution to all of you technical sciency problems.

i will make mars inhabitable by waving my magic wand...


Non-Https Image Link


tada!


and now everyone's happy... ubbrollsmile

I had a dream that my friend had a
strong-bad pop up book,
it was the book of my dreams.


snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
Written by: vanize


Written by: snork


Why couldn't you have clear domes with an LCD type film on it that can be adjusted/turned on or off to screen light spectrum radiation (and radiation close to the light spectrum) and in addition, you could make the dome double pane, in the space between the panes you could pump a sollution of metallic salts and liquid into it, to block the radiation not stopped by the screen. Say if a solar storm was comeing, turn on the pumps, when it goes drain it.




actually the double pained dome, while exceedingly expensive, is not a bad idea - give yourself a couple meters between panes and fill with water - would be heavy, but it would be clear. just pray you don't make a huge magnifying glass out of it and fry all yuor inhabitants! ubblol

but wait (just thought of this)!!!
do make a huge magefying glass out of it, design it such that it focuses on a series of water pipes (arranged so that the shifting focal point for the sunlight as the day progresses always hits pipes), and use the resulting super heated water in a steam turbine for power!




For the purpose of not super heating plants and living quarters, you would power the LCD screens which block out light spectrum radiation.

AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
Written by: spritie


I've heard talk of human waste being transformed somehow into energy. In theory, I think it's a great idea because our bodies are going to produce it whether we want them to or not.




Makes sense. Wonder how it would be done. Would it be like making methane from human feces? There would definitely be a buildup of it over the time it would take someone to reach Mars!

snorkmember
52 posts

Posted:
They can do that already, the human waste thing. I don't quite remember the details, but it had something to do with fostering a bacteria in the waste which produces electricity somehow..

If I remember correctly, they had almost enough power output to power the sewage treatment plant it's self, and they said soon they would be able to feed back into the power grid.

Page:

Similar Topics No similar topics were found
      Show more..

HOP Newsletter

Sign up to get the latest on sales, new releases and more...