Topic: Russian roadmap to Solar System colonisation. Moon is the first step. - page 4. (Read 6233 times)

Yes, this is quite possible.  First the Lunar robot exploitation systems.  From your link.



The torus would require nearly 10 million tons of mass. Construction would use materials extracted from the Moon and sent to space using a mass driver. A mass catcher at L2 would collect the materials, transporting them to L5 where they could be processed in an industrial facility to construct the torus. Only materials that could not be obtained from the Moon would have to be imported from Earth. Asteroid mining was an alternative source of materials.[10]
General characteristics

    Location: Earth–Moon L5 Lagrangian point
    Total mass: 10 million tons (including radiation shield (95%), habitat, and atmosphere)...

Yeah, but that's only true for big structures, like 1km diameter.
Otherwise your head will feel a different gravity that your feet.
Or you will fall over if you try to lace your shoes.
Something like this would be nice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus

Artificial gravity is achieved through either using the centripetal force or the linear acceleration. Both have their own disadvantages and both can cause health issues in the long term.

Why not use artificial gravity? The gravity in moon is 1/6th of earth and in mars 2/3rd. I think 2/3 is not a problem.

Reproduction in space or on the moon/Mars may also be a problem. They have done experiments at the space station (obviously not with humans) that have shown that the lack of gravity in space appears to cause some real problems for a developing fetus. It isn't clear yet whether low gravity will have the same issues.

There are combinations of genes which have enhanced resistance to ionizing radiation. If radiation level in your environment is greater than average, then natural selection of resistant combinations will happen.

There are many examples... Citizens of northern Iran (Ramsar city) are constantly exposed with gamma radiation at level ~4 mR/h which is ~4 times higher that average level of gamma radiation on the Chernobyl NPP (~1.2 mR/h on the roof of the sarcophagus over a former 4th reactor building). These people are resistant to these levels of radiation, their blood demonstrates an absence of pathologic changes even at much higher levels of exposition dose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Mazandaran
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Ramsar_radiation.jpg

According to the results of the experiment on voles in Chernobyl, ~26 generations is required for adaptation of regular population. So it seems that it would be cheaper to find resistant combinations and use them for this mission.

Not only it will take months of time, but also it will take tens of thousands of workers as well. The cost of transporting 3 astronauts to Mars stands at $100 billion. Imagine the cost of transporting tens of thousands of them. 

Well initially they would have to build structures to live and work in, and use suits any time they go outside. Clearly they aren't going to be able to terraform it in a matter of months; it would take decades at least. But also it would be a big step to just get started already.

As I have already stated, any mission would include shielding to limit radiation, as has every mission already completed.


The current record for time spent in space on a single mission is 15 months - the astronaut in question is still alive at age 71 with no health problems.

The current record for cumulative time spent in space over multiple missions is 2.2 years. Sergei Krikalev is now 55, also with no health problems.

18 months isn't much of a stretch by comparison.

Sure you can do that.  You just need to get the materials for the 'massive ship' from the moon.  And that puts you right back at robotic lunar exploitation as the primary and first goal necessary for solar system exploration and colonization.

But this is a self reinforcing cycle - as soon as you think in terms of "massive ships" then you need off-Earth fuel and oxygen generation systems.  That is only possible by decomposing lunar water deposits into h2 and o2.  We don't KNOW HOW to do that.  But the deposits are there, deep in craters within craters where the sun has never shined.   Crater Hermites, by the N. Lunar Pole.

Of course for ANY solar system exploration, if manned, these fuel and oxidizer supplies would be virtually necessary as opposed to lifting them off Earth in rockets.  But for trips of 8-18 months (Mars is 8 months, not 18, if the optimal orbital transfer is chosen) systems like
The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) are much preferred.

There has also been development recently of what is best dubbed a "force field" that would surround a spacecraft and protect it from the solar blasts.  Sort of like a miniature Van Allen belt.  

So we can learn to do these things in smart ways, if the research continues.  But we are not really there yet.  From my point of view there is nothing wrong with thinking in terms of 50-100 years for serious Mars exploration.  But that is so long a period of time for computer tech, that we may find our brains in machines on mars and the idea of capsules supporting meatspace being laughed at, long before the capabilities exist to easily get to such places. 

Mars, incidentally cannot support terraforming without first building some kind of planetary radiation shield like the Van Allen belts.  In their absence, O2 strips to ions recombines and is carried off into space.  If Mars were given a 3 psi atmosphere mostly O2, in ten thousand years it would be lost to space.  Very interesting place, for sure, but if we humans go there, we go there with our meatspace cans and suits.

I think the one they are referring to was a plan to send like 4 or 6 people with very limited equipment and totally dependent on receiving continuous supplies from Earth. Then they would keep sending a few more people with additional equipment on subsequent trips and build up slowly. 6 billion could easily do the first leg of that. The only problem is I think they'd rape and kill each other about 2 months into the mission.

As far as the radiation - why can't we create shielding to prevent this? Why not construct a massive (and well shielded) ship IN SPACE, use a smaller ship to fly up to it (so you dont have to worry about getting the massive heavy ship out of the earth's gravity) then fly the giant ship to Mars orbit, and land in the smaller ship? It could be done.

This is a disadvantage of the moon. Mars has a persistent (albeit thin) atmosphere, the radiation dose on the surface is not significant. They would only need shielding on the outward trip.


This only places a limitation on the thickness of the atmosphere, not it's composition. If we could somehow (and this is a near-impossible task, granted) introduce enough O₂ to make up 20% of the atmosphere, the air would be breathable, equivalent to that at very high altitudes on Earth. People would only be able to breathe for short trips in such thin air, but would only need a supplementary oxygen mask for longer periods, not a big suit or anything.


This is a terrible, terrible idea. All animals, including humans, get fucked up psychologically by the absence of a light-dark cycle, and while humans can shelter in dark houses, a brighter moon would be catastrophic for wildlife and farm animals.

Bare in mind none of these long missions ever left earth magnetic field, which provided for the vast majority of radiation protection. The health of these persons (after returning to earth) was everything but stellar despite daily training - and required months of recovery (most credited to the effects of zero gravity).

Leave the earth magnetic protection and you're in entirely different waters, requiring massive shielding which noone has ever sent to space so far (not even anything close to it).
Everything in existence concerning this issue are mere design concepts not even proven to reliably work as desired. Whatever it will be, will require modular assembly in space due to the hefty mass we're talking.

PS.
That MarsOne design study image posted on the previous page wouldn't even afford safe passage to the moon in terms of radiation protection. An 18 months trip in that little critter would resemble a death sentence, in case of intensive solar flares likely to occur even during time-of-flight.

There are good reasons space-used computers are powered by old-gen, especially hardened and manufactured ICs and RAM components, which need to be built using old nanometer masks for robustness.
The radiation would easily and quickly interfere with and/or destroy the modern 22nm chip designs we're used to. The hardened designs are the only ones tough enough to withstand the radiation for a limited time, and even these need external shielding packages and redundancy to achieve their mission.
Not a smart plan trying all that on a human...

PPS.
That 6 Billion $ that I found mentioned somewhere in the thread are downright bizarre for a manned mars mission. Multiply it by at least 100x and you're getting into more realistic regions.

If it was a joint project they could call it the "International -----" like they did with the space station.

We tend to call things like this by the country that is behind it because we are all still at each others' throats and countries distrust each other (sadly, with good reason.) Everyone is paranoid that if the Russians or Chinese or Americans build a base on the moon they will use it as a military installation.

The HUMAN Olympiad? The HUMAN World Cup? The HUMAN Eurovision? All examples nationalistic pride.

I don't know where you keep getting these ideas. First, they aren't going to send them across the galaxy in a plastic bubble, whatever ship they use would obviously be shielded. You keep saying they're going to get exposed to radiation like that hasn't been thoroughly discussed and addressed. The point is there would be MORE of a radiation problem on the moon.


They would do better (psychologically and physiologically) on Mars than they would on the moon. Living in low gravity is not fun. Imagine eating, drinking, moving around, getting exercise, working in an environment where everything has to be strapped down, even taking a dump - in almost no gravity. Yeah not fun.

Mine as well. We are in complete agreement there. I see the future of space exploration only as a joint human venture.

The title of the thread comes from the nature of news announcement in the OP. I am glad that the discussion evolved to cover a much wider aspect.

As I have already stated, a one-way trip to Mars will take 18 months. I don't know whether the human body can endure that much cosmic radiation. No one has ever been exposed for that long.

Who is having this sort of money?

NASA-Funded Scientists Detect Water on Moon's Surface that Hints at Water Below


PASADENA - NASA-funded lunar research has yielded evidence of water locked in mineral grains on the surface of the moon from an unknown source deep beneath the surface. Using data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists remotely detected magmatic water, or water that originates from deep within the moon's interior, on the surface of the moon.

The findings, published Aug. 25 in Nature Geoscience, represent the first detection of this form of water from lunar orbit. Earlier studies had shown the existence of magmatic water in lunar samples returned during NASA's Apollo program.

M3 imaged the lunar impact crater Bullialdus, which lies near the lunar equator. Scientists were interested in studying this area because they could better quantify the amount of water inside the rocks due to the crater's location and the type of rocks it held. The central peak of the crater is made up of a type of rock that forms deep within the lunar crust and mantle when magma is trapped underground.

"This rock, which normally resides deep beneath the surface, was excavated from the lunar depths by the impact that formed Bullialdus crater," said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md.

"Compared to its surroundings, we found that the central portion of this crater contains a significant amount of hydroxyl - a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom -- which is evidence that the rocks in this crater contain water that originated beneath the lunar surface," Klima said.

In 2009, M3 provided the first mineralogical map of the lunar surface and discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. This water is thought to be a thin layer formed from solar wind hitting the moon's surface. Bullialdus crater is in a region with an unfavorable environment for solar wind to produce significant amounts of water on the surface.

"NASA missions like Lunar Prospector and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and instruments like M3 have gathered crucial data that fundamentally changed our understanding of whether water exists on the surface of the moon," said S. Pete Worden, center director at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Similarly, we hope that upcoming NASA missions such as the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, will change our understanding of the lunar sky."

The detection of internal water from orbit means scientists can begin to test some of the findings from sample studies in a broader context, including in regions that are far from where the Apollo sites are clustered on the near side of the moon. For many years, researchers believed that the rocks from the moon were bone-dry and any water detected in the Apollo samples had to be contamination from Earth.

"Now that we have detected water that is likely from the interior of the moon, we can start to compare this water with other characteristics of the lunar surface," said Klima. "This internal magmatic water also provides clues about the moon's volcanic processes and internal composition, which helps us address questions about how the moon formed, and how magmatic processes changed as it cooled."

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper was selected as a Mission of Opportunity through the NASA Discovery Program. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., designed and built the Moon Mineralogy Mapper and is home to its project manager, Mary White. JPL managed the program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Carle Pieters of Brown University, Providence, R.I., was the principal investigator. Joshua Cahill and David Lawrence of APL and Justin Hagerty of the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., co-authored the paper. The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was constructed, launched, and is operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-262