NASA might build an ice house on Mars - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14757581

NASA might build an ice house on Mars

At first glance, a new concept for a NASA habitat on Mars looks like a cross between Mark Watney's inflatable potato farm from "The Martian" and the home of Luke's Uncle Owen on Tatooine from "Star Wars."

The key to the new design relies on something that may or may not be abundant on Mars: underground water or ice.

The "Mars Ice Home" is a large inflatable dome that is surrounded by a shell of water ice. NASA said the design is just one of many potential concepts for creating a sustainable home for future Martian explorers. The idea came from a team at NASA's Langley Research Center that started with the concept of using resources on Mars to help build a habitat that could effectively protect humans from the elements on the Red Planet's surface, including high-energy radiation.

Langley senior systems engineer Kevin Vipavetz who facilitated the design session said the team assessed "many crazy, out of the box ideas and finally converged on the current Ice Home design, which provides a sound engineering solution," he said.

The advantages of the Mars Ice Home is that the shell is lightweight and can be transported and deployed with simple robotics, then filled with water before the crew arrives. The ice will protect astronauts from radiation and will provide a safe place to call home, NASA says. But the structure also serves as a storage tank for water, to be used either by the explorers or it could potentially be converted to rocket fuel for the proposed Mars Ascent Vehicle. Then the structure could be refilled for the next crew.

Other concepts had astronauts living in caves, or underground, or in dark, heavily shielded habitats. The team said the Ice Home concept balances the need to provide protection from radiation, without the drawbacks of an underground habitat. The design maximizes the thickness of ice above the crew quarters to reduce radiation exposure while also still allowing light to pass through ice and surrounding materials.

"All of the materials we've selected are translucent, so some outside daylight can pass through and make it feel like you're in a home and not a cave," said Kevin Kempton, also part of the Langley team.

One key constraint is the amount of water that can be reasonably extracted from Mars. Experts who develop systems for extracting resources on Mars indicated that it would be possible to fill the habitat at a rate of one cubic meter, or 35.3 cubic feet, per day. This rate would allow the Ice Home design to be completely filled in 400 days, so the habitat would need to be constructed robotically well before the crew arrives. The design could be scaled up if water could be extracted at higher rates.

The team wanted to also include large areas for workspace so the crew didn't have to wear a pressure suit to do maintenance tasks such as working on robotic equipment. To manage temperatures inside the Ice Home, a layer of carbon dioxide gas—also available on Mars—would be used as in insulation between the living space and the thick shielding layer of ice.

"The materials that make up the Ice Home will have to withstand many years of use in the harsh Martian environment, including ultraviolet radiation, charged-particle radiation, possibly some atomic oxygen, perchlorates, as well as dust storms – although not as fierce as in the movie 'The Martian'," said Langley researcher Sheila Ann Thibeault.

Phys.org


Mars settlement is going to be a collaborative effort. Glad to see that NASA is investing some of its budget into research like this.

Next step: Alpha Centauri. Let's hope the Starshot initiative is working out and we might be able to reach it in as little as 20 years. :D

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#14759138
Rugoz wrote:Unfortunately settling Mars is pointless.

NASA likes the show concepts, it hasn't managed to send people there though let alone settle it.

It's obviously for the future. If we want to send people there, we'd better provide shelter for them.

Your optimism is always refreshing though, Rugoz.

MistyTiger wrote:That looks cool but seems like a waste of time and money.

I thought NASA had its funding cut drastically. So how is it possible that they can afford all this new tech and all the building supplies? :?:

They still have a budget dedicated to space exploration. Let's hope it will be increased in the future.
#14759140
Well I suppose that they could borrow a percent of the money for the whole building process and then pay monthly amounts over a period of years? The bank would be getting monthly payments from them and NASA could slowly pay the vendors for the project. I feel like public building projects take much longer to complete than they have to.
#14759175
NASA ain't gonna be building shit. It's payback time for earth monitoring satellites and climate research, and a conservative congress will be kicking NASA's butt.
#14759235
MistyTiger wrote:Well I suppose that they could borrow a percent of the money for the whole building process and then pay monthly amounts over a period of years? The bank would be getting monthly payments from them and NASA could slowly pay the vendors for the project. I feel like public building projects take much longer to complete than they have to.



That's not the way it works. This would be a project for the sake of celebrating human achievement. There isn't any commercial value, umm, possible not much reseach value either, in it. So you'd want a grant, not a loan. Or for a project as expensive as this, a government institution with adequate funding.

Having said that, Elon Musk has a privately fund program to send people to Mars. I guess that would be described as philanthropy? Or maybe there is another term. In the past, rich people have funded arts and science because they wanted to advance the human condition.


Anyway, I must side with Rugoz on this occasion. The travellers will be subject to some serious space radiation on the way and also have issues with physical degeneration from zero G. Also, the size of a space vessel to get all the atmosphere they need to breath, food to eat, heaters to stop them freezing in space, etc, for what could be a 200 day journey, would be immence.

I doubt it would be worth the effort. But then there were those who insisted on climbing Mount Everest and travelling to the South Pole....
#14759311
Baby steps. We must find a way off earth eventually. Any steps taken in that direction are desirable. The cost can not be a rational consideration. It is simply something we must pursue. Going to Mars will provide a baby step. Future discoveries would not be made without it. That is all we should need to know to support it.
#14759326
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:It's obviously for the future. If we want to send people there, we'd better provide shelter for them.

Your optimism is always refreshing though, Rugoz.


There's little reason for optimism when it comes to human spaceflight. It makes no sense now, and will make even less sense in the future. Space tourism might be interesting, but that will take time. Suborbital tourism takes a decade longer than expected (still not reality).

foxdemon wrote:The travellers will be subject to some serious space radiation on the way and also have issues with physical degeneration from zero G. Also, the size of a space vessel to get all the atmosphere they need to breath, food to eat, heaters to stop them freezing in space, etc, for what could be a 200 day journey, would be immence.


Those problems are managable, at least for exploration missions. Whether settlement is feasible is another question, humans might not be able procreate and raise healthy children in partial gravity.
#14759331
Mining the asteroid belt and solar system exploration and colonization will never happen - not for humans, at any rate. The premise of The Expanse tv series, however entertaining, is fantasy, not science fiction.

Here's why: Cosmic radiation exposure and persistent cognitive dysfunction

Rodents exposed to cosmic radiation exhibit persistent hippocampal and cortical based performance decrements using six independent behavioral tasks administered between separate cohorts 12 and 24 weeks after irradiation. Radiation-induced impairments in spatial, episodic and recognition memory were temporally coincident with deficits in executive function and reduced rates of fear extinction and elevated anxiety. Irradiation caused significant reductions in dendritic complexity, spine density and altered spine morphology along medial prefrontal cortical neurons known to mediate neurotransmission interrogated by our behavioral tasks. Cosmic radiation also disrupted synaptic integrity and increased neuroinflammation that persisted more than 6 months after exposure. Behavioral deficits for individual animals correlated significantly with reduced spine density and increased synaptic puncta, providing quantitative measures of risk for developing cognitive impairment. Our data provide additional evidence that deep space travel poses a real and unique threat to the integrity of neural circuits in the brain.


True, this has been established only in animal models (it wouldn't be ethical to perform such experiments on humans). Do you really want to spend trillions on human exploration of the solar system, only to find your astronauts reduced to an end-state Alzheimers-like condition?

The solar system belongs to robots, until such time as space vehicles can be shielded from radiation. Even burying habitats deep underground won't work. The round-trip travel to Mars will be a minimum of 1 year - returning astronauts would likely be incapable of operating their spacecraft.
#14759429
Rugoz wrote:There's little reason for optimism when it comes to human spaceflight. It makes no sense now, and will make even less sense in the future. Space tourism might be interesting, but that will take time. Suborbital tourism takes a decade longer than expected (still not reality).



Those problems are managable, at least for exploration missions. Whether settlement is feasible is another question, humans might not be able procreate and raise healthy children in partial gravity.



Hmm, manageable? Maybe one day but with our current technology these are big problems. Your right about a colony. Mars is about a quarter the mass and can't hold the same atmosphere as Earth. It is much colder and there is insufficent magnetic field to shield the planet from radiation.

If only there was some way to travel to the stars. New exo planets are being discovered in the water belt region around distant stars. There must be millions suitable for human settlement. Imagine how long we could sustain capitalism with all that opportunity for unlimited growth :excited:


quetzalcoatl wrote:Mining the asteroid belt and solar system exploration and colonization will never happen - not for humans, at any rate. The premise of The Expanse tv series, however entertaining, is fantasy, not science fiction.

Here's why: Cosmic radiation exposure and persistent cognitive dysfunction



True, this has been established only in animal models (it wouldn't be ethical to perform such experiments on humans). Do you really want to spend trillions on human exploration of the solar system, only to find your astronauts reduced to an end-state Alzheimers-like condition?

The solar system belongs to robots, until such time as space vehicles can be shielded from radiation. Even burying habitats deep underground won't work. The round-trip travel to Mars will be a minimum of 1 year - returning astronauts would likely be incapable of operating their spacecraft.



Automation is far more practical. One day we might be able to generate enough power to maintain a strong magnetic field around a space craft that would shield the crew from high energy ionized particles. If we sent people to Mars now, we would be sacrificing them. There are some people who would do it anyway but it doesn't fit well with contemporary Western ethics to do that.
#14759511
One Degree wrote:Baby steps. We must find a way off earth eventually. Any steps taken in that direction are desirable. The cost can not be a rational consideration. It is simply something we must pursue. Going to Mars will provide a baby step. Future discoveries would not be made without it. That is all we should need to know to support it.

:up: There is a possibility that it may fail and a high likelihood that there will be major problems, even casualties, in the beginning. This has always been the case with exploration of unknown territory, however. It's never stopped us. I suspect that the first explorers were always opposed by a majority of people who believed that the project was doomed to fail.

Rugoz wrote:There's little reason for optimism when it comes to human spaceflight. It makes no sense now, and will make even less sense in the future. Space tourism might be interesting, but that will take time. Suborbital tourism takes a decade longer than expected (still not reality).

The timelines seem ambitious, especially those of Elon Musk. But that's more a function of the challenges and unknowns which make it impossible to predict future events with much confidence. Nevertheless, it's better to have a plan and objective, which can be adjusted/updated as new information and technology becomes available, than to leave it open-ended. As such, I'd take the plans and timelines more as a statement of ambition than something to seriously count on. On the other hand, sometimes technology advances rapidly and unexpectedly, which is also unpredictable.

Human space exploration makes as much sense as the exploration of unknown territory of our planet back in the 15th century.

quetzalcoatl wrote:Mining the asteroid belt and solar system exploration and colonization will never happen - not for humans, at any rate. The premise of The Expanse tv series, however entertaining, is fantasy, not science fiction.

Here's why: Cosmic radiation exposure and persistent cognitive dysfunction

True, this has been established only in animal models (it wouldn't be ethical to perform such experiments on humans). Do you really want to spend trillions on human exploration of the solar system, only to find your astronauts reduced to an end-state Alzheimers-like condition?

The least likely scenario is actually that it will never happen. A few hundred years ago an equivalent question would have been do you really want to spend a fortune on exploring the planet only to find your explorers to be wiped out by some tropical disease or killed by people living in the newly discovered territory. If it is the case that radiation causes cognitive dysfunction in humans, this needs to be seen as a challenge which must be addressed. Chances are we'll find a way to protect ourselves from, treat or reverse the negative effects eventually.

foxdemon wrote:I doubt it would be worth the effort. But then there were those who insisted on climbing Mount Everest and travelling to the South Pole....

It's almost certainly worth the effort in the very long term, at least if we think the survival of humans has any worth. Eventually, we will have to get off this planet. We may fail, of course, but that's not a good enough reason to not try.
#14759577
quetzalcoatl wrote:The solar system belongs to robots, until such time as space vehicles can be shielded from radiation. Even burying habitats deep underground won't work. The round-trip travel to Mars will be a minimum of 1 year - returning astronauts would likely be incapable of operating their spacecraft.


Actually burying habitats works perfectly fine. Space vehicles would get to heavy with meters of passive shielding though. One option is to surround a part of the habitat with liquid hydrogen fuel tanks.

1 year in deep space should not be much of an issue. Mars astronauts will receive radiation doses above the current astronaut career limit (from a single trip), that means they have a somewhat higher chance for getting cancer in their life, but it's not dramatic. They're more likely to die as a result of some technical failure, in fact chances for that to happen are probably somewhere between 1:20 and 1:50.

Kaiserschmarrn wrote:The timelines seem ambitious, especially those of Elon Musk. But that's more a function of the challenges and unknowns which make it impossible to predict future events with much confidence. Nevertheless, it's better to have a plan and objective, which can be adjusted/updated as new information and technology becomes available, than to leave it open-ended. As such, I'd take the plans and timelines more as a statement of ambition than something to seriously count on. On the other hand, sometimes technology advances rapidly and unexpectedly, which is also unpredictable.

Human space exploration makes as much sense as the exploration of unknown territory of our planet back in the 15th century.


Musk want to establish a Mars colony, but there's zero business case for it. He can hope for NASA to pay for it, but I don't see it happening.

Exploration of unknown territory in the 15th century was driven by economic interests. It was about finding new trade routes or lands to plunder. Moreover, unlike the oceans space is an incredibly hostile place to humans (meaning it's very expensive to keep them alive). If it weren't for national pride and inspiration the job of the astronaut would never have existed or only for a very short period of time (for the duration of the Mercury program for example).
#14759734
Exploration of unknown territory in the 15th century was driven by economic interests. It was about finding new trade routes or lands to plunder. Moreover, unlike the oceans space is an incredibly hostile place to humans (meaning it's very expensive to keep them alive). If it weren't for national pride and inspiration the job of the astronaut would never have existed or only for a very short period of time (for the duration of the Mercury program for example).

Precisely. The Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British... none of these were motivated by noble-minded ambitions to advance humanity or transform the world for the better, or anything of the sort. Instead, they were driven by the 'sacred hunger' of greed. As Cortes told Montezuma: "We have a disease of the soul which can only be cured with gold." Lol. :lol:

Seriously, though, unless and until a business case can be made for space exploration and colonisation, then it will never happen. Once people see a way of making a profit from, say, mining the asteroid belt, then it will happen incredibly swiftly. Nothing motivates people more effectively than greed. Until then, it's just a few romantic nerds pissing into the wind.
#14759737
Until then, it's just a few romantic nerds pissing into the wind.


Yeah, those same stupid people responsible for all human advancement. :lol:
#14759747
No they're not, One Degree. Seriously. :eh:


I would not have guessed you would dismiss the contributions of the 'dreamers'. All the greats were dreamers, even Marx. Science follows science fiction.

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