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Mars and Off Planet Colonization - General Possibilities Discussion

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If it's from June 2020
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.9b12111
it uses a KHCO3 solution.
Thanks, that explains where the reaction gets its hydrogen from, but makes me ask: "Where did they find enough potassium bicarbonate on Mars?", not that there haven't been traces detected : Vastitas Borealis - Wikipedia

You can get H2 from Ice, but where and how are you going to get the 'C' in Mars?
C is from the Martian CO2 atmosphere.
 
Use a translator. That will convert Mars to March and you have both C and H.

More seriously, although Mars' atmoshere is only 1% of Earth's, it is 95% CO2.

Apparently the answer to the energy needs is to bring potassium.

Although ...

Martian soil - Wikipedia

Wikipedia said:
n June 2008, the Phoenix lander returned data showing Martian soil to be slightly alkaline and containing vital nutrients such as magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride, all of which are ingredients for living organisms to grow on Earth.
 
A small number of posts in the Investor quagmire regarding the eventual forging on Mars of semiconductor chips prompted my thinking of raw materials necessary to an extraterrestrial colony. Many of these have been discussed or at least alluded to either in this thread, elsewhere within TMC, in popular media and amongst specialized Martian publications.

The latter I have not good access to, and perhaps the following topic has been addressed there. Happy to learn if someone knows any other discussion re same.

Easy ones to consider, if not to solve for: water, oxygen, energy, iron, silicon, steelmaking alloys like Ni, Cr, Co and others. Battery raw materials like Li, Ni (again). Soilmaking enrichers like Ca, K, P, N. Saline anodes like Cl. Monster anodes like F.

My concern is with another element, one ubiquitous not only in humans' daily lives but omnipresent also in all phases of the transportation sector - aluminum. Now, Al (that's not AI but Al. Do you see the difference? No, neither do I. First abbreviation is for Artificial Intelligence and the second is for element #13, Aluminum/Aluminium). Al is indeed well-thought to be approximately as common in Martian crustal material as it is on Earth - about 5th in abundance after Si, O, Fe, Mg. The BUT is, however, extraordinarily large and troublesome.

Exactly 100% of all primary aluminum mined on the earth comes exclusively from deposits formed in just one way: the extreme action of rainfall over not millions, but many tens or hundreds of millions of years. Once aeons of rainwater have leached out everything else: all the other rockforming elements like magnesium, sodium, and even silicon (did you think quartz - SiO2 - is hard and weatherproof? Not by geologic time standards it isn't), and even the removal of that second-most resistant material - iron oxide - that which is left over is aluminum oxide (bauxite & ilk). There is NO other source* of aluminum.

And, unless the former Martian water processes now quiescent for X*10^9 years had been strong enough and prolonged enough to have acted similarly, then aluminum will not be available on Mars.

Why not, you ask, if the energy problem can be solved and the element is indeed present in Martian crust? Because rockforming mineral that contain aluminum - feldspars and so forth - divulge their elemental metal even more reluctantly than that so-called hardest of all metallic nuts to crack - aluminum oxide (bauxite). Aluminum so derived is called 'canned electricity' for good reason. Attempting to concentrate Al-poor sources into pure feldspars, and then releasing that metallic Al, would be many times more energy consumptive.

A way to put historical perspective on this: prior to the development of the Hall-Herout method of electrosmelting of bauxite, Aluminum metal was so rare that it was more precious than gold, and Queen Victoria was gifted an incalculably valuable aluminum service as a gift (now retailing at Wal-Mart for $27.99........).

So. What to do? Three answers from me.

1. Refer back to the propreantepenultimate paragraph's *asterisk. For a short number of decades, there was ONE other source of aluminum; one not a function of weathering but rather, from 'pure' magmatic action. A rare mineral in pegmatites - that final exhalation from a cooling magmatic chamber, and one in which all the hard-to-incorporate into "regular" rock-forming minerals (boron, beryllium, lithium, uranides and so forth) - is a sodium-aluminum fluoride called cryolite. It has been found in minute quantities in a small number of pegmatites in Colorado, Russia and China....and in exactly one single location in coastal southern Greenland where it was a large enough deposit to be mined from the 1860s until exhaustion after WWII.

There is no reason at present to believe that magmatic intrusions like pegmatites might not once have occurred on Mars. Those in which cryolite has been found seem to share gneisses as their matrix - some gneiss is highly feldspathic and possibly the pneumatolytic fluids associated with the proto-pegmatite leached Al, to be grabbed by that most vellicate of elements, F, to create cryolite. A concerted search for pegmatites peripheral to, for example, Elysium Mons or Hecates Tholus rather than that most familiar gargantuan Olympus Mons, as the latter is too similar to Earth's shield volcanoes to be a likely former of pegmatites. But areology remains hardly even in its infancy and it is risible to consider a keyboardist's ramblings as an authoritative guide to mineralogic exploration.

2. Consider Earth as the source for Al and calculate the costs of importing either ingots or pre-created alloys for.....¿perpetuity?

3. Embrace the lowered gravity of Mars and substitute iron and steel for items that on Earth would be made from aluminum.

Cost-Benefit analyses await....
 
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A small number of posts in the Investor quagmire regarding the eventual forging on Mars of semiconductor chips prompted my thinking of raw materials necessary to an extraterrestrial colony. Many of these have been discussed or at least alluded to either in this thread, elsewhere within TMC, in popular media and amongst specialized Martian publications.

The latter I have not good access to, and perhaps the following topic has been addressed there. Happy to learn if someone knows any other discussion re same.

Easy ones to consider, if not to solve for: water, oxygen, energy, iron, silicon, steelmaking alloys like Ni, Cr, Co and others. Battery raw materials like Li, Ni (again). Soilmaking enrichers like Ca, K, P, N. Saline anodes like Cl. Monster anodes like F.

My concern is with another element, one ubiquitous not only in humans' daily lives but omnipresent also in all phases of the transportation sector - aluminum. Now, Al (that's not AI but Al. Do you see the difference? No, neither do I. First abbreviation is for Artificial Intelligence and the second is for element #13, Aluminum/Aluminium). Al is indeed well-thought to be approximately as common in Martian crustal material as it is on Earth - about 5th in abundance after Si, O, Fe, Mg. The BUT is, however, extraordinarily large and troublesome.

Exactly 100% of all primary aluminum mined on the earth comes exclusively from deposits formed in just one way: the extreme action of rainfall over not millions, but many tens or hundreds of millions of years. Once aeons of rainwater have leached out everything else: all the other rockforming elements like magnesium, sodium, and even silicon (did you think quartz - SiO2 - is hard and weatherproof? Not by geologic time standards it isn't), and even the removal of that second-most resistant material - iron oxide - that which is left over is aluminum oxide (bauxite & ilk). There is NO other source* of aluminum.

And, unless the former Martian water processes now quiescent for X*10^9 years had been strong enough and prolonged enough to have acted similarly, then aluminum will not be available on Mars.

Why not, you ask, if the energy problem can be solved and the element is indeed present in Martian crust? Because rockforming mineral that contain aluminum - feldspars and so forth - divulge their elemental metal even more reluctantly than that so-called hardest of all metallic nuts to crack - aluminum oxide (bauxite). Aluminum so derived is called 'canned electricity' for good reason. Attempting to concentrate Al-poor sources into pure feldspars, and then releasing that metallic Al, would be many times more energy consumptive.

A way to put historical perspective on this: prior to the development of the Hall-Herout method of electrosmelting of bauxite, Aluminum metal was so rare that it was more precious than gold, and Queen Victoria was gifted an incalculably valuable aluminum service as a gift (now retailing at Wal-Mart for $27.99........).

So. What to do? Three answers from me.

1. Refer back to the propreantepenultimate paragraph's *asterisk. For a short number of decades, there was ONE other source of aluminum; one not a function of weathering but rather, from 'pure' magmatic action. A rare mineral in pegmatites - that final exhalation from a cooling magmatic chamber, and one in which all the hard-to-incorporate into "regular" rock-forming minerals (boron, beryllium, lithium, uranides and so forth) - is a sodium-aluminum fluoride called cryolite. It has been found in minute quantities in a small number of pegmatites in Colorado, Russia and China....and in exactly one single location in coastal southern Greenland where it was a large enough deposit to be mined from the 1860s until exhaustion after WWII.

There is no reason at present to believe that magmatic intrusions like pegmatites might not once have occurred on Mars. Those in which cryolite has been found seem to share gneisses as their matrix - some gneiss is highly feldspathic and possibly the pneumatolytic fluids associated with the proto-pegmatite leached Al, to be grabbed by that most vellicate of elements, F, to create cryolite. A concerted search for pegmatites peripheral to, for example, Elysium Mons or Hecates Tholus rather than that most familiar gargantuan Olympus Mons, as the latter is too similar to Earth's shield volcanoes to be a likely former of pegmatites. But areology remains hardly even in its infancy and it is risible to consider a keyboardist's ramblings as an authoritative guide to mineralogic exploration.

2. Consider Earth as the source for Al and calculate the costs of importing either ingots or pre-created alloys for.....¿perpetuity?

3. Embrace the lowered gravity of Mars and substitute iron and steel for items that on Earth would be made from aluminum.

Cost-Benefit analyses await....

Al is easily recyclable. Given it's high conductivity, electric arc furnaces that turn parts of the cargo containers (I'm assuming that cargo containers would be needed to keep stuff from jostling around during launch and landing) inside the starship into new products would probably be the lightest (the crucible doesn't have to be very large) and easiest industry to startup. That would be the short-term solution for any Al supply issues.

And yes, substituting iron and steel for bulk structures would be next longer term solution. Without water vapor in the air to promote oxidation, iron oxide might not be as prevalent of a problem on mars as it would be on earth.
 
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Re-using aluminum is indeed utterly essential; my thoughts were that the amount arriving as the interplanetary analogue of conex containers would be minuscule - that more mass-efficient methods of cargo handling will be used. I have, however, been envisioning the Transformer-like organization of items like terran-made Martian vehicular aluminum chassis themselves being also the means by which other material is secured.

More: in that I don't Moderate this section I haven't unlimited "Edit" ability. Two sentences in the ending portion of post #344 would be both more grammatical and more understandable were they changed by adding the italicized parts below as follows:

1. The sentence beginning "A rare mineral in pegmatites..." should have its center changed to "...all the elements hard to incorporate into....uranides) are concentrated - is a..."

2. "....Olympus Mons...too similar...to be a former of pegmatites might prove fruitful".
 
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Re-using aluminum is indeed utterly essential; my thoughts were that the amount arriving as the interplanetary analogue of conex containers would be minuscule - that more mass-efficient methods of cargo handling will be used. I have, however, been envisioning the Transformer-like organization of items like terran-made Martian vehicular aluminum chassis themselves being also the means by which other material is secured.

That would indeed be more mass efficient, but only for the outer container. It's a 7-month trip, consumables will occupy a significant amount of the actual cargo volume. Even accounting for dehydration, you'd need about 460 lbs of dehydrated food (1-Year Emergency Food Supply (2,000+ calories/day)), occupying ~30 cubic feet of space. Not including water (which would be recycled). Using aluminium "tins" instead of plastic bags would mean less "trash" on mars. Plus the pre-supply ship would have the same amount of food-stuffs packaging (if not more).

Unless, they're relying on hydroponics to reduce the food requirement?
 
Re-using aluminum is indeed utterly essential; my thoughts were that the amount arriving as the interplanetary analogue of conex containers would be minuscule - that more mass-efficient methods of cargo handling will be used. I have, however, been envisioning the Transformer-like organization of items like terran-made Martian vehicular aluminum chassis themselves being also the means by which other material is secured.

More: in that I don't Moderate this section I haven't unlimited "Edit" ability. Two sentences in the ending portion of post #344 would be both more grammatical and more understandable were they changed by adding the italicized parts below as follows:

1. The sentence beginning "A rare mineral in pegmatites..." should have its center changed to "...all the elements hard to incorporate into....uranides) are concentrated - is a..."

2. "....Olympus Mons...too similar...to be a former of pegmatites might prove fruitful".

Even the most optimistic scenarios would have Mars and other off-world habitats being utterly dependent on earth for many decades, perhaps hundreds of years.
Given that, establishing a large scale import/export infrastructure makes good sense.

A key component would be a mass driver on the moon. The moon is delightedly close to earth so getting manpower and material assets to both mine what materials can be gotten from the moon and forward other stuff (raw materials, chips, luxury food, etc) seems a logical necessity. Combine that with a cohort of freighter/carriers cycling Mars orbit solely for intercepting mass-driver shipped goods from the moon and getting that to Mars proper.
What will Mars export back? The first couple of years: People. And perhaps Mars rocks for sale on earth, until the novelty (quickly) wears off.
Over time, any self-respecting Mars colony will also do Mars and nearby asteroid mining. Given that the reusable spaceships have to head back to earth, due to cost/economy of the colonization effort, there might be room for a few tons of stuff on the return trip. Yes, Elon has joked that even crack cocaine would not be valuable enough to import from Mars. But, that assumes 'normal' shipping logic. If the star ships absolutely have to get back to earth no matter occupancy rates, then there might be some possibilities there. Of course the extra fuel spend per weight unit is a huge problem.
But, it really depend on the cost of local energy production on Mars. Given a high enough industrial base, local production and deployment of solar arrays at a huge scale (likely over decades) and perhaps some micro atomic reactors as well the cost local energy comes down gradually.

It makes sense for the moon mass driver array to also be utilized for transport towards earth and combined with orbiting earth freighter/carriers for intercepting goods and doing 'last mile' transport that would bring down the cost of 'shipping' stuff back from Mars and the off-world colonies down a lot, thus closing the import/export loop and thus making the whole infrastructure that much more reasonable at a massive scale.
 
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Just as a clarification - not that it was written in the above post - but aluminum itself will not be available for extraction either on the moon or in asteroids. I’ve not given any thought to Venusian-derived Al, other than ceteris paribus, why bother? I’ve heard it’s available on Earth.
 
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Those lunar soil data present exactly my case: elemental aluminum is omnipresent.

All you have to do to obtain it on the moon, or on Mars, or on the island of Hawaii.....is to take that ubiquitous plagioclase feldspar-containing rock, subject it to 200-300 million years of tropical rain, and ta da! you have high-quality bauxite, ready to be electrozapped to free its metallic soul.
 
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I have, however, been re-thinking it overnight. It is not impossible that there is another way - one which also takes natural forces to make them do the heavy lifting - which could, maybe, possibly allow us to find on Mars high-grade aluminum ore, ready for smelting.

More later, but I’ve provided clues in the first paragraph.
 
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Mars has less solar irradiation than earth, so any electricity derived from photovoltaics would be too valuable to squander on any kind of heavy industry like refining metals on mars. So I think importing refined aluminium produced from the moon would be a permanent solution. A mass driver delivery system on the moon would be most energy efficient and free from the limitations of transport intervals. Metals and rock from nearby asteroids should probably get delivered to the moon base for refining and delivery to mars.

Without an atmosphere, concentrated-solar-thermal foundries should be viable on the moon. There's a CST furnace in France that's already demonstrated this to be possible. How to run a foundry in a micro-gravity might be a tough engineering problem to solve though.
 
If I am anywhere near correct, what I envisioned as a possibility for Martian aluminum ore is absolutely impossible on the Moon.

Nor, to my understanding, would the lunar makeup present any other even remote chance of having Al in a concentration enabling one to fashion metallic aluminum.

However, I also dispute @Oil4AsphaultOnly‘s stance that the lessened solar insolation of Mars precludes solar as a source of electricity. I believe there have been demonstrated high-quality calculations showing that PV panels - at, naturally, the right price point - will suffice.
 
If I am anywhere near correct, what I envisioned as a possibility for Martian aluminum ore is absolutely impossible on the Moon.

Nor, to my understanding, would the lunar makeup present any other even remote chance of having Al in a concentration enabling one to fashion metallic aluminum.

However, I also dispute @Oil4AsphaultOnly‘s stance that the lessened solar insolation of Mars precludes solar as a source of electricity. I believe there have been demonstrated high-quality calculations showing that PV panels - at, naturally, the right price point - will suffice.

Just to clarify, my stance isn't that solar wouldn't be a source of electricity on mars. It's that electricity would be too valuable to squander on thermally intensive activities like smelting. Lighting and environmental heating (assuming we're NOT relying on radioactive decay to produce that heat) are the vitally important electrical loads. With the reduced solar insolation, we'll need 3-4x the surface area in panels that one would normally need on earth. Factor in the fact that heating needs will be much higher than what earth normally needs, we'll need a pretty large solar farms just for basic life-support functions on mars. Smelting would best be done closer to the sun, and the finished products slingshotted to mars.

As for the moon not having the right ores for Al, could asteroids containing the right concentrations be delivered to the moon for processing? The point is to carry out the smelting somewhere closer to the sun, since that's the only source of heat out in space.

If a compact nuclear reactor can be delivered to mars, then I'll withdraw my contention.
 
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Thank you for clarifying your thoughts on how to prioritize Martian electrical consumption. I have no more than basic, popular science knowledge of thorium-decay reactors - esp. in that they emit considerable heat, a very valuable byproduct on Mars.

I’m not a betting person but if I were, I’d wager my round-trip Mars<==>Io first class seats that zero aluminum productively could be extracted from anywhere in the asteroid belt. Rather, find a metals-rich floater, throw it onto the moon, process that and trade it on Earth for aluminum - that would be the way to go.
 
Here's hoping for more progress on Boron-fueled Dense Plasma Fusion in order to have working reactor just in time for Mars colonization. Then we could both do industrial level smelting on Mars while warming up the atmostphere (and in parallell hopefully some gradual terraforming of the atmosphere).
 
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson on terraforming Mars; he thinks it is possible though he’s pretty light on specifics.


And Dr. Ryan Ridden (astrophysicist atthe theexplains why it won’t be possible to create a human-compatible atmosphere on Mars; the relatively low mass of the planet (one tenth of Earth) combined with the absence of a magnetosphere means that the solar wind will relentlessly strip away the atmosphere that human technology would labor to produce, given that at present we lack the technology to give Mars a magnetosphere. The Sun will always win.

 
Article in the journal Nature Astronomy: Inventory of CO2 available for terraforming Mars
Conclusion:
…there is not enough CO2 remaining on Mars to provide significant greenhouse warming were the gas to be emplaced into the atmosphere; in addition, most of the CO2 gas in these reservoirs is not accessible and thus cannot be readily mobilized. As a result, we conclude that terraforming Mars is not possible using present-day technology.
So we have to invent new technology to do it. But this PBS video about terraforming Mars is not optimistic.
 
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