I just got my DI cherry popped today and this is a damn interesting point. It would be helpful to cite the timezone, considering the site is being archived.

I am now a loyal reader of DI and hope to see the timezone stamp included when the site is has been completely redone.

This conjures up images of tough and massive machines reminiscent of the terrestrial mining machines we are all familiar with. The more I think about it, the more I think that this is exactly the wrong approach, first making rubble and then extracting value from the rubble. Not only would such machinery need to be massive and durable, there would be a lot of moving parts. Parts subject to wear and ultimate breakdown, at which time the larger machinery may become as useless as a paperweight.

Let us examine the singular advantages of mining in deepspace. First, there is no terrestrial environmental impact. Also, the energy available to do the work does not need to be extracted from finite resources, as is the case with terrestrial operations. In space, we have unlimited solar energy.

Even so, if we use that energy in wrong ways, we can still fail miserably to do anything useful. However if we choose to convert that energy into another form, each of those conversions subtracts efficiency and adds costs, depleting rewards for the investors.

So choosing between using solar energy to create electricity with which to generate powerful laser beams to slice and dice the asteroid would be innefficient compared to a large diameter lens directly focusing on the asteroid. But of course, the light from a lens is only focused. not coherent. Focused light only provides heat, not exactly the satisfying instantaneous flash of sheer destruction that the laser’s coherent beam can produce.

To me, the lens has the edge except for the sheer mass involved. If the lens were of any size, and made of glass or quartz, just getting it there would be massively expensive. And because it is massive, it requires more substantial equipment to maintain its’ orientation and positional stability. The way around this is quite simple and requires no technological breakthroughs or esoteric materials. We need only make large wafer thin fresnel lenses out of the correct selection of the clear dimethylpolysiloxane family of materials, easily kept oriented for their task by tiny peripheral gyroscopes and micro thrusters. No brute force here. Just the tiniest if changes now and then, all powered by computers no bigger than a cell phone.

Seversl of these lenses would be focused on the target asteroid. And very slowly, perhaps overa period of years, they would increase its’ temperature until it becomes molten. The various elements and rocky materials would stratify, with the heaviest metals going to the core, and the lighter rocky materials forming the mantle.

During this cooling stage, the lighter mantle would cool more quickly than the interior. At some point, this lavalike mantle would attain a quas-isolid consistantcy allowing it to be scored deeply over the entire surface, now fairly spherical, by a more conventional device. Thes grooves would be deep and thin, Perhaps only a fraction of an inch to an inch in width.

Now additional time would go by as the asteroid dissipated enough of the remaining heat that at the base of the undercut grooves, the temperature is below zero C. Now a thin tough tape would be robotically applied accross the tops of all these grooves. Then, at strategic points all over the sphere, small squirter robots would simultaneously inject water at only slightly above the freezing point. It would very quickly freeze. And of course, since water expands when it freezes, the mantle will be split into pieces defined by the grooves.

Let us talk about the forces of this water as it becomes ice. Few people really comprehend exactly how much force is involved. Here is an illustration. I once made pressure vernier controls for the aerospace industry. One was called a V-II which was designed for use in pneumatic pressures of up to 6000 psi. In round numbers, that is more than 400 atmospheres. (Actual rated burst pressure for this device was 24,000 psi). I had made a couple dozen of these devices, and in testing, one of them showed a blemish in the interior bore which made it useless in the purpose that it was designed for.

I removed the piston, filled the V-II with water, made sure there were no air voids, put on an old 20,000 psi gauge, the bourdon tube of which I had filled with oil. So I had an entirely trapped system with no air voids, filled with water which had even had most of its’ dissolved gases removed in a soft vacuum. .

This was to be a simple demonstration to my young assistant who had blithely overpressured a lower pressure device pneumatically, He and a couple of other people in his vicinity had very nearly been seriously hurt. He had not apprehended the full import of the equation dealing with gases and pressires; PV=k, or to put it in more simple straightforward terms, P1V1=P2V2. Boyle’s Law, dealing with gases. Centuries old. This is dealing with gaseous pressures in a trapped system, P referring to pressure and V to volume. Increase the volume and the pressure decreases. But the young man had not internalized how much more dangerous gaseous pressures were than the virtually incompressible pressures of hydraulic or other liquid systems. Since he had just made a big pop with a cerain amount of shrapnel, I thought my little demo might capture a little understanding while he was still recovering most of his hearing.

Now I asked him how we should freeze the device, He suggested liquid nitrogen, which is far too cold and sets up some metal fatigue issues. I already knew there would be a failure of the unit. I did not want him to conclude that it was because of the extreme cryogenic conditions.

I put the unit in the freezer which was at about 10F. Every few hours, I would flambouyantly go over and get very close to the device, while he was looking on from 10 feet away. When the gauge read eighteen thousand psi, I was still unconcerned, getting my face a few feet away. My assistant is now watching from a full thirty feet away. He still wasn’t getting it. The unit was not going to pop until the 20,000 psi gauge had pegged out, and then some. I closed the freezer, locked it, and went about my business. Bit before I left I said, :”You know, I want to test your hearing. You work at my desk and listen for the explosion. I’ll come back as soon as you hear it and open the freezer. if you are right, I buy a steak and lobster dinner. If you don’t hear it and I come back and it has occurred, you buy. Two hours later I come back. he is still straining his ears. Says it hasn’t happenned yet. I said, yes it has. The silly goose was so sure of himself he bet another ten dollars. I opened the freezer Eight quarter inch steel bolts holding the end cap on had failed. The end cap only moved about a quarter inch, half an inch at most. If he had put a stethescope to the freezer he might have hear the snaps of the bolts, but I doubt it.
The point is, the failure occurred at probably above 25,000 psi, all of which was generated solely from the transition to the crystal state from the liquid state of water.

As to my bets. While my practice is generally to collect bets properly entered into, these were not entirely proper. I collected the $10 but gave him the opportunity to make me a bet that would cancel the steak and lobster dinner, that he couldn’t lose. I gave him a college physics textbook, which had a one page test at the end of each chapter. I bet him that he couldn’t read the book and do the tests successfully. I also stipulated that it was an open book test, so he could look up the answers. Couple that with the fact that each question referred the student to the page the answer was on, he had a mortal lock on winning the bet. He finished the book and all the tests within three weeks. This of course meant that he didn’t actually read the book. He scanned it in general, then took the tests, looking up the answers as required. But I presume he learned a little something anyway.

And finally, the grooves in the asteroid, the tape, that will certainly not work in the way I described it. The water is not in a trapped system and therefore, there is considerable relief of the pressures that would otherwise have built up, sort of like the hump on the ice cube in an ice cube tray. Also, there is not much water in the asteroid belt, and this use of water would be wasteful. Htdraulic jacks can generate even greater forces, and are very straightforward.

Also, at some point in the heating of the asteroid, there might be a point of equilibrium which would require the application of some sort of insulating cover material that would allow the heat to enter but retard its escape. This was just a spur of the moment brainstorm. One of the uses of a brainstorm is not just the basic idea, but also the opportunity to pick it to pieces while it is still just a brainstorm. What would be the minimum or maximum size of an asteroid that this sort of thing might work on? How many fresnel lenses would be required and how big would they need to be? Would it be worthwhile to impart spin to the asteroid? If so, how much spon would be practical? Some spin would facilitate more uniform heating. Too much might interfere with the stratification of the various components of the asteroid. We don’t even really know how efficiently any stratification would occur in the microgravity of the asteroid. Maybe the project would require both fresnel lenses AND laser beams generated by solar power. Even microwaves might play some roll. I think the central theme comes down to as few moving parts as possible with mechanical equipment, and with electronics, backup systems and excess capacity. That’s why I like the idea of fresnel lenses, lasers. small, durable, tough robots.

Well, I’m new around here, and I am never one to discourage brainstorming. But from my perspective, in such a distant, harsh and arid environment, the best focus is from a base of maximum practicality.

Recognizing how arid Mars appears, I expect water will always be at a premium, which means that fish farming requiring large pools of water is not likely to be at the very top of my list of things to ponder.

I do like the idea of a couple of gyroscopes, perpendicularly mounted near the center of a spacecraft, with spin rates rheostatically adjustable. This is certainly a fine idea for adjusting the position and stabilizing the craft. A similar kind of thing might also be useful on spacesuits as well, but we would have to mount them more creatively, since the spacesuit occupants stomach is in the way.

There is no question we will have to grow basic foods on Mars, and that the plants and grains we select will need to be nutrient dense and very adaptable. That is why I am experimenting with such plants as Maca which is a very high altitude plant that loves extreme conditions. It is a little too early in my experiments with Maca to draw any conclusions.

But there is another very adaptable and hardy plant that I have been working with for some time. It certainly has struck my interest. I have been eating it daily in every form I could devise. Today I had two salad bowls of the leaves raw; one bowl with lime juice sprinkled on, the other plain. Quite tasty both ways.

Over the past several months I have eaten this plant to excess, sometimes half a pound at a time. I eat the seeds, sprouts, shoots and leaves. I eat it dried as a spice, alone and in combination with other spices. It seems to take on the characteristics of whatever I mix with it. In some societies the seeds are consumed, but my focus in testing are the versatile and tasty raw greens.

Both the seeds and greens are exceedingly nutrient dense, providing a sense of energy, well-being, and fully satisfying the appetite. I have chopped it, dried it, used it alone as a spice on other foods, and I haven’t found anything that is not better with the plant mixed in. I have mixed it with every spice and food in my kitchen.

I call it Shmooo. I’ve got to admit, I’m pretty pleased with these developments. I certainly hope the Maca works out as well.

I’ll tell you another thing about these seeds. They will slurp up the water from the finest wisp of mist. My guess is you could lay a kilo of these seeds out on a tray on the Martian regolith, leave them for a few days, and they will have absorbed a couple hundred grams of moisture from the environment. I have not yet done any low temperature, low pressure tests. but the Shmooo seeds are so hardy that I would not be surprised if they did not slurp the moisture, hold it frozen solid, and still sprout when taken into a warm, well pressurized environment. I will be doing some freezing tests before long.

The article pretty much calls the patent hogwash and says it was given when the patent office was baffled by anything relating to space travel.”[/quote]
It strikes me that patent offices in general are often populated by non-inventive, pedestrian, clerical types. One notable exception — Einstein. As I recall, his career possibilities pretty much in ruin, do to his failure to fit in in acadamia, as sort of a last resort, went to work for the Swiss Patent Office. He was able to avoid retardation, so I expect he was not with them too long.

“Currently carbon dioxide collected by the space station’s air scrubbers and hydrogen produced by the station’s Elektron oxygen generator are dumped overboard.”

It is absolutely appalling that these loaded scrubbers are dumped into space! First from the perspective of the monumental cost of lifting every kilo of anything off earth, and the fact that both H and CO2 are potentially useful in an incredible number of ways. These elements and scrubbers are not bananas. They won’t rot. Are you suggesting that there is not enough space in space to store these materials?

But even more than that, we have already shortsightedly created a vast zone of incredibly fast moving trash around the planet, making it increasingly dangerous for every venture up there.

An errant paint chip or a screw, traveling much faster than a bullet, can take out a billion dollar satellite in a heartbeat.

May I suggest you recruit one or two nuts-and-bolts pragmatic people to supplement your scientists and engineers?

I am mystified that NASA can be this short sighted.

I’ll note you in my book of memory.

O mischief, thou art swift to enter in the thoughts of desperate men.

I attend a great purge. My driver is gone. My key retainers gone. But I stand now, feet solidly planted, with no retreat in them. My sword may be broken, but my dagger is dipped in venom.

Those who wish only for blunders from the besieged King, beset on all sides, serve themselves not.

If there is no regent on this field but me, then sink to your knees, put your forehead in the bloody mud and retire from this battle. Then rise and be my jester when I return from my joust with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and gird myself to do battle with the god of Presbyteria.