Colonisation details from Elon Musk

#colonization #life #Mars #space #ElonMusk #Earth #interplanetary

Eventually, there will be a nuclear war, or an asteroid collision on Earth or a rogue AI, or environmental destruction that might cause problems to live on Earth. Well those are some of the few reasons Elon Musk is so interested in the Living in Mars concept or inter-planetary capabilities.

According to Elon Musk’s timeline, if all goes smoothly, the first manned mission to Mars can be held as early as 2023. And the idea of transferring 1 million people to Mars, thus starting a civilization, can happen in 40 – 100 years.

The lift-off thrust from the Earth will be 13,000 tons, quite tectonic, for a rocket to speed by and reach Mars in as many as 30 days. However, currently the cost per person to travel to Mars comes out to an approximate $10 billion, which should be reduced by 5 million percent according to Musk. Reducing the price will allow more people to travel to the red planet.

The spaceships design has been summed up as not complicated, however the critics point out that it runs contrary to the reputation of this field of science.

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A Mars vision, and sending a million people to the planet within 40 – 100 years. People won’t be wrong of calling Musk overly-ambitious, however he does hold on to what he says, like the re-usability of rockets, that is saving millions of dollars for everyone. So keep your fingers crossed.

City on Mars is possible

#space #Mars #ElonMusk #SpaceX #interplanetary #humans #colonization

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, mentioned that human colonies on Mars are possible in our lifetime. He also described the options for expanding to a space-bearing civilization and the advantages of Mars. He compared possible spaceships and rockets designs and performance features.

At present, the major challenge that faces engineers and scientists is the need to reduce cost per tonne of transporting materials to Mars by five million percent.

Musk also mentioned that as seen in history, there always is an extinction event at some point that wipes the entire civilization aka doomsday event. Human will be extinct if they stay on Earth forever. And the alternative to that will be to become a multi-planetary species.

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Musk is right. There will be an extinction event in the far future, however most of the people are sure that humans won’t need an extinction event if the current trend in population and pollution keeps growing, leading to a man-made catastrophe.

Diverse minerals found in Mars

#Mars #NASA #Curiosity #space #life #planet #minerals

Curiosity rover, the NASA’s rover on Mars, has found a variety of minerals on the red planet. These layers of rocks are predicted to have been deposited about 3.5 billion years ago, coinciding with a time on Earth when life was beginning to take hold. In fact, early Mars could have been very similar to early Earth.

Four samples were drilled near the base of Mount Sharp:

Telegraph Peak sample had minerals similar to quartz.

Buckskin sample had tridymite, which is rather strange considering that the mineral is found from partial melting of a planet’s crust (such as Earth’s crust), and Mars is assumed to never have had tectonic plates

Confidence Hills and Mojave 2 sample had clay minerals, generally formed in the presence of liquid water with a near-neutral pH.

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There were several other minerals found. So, since Mars had a habitable environment in the starting, could it be that there was life on Mars and was later wiped out? or rather life managed to reach Earth from Mars?

NASA’s Deep Space Lunar Gateway

#NASA #Space #Moon #DeepSpaceGateway #astronauts #Mars #science

NASA aims to have a Deep space Gateway up and running in the 2020s. The gateway will be located on Moon and have a crew habitat, a propulsion module and an airlock. However, the gateway will be occupied intermittently, rather than continuously like the ISS.

The gateway will enable a variety of missions in Earth-Moon space, and will even help get dirt and rocks from other planets. The basis will be that, there will be a system that will let astronauts go from the Earth to the Moon gateway. From there, the crew can go anywhere with the existing capabilities. However, there is no concrete plan regarding the gateway at present.

NASA has quite a few missions lined up for the 2020s, such as the launching of SLS and completing it’s flight tests with crew onboard, the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission that is aimed at returning a sample of space rock from the asteroid Bennu, the development of new Space suits for the astronauts to be used in Mars and many more.

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This is amazing. Exploration, especially in Space, has no bounds and is worth taking note of, considering that most of the population might be living outside Earth in the next century or so. And it is always filled with unique findings, and who knows, someday we might be able to make contact with friendly-Aliens.

Bricks made on Mars

#Mars #bricks #colonizing #MartianSoil #NASA #curiosity #space #newtech

Scientists have manufactured tiny bricks, about 0.1 inch thick and disc-shaped, using artificial Martian soil. The technique only requires the red Martian soil to be compressed in a precise way. There are no additives required or no baking to be done.

NASA’s Curiosity rover collected samples of Martian dust and sand for the first time in 2012, analyzing its composition in a laboratory inside the mobile robot.

These bricks can be used by people during manned mission, and will be effective in the colonization of Mars. Since the soils just needs to be compressed, there will be no need of building nuclear plants to fire bricks, or hauling large quantities of polymer from Earth.

The main reason is due to the presence of Iron oxide in the Martian soil, which is thought to be the ‘cementing agent’ that makes the soil so malleable. The bricks thus formed can be considered stronger than steel of the same dimensions.

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Amazing. Now all that is left is someone working on Space suits.

Space suits yet to be updated after spending millions

#SpaceSuits #NASA #space #astronauts #Mars #LucaParmitano #ISS

US and it’s space agency NASA want to send it’s astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, however there has been no next-generation space suit technologies in development, even after spending nearly $200 million on the development program.

The White colored suits currently worn by astronauts were developed more than 40 years ago, even though the life-cycle for the suit was meant to be 15 years during it’s production. Most of the suits have been refurbished over the years and have been added with new features like glove warmers, improved helmet cameras and lights.

However, the current suits are facing new problems, like water leaking. In 2013, astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned in the spacesuit because there was water leakage in the helmet he was wearing. Also, out of 18 life-support backpacks (EMU), only 11 are in working condition currently.

The inventory may not be adequate to last through the planned retirement of the ISS in 2024.

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Why NASA? Why can’t you take better care of the people you are sending in space, rather than just being interested in scientific data and images.

Donald Trump talks to Peggy Whitson

#NASA #PeggyWhitson #ISS #DonaldTrump #astronaut #space #Mars

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, 57, set a new space record on Monday, beating NASA’s previous record-holder Jeff Williams for the most number of days in orbit. However, she is still (534 days) shorter than the world record of Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka (879 days).

Donald Trump commented to her that That’s an incredible record to break, and then asked her What are we learning form being in space? One being told that there is a technology to convert urine to drinking water for astronauts, Trump replied Better you than me.

Whitson is the oldest woman ever in space, and has also set a new record for most space walks (8) by a female astronaut. She also mentioned that NASA is currently building hardware to test a new heavy launch vehicle, Space Launch System (SLS), which will help space vehicles to take manned missions further into the space.

Trump said he wished that NASA is able to do the Mars manned mission in his first or second term of Presidency.

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That’s amazing! Congratulations Peggy Whitson! And in reality, a technology to convert urine to safe/hygienic drinking water will be treasured on Earth.

A Venus Odyssey after Mars

#Venus #Odyssey #Mars #ISRO #India #orbiter #space

It has been nearly three years since India sent it’s Mars orbiter on its first attempt, and now the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to do a similar mission for Venus.

ISRO has already invited proposals for space-based experiments to be carried out in the Venus mission. May 19 is the last date for the proposals to be received. The planned mission will carry scientific instruments weighing around 175 kg which is 10 times more than the scientific payload carried by the Mars Orbiter.

The proposed orbit is expected to be around 500 x 60,000 km around Venus. ISRO will likely be undertaking the Venus mission in 2021/2022.

Venus has a size, mass, density, bulk composition and gravity almost similar to that of Earth, and hence is often described as Earth’s twin sister.

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To Venus now! But I would rather have some scientists searching and reaching exoplanets. It’s an area that interests me most.

Solar wind turned Mars into what it is today

#Mars #space #MAVEN #exploration #atmosphere #planet

Mars also had a dense atmosphere, similar to Earth’s, about 4 billion years ago. This atmosphere kept the planet warm and wet, but somehow the Mars atmosphere became vulnerable to the solar wind (probably because of the loss of the planet’s magnetic field), which resulted energized particles in the solar wind to strip off Mars’ atmosphere.

The atmosphere in Mars is still believed to be shrinking, considering that it has already lost 66 percent of the Argon in its atmosphere from the amount it had 4 billion years ago. Mar’s atmosphere was and is dominated by carbon dioxide.

The above information was collected by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is one of the eight satellites/rovers currently operating around/in Mars.

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Might be able to make Mars habitable?

#Mars #NASA #ScienceVision2050 #space #solarwind

A computer modeling experiment suggests that we can use a spacecraft to create a magnetic field around Mars, shielding it from the solar wind that’s stripping its thin atmosphere away, oxygen ion by oxygen ion.

If we are somehow able to shield Mars from the Solar wind, and if the above theory proves to be correct, Then it will be possible to melt the planet’s polar ice caps and bring back some liquid water to the Martian surface.

The proposal was presented at NASA’s planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop.

However, this experiment has its limitations. While computer modeling is a good option in place of practical experiments, it also means that this kind of mission is far from a sure thing.

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