What the song fails to mention was that the terraforming of Mars in the video was actually an unintended consequence of rampant pollution. Rather than developing safe nuclear power (fission or fusion) or investing in solar power, Humanity chose to ship fossil fuels and shale gas to Mars, and the resulting green house effect melted the poles of Mars, while a cargo handling mishap provided the fungi and plants necessary to kickstart forest formation.
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I find that hard to believeâŠkilogram for kilogram solar power is worth more than gold on another planet with no industry. In the early stages of colonization, you HAVE to use solar otherwise you die. Solar infrastructure will last far longer than a tank of gas on another planet. Itâs barely a comparison.
Any terraforming of Mars would be a very intended consequence of pollution. However, ultimately you need to import a lot of mass to the planet if you ever wanted a breathable, livable(pressure wise) atmosphere for humans.
Yeah, shipping chemical fuels from off-planet to a colony makes no sense energy-wise.
Nuclear reactors could also be used on Mars (and are more and more attractive as you go further, for lack of Sun), if you can ship nuclear fuel, and may end up scaling better, but at first solar panels would probably be the way to go.
Also, why would you use fossil fuel on an planet where without oxygen in the atmosphere? (Not to mention that the CO2 wouldnât be a problem with an already mostly CO2 atmosphere.)
I remember an old sf book where oxygen fires are evoked on Titan: during mining operations, they use oxygen in the ground to burn it in giant fires with the combustible atmosphere, in the inverse process we see here on Earth. I wonder what effect that would have on Titanâs climate on the long run.
You both make great arguments based on objective facts. When was the last time facts dissuaded political lobbyists? The oil- and fossil fuels industry has, directly or indirectly, been providing the majority of the energy used for space travel and -exploration* since the beginning, you think theyâll just quietly give up that market?
I really hope we donât wait for human nature to change before colonizing Mars.
*) Non-ground-based space exploration, then, I know people have been looking at stars for a long time.
Donât we need combustibles to get rockets off mars into space (at least untill we have figured out nuclear booster rockets/thrusters)?
We already have nuclear engines for space propulsion and open-cycle nuclear jet engines, however these projects have been shutdown, supposedly because of the danger of flying nuclear material around in craft that crash and explode. Also some of those engines leave behind radiation as they function.
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Which is worse then air pollution by combustion, right? (fallout from nuclear rockets vs CO2 from combustibles)
If so the scenario from the videoclip makes kind of sense.
Yes, chemical rockets contain both oxidizer and combustible, often oxygen and hydrogen or kerosene. And chemical propulsion is pretty much your only option to get off a planetary gravity well like Earth or Mars. There are a few options to get them in-situ if you have energy to spare.
But off-Mars rockets would be a tiny part of the energy requirements of a Mars colony. For nearly everything else, shipping off chemical energy from Earth is so impractical you can rule out as flat-out impossible - and no amount of lobbying will change that. And again, making chemical fuel requires more energy it will give you in the first place.
Nuclear rocket propulsion gives you a pretty good efficiency, but it is way too weak to take off from the planet, even ignoring radiation. Unless you go for nuclear pulse propulsion (the old project Orion), which is both pretty efficient and extremely powerful, but the âuse nuclear explosives to throw yourself into spaceâ part wasnât popular, for some reason.
Iâd argue that today, we could manage it to work with an international structure and taking off from northern Norway (itâs better to take off from near the magnetic pole if possible), but people seem to disagree.
So chemical propulsion is still your only option to take off.
Once in space, ion propulsion is actually more efficient, but it is so weak that for human movement, itâs probably too low - which is why for a Mars crewed mission, nuclear engines may be necessary in the end.
Nuclear-powered aircraft was the kind of insanity we could expect from the Cold war and its nuclear mortar teams, pigeon-guided missiles, underwater bases, orbital laser cannons and plans for a (project Orion-powered) 4000 Mt orbital nuke - which fortunately, like most of those, never saw the light of day.
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While your first statement does have merit, it ultimately doesnât apply in this situation.
Space is a whole 'nother ball game no matter which way you look at it. While the oil and gas companies may call the shots in politics, they are the ones actually blocking something like this happening. Politicians donât really care about spaceflight, they care about pork for their districts and thatâs it. You can see this by looking at the launch costs for the last 40 years or so.
Spoiler: They havenât changed. Keeping the cost to space high puts the need for a high bar of profit to do anything there(if youâre a company) which is why we have almost zero space commercialization now.
Today, there is absolutely zero reason to colonize mars other than âWe need to as a raceâ or âIt would be a great challengeâ, etc. Believe me, Iâm a huge proponent of space travel, but it all costs something and currently the cost is too damn high to make any mission like that economicly viable.
When it is viable economically, you wonât be powering such a colony with fossil fuel based products. Itâs ludacris to expect to ship what would amount to millions of tons of the stuff over time to power their generators once. What I mean by this is, once you burn the fuel, itâs gone. There is not any oil on Mars, so youâd have to import it at from Earth. By looking at the time and cost investment of a single shipment to Mars, solar is orders of magnitude more economical. Honestly, to send your first colonies to Mars and expecting them to live off of fossil fuels and not solar for electricity, is sending them on a suicide mission. It canât happen.
As far as NERVA and nuclear rockets go, they can go radioactive and dangerous but not necessarily. It depends if the reactor runs open cycle and dumps the energic neutrons into the exhaust. If itâs closed cycle, then this doesnât happenâŠbut after time your core gets more and more radioactive and also loses efficiency(heat) due to halflife of your fuel. Where to put the old cores, and how to replace them is one of the problems facing nuclear engines today. I say one because stigma towards nuclear anything is at an all time high, and no one likes the idea of nuclear reactors flying over our headsâŠeven if they arenât started/radioactive until they reach space. Itâs a tough sell.
This is not entirely true and also depends on the type of nuclear engine youâre running. For the record, KSP has it wrong. It gave Nervas high ISP but low thrust to balance the engine for gameplay reasons. A real nerva(using hydrogen as fuel) has great ISP, around 1200s, and pretty good thrust comparable to chemical rockets.
I donât want to cherry pick quotes, but if you read this wiki you can see that various designs have varying ISP and thrust values, but ultimately once in space they are miles better than chemical rockets due to their much larger ISP values, and the fact that ISP increases your efficiency exponentially due its logarithmic nature.
All you need to know, is that for our age(baring any serendipitous physical breath throughs such as the EM drive actually working or discovering warp) these nuclear engines are the best engines(efficiency wise) to launch us into space and get us to nearby destinations. However, politics and common sense are a pretty large obstacle to overcome. Chemical rockets will reign supreme for access to LEO for many years to come, but once there the switch to electric propulsion is on itâs way. Whether we power our manned missions with nuclear reactors(in which case itâs better to go NERVA so that you donât have to worry about radiating your waste heat) or with extremely large solar panels for power remains to be seen.
I just found out that there is an independent Star Trek film in the works, that are just about to end their indygogo campaign to fund it. So far they have made a 20 minute prequel short film leading up to what is coming.
Well worth a look.
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One of my favorite sci-fi shorts, based around a concept not commonly acknowledged in regard to FTL travel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yid59_nd9-8
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Never thought of it this way⊠fascinating thing is that here on this forum it was in front of the eyes for years.
Simple yet brilliant. I love sci-fi such variety of themes to explore.
This is the one I was going to post. My all time favorite. I wish the whole world could watch thisâŠ
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METACHAOS from Alessandro Bavari
Not quite Sci-Fi, more Silent Hill, but I always found it creative in a very dark and macabre way. I just wish the guy would release the HD version again, all we have is SD.
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Last day of war.
And the prequel.
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The Lord Inquisitor prologue:
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I canât wait for the entire short film to come out. I especially love the music, it fits the scenery and the parade so well. Admittedly lipsync could use more work, but Iâve heard that it is really hard to do.
I still thing that the Inquisitor would make an incredible TV series / movie! 
For the Greater Good!
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I donât know if this fits here, but I highly recommend âBlack Mirrorâ (a series on Netflix). Each episode tells a different story. The series deals with how technology impacts and could impact society.
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