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Want to Colonize Mars? Aerogel Could Help
In a new paper in Nature Astronomy, researchers propose that a material called aerogel might help humans one day build greenhouses and other habitats at Mars' mid-latitudes, where near-surface water ice has been identified. The study was funded by Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Aerogel is a Styrofoam-like solid that is 99% air, making it extremely light. It's adept at preventing the transfer of heat as well, making it an excellent insulator; in fact, it's been used for that purpose on all of NASA's Mars rovers. Moreover, aerogel is translucent, allowing visible light to pass through while blocking ultraviolet light's harmful radiation. Most aerogel is made from silica, the same material found in glass.
In an experiment conducted by lead author Robin Wordsworth of Harvard, 2-3 centimeters of silica aerogel allowed light from a lamp tuned to simulate Martian sunlight to heat the surface beneath it by up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius) - enough to raise temperatures on the Martian surface and melt water ice.
"The study was meant as an initial test of aerogel's potential as a Martian building material," said second author Laura Kerber, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Kerber participated in a 2015 NASA workshop to identify the best places on Mars to send astronauts. "The ideal place for a Martian outpost would have plentiful water and moderate temperatures," she said. "Mars is warmer around the equator, but most of the water ice is located at higher latitudes. Building with silica aerogel would allow us to artificially create warm environments where there is already water ice available."
Also at Harvard, Scientific American, and CNET.
Enabling Martian habitability with silica aerogel via the solid-state greenhouse effect (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0813-0) (DX)
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @12:20AM (2 children)
Actually it will be higher, even if only infinitesimally so.
The volume of fluid it contains does not matter as long as the aerogel is sunk into a fluid of the same density.
But Archimedes guarantees the silica sponge will be pushed against gravity (for some reasons they call it buoyancy) with a force equal with the weight of the displaced fluid - he even introduced a bill and made it a law. So, the denser the fluid, the higher the 'apparent weight loss'.
Since the density of Earth's atmosphere is higher than the Mars'es...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 17 2019, @02:29AM (1 child)
I mean, as long as we're "well technically"ing, gravity would be substantially lower, so bouyancy would be a relatively small effect compared to 9.8 m/s/s vs 3.7 m/s/s
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @02:46AM
You have a point, sir.
Should teach me right about nitpicking before considering the obvious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford