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Many of the tools are designed as experimental steps toward human exploration of the red planet. Crucially, Perseverance is equipped with a device called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE: an attempt to produce oxygen on a planet where it makes up less than 0.2 percent of the atmosphere.
Oxygen is a cumbersome payload on space missions. It takes up a lot of room, and it's very unlikely that astronauts could bring enough of it to Mars for humans to breathe there, let alone to fuel spaceships for the long journey home.
That's the problem MOXIE is looking to solve. The car-battery-sized robot is a roughly 1 percent scale model of the device scientists hope to one day send to Mars, perhaps in the 2030s.
Like a tree, MOXIE works by taking in carbon dioxide, though it's designed specifically for the thin Martian atmosphere. It then electrochemically splits the molecules into oxygen and carbon monoxide, and combines the oxygen molecules into O2.
It analyses the O2 for purity, shooting for about 99.6 percent O2. Then it releases both the breathable oxygen and the carbon monoxide back into the planet's atmosphere. Future scaled-up devices, however, would store the oxygen produced in tanks for eventual use by humans and rockets.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/moxie-robot-nasa-mars-rover-turns-co2-into-oxygen-2020-7
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dale_dmanny on Monday August 10 2020, @04:17PM (26 children)
That is to say that very little of it is beneficial to human respiration. Any breathable mixture would have to be produced.
Also from wikipedia on carbon dioxide:
Of course this has an implicit presumption that the mixture in which these levels of carbon dioxide is present is a 'normal' Earth atmospheric one.
On the bright side, we don't have to worry about an industrial revolution on a second planet engaging in massive combustion of hydrocarbons.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 10 2020, @04:22PM (22 children)
Terraforming is probably a waste of time. Rocket tanks and indoor humans can use the oxygen.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday August 10 2020, @04:42PM (5 children)
Terraforming Mars would be cool. What would that even look like though? Given, that we could actually convert all of the atmosphere to breathable air, is that what it would equate to? Just the fact that you could walk outside and not be dead in short order? I mean that would be great, but then, you've still got a giant ball of dust and maybe some ice. Which isn't what one would think of when you think of Sci-Fi terraforming. You think, green grass, flowing water, an atmosphere that replenishes itself, etc. Then, doing that on a planet scale? Yeah, that seems bonkers. You'd likely be able to create massive facilities with tons of redundancy that would be feasible from modern standards. Comparatively, it's like expecting an SR-71 Blackbird from the Wright brothers. Sure, they got something to fly, but there's a whole lot of incremental steps to get to something that they didn't even comprehend. While people may have thought how awesome it would be to be able to fly many centuries ago, being able to travel thousands of times faster than a bird, likely wasn't even something they speculated on.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @04:47PM (3 children)
I dunno. That alien one used in Total Recall (the first one--I never saw the remake) worked pretty darn fast. You could take your helmet off and not have your head explode only minutes after turning it on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @06:07PM
I see. Let’s send a bunch of holywood people to mars and see what happens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @07:44PM (1 child)
Yeah,... and how can you be sure that it's not a fake memory somebody planted in your brain?
(Score: 4, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Monday August 10 2020, @09:06PM
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @08:21PM
We'd still be at 1% of the earth's atmospheric pressure levels. So we'll need to find some ice or breathable rocks to vaporize as well.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 10 2020, @06:11PM (4 children)
Speaking of rocket tanks.
SpaceX Raptor engine burns methane and lox.
If we can produce oxygen from Mars' atmosphere, then we could possibly make lox.
Now if we can find underground ice or water, can we then use some of the C's from the CO and some of the H's in water to produce methane for fuel?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday August 10 2020, @06:19PM (3 children)
Consider it found [wikipedia.org].
They picked methalox in part because it can be made on Mars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_program [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 11 2020, @01:45PM (2 children)
We could use the H's from the water, but maybe Martian water doesn't have any H's in it?
<no-sarcasm>
My favorite line from various Sci Fi is: it's made of a metal not found on Earth.
Really? What element on the periodic table is that?
Or from Captain America, whose shield is made from the element Vibranium.
What element on the periodic table is that one again please?
</no-sarcasm>
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:24PM (1 child)
ISLAND
OF
STABILITY
?
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 11 2020, @08:38PM
Would such a shield be too heavy for Captain America to lift?
Or would such an alien item made of such a non Earthly metal be too heavy to bring with them on the trip -- especially if the vehicles is made of this non Earthly metal.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday August 10 2020, @09:02PM (10 children)
Terraforming Mars would be a wasteful extravagance, because any atmosphere you add will drift away. Perhaps if you put a UV/solar wind shield around the entire planet it would be reasonable, but WHY? If you can do that kind of engineering you can build much more livable space habitats a lot cheaper.
So if Mars is to be inhabited, it's going to be in pressurized "domes", whatever their shape. 1 atmosphere isn't that hard to maintain, but if you go out on the surface you're going to need a much improved space suit. (Well, "Mars suit", but you know what I mean. It will need better abrasion resistance, something to let you see when there's a dust storm, and lots better joint flexibility. I hope the idea of the "space leotard" can be made to work, but I have doubts that the problem of getting it one and off without wrinkles can be solved. If it can, that would be an ideal inner layer, and the outer layers would do all the adaptation to local conditions.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 10 2020, @09:34PM (1 child)
The engineering on domes could be tough. I think it will be a "tent city" for a long time, with various buildings, ice homes, caverns, stainless steel grain silos, etc. strewn about. Keep things separate/redundant and a failure or deranged Martian can only do minimal damage.
The suit should be developed soon, if SpaceX is really planning to send a couple of humans there before 2030. But is Mars regolith any worse than Moon regolith? I was under the impression that the Moon dust is more hazardous to lungs and machinery because there is no wind erosion grinding it down.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:55AM
Tents are too fragile, though by domes I wasn't talking about any particular architecture, but just about an enclosed pressurized environment a lot smaller than "outdoors". A buried tube would count. Redundancy is important, of course, but so is durability of each as an individual item...you're going to need both.
OTOH, of course this depends a lot on what you mean by "tent city". Plastic film can be reasonably tough, and if you bury it, then it doesn't get exposed to things that would damage it. This is particularly true if you have a layer of ice over it, but I'm a bit dubious about that. The living quarters would be a lot warmer then the surface. A very light tar would probably be a better choice. Light enough to still be viscously fluid at Mars surface temperature, but not light enough to be a real liquid a room temperature. (I wonder if you could make something like that from CO.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @10:19PM (7 children)
"You can build more livable space habitats much cheaper" is true for everything about Mars, not just terraforming.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:57AM (6 children)
Not yet it isn't. We need to develop a lot of technologies a bit more, especially radiation hardening, gravity control (i.e. centrifugal force in a moving craft), and closed ecology. Until those are more developed Mars has an edge.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday August 11 2020, @04:59AM (5 children)
The gravity control or rather producing fake gravity with centrifugal force is relatively simple. Could just attach 2 capsules together with a tether and spin it, or better attach to a central object like a propulsion stage. The closed ecology is likely the hardest, though once on Mars, it doesn't have to be completely closed as there is CO2, H2O and various minerals outside the ecology that can be added to the inside, still likely to be tricky balancing an ecology.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 11 2020, @12:20PM (4 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus-X#Status_as_of_2011 [wikipedia.org]
Nautilus-X ISS demo: Less than $200 million
Status: What's Nautilus-X? Time to deorbit the ISS
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:58PM (3 children)
Looks too small to actually be useful. A rotating habitat has to be big enough with low enough RPM that there isn't a particular large gravity gradient between head and feet. There's other issues such as Coriolis force as well. Still have to start somewhere and one thing it would be nice to know is the minimum G force needed for health.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:47PM (2 children)
NASA likes to do smaller experiments before scaling things up. Like how the CO2 converter in TFA will produce a small amount of gas, and won't be filling up giant tanks for future astronauts to use.
For the price of SLS/Orion development, we could have had hundreds of neat experiments like the Nautilus-X demonstrator. SLS can't be killed fast enough.
My guess is that almost any amount of simulated gravity will cut microgravity health risks dramatically. But it might as well be set at 0.165g to simulate a long-term Moon experience. Sending thousands of people there will become trivial soon, so it's past time to investigate long-term partial gravity health effects.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @08:22PM (1 child)
You seem to have a very interesting definition for "trivial." I don't think that word means what you think it does.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 11 2020, @08:50PM
Relatively trivial. And if you don't agree you need to pay more attention to what's going on.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @07:28PM (2 children)
Actually, massive releases of greenhouse gases (methane, CO2, etc.) would be greatly *beneficial* to terraforming Mars, given how thin its atmosphere (~1% the atmospheric pressure on Earth at sea level) is, not to mention the freezing temperatures.
As such, releasing the stuff that's making it hotter on Earth will also make it hotter on Mars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @08:43PM (1 child)
I was under the impression that Mars cannot hold a thick atmosphere due to its core being inert and lacking a strong magnetic field.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:26PM
Which argues for the *continuous* release of greenhouse gases, if terraforming is a goal.