[Vince Ferrer]

[Deaf Smith]

"Aerogel is a Styrofoam like...."

How well will this stuff hold up to a month long sand storm.

Did they test it around Lubbock, TX during the Spring sand storms?

[Beowulf9]

Fix California. Forget colonizing Mars. It’s got nothing.

[HighSierra5]

Mars bars.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*

[northislander]

Beware of these fables...

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Aerogel Superinsulation Blowtorch Demo: Hershey’s Kiss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sw1tNeJ0Rw

Originally invented in 1931, Aerogel was both brittle and expensive. Plus it was very hydrophilic, attracting water.

However, a decade or two ago, somebody came up with a way to make thin, flexible sheets of aerogel at much less cost.

It insulates too well to be integrated into clothing. If you lined a sleeping bag with it, you could sleep outside in a winter blizzard in the Arctic, and feel like you were in a sauna.

However, inside a panel, it could be used to line a freezer or refrigerator, or an oven, and they would use just a fraction of the energy they currently use with conventional insulation.

NASA has first call on aerogel insulation for use in satellites and spaceships. Likewise Arctic and Antarctic stations, and places where it gets extremely hot could benefit from it.

In full industrial-commercial production, it could slash US energy use by a huge amount.

[steve86]

“Although aerogel is several times lighter than air”

That can’t be, especially since it says earlier in the article that aerogel is 99% air. Looking up the density, it appears to be about twice as dense as air or a little more. A sort of aerogel made from graphene, however, can be less dense than air. That material would take off like a hot air balloon.

[familyop]

Destination Planet Negro (Free Full Movie) Kevin Willmott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plhWisabXq4
“In 1939, African American leaders respond to Jim Crow segregation by building a rocket to colonize Mars. The three person crew blasts off, but time travel instead, arriving in present-day America revealing much about race today.”

[katana]

I’m as much or more a fan of science fiction and space exploration as anyone I know. But if we’re going to seriously contemplate “colonizing” Mars, how about we first colonize Antarctica (similar climate but with a breathable meteor and radiation protective atmosphere, with Earth gravity to keep our bones healthy to boot), or the continental shelf, with abundant and accessible food and mineral resources. Less ambitious or “sexy”, I’ll admit. But a bit more realistically achievable as well.

[Carriage Hill]

Mars is a suicide mission.

[DouglasKC]

But the study's authors noted that developing small habitability zones on Mars is more plausible than attempting to "terraform" the planet, as science-fiction writers have proposed doing in the past. A NASA study last year dashed the hopes of thickening the Martian atmosphere enough to create an Earth-like greenhouse effect.

Gee we can apparently do it on earth without even trying but we can't do it on Mars even with the best minds working on it.