Posted on 09/03/2018 7:35:51 AM PDT by BenLurkin
For a potential prize of $1 million, the government space agency is inviting the public to submit ideas about how to turn carbon dioxide, which is plentiful on the red planet, into glucose, which is more useful for human consumption. The goal is to allow astronauts to visit Mars with fewer materials and ultimately “to enable humans to live and thrive on the planet.”
...
NASA has also asked for help controlling a humanoid robot in a simulated mission to Mars and with building “sustainable housing for deep space.”
NASA isn’t the only organization trying to get people on Mars. Boeing and SpaceX are also working on plans to get humans to travel to and colonize Mars, and Elon Musk says SpaceX could begin a mission to Mars as early as 2022.
Entries for the CO2 Conversion Challenge are open through January 24, 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
A replicator!
Sounds like my life.
Thank you for the LOL.
One question; what sane person would want to go to that desolate planet?
Why on earth (or in space) would you do that? A couple tons of chemical laboratory, and all you get is glucose.
A few hundred pounds of seed and fertilizers an you get sugars, starches, fiber, fuel, vitamins and oxygen. You get pasta, potatoes, tomatoes, cotton, peppers, corn, berries, salad greens, eventually fruits and nuts. and if for whatever reason, blueberries fail, its not a disaster, you still have strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.
With your chemical factory all you get is sugar water, and if the equipment of any step of the process including the side steps making the chemical feedstocks breaks, you are done.
Weight = energy. Also, the system is vulnerable since the environment has to be earth-like = pressure, temperature, sunlight, artificial gravity, micrometorites, radiation, etc. etc. etc.
And it is not just glucose that might be produced but all nutrients and elements like oxygen to sustain a human.
Important point: human scientists can create a solution better than nature. Nature is inefficient. Example: a bird vs a fighter jet. Both can fly.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/20120515-earth-life-survive-mars.html
Lichen, cyanobacteria, water bears. They’re tough.
This is way out of my competence, but isn’t that something plants do? And they don’t have to be trained to do it! and they don’t need government grants.
“One question; what sane person would want to go to that desolate planet?”
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise a kid, in fact it’s cold as hell.
Energy produced from fusion or solar?
And long term stay on any body, as well as getting there in realistic time frame, will require nuclear power. The squeamish and environmentally correct need to just take a hike ...
That sounds like a job for some 17 year old kid, preferably one with gender dysphoria.
Do you know how the little winglets got on the ends of commercial jets?
Pretty hard to improve on a billion years of adaptation.
BTW, my dad worked in ground support of those fighter jets. it takes a large ground crew, a massive supply chain, a good machine shop and a repair facility to keep them in the air for a fraction of the time.
Birds, not so much.
And Muslim.
Plant crops—simple. Where do I get my $1MM?
Take protiens and your body will do the rest. How about chia seeds?
Boy did NASA ever get dumbed down after the Obama devil repurposed them into a Muslim outreach program. All this knowledge is lying around in books (old school) and all over the internet and they want someone else to find it for them. For a million dollars! Damn, them Dems love throwing money around.
There are already 20 ideas right here. I propose the million dollars be donated to Free Republic. Problem solved.
How intolerant
From Wiki:
Procedure:
Make up stock solutions and store in separate bottles with appropriate label.
Add each component to 800 mL deionized water then fill to 1 L.
After the solution is mixed, it is ready to water plants.
What many people may not know is that the Hoagland/Arnon nutrient solution formulations require one gallon of nutrient solution to be used per plant with replacement on a weekly basis.
If any of these use parameters are changed, i.e., the volume of solution, number of plants, and/or frequency of replacement, plant performance will be significantly affected, this is a factor that may not be realized by people using the formulations.
But this is not what NASA is asking for, it seems to me. Take a gas and combine it with something common or process it in a simple energy efficient way to create a sugar.
Using plants requires a host of other materials and machinery ... while the end result may be a sugar, the process to too laborious and fragile, not to mention expensive and time consuming, to be viable.
The goal is to allow astronauts to visit Mars with fewer materials and ultimately “to enable humans to live and thrive on the planet.”
This is the dumbest waste of time, energy, and money of all time; and will end in death and disappointment.
Better to fix the roads.
—
The goal is to allow people to cross the Mississippi with fewer materials and ultimately “to enable humans to live and thrive in the West”
This is the dumbest waste of time, energy, and money of all time; and will end in death and disappointment.
Better to fix the roads.
See how that turned out?
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