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.”
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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 ...
What is the most plentiful element in space? Put a scoop on the front of your spaceship and use it to feed your fusion reactor. Maybe scoop up other stuff like particles flying through space blasting out from the sun. Some of the particles are charged and are probably plentiful (relatively speaking).
Interesting how optimistic predictions about space travel are — according to the 2001 Space Odyssey we should have already had a manned mission to Mars. So maybe by the time we have figured out space travel, we will have figured out the fusion thing.
It isn’t just light but how much UV and IR the plants get; on Mars those components are a lot weaker than on Earth, and mirrors will not help.
Take protiens and your body will do the rest. How about chia seeds?
As pointed out by numerous Freepers, plants are the answer. Mars has adequate sunlight to grow plants; you just need to install windows and possibly mirrors to bring sunlight into your shielded habitat. There is no need to try and grow plants directly on the surface.
Where this research project will really pay off is in deep space missions or long interplanetary transits. The logistics of supplying oxygen, water, food, etc. for astronauts on long missions are considerable.
While plants have been grown in zero G using hydroponics, it would be very useful to have a bioreactor or chemical conversion process to provide such consumables on long missions. The effect on total launch mass is considerable.
20 years ago when I was an aerospace engineer, I worked with a brilliant biochemist who came up with such a process. His unit was about the size of an office desk and used inputs of CO2, water, electricity from either solar or nuclear, and astronaut waste products.
He started with purely chemical conversion processes and ended up with O2, glucose, starch, and ethanol. He then used the treated astronaut waste and engineered microbes to create fats, proteins, and complex carbs. The output from the processor was bread, artificial meat, and ethanol for the astronaut’s grog ration.
Add in some hydroponic veggies and perhaps a pig or some chickens for a complete diet.
That last part may be the most difficult. Imagine trying to raise pigs in zero G!
Early flying machines tried to mimic the flapping of a bird wing. Innovation and science came up with a much better solution.
What is the top speed for a bird? 100mph? A fighter jet can do many times that. If speed is the goal, the fighter jet has the bird beat.
Bottom line: depends on your goal. Nix the overhead of an ecosystem.
There are other factors to be considered too. Can a human survive outside of an ecosystem.
I believe that it is the red end of the spectrum. Plants absorb red, reflect green.
with enough energy one can convert pretty much any substance to any other substance, so I’ve invented a battery that’s a 1” cube that weighs only an ounce, costs only $1.00 to manufacture from plentiful materials, maintains its charge indefinitely until used up, and can output a billion terawatts of power at a variable rate before it goes dead, at which point it becomes completely inert and can be used as a small building block ... please mail my prize check to catnipman, c/o Free Republic ...
That same question has been asked many times.... about Antarctica, Australia, the Old West, South Africa, my ex, etc etc etc.
Short answer, no.
Longer answer, If you know EVERY micronutrient a human body needs, and can make it in a factory, and you have the industrial ecosystem to feed and repair that factory, the body can be sustained.
Whether a living body with no other living things to interact with is still a human being is an exercise left to the reader.
Mostly because harsh environments weed out liberals...
I haven't seen a sillier intelligent post in a long time. Nature creates flying machines that reproduce themselves for millennia, with minimal input, and those inputs are extremely plentiful. Humans can produce a flying machine, but it requires vast networks of resources and constant input, and the inputs are often scarce. That is not even close to being more efficient.
I'm sure that NASA here is hoping to find something simple, that doesn't require massive airtight housing, and can survive extremes in weather, and still reliably converts CO2 to glucose. THAT would be world-changing (for Mars), and would be worth far, far more than $1m.
... according to the 2001 Space Odyssey we should have already had a manned mission to Mars. So maybe by the time we have figured out space travel, we will have figured out the fusion thing.
According to Project Orion (the original Orion) we would have been on Mars since 1964 and visited Saturn back in 1970.
But calmer heads prevailed and decided it was best to follow treaty obligations, mollify the budget hawks, while pleasing the military with their pet ideas, so it was canceled in 1964.
Perhaps in was also canceled because it would have been so much cheaper to make (heavy materials, not expensive composites) and use - $250 per pound instead of $5-6,000 to LEO.
So instead of ships (10,000 tons) with crews of 150 exploring our solar system far faster than anything we have presently (125 days to Mars), we got 12 guys spending some 80 hours on the moon; instead of visiting the nearest stars in ships (40,000,000 tons) with crews in the thousands, we got movies ...
And are we designed for space travel? Clearly no.
But how much can we do without the complex ecosystem is the question. Scientists and engineers can offer solutions. Maybe humans will have to be modified in some way?
I like to use the analogy of traveling with the wife - do you really need that industrial sized hair dryer? Do you need the three jumbo sized suitcases? No doubt scientists are considering this. But maybe the need to completely rethink it.
There are many aspects of a human being that we don’t even understand yet. Maybe subtle things like the earth’s mag field are necessary.
Perhaps a more useful question is "Are we designed with wanderlust?" Clearly yes.
Look how quickly we spread from the Bering Straight land bridge to Terra del Fuego. On foot.
Here is a challenge for scientists: eliminate the need for gravity. Gravity is expensive.
It is the creative mind that sometimes points us in the right direction. :)
Makes you appreciate the trips to the Moon. That was real and done with 60s technology. Best of all many of the gadgets that we use today can be traced back to the space race.
They plan to subside on glucose on mars? It will go from the “red planet” to the “fat diabetic planet”.
But looking at the other side of it ...
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Trouble is that we went to the other side, giving up greater things in favor of the small and trivial. At the time there was great Hope (during one of missions, I was in Mexico in a very small village and all there were so proud and so hopeful for their kids’ future) and still greater things would come along. But we retreated and lost the Hope we had gained.
Perhaps now things will go back, but I think there are so many forces against that these days, despite the seeming progress that Luna will remain unvisited, let alone Mars, for many more decades, if ever.
Most of modern society’s aids from computers to phones, to medical devises, to how food is grown came out of the so-called space race.
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