SPACE EXPLOITATION ver 2.0 hosted by Smilo

[smilo]

Terraforming eh, hmmm this reminds me of a movie you all know : alien 2. Now how can we get the aliens in ?

[don Don]

Well, I haven't read the Robinson books. But I did hear this from a little pipefitting job on which I worked as helper. Argon is used to fill the pipe and blanket the weld area to "flood out" all the oxygen when welding certain metals (titanium, in this case). The Argon is very dangerous because it can do the same thing in the lungs. It is much denser than air, and the lungs' pneumatic action is too weak to expel it once it gets in the alveoli. Inevitable suffocation is the result of a full breath of Argon.

I asked, since welding supplies include oxygen, if intubation and flooding the lungs with oxygen wouldn't work. The answer is it hasn't worked in field conditions.

Is this just an "old welder's tale," or is this correct?
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by don Don (edited August 09, 1999).]</font>

[Tornado7]

*Bump*

[Harel]

Yeah, I DO mean nytrogen, sorry.
However, I did mean what I said: they WOULD have to shuttle it from somewhere else.
On mars, there is more the enough co2 trapped in the rocks to create an atmopshere as thick as Earth: however, for temputre and toxic reasons, we can't create such a co2-rich atmosphere ( hell, it will eat down the buildings! ).
Ice, and limited amount trapped in the rocks can give a fair amount of oxygen in the air: not nearly enough, but with trees it would do.
The problem is non-reactive gases. There aren't any. Period.
Not Neon, nytrogen or Argon. Not even enough to fill 1% of a 1 atmosphere unit air ( according the most optemistics plans ).
Shreding and evaporting huge amount of deep-ground rocks could probaly get more noble gas into the air, but still not nearly enough. In every attempt to create a harmonical pseudo-earth atmosphere, you will reach the level that you simply don't have nay more on mars, everywhere, period.

So, you can't "just use what you have on the planet". In Kim stanely robinson triology, for example, a civil war broke down due to the way of terraforming mars: big coporations wants to just fill the air with co2 ( using massive lances which focused tight beams of light and evaported rock into gas ) and then slowly reduce the amount of co2. Advantge: immdiate atmosphere and heat. Dis-atvantge: probaly take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to lower the co2 levels ( the coporations, however, didn't want to admit that ). Other side wanted to build a fixed atmosphere in a single pass: they suggested creating a fleet of autmated ferries that will be propeled by a catapult drive ( Mars has a space elavator ), skid down Titan and Gyanmde atmosphere and bring back Argon. Costly, but less time-consuming in the long run.

[Westergaard]

An idea
The way I see the future of space exploitation, we'll have huge manufacturing plants/cities orbitting Earth. The production of these spacestations will be kept supplied by mining activities on other worlds with a lower gravity. The reason why I think we'll move whole manufacturing plants to space is mainly because of the high cost of launches from the surface of Earth. This will be covered later in the post.

Why not on the surface? why in orbit?
I think this was mentioned earlier, but one of the nicest place to live, besides on Earth, is orbiting Earth. [*]You're protected from some radiation (by Earths magnetic field) [*]It's pretty easy to build huge structures in low-g enviroments [*]You've got free solar energy at all times (It's almost never night)[*]The abundant solar energy results in high crop outputs from your hydroponic farms. [*]And you're close to home.

But how will thoose cities get their ressources?
The one major drawback is, of course, that you haven't got any raw materials (obvious since space is empty) and it's more expensive to get materials from down on Earth, than from a mining station on an asteroid or the moon. It may sound stupid that it's more expensive to move materials the small distance from the surface of Earth to the orbit, than it is to move them all the way from the moon or some asteroid. But it's actually true. Because of Earths greater gravity you use huge amounts of fuel for the take-off. But when departing an asteroid you just have to spend a little fuel to get started, and then you can use the gravity of various planets to reach Earth. It's slower but it's cheaper.

So you'd naturally build off-world mines to mine for raw material. These raw materials would have to be shipped to Earth-orbit because that's where the energy to process the minerals is. And that's where the workforce would like to be too, because of just mentioned advantages.

How could Civilization III model this?
The way this could be done in Civ terms is to split the resources, the "shield", into minerals and labour. This idea has already been mentioned in other threads. But in space this would provide the further advantage of simulating orbital cities getting their minerals from off-world mines and then processing them into something useful with the labour which is present there. The production would most likely be further space improvements, such as other cities, ships, or mines. All of which is cheaper when build in orbit, than when launched from the surface of Earth.

You'd have to improve the area around space cities with hydroponic farms with a big output to support the citizens in the city. These could be ordinary TI's, just built in space. The off-world mines however would have a harder time getting food, because they're far away from the sun (on asteroids), or suffer from 14 day-nights (on the moon). Maybe only the base square produced food, so that a mine could never have more than one or two citizen. You would then have to supply the mines with robots to do the work for you.

The way I see it you build the robots, either on Earth or in your orbital cities, and then immedeatly when build, they're assigned to work in a mine, in which they appear instantly. The robots would act like one population point, working the lands for the available minerals. But instead of consuming two food units, they consumed, say ten labour "points" a turn. This is to simulate that they had to be controlled by the human population. More advanced robots would need less control.


But isn't that a lot of micromanagement?
The mineral production of a mine would then be assigned to an orbital city or a city on the surface of Earth. The transportation would be automatic, to reduce micromanagement. It would cost more to bring the minerals down to Earth, say one mineral for every two shipped. Similary you could choose to ship minerals from Earth to your space-cities, but at a cost (eg for every 8 minerals sent, only 1 arrive).

Further advances in off-world farming could allow for populations to expand, by allowing more food-production, maybe even in the far future resulting in thriving colonies on other planets.

Multiple maps or not?
I'm not sure if it should be handled with multiple maps, each showing various asteroids and planets. Another, simpler way is to scrap to maps, and only show the city from the city-window. You could select your mines from the "off-world mines menu" and then you'd see the well-known city-window, with terrain and population (of which some where robots), and everything. There just wheren't any map you could see the city from. I don't know, haven't figured this out yet. Please help.

I'd really like to get some feedback on this idea.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Westergaard (edited August 11, 1999).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Westergaard (edited August 11, 1999).]</font>

[ember]

CO2 is used in the body as the regulatory feedback for respiration. Your body does not know how much oxygen is availble in your blood, but it does know how much CO2 there is. When CO2 levels go up, you breath faster.
In an experiment where the subject keeps breething the same air, but the CO2 is scrubbed, the subject keeps breething at the same rate, even as they are almost unconsious.
CO2 also forms a moderate strength acid with water.
The big problem is regulating respiration in a CO2 atmosphere.

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Westergaard]

Harel
Well okay maybe you're right that the only way to get a healthy atmosphere is to get it from other planets and moons.

How toxic is CO2 anyway? Could you have genetically engineered plants tolerate high levels of CO2? Could one survive it by bringing his own oxygen supply along (SCUBA-gear)? Do you know how much a dense CO2 atmosphere would rise temperatures? maybe these problems could be solved in one way or another. Bringing your own oxygen supply, modify your plants, protecting your buildnings, and things like that.

Because if you wanted to move an atmosphere from Jupiter and moons, it would take such huge amounts of time and energy, that it would be like moving the pacific ocean with a small bucket. But maybe in the far future we will develop more advanced buckets? We could develop fleets of ferries that could take huge amounts of gas, or other advanced ways of transportation.

All these posts just shows how big a task it is to terraform Mars. You say it'll take at least 500 years and i agree, maybe even a 1000 years. The question then, is how far in the future does people want Civ III to go? Maybe this could be a new poll on the website? Personally I'd probably vote about 2500. (I have already suggested this kind of poll in the "ideas for new polls" thread).

One of the things I really thought SMAC needed is more explotation of space instead of the way too simple sattelite system. I have never played CTP and I'm considering buying it just to try the future part. Does anybody know if CTP's system is well done? Realistic? Worth buying?

Don Don
You're probably right, it sound logic, but suggestions about filling the atmosphere with Argon assumes that everybody has their own oxygen supplies (like divers). Then of course you'd better not breathe any air from outside.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Westergaard (edited August 11, 1999).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Westergaard (edited August 11, 1999).]</font>

[Westergaard]

Ok so it's not a good idea to pump the atmosphere full of CO2 then.

But how do you terraform Mars then?

You have got to agree that it's a pretty large task to transport enough nitrogen or other gasses to Mars. It's pretty long distances and pretty much nitrogen we're talkting about.

[Maniac]

Finally someone who agrees that an atmosphere full of CO2 is bad.

I was wondering why everyone was so eager to do that.

[Maniac]

Did I really post the 100th reply ????? Wow.

[Harel]

To westergaard: on Earth, only 0.07% of the atmosphere is CO2.
One of the first lessons in Botony is how plant prodcution ( CO2 + water + photon -> glocoze + oxygen ) is increased in a difernail curve when you increase water, light and co2. Difernail means it reachs a certain maxium that rising above won't increase the level ( or even reducing it ).
As you know, too much water are bad for the plant. And too much light is harmfull also: the plant shell dry or burn.
The optimum amount of CO2 for plants is 0.15%: till then they just increase production.
Thats why the jungle forset, left alone, should be able to reduce the level of co2 in the air cause by pollutive industry.

However, too much co2 is, ofcourse, harmfull. Too much of a required minerals cause the anyzimes to break-down: the body needs food, but can die of over-weight, intoxicted by water and get metal-poision from elements you need in small amounts: like zync and iron. ( Iron is a key element in the elctron-passage of a broken-down ATP which release energy ).

True, plants can be enhanced by genetic to have increase resistence and bettero ouput in a co2-rich atmosphere. But how high can we raise it? to 0.3%? 1%? A full mars atmpsphere will consist of an absloutly large portion of co2 in the air.

Not only that will kill the plants, but co2 can turn acid and even burn down the colonist buildings.

[Westergaard]

Have you guys not got a single comment on my space exploitation system?

Is it because you don't want space explotation in the game anyway?

I'd really like some feedback, please.

[EnochF]

Needlessly complicated. Simpler solution: Have hydroponics bay TI's produce more than one food. That was Call to Power's solution, anyway, and I've always thought that space cities were the one thing CtP did right. You'd figure that any food production facility built in space would be designed to produce more food than would be consumed by its own work force.

But I agree that space cities would be mainly production facilities supplied with raw materials from the Moon, the asteroids and a few stray comets. I'd even agree that space cities are a much more logical step toward Alpha Centauri than a Mars colony ever could be. Microgee construction facilities are the only way to make a really effective solar sail, for example, and you wouldn't have to worry about making your ship sturdy enough to survive a launch.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled bickering match.

[Harel]

I pointed up several times that I would like to keep civ III a "one-map-game". No moon, no mars, no astroid map. No nothing.
The game that should have had moving space units, and space maps, and moons and the like was SMAC.
Not civ. In civ III i would like them to use the same system they wrongfully used in SMAC. Keep it earth-bound.
Hydrophonic pods? Space labs? Satellite? Buildings in the city. Plain and simple. Don't want to see them, not even with multiple layout that can show me what I have in space ( like CtP ). It will crowd the game and it's pointless.

Even colonozing mars and the moon should be done from the city by wonders. That wonder gives you extra minerals and a much bigger popultion maximum. It will also cost a hell fo a lot of maintain it. But still, keep it city based, pls.

[Gordon the Whale]

Harel, the Earth is 149.6 million Km from the sun. Mars is 227.8. That is NOT three times, and in my opinion is pretty close. The energy density of the sun's rays at Mars is 43% the energy density at Earth. A difference, but in the grand scheme, not a big difference. Venus, at 108 million KM, gets 190% times the energy density of Earth. As we all know, it has its own problems, and Mars's seem easier to solve.

About Argon and it's dangers: Argon, like any gas other than oxygen, is not respirable. If you breathe pure Argon, you will die, because you are not getting enough oxygen. However, like all gasses, it mixes with the oxygen or whatever after a while, and it's safe. Argon is the 4th most abundant gas in the Earth's atmosphere, and it's also what's inside lightbulbs.

I was unaware that there's nowhere to get neutral gasses on Mars... All your references are from Science Fiction. Are you sure that they are considered fact by science? We'll know soon enough exactly what the surface of Mars is like, anyways. I'll believe you that there's nowhere to get Nitrogen, I can't really think of anywhere off-hand. The only way would be to, for the sake of the game, put nitrogen into the ice caps or something that's scientifically possible, just not the case in real life. Maybe not. That combined with the lack of a suitable magnetic field makes any sort of terraforming very difficult... I've learned something, anyways.

So, it looks like Westergaard's suggestions about robotic/enclosed mining colonies combined with orbital space stations is the only way to go short of colonizing other star systems. Here, I have to agree with Harel: Wrong game for it. Much as I've always wanted to be able to build civ cities on the moon, it's too much micromanagement hassle, unless it's done like in SMAC. And how realistic is SMAC? Hydroponics in space are great for feeding people in space, but the expense of shipping to and from Earth is too much for it to EVER be worthwhile... It would be cheaper to build giant hydroponics bays out in the desert, or floating in the ocean. Mining in space is also useful mostly for space... There, you're only dropping things TO Earth, so there's not so much trouble with energy, especially if you've got a space elevator. But still... Mine the Moon to make space stations and Moon bases and Starships, not for materials on Earth. The only space structures I see necessary, besides maybe some wonders to make people happy like a Zero-G hotel, would be part of a long chain leading to the AC ship. Build a space station for command, build mines on the moon or asteroids for raw materials, build a factory in space for production, and THEN you can build the spaceship.

Maybe comm and spy sattelites, too, but I'm not sure how much fun those would be in the game...