Nano Future 2030

At last, proof of water on Mars. I was wondering how they could get any of the white stuff in the tiny ovens to cook it and prove it was ice. Turns out they only needed to dig it up and watch it evaporate.

You can click on this small image and see the large one up close. The image shows two photos taken 4 days apart. The bits and pieces that disappear are ice that evaporated over the 4 days.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

This means that a significant part of Mars contains ice/mud right at the surface. A human settlement could set up shop and harvest the water with automatic equipment. Water plus solar power or atomic power means you have water, oxygen and hydrogen fuel where you can get to it.

I suspect Mars is the only place in the solar system where we can hope for a sustainable habitat that could support a significant human population. Once nano recyclers handle all human waste, the water cycle means we can support a huge population on the water from less than a hundred square kilometers of automated mines. Yeah, not pretty, but worth it to create an off Earth home for humans.

We’ve been dependant on Earth long enough. It is time to begin the great exodus. No, the Earth will never notice the ones that leave, too many are born for the small number to make a difference. The old idea of everyone going to mars and leaving the Earth with a small population is unreasonable given the reproductive power of the organism.

Besides, we need to work on sustainable systems both on Mars and on Earth. Nothing says we have to ruin our home planet during our ignorance of youth. That is the promise of nano. A smaller footprint on Earth. At the same time, any solution that would work on Mars, could probably be put to work here at home.

Anyway, those photos are so fascinating. You are looking at the discovery of water on Mars.

Now for a bit of serious humor:

This is a nanotechology blog, so what is all this asteroid stuff?

We want nano tools to accomplish goals. We don’t need nano just to have a toy. Protecting the Earth is a rather high priority. This is how we can prevent damage from space, regulate global warming, clean up the environment. So what if some of the early stuff is not nano based. It is the prerequisite infrastructure for a nano based lunar factory that can cut solar illumination, and global warming by a few percentage points and save our ass. So, just trust me, it will eventually involve nano.

The goal is to show a workable asteroid deflection system, a solar power system, and a lunar production system that can ship nano constructed artifacts to any place in the solar system. That lets you block equatorial sunlight sufficient to reduce global warming, catch and divert any asteroid if you find it soon enough, track all asteroids in the solar system, and generally spread the population out across the system and eventually to the stars. Quite a big project.

Wish I had time to work on it more often. It would help if I heard from you guys more. Kick holes in it. Tell me why it will not work. It would give me a lot more motivation to get it done and show the details of why it might work.

John

I’ve been busy and the satellite has sat here doing nothing. But I’ve got to get this thing done. So I’m going to promise something and hope you hold me to it.

I had to redesign the thing to handle smaller ribbons of deposited solar material. They are up to 1 meter wide and I think they are already working on that size as a real porduct. I did not think the 10 meter wide rolls would ever be developed.

Still having problems folding the thing up and getting it to deploy. 32 rolls of material, 1 meter wide and up to 400 meters long. I’m going to limit it to 100 meters long just to keep things sensible. That makes the satellite 200 meters or 656 feet in diameter.

In it’s folded and ready to launch from moon orbit it looks similar to this older design using 10 meter wide rolls of material. Click the image for a large version. The top part of the payload is the beltbuckle craft that wraps a belt around an asteroid up to 600 meters in diameter. The solar array is the lower half of the payload.

You can see a animation of the old version at this location It’s 64 Megs QuickTime. and takes 8 or 9 minutes to download before it plays. Might as well download it and play it outside of the browser. Right click and “save link as” to save it.

As I get the latest design animated, I’ll make it available.

The central ball of phase antennas needs to be big enough to make the radiation surface a small fraction of the entire sphere. As it turns, the active section moves around the sphere and distributes the heat loss over much bigger area.

As you may notice, the old design creates a cylinder of phased array antennas to send the power to a destination that needs up to 1/4 megawatt of power. That is a problem in orbit because the solar satellite points toward the sun and that changes it’s orientation as it goes around the sun. Hence the cylinder can only send power to destinations that lie in the plane of the solar array. And that will not work in orbit as the solar array follows a space station (which needs the power) in the same orbit. You need a solar satellite that can transmit in any direction and lock onto a target. Then the power connection will be maintained as the orientation changes. The 2nd design creates a sphere of phased arrays and that can transmit in any direction.