Martian Shelters Summation

Okay, so that was pretty much all I found for ideas about Martian shelters: tents of various shapes made of multiple layers of flexible plastic and insulation (probably foam), either buried in the sand or not; tunnels and rooms dug deep underground by robots; and a top-side shelter shaped like half a bagel with a layer of ice between the sheets of plastic.

I did see some reference to making a spun glass (fiber glass) insulation from sorting the Martian sand and melting a particular type of that sand. I’m not sure that would be available for the very first shelters, but maybe it would be a useful building material later on.

For that matter, rocks have been used to build human home for centuries, perhaps millennia. Sand could be combined with other materials to make a type of cement or even mortar. That assumes the colonists can find a supply of calcium silicate nearby, or some other binder to use. If not, they could use polymers, but that would need to be shipped to them from Earth, or they would have to make it on Mars, and I have no idea how complicated a process that might be.

One other idea, briefly mentioned, was to dig holes into a large boulder to create a small shelter, perhaps a type of emergency shelter. I kept thinking about today’s ‘tiny homes’ and thinking a sufficiently large boulder might make a nice small home for someone who really liked his/her privacy.

So, if you are going to be one of those first colonists sent to Mars, don’t expect a mansion. Of course, if you were expecting a mansion, you probably wouldn’t be one of those chosen to colonize Mars. Or anyplace else.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/a-new-home-on-mars-nasa-langley-s-icy-concept-for-living-on-the-red-planet

https://phys.org/news/2016-12-nasa-ice-house-mars.html

Martian Shelter 5

I was beginning to think we had run out of ideas, but it turns out I was wrong. So, how about an ‘ice home’? They’ve been used in the Arctic Circle for centuries, haven’t they? But, the ones proposed for Mars are a bit more complicated than igloos. They are, once again, inflatable, but... in the shape of a doughnut. The body of the doughnut would be where people would live and work.

The ‘skin’ of the doughnut would be a double-wall, flexible, of course. The interior wall would hold in the air and provide the space for people to occupy. The space between the 2 flexible skins would be filled with water and allowed to freeze. That outer wall and the ice under it would keep the radiation out, and protect the inner sections from any nasty weather Mars can produce.

Despite recent findings of water of Mars, it is not nearly as omnipresent as it is on Earth, so where does that water come from? No, it won’t be shipped from Earth. What they would ship from Earth is robots with the equipment to find, mine, and transport the water to the shelter area so it could be melted, pumped inside the walls and allowed to re-freeze.

Presumably, this store of water could serve a second purpose; that of being turned into fuel when it was time to leave. To me, this seems counter-productive. It assumes the people will be leaving, abandoning their colony to return to Earth. Even if they were ‘only’ there for a shift of a couple years, wouldn’t more people be expected to arrive to take over, like is done with the space station? On the other hand, keeping options open can be a very good idea.

Of course, with proper timing, those robots could be sent out to mine more water to replace what’s been turned into rocket fuel. You’d just need to make sure the equipment doesn’t get clogged with sand in the meantime.

The biggest drawback I see to this design is that it could take 400 days to fill and freeze the shell. So those robots had better know what they are doing in order to get it ready before humans start arriving.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/a-new-home-on-mars-nasa-langley-s-icy-concept-for-living-on-the-red-planet

Martian Shelter 4

We’re going to look at a different style of shelter this time. Something a little more complicated to build, I suppose, but which could be more... comfy, should we say?

This shelter is underground. Deep underground, not just some sand kicked over it. Building it would take tunnel-boring machines, which are quite heavy. Perhaps these would be shipped before people were sent, along with some robots to use the machines to bore out a network of tunnels and living quarters. Yes, apparently, some people are ready to go back to living in caves.

But ‘underground’ does not need to mean dark and unwelcoming. I watched an episode of a science show on Netflicks a couple weeks back, where the people were digging out a series of tunnels under New York City. They had some complicated equipment on the roof of a warehouse that gathered and concentrated sunlight before it was piped into the tunnels. Yes, I did say concentrated and piped. The tunnels they created were fully lighted, and with smooth, level floors, ceilings and walls, seemed far distant from a creepy cave.

The theory about living in man-made tunnels on Mars is that the gravity is weak and Mars doesn’t have any quakes, so you wouldn’t need as much support to hold up the ceilings; and there ‘probably’ would not be any moisture seepage. But, this plan does call for some heavy-duty insulation. Martian air may be thin, but Martian dirt and rocks are cold! Even without that insulation, the dirt and rocks would keep that nasty radiation out.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to this idea. There always are, right? All that equipment would be expensive to get there. And once it finishes digging out that first small habitat, then what? Oh, if there’s a big influx of immigrants, the equipment could be busy for years or decades, forming a city here, a city there... But eventually, one assumes, it will become obsolete or unneeded. A lot of money to just let rust away.

And it’s possible there’s more water on Mars than we think, so seepage could be a problem. With all the insulation installed to keep the internal temperature agreeable, we might not even know if seepage was occurring. I hear some of you thinking ‘Then it’s not a problem,’ but that’s not necessarily true. There could be some kind of mold, fungus or other organism that could start growing, possibly leading to health problems for our colonists. Water flows, and ice can expand and create cracks. This could - over time - undermine (so to speak) our efforts at adequate support.

If you own a house, you know you need to keep an eye open for such things, and if you don’t deal with small problems that crop up, you’ll eventually pay for it with a huge repair bill. But these tunnels would not be for an individual’s use; it sounds more like they would be cities, as least to begin with. Owned by committee, you might say. Would that ‘committee’ have the foresight to watch for and deal with these types of problems while they were small? Or would they be political entities, always kicking the financial can down the road?

Okay, if you don’t like the idea of a cave-dwelling, we’ll keep looking. I’ll see what else I can ‘dig up’ for you to consider.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

Humanoid Robots

On Star Trek; Next Generation, Data was a humanoid robot, right? Actually, no, he’s an android, a robot built to look human. Humanoid robots resemble humans, and sometimes, only part of a human, like from the waist up. C3PO is a humanoid robot.

Building humanoid robots is a circle of learning. In order to build a walking robot, for instance, scientists had to figure out – in broad terms – how humans do it. Once a robot could do it, they studied its movements, learning more about how humans do it, and how to improve the robot’s performance. This has led to better prosthetics for humans, including powered leg prosthetics, ankle orthosis, and biological realistic prosthetics.

Theoretically, humanoid robots can be programed to perform many jobs that humans do, using the same tools humans use. Realistically, at this point, they are more specialized. Some are entertainers, others might be assistants for the sick and elderly. Wikipedia had photos of some of these specialty robots:

Topio is a Vietnamese ping pong playing robot that is 6’2” and 264 pounds.

Nao (pronounced Now) is French, and originally played soccer, but moved on to universities to assist with education and research. As of 2015, some 5,000 units of Nao were in over 50 countries. One Nao can dance, another performs stand-up comedy. The University of Tokyo bought 30, intending to train them to be lab assistants. (I don’t know how well that did or did not go.) At some point, the company was sold and Nao became Japanese. They have been used to help teach autistic children, train ISS crews, and assist the elderly. The most interesting item I found was that in a philosophical experiment, Nao robots were shown to have a basic sense of self-awareness. It is just shy of 2 feet tall, and weighs less than 10 pounds.

Enon, from Japan, was designed to be a personal assistant, and has no legs, but rolls along, so the bottom half looks something like a long skirt. It is self-guided, has limited speech identification (and production), and can carry approximately 1 pound in its arms. I found no information on its size, but the photo I saw indicated it was approximately half as tall as the man next to it.

The robots are coming! The robots are- Well, they’re already here. But they aren’t anywhere near as sophisticated as Data. If you buy one that plays soccer, but then want it to dust the living room, you’d probably have to completely reprogram it, maybe change out the arms, beef up the servo motors, and install more sensors.

Oh, never mind. It’s easier to do the dusting myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanoid_robot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPIO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nao_(robot)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enon_(robot)

NASA News 2

NASA News 2

 

Now to get back to that informational talk NASA personnel gave at the Orlando Science Center. I believe the next subject was the Kepler telescope.

The purpose of the Kepler telescope is to examine one tiny section of this galaxy looking for planets. That's all. And it does a wonderful job of it, including some planets that are more or less earth-like AND in that star's Goldilocks Zone. Personally, I was surprised to learn that the Kepler telescope does not orbit Earth, but is actually located quite a distance from us. I was dismayed to hear that a short time ago, the second of its 4 stabilizers went out. It had been working 'okay' with only 3, but with 2, it is now rotating, unable to keep track of the section of the galaxy it's supposed to examine. Since it is so far away, chances are it will not be repaired. And that is a bummer.

Then we turned to Mars. I don't remember a specific number being mentioned, but there have been a lot of attempts to land a probe on Mars, by many different countries. The US is the only one who has managed to have any of their Martian probes still function after landing.

Apparently, Mars is very difficult to land on. It has enough gravity to pull things down really fast, but not enough air for wings or parachutes to do much good. If I remember correctly, the density of Martian air at the surface is only 17% of Earth's atmosphere density at sea level. It's why we've gotten so creative with our landing methods, from bouncey balls to floating cranes.

Discovery is our most recent probe sent to Mars, and it's about the size of a van. Can you imagine tooling around Mars in an intelligent van? It has to have some ability to make its own decisions, because calling for help, waiting for humans to figure out the answer and send it back takes too long.

Intelligent robots. The future is here. And we sent it to Mars.

NASA News

Yesterday, my husband and I visited the Orlando Science Center. We'd heard they had a NASA person coming in to give a talk on Curiosity, their latest probe on Mars. Since we both had expected there to be at least one space station, a moon base and a Martian colony by now, we are always eager to hear if we're getting any closer to that.

The talk started with a few questions from the audience as the rest of the audience filed into the auditorium. One guy asked if it was true NASA had recently launched from some old base in Maryland, and young Samantha, the rocket scientist who had been with NASA for 2 years, said, yes that was true. Then the guy asked if Maryland was a better location for launches than Florida. No, she returned, Florida was the better location for an equatorial orbit like the ones they want. Then why launch from Maryland at all? Sam, flustered, turned to her older cohort, Rich, who promptly answered, "Because some Congressman told us to."

He went on to explain that this unnamed Congressman thought it would be a good idea for NASA to make some launches from his district, and because he thought that, they had to rebuild launch pads, construct a clean room and several other buildings, and finally, make a launch. Billions of dollars used for that effort that some people feel could have been used in better ways. My first thought was that it was no wonder NASA was 'behind', if they had to stop and fulfill every Congressman's egotistical whim.

They touched on the International Space station, roughly the size of a football field, counting all the solar panels, but the living space for the crew of 6 is about the size of the interior cabin of a 747. The ISS is expected to be decommissioned by 2020, did you know that? Well, the US expects to do that, but the Russians think it should be left there. The Russians tend to keep using what they have until it can't be kept in one piece any more.

There was a lot of information in that one-hour talk. Next week, I'll try to remember enough to talk about the Kepler telescope and the Curiosity robot on Mars.

If it Walks Like a Duck...

I’ve been reading magazines like Archeology and Popular Science, trying to learn The State of Science So Far. Many of the articles in these magazines are fascinating and could serve as a spring board for stories.

One article was about a group who were designing robot legs that could walk like a human. The legs don’t exactly look human; there’s a couple kevlar straps (used as muscles) in the back that - when contracted - are outside the thigh, connected to the calf by a plastic flange. But the results move much more like a human leg than other robots have managed.

I was very excited a few years back to hear about Asimo, a child-sized humanoid robot that could walk. But I was disappointed when I actually saw it in motion. Slow motion, that is. Asimo would lean to the right a bit, pick its left foot up straight for about an inch, move the left foot forward a couple inches and put it down, repeat for the other side. And at all times, the foot remained parallel to the floor. It was a strange gait, rather painful to watch.

Besides a different system of ‘muscles’, the new method of robot walking also makes use of something like a human’s subconscious. A human learns to walk, and then leaves the actual giving of instructions to a corner of the mind. We don’t have to actively think, ‘Lean, lift by bending, swing foot forward, lower, adjust balance...’ The people making this new robot gait removed such calculations from the robot main processor and gave this skill to a separate processor.

This particular robot only has legs and feet right now, but I am beginning to anticipate a real android - a robot made to look (and act?) like a human. Data of STNG, the androids in the Alien movies would be examples, although I swear I remember old tv comedies about robots paired with a human to see how well they ‘blended in’. Could that happen soon in a neighborhood near you?

I was also amused to read in this article that one problem the team had to solve was that the hard plastic of the feet’s soles could not grip the floor. They debated about other materials to use for the soles until somebody put a pair of Keds on the robot.

If it walks like a human, it deserves the right footwear, don’t you think?