Asteroid use

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, "bill t" wrote:
>
> The same processes I need to recycle air and water you will need as
> well. I don't know where you are getting your facts but every
analysis
> of Marsian soil I have ever seen lacked uranium and thorium. In fact
> it lacked many of the common metals as well outside of iron.
>
Nuclear fuel can be shipped from earth for now, or harvested from
asteroids if we can't find it on Mars. Until we survey the surface
with UV or a giger counter, we won't really know if there has been
sufficient differentiation to produce mineral deposits. Perhaps we
can extract Uranium from underground water just as we can from sea
water on earth? Japanese reserch suggests that the cost can be
reduced to around 100 USD per KG if massed produced.

Mars is superior to the moon which is only suitible for anderoids and
telerobots.

Cheers,

Tom Tucker

> The marsian atmosphere is 1% the earth atmosphere. There won't be
any
> blimps in it until someone decides to do major terraforming of Mars.
>
> No matter how thin the atmosphere, its not going to have 24/7 power
on
> the planet, and the structural requirements of solar panels on Mars
is
> going to make it thousands of times more expensive than space.
>
> Antarctica has all the resource for constructing buildings and
> biodomes on earth, so why is everything shipped in pre-built?
Because
> the industry required to go from mines to finished products requires
> large amount of physical effort, energy and machinery.
>
> > MW: Because you don't have to import your air and
> > water by rocket from an asteroid or another planet.
> > Oxygen can easily be extracted from the carbon dioxide
> > in the marsian atmosphere and cheap frozen water can
> > easily be imported by hydrogen blimps from the polar
> > ice caps of Mars. Ice is thought to extend at least
> > one kilometer beneath the northern polar caps-- so
> > there's plenty of it.
> > Thanks to its thin atmosphere, solar energy on the
> > surface of Mars is about as intense as it is on Earth.
> > And the marsian soil appears to be rich in uranium and
> > thorium which would be needed to power nuclear
> > reactors.
> > Mars has all of the resources for constructing
> > buildings and biodomes for its marsian inhabitants and
> > supply them with food and water.
>
> So does every asteroid of any interest.
>
> > > > > Bill: I want to know why you believe the solar
> > > > energy in
> > > > > mars orbit is
> > > > > extrinsically cheaper than a similar space
> > > satellite
> > > > > be tugged along
> > > > > with a ship?
> > > >
> > > > MW: For the simple reason that I don't have to
> > > spend
> > > > money transporting a large solar power plant
> > > around
> > > > the solar system everytime I want to process an
> > > > asteroid.
>
> You have to spend money building structures for support, for
tracking
> the sun, on storage because of night day cycles. All I need is a
solar
> sail heating up a boiler to run a turbo generator.
>
> If you are claiming that moving asteroids to Mars orbit will be
cheap
> enough to be economically viable, why are you worried about a
hundred
> tonne turbo generator?
>
> > MW: So now you want to move parks too on your grand
> > tour of the asteroids. That roving ship of yours is
> > going to weigh about a million tonnes after you finish
> > with it :-).
>
> You seem to have no problems assuming spending grands amount of
money