Private Mars Rocket II

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly Weinersmith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'm not obsessed with Mars - I can stop thinking about it any time I want to. ;-) Yesterday was not that day - I read the new book A City on Mars. Part of the subtitle is "Have We Really Thought This Through?" This may be a bit of a spoiler, but the answer is no.

The authors very competently, clearly and in an entertaining manner outline all the important stuff we don't know about living in space, from pregnancy to running closed-system ecologies. Rand Simberg, somebody I've sparred with online on occasion, is quoted at least twice in the book, neither time favorably. I personally didn't learn anything I didn't already know, but the book was a useful compellation of all the known unknowns facing space settlement.

The authors conclude with making a reasonable argument that humanity should do a lot more research before attempting any permanent colonization. Unfortunately, I expect this advice to be ignored. Simply put, once getting "there" becomes possible, the most optimistic people will go. I expect there will be a number of tragic deaths which will serve as object lessons for what not to do.

In any event, this is a well-written book and definitely worth your time to read.



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No, I'm not obsessed with Mars. I can stop thinking about the Red Planet any time I want to. (Clears throat.) Since that day hasn't come yet, I'd like to talk about this article How Will Police Solve Murders on Mars?

I found a lot of the article spot-on, but there was a big red (orange?) flag for me. The author said that Martian police won't have guns because the risk of shooting holes in their station is too high. Er, not really.

First, there are such things as frangible bullets. These are projectiles made from compressed copper powder. When they strike something harder then them (like metal) they break into tiny pieces. They are still lethal, just not as likely to penetrate.

Second, let's think about a bullet hole. A big bullet hole from a large-caliber handgun is less than half-an-inch in diameter. Even for a small pressure vessel, it's going to take a while for enough air to leak out to cause a problem. Also, pressure vessels, especially those on the ground where weight isn't as big of an issue, can be (and probably would be) made self-sealable. After all, it would really suck if an errant screwdriver could depressurize your hab.

Finally, let's think about what you need for your hypothetical Mars habitat. Mars has much higher levels of surface radiation and very extreme temperatures. As it happens, the best way to protect yourself from both is with dirt. Basically, pile some dirt on top of the hab and it will insulate you from both radiation and temperature. Said dirt will also absorb bullets and minimize if not stop leakage.

Now, to be fair, your typical hab will probably have a lot of stuff in it that doesn't react well to bullets. But depressurization is probably low on the list of problems with going all O.K. Corral on Mars.

I’ve periodically written about space colonization. (No, I am not obsessed about space. I can quit thinking about it any time I want to.) While doing that highly-important task of dinking around on the Internet, I came across this Twitter thread.

The author, Dr. Sarah Taber, is an expert in agriculture, and does a lot of work in support of greenhouses and other agricultural endeavors. She was talking to somebody about how a vegetarian diet is more sustainable for the Earth. Perhaps surprisingly, she’s not in support of that. Some key points she makes:

1) Many human societies (Bedouin, Mongols, Maasai, Inuit) have all or very high meat diets.

2) Many of the early human societies that didn’t eat a lot of meat (The Ganges valley, ancient Egypt, China, much of early Europe) had two things in common:
a. Lots of rain
b. Hierarchical societies that could enforce a low-meat diet

3) Humans can only eat a relatively small part of a plant. We need seeds and soft leaves. As she says, “we eat straw, we’ll poop straw” without getting any nourishment from it.

4) Large parts of the world, to include the current lettuce capital of the USA, Arizona, naturally only support “scrub plants.” We can’t eat them, and the only way to get what we can eat to grow there is to irrigate the hell out of the place.

5) Cows and other animals with multiple stomachs can, on the other hand, eat these plants just fine. All you need for cows is drinking water.

Then the good doctor does the math. 10 cows could graze on 73 acres of land and consume about 67,000 gallons of water a year. To get food crops out of the same chunk of land, you’d need 79 MILLION gallons of water. Now, it’s true that you can feed more people on 73 acres of crops then you can on 10 cows, but only if you’ve got the water. So, in dry areas, it makes sense to let cows graze, and in wet areas one grows crops.

Now, let’s tie this to space. It’s traditional to assume that space colonists will eat only plants. But water is heavy, and even the best recycling system will have some losses. I suspect, therefore, that at some scale of agriculture it would not make sense to grow plants for protein. It would be better to raise animals – especially animals that can eat the stalks and shoots of plants we can’t.

Comes news today that SpaceX just successfully recovered their first stage, making them the second entity to fly a reusable spaceship to orbit. (NASA's Shuttle was the first, of course.) This event is critical, in that if we are ever to have colonies in space, the cost of getting to orbit has to go down. The only way that happens is if we stop throwing away the spaceship after one mission.

Been saving this up...

A) An interesting thought on police misconduct. The author compares fear of police as equivalent to the fear of terrorism. Both are random events that could happen to anybody anywhere, where as other forms of violence can in theory be avoided.

B) What do you eat in Antarctica? The hot dog soup actually looks pretty good, but then one does not get to be my size by being a picky eater.

C) The title says it all Yes, Virginia, people of color do fucking read SF/F.

D) Speaking of science fiction, an interesting anthology having a Kickstarter.

E) Here's a video on the cause of the Civil War:

The title of today's post comes from a comment at this post. The short version is Somebody On The Internet Is Upset, this time over a black female pirate in fiction. Well, despite the fact that one such person really existed, the discussion has proceeded along the usual lines. Moving on to the links:

A) La Maupin, a 17th-Century opera singer, swordswoman (fought and won multiple duels) and bisexual (joined a nunnery to get into a nun's knickers). The things you learn on the Internet...

B) Something I really hope is a gag - a handheld flamethrower.

C) A theory on the cause of nearsightedness: not enough outside light. If true, it suggests Martians and other out-planet colonists might all be nearsighted.

D) Is Seattle's $15-an-hour minimum wage forcing restaurants to close? The owners say no.

E) A picture is worth a thousand words:

On Blackstone, public accommodation and conservatives

I'm doing a lot of driving between branches for the day job, hence my lack of posting. In any event, yesterday's entry seems to have pushed a few buttons. My points in sharing the Blackstone quote were two:

1) The idea that "public accommodations" means all of the public is very old.
2) Conservatives who argue that businesses have a private right of association are arguing for a new right, not "conserving" an old one.

On Asteroids as Islands

I found myself looking at Tristan da Cunha, the most remote island in the world, and St. Helena, the second-most remote island. I could see human-colonized asteroids (and moons, and even planets) as sometimes falling into similar situations.

Gamergate, an Epic Rant

Former NFL player and current gamer Chris Kluwe has an epic rant on why Gamergaters piss him off. There is much adult language therein, but also much truth. The tl;dr version? We [gamers] won. Over 100 million Americans play games, so of course there are going to be games you don't like. Get over it.

Cleaning out the leftovers from last year:

A) As illustrated by a sad case in which a man shot his stepdaughter thinking she was a burglar, home defense requires more than just a gun. You should always visually ID your target before shooting.

B) Here's a real-world case of a woman without fear. She manages to get herself in a lot of dangerous situations.

C) For creative types - be friends with failure.

D) Found via dinking around, could the whole world conquer the United States? The short answer is no, not without years to build up their militaries.

E) From james_nicoll, we may only get one shot to terraform Mars. Linked to not because I agree or disagree with it, but because it's an interesting discussion.

F) If you live in wildfire country, defensible space around your house is critical.

Various links with some commentary:

1) Back in the heady days of the Space Race, there was an idea to send people into space by riding a wave of nuclear explosions. Supposedly, design work got serious enough that engineers from the Coca-Cola company were brought in to design "vending machines" to pop out nuclear bombs once-a-second.

2) From the same blog, Obamacare as a corporate pizza party.

3) An interesting memorial visible on Google Maps.

4) My publisher, Hadley Rille Books, has a new website.

5) One of the arguments against space colonization is that "we haven't colonized the Gobi Desert." Well, actually we have, but as this article points out, were it not for a lot of the type of engineering you'd need for a space colony, America's second largest city would not exist.

I grow weary of the butt-hurt explosion regarding the Hugos. Not, as I remind you, because my pick won (it did not, as I predicted) but because all of the butt-hurt is sound and fury signifying nothing. The awards were given, and absent a working time machine, they will stand.

Moving on, a few links with thoughts:

A) Just for the giggles - Despair, Inc., the demotivator people.

B) Also kind of humorous, in a "look at stupid questions people ask" kind of way, I present Ask A Slave. A young black actress got a gig at a historical site playing a slave. These are the real (and really stupid) questions she was asked. (Hat tip james_nicoll.)

C) From the great time-sink TVTropes, a trope I hate - good guy slaughters bad guy's henchmen but suddenly decides to not kill the bad guy. Seriously, if you get a shot at the Big Bad, take it! (Corollary to Tuco's Law.)

D) From Tobias Buckell - NASA to actually grow food in space.

E) From various sources including Buckell, an actual flying zeppelin called the Aeroscraft. A key innovation - unlike all other lighter-than-air craft, this uses air as ballast. They compress the helium bags to sink and decompress them to rise.