Slashdot Mirror
Mars Base Design Competition Open To Non-Scientific Professionals
An anonymous reader writes "MakerBot, in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is hosting a competition for the design of a future Mars base. The competition is open to any Thingiverse account holder regardless of professional or educational background. Winners will be chosen by a subjective panel of JPL and MakerBot employees based on scientific feasibility, creativity, and printability. Contest ends June 12, and contestants have to be at least 13 years old. The first place winner will receive a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D printer and three spools of MakerBot Filament. The second place winner will receive two spools, and the third place winner will receive one spool. All three will have their design featured on Thingiverse."
You can also browse the entries so far.
Bre Pettis is bad human.
MakerBot went closed source after taking community ideas
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/pu...
They patent community ideas
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
Do NOT use them or their services.
P.S what the best thingiverse replacement?
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
In his trilogy beginning with Red Mars , Kim Stanley Robinson had the colonists struggling with the infiltration of ultrafine particles of dust even in sealed plastic habitats. The Martian regolith may be harmful to human lungs. The same fear is held about lunar regolith. Initial habitats will have to be well-sealed from the local environment before further studies can be done.
You not only assume that the cave is otherwise airtight, you also assume that it contains no harmful minerals that could pose dangers to humans.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dont need it airtight, just keep pressure high enough for .8 atmospheres.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is an urban myth and has been thoroughly debunked. Sad to see it being thrown forth on Slashot.
Based on "Contest ... is void ... where taxed" phrase I'm under the impression this contest would be mainly open to Americans only, if even them. (Some weird legalese and syntax in the terms). Additionally, "All Entries must include a description of how and why the submitted MakerBot Mars Design is suitable for the living conditions of a Martian. For the purposes of this Contest, ÃoeMartianà is defined as a native inhabitant of the planet Mars." Given current science is fairly certain there are, in fact, no native Martians, I should probably submit a sold block with a description to that effect. Either that, or a petri dish.
The problem with building a human habitat in such a remote location is lack of heavy machinery and lack of energy source. It has to be almost self erecting and require very little (or at least very lightweight) material and only the power a human wearing a bulky suit can provide. Ideally it would be near a source of water and situated where the Sun and wind are favorable. Of course even if you could build it and get people moved in they wouldn't have anything to do that a robot couldn't do better.
Since Mars has no atmosphere, wouldn't living on Mars require shielding against micrometeorites? What about radiation?
Why build something above the ground? Make an underground city and you gain "free" extra-thick shielding and you also get real radiation shielding at the same time.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Coffins would make the perfect Mars base since first settlers are likely to arrive dead.
Achille Talon
Hop!
There is 2.7 % nitrogen and 1.6% argon, both of which work great for breathing gas, you can cryogenically separate the 95% CO2 which doesn't have to be cooled so much, after combusting the toxic carbon monoxide into CO2 also with heated copper oxide gauze. That should eliminate any nitrous oxides too generated by UV/cosmic rays.
For oxygen you can either use the standard but extremely energy hungry silicate rock oxygen extraction, or you can get it out of the CO2 you liquefied. The easiest way is to react it with hydrogen to methane+H2O, electrolyze the H2O, and graphitize your methane in absence of air into a tar/graphite, hence ending up with C and O2, recycling the H2. It should be much less energy intensive than extracting oxygen from silicate rock, and would need a smaller nuclear power module to get it done.
By the way nitrogen has a molecular weight of 34 for N2, oxygen 36 for O2, and argon 39 for Ar. Helium has a molecular weight of 4 as He, and inhaling it from balloons increases the pitch of sound coming from your vocal chords to something really funny. As Ar is so close to normal air, the pitch change should be almost unnoticeable, but toward the deeper sounds. Heavier stuff like Xenon(mw 131) or even Krypton(mw 84) might create difficulty with breathing (I have no clue, possibly diver's nitrogen bubble in blood issues) but it should produce a really deep sound as an oxygen diluent, on Mars. But sulfur hexafluoride which is not in the Martian atmosphere is best at lowering the pitch of sound as it has a molecular weight of 146. See the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... page for discussion about effects on vocal chords.
So just as dangerous as any small particulate matter. It will stick to space suits, get in via airlocks, cover equipment that goes outside, etc. You don't want to be breathing fine rock dust. The levels in the pressurized areas will be low, but it's still something to be concerned with. Even if not breathing, it can get into mechanical components of suits and machinery and cause wear. Of course this is assuming a system with a pressurized base and the outside area having natural Martian atmosphere (tenuous and oxygen-free, but present.)
That said, dust can be dealt with. The US military has been learning how to do so in Iraq, dust gets into everything there. It takes quite a bit of effort to keep things clean and operational in a dusty desert environment.
Not a sentence!