Author: T.L. James

Concrete-Forming Robots for Mars

It may not be intended for use on Mars, but this is what we had in mind when we wrote about teleoperated “formers” building the foundations for the Green’s agricultural domes.

Well, not exactly for Mars, but this is what we had in mind when we wrote about teleoperated “formers” building the foundations for the Green’s agricultural domes – Buildings Made with a Printer:

Some areas would have strong, dense concrete, but in areas of low stress, the concrete could be extremely porous and light, serving only as a barrier to the elements while saving material and reducing the weight of the structure. In these non-load bearing areas, it could also be possible to print concrete that’s so porous that light can penetrate, or to mix the concrete gradually with transparent materials. Such designs could save energy by increasing the amount of daylight inside a building and reducing the need for artificial lighting. Eventually, it may be possible to print efficient insulation and ventilation at the same time. The structure can be complex, since it costs no more to print elaborate patterns than simple ones.

Other researchers are developing technology to print walls and other large structures. Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of industrial and systems engineering and civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, has built a system that can deposit concrete walls without the need for forms to contain the concrete. Oxman’s work would take this another step, adding the ability to vary the properties of the concrete, and eventually work with multiple materials.

We devised a similar idea for In the Shadow of Ares as a means of building large structures on Mars without the need for a large construction crew and the sorts of construction equipment, specialized forms, etc. used to cast concrete on Earth. In our case, it was a reasonable application of the speculative technology already established in the novel (specifically the simulacrum intelligence used in MAs and the robotics employed in diggers).

Mars Society Links to “In the Shadow of Ares”

I missed this a couple weeks back, but the Mars Society linked to In the Shadow of Ares. Unfortunately it isn’t a review of the book, so there’s no telling what they thought of it. 

The Mars Society has an important role in bringing about ITSOA. The Ares mission design is of course derived from Mars Direct, MS founder Bob Zubrin’s brainchild. Carl and I know each other through the old Louisiana chapter of the Mars Society, which we helped found back in 2000. And the idea for the book originated from a panel discussion on Mars in science fiction at the 2001 Mars Society Conference at Stanford University.

Fog on Mars

This report on a newly-released analysis of data from the Phoenix lander pretty closely describes what we had in mind for the “yardang” scene…only in reverse.

This report on a newly-released analysis of data from the Phoenix lander pretty closely describes what we had in mind for the “yardang” scene…only in reverse – Martian-Fog Study Finds Thick Haze, “Diamond Dust”:

“Heat from the air is lost to the ground, so the air close to the ground gets colder, and as that pocket of [cold] air gets larger,” more water vapor in the atmosphere condenses into ice crystals, and the fog gets thicker, Moores said.

“The fog starts closer to the ground and rises in height over time, so the cloud gets thicker and thicker and higher and higher as the night goes on,” he added.

Eventually the icy haze begins to shower the ground with a light sprinkling of snowlike particles. The shower is not quite snowfall, the scientists say, but is perhaps more akin to the “diamond dust” that falls from the skies on some cold nights in Earth’s Arctic regions.

Some 0.0001 inch (2.5 micrometers) of frost coats the Martian surface by the time the sun begins to rise in the morning. That icy layer then sublimates—turns directly from a solid to a gas.

In our case, the resulting frost at first sublimates into a fog as sunlight hits it, then rapidly dissipates. It may be a bit of literary license (or not — there’s no saying that what we described doesn’t happen), but it’s not far off from observed reality.

Suits for Mars

They’re not quite skinsuits, but someone is thinking ahead to what sort of suits future Mars settlers will need.

Wikipedia has a useful backgrounder on the skinsuit (aka “mechanical counterpressure suit” or “space activity suit”), which includes the basis for several details of how the concept is applied in In the Shadow of Ares. But if you’re more into a retro-look, Jeff Foust reviews of a new book on the development history of the Apollo lunar spacesuits.

Agriculture on Mars

Interestingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), we came to some of the same conclusions as these researchers. Of particular note, the morale benefit to settlers in an inescapably indoor environment of having an open green space (or Greenspace, if you’ve read the book).

An interesting project at the South Pole, involving agriculture in a controlled (and in this case, sunless and soil-less) environment: To the moon…South Pole greenhouse model for growing freshies on other worlds

Crops of lettuce, kale, cucumber, peppers, herbs, tomatoes, cantaloupes and edible flowers comprise many of the plants grown in the climate-controlled chamber. Because the importation of soil is restricted by the Antarctic Treaty External U.S. government site, dirt is not used to grow the plants. In fact, the closest local dirt is nearly two miles beneath the ice on which the station sits. The plants are grown in a hydroponic nutrient solution instead — no dirt needed.

For that matter, no sunlight is needed either. The growth chamber, which was built in the winter of 2004, makes its own light via 13 water-cooled, high-pressure sodium lamps. In this bright environment, it is not uncommon to find people, like the plants, dwelling happily under the intense light produced in the chamber during the dark polar winter.

Carl and I put a lot of thought into extraterrestrial agriculture while writing In the Shadow of Ares, not least because the primary setting for the book is a very large agricultural settlement. Interestingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), we came to some of the same conclusions as these researchers. Of particular note, the morale benefit to settlers in an inescapably indoor environment of having an open green space (or Greenspace, if you’ve read the book).

Farming in Space

Whether it is the fresh atmosphere of a small homestead garden or the large park tucked into one corner of an industrial-scale agricultural bubble, greenhouses will offer settlers a reminder of Earth and a break from their otherwise wholly artificial surroundings.

Popular Mechanics takes an ever-so-brief look at farming in space.

Gene Giacomelli, a University of Arizona agricultural researcher and the lead investigator of a NASA-funded growth chamber for the moon, envisions a multiarmed, inflatable greenhouse building staffed with robots that do the bulk of the work. “Astronauts should not have to be farmers,” he says.

Nor (more to the point) should settlers.

The settlers in In the Shadow of Ares make extensive use of this combination of inflatable greenhouses and robotic technology, in the form of the bubbles at the Green and the Jacobsens’ Ares IV homestead and their respective semi-autonomous gardener ‘bots.

While the article mentions food and oxygen production, it does not mention one of the important benefits such greenhouses would offer: enhanced morale. Whether it is the fresh atmosphere of a small homestead garden or the large park tucked into one corner of an industrial-scale agricultural bubble, greenhouses will offer settlers a reminder of Earth and a break from their otherwise wholly artificial surroundings.

Life Imitates Art: MAs and 5G

While looking at upgrading to a 4G phone/hotspot combo this afternoon I got to wondering if there was a “5G” in the works. It turns out there isn’t, exactly, but there are a few hints on the Wikipedia page on what that wireless standard might include when it emerges around 2020:

* Pervasive networks providing ubiquitous computing: The user can simultaneously be connected to several wireless access technologies and seamlessly move between them (See Media independent handover or vertical handover, IEEE 802.21, also expected to be provided by future 4G releases). These access technologies can be 2.5G, 3G, 4G, or 5G mobile networks, Wi-Fi, WPAN, or any other future access technology. In 5G, the concept may be further developed into multiple concurrent data transfer paths.

* Cognitive radio technology, also known as smart-radio: allowing different radio technologies to share the same spectrum efficiently by adaptively finding unused spectrum and adapting the transmission scheme to the requirements of the technologies currently sharing the spectrum. This dynamic radio resource management is achieved in a distributed fashion, and relies on software defined radio. See also the IEEE 802.22 standard for Wireless Regional Area Networks.

* Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6), where a visiting care-of mobile IP address is assigned according to location and connected network.

* High altitude stratospheric platform station (HAPS) systems.

* Real wireless world with no more limitation with access and zone issues.

* Wearable devices with AI capabilities.

* One unified global standard.

    Hmm…that “wearable devices with AI capabilities” business sounds awfully familiar…

    Given that new wireless communications “generations” come out approximately every ten years, the standard that emerges around 2050 — “8G” — ought to be pretty impressive.

    Concept Art

    While rooting around in a desk drawer this evening, I came across a bunch of sketches of our early concepts from 2002-2003 for several locations and bits of hardware for In the Shadow of Ares. It’s surprising how similar most of them were to what ended up in the book — and that only one specific setting ended up not making it.

    If I can get some time this weekend, I’ll scan them in, and in the case of the MA add a sketch of what the original concept morphed into over time.