The meaning of getting to Mars? Your view?

I wish to clarify my call for a ring world. Rather than the common Sci Fi version, I would advocate one that dos not face our star, but faces away from the star. Then the use of mirroring materials could give a certain amount of reflected light to the ring segments, an amount which would be proper for the flora within the segment. This would allow one to provide "day and night" to the flora, and possibly season changes. The inner surface of the ring, the side facing our star, could be shielded with Pb.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Gamma can really **** up your weekend, but lad paint was never designed to shield you from space "death rays"

Are you sure about that? Lead can shield Superman from the effects of kryptonite and stop his x ray vision. If it can do all of that there's no reason why it can't stop a few puny outer space death rays.

I'm using the same sources as Livinglava.

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@izzythepush,

yes kryptonie

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@farmerman,

He sounds like a necrophiliac.

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@izzythepush,

I always wondered who began the whole story about the kryptonite stuff. I know that its only the green kryptonite that superman needs to avoid.
No death rays with krypton gas.
it can make neon lights glow green (or yellow with neon).

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@farmerman,

I doubt they even knew it was a real substance, Superman was from Krypton which is why kryptonite, (from Krypton,) can hurt him.

I always thought it was a bit daft, more likely to make him feel nostalgic than anything else.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

It's an indirect link to that video through reddit but let's see if it works.

I'll get to it at some point. The guy has a lot of other interesting videos that I am still working my way through.

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@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

All I'm trying to say is that whatever industrial projects we consider undertaking, either on Earth or outside of Earth, should all be scrutinized in terms of how they interact with a sustainable Earth where Earth's natural patterns are protected as much as possible. We should assume that Earth is healthy when left to its own nature, and thus deviate as little as possible from what Earth would be like without human ingenuity.

I don't think that's a safe assumption to make. But I do agree that humanity should put its best minds to considering our options, and we should seriously think about it for many generations before we actually try to act on any of these plans.

That YouTube guy that Leadfoot referred to has a lot of interesting ideas. One thing that he talked about is filtering all of the heavier elements out of the sun. This would make the sun younger (a greater proportion of its remaining mass will be hydrogen), and it would give our sun a much longer lifespan (lower-mass stars live a lot longer).

Maybe humanity should shrink our sun into a young Population II K-class star and move earth's orbit inward a bit. And if we become advanced enough, maybe we could periodically refresh the sun with hydrogen brought in from elsewhere in the galaxy.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

When we later experience the sun going through the beginnings of its unstable perio and leading to its brown out. gamma radiation will begin in earnest.

Do you have a cite for this phenomenon?

I thought M-class stars radiated much of their energy in the infrared spectrum.

At any rate, we would not have to worry about such a thing until the red giant phase actually began. And if that YouTube video guy is correct, perhaps we will be able to prevent the red giant phase from ever happening.

I do have one question about the YouTube guy's claims though. I thought that the helium produced by fusion stayed in the sun's core instead of mixing throughout the star like he describes (waiting for red giant dredge-ups defeats the goal of preventing the red giant). That could interfere with our ability to extract that helium from the sun using the techniques that he describes. It's not an issue that I have studied in depth though, so perhaps I'm missing something.

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Even A small pandemic appears to be an effective way of cutting CO2 emissions.

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@oralloy,

M star produce gamma rays, but youre right , ithey dont mmake it to the surface due to the stars immense core gravity.It takes over 100k years for gamma radiation to reach the surface and by then , the gamma photons are converted to a lower energy form. That occurs most of the time except during solar flares and, I understand, theres amove to monitor such radiation even more closely.
The 4 major solar reactions , 3 of which involve Hew, He3, and He4. AS I understand, as the star begins exhausting its hydrogen fuel and He4 is themajor reactant, that when gama radiation will possibly become a radiation hazard. And itll take several feet of Pb to be effective.
The last reaction (which fuses He4 to Be7 emits a lot of gamma throughout the sun.

YouTube guy. Ive been sick with an RSV the last few days so I didnt find this clip. My guess is that , as the He isotopes begin to become the fuel, the location of He is more easily obtainable

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

Even A small pandemic appears to be an effective way of cutting CO2 emissions.

For a few weeks only... But yes, it shows that it's quite straightforward to reduce CO2 emissions by reducing economic activity.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

YouTube guy. Ive been sick with an RSV the last few days so I didnt find this clip. My guess is that , as the He isotopes begin to become the fuel, the location of He is more easily obtainable

I linked/embedded the YouTube video just a few posts above this. It's the one that says "starlifting".

The problem with waiting for dredge ups is, the sun has already entered its first red giant phase by that point. Maybe we'd be able to act quickly and start extracting helium from the sun once the first red giant phase begins. But that's a lot different from the proposed scenario where we prevent the sun from ever reaching that phase to begin with.

So either I've missed something or the people who came up with that idea have missed something.

Since I've not studied this in depth, I may well be the person here who has missed something.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time that I've pointed out an expert's mistake. Perhaps this time I'm the guy who asks "Where ya gonna get all that crushed rock from?"

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Leadfoot Quote:
“Even A small pandemic appears to be an effective way of cutting CO2 emissions.”

Olivier replied:
For a few weeks only... But yes, it shows that it's quite straightforward to reduce CO2 emissions by reducing economic activity.

But if the health of the planet depends on it, we could do a big one.
I’m just say'n

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Utopia is all about overpopulation but they don't see a pandemic as the solution.

I can't say much more because it's full of twists, visually stunning and very well written.

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@Leadfoot,

Natural selection does come in with a vengeance. Very likely, however, our CO2 and methane emissions are only accelerating a natural process already well underway. It will be useful, however, to know how such cylces of warming and cooling work, to know it in detail, if we are to establish our species on other planets.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

But if the health of the planet depends on it, we could do a big one.

Byvthat you mean a big pandemic, or a big reduction in economic activity?

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Byvthat you mean a big pandemic, or a big reduction in economic activity?

They are not equivalents. One is a means to the other.

The only thing that can slow economic activity is fear.
Many things can generate fear. A pandemic is one, others include the muzzle of a gun, threat of imprisonment, terrorism, etc.

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There are treads about climate change, this is not one of them.

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The meaning of getting to Mars? Your view?

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