Author Topic: A helpful book to read  (Read 5730 times)

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Bamman

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A helpful book to read
« on: March 27, 2010, 12:16:47 AM »
Ive been reading a good book latly that i think Hyper may want to read a little that may spark some ideas. "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson. it has alot of cool things that im sure hyper could use and we would love!

(oh and this is my first time being on in several months!!! i really miss the days i was able to spend hours testing! hope to see you all on the surface!)

profit004

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2010, 01:13:32 AM »
I have read that.

It is a decent work of science fiction.

Danscall

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2010, 08:45:30 AM »
Red Mars (Which is followed by Green Mars and Blue Mars) is an excellent exploration of how life on Mars would go, including the terraformation of the planet. It doesn't really go too much into the technical details of early habitats though, the book begins with the first large scale (100 people) immigration that is designed to be a permanent colony. It focusses more on the sociological aspects of colonising a new planet, and the vie for independence from Earth than would probably follow.

thedubman

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2010, 09:27:53 AM »
Yes Agree, a great triolgy of books,.. I good read. And would agree a nice source of inspiration.

profit004

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2010, 08:55:12 PM »
Yes,  an excellent trilogy....

 However as for using it as a technical base for the game....

The biggest one is Mars can never really be terraformed to be like earth.... We might be able to get a small plant based ecosystem to work there for a while, but it would require constant maintenance.  There are a couple reasons for this. 

  The first being a lack of a magnetic shield.  Without it the full radiation of the sun will always be beating down on the red dust ball.

  The second is the lack of gravity.  The gravity is so low many gasses will reach escape velocity by the heating of the sun and be shuffled off into space.

 The third is the lack of easily available atmosphere.  The poles have some, but even if all their carbon dioxide was vaporized it would not create a decently thick atmosphere.  However the good news is the poles are almost entirely water unlike being mostly Co2 like originally thought.... so there could be plenty of water there.

The only way humans will ever have shirtsleeve environment on mars when in the martian atmosphere is if they dig a hole more than 5KM deep at one of the lowest spots on mars and basically allow the entire atmosphere of mars to drain in the pit.   Then they could use some mirrors or something and reflect the light minus the radiation down the hole.

Sorry to rain on the parades but it would be easier to terraform Venus into a habitable planet than mars.

Least Venus we would just need to cool it down to make it habitable for some types of bacteria and algaes.


profit004

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2010, 09:40:34 PM »
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0213_030213_marspoles.html

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/05/06/was-mars-magnetic-field-blasted-away/

and here is a decent debate about it here ->  http://www.astrobio.net/debate/1017/giving-mars-back-its-heartbeat

They actually put some real thought into it... They are missing some of the challenges but they at least seem to grasp a few of them.

Bamman

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #6 on: March 28, 2010, 12:49:33 AM »
I was thinking more along the lines of the buildings and vehicles in the book, like the buildings they build with the bricks they made and stuff, not so much the terriforming

thedubman

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #7 on: March 28, 2010, 11:12:02 AM »
Yes, the first book would be more associated with MCO,. its My favoroite out of the series- I like how it shows how the colony is started, and how problems are overcome and how the technology is explained..

Marco2001

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #8 on: March 28, 2010, 11:52:44 AM »

Mars - Ben Bova
&
Return to Mars - Ben Bova are a great books. I reed both of them like 3 times now :) You can get lot's of information from it. For your example - the martian colonists knew that the sandstorms can't do anything to the Habitat's air-walls becous they dont have the momentum (low air preasure = low air mass with hight speed). Yet they discovered that at some special ocasions the habitat wall might be breached so they reached a conclusion that they'r ISRU (In-Site Resource Utilisation) experts should make a new harder wall using a solar collector furnace. They made a glass bricks using martian regolith containing lots of FeO2 and mixed it with other materials that they were able to mine themselves. That way the builded a surrounding wall of (red) glass over the greenhouse and proven that you can do some things on Mars on your own - without the help from earth.

Poland here. My time: GMT + 1h
Writing a book about Mars. Any ideas? Type to me.
I'am an Astrobiology/Biology student.

thedubman

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Re: A helpful book to read
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2010, 12:21:03 PM »
Yes, Ive read those also, I remeber when there vitamin pills got exposed to martian air when they had a breach- they all got ill and couldnt work out wjy for ages- also great books..