[HN Gopher] Mars will have a lot of wicker furniture
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Mars will have a lot of wicker furniture
Author : themanmaran
Score : 97 points
Date : 2023-02-28 12:39 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (havewelanded.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (havewelanded.com)
| ArekDymalski wrote:
| This article is perfect use case for AI generated graphics:
| small, presumably personal blog for which commissioning an artist
| for illustrations would not make sense both from time and
| financial perspective.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| and what would be the use of commissioning an artist at a
| larger publication?
|
| altruism?
| rwmj wrote:
| Wicker furniture was also the weight saving solution used on the
| 1920s/30s British airship R101:
| https://www.airshipsonline.com/airships/interior/R101Interio...
|
| Of course that was before aluminium was cheap and widely
| available. I'm going to say that aluminium or plastic seems like
| a more likely choice for future Mars missions, at least until
| they work out how to grow bamboo locally.
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| The article is specifically about what they could make there.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Plastics will require custom dies and a lot of heat?
|
| Has a decade of home plastic 3D printers gone unnoticed by the
| author? Or is the production of the feeder thread something that
| is a lot more intensive than I'm aware of?
|
| That is one of the things the "why not settle antarctica" folks
| don't get. Anarctica-the-land is under MILES of ice. Water is ice
| to have... but it's not useful for making things. Not that I know
| what martial regolith or mineral mining (low-G ... should be
| easier?) entails.
|
| Google says regolith is silicon dioxide, ferric oxide, aluminum
| oxide calcium oxide, sulfur oxide, and there is perchlorates
| (toxic) as well. That sounds like a lot more usable elements than
| ice.
|
| Also, I can't imagine a mars colony of some size wouldn't involve
| mining of phobos and deimos. Low-gravity, lots of solar power
| without mars's dust and atmosphere to power things. Just drop
| things to the surface once processed.
| mpsprd wrote:
| As a FDM printer owner, it does use quite a bit of energy. My
| ender 3 uses 0.125kWh[0] with 200C extrusion (PLA) and 60C bed,
| but making a durable children spork can take hours.
|
| my personnal guess: by plastic mass, FDM is probably way less
| efficient energy wise than injection molding for the same mass
| of plastic, since meltic plastic a tiny volume at a time must
| have more losses than having a big amount heated at once.
|
| 0: https://3dsolved.com/ender-3-power-consumption/
| mhandley wrote:
| I've got the same printer - it's great, but clearly not
| optimized for power consumption. The hot end could be
| insulated so the only loss of heat is via the melted filament
| - as it is, I think most of the energy that goes into the hot
| end is lost directly to the air. Then the heated bed is great
| for ease of use, but it's pretty wasteful. If power was at a
| premium, I'm pretty sure we'd go for other solutions to
| keeping the print stuck down. My making both these changes,
| I'd guess it would be fairly easy to reduce the power
| consumption by a factor of ten or so. In the end, it ought to
| be possible for printing to take negligible power compared to
| making the bioplastic filament in the first place.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| You don't need a heated bed. Just some glue stick or
| hairspray on the build plate
| schiffern wrote:
| >by plastic mass, FDM is probably way less efficient energy
| wise than injection molding for the same mass of plastic
|
| How does it compare when you consider the energy required to
| manufacture small-run injection molds?
|
| Clearly at a certain scale there must be a crossover point,
| and it's probably greater than 1 unit.
| gene-h wrote:
| Water may be recoverable, but what about phosphorus? And why
| wicker instead of processed plant waste from the food being
| grown? Quite a bit of agricultural waste should be produced. It
| would make sense to use that instead of growing reeds.
| themanmaran wrote:
| Yea fibrous plant waste could be a great alternative for small
| products. I'm imagining something similar to the Agave Fiber
| straws you occasionally see. They hold up super well in water
| and seem like they have a higher tensile strength than their
| plastic alternatives.
| xwdv wrote:
| I don't think humans will ever populate mars so why don't we just
| shoot a seed of bacteria and simple organisms into the surface
| and give something time to develop millions of years down the
| line?
| kldavis4 wrote:
| Not to mention that if there is some kind of as yet
| undiscovered microbial life on Mars, doing this would risk
| never finding out about it.
| xwdv wrote:
| Ok fine but if humanity is ever on the brink of extinction
| and this question is no longer important then we should have
| something ready to shoot a seed and ensure at least some form
| of life will expand beyond Earth. Maybe we could shoot out to
| several planets. I'm sure this is the premise of some sci-fi
| story.
| advisedwang wrote:
| Getting from simple organisms to a habitable biosphere took
| like a billion years on earth. So if that would even works the
| results would likely be 1-2 billion years from now. For
| comparison, the Homo genus (let alone sapiens) is only 2
| million years old!
|
| In other words, that would take longer than humanity can
| conceivably plan for.
| kevinpet wrote:
| I had thought that iron would be the material of choice,
| especially early enough that elemental iron in the form of
| meteorites is readily available. All it requires is heat, meaning
| electricity.
| qayxc wrote:
| I think you vastly underestimate both the energy requirements
| and logistics of heavy industry. This is not something you'll
| see deployed on Mars for a long time.
| sparrish wrote:
| Is the thought that Mars has no useful ores of any kind or that
| mining it would be too difficult/expensive/dangerous? It mentions
| the regolith but I'm asking about raw materials under the
| surface.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I think they're talking about the "small research outpost"
| stage, rather than the "economic colony" stage of space
| exploration.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Yeah, the installed base of manufacturing capabilities on earth
| is quite staggering. It would take an enormous number of
| launches to get enough materials to mars for it to become self-
| sustaining at any scale. Just look at someplace like Guam or
| Antarctica. The difficulties are staggering despite the far
| more accessible transport medium of ships at an air-water
| interface. Guam takes millions of tons a year to sustain.
| Antarctic camps need less because smaller, but also far less
| capable of self-sustainment.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I wouldn't call the difficulties on Guam or Antartica
| staggering. It's expensive but damn near everything there is
| a known-known or close to it.
|
| Mars isn't that easy but a lot of the problems evaporate if
| you can assume that we will spend lavishly to supply whoever
| goes there.
|
| We could support a Mars research colony today if there was
| political will to spend the money. But there isn't so the
| long slow march of technological progress will have to bring
| the price down to something we can justify.
| 8as746fd4a5df wrote:
| My prediction is different from that. If humans make it to Mars
| and start setting up more than just a basic base then I predict
| that Mars is going to be a plastic planet for the forseeable
| future. -->Given enough energy<-- and that water and carbon
| dioxide make it easier to gather hydrogen, carbon and oxygen than
| other elements makes it very attractive to produce as much as
| possible from plastics.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Agreed. If colonized using the SpaceX Starship plan, there are
| going to be massive factories producing methane. Making those
| factories slightly larger to produce feedstock for plastic will
| probably be a lot cheaper than growing bamboo.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Part of the articles point is that for _furniture_ getting
| plastic in the right shape would be hard. Sure you can use a 3D
| printer but furniture is massive. You can make a mold... but
| with what?
| traverseda wrote:
| Heat welding plastic sheets should be a lot easier to work
| with than wicker. Wicker is very labor intensive unless
| there's something I'm missing.
|
| On earth we just make a mold when we want to make something
| out of plastic, but on mars it would make sense to have one
| mold for some kind of plastic sheet (perforated?) that we can
| thermoform by hand with a heat gun, heat weld together, etc.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| actually, I'm glad that article "artist renditions" of
| extraterrestrial concepts have been replaced by image AI,
| immediately
| evan_ wrote:
| I wonder if the lower gravity on Mars would have an effect on
| bamboo's growth. Maybe it will grow faster, or higher?
|
| The gravity on Mars is roughly 1/3 G.
|
| Edit: I also wonder if there's a potential process for turning
| bamboo into PLA.
| wefarrell wrote:
| My guess would be higher and weaker.
| themanmaran wrote:
| Luckily humans will weigh less as well. So it might balance
| out.
| cwkoss wrote:
| likely much less wind too, which would have the same effect
| martyvis wrote:
| You aren't going to be sitting outside without a space suit
| on.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Grow bamboo there.
| neogodless wrote:
| You may have skimmed, but the article discusses reed/bamboo in
| the second paragraph, and in the list below it.
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