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Biosphere 3


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Biospheres 1 & 2 were functional disasters.

 

First and foremost you need a fat source of energy - Mars is cold, freezing and below, with average 43% of the sunlight and 1% of the surface atmospheric pressure of Earth. There is no magnetosphere to divert particulate radiation and no atmosphere to absorb it (Earth's air at sea level is equal to 900+ centimeters of lead shielding - 14.7 pounds/in^2). There is no ozone layer to block hard solar ultraviolet light.

 

How will you get your living stuff there? During transit your coveyance will be cooked with some 30 rads of radiation. Seeds won't much care, but a human median lethal dose (50% of exposed people die) is only 300 rads. Everybody gets radiation cataracts, just like on International Space Station Freedom FUBAR Space Hole One Alpha but more so.

 

http://www.indiana.edu/~futhist/Part4/Wk12/Schell2.htm

http://www.eas.asu.edu/~holbert/eee460/gcd/radiation.htm

Bottom

 

What did Biosphere 2 cost on Earth, from design through the end of its life? What did it weigh? The lamentable Space Scuttle boosts mass into low Earth orbit for $30/gram. Look up the cost of gold.

 

We have to choose what kind of people will be in the biosphere

Enviro-whiners, Liberals, politicians, social advocates, Christian missionaries, union leaders, Inner City denizens, feminists, middle management; anybody with an MS/Edu, anybody currently resident in a Federal or state penitentiary. All of them are proven survivors with minimal efforts expended. If the Mars colony goes belly up... so?

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Does the shape of a structure in space have any specific importance? Is there a difference in a dome structure compared to a rectangular structure?

 

___The difference is the geodesic dome is stronger & encloses a larger volume of space for a given mass of building material than any other structure shape.

___Besides geodesic domes, Buckminster Fuller designed something called a Dymaxian House.

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How would one obtain water on mars?
That's what many of the experiments on all those current probes and landers are trying to find. We think there's a bunch there, but how much and how easy it might be to get to we don't know yet. If there's not enough or its hard to get to, then Uncle Al's $30/gram cost applies, and think about the fact that humans need about a gallon or so a day for all purposes before recycling. It becomes a real issue...

 

Cheers,

Buffy

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Is it possible to create a form of precipitation in biosphere 3? Like the man made rainforest in biosphere 2?
As long as Biosphere 3 has enough moisture and air pressure inside it to start, sure. The much lower gravity on Mars will probably have some effect (I don't know what, rain drops will certainly fall slower), but its an issue mostly of having a high enough humidity level in your artificial atmosphere...so the problem comes back to how do you get it inside your sphere...

 

Cheers,

Buffy

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