Rei, it's always this way with you. Take the chip off your shoulder.

Firstly, I see you have this notion that martian rocks must all be igneous. This is not correct. That planet has had extensive geologic hydrolysis. Noteworthy shale formations have been found at Jezero and Gale.

https://news.mit.edu/2024/stud...

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary....

The generalized composition profile for windblown dust is very high in basaltic minerals, but many noteworthy sedimentary-dominated structures have been catalogued, as above. Depending on where the regolith is sourced, its composition can vary widely. Blanket statements like 'regolith is not shale!', does not engender notions of superior knowledge. Regolith is the fine to midsized mixture of fractured rocks on the surface. Its composition will be determined by wind erosion and transport patterns, and which rocks became wind eroded. As pointed out above, large surface deposits of hydrolized mineral layers are present on mars.

Rather than pretend I dont know this, I instead correctly asserted that what you do with the collected dust after extracting the perclorate depends entirely on its composition, which will be very site-specific. The one making silly generalizations about the regolith is yourself, Rei.

But, since we are playing 'name the ignorance' in this exchange, your attestation stat perchlorate is 0.5% liberatable oxygen says 'Say i'm ignorant of basic chemistry without saying i'm ignorant of basic chemistry, and am bad at reading too.' The 0.5% statistic comes from the publication at bottom, and is the proportion of the regolith that is perchlorates. This is one of those lemons you seem to have a hard time with, so I'll hold your agitated little hand on this one.

Washing the regolith to remove the perchlorate is a requirement for *any* other use of that regolith. The chlorine it contains is a fouling contaminant for any other industrial process that you put it through. It's not optional. This stuff MUST be washed first. Even at this low of a concentration, its presence would destroy melting crucibles, and deleteriously affect the mechanical properties of resulting products.

Washing it is not optional. It's a required first step for any subsequent process.

As you have rightly pointed out, the water ice on mars is more 'frozen mud'. Cleaning the melt is going to be a necessary first step to using it *regardless*. That means either vacuum distillation, thermal distillation, or reverse osmosis filtration. Again, NOT OPTIONAL. This is necessary equipment that you need to bring, regardless. RO filtration is the least energy intensive of these.

The end products are clean water and perchlorate contaminated mud, and clean mud, with contaminated water.

Since we already have to bring the RO equipment, do it like this:

Permafrost goes in RO unit 1.
clean water and salty mud come out.

Dry, salty regolith, and the dirty mud go in an agitation and settling system. It gets completely cleaned through agitation and settling in a continuous inflow agitator, until water testing shows clean (salt free) water at the outflow. The dirty water is partially re-added to the salty mud in the RO unit, which is processing permafrost, to improve filtration. The remainder is low-sediment saline water, which is fed to another RO unit, giving potable water, and concentrated perchlorate saline solution as products.

This gets you cleaned regolith, concentrated perchlorate brine, and fresh water.

Of those, only one is a lemon. The perchlorate brine. The other two have industrial or immediate uses.

What do we do with this nasty bitter lemon? Do we complain about it, or put it to use? You seem to favor complaining about it, but that's dumb. Instead, it should be made into lemonaide.

Now that we have strongly concentrated the stuff, as a biproduct of producing other things this doomed colony needs, I remind you, the percentage of this stuff is going to be very much higher than 0.6% by weight, so kindly shove that out the airlock, and look at what perchlorate salts *are*: highly oxygenated alkali-earth and transition metal chlorine salts, with a very high recoverable oxygen value.

The very same publication that gives the 0.6% wt value, also gives us a generalized compositional makep of what perchlorates we have. They assay it as predominantly calcium and magnesium perchlorate.

Here are the percentages of oxygen (many wholly liberatable) by weight of various anhydrous perchlorate salts, including calcium and magnesium), and the thermal decomposition temperatures of each. (No electrolysis, just getting it hot enough. Though again, if we have nitrogen, we can use bioreactors for this very cheaply instead. Since thats not guaranteed, here's the thermal decomp route.)

Sodium Perchlorate (NaClO4): 52.3% liberatable oxygen by weight. Thermal decomp at 490-520C at 1atm.

Potassium perchlorate (KClO4): 46.19% liberatable oxygen by weight. Thermal decomp at 550-600C at 1atm.

Calcium perchlorate (Ca(ClO4)2): 53.56% liberatable oxygen by weight. Partial decomp at 150C(!), full decomp at 380-570C at 1atm.

Magnesium perchlorate (Mg(ClO4)2): 57.3% liberatable oxygen by weight (but requires more processing to get it all). Thermal decomp (to MgO) at 369-429C.

Aluminium perchlorate: (Al(ClO4)3): 58.9% oxygen by weight. Aluminium holds oxygen very tightly. Decomposition produces a mix of oxygen and chlorine gasses, with pure aluminium oxide as the end product. This is a useful substance, as it's a principle ore of aluminium, and a useful abrasive in manufacturing. Thermal decomposition begins at 150C, and ends at 450C. (But unlikely to be a major constituent of martian regolith)

Iron(II) perchlorate (Fe(ClO4)2): 50.24% oxygen by weight. Like Aluminium, it holds oxygen tightly. The decomposition initiates a redox reaction that turns iron(ii) into iron(iii), resulting in iron(iii) oxide (Fe2O3), and a mixture of oxygen and chlorine gasses. It functions as a catalyst in the thermal decomposition of other perchlorates. Decomposition starts at 100C(!)

Iron(iii) perchlorate (Fe(ClO4)3): 54.2% liberatable oxygen by weight. Basically the same as iron(ii), but is already oxidized to iron(iii).

Since we need to heat the now cleaned regolith to its melting point *ANYWAY*, (in order to get glasses, basalt fibre, or bisqued shales, as appropriate) we can use the same industrial plant to thermally decompose the perchlorates. If we're building sintering furnaces, we are building sintering furnaces. The decomp temps are comparatively low, compared to the temps needed for melting bassalt. The melting / bisqueing of the regolith will also evolve useful gasses we want to collect and refine later, because of local scarcities *anyway*, so having the equipment in one processing plant makes logistical sense.

Our outputs here are alkali earth oxides (mainly calcium and magnesium oxides, which are useful for making concrete) and chlorides (which are useful for an abundance of chemical processes), oxygen, chlorine, and water vapors, and industrial regolith end products (glasses, basalt fibre, or bisqued shale pellets or bricks, depending on what we fed in.)

Fractional distillation of the gasses will give you distilled water, liquefied oxygen gas, and compressed chlorine gas.

Noteworthy publications:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a...

I am not interested in an an argumentative tit for tat Rei.

Perchlorates can be broken down through bacterial processes in water (but assumes you have the other things you need for life, which we dont here. Then again, I am open to nitrogen sources existing, but being undocumented. If they do, this by far the least expensive means), and through electrolysis with a boron doped diamond electrode set.

Which just so happens that this latter is also be your preferred method, since it breaks the water as well. The increased ion content of the water would increase bulk oxygen yeild over pure water.

Why are you complaining, instead of being informative?

As for mineral dusts being bad, it depends on how hygroscopic the dust is. Shales and clays are indeed bad (but can be sintered into bisque that is not). Fine silicon oxide species less so (but are better used to make glass). Sintered bb sized balls, being much more ideal.

Again, why be argumentative instead of informative?

The statement about bassalt fiber is not meant to be taken in a horticultural context. It's vastly more useful as a construction matetial for high pressure vessels, which any 'earth atmospheric pressure' cabin WOULD BE, compared the the outside pressure. Not all regolith compositions produce bassalt fibre when melted though, which is why there is the caveat. Even the powders not useful for either role (like calciferous minerals) have industrial uses as bulk fillers for plastic resins, and as cement.

  It's almost as if you are either unwilling or unable to 'make lemonaide' from the lemons, because you are used to using only abundant fresh fruit.

The notion that only perfectly ideal conditions or materials are required, rather than just preferred, is not consistent with reality.

A more honest appraisal looks at the costs associated with using what's actually available, and if they exceed operational thresholds or not. 'Is it cheaper than importing from Earth', and 'Can we actually systain the infrastructure required on-site' being the important questions. NOT 'can we compete with people in the market who have ideal feedstocks'.

People have made housing from regional materials for thousands of years. The kinds of conditions that forced that are present on both the moon, and Mars. Think of ways to make lemonaide, and less about how you dont have fresh guava juice.

I'm not so sure that perchlorates are such an awful sticking point.

(This is not meant to be a post in support of this study, mind. Please do not infer that it is.)

Perchlorates are a 'potentially useful' chemical salt, that form from slow dehydration and UV exposure in an oxygen rich envirionment. They contain a lot of chemically bound oxygen, that is relatively easy to liberate, producing reactive oxygen species when that happens.

Numerous findings of water ice have been made on Mars, which means it can be collected from the Martian envirionment. The primary ways perchlorates decompose is from exposure to water and heat. Perchlorates are also generally water soluble, which is one of the reasons they are harmful to human health.

Together, this suggests Martian regolith that is loaded with perchlorate is a potentially valuable source of easily extracted mineral-derived oxygen gas, which would be essential for a manned Martian colony mission. The extraction of this gas from the perchlorates would leave alkali-earth chloride salts behind in the reactor vessel, but these have other industrial uses, such as the production of hydrochloric acid, and the production of vinyl-chlorides.

Extraction of the perchlorates from the regolith through this industrial process would produce an abundance of potentially useful mineral dust to use hydroponically, or, if the composition is useful and fit for purpose, as raw material for sintered brick and basalt fiber.

The elements in low abundance are nitrogen and phosphorus. These are the real sticking points, from my understanding. The only sources of these would be from radiological processes, or from importation from earth. Both represent a very significant scarcity that would make the idea of 'colonization' infeasible.

Lunar regolith spectrometer data suggests that lunar soil does contain phosphorus, but in very low concentrations. Carbon and nitrogen are scarce.

The majority of publications about Martian regolith is about geochemical evidence of hydrolysis and water-erosion evidence, and talk about perchlorate levels. I have not seen good datasets detailing phosphate levels, or nitrogen sources. They may exist, but I have not seen it discussed much.

There's also inter-hospital secure emails (and local mailboxes), locally saved attachments, digital fax services, scan-in temporary folders before batch upload, etc, that *cannot* be taken out of the medical institution's local intranet.

EPHI is EPHI, and if they have it in any way, the new security rule applies.

Meaning basically every hospital, clinic, dental office, chiropractor, or skilled nursing facility, is gonna have yearly penetration tests, at a minimum.

Thats a lot of yearly pentesting.

And a lot of PHBs that need to understand things, that probably wont.

Centers for Medicare has *demanded* frequent penetration testing to be performed by all healthcare organizations that store digital patient records, as part of their new security rule.

You can read all about it here:
https://www.federalregister.go...

NATURALLY, I expect Hospital Management, and other pointy haired bosses to not understand the new requirements, and to flip out when the mandated penetration testing happens, that their own compliance officers and IT staff coordinated.

For WinG, there's a "Its pretty much dead Jim" component from the WINE project, called WINEVDM

https://github.com/otya128/win...

You can use it to run win16 applications on modern windows. (with lots of warts. Caveat emptor)

It can also run win16 applications inside WINE. (same caveats apply)

For old DX versions, I'd suggest stringing DGVoodoo2 together with VKD3D in a proton container. Essentially wraps those old APIs over DX12, which is provided by VKD3D over Vulkan, and has quite a few options you can fiddle with about color depth support reporting, and options to force upscale (useful for those 640x480@8bit DX5 games, since modern monitors dont like those legacy modes).

Bonus, is that it also functions as a glide wrapper.

You can do this right now.

Use DGVoodoo2 with VKD3D.
https://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVood...

VKD3D provides DX11 and DX12 over Vulkan.
DGVoodoo2 wraps DX1 through DX9 over DX12 api. (which will functionally pipe it through Vulkan on Linux)

Your wine / proton prefix will need to be set to use native DLLs, but it totally works.

Count me in the apparently 0% of the population that likes the switch. It maps well to my body's natural cycles and that keeps me awake, alert, and happy throughout the day. My only gripe is that the fall back is a couple of weeks too late and spring forward is a couple of weeks too early -- it should be closer to the equinox than it currently is.

Second-best to keeping the switch would be year-round standard time, possibly with a culture of shifting business hours in the summer.

Year-round daylight time is a very distant third choice. Really, I find the idea of year-round daylight time offensive. The sun should be at its peak around noon. If you are on the far eastern edge of your timezone and think you ought to be one timezone ahead, cool. But for those of us in the western half of our timezones, daylight saving time means astronomical noon is after 1:30 PM.

Graft, at least in the US parlance, is when a government official provides government funding to enhance the viability of a private enterprise, while simultaneously investing in that enterprise themselves, and making a killing on the return from that investment, through leveraging the stability and exclusivity of the government's financial contributions to the success of that enterprise.

Why it is bad:

Investing in companies in this manner creates necessary exclusivities which gives unfair market advantages to the recipient of the graft's financial capital. It also creates a quid pro quo relationship between the government official that created the deal, and the enterprise that accepted it, which can be exploited in any number of truly devious and heinous ways.

Now--

If the government wants to support struggling American chip foundries, they can universally invest across the board, while simultaneously imposing a hard rule against *ANY AND ALL* public servants privately investing at the same time.

This, at least in theory, removes the majority of the reasons why the dealmaking is *BAD*. (not all, just most).

Since our legislators balk at the idea of ANY AND ALL forms of *restriction* to their investment activities while in office, and since Pres Trump seems *incapable* of understanding that Quid Pro Quo is *BAD*, I have to come out very much against the government *INVESTING* in companies in this manner.

There's also data showing that Millennials and zoomers are not getting more republican as they get older.

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

However, there *IS* evidence that an unsettling number of zoomers are straight up redpilled.

Picking winners in a such a shockingly open way is the pinnacle of open governance!

Using the office of the presidency to support a company, while heavily investing in them, so that it succeeds and you make lots of money is certainly not illegal!

No, not at all! Certainly not GRAFT, No, THAT'S A CRIME!"

This is PROTECTING AMERICAN INTERESTS, Yeah-- that's it!

Surely!

If you mean the toxic hazard potential caused by PFAS, and other such compounds, then yes.

A basic rule of thumb, is that if a thing-- any thing at all, of any kind or nature-- is "USEFUL" or "PROFITABLE", but also has "But it will cause some horrible bad thing to happen if used", it will be used, and used heavily, 100% of the time, until its use is forcibly stopped. (and even then, it will be whined about, A LOT.)

Examples include such noteworthy entries as tetra-ethyl lead, C8/GenX, CFCs in aerosol sprays, plasticizers in polymer products, glyphosate and other herbicides, an abundance of insecticides, antibiotics in food animals, and if you want to get away from chemicals, you have things like, sub-prime lending packages, cryptocurrencies, gerrymandering, etc.

It is simply how humans behave when presented with these conditions. All of them are variations on the tragedy of the commons, and it is a very well known problem with human behavior.

Further causing frustration, is that a fair number of people ardently refuse to accept that it is even a problem *at all*, and that it should be seen as a valuable, predictable, and reliable feature to tap into for wealth generation.

In many cases, the reason you cant do that, is because of the requirements of the seminal study in the first place.

Things like lifetime cohort studies, for instance, (where are you going to get another 5000 people to track for a lifetime study of a once in a lifetime event? A time machine?) or where very specialized equipment that costs a small fortune to produce (like the stuff at CERN) are at play.

Think about what you are actually saying, and then think more critically about the replication crisis, and then think about the current state of academia more like an experiment that is not performing according to expectations. (specifically, the expectation is that impact factor and impact scoring are sufficient controls to combat and control fraudulent papers proliferating and poisoning the credibility of the entire endeavor.)

Current processes are geared to explicitly maximize new work, even though the actual quality of that work cannot be verified, and is increasingly having problems with actual quality. (with perverse incentives on the rise to actually do the opposite: actively degrade quality. See for instance, the hackjob work done by private interests to undermine "undesired" findings, such as about our climate, and human impact thereon.)

Again, this is because of a fundamental failure to appreciate the value of boring replication work, which is exactly what I suggested.

Boring replication work combats both kinds of problem, but we do not give it the valuation it deserves.

The reason current polices are geared to maximize new work, is due to the resource scarcity with which to do meaningful work in the first place (it's very hard to get the funding to follow 5000 people for 50 years to see how the removal of tetraethyl lead from fuel has changed human behavior, for instance), which is another way of saying that there just isn't enough funding to study the things that need to be studied, let alone verify the findings of the things we can fund to study.

The people holding the purse strings are still politicians, since they set the size of the award pool to start with.

So far, your arguments have been "Refusal to see the forest, for the trees" and "Insisting nothing is wrong, even with alarming evidence to the contrary in your face."

Am I saying that your course of action is incorrect, given your position? No. You are and have been doing what is necessary in the face of resource scarcity, to get as much science done as possible with the best quality you can manage with those resources.

But does it create the replication crisis? Yes. yes it does.

Scientists are humans, and humans are prone to certain modes of mental derailment. There is a very strong bias that the current system is functioning well, even when many outstanding measures indicate it is not. (this study from the summary, and numerous others, for example.)

Why is that, I wonder?

Why do you insist that nothing is wrong, or that dedicated replication teams are so unglamorous, as to be worthless to academia-- or, in your words, "The things you give undergrads" ? (as if it is work "beneath actual scientists" rather than a valuable and indispensable tool in that process)

More pointedly, you assert that things are fine as they are, since "We still catch fraud"-- even though the data suggests that fraud is INCREASING, and catching it is falling behind, which would indicate a failure in methodology...

In fact, recent studies have indicated that its becoming so common, that its become an actual industry, and increase at a rate that very clearly indicates that this is NOT being adequately controlled:

https://www.science.org/conten...

Yet you insist that the methodology is fine-- Why is that?

Again, I would conjecture, it is because there is a startling degree of disdain for "mere replication of findings", combined with an awards system that actively prices that work out of the process, with no system in place that *ADEQUATELY* polices the problem. ("Adequately", because this rate or error is increasing at this very alarming rate) This is abundantly clear from widespread findings in the academic field, like the study I just posted a story about-- its just one of many.

Impact scoring (including impact factor), is very clearly not a sufficient control for this process. If it was, this result would not be appearing.

The scientific process would suggest that this is an observation, and that the next step is formulation of a hypothesis for testing.

I have provided one for you, and it can be tested. Why has this kind of thing not been proposed and examined with the appropriate process?

I can appreciate that there are precious few resources to allocate, but this kind of thing can be tested in small scales for performance quality measures.

It's what's called for by the scientific process, so why has academia resisted it so much?

Or, does academia think its own policies are somehow above the very process they use to wrest truth from bias? (again, scientists *ARE* humans, and humans *DO HAVE BIASES.* Things like "Sunk Costs Fallacy" and pals, spring instantly to mind, given the battle to attain tenure and recognition in a field. "Appeal to authority" also comes to mind, with rhetoric about Impact Factor and Reputation Scoring, in clear contravention of very observable trends.)

Try to be more objective about the degree and severity of this problem, and the outstanding need your vocation has to maintain its rigor and value to mankind.

Especially in the face of a very well funded, concerted effort to undermine that work.

Impact score is literally the number of times a paper is cited by other papers.

Instead of pretending it's magic, instead realize what happens when studies are *not* replicated.

A single study is conducted, and because it is the seminal paper, it gets lots of citations in related works.

Assuming an academic forger is smart, and does not make outlandish claims that break ancillary studies, they can go undetected for decades.

Like the work behind the amyloid hypothesis.

The methodology currently employed grants awards to very skilled fraudsters, in increasing quantity and severity, as suggested by this study, and supported by the observable lack of replication being done.

The politcians I mention provide an insufficient financial resource to provide for the degree of replication needed, replication scientists dont get near the impact scores of seminal paper authors, and conversely, through the the process you laid out, dont get funding approved, leading to them getting even less funding, because you cant realistically do science on a 0$ budget to get the impact scores you need to be awarded that funding. You've created a singularity.

To have competative impact score ratios, there would need to be dedicated 'refutation firms', that predatorially kill published findings, and get citations for doing so. Those firms would need good premises and equipment equally on par with the vanguard, and in many disciplines, that's an equally costly outlay that may require a fed budgetary line item.

We dont have those, and we dont have those for reasons related to the insufficiency of impact score as a proxy for merit, combined with generally insufficient funding overall.

No. The *correct* way to fix this is to resolve the root cause:

How funding is awarded.

Currently, the paradigm is 'publish or perish', because science funding is only handed out to 'rockstars' by politicians who dont understand the fundamental value of boring replication work.

It is the toxic combination of 'I can only do work if I publish first and publish often!', and 'There is nobody checking my work anyway; nobody has the funding to do verification! that leads to this perverse outcome.

Further restriction to 'vip rockstars only!' Is a gross misunderstanding of the root problem, and would be heaping jetfuel on top of the dumpsterfire.

Turns out, you actually need non-rockstars--Lots of them.

And to have them, you have to fund them and their laboratories.

Oh, how awful! You cant have 'only cream'. /s

The sooner this is realized in policy, the better.