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.

Fuck you and that Ribbon.

I'm sorry. This is a topic that makes me nerd-rage.

LK

How in the fuck does using 15% of the screen for a ribbon provide a compact interface when the menu bar is the competition?

LK

I'm so happy to hear of how many people are expressing this same sentiment.

I absolutely abhor the Ribbon interface. I don't care what their market research shows. I don't care what their shills and evangelists say. I do not like it. It's not intuitive at all.

LK

I have hated the Ribbon interface since it became the default. I use LibreOffice specifically to avoid having to use it.

LK

So you justify Iran's actions because they are just showing strength. But if the US shows strength when Iran "negotiates" in bad faith it's bad? Got it.

So showing the IRGC that they are not in charge and showing the public that the IRGC is not in charge is what exactly? What position does that put them in? The last 47 years of diplomacy have been a shit show.

First of all 9-11 was targeting and mainly killed civilians. These strikes have targeted military and leadership. You know, the same military and leadership that has killed 10K to 30K of their civilian population in the last couple of weeks alone. Not to mention who knows how many others in the last 47 years. If you can't see the difference between this and 9-11, I don't know what to say.

At the time you posted, Iran has already hit civilian targets in UAE, Iraq, Kuwait, Qutar, Syria, and Jordan. As well as Israel and the USN base in Bahrain. I don't think they will be siding with Iran. Doesn't sound very smart to me. But perhaps your idea of stupid is significantly different from mine.

How do you know that? Do you have multiple independent contacts inside of Iran telling you this? Are you clairvoyant? Or just spewing bullshit?

So you're telepathic too? Amazing.

Personally I think the most significant mistake Eisenhower made as president was agreeing to put the Shah back in power at the behest of Britain. Taking out Sadam in Iraq was also really bad for the region and strengthened Iran. Sending Iran almost $2 billion was stupid. lifting sanctions and later ignoring sanctions was also really dumb. But none of that can't be undone. In an ideal world a peaceful resolution would be great. Sometimes that just doesn't work. My only hope is that it is the best decision. We just have to wait and see.

Are you fucking stupid? Chavez destroyed Venezuela. Granted, the pre-Chavez leaders in the 1990's made a mess of things with half the country in poverty. But Chavez completely wrecked their entire economy. He managed to drop the country's GDP to 20% of what it was by the time he died. Venezuela went from 50% of the country being in poverty to 95% being in poverty and 77% in abject poverty. Around 1/4 of the Venezuelan population fled the country in the last 10 years.

Not still, that was agreed to after the war. There were no boots on the ground. I can guarantee you Japan doesn't want the US to abandon their bases in Japan either.

South Korea was not at war with the US. They were allies against the North who were/are backed by China and previously the Soviet Union. They want the US bases there as well.

One base was abandoned in 1991 due to volcanic damage and the lease expired on another in 1992. Ever since Durante left office US Philippine relations have improved greatly. The US military operates out of 9 different Philippine bases currently.

That's why Amazon wanted to acquire Ring.

I have a ring camera and I'm hesitant to install it for this reason.

LK

Fun fact, Viagra was originally supposed to be for lowering blood pressure and to alleviate angina. During the human trials it was discovered that one of the side effects was, well, what it's sold for now. Obviously the side effect was vastly more profitable.

I have a family member who retired from a large city fire department. If fire fighters failed their physical for having high blood pressure they would ask their doctor for a Viagra prescription and pass the follow up physical.

You would think. But computer modeling for how long something will last has gotten really good. That's why things fail just outside of warranty more often these days. I'd guess that the starter motor itself could outlast the engine. But I'm sure there's some electronic component that will fail. Kind of like the old small block Chevy starters. It was almost always the relay that was attached to those that failed because they were too close to the exhaust. When I was young we would get a $2 Ford starter relay from the auto parts store and wire it in attached to a fender well or the firewall. That usually saved us $20 for a new starter and I don't think anyone who did this had to worry about it again.

They do, which makes batteries and starters on those cars considerably more expensive to replace. My last car did not have start/stop and an OEM starter was $110. My current car has start/stop and an OEM replacement starter is $700. Neither of those include labor.

I just checked the Ford website for a 2020 Ford Explorer. I don't know what year your Explorer is, but on a 2020 with a moonroof the limit is 75lbs and without a moonroof it's 165lbs. If you plan to haul things on your roof, don't get one with a moonroof. Regardless, according to Ford, even with a moonroof, you can put over 3X the weight you are claiming.

Here's the thing you are missing. Those coal plants are taken off line when solar and wind are functioning but the coal still has to be burned even when they are disconnected from the grid. A small coal plant takes at least 10 hours from a cold restart until it can produce power. Larger modern coal plants take 24 to 48 hours to start up. So they never stop burning coal. They just disconnect the plant from the grid when renewables are enough. But they are still burning coal the entire time. So what ever CO2 and pollution they produce when producing power they are also producing when they are disconnected from the grid.