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I'm surprised that nobody is commenting on the true exciting possibility left over: to directly mine (then use) uranium from Mars. Completely feasible, and comp

I'm surprised that nobody is commenting on the true exciting possibility left over: to directly mine (then use) uranium from Mars. Completely feasible, and completely sustainable. That would be a huge energy resource to develop Mars.

dungdongdang 6y ago
and why in the world would we do that? you don't need a lot of uranium, and there's plenty on earth. yeah, let's get a bunch of equipment to mars and build a mine bumblefuck miles away where we can't even get a little toy car to function without breaking down in several years. speaking of exciting possibilities: did you know we have the possibility of refining oil into jet fuel, right on an airplane? then we can use that jet fuel directly on the airplane.
- fyrn- 6y ago
  They were talking about the future. One day if mars has high energy requirements, from settlements of anything really, solar panels may not be enough. In such a future developing nuclear power infrastructure on Mars might be worthwhile. But you only looked one inch in front of your face, and dismissed their comment so that you got to play the practical sensible engineer. What makes sense in engineering is context dependent, don't be so quick to dismiss.
  - dungdongdang 6y ago
    one day, when mars has high energy requirements, it will still be easier to mine on earth and bring uranium to mars. there will never be a time when it is not. not sure what you are not getting here. unless you mean millions of years in the future, when humanity is dead, and mars is terraformed and as friendly an environment to build a mine as earth. don't be so quick to make up stuff people never said.
ginko 6y ago
> Completely feasible, and completely sustainable. Setting up the facilities to mine, process and purify uranium on another planet does seem like a major technical challenge to me.
- iso1210 6y ago
  Benefits seem minimal too - Uranium is high density. Creating water, oxygen, even rocket fuel, in situ makes perfect sense. Only once you have a nearly self-sustaining group of colonies would you need to worry about insourcing fuel supply - and by then there may be better solutions to generate power (thorium, fusion, space based solar, etc)
MertsA 6y ago
You'd need to enrich it or use a breeder reactor if you wanted to do that all on Mars. Nuclear is so energy dense you'd be better off just including shipments of reactor fuel every 780 days on regular resupply missions than trying to come up with a way of enriching it on Mars. If you were considering a breeder reactor, Thorium appears to be more advantageous than Uranium on the Moon and Mars. Thorium is more plentiful and should be easier to extract in usable quantities and breeding Thorium-232 to Uranium-233 in a small reactor would seem to be more practical than breeding Uranium-238 to Plutonium-239 in i.e. a sodium cooled fast reactor.

dungdongdang 6y ago

and why in the world would we do that? you don't need a lot of uranium, and there's plenty on earth. yeah, let's get a bunch of equipment to mars and build a mine bumblefuck miles away where we can't even get a little toy car to function without breaking down in several years. speaking of exciting possibilities: did you know we have the possibility of refining oil into jet fuel, right on an airplane? then we can use that jet fuel directly on the airplane.

fyrn- 6y ago
They were talking about the future. One day if mars has high energy requirements, from settlements of anything really, solar panels may not be enough. In such a future developing nuclear power infrastructure on Mars might be worthwhile. But you only looked one inch in front of your face, and dismissed their comment so that you got to play the practical sensible engineer. What makes sense in engineering is context dependent, don't be so quick to dismiss.
- dungdongdang 6y ago
  one day, when mars has high energy requirements, it will still be easier to mine on earth and bring uranium to mars. there will never be a time when it is not. not sure what you are not getting here. unless you mean millions of years in the future, when humanity is dead, and mars is terraformed and as friendly an environment to build a mine as earth. don't be so quick to make up stuff people never said.

ginko 6y ago

> Completely feasible, and completely sustainable. Setting up the facilities to mine, process and purify uranium on another planet does seem like a major technical challenge to me.

iso1210 6y ago
Benefits seem minimal too - Uranium is high density. Creating water, oxygen, even rocket fuel, in situ makes perfect sense. Only once you have a nearly self-sustaining group of colonies would you need to worry about insourcing fuel supply - and by then there may be better solutions to generate power (thorium, fusion, space based solar, etc)

MertsA 6y ago

You'd need to enrich it or use a breeder reactor if you wanted to do that all on Mars. Nuclear is so energy dense you'd be better off just including shipments of reactor fuel every 780 days on regular resupply missions than trying to come up with a way of enriching it on Mars. If you were considering a breeder reactor, Thorium appears to be more advantageous than Uranium on the Moon and Mars. Thorium is more plentiful and should be easier to extract in usable quantities and breeding Thorium-232 to Uranium-233 in a small reactor would seem to be more practical than breeding Uranium-238 to Plutonium-239 in i.e. a sodium cooled fast reactor.