2021/01/27 For Dr. Dartnell: This is a request to post announcements of volunteer opportunities in support of Building a Civilization from Scratch on another World
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This web site is provided through the generosity of Dr. Lewis Dartnell, author of "The Knowledge"
In the years since I bought my first copy of "The Knowledge", I've maintained a presence here in your forum, while establishing a presence in the NewMars forum of the Mars Society (marssociety.org)
In recent months, the "powers that be" decided to give me a promotion to Moderator, and I am (of course) appreciative of the trust they've invested in me, and hope I live up to their expectations.
What is significant is that, like you, they have closed off registrations entirely. Your policy is a bit different, but the number of spam ID's you've accumulated, while impressive, is not overwhelming.
I am currently engaged in what looks to be a three year effort to recover spammer created ID's, at the rate of 22 spoiled ID's per day. At the end of the project, we expect something like 19,000 ID's to be "registered", of which about 18,000 will be recovered from spammers, and ready to be awarded to new highly vetted members. The processing of spammer created ID's is finished, and we have moved on to cleaning up debris left behind by conversion to a new forum package. That process will cover 17,000 posts, and it is expected to take until August of 2022.
Four highly vetted members have been added through November of 2121. One is a PhD student who is putting the finishing touches on his design for a new 36 bit CPU to be manufactured from low order mass produced components. The design has security built in from the beginning, unlike the early CPU designs, which were just trying to achieve working capability.
The second new vetted member is a student at a university in Mexico, who is concentrating on robotics as a career field. While his focus is upon Earthly/terrestrial applications, his knowledge and skills should be transferable to the Mars project at some point.
The third new member is a student from Germany studying in Switzerland. His interests include designing an expedition to Mars.
The fourth is a recent graduate who is looking for the right institution to continue medical studies.
The NewMars forum has three PhD level members (that I know of) and a number of participants from various walks of life.
One member is a long time Mars Society member from Canada, who as (somewhat bravely) taken on an initiative to design a Large Ship (1000 passengers and 60 crew) for transport between Earth and Mars.
The distinguishing feature of the design, and the reason I am supporting it, is the bold decision to forego use of bearings between the rotating habitat (Mars equivalent gravity) and the central column of the ship.
I am deeply skeptical that physics will allow for a successful implementation of this idea, but my approach to this is that if it CAN be done then it SHOULD be done, because there are so many advantages to an integrated design for this hardware.
Spacecraft have been rotating successfully for many decades ... In fact, the original/first successful United States satellite was spin stabilized (launched on a Redstone by Wernhner Von Braun et al).
However, ** this ** vessel will be much larger, and it will be filled with objects that are constantly in motion inside the spinning wheel. Instability is guaranteed, so dynamic stabilization measures will be required.
In addition, the question of how such a vehicle would be accelerated in space is completely unaddressed. A model spacecraft could be built, fitted with sensors of various kinds, and launched into space in a Smallsat venture. How to do ** that ** is another open question.
In any case, with your permission and (perhaps) watchful supervision, I will launch an initiative here to announce opportunities for volunteer opportunities to assist with the Large Ship project.
(th)