Use Atomic and Nuclear fuels on Mars and Moon and “out there”
Time Travelers Clup? Artificial intelligence solved the oxygen problem on Mars at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCbqK_eQw0Y
Running calculations for a set of chemical reactions to search for yields and economics is what chemists, particularly those working at global or heliospheric scale, do. Ask a chatbot to run a program with data is not intelligence on the part of the chatbot. If there is any intelligence it is the regular programmers and instructors for “AI” wrapper programs. Those LLM are a statistical index to internet data and the server can generate sequences of things including words and program instructions. But it is the programmers who write the wrapper programs where all the smart and real value lie. And good one use ALL methods, including very very refined and efficient methods from STEMC and other disciplines.
But there is a LOT of water on Mars. Economics of space travel and cost of moving fuels means that nuclear and atomic energy will be used in remote locations. And then melting and separating oxide regolith is plausible and practical. Ferric oxide (Fe2O3) is 30.1% oxygen. And the “by-product” is iron. Mars “simulant” is 43.48% silicon dioxide and 16.73% iron oxide by mass. And likely there will be ore bodies where the concentrations are higher. Now you might melt a lot of glass (silicon oxide) make some oxygen and silicon and just use glass to make things. Now solar system exploration is going to take much more energy than man has used so far. And there is a lot of space, and lots of computer time and smart humans. So designing clean atomic energy does NOT have to depend on lowest bidder. Spend a few billions do mine the earth’s knowledge is probably a better investment than burning energy to run cryptography in saturated market. But “out there” maybe there will be more freedom to live dangerously and fast. Modular nuclear is improving daily and the AIs that really work are just getting started as their programmers learn to automate things by talking and guiding.
Richard Collins The Internet Foundation
