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Re:Mars Colony Prize by jonathankoren on Thursday October 25, 2018 @08:47PM (#18305911)
Also, the CFP is strongly hinting at what buzzwords a winning paper needs. (Robots! 3D printing! Exports!)

Given the paper parameters and this strong hinting, I suspect they’re going to attract a lot of very handwavy and not very serious papers.

For example, one of the requirements is to make steel on Mars. (Why you would do this with only 1000 people, it doesn’t say.) No one wants to say, that we’ll have humans strip mining iron ore (we don’t even know where such veins exist), so someone will say something about 3D printing up a robot smelter that collects iron from dust in the wind, and spits out I-beams that are a special Martian alloy that makes shipping them back to Earth via a railgun cost effective.

Re:Mars Colony Prize by too-soon-ago on Thursday October 25, 2018 @09:08PM (#18305993)
That does sound very cool though. Except considering the poor city block on the receiving end of the I-beam.
Re:Mars Colony Prize by parliament32 on Friday October 26, 2018 @01:20PM (#18311203)
>3D printing up a robot smelter that collects iron from dust in the wind, and spits out I-beams that are a special Martian alloy that makes shipping them back to Earth via a railgun cost effective

Just picturing this is great, sounds like a winning proposal to me.

Re:Mars Colony Prize by jonathankoren on Friday October 26, 2018 @02:19PM (#18311599)
I am halfway tempteded to write this up.