Mars and natural satellites

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, and the second smallest planet after Mercury.  It's believed that in its past it could have harbored life, and may still, which seems more likely since the discovery of flowing water on Mars.

The house would probably fall victim to wild temperature swings (20 Celsius to -153 Celsius) or just be covered by dust.

 

Normal airplanes can't fly on Mars, because that it's atmospheric density is 100 times less than Earth's, and because that there isn't enough oxygen in the air to support combustion.  However, specially designed planes could fly on Mars.

 

There isn't enough liquid on Mars for a boat to float in.

 

The human is more interesting.  The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, and extremely thin, and that, combined with the temperature changes, would make some kind of space suit necessary.  Food could possibly be farmed in a green house, or just carried along.  Water could be mined from the ground in places in the form of ice.  Rocket fuel could be refined in-situ.  A trip to Mars is much farther than a trip to the Moon, so it has to be much longer because of transfer windows, which only happens approximately every two years.  Plus, travel time:

 

This image shows why a faster trajectory is less efficient and requires more efficient engines:

Source: http://athena.cornell.edu/

You can read more about interplanetary trajectories here: http://www.braeunig.us/space/interpl.htm 

And here's a handy spreadsheet: http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/sched.html

Of course, all that time in zero-g causes muscle atrophy and osteoporosis, so many Mars mission proposals involve some kind of centrifuge, to create artificial gravity.

Finally, I want to add this: List of rocks on Mars.

 

Moons:

Phobos and Deimos are the two moons of Mars.  It is believed that they are captured asteroids.  In most respects, they are like the Moon, except for gravity.  Deimos' escape velocity is 5.6 m/s, and Phobos' is 11.4 m/s, so it probably wouldn't be quite possible to reach escape velocity by running on Phobos, but maybe on Deimos.  With a bicycle, though, it probably would be possible.

 

Mercury

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and also the smallest planet, about the size of the Moon.  It's gravity is about 38% of Earth's gravity, so if you were the world's high jump champion, you could jump 6.4 meters.  But you're probably not the world's high jump champion, so if you divide your jump height by 0.38, that's how high you could jump on Mercury.  You will probably get something like 1.2 meters, if you're between 20 and 30 years old.  Long story short: Averages are hard.

Anyway, all that means that you could dunk a basketball almost without raising the ball above your head. 

So, the human, and the structures would be fine in the gravity.  Mercury has no atmosphere to speak of, so the airplane would be useless, and since there are no oceans on Mercury, the boat wouldn't be very interesting.  The house could stand in the gravity, and the lack of atmosphere wouldn't affect it, but the heat would.

The temperature:
Because of it's proximity to the sun, the temperature varies wildly between day and night, with 100 K (−173 °C; −280 °F) temperatures at night to 700 K (427 °C; 800 °F) temperatures during the day at some equatorial regions.  That's definitely too hot for most of the house, but you could survive in something like a fire proximity suit.  The house could survive if it was made out of something with a higher melting point than tin.  At night, a spacesuit would be necessary.

Mercury has been suggested as a colonization site, as it has lots of solar power, not terribly unreasonable temperatures near the poles along with possible ice deposits, and possible deposits of Helium-3. 

In short, Mercury would be fairly survivable, with proper equipment.

The sun

The first body in the solar system is the sun.
It is a ball of plasma, it's radius is 109.2 times larger than earth.  It accounts for 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System.  It's surface gravity is 28 times earth's.
Now, on to the facts that really make the difference to our human, house, boat, and airplane.
The surface temperature is 5,800 K.  That's 9980.33 °F or 5526.85 °C.
How hot is that?













What?  What was that?  You want me to write something?  Sorry.  Just getting lost in youtube.
Essentially, plasma is fire:

So, what would happen to anything on the surface of the sun?  Well, around 5800K, carbon atoms are ripped apart. 

First, the gravity:
The sun has 28 times the gravity of the earth.  A typical person can stand about 5g before losing consciousness, and with training and specialized clothing you could withstand 9g.  However, at 28g you would not even be able to stand.  You would quickly be killed, if only by the fact the the heart is not strong enough to pump blood around your body at 28g.  The heat would kill you, quickly, but sometime after a nanosecond.  Because of the heat in the sun, photons would have very short wavelengths.  Those would ionize your DNA, which is not good.  Cancer is the least of your problems.

I think that our building could theoretically stand up, especially with reinforcements, since a 1 story house would only weigh about as much as a 28 story house, which is perfectly possible on earth.  In fact, it could be more stable than a 28 story house, since it's closer to the ground, and therefore more stable.  Too bad it's rapidly being converted to plasma by heat and radiation which rips apart the very molecular bonds inside the walls.

Similar things happen to the airplane and the boat, and since there's no oceans or atmosphere high enough for the plane to not be vaporized, they're not very interesting.

At the very least, you might trigger a solar flare: http://meetings.copernicus.org/www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU05/04384/EGU05-J-04384.pdf

See you on Mercury!

The size of space

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

-Douglas Adams

Space is as infinite as we can imagine, and expanding this perspective is what adjusts humankind’s focus on conquering our true enemies, the formidable foes: ignorance and limitation. 

-Vanna Bonta

Today we have an interesting topic; How big is the solar system?

You might be familiar with maps of the solar system like this:

But if you want to know really how big the solar system is, take a look at this map, with the moon the size of a pixel, and everything else to scale: http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
If you have 297 minutes, you can travel it at the speed of light.  Or, perhaps, 177,632,973,808.5 Blue Whales

Such misconceptions run rampant, as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz9D6xba9Og

Next, take a look at the 70's classic short scientific film: Powers of ten

For the more interactive of you, here's a fascinating scrollable scale from the planck length to the observable universe.  There's some interesting stuff in there, for example: A marathon is longer than Phobos.

So, yes.  Space is truly massive and almost empty.  Remember, any solar system is incredibly dense by cosmic standards.  Want to explore it yourself?  See Celestia  For a example of the challenges in spaceflight, take a look at Kerbal Space Program  If you are playing Kerbal Space Program and feeling a lack of challenge, try the Realism Overhaul modification.

Now that you know how big space is, you can see how many humans are in it right now.  And then watch this awe-inspiring video: http://www.erikwernquist.com/wanderers/

So, why all this preamble?  Because I'm going to start a series of posts on what would happen if a plane, a boat, a human, and a building were transported to every large body in the solar system.
Invaluable for this will be What If's posts Interplanetary Cessna and Extreme Boating

See you on the sun, with a 747, a condo, and a sailboat.

P.S.
I was recently linked to by the blog Way Of The Dodo