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How We Get To Mars

10 Comments

Rick Tumlinson channels me in this Space News op-ed:

If settlement is the goal, Apollo redux is dead. Giant expendable government rockets hurling government employees and return vehicles at Mars won’t cut it in the long run. The main reason to do so is government public relations, as the heroes return and share their stories. If settlement is the goal, we send other kinds of PR heroes — settlers — who land and live out their days on camera, building the first community as more and more follow. Again, it’s different models. One model works for government, the other for private ventures. And since the one-way model is so much cheaper, and the people who will have working one-way systems first are private sector, they may well beat the government to Mars.

He proposes a much more viable approach, but for now, it’s politically unrealistic. Congress doesn’t want to send people to Mars. It wants to build big rockets.

[Afternoon update]

Keith Cowing isn’t impressed.

10 thoughts on “How We Get To Mars”

  1. If settlement is the goal then there has to be some product that can be produced on Mars (or the Moon) and shipped back to Earth to be sold for such a profit that the things the colonists need, not merely common comforts but absolute life sustaining necessities, (oxygen comes to mind, or the equipment to make it, power generators, pressure suits, air handling equipment, carbon compounds from which to grow food, etc.) that can not be made without a signifiicant industrial infrasatructure, can be purchased and sent to the colony.
    The Apollo stack was capable of putting about 250,000 pounds into orbit and about 600 pounds of payload on the lunar surface, not lander, not fuel, not crew, payload. Similarly, it could take off and bring back about 600 pounds of payload. Barring radical advances in specific impulse those numbers are not going to change by orders of magnitude no matter what your architecture. So, assume your launch costs to LEO are $100.00 a pound and that Jim Hoagland’s aliens have left ingots of pure, refined gold just waiting to be shoveled into bins on the the lunar surface. If you will do the math, that means it would cost $25,000,000 to bring back 600 pounds of gold, which works out to about $3,500 dollars an ounce, not pound, ounce. Which, even at the current high historically high price of gold, is a factor of three too high. It would cost that same $25,000,000 to put two colonists and 600 pounds of supplies on the Moon. That is assuming launch cost to LEO of only $100.00 per pound. Now would somebody please tell me what Moon or Mars colonists are going to produce that will pay for this?
    I’m sorry but I will not be able to reply to anybody who responds to this. The building I am working at today is the only place where TM will allow the computers to post. For some reason my smart phone and other computers available to me just give me error messages saying I can’t post here. Wonders of the 21st century.

    1. there has to be some product that can be produced on Mars (or the Moon) and shipped back to Earth

      No, no, NO!!! Absolutely, emphatically NO!

      I don’t have a big enough cluebat, but let’s give it another try…

      Imagine two identical industrial planets in another solar system. Absolutely NOTHING having mass can be economically traded between the two planets. Here’s the question, class… Will there be trade between the two planets and how extensive will it be? Try to think deeply about this. (Not like the guy that thought encryption explains the Fermi paradox, it doesn’t)

      Hint: Ownership does not require hands on possession.

    3. Ken touches on this, that trade doesn’t demand the shipment of goods from one planet to the other but the real economic question about whether or not a colony can survive is if there is enough economic activity in the specific colony that will allow its residents to to have a job and buy goods and services.

      A subsistence lifestyle would be really hard as there are huge capital investments to be made traveling to and living on Mars. Residents would have to be able to produce something of value for their other colonists. The success of a colony isn’t determined by what it can send to Earth but rather what it can provide to its colonists.

    4. “he building I am working at today is the only place where TM will allow the computers to post.”

      I get that sometimes when out and about. Can’t post from behind a proxy or some such.

  2. As long as they continue to lie about the costs it will remain politically unrealistic. However, it is politically realistic to send the next unmanned rover for $2.5B?

    $2.5B could preposition 25 tons of supplies for humans on mars. We could realistically put 100 tons at a site in preparation of human settlers. They could go with less, but it’s actually more realistic politically that we send more. Nobody will want the blame if we don’t send enough stuff. $10B over 6 years would hardly make a blip in the budget.

    The ship that takes humans to mars orbit will first spend a few years in shake down mode which includes trips around the moon. We should not send anybody on a long mission without testing the systems and duration of the ship. This ship will be amortized over many missions but to orbit should only cost about $200M.

    Landers for humans will be the same as cargo landers. All will provide temporary shelters. Permanent shelters will be built by the colonists ISRU so they can maintain and repair them w/o resupply from earth. THEY SHOULDN’T GO IF THEY ARE NOT PREPARED TO DO THAT.

    The cost of getting colonist to mars will come down with quantity sent at a time and over time. Those paying for space tourism today may for the same ticket price also be sponsors for some future colonists. Once a town is established, future colonists will need very little to establish themselves. They just need a ticket to get there.

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