Start ocean settlement, which wants to be US territory, and become a US State, which launches rockets and wants to be surfing capital of the world.
State motto: They said, living on the ocean was cheaper than living on Mars. Let’s do both.
Elon Musk, Prince of Mars.
The Elon of Mars, per Von Braun.
Wasn’t that a 3rd season Star Trek starring France Nguyen?
Something something of Troyus. Elan maybe
Pretty close. Elaan of Troyius.
Beware the tears of Troyans.
The tears were her “Musk”.
2026 is optimistic but not impossible, technically speaking. Politically speaking I think Musk will be arrested and deported by then.
“Politically speaking I think Musk will be arrested and deported by then.”
Not if Donald J Trump is elected POTUS he won’t be. Although I thought Musk was a US citizen but I’m not positive.
Well ChatGPT hasn’t disowned him (yet):
Q: Is Elon Musk a naturalized US Citizen?
A: Yes, Elon Musk is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
Musk initially moved to Canada and became a Canadian citizen through his Canadian-born mother. He later moved to the United States to study and work, and eventually obtained U.S. citizenship, making him a dual citizen of South Africa and the U.S., in addition to his Canadian citizenship.
There is legal precedent for kicking out naturalized citizens. One of my dad’s coworkers, a WW2 refugee, was stripped of his citizenship and deported to the USSR, where he was summarily executed on the tarmac at Sheremetyevo airport. KGB met him at the stairs, walked him to a tarp and blam.
And if Trump is elected in Nov, he won’t be sworn in until late January. Lots of opportunities to get rid of him in 3 months. Musks best bet could be to defect to China the day something like that happens. It wouldn’t even be the first time something like that has happened. Qian Xuesen.
“Lots of opportunities to get rid of him in 3 months. ”
I believe that Musk is also a Canadian citizen (via his mother who is native born Canadian). So the Biden administration can “deport” him to Canada if they wish that’s about it.
Justine Trudeau is even worse than Biden
This is not arcane lore. The legal process is called denaturalization. Then the person is theoretically deported, and can go anywhere, so long as the US is not responding to an extradition order. Qian Xuesen was deported to Hong Kong, and then walked to Red China. Time will tell what happens to Musk. There are a number of cases where a denaturalized person remained in the US because no country would take them.
I thought she was Justine Castreau?
I don’t see humans in four years happening because I think it will take them longer than that to finalize all the onboard systems it will take to sustain the crew for that long and develop confidence by having the ship tested in orbit for six months or a year.
Doing so will have to put a lot of reliance on NASA’s ISS experience and systems, and thus NASA’s organization for long duration support, and that will probably run into some NASA HSF issues with sign offs and approvals aimed at minimizing risk.
There’s also an obvious potential roadblock on sterilization of his first landing attempt, as there’s simply no way to sterilize and entire Starship prior to launch, and the entire Starship is supposed to land on Mars.
Maybe the sunlight at Venus distance would sterilize the hull.
Go to Venus, first.
That’s the sanctity of the spheres argument. You cannot sterilize humans. Might as well make interplanetary space colonies illegal. Calling Jeffery Spindler.
Besides who knows maybe it’ll be War of the Worlds in reverse. You get sick on Mars my friend and you have to stay there. Don’t bring it back here.
Someone just needs to drop Troy on Mars and get it over with.
I liked the scene in “The Martian” where Watney puts a note on his makeshift latrine on his long drive across Mars, that said “Sorry”.
I could put together the necessary ECLSS in a couple of weeks given the necessary budget from off the shelf hardware. Oxygen generators and mine rebreathers will work in zero gee. Osmotic water recycling is just a matter of overcoming the “ew” factor. Particulate filter it, boil it, pass it through the osmotic membrane, pretend you don’t know it came out of your butt yesterday. Starship is big.
I had this plan to convert Atlas bomb shelters to planetary colonies that would work on Luna, Mars. and some near-Earth Asteroids. As long as there’s a water supply, the rest is off the shelf hardware. Luna’s probably close enough to ship water and carbon (anthracite) economically.
When the head of NASA’s planetary protection program was on The Space Show, she stated that the requirements will change as things progress. Before crew go, they will have stringent sterilization protocols. When crew go they will change the protocols not requiring sterilization of the crew but limiting them to certain locations. Chris Mckay has an interesting proposal in which one maintains the ability to reverse sterilize the base if native life is found on Mars.
NASA has been proclaiming for decades, that they intend to send crew to Mars.
And have utterly failed to do the preliminary work to do this.
Therefore they have been lying for decades.
Well maybe NASA should do something.
Starships are cheap, buy starship to send crew to Mars moons, and return lots of samples from these moons.
It has been easy to do, and it’s easy to do now.
How about 100 million dollars per ton, and will buy up to 20 tons of samples from these moons.
And SpaceX, gets 60 tons back to Earth, and NASA can pick what 20 tons they want.
And then SpaceX sells 40 tons at $50 million per ton.
…if native life is found on Mars.
Let’s hope it’s not pathogenic.
I’ll have to look at the Mckay proposal. My first thought was a thermonuclear device under the base, ala Andromeda Strain… heh…
It’s got the opposite twist from DNA on earth. We can’t digest Mars bacteria and vice versa.
Really? You can hope. A quick search didn’t turn up anything, but I’m at work and don’t have a lot of time to do an extensive search. But ChatGPT has this to say:
Q: Does microbial life on Mars have a reverse twist to its DNA?
A: As of now, there is no confirmed evidence of microbial life on Mars, let alone details about its DNA or genetic structure. The idea of “reverse twist” DNA is speculative. Here’s some context:
1. **Reverse Twist DNA**: DNA in life on Earth typically has a right-handed double helix structure (B-DNA). The term “reverse twist” could imply a left-handed double helix (Z-DNA). Z-DNA is less common but can occur naturally in specific conditions in Earth’s organisms.
2. **Life on Mars**: If microbial life exists or existed on Mars, its genetic material might differ from Earth-based DNA due to the distinct environmental conditions. However, whether Martian life would have DNA at all, or if it would have a different biochemistry entirely, is still an open question.
3. **Speculation on Different Biochemistries**: If Martian life evolved independently, its biochemistry might be fundamentally different. This could involve different nucleic acids, or even a different molecular basis for life altogether.
Until we have concrete samples and evidence of life on Mars, the idea of “reverse twist” DNA remains speculative fiction or a hypothesis without scientific confirmation. Future missions like Mars Sample Return could help clarify the possibilities of Martian life and its biochemistry.
Heh. Mars Sample Return indeed. You mean when SpaceX brings people home?
It was proven in 1976 with the Labeled Release experiments on the Viking landers. Same guy who built that experiment later developed aspartame.
I assume they will devote at least one Starship to deploying a satellite network at Mars to support their manned and unmanned efforts but what will the payloads be for the other Starships?
There has to be a lot of people who would like a chance to put something on Mars if the price was right.
Exactly this.
I hear people all the time talk about how Tesla is Elon’s R&D proxy for electric vehicles on Mars, electric motors for the grid fins, gimbals, etc., but I rarely hear about how Starlink is a R&D proxy for a lunar communication network or Mars communication network.
Surely Elon has admitted as much publicly at least once or twice?
I’ve been saying that for years, everything he’s been doing has been research for useful things for Martian colonies, and happen to be things that people will buy here to pay to build them.
Oh, you left out mention of The Boring Company for digging out the underground parts of the colonies.
Given the projected payload capacity to Earth orbit of the starship wedded to the super heavy of somewhere in the neighborhood of 330K pounds per flight reusable it would just be a matter of time before someone realized that it would be better to orbit components of a much larger more proper maned interplanetary craft (likely nuclear powered).
Then subsequently assembled in orbit probably eventually a Fleet of them and then use that to ferry Musk’s approximately million people to Mars fantasy. The starship/superheavy likely used primarily in the earth moon system. Of course assuming human fecundity isn’t adversely affected by the Martian environment expect large families to be the norm rather than the exception. So maybe wouldn’t need to actually send that many to Mars to reach the magic number.
I think this is the real future, once Starship has set the stage. Interplanetary liners with 5,000 passengers, using modified Starships as orbital ferries. If you had a big space station orbiting Saturn, you could use Starships to get around the huge moon system. You’d need a rotating station for the crew maintaining the robotic mining equipment on the various moons. Probably ship product back to Earth by solar sail, a variant of the Pipeline Effect.
I think shipping volitiles to Mars from Saturn makes more sense, especially to help the burgeoning Muskvilles.
If there’s a lot of ground water (frozen or otherwise) then importing it won’t be economical. Other volatiles? Time will tell. I wrote an article “Harvesting the Near-Earthers,” published in Ad Astra in 1989 that began to explore these issues. Another important piece of real estate reachable with our current technology is Callisto. Volatiles-rich, with a surface radiation environment a little lower than LEO. Chinese are certainly interested.
For Mars to have settlements, it needs cheap water, it needs mineable water, mined a lot.
The Mars water can be fairly expensive, in the beginning of a settlement, but it has to have a future where Mars water is as cheap [and possibly cheaper] than water on Earth.
So, fairly expensive is about $1 per kg or $1000 per cubic meter- about thousands times the cost of water on Earth- but as said, it needs a near future {a decade or two] of it being much cheaper than that. Which means it has to have many trillions of tons of mineable water on Mars.
But it needs to start mining a million or more tons of water per year at time of a beginning of a settlement, and scale up to billions of tons per year.
And this would solve secondary “problems” in addition to simply being a economic requirement.
Mars can export water. One doesn’t have a problem with toxic stuff on Mars. And gives cheap radiation shielding.
Our moon doesn’t need lunar water to be as cheap as $1 per kg, and it’s unlikely one could “start with” mining a million tons of water per year. There may not even be a site on the Moon which has a million tons of water to mine. With the Moon one start with say few hundred tons of water per year and within decade, be doing thousands of tons per year. Though with Moon you need mineable water which one get up to 10,000 tons per year- or it’s not mineable. Or need a future with lunar and Mars mineable water, or it won’t happen.
Paul Spudis claimed there was sites with more than 1 million tons of mineable lunar water- that is barely mineable. One start mining it, and hope there is more water to be is found and/or branch out to mining other things on the Moon or elsewhere.
But back to Mars, one could assume there is trillions of tons of mineable water on Mars and if assume one have price of water being $1 per kg, one export small amount [100,000 tons per year sold at $100 per kg or $100,000 ton- grossing $10 billion per year] to Venus orbit. And same type infrastructure {mass driver or whatever], could also export food stuff, anywhere in space. Start with water, but Mars food export would become much more important.
Or rest of space has endless amount of water, but growing food on Mars, could be something that become close to monopoly.
“But it needs to start mining a million or more tons of water per year at time of a beginning of a settlement,”
Sorry…but I don’t get why you think an initial settlement of perhaps a few hundred people would need anywhere near that much water per year to start with. It would take many decades to get to Musk’s million plus people on Mars so plenty of time to locate and develop indigenous water resources. Also might as well include Martian moons Phoebes and Deimos as possible available mine-able water as well.
US uses about 600 billion tonnes a water a year.
China uses about 1 trillion and so does India.
People use a lot water, and farming requires a lot of water.
If mine only say 100,000 tons a year, water will costs more.
And if have a lake on Mars, real estate is worth more, than if you lack a lake.
Snow on your real estate is worth more than not having snow on your real estate.
You can live on water on Mars, 10 meter water depth on Earth is 14.7 psi, on Mars lower gravity, is .38 or 5.586 psi of pressure. With scuba or oxygen mask you can swim with swimming shorts [you don’t need spacesuit/pressure suit].
You probably want to grow fish, to eat.
Oh, and snow is not slippery on Mars, you can make roads of snow.
Also, they say there is brine on Mars, brine would quite useful, as you can make solar ponds.
They say there are solar ponds in Antarctica.
Remember they don’t actually “use” the water. It’s still water after you pee it out, and easily filtered. You can dry the poop and get that water too. And of course, the breath and sweat humidity in the air. Recycling (including more than just water) needs to exceed 99% for planetary colonization to work. That reduces the million tons to 10,000 toms.
A problem on Earth is a lack of cheap water.
Cheap water is indoor plumbing.
Free water in a well, one mile away, is not cheap water. It’s a major factor of our global poverty.
I agree, with idea that making dams {with global financing} has a good way to deal with global poverty- and it has worked.
So it seems to me, Martians should have indoor plumbing- or they are going to fail.
And rain doesn’t fall from the sky on Mars, so the focus, should be to find water, and mine it.
And people living on Mars should near places which one can get a lot of water.
And the early “investment” with Mars, should be to make a lot of water.
I assume you’re talking about 3rd world villages in Africa and India? My water comes from a 200 foot well in my back yard. My effluent goes to a septic tank and leach field in my front yard (which is downhill from my backyard and well). That’s the standard for rural Americans living east of the Rockies.
People living on 30-foot sloops crossing wide oceans have water makers that cost a few hundred dollars. Desalinization is a solved problem, and similar technologies will work on Mars permafrost. All you need on a boat is a single solar panel. On Mars probably more than that. There’s really nothing standing in the way of Mars colonization other than money and transport (both of which are political problems). As for indoor plumbing for India and Africa. Well, that too is a wholly political problem.
If there is enough ground water accessible on Mars, then you don’t need to make a lake.
And I am talking early Mars settlement and perhaps after a century of living on Mars, having to live anywhere near a lake, perhaps will be regarded as old fashion type thing.
With the Sahara desert:
“The Great Man-Made River (GMMR) project in Libya makes use of the system, extracting substantial amounts of water from this aquifer, removing an estimated 2.4 km3 of fresh water for consumption and agriculture per year” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_Sandstone_Aquifer_System
2.4 billion tons of water per year would be a lot water in terms what needed for a Mars settlement.
It’s taken from a fairly shallow depth. And they call it fossil water, though the Sahara desert had a lot more rainfall only about 10,000 years ago.
GMMR is an example of bureaucratic engineering arrogance, to whit: “Engineer, solving problems you didn’t know you had in ways you can’t understand/” Parse that sentence and weep!
First, they’re dumping the effluent in the Med instead of returning treat water to the aquifer.
Second, desalinization only cost $250nln if its for a monolithic nuclear-powered plant. How about piping filtered salt water to the houses, and letting homeowners use cheap commercial water makers to feed their tap?
These things are solved problems, unless you’re a bureaucratic engineer.
Start ocean settlement, which wants to be US territory, and become a US State, which launches rockets and wants to be surfing capital of the world.
State motto: They said, living on the ocean was cheaper than living on Mars. Let’s do both.
Elon Musk, Prince of Mars.
The Elon of Mars, per Von Braun.
Wasn’t that a 3rd season Star Trek starring France Nguyen?
Something something of Troyus. Elan maybe
Pretty close. Elaan of Troyius.
Beware the tears of Troyans.
The tears were her “Musk”.
2026 is optimistic but not impossible, technically speaking. Politically speaking I think Musk will be arrested and deported by then.
“Politically speaking I think Musk will be arrested and deported by then.”
Not if Donald J Trump is elected POTUS he won’t be. Although I thought Musk was a US citizen but I’m not positive.
Well ChatGPT hasn’t disowned him (yet):
Q: Is Elon Musk a naturalized US Citizen?
A: Yes, Elon Musk is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
Musk initially moved to Canada and became a Canadian citizen through his Canadian-born mother. He later moved to the United States to study and work, and eventually obtained U.S. citizenship, making him a dual citizen of South Africa and the U.S., in addition to his Canadian citizenship.
For more information, you can refer to his [biographical details](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk) and other authoritative sources.
There is legal precedent for kicking out naturalized citizens. One of my dad’s coworkers, a WW2 refugee, was stripped of his citizenship and deported to the USSR, where he was summarily executed on the tarmac at Sheremetyevo airport. KGB met him at the stairs, walked him to a tarp and blam.
And if Trump is elected in Nov, he won’t be sworn in until late January. Lots of opportunities to get rid of him in 3 months. Musks best bet could be to defect to China the day something like that happens. It wouldn’t even be the first time something like that has happened. Qian Xuesen.
“Lots of opportunities to get rid of him in 3 months. ”
I believe that Musk is also a Canadian citizen (via his mother who is native born Canadian). So the Biden administration can “deport” him to Canada if they wish that’s about it.
Justine Trudeau is even worse than Biden
This is not arcane lore. The legal process is called denaturalization. Then the person is theoretically deported, and can go anywhere, so long as the US is not responding to an extradition order. Qian Xuesen was deported to Hong Kong, and then walked to Red China. Time will tell what happens to Musk. There are a number of cases where a denaturalized person remained in the US because no country would take them.
I thought she was Justine Castreau?
I don’t see humans in four years happening because I think it will take them longer than that to finalize all the onboard systems it will take to sustain the crew for that long and develop confidence by having the ship tested in orbit for six months or a year.
Doing so will have to put a lot of reliance on NASA’s ISS experience and systems, and thus NASA’s organization for long duration support, and that will probably run into some NASA HSF issues with sign offs and approvals aimed at minimizing risk.
There’s also an obvious potential roadblock on sterilization of his first landing attempt, as there’s simply no way to sterilize and entire Starship prior to launch, and the entire Starship is supposed to land on Mars.
Maybe the sunlight at Venus distance would sterilize the hull.
Go to Venus, first.
That’s the sanctity of the spheres argument. You cannot sterilize humans. Might as well make interplanetary space colonies illegal. Calling Jeffery Spindler.
Besides who knows maybe it’ll be War of the Worlds in reverse. You get sick on Mars my friend and you have to stay there. Don’t bring it back here.
Someone just needs to drop Troy on Mars and get it over with.
I liked the scene in “The Martian” where Watney puts a note on his makeshift latrine on his long drive across Mars, that said “Sorry”.
Calling Jeffery Spindler.
Sorry my bad, I meant Jeffery Spender.
And I meant Trou. Damn autocorrupt.
I could put together the necessary ECLSS in a couple of weeks given the necessary budget from off the shelf hardware. Oxygen generators and mine rebreathers will work in zero gee. Osmotic water recycling is just a matter of overcoming the “ew” factor. Particulate filter it, boil it, pass it through the osmotic membrane, pretend you don’t know it came out of your butt yesterday. Starship is big.
I had this plan to convert Atlas bomb shelters to planetary colonies that would work on Luna, Mars. and some near-Earth Asteroids. As long as there’s a water supply, the rest is off the shelf hardware. Luna’s probably close enough to ship water and carbon (anthracite) economically.
When the head of NASA’s planetary protection program was on The Space Show, she stated that the requirements will change as things progress. Before crew go, they will have stringent sterilization protocols. When crew go they will change the protocols not requiring sterilization of the crew but limiting them to certain locations. Chris Mckay has an interesting proposal in which one maintains the ability to reverse sterilize the base if native life is found on Mars.
NASA has been proclaiming for decades, that they intend to send crew to Mars.
And have utterly failed to do the preliminary work to do this.
Therefore they have been lying for decades.
Well maybe NASA should do something.
Starships are cheap, buy starship to send crew to Mars moons, and return lots of samples from these moons.
It has been easy to do, and it’s easy to do now.
How about 100 million dollars per ton, and will buy up to 20 tons of samples from these moons.
And SpaceX, gets 60 tons back to Earth, and NASA can pick what 20 tons they want.
And then SpaceX sells 40 tons at $50 million per ton.
…if native life is found on Mars.
Let’s hope it’s not pathogenic.
I’ll have to look at the Mckay proposal. My first thought was a thermonuclear device under the base, ala Andromeda Strain… heh…
It’s got the opposite twist from DNA on earth. We can’t digest Mars bacteria and vice versa.
Really? You can hope. A quick search didn’t turn up anything, but I’m at work and don’t have a lot of time to do an extensive search. But ChatGPT has this to say:
Q: Does microbial life on Mars have a reverse twist to its DNA?
A: As of now, there is no confirmed evidence of microbial life on Mars, let alone details about its DNA or genetic structure. The idea of “reverse twist” DNA is speculative. Here’s some context:
1. **Reverse Twist DNA**: DNA in life on Earth typically has a right-handed double helix structure (B-DNA). The term “reverse twist” could imply a left-handed double helix (Z-DNA). Z-DNA is less common but can occur naturally in specific conditions in Earth’s organisms.
2. **Life on Mars**: If microbial life exists or existed on Mars, its genetic material might differ from Earth-based DNA due to the distinct environmental conditions. However, whether Martian life would have DNA at all, or if it would have a different biochemistry entirely, is still an open question.
3. **Speculation on Different Biochemistries**: If Martian life evolved independently, its biochemistry might be fundamentally different. This could involve different nucleic acids, or even a different molecular basis for life altogether.
Until we have concrete samples and evidence of life on Mars, the idea of “reverse twist” DNA remains speculative fiction or a hypothesis without scientific confirmation. Future missions like Mars Sample Return could help clarify the possibilities of Martian life and its biochemistry.
Heh. Mars Sample Return indeed. You mean when SpaceX brings people home?
It was proven in 1976 with the Labeled Release experiments on the Viking landers. Same guy who built that experiment later developed aspartame.
I assume they will devote at least one Starship to deploying a satellite network at Mars to support their manned and unmanned efforts but what will the payloads be for the other Starships?
There has to be a lot of people who would like a chance to put something on Mars if the price was right.
Exactly this.
I hear people all the time talk about how Tesla is Elon’s R&D proxy for electric vehicles on Mars, electric motors for the grid fins, gimbals, etc., but I rarely hear about how Starlink is a R&D proxy for a lunar communication network or Mars communication network.
Surely Elon has admitted as much publicly at least once or twice?
I’ve been saying that for years, everything he’s been doing has been research for useful things for Martian colonies, and happen to be things that people will buy here to pay to build them.
Oh, you left out mention of The Boring Company for digging out the underground parts of the colonies.
Given the projected payload capacity to Earth orbit of the starship wedded to the super heavy of somewhere in the neighborhood of 330K pounds per flight reusable it would just be a matter of time before someone realized that it would be better to orbit components of a much larger more proper maned interplanetary craft (likely nuclear powered).
Then subsequently assembled in orbit probably eventually a Fleet of them and then use that to ferry Musk’s approximately million people to Mars fantasy. The starship/superheavy likely used primarily in the earth moon system. Of course assuming human fecundity isn’t adversely affected by the Martian environment expect large families to be the norm rather than the exception. So maybe wouldn’t need to actually send that many to Mars to reach the magic number.
I think this is the real future, once Starship has set the stage. Interplanetary liners with 5,000 passengers, using modified Starships as orbital ferries. If you had a big space station orbiting Saturn, you could use Starships to get around the huge moon system. You’d need a rotating station for the crew maintaining the robotic mining equipment on the various moons. Probably ship product back to Earth by solar sail, a variant of the Pipeline Effect.
I think shipping volitiles to Mars from Saturn makes more sense, especially to help the burgeoning Muskvilles.
If there’s a lot of ground water (frozen or otherwise) then importing it won’t be economical. Other volatiles? Time will tell. I wrote an article “Harvesting the Near-Earthers,” published in Ad Astra in 1989 that began to explore these issues. Another important piece of real estate reachable with our current technology is Callisto. Volatiles-rich, with a surface radiation environment a little lower than LEO. Chinese are certainly interested.
For Mars to have settlements, it needs cheap water, it needs mineable water, mined a lot.
The Mars water can be fairly expensive, in the beginning of a settlement, but it has to have a future where Mars water is as cheap [and possibly cheaper] than water on Earth.
So, fairly expensive is about $1 per kg or $1000 per cubic meter- about thousands times the cost of water on Earth- but as said, it needs a near future {a decade or two] of it being much cheaper than that. Which means it has to have many trillions of tons of mineable water on Mars.
But it needs to start mining a million or more tons of water per year at time of a beginning of a settlement, and scale up to billions of tons per year.
And this would solve secondary “problems” in addition to simply being a economic requirement.
Mars can export water. One doesn’t have a problem with toxic stuff on Mars. And gives cheap radiation shielding.
Our moon doesn’t need lunar water to be as cheap as $1 per kg, and it’s unlikely one could “start with” mining a million tons of water per year. There may not even be a site on the Moon which has a million tons of water to mine. With the Moon one start with say few hundred tons of water per year and within decade, be doing thousands of tons per year. Though with Moon you need mineable water which one get up to 10,000 tons per year- or it’s not mineable. Or need a future with lunar and Mars mineable water, or it won’t happen.
Paul Spudis claimed there was sites with more than 1 million tons of mineable lunar water- that is barely mineable. One start mining it, and hope there is more water to be is found and/or branch out to mining other things on the Moon or elsewhere.
But back to Mars, one could assume there is trillions of tons of mineable water on Mars and if assume one have price of water being $1 per kg, one export small amount [100,000 tons per year sold at $100 per kg or $100,000 ton- grossing $10 billion per year] to Venus orbit. And same type infrastructure {mass driver or whatever], could also export food stuff, anywhere in space. Start with water, but Mars food export would become much more important.
Or rest of space has endless amount of water, but growing food on Mars, could be something that become close to monopoly.
“But it needs to start mining a million or more tons of water per year at time of a beginning of a settlement,”
Sorry…but I don’t get why you think an initial settlement of perhaps a few hundred people would need anywhere near that much water per year to start with. It would take many decades to get to Musk’s million plus people on Mars so plenty of time to locate and develop indigenous water resources. Also might as well include Martian moons Phoebes and Deimos as possible available mine-able water as well.
US uses about 600 billion tonnes a water a year.
China uses about 1 trillion and so does India.
People use a lot water, and farming requires a lot of water.
If mine only say 100,000 tons a year, water will costs more.
And if have a lake on Mars, real estate is worth more, than if you lack a lake.
Snow on your real estate is worth more than not having snow on your real estate.
You can live on water on Mars, 10 meter water depth on Earth is 14.7 psi, on Mars lower gravity, is .38 or 5.586 psi of pressure. With scuba or oxygen mask you can swim with swimming shorts [you don’t need spacesuit/pressure suit].
You probably want to grow fish, to eat.
Oh, and snow is not slippery on Mars, you can make roads of snow.
Also, they say there is brine on Mars, brine would quite useful, as you can make solar ponds.
They say there are solar ponds in Antarctica.
Remember they don’t actually “use” the water. It’s still water after you pee it out, and easily filtered. You can dry the poop and get that water too. And of course, the breath and sweat humidity in the air. Recycling (including more than just water) needs to exceed 99% for planetary colonization to work. That reduces the million tons to 10,000 toms.
A problem on Earth is a lack of cheap water.
Cheap water is indoor plumbing.
Free water in a well, one mile away, is not cheap water. It’s a major factor of our global poverty.
I agree, with idea that making dams {with global financing} has a good way to deal with global poverty- and it has worked.
So it seems to me, Martians should have indoor plumbing- or they are going to fail.
And rain doesn’t fall from the sky on Mars, so the focus, should be to find water, and mine it.
And people living on Mars should near places which one can get a lot of water.
And the early “investment” with Mars, should be to make a lot of water.
I assume you’re talking about 3rd world villages in Africa and India? My water comes from a 200 foot well in my back yard. My effluent goes to a septic tank and leach field in my front yard (which is downhill from my backyard and well). That’s the standard for rural Americans living east of the Rockies.
People living on 30-foot sloops crossing wide oceans have water makers that cost a few hundred dollars. Desalinization is a solved problem, and similar technologies will work on Mars permafrost. All you need on a boat is a single solar panel. On Mars probably more than that. There’s really nothing standing in the way of Mars colonization other than money and transport (both of which are political problems). As for indoor plumbing for India and Africa. Well, that too is a wholly political problem.
If there is enough ground water accessible on Mars, then you don’t need to make a lake.
And I am talking early Mars settlement and perhaps after a century of living on Mars, having to live anywhere near a lake, perhaps will be regarded as old fashion type thing.
With the Sahara desert:
“The Great Man-Made River (GMMR) project in Libya makes use of the system, extracting substantial amounts of water from this aquifer, removing an estimated 2.4 km3 of fresh water for consumption and agriculture per year”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_Sandstone_Aquifer_System
2.4 billion tons of water per year would be a lot water in terms what needed for a Mars settlement.
It’s taken from a fairly shallow depth. And they call it fossil water, though the Sahara desert had a lot more rainfall only about 10,000 years ago.
GMMR is an example of bureaucratic engineering arrogance, to whit: “Engineer, solving problems you didn’t know you had in ways you can’t understand/” Parse that sentence and weep!
First, they’re dumping the effluent in the Med instead of returning treat water to the aquifer.
Second, desalinization only cost $250nln if its for a monolithic nuclear-powered plant. How about piping filtered salt water to the houses, and letting homeowners use cheap commercial water makers to feed their tap?
These things are solved problems, unless you’re a bureaucratic engineer.