A space settling enthusiast who thinks that only government can do it.
A lot of flawed assumptions there. The reality is that only wealthy private individuals who want to do it (like Musk and Bezos) will make it happen.
74 thoughts on “Why Private Space Won’t Settle Space”
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“I don’t see…”
Pretty much explains this [admitted socialist] guy.
Liam isn’t a socialist.
He says he is.
He said, “I’m more of a socialist kind of guy.”
His economic thoughts certainly appear socialist. His use of business terms and concepts is sloppy and it doesn’t appear as if he has a good grasp of them or business in general.
He is right to point out the uncertainties but, IMO, the response to those uncertainties isn’t to use a small insular group of government bureaucrats or technocrats to plan and manage space based activities but to embrace the power of large groups in creativity and idea generation.
The ability of government to do anything in space relies on the ability of the private sector to produce technology and tax revenue. A wise government, would unleash the power of its people.
Other commenters are right that this isn’t an either/or question of government or free enterprise but rather to embrace the power of the word both.
He can’t figure out how someone could make money going to Mars. That’s a normal thought for people who haven’t seen whatever market there might be.
We can run down to Home Depot and buy 50 pound bags of dirt. Any kind of dirt you want. On this vast continent, somewhere there was farmer who looked at his ruined crops and said, “Maybe I can make more money selling the dirt in a retail dirt store.”
That’s something a government planner would never think of.
Funny you mention that. Live soil from earth to mix with processed mars regolith will probably be quite valuable personal property of most every newly arriving colonist. Every kilogram will have a transportation surcharge value equivalent to what it would cost to pay for it’s earth to mars transportation. Martians will all arrive on mars wealthy!
To refine the point. Imagine we have a 2000 kilogram payload lander with four crew. That’s 500 kg each. 300 kg for suited crew and a week of consumables (they will barter for long term consumables produced by local residents.) Each has 200 kg of personal trade goods. How much is that worth?
It cost X to put that lander on mars. The transportation surcharge value is therefore X/2000 per kg. Those 200 kg of trade goods are worth X/10. Now give X a reasonable value to get an answer. Martian will all start out wealthy. What they do from there depends on how smart they are.
Ken, would you take martian gemstones in trade for the rare earthsoil?
Ken, would you take martian gemstones in trade for the rare earthsoil?
The point is trade benefits both because each has what the other hasn’t. Rather than paying the freight from earth, here’s a new colonist with stuff I want. How do I pay for it? With the advantage of time. I’ve been on mars producing stuff for two years. Stuff the new colonist can have now instead of taking two years to produce it themselves. Everybody wins.
That earth soil is going to be made into different blends and resold. The market, as it should, will determine ultimate winners.
I agree colonizing Mars has no near term ROI. But that’s not the only revenue stream available to Musk, Bezos, Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, etc.
It annoys me that he seems to lump would be Mars colonizers in the same pot with everything else. I don’t like being conflated with Bob Zubrin.
When it comes down to it, I believe the next frontier will be opened by a private/business partnership. Dennis Wingo documents how such collaborations built U.S. transportation and communications infrastructure in his book Moonrush.
I just wish NASA and other government entities would collaborate more with entities who actually want to open a new frontier. More partnerships with folks like SpaceX and Planetary Resources and less taxpayer dollars to make work programs like SLS.
By paying for Dragon payloads to mars, NASA gets a bargain while SpaceX gets research and development paid for. Everybody wins. A decade of affordable flights (in the budget noise) prepares a site for colonization with bulk supplies provided by the mars environment itself.
While colonists will have to do without some things at first, none are essential and will be available anyway with newly arriving colonists.
Mars may not be easy, but compared to the imagined impossibilities of some, it will be a piece of cake. Return on investment can begin with the first boot mark and continue for the life of the colonist (consider some recording artist make more money after dying than during their entire life.) Not being able to see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. We really do need to just do it to see the result because the crystal ball isn’t working.
The usual top down planning will never be predictive of the actual results. The key is looking backward from an already populated industrial mars.
It will not take many years to build up a very large stock pile of boosters. I would like to see NASA dropping multiple falcon heavy launch payloads on mars with each window. If the reuse cost drops just a tad NASA could afford 4-5 per two year window.
But that’s not the only revenue stream available to Musk, Bezos, Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, etc.
Exactly.
When it comes down to it, I believe the next frontier will be opened by a private/business partnership.
Yup.
An episode of Game of Thrones costs something like 6 million to make and draws a large audience for an hour, and very profitably. For the first mission, at least, there should be quite a lot of money just off the viewership, even before you slap Red Bull logos on everything.
And that’s where the private sector can vastly outperform NASA, which could even maintain viewership on their moon missions because they made sure everything was absolutely professional – and boring.
I believe the next frontier will be opened by a private/business partnership. Dennis Wingo documents how such collaborations built U.S. transportation and communications infrastructure in his book Moonrush.
You misread. Dennis said “public/private partnership,” not “private/business partnership.”
Of course, the partnership he had in mind (the Bush Vision of Space Exploration) turned out quite differently from what he expected. Which illustrates the old adage: “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”
On the flip side Rand, you’re making a lot of assumptions that your “reality” of settlement is going to be the reality.
At least he is an honest socialist.
What he doesn’t consider is that a colony won’t survive if there are no commercial enterprises.
What is unlikely to happen is a single business or billionaire starting a colony. More likely is a group of businesses and people of different levels of wealth starting a colony.
A colony by definition implies government support or sponsorship.
Then call it a “settlement.”
The point is under the currently space law regime there is not going to be any settlement or colonization unless it’s sanctioned by the government.
As long as the government can prevent it.
If government gets in the way launch will happen outside their jurisdiction. They can only delay, not prevent.
Even delay will be difficult if the govt. can’t justify it in the face of a popular movement. Martians will be heroes.
That doesn’t change the ingredients necessary for a colony to be successful. Nor does it require the government to instigate or control the effort. A wise government would enable their citizens to flourish on their own. It’s in the government’s own self interest to do so.
The point is under the currently space law regime there is not going to be any settlement or colonization unless it’s sanctioned by the government.
There are over 100 governments officially recognized by the UN. Which government is “the government” that you are referring to?
So? A colony will not survive if the people living there have no jobs. No jobs, no tax revenue. No tax revenue no government, no services.
An outpost of government workers supplied from Earth, isn’t a colony.
No tax revenue no government, no services.
Let’s stretch our minds a little. No govt (other than local and informal.) No taxes because nobody has the right or power to levy such. Does this mean no services?
Of course not. It just means you pay your neighbors for services they provide you and it gives you the entrepreneurial opportunity to provide your neighbors with your services.
Free your mind!
What if the residents all voted and agreed on a self imposed tax to pay for communal infrastructure?
What Vladislaw said but just because a service is paid with taxes doesn’t mean the service provider has to be a government organization. Some things will be a lot like how they are on Earth.
What if the residents all voted and agreed on a self imposed tax to pay for communal infrastructure?
Fine, that’s local government which is unavoidable. What is avoidable is letting big govt. get it’s tentacles in.
Better still, would be no tax at all; just pay a provider for services.
Citizen are not subjects or serfs unless they believe they are (and most universally do.) The OST has an amazingly valuable term… no sovereign claims. This is an opportunity easily lost because people are unwilling to even make a token fight for it.
The colonists simply have to make a pact among themselves to only have local governance. Base it on contract law and absolute property rights. Enforcement is by its members. They don’t need no stinkin’ outside government!!!
More likely is a group of businesses and people of different levels of wealth starting a colony.
Not just more likely. It’s an absolute certainty.
Yep, and there will be rainbows and unicorns, etc..
I find your comment difficult to parse. Are you saying business will not participate in business?
What he doesn’t consider is that a colony won’t survive if there are no commercial enterprises.
The same came be said of most space settlement proponents. Even Elon ignores the question of what the one-million Mars colonists are going to be doing for a living (beyond saying that NASA would have a significant presence, but NASA clearly cannot account for more than a small fraction of one-million people.)
Large-scale settlement will not occur until there is a *need* for large numbers of people. Historically, that need has been created either by industry or by the military. Cities don’t just pop up because an agency such as NASA decides there should be a city there.
Large-scale settlement will not occur until there is a *need* for large numbers of people.
The need is products and service providers (many hands make light work.) Mars will be an entrepreneurs paradise. Finding a niche on earth is difficult. On mars, the biggest problem will be settling on just one. Early on they won’t, but later there will be more specialization. Early martians will all produce their own life support consumables. Later they will have companies that specialize and deliver. Or they’ll live in communities where it’s taken care of as a background task. Think of a huge central mall of businesses with apartments scattered around the perimeter.
What products? What services? Again, you haven’t identified any except for NASA R&D — and that’s not sufficient for the number of colonists Elon envisions.
You want to settle Mars because you’re fixated on Mars. But until you know what the industry will be, you don’t know if the best place for the settlement is Mars or Venus or Ceres or Free Space or…
Deciding on the destination first before you know why you’re going is putting the cart before the horse.
Yes, I know this will go completely over your head, once again, and you’re just respond with the usual, “Because Elon!”
On mars, the biggest problem will be settling on just one.
Laugh. Settle on just one? I’m still waiting for you to name just one. What industry or combination of industries makes Mars more desirable than any other possible location in the solar system?
The guy (is it Liam?) misses a few things:
1. He uses the government cost numbers that we’ve seem in the past, which are unlikely to be a good indication of private space costs.
2. He overlooks that, while there needs to be a return to investors on Earth, that return could be in the form of the value in the settlements themselves (starting to sound like Ken here) an example would be if an Englishman invested in New York in the early days of North American settlement, but for that return to have value New York has to grow and produce something that’ll earn it hard currency.
3. If the wealthy migrate and invest in these new worlds they the wealth transfer is effectively an earner of hard currency.
4. Governments aren’t reliable long term investors unless there’s a long term political return, no return and – as with Apollo, the investment ends (something Spudis hasn’t worked out either).
(starting to sound like Ken here)
I’ve observed it usually takes a decade or two to catch up, so you’re actually ahead of the curve.
1. He uses the government cost numbers that we’ve seem in the past, which are unlikely to be a good indication of private space costs.
Yes, this is one of the biggest flaws in his analysis. Like when Sagan said it would be impossible to depopulate the earth to space colonies by using Space Shuttle costs.
Even if it did take $500b the correct way to look at it isn’t in terms of net worth of a company or individual because they won’t be spending that net worth but rather some portion of it incrementally to generate money to cover costs and make a profit.
The question is if Elon Musk has $10b, will he be able to invest a portion of it to generate enough revenue to cover his costs, invest in R&D, and make a profit, with his ultimate goal being Mars.
Could it ultimately take $500b in revenues before Musk goes to Mars? Maybe, it looks like much less right now, but Musk didn’t have to save up $500b to do it and he won’t have had to save up whatever the total amount of money SpaceX ends up spending to get to Mars before going to Mars.
Liam gets it backwards when he says companies ultimate goal can’t be Mars or asteroid mining because they engage in other activities along the way. The intermediate activities are what enables reaching the ultimate goal.
The question is which is the most credible “reality” of settlement; of which the null answer is simple *none*.
That said, a sampling of rebuttals to this:
1. VL5 spends a lot of time considering the problem from the perspective of one or a handful of enterprises. For example, it makes no sense to talk about mining operations in space building O’Neill cities when we don’t talk even talk about mining operations on Earth building residential developments.
2. VL5 skimps over the major limiting factor–public or private–in space settlement in the first place: emigration. If you’re going to encourage mass exodus of meat and all the accoutrements needed to keep it alive and thriving off Earth, you’ll need something really compelling to get them going in the first place AND a means of driving the per kilogram cost down to something within spitting distance of a transatlantic flight. But *if* we do see the promised collapses in launch costs, space-side analogues to redevelopment activity (say, for freefall industrial and research parks) makes sense. And if automation isn’t sufficient to drop the need for meat by an order of magnitude or so, that can encourage at least thousands of business-related migrations into space. Some may wish to bring along families if it’s safe, which in turn pumps demand for residential redevelopment of space. And incrementally, slowly, and surely–as with a real, Earth-side municipality–that’s how you get to O’Neill cylinders (or at least some comfortably hollowed out asteroids). The extractors that went before now have an additional market to play with; trading waste rock and hollowed out husks with freefall developments throughout the solar system.
3. So long as man doesn’t seriously attempt *private* exploitation and settlement of space, the *exploration* VL5’s holds so dear is at permanent risk of being cut as the public grows weary of holding the least efficient, most expensive science fairs NASA and the like can dream up. We need lots more cheap exploration, supported by an economically sustainable model of space development, and less hundred million dollar jury-rigged one-shots hoisted on hundred million dollar candle sticks.
I believe there are historic examples of company towns in support of mines. But that only works if the product is valuable enough to pay for transport back to existing markets. So you need a product that is extremely valuable, cheap to transport, or attractive without transport.
Indeed there are, but there’s also a whole spectrum of residential growth in and around some central enterprise (or a bunch, or none).
There is an extremely valuable product/service market already that, if supported independently from freefall, is nominally free (at least from Earth’s perspective)–Earth orbiting satellites.
Location is important. The Celts built their settlements based on their ideological preferences while other cultures built their settlements by resource extraction points, sources of water, or trade routes.
Sometimes, I get the feeling NASA would select a place for a colony based on ideology rather than a site suitable for potential economic activity.
This is actually an area where I tend to disagree with the strong partisans of both sides of the debate. It is hard for me to find a historical model for settlement of areas requiring significant resources that doesn’t involve roles for both the government and the private sector. I therefore find arguments about whether the private sector can “do it alone” or whether government can “just do it” rather miss the point.
Saying “government has an important role” does not imply that government needs to ensure space is settled only by civil servants, nor that government needs to build the ships or even plan the missions. For example, government grants of monopoly rights to exploring companies played a huge role in the settlement of North America. Government can do many things that make it profitable for private companies to open new economic frontiers — just as they can do many things that make that less likely.
But yes, I also have my doubts that private sector entities will settle space absent any government action — but the question is counterfactual. I also have little doubt that while SpaceX going to Mars is not a moneymaker in itself — viewed as a loss leader to secure future government funding, it might well be a great investment.
We needn’t reach back so far in history to find analogues to pioneering space today. Every year the public and private sectors interact in discovering and development natural resources, real estate, and enterprise. While it’s useful to recall Lewis and Clark and the Homestead Act in a single breath, we’d probably probe more possibilities by analogizing to modern day prospecting and extraction, business park and residential development projects, etc.
Rand,
I sent Jeff Foust’s Space Review an article about this very subject a week ago, but haven’t heard back from him yet. If he takes the piece, I’ll send you a link and perhaps you’ll consider it worthy of comment. If he doesn’t, I’ll send it to you anyway as I’m immodest enough to think it’s a good piece.
Good job on that space review article Dick. I tried posting some nits, but it keeps timing out.
Okay, Jeff took my piece. It’s up over at Space Review. This post and its associated comments has already fallen off your home page so perhaps no one will find the link here, but I put it here anyway for completeness.
Here seems to be one way that *some* governments will help establish commercial space companies, ..by investing in them!
https://deepspaceindustries.com/prospector-x-an-international-mission-to-test-technologies-for-asteroid-mining/
Hat tip to Bob Zimmerman, at “Behind the Black”
http://behindtheblack.com/
I am curious how many more of these companies will be drawn out of the woodwork by the public announcement of this deal. Certainly this has a better chance of long-term benefit to Luxembourg and its government’s revenues than will any money sent to the builders of Ariane 6! I imagine that not flying Ariane will be sniffed at by some, but Luxembourg has more important things to worry about than that.
SpaceX just made another successful satellite launch and droneship landing, this one much more challenging that the one in April. Apparently they used a three-engine landing burn.
It is hard for me to find a historical model for settlement of areas requiring significant resources that doesn’t involve roles for both the government and the private sector.
There’s a reason for that. It has been so ingrained in our thinking that government has the power to tax and they aren’t going to miss the opportunity. Govt. involvement comes at a price. It both helps and harms. Especially for big ticket items it is just assumed that govt. is required… but that is a false assumption.
Governments assume power because they have power but it is not absolute and BEO can be beyond their jurisdiction. People are not chattel unless they make themselves such (and most have.)
If they can finance it themselves they may not want the baggage that comes with govt. involvement. Space and the rocks in it are countless… why assume any govt. has the right to say who owns any of it? Historically ownership of mines for example, were worked out locally (yeah, with some claim jumping) but jumping claims in space will be much less frequent.
The OST specifically bans sovereign claims. The state shtuppers would have us believe that no citizen can therefore make any claims. This is ridiculous and against humanities interests. Ownership is freedom. We are not property of the state unless we believe we are. This is what loses the universe.
It’s 2016. Can we get past the L5 delusion?
I have no problems with commercial satellite delivery to LEO to pay the bills and re-usable rockets to expand that market and make it more profitable.
If Musk wants to try a Mars settlement, fine. I don’t expect that to be a “commercial success”. Nor would it have to be to have people living there, if SpaceX can subsidize it. If it can’t, and/or ISRU fails, people will be coming back to Earth or expiring there in their new home. Their choice. Just as it was for Europeans settling in North America after 1492…
I just don’t get that romantic about space I guess. It’s just a job. 5 days a week. With pretty decent views and some moments of high G that make one want to say, why the hell did I choose *this* profession?
Put away the rainbows, unicorns, socialist utopias and zero-g tennis. For much of the 21st Century think pressurized cans….
The above should have said LEO & GEO…
For much of the 21st Century think pressurized cans….
This lack of imagination is a huge problem. Why after landing on mars would the people permanently live in tuna cans?
The land is free (as never before, no sovereigns) and abundant. All the parts for an regolith moving tractor can put in a Dragon lander and assembled on mars in a single day. In a week (or month) they could dig a trench the size of a mall or mansion. Then they could do it again and again, connecting these radiation protected habitats with tunnels. Space in huge volumes to live in. The only way they will know they are not in a mall back on earth is that their steps will be lighter. This isn’t something for the far future. This is something they can accomplish the first year after landing. Why would they not?
Ken, …far easier to put the first settlements in the very large lava tube caves already found on both the Moon and Mars. Leave the bulldozers at home, and use lightwieght inflatables inside the lava tubes until you have used the iron powder you can make (carbonyl refining) to seal the tubes. They are already seen as hundreds of meters across.
Tom Billings
–May 6, 2016 at 10:50 AM
Ken, …far easier to put the first settlements in the very large lava tube caves already found on both the Moon and Mars. Leave the bulldozers at home, and use lightwieght inflatables inside the lava tubes until you have used the iron powder you can make (carbonyl refining) to seal the tubes. They are already seen as hundreds of meters across.–
But what is “found” [or detected as a possible a lava tube]?
If we have found lava tubes on Mars and/or the Moon, which lava tube is the best one?
If there is a best one, how does it compared to a lava tube which isn’t as good, but at location that might more desirable despite it not being the best one.
This same issue as we have found water on lunar poles [or poles of Mercury- supposedly more water]. Except one could say, we have explore for water on the Moon more than lava tubes.
Say you had a choice, explore the Moon to find some lava tubes Or explore the Moon to find some place which minable lunar water.
Which would be better, and which would cost more to explore. And when are you finished this exploration- what are you looking for?
Now, for lava tube, not sure I would want the largest diameter tunnel.
A larger diameter which is half or mostly filled, might be ok.
But I don’t know, say something with 10 foot high ceiling.
Next how do you get into it. Is there a hole in the top of tunnel? Say caused by a small asteroid impact?
How similar are lunar or Mars lava tubes as compared to Earth lava tube?
Is there any Earth lava tubes which one could be pressurized as demo of how it could be done?
Anyways if you wanted to use lava tubes on the Moon or Mars, it seems one need to explore the Moon or Mars to find them, and explore them enough so one could make plans to use them.
It’s not either/or. Not having tractors would be a huge mistake. Yes, caves have advantages but trenches can be dug just about anywhere (and you need the dirt anyway.)
That’s the mars advantage in a nutshell. Independent martians can each choose to go their own directions.
The one thing that every colony needs is enough exports to balance the things they need to import to survive. The colony doesn’t necessarily need to make a profit, but it can’t run at much of a loss–at least not for very long.
Let’s go through the things that have been identified as potential extraterrestrial exports:
1) Energy. SSPS has a business case. That business case relies heavily on lunar ISRU, which in turn relies on a business case for setting up manufacturing operations on the Moon. If the sole reason for setting up those operations is to construct SSPSes, then the SSPS power is going to be awfully expensive–and have no business case.
2) Rare commodities. If you can mine asteroids for minerals that aren’t easily extractable on Earth, then maybe there’s a business case. But you need to be able to extract minerals that are in incredibly high demand (and remain so after you glut the market), at extremely high scale, to make it a viable business.
3) Microgravity-enabled manufactured goods. This one’s a wild card. It only takes one high-demand product that requires conditions that only exist in space to create a manufacturing boom, but that product has yet to be identified.
4) Volatiles. This is a slam-dunk for enabling colonization of space, but it requires a space colony before it’s important. Nobody’s going to be exporting hydrogen and oxygen to Earth, so there has to be a reason to develop a “domestic” trade in volatiles before it can contribute to the economy of a colony.
5) Information. If there’s a hugely valuable entertainment stream coming out of a space colony, or a huge number of patentable discoveries, then that might make for a viable colony. But both of those seem… far-fetched.
Two things to notice about all of these: The first is that there are lots of chicken-and-egg problems. Some of them make sense in a steady state, but getting from startup to that steady state is problematic.
The second is that only #5 makes any sense at all for Mars. The bottom of a gravity well, in a hostile, hydrogen-poor environment, with just enough atmosphere to mess up any sort of vacuum-dependent industry, and horrible logistics to and from Earth, seems like the absolute worst place to put an extraterrestrial colony that I can imagine.
I would love to see the “oil platform” model show up for cis-lunar and asteroid operations, because that enables a viable business case for lunar ISRU, which enables a viable business case for volatiles extraction, which ultimately makes it cheaper to have a permanent colony than it is to shuttle workers to and from Earth. But none of this works for Mars. So, unless you can convince Hollywood and a couple of R&D labs to relocate to Mars just for the fun of it, it ain’t gonna happen.
Exports are nice but what about products and services that would service a Martian economy? This is just as, if not more, important than exports. It could be that things we consider mundane in an Earth economy are very profitable from a Martian perspective. Lightbulbs for example, are going to be in huge demand and hard to ship from Earth.
Early on I expect LED lighting and semiconductor devices to be major imports. High value/mass, and a lot of equipment needed to make them. Also very long operational life possible.
I would expect that, in a mature Martian economy, you’d have a huge amount of domestic (internal) trade, and then some interplanetary import/export, just like any other country. But getting to a mature economy is the problem.
Mars shares a unique characteristic with all other extraterrestrial colonies: they’re currently uninhabitable. Not just tough environments, but actually, completely inimical to any human life unsustained by expensive technology. However, Mars also has one unique property: of all the places we’ve considered colonizing, it has by far the highest logistical cost, and the fewest advantages in terms of unique extraterrestrial characteristics.
When North America was colonized by Europeans, some of them were stupid and died. Some of them were ignorant and died, or failed to learn the right things quickly enough–and died. In a couple of cases, this resulted in the complete annihilation of colonies. But, by and large, all that was required to survive in the Americas was a little agricultural technology transfer and a lot of hard work. That there were all kinds of trade goods that could be shipped back to Europe also helped enormously, but there have been a lot tougher gigs in human history than “American colonist”.
Mars is 100% fatal without continuous infusions of technology that will be well, well beyond the ability of the initial colonists to produce domestically. It could easily be generations before that situation changes. They are going to be utterly dependent on imports. Somebody needs to pay for those imports. They’re not going to be able to create the needed money from internal trade for a long, long time.
They’re going to need an export good. It might not have to completely defray the cost of early colonization, but it needs to come close. If not, Mars will remain uninhabitable–and uninhabited.
“Exports are nice but what about products and services that would service a Martian economy?”
It seems having electrical power whenever you want it.
Having a source of water whenever you want it.
LOX. Fuel. Food.
Earth entertainment and internet. Local news and weather.
I don’t think you will need a fire dept, but emergency rescue and
medical services.
Transportation- small aircraft, doing function like bush pilots- though
probably don’t need a pilot. So planes like the U-2. Balloon to haul freight [would be slow- and again, pilot-less].
All kinds of manufacturing- small scale and including 3D printing, so:
Rope, cable, clothes, paper, plastics, wood products, glass, metal, etc.
Drilling rigs, tunneling equipment, and blasting services.
Planetary governmental function of reducing dust storms.
Also navigational functions- GPS and other.
Mars tourism including things like skiing
Spaceports. Including types assist boost as part of spaceport.
And stuff like cannon delivered orbital or suborbital payloads.
Now, exports would include places other than Earth surface. Such as High Earth orbit, the Moon, and elsewhere.
I think a large part of Mars economy will related to exploiting asteroid resource. Asteroids could be impacted on Mars surface.
One also capture asteroids in Mars orbit and one can be supply point, for asteroid mining which isn’t moving asteroids to Mars.
TheRadicalModerate, your analysis fails to consider that A way to do something may not be THE way to do it.
Imagine another copy of earth around another star and we only had the tech. to send a few people there (with a sperm bank for biological diversity.)
It’s too far for any trade, but it’s a copy of earth (just minus people.). Nobody could claim it’s not viable.
Think of mars the same way. It is in many ways a copy of earth. It has an abundant geological diversity not missing a single key element for a thriving human community (just add people.)
The challenge is getting there, not so much living there.
It’s cold. Add heat.
It’s toxic. So is earth if you don’t manage it. Try hitting the beach without enough sunscreen.
It’s a beautiful planet as my screen saver shows and the challenges of living there will fade into the background as more people get there. Getting there is really the only hard part.
There will be trade with mars, but it may be better to imagine there not being any and going anyway. We do it for the betterment of humanity.
“Imagine another copy of earth around another star and we only had the tech. to send a few people there (with a sperm bank for biological diversity.)
It’s too far for any trade, but it’s a copy of earth (just minus people.). Nobody could claim it’s not viable.
Think of mars the same way. It is in many ways a copy of earth. It has an abundant geological diversity not missing a single key element for a thriving human community (just add people.)”
I think of Mars as far more viable than a Earth around another star.
Or a Mars around another star is more viable than a Earth around another star.
Some may think the sub-orbital travel like air travel is somewhat problematic/difficult on Earth, But it less problematic to have sub-orbital
travel on Mars. One problem with Mars is the suborbital travel would be at slower velocity than at Earth- so it take longer to go 1/2 way around the world on Mars as compared to go 1/2 around Earth which has much larger circumference. Or if you going a distance of 1000 miles, to takes a longer period of time on Mars vs the 1000 mile sub-orbital hop on Earth.
Or travel on Mars would much faster than present travel on Earth- ie, on Mars one could routinely go super sonic, but Earth’s larger gravity allows a much higher highest speed which can be possible.
An advantage of the Moon is one has a vacuum, but an advantage of Mars is one can make a vacuum easier- one could make a large volume space which has a vacuum similar to the Moon. Or one use the Mars “natural” vacuum in similar way we make vacuums on Earth for various uses.
On Mars is you have enough water, one can make a high pressure environment- make 1 atm or 5 atm pressure. And cooler water is fairly stable in the Mars natural environment unlike the Moon.
Mars a better place than Earth to harvest solar energy. If you want solar power harvested at the planetary surface- Mars is better than Earth. Though the Moon is a lot better than Mars if you want to harvest solar energy at the surface.
So with Moon one has encircle it’s polar region and get constant solar energy. With Mars one needs a much larger circle at it’s poles, due Mars being bigger, and due to Mars having axis tilt of 25 degrees. Though if you only want solar energy in the summer, one can get constant solar power at it’s poles.
Or idea of harvesting solar energy on Earth’s surface is simply, stupid.
Due to Earth’s thick atmosphere. And also it’s clouds. Plus, as compared to the Moon, Earth’s violent weather- tornadoes, floods, lightning, etc.
So one could argue about whether you want the Moon or Mars around this distant star, but the advantage of Mars is, it has a lot of CO2. So Mars is a good place to farm. Plus Mars has a lot more water than the Moon has. So with lots of water one can make large living area with 1 atm of pressure and use lower pressure environment to grow crops.
Making artificial gravity is slightly easier on the Moon as compared to Mars, but either are easier than doing it on Earth. Whether one wants micro gravity or very high artificial gravity.
Now if you coming into the Sol system, where would you go?
It seems one has two choices, Mercury or Mars. One also choose Venus or Earth’s Moon. Venus seems to me the safest place if worried about “space alien invasion”, though Mars also has it’s advantages in this regard. Generally Venus is good place to hide and it’s fortress vs bombardment and nuclear attack. The high gravity makes hard to land in it’s sky and leave it’s sky, but it has the highest speed limit like Earth.
Mercury has advantage of shortest hohmann transfers to rest of the solar system- fastest hohmann transfer to Mars for example- as compared to from any other planet.
And Earth is least defensible planet in the solar system- and generally, a very dangerous place. Impossible to defend and difficult to live in and one of the worse places in terms of using hohmann transfers.
You seem to be living in the same bubble as the L5 O’Neill Colony crowd. You are right we don’t have much in common.
Again I see no reason a Mars settlement has to be a commercial success to be viable. It can either exist on subsidy or exist through ISRU. It is too distant to trade with, as compared to say the moon.
It is a harsh and unforgiving environment. Trivial to freeze to death at night and at most latitudes even during the day. (btw ever wonder why the reality TV series “Survivor” is never, ever staged in the Arctic?) The atmosphere is unbreathable and the soil (as recently discovered) is toxic. It is not Earth like in the slightest. To terraform, even if we knew how, would take even under the most optimistic wild-eyed scenarios, centuries…
Oh did I mention the fact that as far as we know today, the gravity on Mars (or Moon) could lead to permanent blindness, brittle bone syndrome, a host of low gravity aliments & fatalities we can’t even imagine because we haven’t lived it? There is a significant non-zero chance that once on Mars for a couple of years, return to Earth is an automatic death sentence because our organs cannot compensate fast enough to the higher Earth gravity. I hope I’m wrong. There is no data to prove me wrong. But from the 1 year studies on the ISS it ain’t lookin’ too good and btw nature rarely follows a nice linear function on anything biological. Oh and about life on Mars? How about that life? How about a viral infection that wipes out a settlement with an untreatable disease that makes Ebola look like a walk in the park?
I don’t underestimate the effort required to set up a mfg. base on Mars sufficient to provide the comfortable living conditions sub-surface as described by Ken. I think that estimate is decades away, not months. Barring a solution to the interplanetary transport issue that could drastically reduce transit times. If Musk can set up a supply & transit chain from Earth that makes regular visits, then maybe that time goes down to a decade. Assuming he can do that and not bankrupt SpaceX in the process.
Mars will be settled largely by people who want to live and die on Mars. Martians as such, could give a hoot about Earth, Earth commerce, striking it rich, or (in the 21st Century) as a viable alternative to living on Earth. The goal will be to survive then thrive. Think life in Alaska above the Arctic Circle x1,000,000 harder. It will not be the Mall Of America…. Nor will it be a place for the SJW or the socially maladapted. Cause too much trouble or commit a serious crime and you’ll find yourself locked outside the hab with a defective air-bottle and a non-working radio. I’m sure, just like our friends from Oz, they’ll come up with a colorful colloquialism for that maneuver.
Now maybe in the 22nd Century….
It is a harsh and unforgiving environment.
Most of the earth will kill you from exposure without having to even go to extreme locations. We terraform mars the same way we do the earth, on habitat at a time. We know how to do this in an open system like mars (which is why closed system comparisons are wrong.)
The effort will be incremental and much faster than you imagine. The problem is looking at it from a researcher ‘sittin’ on there asses’ point of view. Real people work much faster when they are not part of a top down plan, but instead are working to improve what they own.
People on earth regularly live in harsh and unforgiving lands… have you ever been to the Dakotas in winter? People unfamiliar would die there in a day, but the locals think nothing of it (watch them build a bonfire under their cars engine so it’s warm enough to start for example.)
Sounds nifty–for a science fiction saga set about 150 years from now. For now, it’s too expensive.
If there actually were an Earth 2, where you could arrive with a bag of seeds, some farm and construction equipment, and a warm coat, that would actually meet my criterion, in that, even if you had little to export, you also needed little to import to survive. But that’s not Mars. You have to import almost everything, with no mistakes that cause everybody to die, just to stay alive long enough to develop the technology to be even partially self-sustaining.
Somebody has to pay for that. Somebody has to pay a lot for that–at least hundreds of billions. That’s not going to be Musk, and it’s certainly not going to be SpaceX–the stockholders simply won’t allow it.
This is not to say that SpaceX won’t put humans on Mars, and maybe even maintain a permanent outpost there, with some of the residents being more-or-less permanent. But that’s not a colony; that’s rental space for a science experiment, or maybe an awesome reality TV show that gets good ratings for five years.
I’m prepared to believe that there’s another way to do this, but it’s going to obey the laws of economics if it exists. What you’re describing, doesn’t.
NB: All of these problems apply to any space colony, with a few notable exceptions: A space colony (or an asteroid colony) doesn’t live at the bottom of a hefty gravity well, doesn’t have an atmosphere that’s simultaneously too thick and too thin to be useful, and doesn’t have a two-and-a-half-year round-trip logistical tail and >30,000 m/s delta-v attached to it.
But that’s not Mars. You have to import almost everything, with no mistakes that cause everybody to die, just to stay alive long enough to develop the technology to be even partially self-sustaining.
But it is. You do not have to import everything… that’s what makes mars viable and why the analogy holds.
Yes, they need a good start. That’s why they need about ten years of presupply (oversupply actually, let our worse fears lose and supply for that.) It doesn’t have to cost that much. $150m for 2,000 kg on Dragons is nor hundreds of billions. Each of the first colonists will need about 10 tons of presupply (I recommend a dozen first colonists.) After two years they will provide enough so the following colonist will need almost nothing other than personal property.
The essentials of life support we’ve been practicing for half a century (actually 200 years of simple chemistry.) This doesn’t require equipment from earth that breaks or require import of parts. It’s a simple design issue (if we bother.)
Everything else will happen in time. The greater needs will be apparent first and taken care of first. This just creates income (really good income) for new colonists.
it’s going to obey the laws of economics if it exists. What you’re describing, doesn’t
We agree that economics is inviolate. What am I describing?
We land presupply. How is that paid for? ISRU research at bargain pricing (in NASA budget noise) plus a few landers that can’t be justified that way (because we need equipment that isn’t directly for ISRU…, but then is indirectly so perhaps it does get paid for the same way.)
How do we now pay for colonists? How much per? The first dozen will cost about $450m in 3 Dragon landers (inflatables provide low mass volume on trip to mars orbit then discarded.) Elon alone can pay for this. Two years later the cost drops to $5m per. (MCT replaces Dragons.) Dragons are still available for emergency backup.
$5m is low enough that a simple lottery would do it, but there are many other ways. It’s a one time cost.
17% of primetime TV are reality shows. Real Housewives were making $30,000 an episode. However, the NYC housewives are negotiating six-figure salaries for their new season. It would not take long for the first wave of colonists to pay back their transportation costs at that rate, but it won’t just be reality TV stars.
Companies will finance employee transportation to provide services to existing colonists. $100,000 per year jobs are not unreasonable, $30,000 per year being payback with interest (or just assume $70k jobs, it’s the same thing.)
If Elon somehow manages $500k per it just gets easier.
Screwed up. $30k per month would be needed to amortize $5m… let me get back to ya. The reality star thing would still work for a few dozen colonists.
“We agree that economics is inviolate. What am I describing?
We land presupply. How is that paid for? ISRU research at bargain pricing (in NASA budget noise) …”
An aspect of economics is competition. Why not do it on the Moon.
If done on the Moon, why NASA pay significantly less.
If going to Mars is cheap, than going to the Moon will be cheaper [and faster].
Though if it’s done at same time as NASA is exploring the Moon and with future plans of exploring Mars- perhaps NASA would think it should not pay for commercial mining related stuff. And whatever being done on Mars is connected to stuff it would have to do at some point in future.
But anyhow, would every one agree that landing anything, including a crew, on the Moon should be less expensive than doing the same thing on Mars?
Though I would say that landing on one of the Mars moon’s could be as cheap.
I am against idea of NASA doing stunts, but I see no problem with the private sector doing stunts and that such private sector stunts can be helpful to NASA in terms of plans to explore the Moon and Mars.
So in terms of stunts, I think landing on polar region of the Moon,
could be profitable.
Stunts like Apollo can have some usefulness in terms of scientific
knowledge- including sample returns.
Re: “A space settling enthusiast who thinks that only government can do it.”
This guy appears silly.
Here is an unchangeable rule, only government can not settle space.
Even if government actually wanted to settle space, it is unable to do it.
It’s impossible.
So socialism can not settle space- even if the socialism wanted to.
Now, the major problem is that socialism would not want to settle space, but if one could somehow get around this barrier, socialism will still never be able to settle space.
Socialism did not get the first man on the Moon.
One can say it was a socialistic system but it was within one of freest nations on Earth.
NASA is socialist system, but it was the America private sector which enabled NASA to put a man on the Moon.
The American private sector allowed NASA to get to the Moon is less than 10 years.
And the NASA of today which could be described as becoming more socialistic over the decades, has been unable to return to the Moon in the last 40 years.
And many NASA experts today don’t even think they can get back to the Moon within a period of 10 years- which is example of how foolish socialism can get- not even a clue of the past.
Anyhow, Socialism will not and can not settle space.
But socialism could explore space- if there was a desire or need to do this.
Now our socialism is not really exploring space.
Rather our socialism is looking for wonders in space- it’s a form of entertainment.
We live in world filled with pseudo science- lots of people pretending they are actual scientists. Which can hope some day they might regarded a famous scientist. Such creatures have curiosity
and NASA rewards them.
And this is the stuff that socialism creates- idiots.
Anyways, it does not appear impossible to me that NASA could explore space, as theoretical concept, but in terms of what is actually done, there is much flailing around which unrelated to space exploration.
NASA did manage to send a spacecraft to orbit the Moon- after an US military related effort discovered what could have been water at lunar poles.
The flailing of the socialism of the US Military did NASA’s job.
Which then encouraged some effort by NASA to then do it’s job to some extent.
A small fraction of it’s totality of effort of NASA was devoted in some degree of space exploration for a period of time.
One thing NASA wants [but it is somewhat embarrass about it] is finding life on Mars.
That’s not exploration.
This is tickling one’s self- maybe it’s scientific, but it’s not exploration.
Exploration is about finding places for settlements- or industry [if one can have this without settlements]. One looking for something which has the potential of future exploitation.
Of course all pseudo science nuttier have put the word, exploitation, into the category of all which is Evil.
NASA has some history of people trying to find something of value in the space environment. Though one could say it’s been a sickness or perversion in the body politics of the socialism.
So, for example we got such idea as mining He3 on the Moon.
It is possible that we could mine He3 on the Moon, but it’s also sort of ass backward.
Though it’s the sort of candle flame of idea that could fester in the swamp of socialism.
And of course it’s a save the world type thing.
It’s a plan by evil people to save the world- that’s is the simplest metaphor, I can manage.
Or it’s the same kind of thinking involved with the idea that NASA needs to build a big rocket which is called SLS.
Mostly a job program idea.
Senator knew it was job program- that is why it was supported.
[And Senators being some of most clueless people in the world who also regard themselves as the only geniuses which everyone would be dead without their unique guiding wisdom. Senators are involved in long and systematic program of making the human, stupid- one can’t blame the individuals, much, as they are fabricated and brewed in a self contained vat which has been ongoing for couple centuries.]
But as said, it seems possible that NASA could explore space in order to enable future human settlements in space.
Now, this is not saying this a cheap way to explore space. Rather I would say it’s political compromise in the current political reality.
It would be job program, one say it’s an improved job program which could do something of value.
It is cheap in terms of doing something, rather than doing nothing.
And doing nothing is more damaging than many imagine.
But it involves a path which will increase the NASA bureaucracy and people may become overly fond of NASA.
So this has to involve the promotion of socialism, because if done
successfully it would create something of great value [though at large costs]. Ergo, a compromise with current political reality.
To sell the job program of the lunar exploration program, it should designed to be cheap.
And to be cheap, it has to be done fast and of limited scope.
So, not lunar bases, and not lunar mining.
Mining would worst than merely a base.
So purpose of lunar exploration is to determine if and where there is lunar water deposits which could at some time in future be deemed commercial minable. This is probably harder than people imagine. Humans tend to want to skip the work involved in actual exploration. With pretty pictures seen as far more important.
But will skip all needed details, other than NASA stops exploring the Moon and it’s all done within 10 years from time of starting the lunar program.
Then one gets to the bigger job program, the mars exploration program. This will be hard and take a long time- it should not have an end point in terms of years.
Though having settlers landing on Mars could be clue one as finished the program. So purpose of Mars program is to determine if Mars can be settled and where settlements could be to most viable. And this probably related to where there could be a cheap source of large amount of water. And obviously there might not be such a location or one can’t find it- which is the nature of exploration.
In ideal terms, find water on Mars which is as available as ground water is on Earth.
As exercise one might compare to this is the idea of mining Earth’s polar region for ice burgs. Or currently it seems unlikely and no one is actually doing this kind of mining- though some have considered doing it- there is long history of such speculation.
And I have considered it- and obviously it’s apparently crazy, and so seemly never going to happen. But for me, the purpose of excercisr was to consider it in terms of making the ice burg water as cheap as ground water, of at least “better” than most ground water [able to be competitive at higher price], Or not comparing is to something like desalination of sea water which is established way doing it and it costs more the ground water. The thing about mining polar ice burbs is it hasn’t been done, and mainly requires creating a market for it- and billions of dollar of start up
and/or time. Or high risk and requires smart people doing- or certainly not socialism.
Anyhow there is a lot we don’t know about Mars water- salty or otherwise polluted and etc.
And getting water for purpose of mars base is different issue- or such cheap and abundant water is not needed. One could get water from Mars air, for example.
Though as mentioned in an above post, even cheap and abundant water which can’t used for drinking or even farming- at a low cost, could have purpose which is important for Mars settlers. Or any transparent [even non transparent] liquid could be used to cause
pressure.
Now, something mentioned was idea that private sector can not do space exploration. This is crazy, but such exploration would need to be paid for- it needs to be a service one can buy. And if there buyers,
one can have the private sector explore space, just like they explore Earth. [an example of a secondary result of such activity, is discovered the crater of the impactor which killed off the dinosaurs.].
Do retirement communities make a profit? If not, then why do they exist? If so, then how, given that the residents don’t work?
The answer is that retirees make their wealth at another time and another place where they participate in the markets. Then they use that wealth to pay the developers and those who provide them transport to their retirement community. Services that they consume are also paid for via their wealth.
So there you have it. Interested retirees bring their wealth. Elon makes a profit selling transportation services. Developers make their profit selling to the retirees. Certain lower class retirees sell their labor to those whose net worth is greater. Equipment produce products from local feedstock, etc.
The entire economic ecosystem is fueled from the wealth of retirees. All that is necessary is to get the cost of moving down to what wealthy retirees can afford. This is the way Elon understands the way forward. I think that his is the best guess for how to do it.
Yes, that seems to be the SpaceX financial model – Del Webb on Mars. As soon as someone offers big, 1-G rotating space condos, though, I suspect the Martian market for retiree communities dries up pretty fast.