Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Northstar1989]

9 hours ago, tater said:

Except there is no RoI on going to Mars, so it requires vast sums to be poured down a hole (Mars) that could just as well be spent making LEO travel cheaper from the start. 

You keep repeating that like some sort of religious mantra,  despite having zero support for that assertation- and it's clear by this point you don't understand what "Return on Investment" means.

RoI is literally anything where you soend money (Investment), and make money back later (Return), and specifically refers to the RATE that you get back your initial investment.

ITS has RoI.  It requires an *Investment* to build, and later brings in a *Return* in the form of ticket-sales.  That is, *BY DEFINITION* a Return on Investment, just the same as building a soccer stadium or starting a bus-line.  You don't have to make a physical product to have RoI, services such as transport and entertainment (ITS is a little of both) qualify as well.

 

Further, ITS is a different product than LEO space tourism.  With a different market.  Many people would pay for a ticket to colonize Mars on ITS that wouldn't care for an orbital tourist-ride.  And colonizing Mars is a lot more useful.  Cheap LEO access has ZERO utility if you have nothing to do up there... (of course you can launch a few satellites, build a few stations - but this will never prove half as useful as colonizing Mars)

9 hours ago, tater said:

Skylon guestimates have it barely competitive with F9.  The other stuff... why not just spend billions on that instead of lighting money on fire WRT Mars as some sort of driver?

I can't comment on the specific costs of Skylon- but that was never the point.  The point was and is that once SpaceX establishes a route to Mars they will have opened up the market and demonstrated it can be done.

They will also have created a future demand for interplanetary travel in the form of a Mars colony that corporations can reliably count on as a market when trying to raise capital for their plans for better systems to reach Mars.  Optimized methods to reach LEO and Mars from other companies will undoubtedly follow a SpaceX-initiated colony.

You need to STOP calling Musk's plans "lighting money on fire" and similar such.  These comments are not only disrespectful of others' views on the plans and rude, they also reveal your complete and utter contempt for plans cone up with teams of highly-trained engineers and rocket scientists that are probably far smarter than you..  Deriding legitimate plans in harsh and contemptuous language doesn't make you sound smart, it makes you sound egotistical and conceited.

9 hours ago, tater said:

Reread what I wrote in context. It was meant as a comment about any counter-argument that somehow humans should spend money to "save humanity" in a more effective way. It's their (Musk/Bezos) money, if their "save humanity" notion is Mars, it has no impact on me at all, who I am I to say they should spend it on some other pet project to save humanity---they can spend it the same way Bender would, for all I care.

I'm all for the billionaire space race, but the idea that Mars is economically feasible is pretty comical. Bezos has a better business model, IMO, the tourism market is just a matter of cost when it comes down to it. Like most things, it's just a matter of price. We spend 10s of thousands on a vacation, for example (direct costs for travel someplace like Europe for 4 people, plus opportunity costs (lost income))---but a few hundred grand is out of the question. If a week in orbit was ever on the same order of magnitude as a week on the other side of the Earth... where do I buy my tickets?

Musk has a business model too.  How is sellingbpeople tickets to Mars so fundamentally different from selling them tickets to Low Earth Orbit?  The cost is higher, but so is the ticket price people are willing to pay for the service.

People WILL buy tickets to a new frontier, no matter how dangerous.  I am living proof of that- being descended from many of the first European settler families in North America, including THREE aboard the Mayflower.  Most early settlers died, but more kept coming despite the risks (many early colonies died off entirely- take Roanoake Island for example).  And they came for a ticket-price that was actually much steeper relative to people's assets than the $250-500k Musk will be asking for a ticket to Mars...

Mars is dangerous, but there are no infections diseases, dangerous wildlife, or hostile natives to deal with.  Some colonies will undoubtedly go the way of Roanoake Island's first colony, but more settlers will undoubtedly come nonetheless.

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

You keep repeating that like some sort of religious mantra,  despite having zero support for that assertation- and it's clear by this point you don't understand what "Return on Investment" means.

RoI is literally anything where you soend money (Investment), and make money back later (Return), and specifically refers to the RATE that you get back your initial investment.

ITS has RoI.  It requires an *Investment* to build, and later brings in a *Return* in the form of ticket-sales.  That is, *BY DEFINITION* a Return on Investment, just the same as building a soccer stadium or starting a bus-line.  You don't have to make a physical product to have RoI, services such as transport and entertainment (ITS is a little of both) qualify as well.

If your return is less than your investment, then you have a negative ROI, which is pretty much the same as no ROI. When we say there is no ROI on Mars, what it means is that the investment is orders of magnitude higher than any return you can reasonably expect. Which explains why the private sector isn't interested.

Musk isn't interested in ROI. He's motivated by a philantropic vision, not by economics, but he's an exception to the rule. That is not how capitalism works, and no rationally run business can get away with spending shareholder money just for a vision. This is why we aren't seeing any other corporations jumping on the Mars bandwagon to build Mars habs, Mars mining equipment, Mars buldozers, Mars greenhouses, Mars power plants, and so on.

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

Further, ITS is a different product than LEO space tourism.  With a different market.  Many people would pay for a ticket to colonize Mars on ITS that wouldn't care for an orbital tourist-ride.  And colonizing Mars is a lot more useful.  

In your dreams. Again, you are speculating. There is no marketing data that proves that statement.

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

Cheap LEO access has ZERO utility if you have nothing to do up there... (of course you can launch a few satellites, build a few stations - but this will never prove half as useful as colonizing Mars)

It's the only space-related business that has an actual tangible ROI and an established market.

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

I can't comment on the specific costs of Skylon- but that was never the point.  The point was and is that once SpaceX establishes a route to Mars they will have opened up the market and demonstrated it can be done.

No. They will have opened up a route. The market only exists if somebody makes a business case for going there. If that doesn't happen (and there is zero evidence that it will) then SpaceX ITS is a bridge to nowhere. It's like setting up an A380 airline airline from London Heathrow to Tristan DaCunha island.

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

They will also have created a future demand for interplanetary travel in the form of a Mars colony that corporations can reliably count on as a market when trying to raise capital for their plans for better systems to reach Mars. Optimized methods to reach LEO and Mars from other companies will undoubtedly follow a SpaceX-initiated colony.

Creating a route does not create demand for that route. The Heathrow-DaCunha route would not create much demand to go there (although it's a much more attractive destination than Mars). You probably wouldn't return the investment of building an airport and operating an A380.

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

You need to STOP calling Musk's plans "lighting money on fire" and similar such.  These comments are not only disrespectful of others' views on the plans and rude, they also reveal your complete and utter contempt for plans cone up with teams of highly-trained engineers and rocket scientists that are probably far smarter than you..  Deriding legitimate plans in harsh and contemptuous language doesn't make you sound smart, it makes you sound egotistical and conceited.

Absolutely not. It's not the competency of the SpaceX engineers that is in discussion. They do what they are paid for, and they are obviously driven by wacky requirements. It's the business plan behind it, which Musk himself admits that is lacking (illustrated by his famous slide about stealing underwear).

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

Musk has a business model too.  How is sellingbpeople tickets to Mars so fundamentally different from selling them tickets to Low Earth Orbit?  The cost is higher, but so is the ticket price people are willing to pay for the service.

People WILL buy tickets to a new frontier, no matter how dangerous.  I am living proof of that- being descended from many of the first European settler families in North America, including THREE aboard the Mayflower.  Most early settlers died, but more kept coming despite the risks (many early colonies died off entirely- take Roanoake Island for example).  And they came for a ticket-price that was actually much steeper relative to people's assets than the $250-500k Musk will be asking for a ticket to Mars...

And here we go again with the colonization of America analogies...   *yawn*

Mars is nowhere like the American Frontier. People migrated to America for a safer or more comfortable life to themselves or their families. In no way will Mars ever be safer or more comfortable than anywhere on Earth. 

And for the umpteenth time, prices will not be $200K before many decades. That price only works if there are thousands of people queueing up to board a thousand ITS waiting in orbit, when an actual interplanetary spaceship is cheaper to build and operate than an A320 is today. In other words, after the end of the colonization phase. During the actual colonization, it will be orders of magnitude more expensive. 

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

Mars is dangerous, but there are no infections diseases, dangerous wildlife, or hostile natives to deal with.  Some colonies will undoubtedly go the way of Roanoake Island's first colony, but more settlers will undoubtedly come nonetheless.

Based on marketing data from the 17th century that doesn't apply here.

[kunok]

@Northstar1989 and more people, if you claim that SpaceX is only doing the transport part, even believing the tickets prices (I don't, is pretty ridiculous, cheaper than most aircrafts that are manufactured in series), who will made the mars settlement part? Who will design and produce the habitats? Who will design and produce the machinery? One example, it would be need in almost everything almost-vacuum proof lubricants that are also dust proof, AFAIK there is none of that. And it would be worse if we add to that the requirement that needs to be able to done with mars materials.

There isn't mars proof habitats, nor vacuum proof mining equipment, nor really anything that we need to a mars settlement , and nobody is doing that.

There is no life support system for a mars settlement, and that's probably the biggest problem. The sector with monies here, the military, AFAIK doesn't have closed life support systems in their nuclear submarines, and they would like to. That's and not the ISS, the closest analogue to an habitat in other planet, and that's still far.

The rocket is the easy part. Who will be mars enthusiast billonary that will develop everything else?

 

And, seriously, the American colonization example looks ridiculous outside North America, I understand that is part of your culture, but you should question how realistic it is.

Edited October 30, 2016 by kunok
typos, typos everywhere

[Green Baron]

56 minutes ago, kunok said:

*snip*

The rocket is the easy part. Who will be mars enthusiast billonary that will develop everything else?

And, seriously, the American colonization example looks ridiculous outside North America, I understand that is part of your culture, but you should question how realistic it is.

And even the rockets are grounded right now due to unresolved problems.

In 2,5 million years humans haven't even "colonized" deserts like the Rub al Khali (just for example). Nobody can live there without support from outside, yet it would be far easier than living on Mars, only surface water is lacking there, everything else is just like home. Yet nobody can live there, but on the rare occasions of a few drops of rain there are flowers everywhere, just for a few days, i've seen it (well, at the fringe). So the ability to bear life is "built in", the biosphere had enough time to be potentially able to colonize even these places.

Not so on Mars.

On Mars there is no surface water, no breathable atmosphere, no plant seeds or useful bacteria, only dust, radiation exposure and low gravity. To live there is just a vision and fantasy.

Imagine a place that combines the ground of a desert like Rub al Khali, the temperature of the Southpole and the atmosphere on the top of Mount Everest. Without support your dead, dead, dead (questions ? :-)). And still, all the prerequisites for a living are there in these places, compared to Mars they are paradises.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by Green Baron

[tater]

No need for me to directly quote out every few lines as Nibb has already done it.

There is no reason to go to Mars. Mars is only a destination for humans after the destination is built from the ground up there. The bottom of the Marianas Trench is also not a destination by itself, if you wanted to send thousands of people there, you'd first have to build someplace for them to go. Ditto L5, it's a point in space until you put a place to go there. ITS is, absolutely, "lighting money on fire." Guess what, it's fine, and a bonfire I want to see. I'm glad Musk and Bezos have money to burn on something coincident with my interests. That doesn't delude me into thinking it's somehow a "business model," however.

Apollo was lighting money on fire, too, after all. As far as the person writing the check was concerned---the taxpayer---the RoI was negative. Oh, right, velcro, etc. Velcro didn't pay back the taxpayer, nor did anything else, we were charged for those products by the contractors that invented them, so even the tax revenue those companies generated was, like all businesses, paid by the customers. You might be able to zoom out to some system large enough to claim that tech advances ended up being a positive return, somehow, but the outfit writing the checks (the US Treasury) never got paid back... negative RoI. The same is true of SpaceX here WRT Mars.

There is nothing on Mars of value to Earth that can be delivered to Earth in a cost-effective way. That's not ever going to change I think. Any resources on Mars exist elsewhere, and can be brought here cheaper (moving asteroids (slowly), for example). 

As I also said, tourism is at least an effectively bottomless market, and customers will appear entirely based upon price point. At 20M$ to LEO, you get a handful of customers. At a few hundred thousand, you likely get hundreds of customers per year. At some point, it jumps orders of magnitude, however. I actually find myself surprised every time I defend space tourism, but it does make sense---but the price point needs to be absurdly low, perhaps lower than is possible.

[shynung]

I agree with Nibb31 and tater on this point: Mars doesn't have any value for us to send colonists to, barring something like Earth's population reaching extreme levels. Even if we can send people there, they'll need help from Earth to survive, so they'll follow shortly if Earth was a goner.

Though, the ITS itself isn't entirely worthless either. Here's an excerpt from Atomic Rockets:

Quote

What are the other possible commercial applications of the ITS, besides sending a million optimists to Mars?

Here's what I can see:

0. 1-2 order of magnitude cost reduction in cost/ton of payload to orbit: this is axiomatic. ITS won't be commercially viable for Musk's proposed Mars colonization bid if the per-launch cost of this big-ass fully reusable rocket significantly exceeds that of the big-ass but not fully reusable (the second stage is disposable) Falcon Heavy that flies later this year. So let's posit a cap of $100M on flight costs, or maybe $400M for a disposable shot (which would only really be necessary for a single monolithic payload that can't be broken down into sub-elements massing less than 300 tons—candidates for which, see below). (Here are SpaceX's cost estimates.)

1. Big, dumb, comsats: Currently the mass of a geosynchronous comsat is constrained by the payload of the available boosters, which are tailored to fit the perceived requirements of the comsat market. About half the mass of a comsat in GEO is fuel, used for positioning (satellites in geosynchronous orbit drift, very gradually, away from their parking longitude). Their power output is constrained by the solar panels they can carry and the size of their emitters. So a big GEO comsat today is on the order of 5-8 tons. A current advanced geosynchronous comsat such as Inmarsat-4A F4 has a 12 kW electrical system; this obviously puts a ceiling on its broadcast power; but ITS raises the bar so high that it effectively disappears. The first post-ITS generation of comsats could have power outputs in the megawatt range if necessary. So I'm going to guess that 1-2 decades after ITS flies, we're going to see satellite phones converge with regular cellphones in terms of size, convenience, and bandwidth capacity (although they're going to cost more). Upshot: terrestrial 5G and hypothetical 6G high bandwidth service will look more like municipal-area gigabit wifi, and your phone will cut over to satellite bandwidth if you roam into rural areas (or even suburban areas, by the US definition). But you won't notice anything except a slight increase in latency. It's as if your cell tower just moved into orbit.

2. No more Kessler syndrome nightmares: the launch stack is fully reusable. Anyone not aiming to operate a reusable launch stack by 2030 at this point is a buggy whip manufacturer. So that's one source of debris gone. And another source of the problem is the number of objects in space. A few giant satellites are less likely to shed debris or risk a collision hazard than a large number of small satellites. And we'll have so much spare lift capacity that cleanup becomes a practical possibility, paid for by the insurance underwriting industry: sending up a fleet of cubesats to hunt down, grapple with, and de-orbit 1960s paint chips is cheap compared to the payout if said paint chip holes your orbital Hilton.

3. Space tourism, for realz: the Bigelow BA-2100 spacehab only needs a 70-90 ton LEO launch capacity and has half the volume of the entire ISS. We can conservatively estimate that a space hotel with a ~300 ton mass fabricated using Bigelow's expandable tech and flown on the ITS would have 3-4 times the habitable space of the ISS, so room for 20-40 tourists and staff. (The inflatable hab tech isn't vapourware either: there's one docked to the ISS right now.) A week in space won't be a cheap vacation, but Virgin Galactic think people will pay $25K for 10 minutes in free fall; I reckon $250,000 for a honeymoon in orbit will find some takers among the 1%. (Passengers would travel as a sub-cargo aboard an ITS which would be mostly carrying other types of paying cargo.)

4. Return to the Moon, this time for good: a huge problem with proposals to build a permanent base on the Moon is that the Moon is short on volatiles that you can turn into fuel, and has no atmosphere worth mentioning for aerobraking purposes. (Lithobraking is not recommended. Or should I say lithobreaking.) One serious proposal for a long-term Lunar presence requires the construction of a Lunar space elevator. This would not run from surface to geosynchronous orbit—the moon, being tidally locked, has no GEO—but instead to the L1 (near-side) or L2 (far-side) Earth-Moon libration points, 56,000 and 67,000 kilometers from the surface (points where the effect of the Moon's gravity and the effect of the centrifugal force resulting from the elevator system's synchronous, rigid body rotation cancel each other out and an elevator could be stable). Unlike a terrestrial space elevator sufficiently high tensile strength materials for such a tether already exist. There is, however, the slight problem of fabricating and shipping a 120,000 kilometer long cable out to near-Lunar orbit (and capturing a near-Earth asteroid to act as a counterweight). This is just a wild-ass Charlie guess, but I suspect shipping up 500 tonne cable drums will work out cheaper in the end than trying to build a carbon fiber factory in space (at least, until space industries are sufficiently developed to go the whole eat-your-own-dogfood distance). (Upshot: ITS probably makes the folks at LiftPort Group very, very happy.

5. Stupidly enormous space telescopes: Because there is a budget and a booster that can lift primary mirrors 17 meters in diameter is going to make the astronomical community need a change of underwear when the implications sink in. (Put it this way: one part of the value proposition is "maps of continent-sized features on terrestrial exoplanets" by 2040.)

6. (Speculative) Wake shield molecular beam epitaxy fab lines: with a wake shield you can produce an ultra-hard vacuum suitable for growing rystalline semiconductor thin films. I don't know wht the commercial implications are other than really pure GaAs and AlGaAs semiconductor substrates, but with rock-bottom launch costs and the ever spiralling cost of semiconductor fab lines (part of which is down to the requirement for clean room air flow on a large scale) we might see some semiconductor manufacturing activities planned for deployment in orbit after 2030. (After all, high-end microprocessors—at least before they're sliced, diced, and packaged in pin grid arrays—are some of the few objects that cost so much per unit weight that they'd be worth retrieving from orbit even with current generation flight costs.)

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns2.php#spacexits
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/09/what-else-can-you-do-with-a-bi.html

 

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by shynung

[tater]

I don't think ITS is worthless, by any stretch, I find it incredibly intriguing, actually.

@Nibb31 and I tend to disagree on at least specifics (or perhaps the entirety of) the "backup humanity" argument. I'm actually on board with that project on a long timescale, anyway, and I think it's defensible. But that's an abstract goal in many ways, and the RoI is statistical---it's basically like having a lottery ticket, it might have a positive expectation value, but your chances of winning are vanishingly small, anyway. 

ITS working would be pretty transformative as a LEO vehicle alone, frankly.

[Elthy]

SpaceX would have to develope a LEO optimised cargo version. The biggest problem with that is fitting a big fairing on top while still keeping the aerodynamics for reentry.

[shynung]

I think there will be a cargo version of the ITS tanker. After all, the engines on the tanker/spaceship acts as a seconds stage.

[kunok]

0 is pure speculation, I don't think is realistic at all and makes everything else very dubious

1 Our comsats (most of them, there are smart ones) are already the most dumb thing that there is in telecommunications. They are already basically a big analog relay, full of transponders, made by valves (Traveling-Wave Tubes are the amplifiers here) with only basics codification. They are already big, dumb, comsats. Ariane 5 has lots of problems to get a single launch comsat. We don't need at all a 400 ton comsat, what good it would do? A 10tn comsat maybe, a 20 ton maybe, that's covered by the falcon heavy for example. Bigger satellites also implies less satellites, we will have the same communication needs. And we are using less and less the sat communications

2 is absurd

3 no need for that big booster for that.

4 no need for that. who will pay for a moonbase and all the need developing effort?, it has the same problems of mars colony. The space elevator is just silly in a body without an atmosphere.

5 who will pay and develop this? there is not that big telescope in the ground

6 this keep coming and coming again, microchips are very very expensive by mass, but the base material isn't that expensive, and is the only part that beneficts of the space manufacturing.

 

ITS is musk dream, doesn't need an economical plan, after all is his money not ours. If ever gets done and has a little price it would have uses, but don't take that as an economic viability plan.

 

Here comes the rant: Taking scy-fy authors as a reference of engineering systems is plain wrong. They usually look only if the system is physically possible in a simplified model not if its feasible from a engineering point or even is viable at all, or the time and people we would need to get something developed, and that in all that time that development need to be paid.

Edited October 30, 2016 by kunok

[Northstar1989]

7 hours ago, kunok said:

@Northstar1989 and more people, if you claim that SpaceX is only doing the transport part, even believing the tickets prices (I don't, is pretty ridiculous, cheaper than most aircrafts that are manufactured in series), who will made the mars settlement part? Who will design and produce the habitats? Who will design and produce the machinery? One example, it would be need in almost everything almost-vacuum proof lubricants that are also dust proof, AFAIK there is none of that. And it would be worse if we add to that the requirement that needs to be able to done with mars materials.

There isn't mars proof habitats, nor vacuum proof mining equipment, nor really anything that we need to a mars settlement , and nobody is doing that.

There is no life support system for a mars settlement, and that's probably the biggest problem. The sector with monies here, the military, AFAIK doesn't have closed life support systems in their nuclear submarines, and they would like to. That's and not the ISS, the closest analogue to an habitat in other planet, and that's still far.

The rocket is the easy part. Who will be mars enthusiast billonary that will develop everything else?

 

And, seriously, the American colonization example looks ridiculous outside North America, I understand that is part of your culture, but you should question how realistic it is.

Oh, I never said the ither peoblems to do with actually surviving on the syrface are solved.  They're most vertainly not- which is why I fully expect earlu colonists to die in huge numbers on Mars (but NOT en route to Mars) befire we get most of them worked out.  But progress is sure to happen a lot faster when we've got inventor's boots on Martuan soil and lives on the line than when living on Mars is just some unlikely theoretical and an excuse to get grant money for unrelated research...

The example of the colonization of America is, by definition, realustic because it ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  And like I said, I'm LIVING PROOF as a direct descendent (on my mother's side) of Mayflower colonists that some early colonists actually did survive, despite the hardships.  You can't get any more realistic than that.

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

And even the rockets are grounded right now due to unresolved problems.

In 2,5 million years humans haven't even "colonized" deserts like the Rub al Khali (just for example). Nobody can live there without support from outside, yet it would be far easier than living on Mars, only surface water is lacking there, everything else is just like home. Yet nobody can live there, but on the rare occasions of a few drops of rain there are flowers everywhere, just for a few days, i've seen it (well, at the fringe). So the ability to bear life is "built in", the biosphere had enough time to be potentially able to colonize even these places.

Not so on Mars.

On Mars there is no surface water, no breathable atmosphere, no plant seeds or useful bacteria, only dust, radiation exposure and low gravity. To live there is just a vision and fantasy.

Imagine a place that combines the ground of a desert like Rub al Khali, the temperature of the Southpole and the atmosphere on the top of Mount Everest. Without support your dead, dead, dead (questions ? :-)). And still, all the prerequisites for a living are there in these places, compared to Mars they are paradises.

 

 

Nobody lives in Earth's deserts?

The Israelis wouls beg to disagree.  Through massive desalinization programs at the coast, diversion of river water, and pumping from aquifers they've managed to not only inhabot but farm some of their deserts with greenhouse agriculture.

The reason most deserts are mostly unihabited is because the nearby populations are backwards and poor.  Rich, technologically-advanced nations like Israel can and do inhabit deserts and farm them.  Other desert-dwelling nations have existed in the past as well, but collapsed due to military pressure from wealthier neighbors inhabiting richer lands...

Pointing to one desert and saying nobody lives there is proof that nobody lives in any desert on the planet is ridiculous.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

4 hours ago, tater said:

ITS is, absolutely, "lighting money on fire." Guess what, it's fine, and a bonfire I want to see. I'm glad Musk and Bezos have money to burn on something coincident with my interests. That doesn't delude me into thinking it's somehow a "business model," however.

Apollo was lighting money on fire, too, after all. As far as the person writing the check was concerned---the taxpayer---the RoI was negative. Oh, right, velcro, etc. Velcro didn't pay back the taxpayer, nor did anything else, we were charged for those products by the contractors that invented them, so even the tax revenue those companies generated was, like all businesses, paid by the customers. You might be able to zoom out to some system large enough to claim that tech advances ended up being a positive return, somehow, but the outfit writing the checks (the US Treasury) never got paid back... negative RoI. The same is true of SpaceX here WRT Mars.

There is nothing on Mars of value to Earth that can be delivered to Earth in a cost-effective way.

You are intentionally taking a very narrow and obfusticated definition of Return on Investment for the basis of your argument.

From the point of view if SpaceX, if tgey receive government subsidies to colonize Mars likely) and thus make back more money than thet spent, there is a positive Return on Investment.

From the point of view of taxpayers and the US government, if a program like Apollo or IRA generates more economic value (in the firm of technology) than it costs, it ALSO has a Return on Investment.

Your saying that "taxpayers" received no RoI on Apollo is a ridiculous assertation, based on an intentionally incorrect definition of "taxpayers".  Taxpayers are not just middle-class Americans working in ordinary jobs- they are ANYONE who pays taxes.  The term includes space industry engineers and scientists who were employed by NASA, the CEO's of the companies that came to own Velcro patents, and even the janitors at Kennedy Space Center.  Thus ANYTHING that generates jobs or technology for the US economy as a whole benefits taxpayers.

What I *think* you meant is that Apollo did not directly benefit SOME taxpayers- and that is a statement I will fully agree with.  There were some winners and some losers with the Apollo program, like literally any other form of economic or government activity.  A factory worker in Detroit who helped pay for Apollo through taxes probably was a net loser, whereas an executive at a furm manufacturing Velcro or a local restaurant oenee in Florida (where Apollo generated millions of dollars in local economic activity) was probably a net winner.

Edited October 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[cfds]

2 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

From the point of view if SpaceX, if tgey receive government subsidies to colonize Mars likely) and thus make back more money than thet spent, there is a positive Return on Investment.

But it is still a worse RoI than just taking government money...

Saint Elon's great Mars plan is pretty much "if someone else will spend trillions of money without any chance of ever getting it back, ILS is my way to earn billions of these idiots".

[Northstar1989]

12 minutes ago, cfds said:

But it is still a worse RoI than just taking government money...

Saint Elon's great Mars plan is pretty much "if someone else will spend trillions of money without any chance of ever getting it back, ILS is my way to earn billions of these idiots".

SpaceX would never receive government money for doing nothing.  They would receive subsidies for the external benefit of inspiring the rest if the country and world, which is a benefit worth paying for (and that we already DO pay for in other contexts- such as sports, mysuc, or inspirational speakers).

Musk is investing and spending his personal fortune on this.  He could have retired on his earnings from PayPal years ago.  He's not doing this for himself.

The government and taxpayer, meanwhile, receive a MASSIVE return on investment in the long run.  In the form of technology developed for the Mars colonization program, which can help us here on Earth, and eventually patents produced on Mars itself by Martian inventors.  Over a sufficiently long timeframe, that technology will DEFINITELY pay for the cost of whatever government subsidies are provided to the Mars colonization program.  As Robert Zubrin once said "I think the greatest export from Mars will be patents".

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Bill Phil]

On ‎10‎/‎29‎/‎2016 at 1:31 AM, HebaruSan said:

Do they really need to be able to return to Earth if it turns out they can live healthily on Mars with less bone mass? Granted, it would be necessary in the "repopulate with a back-up population" scenario, but it's very unlikely that any colonist will have to do that.

They wouldn't be able to visit their relatives. Sure, their relatives could come to them, but that's not guaranteed. Plus, that's kind of a big if. We don't have enough data to really find out how well they'll be able to live on Mars.

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

You are intentionally taking a very narrow and obfusticated definition of Return on Investment for the basis of your argument.

From the point of view if SpaceX, if tgey receive government subsidies to colonize Mars likely) and thus make back more money than thet spent, there is a positive Return on Investment.

Why would the government subsidize Mars colonization? Not going to happen. Not worth considering until the check is written, so assume it's 100% private, or your argument is pretty much imaginary because it involves loads of politics (which we cannot even discuss on this forum). Suffice it to say that it is incredibly unlikely.

 

9 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

From the point of view of taxpayers and the US government, if a program like Apollo or IRA generates more economic value (in the firm of technology) than it costs, it ALSO has a Return on Investment.

All that matters is tax revenue. It's just money. Companies don't pay taxes, their customers do.

9 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

Your saying that "taxpayers" received no RoI on Apollo is a ridiculous assertation, based on an intentionally incorrect definition of "taxpayers".  Taxpayers are not just middle-class Americans working in ordinary jobs- they are ANYONE who pays taxes.  The term includes space industry engineers and scientists who were employed by NASA, the CEO's of the companies that came to own Velcro patents, and even the janitors at Kennedy Space Center.  Thus anything that generates jobs or technology for the US economy as a whole benefits taxpayers.

I only get a return if I get a return.  Other people having jobs doesn't give me anything at all, particularly any jobs they get that don't even pay net taxes (i.e.: do they pay more than their family's per capita share of expense (which is about 12k a head right now in the US). 

SpaceX (on topic) has always said this Mars stuff is private. So demonstrate a return on investment that would attract investors to throw money at Mars. If you can come up with anything plausible then it's worth discussing as a possible business venture. Good luck with that.

[Tullius]

3 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

You are intentionally taking a very narrow and obfusticated definition of Return on Investment for the basis of your argument.

From the point of view if SpaceX, if tgey receive government subsidies to colonize Mars likely) and thus make back more money than thet spent, there is a positive Return on Investment.

From the point of view of taxpayers abd the US government,

You really think that developing a spacecraft to be sold to a single underfunded customer is an economically viable strategy?

Its quite likely that NASA and some other space agencies will pay SpaceX to get a citizen from their respective country to plant a flag on Mars. So the first 1 or 2 missions will probably get at least partially funded by space agencies, at the very least SpaceX doesn't need to train its own astronauts.

What happens afterwards, is pure speculation. But considering that NASA had to stop the Apollo flights to the Moon due to a lack of funding, it is quite likely that the same will happen to the ITS, i.e. after a few missions, there won't be enough space agencies willing to spend money on not just paying SpaceX for a ride to Mars, but also providing sufficient scientific instruments to give the astronauts something to do.

It is more likely that NASA will just continue to send out probes for a billion dollars per mission, much less than what a manned Mars mission even with ITS would cost, while at the same time getting scientific research from all over the solar system. Maybe SpaceX is lucky and NASA buys Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches for those missions, which by the way are economically very sound ideas, since there are numerous customers waiting out there to buy cheap launches to LEO.

ITS is just some billionaires fantasy to be the first man to send humans to Mars, not a strategy like Falcon to actually earn money.

[Northstar1989]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

Why would the government subsidize Mars colonization? Not going to happen. Not worth considering until the check is written, so assume it's 100% private, or your argument is pretty much imaginary because it involves loads of politics (which we cannot even discuss on this forum). Suffice it to say that it is incredibly unlikely.

Why did the government pay for Apollo?  Politicians will always find reasons to support their favorite programs, regardless of whether or not they make economic sense (and ITS *does* make sense).

9 minutes ago, tater said:

All that matters is tax revenue. It's just money. Companies don't pay taxes, their customers do.

OK, now I *KNOW* you have no idea what you're talking about.  Haven't you ever heard of the Corporation Tax? (also known as the "Corporate Income Tax" or "Corporate Taxes")

Corporations *DO* pay taxes on their profits.  DIRECTLY.  And then theur employees in turn pay Income Taxes as well.  So the government gets paid TWICE for any investment that generates economic activity.

Edited October 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[tater]

1 minute ago, Northstar1989 said:

Why did the government pay for Apollo?  Politicians will alwats find reasons to support their favorite programs, regardless of whether or not they make economic sense (and ITS *does* make sense).

Because of the Cold War. It was a PR battle for hearts and minds in the Third World. Using the actual definition of Third World (which relates to which sphere they were in, West, or CCCP).

That's the entire reason for Apollo. That is not happening with Mars.

NASA Mars will be a flag planting mission that will expensively do science better done by robots. Colonization is not their mission now, nor will it be in the foreseeable future.

It;s private, or not at all, IMO.

[Green Baron]

@Northstar1989 said:

Nobody lives in Earth's deserts?

The Israelis wouls beg to disagree.  Through massive desalinization programs at the coast, diversion of river water, and pumping from aquifers they've managed to not only inhabot but farm some of their deserts with greenhouse agriculture.

The reason most deserts are mostly unihabited is because the nearby populations are backwards and poor.  Rich, technologically-advanced nations like Israel can and do inhabit deserts and farm them.  Other desert-dwelling nations have existed in the past as well, but collapsed due to military pressure from wealthier neighbors inhabiting richer lands...

Pointing to one desert and saying nobody lives there is proof that nobody lives in any desert on the planet is ridiculous.

 

I say:

I wrote nobody lives in a place like the Rub al Khali (without support from outside). Sorry, but you are talking nonsense. There is no desert near Israel, not even a steppe, Israel is subtropical. To the rest i ... better shut up.

Have a nice one :-)

Edit: sorry, that was a little sharp from my side. But your comparison of a country like Israel and a desert like Ghobi, Sahara or Rub al Khali is a little short sighted. Just compare annual precipitation or ground water level and you'll see. And still there is fossil water under some dry areas in Arabia and the Sahara that can be used until a certain depth and with great pumping efforts and energy (but will eventually run out soon). The stuff needed for that is a little heavy to transport to Mars ... ;-)

Edited October 30, 2016 by Green Baron

[Northstar1989]

35 minutes ago, tater said:

I only get a return if I get a return.  Other people having jobs doesn't give me anything at all, particularly any jobs they get that don't even pay net taxes (i.e.: do they pay more than their family's per capita share of expense (which is about 12k a head right now in the US).

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Other people having jobs DOES directly benefit you.  In a number if ways.

First of all, people making more money means a larger government tax base.  This means more programs that benefit you for the same tax burden on you, or that you end up with a refuced tax burden.  Even when these jobs are crwated by government spending, the increased tax revenue alliws the government to recoup come of its costs in additional taxes, making the cost of a program a lot less than it looks like on paper...

Second, more jobs mean a,tighter job market.  Which means labor prices go up.  Which means YOU make a higher salary or better wages at your job, whatever it is.  The ONLY way this doesn't benefit you is if most of your incone cones from owning the means of productioninstead of selling your labor- that is, if you are filthy rich.

Third, the concept of "net taxes" is stupid and misleading  (there's,a reason it is rarely discussed even in sober economic circles, and certainly not on the news...)  Many government expenses increase the incomes of people other than those receiving them.

For instance, repaving a local main road drives up the incomes of asphalt manufacturers, road workers, AND the owners of long-haul trucking companies that depend on that road.  It doesn't JUST benefit the citizens of the town where the road was repaved.

Similarly, a Mars colonization program doesn't just increase the incomes of SpaceX employees.  It also benefits aluminum and lithium miners, who dig up the metal for the rockets (or Carbon Fiber manufacturers if CF fuel tanks pan out), farmers and food processors who produce the food that goes on each ITS flight as part of the ticket price, Oil and Gas sector workers who help produce the Methane for the ITS launches here in Earth, and literally anyone who provides any of these individuals or their families with goods and services.  In the end, MILLIONS of Americans (and even a few foreigners who produce some of these same raw materials and see increases in market prices for them) see increases in their incomes from something like ITS...

It doesn't matter if a program increases the incomes of those who pay less than 12k in taxes a year to bring them closer to this point, or those who pay more than it to bring them further above it.  A program like ITS generates tax revenue- and the standard of whether it helps increase the incomes of individuals who pay "net taxes" is a completely arbitrary and worthless distinction to bring up.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Green Baron]

@Northstar1989, you probably think that because people can inhabit barren areas on earth they can as well do so on other planets. But this is not possible. On earth it works because at any time they can go back buy spare parts or get new stuff to support their efforts. This is only because a worldwide industry digs out ressources, refines them, build production chains and infratsructure.

Once support is cut off or conditions get worse people have to retreat from these areas even on earth. This happened more than once in the past and will happen again.

It is - sorry - extremely naive (this goes to Musk more than to you) to think that a place like Mars could easily be colonized. "You can go" he said in the presentation but that is simply not true, even if there was that fantastic rocket he envisioned to us. Well you would go, but not to colonize but to die.

Even earths barren areas are still paradises compared to a remote planet. Once you are there you cannot retreat if something doesn't work as planned. There is nothing to eat, drink or breathe. There is no shop, no ressource acquisition, no production of spare parts, no hospitals to treat radiation sicknesses or malnutrition from too much greenhouse stuff. Even people on earth cannot feed to long on artificial stuff, they get sick and die and relatively young age (which is a big problem in the developed countries).

Colonists who go will surely die after a short time, i fear that is the truth (right now and in the next decades).

Edited October 30, 2016 by Green Baron

[kunok]

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

Oh, I never said the ither peoblems to do with actually surviving on the syrface are solved.  They're most vertainly not- which is why I fully expect earlu colonists to die in huge numbers on Mars (but NOT en route to Mars) befire we get most of them worked out.  But progress is sure to happen a lot faster when we've got inventor's boots on Martuan soil and lives on the line than when living on Mars is just some unlikely theoretical and an excuse to get grant money for unrelated research...

There isn't designed even the "first camp", even the most basic settlement to be when they arrive, there isn't designed anything.

1 hour ago, Northstar1989 said:

The example of the colonization of America is, by definition, realustic because it ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  And like I said, I'm LIVING PROOF as a direct descendent (on my mother's side) of Mayflower colonists that some early colonists actually did survive, despite the hardships.  You can't get any more realistic than that.

Is not realistic as a comparable scenario. And that's the problem, you keep comparing with an already habitable scenario. You are not the only with emigrant ancestor (I have too, only that he return) , yet AFAIK only the north american people has this strange cultural obsession with the colonies.

Your ancestor has already an habitable air, tolerable climate conditions and food that he could get in America. He could do something to settle after that. But a mars colonist doesn't have that, they would die before they can invent anything, with current tech they would die the same day that the ITS returns to earth (and that's assuming that the ITS has a life support system that we currently don't have and doesn't look at all that spaceX is developing).

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, kunok said:

(and that's assuming that the ITS has a life support system that we currently don't have and doesn't look at all that spaceX is developing).

And that is why gov't agencies partner with private enterprise. NASA and its predecessor NACA were created to develop, test, prove and demonstrate new technologies, for example the NACA cowling. SpaceX and other space startups are using NASA's technologies and experience to help develop their vehicles. I have no doubt that SpaceX and Bigelow will lean heavily on NASA's experience with the life support systems that have been tested on the ISS for years now.

[Northstar1989]

5 hours ago, kunok said:

There isn't designed even the "first camp", even the most basic settlement to be when they arrive, there isn't designed anything.

That's not true.  Plenty of plans for Mars basecamps have been drawn up before (by organizations such as NASA) that SpaceX can draw on.

Seriously, how do you get off saying these things?  Your claims, like those of many of the other SpaceX cynics here, are pants-on-fire false, to use a term from fact-checking sites...

5 hours ago, kunok said:

Is not realistic as a comparable scenario. And that's the problem, you keep comparing with an already habitable scenario. You are not the only with emigrant ancestor (I have too, only that he return) , yet AFAIK only the north american people has this strange cultural obsession with the colonies.

Your ancestor has already an habitable air, tolerable climate conditions and food that he could get in America. He could do something to settle after that. But a mars colonist doesn't have that, they would die before they can invent anything, with current tech they would die the same day that the ITS returns to earth (and that's assuming that the ITS has a life support system that we currently don't have and doesn't look at all that spaceX is developing).

The colonists were provided with tolerable climate conditions and food?

Sure.  That's why THOUSANDS of them starved to death or died of exposure early on.

And the colonists would die the day the ITS left, despite being supplied with hundreds of tons of equipment sent to Mars in earlier launches? (since his presentation, Musk has been very clear on this point- the early launches will carry very few colonists and lots of cargo to set up an initial base)  By the same logic the astronauts on the ISS would die the same day they arrived as well...

 

You clearly know nothing about what you're talking about, and are talking from uninformed gut-feelings rather than facts.  You're spreading nothing but falsehoods and misinformation, and haven't bothered to fact-check any of your claims before posting them (which I routinely do for my own claims).  Your behavior is rude, detrimental to the conversation, and uninformative.  I do not appreciate it and would like to respectfully like to express my profound distaste for your false statements and scare-tactics, and those of others like you in this discussion.

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

@Northstar1989, you probably think that because people can inhabit barren areas on earth they can as well do so on other planets. But this is not possible. On earth it works because at any time they can go back buy spare parts or get new stuff to support their efforts. This is only because a worldwide industry digs out ressources, refines them, build production chains and infratsructure.

Once support is cut off or conditions get worse people have to retreat from these areas even on earth. This happened more than once in the past and will happen again.

No economy on Earth is self-sufficient anymore, regardless of the climactic conditions.  It is extremely naive to say that just because these areas aren't self-sufficient, they couldn't be.  People simply don't attempt to be self-sufficient in these areas (or ANYWHERE on the planet, for that matter) because it is difficult and would be extremely expensive...

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

It is - sorry - extremely naive (this goes to Musk more than to you) to think that a place like Mars could easily be colonized. "You can go" he said in the presentation but that is simply not true, even if there was that fantastic rocket he envisioned to us. Well you would go, but not to colonize but to die.

Even earths barren areas are still paradises compared to a remote planet. Once you are there you cannot retreat if something doesn't work as planned. There is nothing to eat, drink or breathe. There is no shop, no ressource acquisition, no production of spare parts, no hospitals to treat radiation sicknesses or malnutrition from too much greenhouse stuff. Even people on earth cannot feed to long on artificial stuff, they get sick and die and relatively young age (which is a big problem in the developed countries).

Colonists who go will surely die after a short time, i fear that is the truth (right now and in the next decades).

Nobody ever said it would be easy.  Claiming anybody has is just a  bogus straw-man argument you set up so you could beat it down...

That doesn't mean it CAN'T be done.  People can survive on the International Space Station with enough resupply and there are literally no resources there except solar power.  On Mars, at least, you have a planet to shield you from radiation and provide gravity, and abundant mineral resources to work with...  The Mars environment is UNQUESTIONABLY less hostile than the International Space Station.  Don't quote resupply times at me- that's not a feature of the environment itself, and how hard an environment is to reach is an entirely seperate discussion from whether the environment is CAPABLE of supporting life.

Nobody questions that early outposts on Mars would be heavily dependent on supplies from Earth many of which would be sent AHEAD of the majority of colonists).  But, with time, a Mars colony would gain the ability to produce more and more goods and equipment of its own, and eventually become self-sufficient.  This is NOT up for a debate- it's a FACT, a virtual guarantee if the colony survives long enough and receives enough support.  The only question is not if, but when.  Given outside support and new migrants, would it take a Mars outpost 50 years or 500 to become fully capable of supporting and growing itself?

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 31, 2016 by Northstar1989