IAC Today!

[tater]

Colonization as a private activity requires an economic driver. There is not one forthcoming for Mars. 

[Illyrian]

30 minutes ago, tater said:

Colonization as a private activity requires an economic driver. There is not one forthcoming for Mars. 

There is one thing. You can allow people to claim part of Mars and dig. Whatever they dig out it is theirs and they can sell it.
US done that in past to lure people, it is called gold rush.
 

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Workable Goblin said:

That's not actually true anymore, sort of. Since about 1950, a third "colonization" model has sprung up--the scientific outpost, a habitat which is inhabited permanently but by rotating crews to conduct some kind of scientific research, like in Antarctica or with space stations. Governments have, collectively, spent billions of dollars on these over a few decades even discounting the ISS (the US alone spends about $300 million per year on Antarctica, and there are a lot of countries with Antarctic bases), so clearly they're willing to dump money into them "just because".

Well, that's "colonization", not colonization.  It's a very small number of people in temporary residence, not any number of permanent residents.  So, even if it weren't covered under the "few exceptions" clause, it's largely irrelevant here.

 

1 hour ago, Workable Goblin said:

At least, if the cost is reasonable, which if Elon can get his cost figures to where he wants would pretty much be the case--the delivery of payload to the Martian surface would have to cost less than about $2,000 per kilogram for a ticket to cost $200,000, which is about the same as what it costs to deliver payload to orbit today, or less. Thus, it would cost about the same or less to operate a Mars base as to operate a space station even with minimal ISRU and, well, there are a couple of groups doing space stations.

What will get those costs down is a high flight rate, leading to improved operations, improved designs, and amortizing the sunk and fixed costs across a significant number of passengers and tons of cargo.  "Colonization" doesn't yield the numbers to drive that flight rate, it misses by a couple of orders of magnitude (at least).  (Seriously, reducing costs is as much about counting beans as sliding rules - and space fans have a long history of ignoring the former.)  It's the infamous chicken-and-egg problem that's been haunting space development for decades.  (And even though it's an elephant sized problem, it's a boring one - so space fans have filed it under "2.?" for just as long.)

And while there are any number of groups capable of creating powerpoints - and a couple with the theoretical capability to actually build space stations...  There's precisely nobody actually "doing" space stations.

[Kryten]

Settlement is probably a much better word for this kind of thing than colonisation. 

[Workable Goblin]

9 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Well, that's "colonization", not colonization.  It's a very small number of people in temporary residence, not any number of permanent residents.  So, even if it weren't covered under the "few exceptions" clause, it's largely irrelevant here.

No, it's highly relevant, because it's basically the only form of colonization that is actually happening in today's world. And it's not that small a number of people, nor is it really a "few exceptions" case--there are Antarctic bases from thirty countries, and they host a thousand or so people year round. That's quite comparable to the early phases of any historical case of colonization--Plymouth only had about a hundred people to start with for instance--and there have been children (a fair number, actually) born in Antarctica. It's hardly something to dismiss out of hand.

9 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

What will get those costs down is a high flight rate, leading to improved operations, improved designs, and amortizing the sunk and fixed costs across a significant number of passengers and tons of cargo.  "Colonization" doesn't yield the numbers to drive that flight rate, it misses by a couple of orders of magnitude (at least).  (Seriously, reducing costs is as much about counting beans as sliding rules - and space fans have a long history of ignoring the former.)  It's the infamous chicken-and-egg problem that's been haunting space development for decades.  (And even though it's an elephant sized problem, it's a boring one - so space fans have filed it under "2.?" for just as long.)

There is a reason why I emphasized the if. Really. I am pretty aware of the economics of space flight.

9 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

And while there are any number of groups capable of creating powerpoints - and a couple with the theoretical capability to actually build space stations...  There's precisely nobody actually "doing" space stations.

Er, ever heard of the ISS? Or Tiangong (1 or 2)? I thought it was pretty obvious that I was talking about governments, given that I specifically mentioned multiple government stations when talking about Antarctica and I was discussing a colonization model which obviously depends on the government (more so than usual, anyway) to function at all. The point was that if you could really build a Mars base for about the cost of a space station, the United States and China, at least, probably would, and the ESA and Japan might, either by themselves or together with the United States. India or Russia might or might not join in, they have smaller budgets than the other four. And there might be others that would ride on coattails. So Mars would become like Antarctica, and have permanent settlements (but not inhabitants).

[tater]

That's why the suborbital application is actually the most interesting bit to me. To convince people to take a ride into space period would require it to be safe. The way to know if it is safe, is many, many flights. As @DerekL1963 said, it's another chicken and egg issue. Suborbital flights, not as a joy ride, but as transportation that is also a joy ride might well fill this role. It could also have government customers... rapid deployment to a forward air base, for example. I posted "Pegasus" above, but it's counterpart was "Ithacus," which was meant to deploy 1200 troops anywhere on Earth in about an hour.

If you could make the "spaceship" function as an airliner analog, with hundreds of seats, things might get interesting. The biggest issue would be the g-loading, though I'm unsure what that would look like in the suborbital application.

[Workable Goblin]

Just now, tater said:

If you could make the "spaceship" function as an airliner analog, with hundreds of seats, things might get interesting. The biggest issue would be the g-loading, though I'm unsure what that would look like in the suborbital application.

There would also be the issue that it would look like an ICBM launch (because, well, it pretty much would be an ICBM launch. Only the missile carries people instead of bombs). Setting up systems to make sure that no one accidentally starts a nuclear war because they mistook your transpacific hop for a nuclear attack would be...interesting.

[tater]

@Workable Goblin, I don't think Antartica is a very good model. If there were not treaties forbidding people from taking ownership, then nations and businesses would do that if for nothing other than oil. There is an economic driver for actual settlement, and Antartica is many orders of magnitude easier and more hospitable than Mars.

Just now, Workable Goblin said:

There would also be the issue that it would look like an ICBM launch (because, well, it pretty much would be an ICBM launch. Only the missile carries people instead of bombs). Setting up systems to make sure that no one accidentally starts a nuclear war because they mistook your transpacific hop for a nuclear attack would be...interesting.

Yeah, that's a legit concern. Realistically, the market would likely be limited to near a few high value cities, likely with a possible facility on or near the sea. NYC, London, LA, Tokyo, Shanghai...

[Nibb31]

17 minutes ago, tater said:

If you could make the "spaceship" function as an airliner analog, with hundreds of seats, things might get interesting. The biggest issue would be the g-loading, though I'm unsure what that would look like in the suborbital application.

I think the biggest issues would be cost, noise, and emissions. Even if the ICT costs the same as an A380, it burns hundreds of tons of LOX and Methane, it makes a racket, including a sonic boom, at it releases tons of CO2 on each flight. It might be fast, but it would be an order of magnitude more expensive than Concorde.

 

Edited September 28, 2016 by Nibb31

[Workable Goblin]

16 minutes ago, tater said:

@Workable Goblin, I don't think Antartica is a very good model. If there were not treaties forbidding people from taking ownership, then nations and businesses would do that if for nothing other than oil. There is an economic driver for actual settlement, and Antartica is many orders of magnitude easier and more hospitable than Mars.

Actually, they almost certainly wouldn't. Yes, the Antarctic Treaty exists, but Antarctica is a very harsh environment which is extremely difficult and expensive to extract resources from, to the point where it is not economically viable. Just look at the trouble Shell has had trying to do offshore drilling in the Arctic, and remember that the Arctic is easier than the Antarctic--there are permanent inhabitants, for one, there are fairly well-established transport routes, they actually do on-shore drilling there so they have a base of experienced people, and so on--yet they just couldn't make it work out, and ended up spending billions of dollars and writing off billions more in assets once they gave up. Resource extraction from Antarctica is not viable because of the economics, not the Treaty, so countries are only establishing scientific stations so that if it does become viable they have a shot at making some money from it, not because they're just waiting for the Treaty to expire so they can start taking that sweet Antarctic oil.

But you could say the same about Mars. Currently, extracting resources (or performing any other economic activity) on Mars doesn't make any sense. There's always the possibility that something might emerge that would change that, though, so there's an incentive to stake a claim (Outer Space Treaty or no), just in case and, hey, Mars bases do have some scientific and propaganda value in the shorter term, just like Antarctic bases. Right now, even that would cost a tremendous amount of money, so no one has done it (or even staked a claim on the Moon, which is obviously much easier in a lot of ways). If costs can come down, though...well, as I said, if you could bring them down to space station levels, then it becomes conceivable. A Mars base would be much more scientifically useful than a space station...

Edited September 28, 2016 by Workable Goblin

[tater]

No human effort in space is scientifically efficient outside the science of how humans live in space, IMO.

I guesstimated that a cost/launch (vehicle included) for a suborbital version that still only flies 100 times would be ~2M$, but the thing has a passenger volume over 2X a 747, so 800 would not be impossible at $2500/seat cost (business class is way more than that for a gajillion hour flight now, 45 minutes is pretty appealing---plus you get to then claim astronaut status  .

[DerekL1963]

21 minutes ago, Workable Goblin said:

There would also be the issue that it would look like an ICBM launch (because, well, it pretty much would be an ICBM launch. Only the missile carries people instead of bombs). Setting up systems to make sure that no one accidentally starts a nuclear war because they mistook your transpacific hop for a nuclear attack would be...interesting.

0.o   We already have a system to ensure that airliners (which look an awful lot like bombers) aren't bombers.  We also already have a system to ensure that space launches (which pretty much are ICBM launches) aren't mistaken for ICBM launches.  Heck, we even have a system which ensures that actual ICBM (and SLBM) launches aren't mistaken for an attempt to kick off WWIII.

The legal and technical frameworks are already in place, widely accepted, and have been for a fair fraction of a century.  Setting up a system to cover sub-orbital transports might have some hitches at the technical level, but overall it's a fairly straightforward task using existing frameworks.

 

15 minutes ago, Workable Goblin said:

A Mars base would be much more scientifically useful than a space station...

In the same way that a bio-research lab is more scientifically useful than a materials science research lab - if you're interested in bio research.  (I.E. apples and oranges.)

[tater]

1 hour ago, Illyrian said:

There is one thing. You can allow people to claim part of Mars and dig. Whatever they dig out it is theirs and they can sell it.
US done that in past to lure people, it is called gold rush.
 

There is nothing worth extracting on mars that could be brought back cost effectively, and extraction would be vastly more expensive than a guy showing up in what is now San Francisco and buying himself a shovel and a pickaxe.

[Illyrian]

12 minutes ago, tater said:

There is nothing worth extracting on mars that could be brought back cost effectively, and extraction would be vastly more expensive than a guy showing up in what is now San Francisco and buying himself a shovel and a pickaxe.

For corporations there is notthing or very little.

But for common person possibility of having ownership of part of Mars and getting money just from selling resources would be very profitable. You don't have to transport it to Earth, since you have large community on Mars and those people would also need resources. 

What if you are lucky and you would own part of land with gold or platinum? Those are worth transporting back to Earth.

[Kryten]

20 minutes ago, Illyrian said:

But for common person possibility of having ownership of part of Mars and getting money just from selling resources would be very profitable. You don't have to transport it to Earth, since you have large community on Mars and those people would also need resources. 

So the reason for people to go to Mars, is to sell materials to the people that live on Mars. But without people to sell to on Mars, there's no reason to go...

[Nibb31]

23 minutes ago, Illyrian said:

For corporations there is notthing or very little.

But for common person possibility of having ownership of part of Mars and getting money just from selling resources would be very profitable. You don't have to transport it to Earth, since you have large community on Mars and those people would also need resources. 

What if you are lucky and you would own part of land with gold or platinum? Those are worth transporting back to Earth.

Ownership implies government recognition. No government has the legal ability to recognize or uphold land property on Mars.

Even gold and platinum are not worth transporting back to Earth. They are also orders of magnitude harder to extract in an extreme cold environment, near vacuum, atmosphere, from highly toxic regolith.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Nibb31

[tater]

Rare earths would be better extracted from asteroids if the goal was shipment to earth. Why would anyone involve 2 gravity wells in such resource extraction?

[Mitchz95]

Don't forget, return to Earth is free on the colony ships. So once the stuff is extracted, it can be shipped home for no cost.

[Workable Goblin]

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

0.o   We already have a system to ensure that airliners (which look an awful lot like bombers) aren't bombers.  We also already have a system to ensure that space launches (which pretty much are ICBM launches) aren't mistaken for ICBM launches.  Heck, we even have a system which ensures that actual ICBM (and SLBM) launches aren't mistaken for an attempt to kick off WWIII.

Space launches aren't usually aimed at other countries, which suborbital transports usually will be. Anyway, this is something that people in the field have said is a challenge, so I believe them.

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

In the same way that a bio-research lab is more scientifically useful than a materials science research lab - if you're interested in bio research.  (I.E. apples and oranges.)

Not really. A Mars base could do almost anything that the ISS could do (aside from that dealing with microgravity--but then, it would be able to do research in partial gravity, which has not been studied at all...), plus it could do a lot of planetary science, obviously. So it would clearly be more scientifically productive. You would get more science, however you want to define that, out for every dollar you put in, if the costs were comparable.

1 hour ago, tater said:

No human effort in space is scientifically efficient outside the science of how humans live in space, IMO.

Absolutely untrue. Humans might not be particularly efficient at, say, astronomical observations, but they're much better than machines in some other fields, particularly planetary science. If you compare the Soviet Lunas to the Apollos, the only actual example of competition, the latter were clearly far more cost effective--they cost something like ten to a hundred times as much (on the order of $100 billion versus on the order of $1-10 billion) but returned a thousand times more samples (380 kilograms versus 326 grams), those samples were recovered from multiple locations (the Soviet sample return spacecraft could only return samples from one position), they emplaced five ALSEP surface science stations that lasted until 1977 (the Soviets landed no such long-term experiments), they traveled farther altogether than both Lunokhods put together, they traveled faster than either Lunokhod (sure, Lunokhod 2 traveled 39 kilometers to about 36 on Apollo 17, but the latter did it in 3 days, while the former took five months), and so on and so forth. The Apollo missions cost a lot more upfront, sure, but they were so much more scientifically productive that they were cheaper for the science than the Luna missions were.

Now, I know you're going to come back, "Ah, that's crappy 1960s Soviet-era technology, modern tech would be so much better!" Well...no. Relevantly, take a look at Mars sample return. During the last decadal survey, JPL proposed (warning, PDF) an ascent vehicle design that would be able to lift 5 kilograms of payload into orbit, including a sample containment device. The decadal survey itself estimated that the caching rover (for finding the samples) would cost $2.5 billion (if you just dropped the ESA involvement, which was more or less what happened...), although the actual implementation of that (Mars 2020) is currently running at about $2.1 billion. Considering that the MAV and sample return orbiter are just as important and less technically mature, I doubt either would cost much less, so optimistically you're looking at a cost of at least $6 billion or so for the full mission.

Now, by contrast, consider a human mission. Most realistic estimates put the cost of building up a humans to Mars capability in the range $100 billion to $1 trillion, and most mission plans that I've seen envision returning about a metric ton of samples. Assuming that the cost of the first mission is at the very high end of that range, you end up paying almost the same for each kilogram of samples--about a billion dollars--as you did with the robotic mission...and if the cost of the robotic mission is higher or the cost of the human mission is lower or both, the humans come out ahead. And that's not mentioning the fact that humans don't need to be babied by Mission Control as much as rovers, so they're likely going to be able to travel farther, collect a more diverse set of samples, and so on than the robots, so you would get more out of your billion dollars per kilogram than with the robots.

The main reason why robots are in fact better than people is that it's practically impossible to get anyone to spend a trillion dollars on putting people on Mars, whereas it's only very difficult to get them to spend six billion on putting robots on Mars. If it only cost six billion to do the human mission, somehow, then you would very definitely rather have the humans, and they would very definitely be more efficient than robots.

Anyway, this is all rather beside the point of this thread, I believe.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Workable Goblin

[monstah]

3 minutes ago, Mitchz95 said:

Don't forget, return to Earth is free on the colony ships. So once the stuff is extracted, it can be shipped home for no cost.

That bothered me when Elon said it. Sure, the ships are Earthbound anyway, but adding mass to them costs fuel, and exponentially so. "Nothing is for free" is the only law of economics/society that is actually enforced by nature.

[A Fuzzy Velociraptor]

1 minute ago, monstah said:

That bothered me when Elon said it. Sure, the ships are Earthbound anyway, but adding mass to them costs fuel, and exponentially so. "Nothing is for free" is the only law of economics/society that is actually enforced by nature.

It's not free but it is nearly so. Generally with space launch vehicles the cost of the propellant would be negligible compared to the cost of all the other excrements that needs to go into the vehicle to make it work. In this case the additional energy to produce the propellant would be the only cost which while they would have to produce more propellant the cost would be so low compared to everything else that it would be essentially "free"

[monstah]

fair enough  

[RedKraken]

Very interested in Robert Zubrin's reaction :

http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=66acde49870b0e6bc3a161cc0&id=46e8d8b04d&e=66242eccde

His architecture tweak for 10x delivery capability :

Stage just short of escape, return to earth in a week, reuse vehicle ~5 times each window.

Not sure if payload is one-way or not. Could be either i guess. 

He suggests u could do this with FalcH much sooner than ITS.

Edited September 28, 2016 by RedKraken

[Illyrian]

59 minutes ago, Kryten said:

So the reason for people to go to Mars, is to sell materials to the people that live on Mars. But without people to sell to on Mars, there's no reason to go...

That is same reason people had during gold rush in US.

 

57 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Ownership implies government recognition. No government has the legal ability to recognize or uphold land property on Mars.

Even gold and platinum are not worth transporting back to Earth. They are also orders of magnitude harder to extract in an extreme cold environment, near vacuum, atmosphere, from highly toxic regolith.

One more reason to leave Earth would be to leave countries with oppressive law systems. Of course leaders of Mars would have to declare independence, once they would become nearly self sufficient.

You would have a choice to be common employee on Earth or land lord on Mars.

[GregA]

20 hours ago, kunok said:

I don't care about economics, there is not really need of that, that's a problem of the capitalism. What I'm saying isn't any purpose more than just exploration or science (with colonization doesn't help at all), and, the important point, the infrastructure to be just alive in mars (or in transit to) is huge (and undeveloped), the infrastructure to manufacture anything there is even bigger.

You can make steel in earth in the 15th century by cutting wood, making coal and mining some iron ore to melt it in steel, then use an anvil to make 15th century metal things, with knowledge and labor you can do the installation for doing that from almost 0.

But in mars there is no wood, there isn't coal, there isn't an oxidant atmosphere useful for the industrial processes. You will need a vacuum mining operation, a steel factory adapted to work in vacuum that will depend on a previous chemical industry because you need chemicals (or even more supplies), you will need precision machining tools to make something spacegrade, generating power for everything and that's simplifying. Repeat that with almost every single need of a human outpost.

 

Well you could start with the freely available calcium perchlorate, carbon, and water to make vast quantities of PVC, and make your initial habitats and building materials out of a plastic that is extremely well understood, very strong, and would last a 100 years in the conditions on Mars.  I suspect with a little engineering you could make giant extrusions based pressurized green houses.  They might not be suitable for human living, but isolated, and you have a perfect environment for farms and live stock.

Even then you have a feed stock to make a whole host of products.  For example, your chair that easily buckles under the weight of a 150# man on earth is steady and strong on mars...