Moral & Technological Problems with Mars Colonization

[78stonewobble]

8 hours ago, Nathair said:

You are joking, right? This is 2017 you must be joking, right?

 The only, ONLY, reason there have not been women astronauts from day one is that the women were turned away from the program. Even when women went so far as to privately fund recruiting and testing procedures to parallel the male astronaut program the qualified women were still refused entry. They took the fight all the way to the U.S. House of Representatives and were again refused entry.  The only inclination issue there was an inclination towards sexism and male privilege.

 As it stands today NASA's current class of astronauts is fifty percent female and I can think of no reason to expect otherwise.

Shpaget only suggested that on average in a population men are more likely to take risks, which afaik. is pretty well proven and can partially explain eg. that more young men kills themselves in car accidents than women.

Which is not the same as saying that eg.: All men take risks, no women take risks, no individual woman can take risks, no individual man doesn't wanna take risks and everything else that could be erroneously be read into that... It just means there is a general statistical difference... a slight inclination... and there is nothing wrong with that.

And as others pointed out... The current class of astronauts is only a testament to current recruiting policies. For evidence of the "inclination" of the populations on a whole you need to look at eg. applicants per X number of qualified men and women.

8 hours ago, Nathair said:

Did it just get very 1958 in here? There are plenty of women astronauts, sixty (60) of whom have been to space. As I mentioned above, women make up fully half of the NASA's current class. In the CSA's most recent recruiting effort the balance was not quite as equitable but was still a seventy/thirty split. The only way you can think that all the colonists would end up being male for statistical reasons is if you only plan on having a colony of two or three people. Or (and this is much more likely) if the people making the selections have some of the quaint ideas about gender that have popped up in this thread.

That would actually suggest, all other things being equal, a lot of female privilege these days.

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2017 by 78stonewobble

[Zhetaan]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

You are a space commander and must select: who will get the last seat in a rescue capsule

(snip)

All crew members must be equally expendable to make decisions without emotional effects.

This one is actually easy to solve:  you're the commander, so you stay behind.  If you're going to be the leader, then you need to know that your life is not your own to keep if the circumstances require that you lose it to save your crew.  Unless there is some special skill that makes the commander indispensable to the mission (not likely; redundant systems are the only way to fly in space, and besides, special skills are what mission specialists are for), the commander is automatically the one with the short straw.  Anyone who does differently isn't worthy of the job.

The actual reality of it is even simpler:  if you've got, say, an eight-person crew, what sane mission planner would include a rescue capsule with seven seats, or oxygen balloons to fit everyone except one?  Such a poor design is so far beyond stupid that I frankly don't think anyone needs worry about the public opinion of the crew because the ones responsible will have been crucified long before the capsule breaks orbit to return to Earth.

The far more likely case is one of two things:  either the problem will result in having empty seats, or the problem is so bad that no rescue is possible.  So the MAV really does tip over, or a micrometeorite hits the command module while the Eagle is down and Collins is the one who dies, or that sort of thing.  'Save all but one' stories only happen in Hollywood or when things have gone so wrong that heads will roll back at the Agency.

[Nathair]

7 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Irrelevant to my point. Just because there were some women who wanted to go to space, it doesn't mean that general female population feels the same

 

I'm not sure how you have moved this into the past tense, there are women astronauts today who want to go into space today. But you are correct in one thing, the fact that there are women who want to go into space doesn't mean that the general female population feels the same. Of course, the fact that there are men who want to go into space doesn't mean that the general male population feels the same way either. If we were talking about grabbing random people off the street and shipping them as colonists then that might matter but that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about volunteers and so the fact that there are both men and women who want to go is all that matters here.

We know this to be true. The Mars One project called for volunteers and received hundreds of thousands of application from men and women. Your speculations about an all-male volunteer cohort completely ignore the fact that as long as we've been doing this we have always had volunteers of both genders.

7 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Is there a policy to maintain that ratio?

 

Probably, but the exact ratio isn't the issue here. NASA's current class is 50/50, CSA's most recent ratio was 70/30, Mars One's first round selection ratio was 55/45. Nowhere is there any justification whatsoever to even suggest that in the actual event of a colonization mission the gender ratio of volunteers would suddenly change to become 100% male.

34 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

That would actually suggest, all other things being equal, a lot of female privilege these days.

 

I'm sure you didn't intend to be quite as thoroughly offensive as you just were.

[78stonewobble]

39 minutes ago, Nathair said:

I'm sure you didn't intend to be quite as thoroughly offensive as you just were.

I believe in treating people equally. Sexism is sexism and I'll call it out where I see it. Preferentially treating one gender over the other would be pretty offensive and that's what CSA and NASA numbers put together suggest.

Edited January 26, 2017 by 78stonewobble

[Nathair]

2 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

I believe in treating people equally. Sexism is sexism and I'll call it out where I see it.

If you believe that equal gender representation in this arena is a demonstration of widespread female privilege then you are not calling out sexism, you are demonstrating it.

[78stonewobble]

2 minutes ago, Nathair said:

If you believe that equal gender representation in this arena is a demonstration of widespread female privilege then you are not calling out sexism, you are demonstrating it.

No, I didn't say equal gender representation... I said equality between men and women.

Equality between men and women in this case would have the ratio of astronaut recruits following the ratio of applicants. If one group is then disproportionately represented according to the relevant demographics, they are then privileged. If there is a system in place to guarantee, that women are picked preferentially over men, solely due to gender, then it is systematic sexism.

If gender representation or indeed any kind of representation is not following the relevant demographics, you are inherently saying that eg. 1 X = 2 Y, aka. discrimination based on gender. Which is text book sexism.

[Nathair]

39 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

No, I didn't say equal gender representation... I said equality between men and women.

 

No, you said words to the effect that a recruitment policy which takes gender into account is a demonstration of widespread female privilege. I can't quote it directly because you have deleted the original remarks and substituted something entirely new above my response. 

 

59 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

I believe in treating people equally. Sexism is sexism and I'll call it out where I see it.

 

Treating people equally is a nonsense goal. Working towards equality of opportunity in broader society is a much more rational approach but we are not talking about that here. NASA is working towards a particular outcome. What you are asking is that NASA implement a recruitment policy which pays attention to, and only to, the particular criteria which you think are important and has as its only goal the outcome which you prefer. Gender balance, quite obviously, not being one of those criteria in either methodology nor desired outcome. NASA, equally obviously, completely disagrees with your preferences. Either way, it is obvious that "No women would volunteer" is simply wrong.

 

1 hour ago, 78stonewobble said:

Preferentially treating one gender over the other would be pretty offensive and that's what CSA and NASA numbers put together suggest.

 

How can the gender ratio of applicants to the CSA possibly represent preferential treatment for women? Regardless, the point is that a substantial number of women do, did and would volunteer.

 

52 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

If one group is then disproportionately represented according to the relevant demographics, they are then privileged. If there is a system in place to guarantee, that women are picked preferentially over men, solely due to gender, then it is systematic sexism.

 

I am not going to get into a full-on debate about entitlement vs desert here nor about the ethical status of inclusivity policies or the myths of meritocracy, the KSP forums are emphatically not the place for that. We have, I believe, quite clearly established that the idea that any component or aspect of space exploration or colonization would or should just naturally or statistically be one hundred percent male is flatly incorrect. If you need a more complete explanation of why it is also pernicious and offensive another venue would be more appropriate.

[kerbiloid]

It's not sexism, it's positive discrimination.

[Mikki]

11 hours ago, Nathair said:

It is but, in this case, I lament more about the wasted opportunities. What would things look like today if they had said "Hell, yes!" to Jerrie Cobb?

Hi there, i`ve never heard of Ms. Cobb, googled now and i fully understand your opinion, as i said, time will change as i learned here about NASAs current gender policy.
Scandinavia and closer regiones have overcome sexism long time ago, and i am myself still deeply embarrassed about certain cultural communitys i`ve visited during my life. For the peace of this thread i end here for the better.

[IncongruousGoat]

10 hours ago, Carl said:

<snip> because if they're that wasteful of basics like water and carbon they're going to have major issues with everything else.

It's not a question of being wasteful. The problem here is you wouldn't be able to expand the population without bringing people from Earth. The carbon needed to make more people simply isn't present. Sure, perhaps not a problem for a scientific outpost... but a serious hindrance for a colony.

Also, on the subject of being harder to get to... From what I remember, transferring to the Moon is 3-3.1 km/s, plus 700 m/s to capture. Transfer to Mars is 3.5 km/s, plus aerobraking. The delta-V differences are close enough to be negligible. The tricky part about Mars is the travel time, and the aerobraking, not so much the delta-V.

Also, mass drivers are nice... but they're also very resource intensive and power intensive, and of course producing resources on the Moon is power intensive since you need a lot of electrolysis. This is a serious problem on the Moon, where your only power source is solar (well, nuclear too, but NASA would never go for that option), and the nights are 14 days long...

A colony is frankly not an economic prospect at this point. The real motivations to do it at this point are cool factor, human progress, and security of the species... none of which have any short-term economic prospects. And for each of those, Mars is a better candidate.

[Shpaget]

3 hours ago, Nathair said:

I'm not sure how you have moved this into the past tense, there are women astronauts today who want to go into space today.

You'll pardon me pointing out that you are the one that went into the past tense. All the way to "day one", if I remember correctly.

Yes, there are women who want to go to space today. There have been some for as long as the concept of going into space existed in our society. That is nowhere near my point.

3 hours ago, Nathair said:

We know this to be true. The Mars One project called for volunteers and received hundreds of thousands of application from men and women. Your speculations about an all-male volunteer cohort completely ignore the fact that as long as we've been doing this we have always had volunteers of both genders.

Probably, but the exact ratio isn't the issue here. NASA's current class is 50/50, CSA's most recent ratio was 70/30, Mars One's first round selection ratio was 55/45. Nowhere is there any justification whatsoever to even suggest that in the actual event of a colonization mission the gender ratio of volunteers would suddenly change to become 100% male.

I'm sure you didn't intend to be quite as thoroughly offensive as you just were.

I did not speculate on all male crew. I merely said that more men would volunteer for risky behavior than women, and you seem to agree with this notion.

Ratios of 50/50 and 70/30 are clear indication that a gender policy is in effect. So, if more men than women apply for the same job one would expect that the final gender ratio of individuals that were accepted is the same as the ratio of applicants. Since that is clearly not the case, women get the preferential treatment since some men who obtained better scores than some women were rejected simply because all male positions were already taken. This leads to an inferior candidate being employed simply based on gender, so the goal of 50/50 ratio can be met. This is by definition discrimination on the basis of sex, also known as sexism.

2 hours ago, Nathair said:

If you believe that equal gender representation in this arena is a demonstration of widespread female privilege then you are not calling out sexism, you are demonstrating it.

Not "widespread". This arena speaks only for itself.

1 hour ago, Nathair said:

No, you said words to the effect that a recruitment policy which takes gender into account is a demonstration of widespread female privilege.

Again, not widespread, but in this case yes.

1 hour ago, Nathair said:

 

Treating people equally is a nonsense goal. Working towards equality of opportunity in broader society is a much more rational approach but we are not talking about that here. NASA is working towards a particular outcome. What you are asking is that NASA implement a recruitment policy which pays attention to, and only to, the particular criteria which you think are important and has as its only goal the outcome which you prefer. Gender balance, quite obviously, not being one of those criteria in either methodology nor desired outcome. NASA, equally obviously, completely disagrees with your preferences.

Treating people equally should not only always be a goal, but doing the opposite is illegal in most western countries.

Working toward a goal is fine, but the method is also important.

Yes, gender balance should not be a goal. It should be a result. Forcin gender balance brings in inferior candidates that were preferentially picked over a more capable candidate of opposite sex.

 

1 hour ago, Nathair said:

Either way, it is obvious that "No women would volunteer" is simply wrong.

None of us said that.

1 hour ago, Nathair said:

 

How can the gender ratio of applicants to the CSA possibly represent preferential treatment for women? Regardless, the point is that a substantial number of women do, did and would volunteer.

If the ratio of applicants doesn't match the ratio of accepted candidates, there is something fishy.

 

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

It's not sexism, it's positive discrimination.

There is nothing positive about discrimination.

[Tyko]

17 hours ago, Carl said:

I haven;t read it but anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell you he''s wrong. The DV cost to get down to mars may be similar to the moon. Shipping anything useful back up from the surface, not so much, especially to LEO. The Moon also has damm near everything a space program might need in it's soil, Mars isn't as god AFAIK.

you lost me at "I haven't read it but he's wrong" ... that's an awesome basis for your argument.

[Nibb31]

The reason there were no female astronauts in early NASA was simply because astronauts were selected among the military test pilot corps and there were no female military pilots. It was thought that the skills and capabilities required to fly on rockets were close to the skills required. If there was any sexism it wasn't as much due to NASA policy, but due to military prejudices.

Those prejudices also existed in science and engineering careers too, which is why there were few female astronauts even after the test pilot profile was no longer the main requirement.

As for now, one of NASA's missions is to educate and inspire younger generations, including girls and kids from all sorts of minorites, into science and engineering careers. The Astronaut Corps is probably one of the most visible arms of NASA, therefore the bias towards gender parity and racial diversity is an absolute requirement in order to meet that goal. It's not discrimination, it's candidate selection geared towards creating a divers group capable of engaging with a diverse population.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Nibb31

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

This one is actually easy to solve:  you're the commander, so you stay behind.  If you're going to be the leader, then you need to know that your life is not your own to keep if the circumstances require that you lose it to save your crew.  Unless there is some special skill that makes the commander indispensable to the mission (not likely; redundant systems are the only way to fly in space, and besides, special skills are what mission specialists are for), the commander is automatically the one with the short straw.  Anyone who does differently isn't worthy of the job.

The actual reality of it is even simpler:  if you've got, say, an eight-person crew, what sane mission planner would include a rescue capsule with seven seats, or oxygen balloons to fit everyone except one?  Such a poor design is so far beyond stupid that I frankly don't think anyone needs worry about the public opinion of the crew because the ones responsible will have been crucified long before the capsule breaks orbit to return to Earth.

The far more likely case is one of two things:  either the problem will result in having empty seats, or the problem is so bad that no rescue is possible.  So the MAV really does tip over, or a micrometeorite hits the command module while the Eagle is down and Collins is the one who dies, or that sort of thing.  'Save all but one' stories only happen in Hollywood or when things have gone so wrong that heads will roll back at the Agency.

Agree here, space is an setting there either everybody or non survive an major catastrophe. Somebody dies because of suit fail during eva is not an major catastrophe, ship fail is.
Also the escape ship would also be the return ship on an space station or base, this is done in ISS now. On an Moon base it would work the same way.
Makes an interesting question, could an dragon 2 hold more crew than the 3-4 assigned in an emergency? I guess so, might even be an idea to have some emergency seats for this. 
 

[Carl]

1 hour ago, IncongruousGoat said:

It's not a question of being wasteful. The problem here is you wouldn't be able to expand the population without bringing people from Earth. The carbon needed to make more people simply isn't present. Sure, perhaps not a problem for a scientific outpost... but a serious hindrance for a colony.

Also, on the subject of being harder to get to... From what I remember, transferring to the Moon is 3-3.1 km/s, plus 700 m/s to capture. Transfer to Mars is 3.5 km/s, plus aerobraking. The delta-V differences are close enough to be negligible. The tricky part about Mars is the travel time, and the aerobraking, not so much the delta-V.

Also, mass drivers are nice... but they're also very resource intensive and power intensive, and of course producing resources on the Moon is power intensive since you need a lot of electrolysis. This is a serious problem on the Moon, where your only power source is solar (well, nuclear too, but NASA would never go for that option), and the nights are 14 days long...

A colony is frankly not an economic prospect at this point. The real motivations to do it at this point are cool factor, human progress, and security of the species... none of which have any short-term economic prospects. And for each of those, Mars is a better candidate.

I think your missing the key point here. We won't go to the moon or mars except to get resources. Of those two the Moon kicks the crap out of mars every which way. Power for it all is trivial again read the links i provided they worked all this out. Colonies in the sense of places where families can live and grow are a luxury we won't be doing for a very, very long time, by the time we do we'll have access to carbon and everything else from resource projects spread across everywhere from mercury to the kuiper belt. certainly i'm sure there will be the odd accidental pregnancy if the contraceptives aren't strait laced into food and drink, (unlikely for obvious allergic reaction reasons), but we won't be making babies up there anytime soon anymore than we will in Antarctica. And for the same basic reasons. It will be a resourcing and scientific endeavour and not an attempt to build space for billions to live, because to do the latter you have to build the former first.

 

Going to the moon or mars will never be about building living space. That will come later after we've got the necessary levels of large scale engineering done to build the necessary scale habitats to support a spaceborn population of that size.

 

1 hour ago, Tyko said:

you lost me at "I haven't read it but he's wrong" ... that's an awesome basis for your argument.

 

Yeah actually it is. I can do math, i know my science. The laws of physics and current known science and technology do not allow him to be right. I don't need to read the article to know he's wrong, it's a fact of physics and current tech levels that he's wrong. Sure if we were using torch ships you get to the point where the cost difference stops being large enough to matter it will be viable to forget about the moon. but unless someone produces a working torchship before we get started, the moon destroys mars in cost effectiveness. It may be about as cheap to get to mars, but it's nowhere near as cheap to get anything back from mars because you can't use an ultra cheap as chips mass driver, you have to use and incredibly wasteful rocket.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Carl

[IncongruousGoat]

1 minute ago, Carl said:

We won't go to the moon or mars except to get resources.

We won't even go to the Moon to get resources. It just doesn't make any sense-we're nowhere close to running out of mineral deposits here on Earth, and it's just more energy-efficient to dig up metal and refine it down here. Schlepping all the infrastructure needed to set up a serious mining/refining operation to the Moon is resource and time intensive, and to what end? It's more difficult to refine things on the Moon, since you don't have an extensive power grid in place, nor a handy supply of highly reactive gaseous oxygen, and then you need to send those resources to Earth (presumably), which means you're going to need to build a lot of throwaway capsules capable of surviving lunar re-entry when full to the brim with metal. Which is going to cut into your already-expensive production.

Mining the Moon at this point in time doesn't make sense. You can (maybe) make a case for the asteroid belt, but that's only because of the large quantities of precious metals (iridium, platinum, etc.) found there. And the asteroid belt has a whole host of problems.

[Carl]

Quote

We won't even go to the Moon to get resources. It just doesn't make any sense-we're nowhere close to running out of mineral deposits here on Earth, and it's just more energy-efficient to dig up metal and refine it down here. Schlepping all the infrastructure needed to set up a serious mining/refining operation to the Moon is resource and time intensive, and to what end? It's more difficult to refine things on the Moon, since you don't have an extensive power grid in place, nor a handy supply of highly reactive gaseous oxygen, and then you need to send those resources to Earth (presumably), which means you're going to need to build a lot of throwaway capsules capable of surviving lunar re-entry when full to the brim with metal. Which is going to cut into your already-expensive production.

Mining the Moon at this point in time doesn't make sense. You can (maybe) make a case for the asteroid belt, but that's only because of the large quantities of precious metals (iridium, platinum, etc.) found there. And the asteroid belt has a whole host of problems.

 

You seriously think were gonna build a massive space presence with resources shipped up from earth. Really? Unless we get a space elevator going that will never fly. Literally, the freight rate is enormous. Right now the proposed Falcon 9 Heavy would have a freight rate of $1700 a KG, the best the study could come up with ran to around $287-769, (EDIT: Updated the prior figures to be more acurratte), a KG in modern dollars. They envisaged making aluminum from moon rock at around $112 a KG, (they even detail the processes). Which do you want to pay?

 

Your right, shipping the stuff to earth surface would be a huge waste, but LEO, Geosync, the lagrange points. Thats primary locations for building all sorts of  stuff you could then use for other objectives. That problematic maybe profitable asteroid belt suddenly dosen;t look so bad when your costs are a quarter what they would be otherwise does it?

 

Your not wrong however, a lack of things earth needs in space is a big part of why we haven't done anything major up there. Sooner or later though something's going to come up, the asteroid belts is one thing, solar power sats are another, there's doubtless others. And plenty of scientific organisations would love to setup stuff up there, astronomers especially. Once somthing sufficiently profitable comes along we will go and when we do we'll need the industry to do it cheaply, and mining and smelting moon rock sure beats shipping it from earth surface.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Carl

[Tyko]

2 hours ago, Carl said:

Yeah actually it is. I can do math, i know my science. The laws of physics and current known science and technology do not allow him to be right. I don't need to read the article to know he's wrong, it's a fact of physics and current tech levels that he's wrong. Sure if we were using torch ships you get to the point where the cost difference stops being large enough to matter it will be viable to forget about the moon. but unless someone produces a working torchship before we get started, the moon destroys mars in cost effectiveness. It may be about as cheap to get to mars, but it's nowhere near as cheap to get anything back from mars because you can't use an ultra cheap as chips mass driver, you have to use and incredibly wasteful rocket.

Just to recap...(because apparently you don't like to read points before arguing against them) here are the two pieces of info I pulled from his book:

• On Delta-V, you can aerobrake on Mars, not on the Moon, so the Delta-V costs of send stuff to the surface are actually pretty similar. according the DV chart below. It costs ~13.1 DV to Mars with Aerobraking versus ~15.7 DV to Moon surface.
• On habitability, radiation is more of an issue for both humans and crops because the unfiltered solar radiation on the moon isn't good for crops. Also, harder to find water and many other necessary resources for survival meaning a lot more has to be carted in from Earth.

You'll note, that neither of those say anything about trans-shipping materials from Mars/Moon to anywhere...so what exactly are you saying he's wrong about?

[FleshJeb]

@Tyko As well as completely ignoring Phobos and Deimos.

http://www.csc.caltech.edu/talks/hopkins.pdf

http://www.planetary.brown.edu/planetary/geo287/PhobosDeimos/slides/Metzger - ISRU on Phobos and Deimos.pdf

Edited January 26, 2017 by FleshJeb
the summoning

[Carl]

Quote

You'll note, that neither of those say anything about trans-shipping materials from Mars/Moon to anywhere...so what exactly are you saying he's wrong about?

If your not interested in transhipping materials you have absolutely no reason to go to mars beyond building a science base, which is well outside the environs of this discussion, (but a perfectly valid reason to go, as i mentioned allready).

 

It comes back to the point that a large scale base anywhere suitable to be called a colony it will be because it has somthing we want, or it has somthing we need to get somthing we want. Resource exploitation basically. Mars is not well suited to this in the slightest for reasons i allready elaborated on, so unless somthing turn up there that we absolutely cannot do without or cannot get more easily elsewhere we won;t go, beyond science bases.

 

@FleshJob: I can't speak authoritatively on those two little devils, but i'd be surprised if it worked out cheaper than the moon, the whole point about using the moon is that by using a mass driver pointed at L2 (figuratively speaking, it fires stuff on a trajectory that takes it there i reality) you can bypass much of the d/v cost of transporting the resources to near earth space which for a variety of reasons (mostly relating to the point that Earth to LEO transport systems for the things you will need to ship up, (space industry heavily cuts down the amounts but it dosen;t eliminate some things), work best if the final destination is nearby to LEO).

 

That said i wouldn't be surprised if long term most of the planets with moons developed and equivalent setup over time as we move out system and they become good bases for projects furthar afield. But initially where gong to be working out of near earth space for logistics reasons, and i doubt Phobos or Deimos could be as cheap.

[IncongruousGoat]

@Carl The problem with that thinking is that there aren't sufficient resources on the Moon to make that work. To start, a lack of copper, which you would need for wire for power systems. Sure, you could ship it up from Earth... but then we're shipping stuff from Earth. Avionics pose a different problem-there's no feasible way to build up enough infrastructure on the Moon to permit fabrication of the sorts of solid-state electronic you would need for spacecraft avionics. You probably wouldn't be able to make engines, either, because of a lack of the kinds of precision machining you would need to make turbopumps. Fuel would also prove problematic. It would have to be LH-LOX or LH NTR, since the Moon lacks the carbon, nitrogen, chlorine, and fluorine needed for any other propellant combinations. Unfortunately, both require hydrogen.. which you would have to extract from the scant supplies of water present on the Moon. Fuel tanks would also be a problem, since you would (somehow) have to manufacture cryogenic tanks using only resources on the Moon... And, on that subject, if you want to use NTRs you have to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon, find uraninite (somehow), and refine it (somehow). All of which are problematic. Of course, you could ship the uranium from Earth... but that's dangerous and expensive, since uranium is so heavy.

In short, building things on the Moon sounds like a nice idea due to the composition of the regolith, until one starts looking at what that would actually entail.

[Carl]

You do know theres a hell of a lot of aluminium wire out there right?

 

More importantly ass i noted, people a lot more knowledge than us sat down and determined that actually, yes it is possibble.

 

I'm also not sure why you think this or that or the other would be missing. Again please for gods sake go read the damned links they talk about several aspects of this in there, and thats just the layman's version, not the super detailed scientific papers they produced that would doubtless bamboozle us both. That said they do emphasise the point, don't expect to build most things the way you would on earth, it will be different. Thats how space is going to have to be unless we get a space elevator because thats what is affordable.

[FleshJeb]

@Carl You've been making some interesting points, but personally, I think Mars takes higher priority, because it's the only place we'll be able to do effective terraforming in the not-too-distant future.

This was an interesting and fairly brief write up about mining Phobos and Deimos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/25/735153/-

P&D are actually less dV to do round trips to than the surface of the Moon. Delta-V map

From the Moon transfer point to X and back:

Moon surface = 5.100 km/s

Deimos surface = 4.292 km/s

Phobos surface = 4.882 km/s

I think near-earth asteroids are still the smallest delta-V, and the best choice for resource extraction.

 

[Carl]

I'll go over that article in a moment, (enjoying some chem articles again atm :p), but as far as the dv, again your ignoring the problem that moon mining puts the rock on a lunar escape trajectory with a mass driver, per your own dv map that removes a huge chunk of the dv cost. it drop from 3.23kps of transfer velocity to Geosync to just 0.68. Thus it's just 0.68kps. Deimos is still 2.17kps if you assume same launch method off deimos surface to near mars space.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Carl

[Carl]

Nice article. His argument of using lightsails bothers me for one simple reason. It doesn't look workable for large payload sizes. You can talk about continuous small accelerations all you want but eventually you reach a point of having issues of scale, either in flight time or numbers. I'm also not sure how they're supposed to get out of mars SOI, (yes i know it's n body physics IRL, shorthand ok), or brake at earth SOI, the earth braking burn in particular would need quite a sudden braking.

 

That said as a huge solar sail fan i heartily approve of this concept :). I'm just not sure it would be as cheap as he proposes, and i have severe doubts about it's ability to handle large amounts, (it also probably wouldn't be viable with a mass catcher style system, a lightsail tug big enough to handle the inertia of the rock catching would be too heavy to be practical IMO), but dang is it cool. Have a like :).

 

EDIT: I ran his numbers through the Dollar tiems converter, about $0.93 a KG which is a good bit higher, though he was converting to 2009 dollars.

 

As a p.s. If i seem to be taking the book i linked a bit seriously bear in mind i'm aware it has some flaws within, some are quite obvious, a few bits are based on theoretical science and in those cases, science has in some area's marched on. But at the same time you will see other authors time and time again re-using their work or bits thereof. The fact that it's so much a gold standard on the actual colonies end, (even if the moon mining to actually build it is so often forgotten), makes me take it seriously in a general sense because others take it seriously who are academics and supposed experts of one kind or another in the field.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Carl