The Space Review: "Why a business case for Mars settlement is not required"

[DDE]

This one is really, really bad.

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Some people have claimed that a “business case” for profitable interplanetary trade with a Mars settlement, or at least the identification a saleable product for trade, is required before such a settlement can be established or supported by business or government. But there is no reasonable prospect for trade in any significant mass of physical material from a Mars settlement back to Earth in the near future due to the high transport costs. In his recent article in the National Review, “Elon Musk’s Plan to Settle Mars,” Robert Zubrin makes exactly the same point: a business case based on physical trade is not necessary and makes little sense. Later trade and commerce via non-physical goods such as software is probable once a settlement is fully operational. More significant and interesting economic situations will occur on Mars.

A good model for the expenditures needed to found colonies is the Greek and Phoenician expansion all across the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas in the period early in Greek history (before about 600 BC), leading to the founding of one of the greatest trading cities in history, Carthage. The cities who founded each colony did not expect immediate profit, but wanted good places for an expanding population

Lemme stop you right there.

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The Phoenician cities were highly dependent on both land- and seaborne trade and their cities included a number of major ports in the area. In order to provide a resting place for their merchant fleets, to maintain a Phoenician monopoly on an area's natural resource, or to conduct trade on its own, the Phoenicians established numerous colonial cities along the coasts of the Mediterranean, stretching from Iberia to the Black Sea. They were stimulated to found their cities by a need for revitalizing trade in order to pay the tribute extracted from Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos by the succession of empires that ruled them and later by fear of complete Greek colonization of that part of the Mediterranean suitable for commerce. 

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Population growth created a scarcity of farm land and a restriction of the ability of smallholders to farm it, which was similar in every [Greek] city-state. In places with surplus population, this led to a demand for additional living space. The location of each colonial establishment was dictated by the supply of unexploited resources which would provision the metropolis, as well as the finished goods it would produce. The development of the emporium was among the more important motivations for the founding of a colony.

This guy is supposed to be an uberbuff with the National Space Society, but he's rolling out the usual overpopulation canard.

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When European colonies were first established in the New World by Spain and Portugal, the emphasis was initially on a search for treasure, not production of products. English and Dutch colonies later led the way to commerce across the Atlantic, with tobacco, sugar, and cotton suddenly becoming a major part of world trade.

TIL gold and silver aren't products.

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A look at some of the steps required to create a Mars settlement will help us understand at least a little about Mars settlement economics. For a Mars settlement, motivation and economics are interwoven. It is possible for at least a partial business case to be made for the transport of settlers and the materials they will need to initiate some phase of Mars settlement.

And, just like that, a vague appeal to Say's Law, and the remaining 80% of the article are a mire - a voluminous but generic description of a Mars colony.

No business case made. You wouldn't even remember about the business case by the time you reach the end.

Spoiler

 

Rating:

 

 

[Bill Phil]

We literally have no way of launching enough people to lower the growth rate, assuming we even had a place to send them.

We'd have to build launch loops or orbital rings to get enough throughput. 

And of course that's assuming that Mars is even a good place to settle (it's not). The only habitable place in this solar system is Earth - followed by the ISS very, very far behind. Maybe even further behind is the upper atmosphere of Venus.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

We literally have no way of launching enough people to lower the growth rate, assuming we even had a place to send them.

We'd have to build launch loops or orbital rings to get enough throughput. 

And of course that's assuming that Mars is even a good place to settle (it's not). The only habitable place in this solar system is Earth - followed by the ISS very, very far behind. Maybe even further behind is the upper atmosphere of Venus.

This, add to the issue that the rich countries tend to have low or negative population growth, we don't have an lack of land either. 
Now earth orbit is an beachhead, agree with Bezos  here, lots of business cases in orbit, many exists today, but easy to add more who also require humans, close term is tourism, zero-g manufacturing, assembly of large structures like 100 meters antennas. maintenance of systems in orbits. 

Long term its the port between earth and deep space, Moon, Mars the asteroids and farther. All passes trough earth orbit. 
NASA know this, they want an commercially operated space station as the  ISS replacement. They want to buy beds, hotel and ship services and berthing ports for their modules. others can launch stuff and get it tested by station engines or have their own modules and astonauts. 

[mikegarrison]

Let's face it -- if people go to Mars it's going to be because they want to go to Mars, not because of a "business case".

Not everything in this universe is about "business cases".

[kerbiloid]

When the interplanetary flight gets as cheap as domestic airplane flight.

[mikegarrison]

16 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

When the interplanetary flight gets as cheap as domestic airplane flight.

That will happen when the energy required for interplanetary flight is the same as a domestic airplane flight, which is to say, "never".

[Shpaget]

I too never understood the fantasies of Mars based business.

No point on Earth is as barren and desolate as the richest and lushest place on Mars, so comparing colonization and expansion on Earth to that on Mars is not sensible. On Earth, you can go in any direction and be fairly certain to find something of worth. Even when traversing the vastness of the Pacific ocean with weeks of no land in sight you are provided with a pleasant, hospitable and bountiful environment compared to the literally endless dessert of Mars where only variation in landscape is dust or sand. Not even the air on Mars is any good. Other than scientific data, nothing on Mars is of interest, as long as tickets prices are out of reach for practically everybody. There are so many space related stuff humanity should do before concentrating on Mars that we have decades, if not centuries of development before we should establish a sizable colony on the Ol' Dusty.

[mikegarrison]

13 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

I too never understood the fantasies of Mars based business.

No point on Earth is as barren and desolate as the richest and lushest place on Mars, so comparing colonization and expansion on Earth to that on Mars is not sensible. On Earth, you can go in any direction and be fairly certain to find something of worth. Even when traversing the vastness of the Pacific ocean with weeks of no land in sight you are provided with a pleasant, hospitable and bountiful environment compared to the literally endless dessert of Mars where only variation in landscape is dust or sand. Not even the air on Mars is any good. Other than scientific data, nothing on Mars is of interest, as long as tickets prices are out of reach for practically everybody. There are so many space related stuff humanity should do before concentrating on Mars that we have decades, if not centuries of development before we should establish a sizable colony on the Ol' Dusty.

But ... people are a social species. People are interested in people! There will never be as much interest (other than by selected scientists) in unmanned space exploration as there is in manned space exploration. People will support what they are interested in, not what brings in the data most cost-efficiently.

[Guest]

Actually, I'm not sure about the cost efficiency of unmanned probes. People overestimate their capabilities and data output. Just look at how much, in terms of raw data, we got out of Apollo landings, compared to all unmanned lunar probes before or since. Automation had progressed, but so had manned research equipment. If we could set up a lab on Mars, the sheer amount of data that we'd get, pre-processed on site and transferred at a vastly higher rate than any unmanned mission could hope for, would dwarf everything we'd have learned so far. To gather that data using unmanned probes, it would require years, possibly decades of unmanned operations, and these have their costs, too, which may seem lower, but spread over such a long time, might end up totaling just as much as a manned mission. 

[Scotius]

Not to mention explorers and adventurers. People who climb Himalayas without oxygen supply. Who freedive in dark caves. Who cross Antarctica on foot. Free spirits who would prefer to die on Mars sand than in office chair.

[mikegarrison]

When Shackleton organized his trans-Antarctica expedition (the famous one where his ship sank and he had to sail for rescue), it was paid for mainly by rich private backers. He also sold exclusive rights to a newspaper and brought along film and photography equipment with the intention of making back some of the money that way. He later went on a lecture tour and wrote a book ("South", I recommend it highly).

[Shpaget]

I'm not against manned exploration of Mars, far from it. I'd volunteer to be on the first ship to go there. I'm not even going to insist on coming back. I just don't see much sense in establishing a 1000+ population colony there. Not yet. Not while there is room and stuff to do in LEO, on and around the Moon and in the asteroid belt.

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

That will happen when the energy required for interplanetary flight is the same as a domestic airplane flight, which is to say, "never".

Care to compare cost of rail travel to air travel in the USA?  As far as I know, air travel has energy costs similar to car travel while rail costs are somewhat above sea shipping but far lower than everything else.  There's always the chance that the cost of domestic air travel gets quite expensive.

Of course the real cost of interplanetary flight likely will be maintaining the passenger cabin.  Unless you have some sort of cold sleep, costs will be similar to oceanliners in terms of crew and wages.  Travel to Mars and Venus doesn't require all that much more energy than LEO (which might be used as a hub for intra-planetary travel for all I know).

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

That will happen when the energy required for interplanetary flight is the same as a domestic airplane flight, which is to say, "never".

It's not the absolute energy requirement, it's the energy cost. And the labor cost, and everything else. 

And even ignoring that, as humanity accesses more and more energy, the relative energy cost of interplanetary flight will eventually approach the relative energy cost of domestic airplane flights.

Once we have more energy, our options expand.

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

Actually, I'm not sure about the cost efficiency of unmanned probes. People overestimate their capabilities and data output. Just look at how much, in terms of raw data, we got out of Apollo landings, compared to all unmanned lunar probes before or since. Automation had progressed, but so had manned research equipment. If we could set up a lab on Mars, the sheer amount of data that we'd get, pre-processed on site and transferred at a vastly higher rate than any unmanned mission could hope for, would dwarf everything we'd have learned so far. To gather that data using unmanned probes, it would require years, possibly decades of unmanned operations, and these have their costs, too, which may seem lower, but spread over such a long time, might end up totaling just as much as a manned mission. 

Cassini alone provided 444 gigabytes of scientific data. And newer probes will only be better at providing scientific data.

Apollo isn't actually a good example - it was never a scientific program as its main focus. Yes experiments were done, but they weren't the reason they went to the Moon. With an infrastructure that allows regular spaceflight to the Moon we could do far more science there, with or without crews.  Only one scientist went to the Moon on an Apollo mission. But if we could actually deploy a few hundred scientists, maybe thousands, to the Moon, along with research equipment? Then we'd be cooking with gas.

Crews will be faster than unmanned rovers, and they have advantages for some specific scientific enquiries. But in general probes are better at gathering data.

However, as preparation for a manned mission and during the manned mission itself, a lot of science will be done to support the mission. This alone would provide immense science. And we get a manned mission to boot.

[RCgothic]

Honestly I'm the short term we'd be better-off building earth-like habitats with 1G centrifugal gravity near to whichever asteroid we're extracting resources from than trying to make do in non-ideal gravity on Mars.

[StrandedonEarth]

Of course there's no apparent business case, at this point in time.. There's nothing there worth the expense of getting it back up the hill to orbit, never mind all the way to Terra Firma. But having read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, I believe the chief export from Mars will be intellectual property, in the form of tech development. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all, and the challenges of surviving on Mars will inspire solutions that we can't even imagine on Earth, and we can't trial-and-error any solutions unless we're there. Granted, solutions there may not apply on Earth or anywhere else in the Solar System, but some might. Beyond that, I'm sure artists would be inspired in new directions, with some very still lack-of-life landscape paintings. Perhaps the next musical sensation will be a 'lith'n'roll supergroup extolling the harsh beauty of the barren landscape

[Wjolcz]

Mars has a lot of science to be done on and below its surface. And it's got a lot of that surface.

I can easily imagine having a couple (or maybe even dozens?) of McMurdo-like bases from which the staff would perform rover excursions and suborbital hops to more remote places. Science is not really business and this kind of stuff would be financed by countries or maybe even internationally.

I really don't think we will be able to answer the question unless somebody goes there and digs more than a few centimitres into the regolith.

And as noted by others in this thread: Silicon Valley isn't named that because it exports raw silicon.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Wjolcz

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Cassini alone provided 444 gigabytes of scientific data. And newer probes will only be better at providing scientific data.

Cassini mostly sent pictures. You don't need humans if that's all you want to do. On Mars, there's much more to do than taking pictures. In fact, you can safely leave deep space missions out of this because in deep space, all you need to gather data is be in a particular location in space, then read the relevant sensor readings. 

In fact, when you look at what probes can do, well, here's it: they take pictures, with various kinds of cameras, radars and spectrometers, and do a bit of other science on the side. Latest Mars rovers have a chem lab, but it's rather wimpy compared to what you could pack into a manned mission. Probes are not better at gathering data in general, because they're very limited in types of data and samples they can take, much more so than a bunch of humans. "Chem labs" packed onto probes consist of a few canned experiments, give a human chemist a properly equipped lab and a supply of reagents (not a whole lot by weight, even, I routinely worked with microliter amounts), and you'll get several orders of magnitude more combinations that you could pack onto a probe. If you're gonna do serious geological work, you need a human crew down there, with a great big drill and a properly equipped soil analysis lab.

5 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Apollo isn't actually a good example - it was never a scientific program as its main focus. Yes experiments were done, but they weren't the reason they went to the Moon. With an infrastructure that allows regular spaceflight to the Moon we could do far more science there, with or without crews.  Only one scientist went to the Moon on an Apollo mission. But if we could actually deploy a few hundred scientists, maybe thousands, to the Moon, along with research equipment? Then we'd be cooking with gas.

Apollo is a great example, though a little unusual. It didn't only bring scientists to the Moon. It brought the Moon to scientists. Between all the Apollo missions, they've brought back about 350kg of moon rocks. Unmanned? 300 grams. And these 350kg were pre-selected for being interesting, as opposed to being in a good place for a landing. Apollo advanced lunar research by decades. You couldn't do that with automated sample return back then, and even now, it would take much longer than a single Apollo mission to gather 100+ kg of interesting-looking rocks. You can have a smaller vehicle, but you need to keep your ground team on station for all that time, along with all the mission support infrastructure. That's expensive, too, Apollo 17 wrapped up in two weeks, for a rover like Curiosity to gather that much rock it'd likely take more on order of two years (not sure how much Perseverance is going to keep in its sample holder).

[wafflemoder]

Mars is basically a worse antarctica, and antarctica is basically empty.

The cases for science, tourism, and industry are all basically the same for antarctica and mars, with resource claims being equally difficult. Antarctica is more accessible (being on earth), and is far more habitable than Mars, and has been occupied for around a century, and yet it still has only a temporary population of only a few thousand.

As much as I hate to say it, not much will happen on Mars even with cheap transportation.

[Raven Industries]

I will have to agree that a manned mission would likely result in much more interesting information than any unmanned mission. One thing that was briefly mentioned but not elaborated on is maneuverability: Curiosity, in its 7 and a half or so years of service, has driven about 22 km. Apollo 17 covered over 30 km in about 4 and a half hours (over a few days on the lunar surface). Adding a generous amount of time for different circumstances and collection of samples, a few astronauts on Mars with a rover could do in a week what Curiosity has taken over 7 years to accomplish. 

As far as whether a permanent presence on Mars goes, I hate to admit that there's little reason to stay with more than a small research team. However, there is one potential export a colony on Mars could provide which has been more or less overlooked: Good feelings for billionaires looking for a cause to support. Evidence suggests it's an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars, growing every day. 

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

That will happen when the energy required for interplanetary flight is the same as a domestic airplane flight, which is to say, "never".

When the cost of the energy will be less than cost of servicing, so when advanced thermonukes come.

But at once that will mean that it's cheaper to import things from the Earth than manufacture them on the Mars.

People fly by planes because the cost of the air trip got comparable to the car trip, if include all payments and disadvantages of the latter.

P.S.

Spoiler

Mars can be an off-shore.

 

[mikegarrison]

33 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

People fly by planes because the cost of the air trip got comparable to the car trip, if include all payments and disadvantages of the latter.

 

People fly by planes because have you ever tried driving from New York to London?

Plus, it's way faster.

[DDE]

9 hours ago, Shpaget said:

I too never understood the fantasies of Mars based business.

They are an attempt to skip past the

6 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

McMurdo-like bases

due to a general disappointment in government-led spaceflight - and hence to a large degree science-led spaceflight. The space buffs start with the desired conclusion of a sustainable Mars settlement, and chart what they think is the most efficient way towards it, while falling prey to the well-known 'final frontier' libertarian bias of Anglophone space buffs. For many in our merry band, a return to state domination in spaceflight is anathema.

[kerbiloid]

44 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

People fly by planes because have you ever tried driving from New York to London?

I could drive to Moscow and back by train or by bus but always preferred planes.

[IncongruousGoat]

5 hours ago, wafflemoder said:

Mars is basically a worse antarctica, and antarctica is basically empty.

I find the Antarctica comparison not particularly compelling, for several reasons. First, Antarctica is actually worse (i.e. less habitable) than Mars by some measures. There's less available sunlight, especially during the winter months, meaning less consistently available solar power, and Earth's atmosphere is much thicker than Mars's, which corresponds to faster heat loss. Beyond that, though, there are several international treaties preventing any and all exploitation of Antarctic resources for economic gain, by public or private entities. The population of Antarctica is low because, beyond anything else, it's illegal to do anything there other than research. Were that not the case, I'm sure we would see mining and oil towns in Antarctica, and at least one settlement that could be described as a city (to function as a port of entry, among other things). The population wouldn't be high, by any means - but it would be a lot higher than what it is today.