SpaceX Mars City Buildings / Plan

[JacobCooper]

I think this image has nothing in common with reality. I heard Elon Musk mentioned that SpaceX could build a city on Mars, but the image you attached is fake. People on Mars are supposed to live in so-called glass domes. However, no one knows when this moment comes. Nowadays, engineers put effort into constructing a spacecraft that can send people to Mars, so it's too early to talk about the colonization of Mars.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

38 minutes ago, JacobCooper said:

People on Mars are supposed to live in so-called glass domes.

Have you seen the surface?  Concrete bunkers and subterranean tunnels would likely be a better fit. 

 

Aside from putting up small research stations - I think it unlikely to colonize Mars.  We've certainly not colonized Antarctica (and are not likely to, any time soon). 

I understand the desire to have a breeding population on another rock - but as others have mentioned, people do not upend their lives and move to unbelievably different environments for simple egalitarianism. 

Now, if Perseverance discovered a vein of Impossiblium that will power FTL drives, and it turns out that people willing to do incredibly dangerous mining are certain to get rich... An entire economy of support and prey will spring up over night resulting in a colony. 

 

[tater]

While I agree there is no economic rationale for Mars colonization (or even a way to support it partially), Antarctica is not colonized because it is off limits to do so. Otherwise at the very least it would probably be covered with oil rigs and the men to work them.

[kerbiloid]

The Last Land Standing.

(Feel free to use as a sci-fi movie title)

[sh1pman]

15 minutes ago, tater said:

While I agree there is no economic rationale for Mars colonization (or even a way to support it partially)

Well, it would be a great jobs program for tens of thousands of engineers and scientists here on Earth.

[tater]

2 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Well, it would be a great jobs program for tens of thousands of engineers and scientists here on Earth.

Not really, since the money doesn't go to Congressional districts. Even the supplies, and construction stuff would be more efficiently purchased, and not bought to maximize the money spent as pork.

[kerbiloid]

If Perseverance finds out remains of the alien derelict perseverances in two last gigayears...

[YNM]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Aside from putting up small research stations - I think it unlikely to colonize Mars.  We've certainly not colonized Antarctica (and are not likely to, any time soon). 

I understand the desire to have a breeding population on another rock - but as others have mentioned, people do not upend their lives and move to unbelievably different environments for simple egalitarianism. 

2 hours ago, tater said:

While I agree there is no economic rationale for Mars colonization (or even a way to support it partially)

I honestly wonder if the continued weirding of the conditions down here on Earth would eventually push the precedent for developing the means for living on completely uninhabitable world further, however. While this would still have no effect on the fact that economic incentives of living on Mars itself be close to nil it'd at least raise the incentive on technological developments that'd enable the activity at one point.

Edited February 22, 2021 by YNM

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Not really, since the money doesn't go to Congressional districts. Even the supplies, and construction stuff would be more efficiently purchased, and not bought to maximize the money spent as pork.

If it is on Elon Musk's dime (presumably some coming from customers), it will be efficiently purchased.  Probably by purchasing the supplying companies and vertical integration.  Bezos would be even more capable of this, but he's never mentioned an interest.

If it is on NASA's dime, the money will maximize pork at the expense of nearly all else.  There are plenty of costs simply "baked in" to following all those regulations (safety regulations are written in blood, purchasing regulations are written in the red ink of fraud) and any congresscritters interested in running again won't ignore their own districts.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

If Perseverance finds out remains of the alien derelict perseverances in two last gigayears...

I wouldn't be that surprised if the dinosaurs manged to get off the planet.  That said, it made a lot more sense to assume that an asteroid was intentionally captured and decayed after the dino civilization collapsed.  A comet seems a bit less likely.

[tater]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

If it is on NASA's dime, the money will maximize pork at the expense of nearly all else.  There are plenty of costs simply "baked in" to following all those regulations (safety regulations are written in blood, purchasing regulations are written in the red ink of fraud) and any congresscritters interested in running again won't ignore their own districts.

Colonization never happens by government. What would cost a trillion for private industry would cost some large multiple of that with government involvement.

That's why I've never been sanguine about the notion of a colony on Mars (or anywhere else). I see no plausible business model, so it relies upon someone with a LOT of their own money doing it with no expected return on investment.

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Bezos would be even more capable of this, but he's never mentioned an interest.

Bezos is interested in "millions of people living and working in space" but he's one of Gerry's kids, so spun orbital colonies.

There is actually a possible economic case for space-based industry once reusable rockets are fully a thing. Secure resources in space. Use them to build factories to make things for Earth. Bringing stuff DOWN is pretty straightforward. The millions of people, OTOH... that's an anachronism to the 1970s, IMO. Doing things with robots seems far easier than sending "organic robots" to do the labor (then supplying them, etc).

I suppose if they can create the robotic infrastructure to mine asteroids brought into cislunar space, then robotic factories to turn them into products, they can create the robots to build human habitats.

I suppose that's the critical point, and where perhaps I see Bezos as more likely to be right—even for Mars colonization if that is a goal someone has.

Given:

1. Resources exist in space to build pretty much anything we're interested in (seems like the trickiest might be mass quantities of nitrogen for habitats), and can be cost-effectively moved to cislunar.

2. Robotic factories can produce and assemble complex tech for us.

3. Human habitation anywhere off Earth is a 100% built environment, doesn't matter where, there is no destination for humans without building that destination FIRST.

We can have economics in place to move such industry to space. The capability that allows building a factory in space, gives us the ability to have those same robots build habitats, cities, whatever. Once built, THEN send the humans, as they will have someplace to go.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, YNM said:

I honestly wonder if the continued weirding of the conditions down here on Earth would eventually push the precedent for developing the means for living on completely uninhabitable world further

The direction of the climate change is unlikely to drive people to flee the planet in any conceivable 'short term'.  The presumption is that our political unwillingness to reign in industrial and commercial pollution is causing a warming trend.  For humans, this is generally a good thing.  Or at least far better than a cooling trend.  Whether you look at the Medieval Warm period or the Little Ice Age, people seem to handle warm far better than cold.  Further - if you look at Siberia and Canada - those are two places that will actually benefit from higher global temperatures - at the cost of some low lying islands and coastal terrain in other parts of the world. 

 

The economic impact of forcing migration to other parts of the planet is far less than trying to move significant numbers of people to space. 

The 'selfish' principle basically shows that people will basically go where they have the greatest chance to improve their self interest.  And I do not think that space is going to be more attractive than recently thawed permafrost any time soon. 

[YNM]

13 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The direction of the climate change is unlikely to drive people to flee the planet in any conceivable 'short term'.  The presumption is that our political unwillingness to reign in industrial and commercial pollution is causing a warming trend.  For humans, this is generally a good thing.  Or at least far better than a cooling trend.  Whether you look at the Medieval Warm period or the Little Ice Age, people seem to handle warm far better than cold.

I'm not sure if you've heard both of Texas freezing off in winter, or that there are island nations that are just sinking off. It's not making the weather more mild - it's making the weather more extreme, you get extra cold winters and extra hot summers. 'Soon' it'll all be like that spot in Siberia where it hits -70 deg C in winter while in summer it goes off to 40 deg C.

And at that point in time you'd need some place to live that'd shield us completely from outside conditions I suppose, about as good to be able to be used on Mars...

Edited February 22, 2021 by YNM

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Weather is not climate.  

The engineering requirement and economic cost to protect Texans from Once-in-a-Decade events is far less than the same to put even 1/10 of the population of Texas into space.   

Note: I'm not arguing that continued pollution of our environment is acceptable. 

[YNM]

39 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Once-in-a-Decade events

Do you know that your standard building is designed to not collapse in a once-in-a-2500-year earthquake event ? And most residential use buildings are designed against 300-year winds ? And 100-year floodplains exists for a reason ?

With climate and weather the events are going to happen even more frequently in the future. You need to prepare for them sooner or later.

And I'm not saying to send them off to another planet. I'm just saying that at some point the requirement to live here on Earth might be about the same as living on Mars. Whether the technology developed to be able to live in such conditions would be developed here on Earth hastily or whether we'll adapt them from our Mars initiatives, we'll see about that in the future.

Edited February 22, 2021 by YNM

[tater]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

I'm not sure if you've heard both of Texas freezing off in winter, or that there are island nations that are just sinking off. It's not making the weather more mild - it's making the weather more extreme, you get extra cold winters and extra hot summers. 'Soon' it'll all be like that spot in Siberia where it hits -70 deg C in winter while in summer it goes off to 40 deg C.

TX had a couple similar cold runs (~0F) about 100 years ago.  Given the mm levels of seal level increases annually (~3mm/yr the last few thousand years compared to 10mm/year for 12k years in a row previously), I don't think any islands are going away any time soon due to climate issues, certainly not faster than people can move.

The real change in "average" temp (not that average temp has much if any real word meaning) is likely much closer to 1.5°C per century best case than the worst case notions (8.5° per IPCC) that have been pitched now for over 20 years (and have not matched observational data).

Any problems will be in "slow motion," and are entirely manageable even if we did nothing at all to moderate carbon—and we are not doing nothing (natural gas has resulted in the US beating other places literally without signing things that are all signalling, no action). It's not like a movie where one day a giant wave comes and kills people. Barely occupied beach houses might eventually become at risk, and the rich people who own them will be out their investment (and the slightly less rich people a few blocks in will now own beachfront homes). People would move as needed. Some areas will switch from one sort of crop to another, and areas too cold for crops could now grow them. Change, not disaster, and again, in slow motion. All tech changes that will likely do the actual dial-moving are already in place, with lower powered devices, all we need are more nukes and we could switch a lot to carbon free (imagine how great the US would be doing minus the fear mongering people of the 70s killing clean power here).

No climate issues on Earth—even the "not going to happen" worst case—result in an Earth that is not still grossly superior to Mars. There really is not an eco-catastrophe possible to change this. Earth is the best planet we will ever have, and any alternate will be a distant second place.

Maybe if they can make arbitrarily long nanotubes, etc, they cam make a 6500km circumference "orbital" a la Iain M. Banks that might be decently nice to live in, but short of that... It's Earth, and crappy bunker living as the alternative.

Bottom line is that Earth climate is no good reason to colonize a place that is awful by comparison.

37 minutes ago, YNM said:

And I'm not saying to send them off to another planet. I'm just saying that at some point the requirement to live here on Earth might be about the same as living on Mars.

No. Not remotely plausible.

[YNM]

38 minutes ago, tater said:

Change, not disaster, and again, in slow motion.

Might also be disasters, ie. floods, which means you have to spend the money moving everyone or build things so it doesn't flood in the area (but it's not the best way out). There're also the storms. In reverse you get droughts like the water shortages in CA.

38 minutes ago, tater said:

No climate issues on Earth—even the "not going to happen" worst case—result in an Earth that is not still grossly superior to Mars. There really is not an eco-catastrophe possible to change this. Earth is the best planet we will ever have, and any alternate will be a distant second place.

Within the next few hundred years, sure. Beyond that, who knows.

Although like I said it's not really the 'living on Mars' necessarily, it can be other things like how to conserve resources etc. which might come back down here. (or maybe lunar outpost is more than enough really.)

Edited February 22, 2021 by YNM

[sh1pman]

51 minutes ago, tater said:

and areas too cold for crops could now grow them.

Banana plantations in the Arctic, yes please. Before taking about terraforming Mars, let’s terraform Earth first!

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

22 minutes ago, YNM said:

Might also be disasters, ie. floods, which means you have to spend the money moving everyone or build things so it doesn't flood in the area (but it's not the best way out). There're also the storms. In reverse you get droughts like the water shortages in CA.

Within the next few hundred years, sure. Beyond that, who knows.

Although like I said it's not really the 'living on Mars' necessarily, it can be other things like how to conserve resources etc. which might come back down here. (or maybe lunar outpost is more than enough really.)

History is a funny thing.  We tend to forget it.  And then, when something happens that has happened before, we are surprised and liquided about it.  Texans are liquided about the cold snap and failure of power, gas and water to mitigate this; but they forget the decades of decisions leading up to where they are now.  Italy wanted to prosecute (hell, they did prosecute) scientists for failing to predict with precision that a volcano would erupt.  And yet, people who lived in the area knew they were building and living on a volcano - but were surprised and liquided when it killed them.  

 

Thing is - there have always been natural disasters.  There always will be - as long as we live on a dynamic wet rock capable of producing and sustaining an atmosphere.  But - I would argue that 'disasters are worse now' not because of our technology, economy and exhaust... but because we have more people.  So, it makes sense to have policies that protect those people and anticipate recurring, if unpredictable with precision problems.

But refer back to what I wrote before: the selfishness principle will always favor decisions that bolster short term profit at the cost of long term good.  We just need enough other people to selfishly guard their interest in a clean environment and healthy children to offset the bastads who want to dump PCBs into the water supply because its cheaper

[YNM]

11 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

But - I would argue that 'disasters are worse now' not because of our technology, economy and exhaust... but because we have more people.

In some cases, ie. when the source are geological in nature, the answer is "yes", but when the source aren't geological, the answer is "no". Weather and climate related disasters falls on the second part. There are already calls that perhaps not even the 100-year floodplain using available data (which are often inadequate in places where there weren't people before and where the technology isn't as good in the past) is enough for future planning, perhaps a 500-year or even 1000-year using current data is needed just to match the upcoming trends. The same planning arguably should go with water availability (river baseflow) to deal with droughts but it remains to be seen as dealing with not enough water usually went to justify more elaborate way to secure them (either taking from river basins further away or just straight up from the sea).

ASCE has also raised the requirement for wind resistance for certain utilization risk categories from 1700-year winds to 3000-year winds (previously only reserved for the most important of buildings ie. schools and emergency buildings), but alongside this they've published a revised wind map that reduces the wind strength in a few places. Arguably this might be more due to the previously lower category is now regarded as being as important in events of a disaster for things like temporary shelter etc. rather than a real increase of the maximum sustained wind speed (3 sec) due to increased rate of storms.

 

Although arguably if we had less people we might've caused less damage that later went and haunt us.

Edited February 23, 2021 by YNM

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

9 minutes ago, YNM said:

arguably if we had less people we might've caused less damage

I'm old enough to remember us catching rivers on fire (in the US).  I also remember the fear that if we did not take steps to stop the population explosion and cap population at 4.5 Billion, we would see mass death from starvation.  History books tell me about the horrors of London's past Air pollution, the Great Stink & the Great Smog | Museum of London but it's not such a bad place now.

While 'people' may have created many of the problems people face in our environments, people are also proving (time and again) to be the solution.

 

 

[mrfox]

With regards to any sort of exodus earth scenario- short of a disaster involving the earth’s crust melting away or its atmosphere stripped, it will always be less resource intensive to maintain a civilisation of some form here on earth, vs starting one elsewhere in the solar system. Even if we end up living deep underground, sucking on recycled filtered air while seeking refuge from a nuclear winter apocalypse... still easier here.

This says more about the potential resource requirements and  hardships of future inter-planetary settlements than anything else.

This balance will likely not change with technological  advancement either - as any given tech advantage developed for colonisation will prove equally useful for improving the habitability and carrying capacity of earth.

What this means, however, is that for most of us, we are most likely not going anywhere. For better or worse this is going to be home for the foreseeable future and there will be no easy do-overs elsewhere. So we better start looking after the place.

[cubinator]

On 2/21/2021 at 4:57 PM, sh1pman said:

Better be Milanese architecture. If I was surrounded by space station-looking buildings, I’d become earth-sick really quickly!

Seconded!

On 2/21/2021 at 4:57 PM, sh1pman said:

I remember seeing a better solution than domes somewhere. It was something like a giant inflatable polyethylene mat that is held on tall pillars. It can hold pressure and heat, is relatively transparent, and covers vast living area. Apparently, it’s also easy to repair the holes with glue and duct tape. Water can be pumped inside the mat to protect the people below from radiation. Easy to set up and maintain, unlike the domes.

I like that idea. With water, you can also convert it to an aquarium with ease. So you can watch the Mars-sharks swimming above you, and get food, protection, and peace of mind all in one shot. Wonder where they'd get any of that water, though...It's not easy to dig it up and most will have to go into rocket fuel rather than living areas.

[SOXBLOX]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Any problems will be in "slow motion," and are entirely manageable...

Absolutely right. Sure, the climate is changing. It always has been. But it is not going to cause the apocalypse. As you point out, these "problems" are happening at a rate that makes a sloth look like an F-22 on afterburners. We will adapt, and by the time we do, the ecosystem itself will have compensated. All the same, I'm happy to see pollution of any sort reduced.

And yeah, it was waaay worse decades ago.

So no, I don't think GW will cause an exodus to space.

[tater]

There's no scenario where Earth is a worse place for humans than Mars short of an upcoming total extinction level event. Not a dinosaur killer, even then Earth is better. I mean turning Earth completely molten again. Short of that, Earth is the best planet. Earth has changed rather a lot over time, it is not even in dynamic equilibrium, except in the broadest terms from super warm, to covered with ice over long time spans. The worst cold when there was still life on Earth, and the hottest jungle world version—still infinitely better than Mars is, or indeed ever was.

Heck, we don't even know if 0.38g is enough for normal human development.

17 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

All the same, I'm happy to see pollution of any sort reduced.

Yep. I like seeing Mt Taylor 60 miles away out my window. And while it gets yucky with car exhaust when we get an inversion... that will improve over time, ICE cars get more and more efficient (less out the tailpipe, as that is wasted energy), and alternative vehicles can help as well (ideally with their batteries topped off with power from splitting atoms—split atoms, not wood!).

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

Heck, we don't even know if 0.38g is enough for normal human development.

We'd get some hellaciously tall BBall players; of course, they could only play home games.