SpaceX: No One Laughs Anymore When We Talk About Colonizing Mars
57 replies, posted
[QUOTE=OvB;47345016]The biggest thing keeping us from Mars is an economic reason to go. The colonization of the Americas had an economic benefit. Mars will need an economic benefit. Taking rocks from Mars, putting them in orbit, then sending them to earth, and taking them out of orbit would not be worth it for even the rarest metals. The asteroid belt holds real potential for space mining however, and maybe Mars could serve as a manned outpost for those missions which would give Mars an economic reason to go, in which case "if you build it, they will come" would fall into place, with everyone wanting the the first of their thing on Mars. First restaurant on mars, first hotel on mars, etc, etc, and that would require more people there. Either that, or someone or a group of people absorb a huge upfront cost so that the "if you build it they will come" effect happens as a result, and the colony exists because it exists. Either way, we need a reason to go, and I guess SpaceX just isn't going to wait for that reason and wants to develop the architecture to get there soon.[/quote]
There is maybe something to hope for there...if the cost of launching payload drops precipitously, several possible things start to become economically viable.
But I just think a government-funded trip to Mars for the sake of science is a pipe dream. Governments just...don't do that kind of thing anymore. Particularly the American government.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;47345033]There is maybe something to hope for there...if the cost of launching payload drops precipitously, several possible things start to become economically viable.
But I just think a government-funded trip to Mars for the sake of science is a pipe dream. Governments just...don't do that kind of thing anymore. Particularly the American government.[/QUOTE]
We didn't go to the Moon for the science, either. Science was a guise (albeit a beneficial one). NASA only exists in the first place because we were scared of the Russians. If the USSR never existed we would've never gone to the moon, and may even still be struggling to find a reason to go to LEO.
[editline]17th March 2015[/editline]
Hell, we only stole Werner Von Braun from the Germans in the first place because we wanted his technology to make better ballistic missiles.
[QUOTE=OvB;47345156]We didn't go to the Moon for the science, either. Science was a guise (albeit a beneficial one). NASA only exists in the first place because we were scared of the Russians. If the USSR never existed we would've never gone to the moon, and may even still be struggling to find a reason to go to LEO.
[editline]17th March 2015[/editline]
Hell, we only stole Werner Von Braun from the Germans in the first place because we wanted his technology to make better ballistic missiles.[/QUOTE]
eh i'm not so sure about that, while yes the mercury and gemini programs were overt-covert military projects, there still was a ton of gusto building up from the turn of the 20th century for space exploration, certainly enough very influential scientists and heads of industry had enough of a dream to do it. ya the US were in the end the only ones with enough resources and expertise and made the right choices to make it to the moon, looking at NASA in the 70s is a great example of what the drive for exploration can achieve, i mean the moon landing was amazing but then think about how many robotic probes nasa sent out durring the following decade, dozens of orbiters, fly-bys, and a few big landers as well as very long lived missions like voyager, and all that done on the backs of surplus launchers and very limited budgets
[QUOTE=OvB;47344637]" They can come back if they like, if they don't like it, of course. You get a free return ticket. There's sometimes a debate about going to Mars one-way and whether that makes things easier, and I think for the initial flights perhaps, but long term, to get the cost down, you need the spacecraft back. Whether the people come back is irrelevant, but you must have the ship back because those things are expensive. So anyone who wants to return can just jump on." - Elon Musk
[url]http://shitelonsays.com[/url][/QUOTE]
Good luck readapting to the Earth's gravity after 9 months each way in space and however long they've been on Mars before feeling the need for grass and oceans. Civilians can't even stick to a daily 15 mins of physio, so I don't imagine many will uphold the rigorous exercises needed to keep an Earth-gravity level of physical strength once on Mars
If and when it's going to happen most likely it will be SpaceX and NASA cooperation. Because after all SpaceX is still a company and doesn't have access to same resources as NASA.
The question is, is colony on mars ever going to be of [I]any[/I] use? Does Mars have [I]anything[/I] to offer over earth? And yeah of course, we should try it in sake of achieving that, because it will mean an enormous achievement for engineering and logistics alike, but can we warrant [I]sustaining[/I] an actual [I]colony[/I]?
Perhaps, I could imagine a scientific base, a forward post, like we have in the arctic, but these aren't exactly colonies. They don't expect growth, they have nothing to grow for. They are a place for the limited amount of people that are enough to do progressive research of the place, but nobody expects an actual city with trade and production to grow out on the north pole (like, sure, eventually, crude oil drilling might change this but that's a kinda special case).
Mars is barren, inhospitable, and as far as we know, as sad as it is, rather uninteresting when it comes to natural resources. If you consider the enormous expenses of shipping something from [I]there[/I] back here, which are, outside of the aforementioned amounts that can be retrieved practically automatically as the initial ship is going to be returning either way, going to be even much higher than the costs of shipping something from here, there. For that reason, you can pretty much forget about things like mining for metals or any but the very most precious minerals, and there's pretty much no reason to believe either of these will be substantially more abundant than on earth.
We can not terraform Mars. It is, with our current scientific understanding, impossible. Not hard or expensive, just literally impossible.
We don't know of anything of real value aside of just studying the place, on Mars, and with advances in electronics and robotics, we will be obviously able to send more and more advanced probes there, who will be able to do all the exploration and survey any human could do, faster and more tirelessly, and at fraction of the cost.
To sum up my point - I know that we should go to mars in sake of going to mars, but is [I]that[/I] it, or does anybody have an actual, real, feasible idea about actual economically viable benefit of going there?
IMO the only way to sustain a permanent settlement on Mars requires a nuclear powered tug. It would be pretty cool as a masters thesis but probably not very applicable when looking for jerbs :/
I think we should still primarily look for replacement, or at least partial replacement of chemical rockets as our primary orbital launch vehicle.
Space elevator or Lofstrom loop (aka launch loop), or a even a railgun mass driver would be really handy.
In case of the last one, we could use it to catapult fuel containers to orbit as that stuff doesn't have to be as sensitive to the massive stresses involved as human crews or delicate instruments would be, and send the crew and actual functional parts of the spacecraft and installations up there separately via classical rocket.
[QUOTE=Sableye;47344969]but in the short term providing bulk returned samples would provide a big enough financial benefit, followed by medium term refueling and space services, but really once they actually do it once, the US government will definitely have to rethink how it spends money on space-ventures[/QUOTE]
Offering 'refueling and space services' is useless if there's no demand for those services in the first place. An economy is not going to arise out of nowhere, there has to be something worth the enormous expense of space colonization, and we've yet to find it.
[QUOTE=gman003-main;47344336]I'd really like to hear what changes they're making to the Falcon 9 to get 30% more performance. With gains like that, I'm guessing it's substantial - maybe they redesigned the engines as staged-combustion rockets instead of gas-generator cycle? Or a switch to LOX+Methane instead of LOX+RP1? It's gotta be more than just incremental improvements, they were already basically the best rocket in its class.[/QUOTE]
They super-cooling the LOX and RP-1 because it's more dense when it's colder so they can fit more propellant into the rocket. And they're making the second stage 10% longer. And the thrust of the Merlin is being upped 15%
[URL]https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/572257004938403840[/URL]
I don't know what exactly they're doing to the engines but apparently they've had the improvements in the works since before v1.1 but they didn't have time to implement them: [url]http://aviationweek.com/blog/spacexs-new-spin-falcon-9[/url]
[QUOTE=catbarf;47346553]Offering 'refueling and space services' is useless if there's no demand for those services in the first place. An economy is not going to arise out of nowhere, there has to be something worth the enormous expense of space colonization, and we've yet to find it.[/QUOTE]
Asteroid belt mining? Sooner or later supply of rare metals will become scarce enough on earth to make it more viable to go fetch them in space.
I hope Mars gets colonized during my lifetime. What a thing that would be to see
At this point in time, what would be the actual point of going to Mars [B]in particular?[/B]
I understand the need to colonize and spread out past earth, but mars is cold and inhospitable. Wouldn't it take much more in resources just to keep people alive there, than any potential revenue return? Or would the people living there serve any real purpose besides existing there? I'm just curious of what the real plans are.
For all the people questioning why we should settle mars... it IS the closest terrestrial planet with some sort of atmosphere and decent gravity.
However, for resources, the moons of Jupiter and the other gas giants, plus the asteroid belt are far more likely to pay off economically.
[QUOTE=_Axel;47348186]Asteroid belt mining? Sooner or later supply of rare metals will become scarce enough on earth to make it more viable to go fetch them in space.[/QUOTE]
Do you have any basic economic maths that could back that notion up?
For all we know, it might be more economically viable to start reclaiming rare metals from seawater than to haul them from asteroid fields. Hell, first of all we will probably start REALLY digging through our landfills and junkyards, because these are full of absolute treasures.
Shipping stuff through space will be always EXTREMELY expensive. Unless you have any explicit maths of "we can get this much stuff from that asteroid for this much money", it's naive to claim it will be simply more viable just because you feel so.
[QUOTE=catbarf;47346553]Offering 'refueling and space services' is useless if there's no demand for those services in the first place. An economy is not going to arise out of nowhere, there has to be something worth the enormous expense of space colonization, and we've yet to find it.[/QUOTE]
The pentagon issued something a while ago stating all future satellites must have a means of refueling, couple that with Lockheed's new space-tug the demand to refit and refuel these big pieces of equipment is there, space-x will also provide cheap enough launch vehicles to bring asteroid mining to a reasonable margin of profit, additionally rare-earth metal demand will outstrip supply in the near future AMD space is flush with them
[QUOTE=Sableye;47349526]The pentagon issued something a while ago stating all future satellites must have a means of refueling, couple that with Lockheed's new space-tug the demand to refit and refuel these big pieces of equipment is there, space-x will also provide cheap enough launch vehicles to bring asteroid mining to a reasonable margin of profit, additionally rare-earth metal demand will outstrip supply in the near future AMD space is flush with them[/QUOTE]
I don't think Pentagon is all so hot about refuelling all of their no satellites on MARTIAN orbit.
[editline]18th March 2015[/editline]
And if we were to build a solar system wide fuel station, it would probably make more sense on the moon, if anywhere. We know there's water on Mars but we don't know how much is there, and the (lack of) gravity on the Moon will probably make it more economically viable than sifting sand on Mars for bits of ice.
[QUOTE=Sableye;47349526]The pentagon issued something a while ago stating all future satellites must have a means of refueling, couple that with Lockheed's new space-tug the demand to refit and refuel these big pieces of equipment is there[/QUOTE]
Refueling in LEO is an entirely different kettle of fish from going anywhere else in the solar system, and only requires cheap boosters. That's a well-established industry, catering to satellites. Development of booster technology will undoubtedly reduce the cost of entry to space, but boosters alone will not make it feasible, profitable, or economical.
[QUOTE=Sableye;47349526]space-x will also provide cheap enough launch vehicles to bring asteroid mining to a reasonable margin of profit[/QUOTE]
(citation needed)
With science getting better and better at synthesizing valuable resources every day, an ever-increasing focus in the Western world on recycling old goods that contain useful materials, and the sheer ridiculous astronomical expense of asteroid mining not likely to drop significantly in the near future, it is not a short-term or guaranteed plan that asteroid mining will become cheaper than local production or reclamation.
[QUOTE=Sableye;47349526]additionally rare-earth metal demand will outstrip supply in the near future AMD space is flush with them[/QUOTE]
Every time people bring up the idea of asteroid mining for heavy metals, they forget that heavy metals are denser the closer in to the Sun and in planetary bodies. Earth is pretty rich in heavy metals compared to the millions of tons of rock that need to be parsed through to get anything from an asteroid.
Even asteroid mining proponents like John S. Lewis are [url=http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2711/1]quick to point out[/url] that rare metal mining is, at best, a byproduct of mining for ferrous metals that can be used for orbital construction... provided an economy for orbital construction exists in the first place, which puts us back at square one in finding a compelling economic motivation that isn't completely circular.
SpaceX exists because Elon Musk wants people to go to space and has the fantastic wealth to finance it himself. That will sustain a piecemeal, scientific approach, but not an economy that sustains itself.
[QUOTE=Karmah;47349399]At this point in time, what would be the actual point of going to Mars [B]in particular?[/B]
I understand the need to colonize and spread out past earth, but mars is cold and inhospitable. Wouldn't it take much more in resources just to keep people alive there, than any potential revenue return? Or would the people living there serve any real purpose besides existing there? I'm just curious of what the real plans are.[/QUOTE]
Well in the short term people there would definitely be on a scientific expedition. Aside from science however, I dont see much of a point other than it being somewhere other than earth. I suppose it is also creating a new branch of human civilization, which has some merits of its own.
I also suppose that if the right infrastructure is set up, people might move to mars at their own discretion. Really it has happened in the past that people move to a new frontier despite significant hardships and peril. Of course the initial capital investment required to set up that infrastructure would mean moving to mars would probably become prohibitively expensive, however I dont know for sure if it could be made profitable. Basically there might be potential earnings in setting up a new frontier and then capitalizing on people migrating there.
Even though Mars itself doesn't have much Resources or economic worth yet. I still think that trying to colonize Mars itself will basically be a test bed for all of our future projects of trying to move around the solar system. Mars itself could possibly be used as a massive factory for all of the metals mined from the Asteroid belt or from it's moons. Or hell,
In order for us to make Mars economically useful, we just need to develop it.
[QUOTE=Deathtrooper2;47354220]Even though Mars itself doesn't have much Resources or economic worth yet. I still think that trying to colonize Mars itself will basically be a test bed for all of our future projects of trying to move around the solar system. Mars itself could possibly be used as a massive factory for all of the metals mined from the Asteroid belt or from it's moons. Or hell,
In order for us to make Mars economically useful, we just need to develop it.[/QUOTE]
This is still completely circular reasoning. All these suggestions in the thread go like this:
'We should set up gas drilling in Antarctica.'
'But why? We can drill for gas cheaper at home.'
'Yeah, but we'll be able to supply the people who will be using gas to travel around Antarctica.'
'But who will be traveling around Antarctica? There are some scientists and a few projects funded by millionaires but they don't need a huge gas operation.'
'All the people who will be colonizing Antarctica, of course.'
'But why would they be colonizing Antarctica? What's worth spending all that money and living in inhospitable conditions?'
'Well they could be setting up gas drilling in Antarctica!'
Find a profit motive to go to space that isn't implicitly just the assumption that other people will go to space. The kind of large-scale colonization and exploration necessary to support an industry like this won't exist without a good reason to justify the enormous investment required.
Edit: I should add that it doesn't even need to be explicitly profit-driven in the conventional sense of going to make money. If a near-miss from an asteroid is enough of a kick in the ass to convince world powers that we need an orbital presence and human colonies elsewhere in case something happens to Earth, we'll go to space. Same for if we have some kind of geopolitical conflict like another Cold War that drives space colonization for political and military reasons. Same for if our population becomes so crowded that a Moon colony becomes the cheaper option compared to building underwater cities or whatever. Same for if we find something ridiculous like magnetic monopoles, or develop a fusion economy too thirsty for Helium-3 to stay on Earth. But the 'if we build it, they will come' strategy a lot of these companies seem to be using is not a long-term business investment, it's more idealism than anything else. A gold rush does not start just because somebody's building wagons and shovels, there has to be an actual, tangible goal that that infrastructure facilitates.
Buzz Aldrin currently raving about the possibilities on the BBC's Stargazing Live is good to see.
[QUOTE][img]http://store.sharespace.org/BUZZ-ALDRIN-STONEHENGE-James-O-Davis.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
ETA: Now has the crew wearing his shirts :v:
Elon Musk is a god in my books. One of the few people with money who looks to improve, change and innovate and not just for his next paycheque.
You can look at it this way: If you had a self-sustaining colony structure on mars and means to transport people there, and that colony had the capability to expand itself, whoever occupied that colony would be far from the effects of just about any entity on earth. They would have an entire world to themselves to shape into what they want.
In the past that has been a motivator for people to move into new frontiers, and it would be amazing if the same happened with mars.
[QUOTE=mecaguy03;47357674]You can look at it this way: If you had a self-sustaining colony structure on mars and means to transport people there, and that colony had the capability to expand itself, whoever occupied that colony would be far from the effects of just about any entity on earth. They would have an entire world to themselves to shape into what they want.
In the past that has been a motivator for people to move into new frontiers, and it would be amazing if the same happened with mars.[/QUOTE]
'Self-sustaining' is the key. That means having the infrastructure to mine for all the necessary resources to sustain life in an extremely hostile environment, then all the industrial capability to turn it into everything from machinery to clothing to household goods to food. For pilgrims going to a fertile New World in the late 1600s, all they need to perpetuate their technology and survive in that environment is manual labor and basic tools they brought with them. For another planet, that's a pretty enormous investment requiring a substantially large population base and the ability to essentially replicate the technological base of modern society from the ground up.
Again, why not Antarctica? It's a lot cheaper to get to and also beyond the reach of modern government. If the fact that Antarctica isn't beyond the reach of nuclear war or aggressive invasion is the problem, well, if you're proposing that space travel has progressed to the point where you can affordably land a few tens of thousands of pilgrims and all their equipment, then surely the governments of Earth will have the same reach as well.
It's insane to think that right now, we could probably get to Mars if we really wanted to. The only question is motivating governments and organizations with money to fund it.
red faction when
Really I think those are all good points, and that commercial mars colonization will only happen soon-ish if its forced by a company that has the money to lose on it and the will to do it anyways. Aside from that I think its still a long ways off. I dont think it has to be an infrastructure to send tens of thousands of people though, it could be a relatively small population at first that would grow over time. And even if a government has the capability to reach over to mars, would they want to?
Does this mean I can officially not live on this planet anymore?
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