CNet:
The first aren't even built yet, but [Elon Musk] already has big plans for his company's spacecraft, which includes turning humans into an interplanetary species with a presence on Mars. He crunched some of the numbers he has in mind on Twitter on Thursday.
Musk doesn't just want to launch a few intrepid souls to Mars, he wants to send a whole new nation. He tossed out a goal of building 100 Starships per year to send about 100,000 people from Earth to Mars every time the planets' orbits line up favorably.
A Twitter user ran the figures and checked if Musk planned to land a million humans on Mars by 2050. "Yes," . The SpaceX CEO has suggested this sort of . This new round of tweets give us some more insight into how it could be done, though "ambitious" doesn't do that timeline justice. Miraculous might be a more fitting description.
...
fans, rejoice. there will be plenty of jobs on Mars. When asked how people would be selected for the Red Planet move, , "Needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don't have money." So perhaps you could pay off your SpaceX loans with a sweet terraforming gig.
Terraforming the planet should be easy if Quaid can get past Cohagen and start the reactor.
Related Stories
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[Editor's note: SN3 is SpaceX parlance for "Serial Number 3"; Elon Musk is not just working on building rockets, he's building an assembly line and plans to build one Starship a week. This helps explain the use of serial numbers. --martyb]
For almost a year now, SpaceX has been building a series of Starship prototypes that will test how the system fares when launched to orbit.
[...] Musk recently shared images of the components for the SN3 prototype undergoing assembly.
Shortly after these images were shared, the assembled components were seen on their way to the company's test facility at Boca Chica, Texas, on the morning of March 29th. They were then seen being transferred to the launch pad by roll-lift and crane as of late afternoon. Footage of both these events was captured by the LabPadre and shared via Twitter.
SN3 pic.twitter.com/bM1wzzd4Zg
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
Like its predecessors, the next step for the SN3 will be cryogenic loading trials in which the spacecraft's methane and oxygen tanks will be filled with a cryogenic liquid (most likely liquid nitrogen).
[...] In a previous statement, Musk announced that the SN3 would be used for static fire tests and short flights, whereas longer test flights will wait for the SN4. [...] There is [...] documentation that indicates that SpaceX will be conducting tests as early as next week.
The documents, which were shared on NASASpaceFlight, reference a permit issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the "Starhopper" vehicle, which is valid until June 2020. They further suggest that a static fire of the SN3's engines could take place between April 1st and 3rd, followed by a 150-meter (500 ft) hop test between April 6th and 8th. This was the maximum height achieved by the Starship Hopper.
[...] Once the Starship is finished and integrated with the Super Heavy booster, Musk hopes to begin conducting payload runs to the moon by 2022, followed by crewed missions to the surface by 2024. In between, Musk also intends to conduct the first lunar tourism mission (#dearmoon), which will involve sending a crew of artists around the moon in 2023.
-- submitted from IRC
Previously:
(2020-04-01) SpaceX Releases a Payload User's Guide for its Starship Rocket
(2020-03-10) Another Starship Prototype Explodes, but SpaceX Isn't Stopping
(2020-02-19) SpaceX Announces Partnership to Send Four Tourists Into Deep Orbit
(2020-01-18) Elon Musk Discloses Details for SpaceX Mars Mega-Colony
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:11PM (10 children)
Sounds like an excellent idea for a slave colony or rampant death cult living in windowless bunkers planning the end of the solar system.
I liked those ad astra sceenes where brad pit is forced to go watch 4 wall TV for a few hours to 'get his sanity' back.
Something to look forward to.
/s
WHY WOULD WE THINK ELON MUSK COULD DESIGN A MARS CITY WHEN HIS ONLY IDEA FOR THE CURRENT BROKEN CITIES IN AN ACTUALLY STILL FUNCTIONING ECOSYSTEM IS TO TRANSPORT CARS THROUGH UNDERGROUND TUNNELS
The problem is not technologic, it is economic and political, and if you set the same forces in motion on another planet, you will get a replica of this planet, and interplanetary war that will in no way be an upgrade for anybody.
But sure great way to suck intellect from society onto meaningless fantasies, can I get a job writing brochures and managing concept artists? Or selling tickets long in advance? Is there any way we can make this into a pyramid marketing scheme?
Like, make people think a hard labor and exile in a prison colony is a LUXURY VACATION! For the whole family! Oh no, youll have to wait for the next shuttle back to earth in 2097, too bad. Should have booked earlier.
How hard could that be? Not hard apparently, at least for you chumps, with your brain's capacity shredded by 24 hours a day of comfortable numbing outright lies in the form of degenerate tweets. You think you would at least be getting away form that, but nope, every day those tweets threatening sanctions and trade war with earth would be plastered on every surface of your dusty mars cubicle.
thesesystemsarefailling.net
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:35PM (4 children)
It's also a great idea for a science outpost, or tourism.
You can have your slick VR experience in a basement, one-room apartment, or Mars bunker. It's up to you.
Why would we expect Musk to design the Mars city when his main interest is the transportation infrastructure to and from Mars? Other people can come up with the designs. And no, some renderings and tweets do not constitute a design.
You watched too much sci-fi if you think you would get an interplanetary war, and the economy and politics of a Mars colony would be very different simply because of the challenges of living there. It would also be a chance to start fresh.
So you don't want to go to Mars, cool. Are you going to stop others from trying?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:55PM (3 children)
I will argue with them not to do it, I would probably not think this issue warrants violence to stop as the violence it imposes and makes inevitable will be so indirect to be covert.
Yes, if it is a misuse of resources when there are real crisese which could be averted here.
Yes, if it is just goign to be for the rich.
Yes, if it is not going to be implemented with a new form of political economy.
Yes, if it is managed by the same oligarchs who have almost completely ruined this world.
There will be a honeymoon period, at best, before the tyranny, slavery, hierarchy, debt, and resource extraction sinks in.
A clean slate, wow you are starry eyed aren't you? That colony would be 1 trillion debt within the first year, even if it doesn't turn into a penal colony. Even the people getting away from their earth debts would make it a slave colony.
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:06AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:32PM
I like the way you think, we could get along.
Sadly, this is well worn territory, Asimov's Daneel R. Olivaw had to travel once to another planet than earth and it was just rich people on vast manors surrounded by only robots because all human contact had become dirty and pedestrian to them. So when someone died by surprise it had to be a robot, so the robo pscyhologist was called in, whodunit.
Then there is Altered Carbon/Elsyium, to some extent Wall-E(or aliens vs predator comics...) where this kindof utopic garden of eden could be created in space or high altitude, but only for a handful of of oligarchs and their harems.
Needless to say this does not ever result in improvement for the 99% on earth.
I think Mark Passio is on to something with his order followers, the police and military have to learn the difference between protect and oppress, or any system turns into a shitshow.
In Bolivia, the miiltary just recently decided poorly. In Venezuela, they are so far demonstrating that to a man they understand what is at stake, which is badass. #
viva Chavismo! make sure they get this one, I think they'll like it:
https://archive.is/dmjdm [archive.is]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @01:57PM
Let me turn your ideas back to you. Given the state of the earth right now, do you really think humanity is on track to have workable solutions to our political and economic systems, our corruption, our oligarchy, within the next century? Within the next five centuries? I'm not optimistic.
So one could make an argument that it makes more sense to populate the solar system as soon as it's practical, because spreading out the species gives us more time to figure out how to not suck before we wipe ourselves out.
Don't get me wrong, I do share your frustration. The cost of Musk's Mars colonization plan could probably cure cancer world-wide and end poverty on a third of the globe. Sure, I would rather see that happen first and space colonization much later. But for example the United States net national wealth is above 50 trillion dollars and our annual GDP is above 15 trillion. We already have all the resources we need to cure every one of humanity's problems. The problem isn't a lack of resources, the problem is humanity itself.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:14PM
Well, we're agreed that Mars is not the place for trannies.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:44AM
First step for Mars (or moon) is mole people and fertilizer.
Digging holes in ground, MUSK KNOWS. This help protect against radiation and hold in "Air".
Need lots of organic fertilizer to grow things, like food and CO2 processing. Large convertion and processing plants and organic material (both cases people) you get teraforming going.
Soylent-Green? Is people right?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:55AM (2 children)
Hell is other people - Sartre
He may have been right, but heaven is also other people.
A neglected aspect in discussion of the viability of a Mars colony is the effect on the society of being a group of people who self-selected to go to Mars.
Regardless of what Musk says about anyone can go, there will also be further selection criteria. Can you survive the trip? Do you have or can you acquire skills that would useful? Can you afford a ticket? Is it going to be 90% nerd basement escapees? Should Musk enforce gender equality on passenger lists? Are they going to design a legal structure and get everyone to sign on before they go?
These things will make a difference. I don't know of any society on earth that will be so homogenous in outlook. They will universally be; in favor of colonising Mars, enthusiastic and hardworking enough to get there, smart enough to qualify. The closest thing would probably be McMurdo Station in Antactica, but there is a very important difference - those people are doing a job and expect to go home afterwards.
Here's hoping for longevity treatments so we can all hang around and watch.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)
Recall Stranger in a Strange Land, they looked at every person on earth in combination for every other, for 6 people who would get along for the trip to mars, and found that any such combination would murder each other before the half-way point. I think that was heinlein's way of agreeing with satre....
Consider Arthur C. Clark's Song's of Distant Earth, which I talk about all the time, because it shoves in your face the idea that once you are on that ship you have a whole new governance structure. To some extent movies like Aliens and Avatar make this point too, like once you are that far away, and there is a xenomorph in the equation, those orders from distant earth are going to sound a whole lot different. Then flip that and to someone/something out there WE are the xenomorphs....
So we have to, inside of our Trumpenstein governance structure with Elon Musk helming a bizarro conglomerate of opaque oligarchic interests, are to expect that they are going to design sane governance, and glitch/RC free operation of your spacecraft?
When we can't even get agree on how to operate the .org registry. When we can't get rid of the electoral college without total collapse and the risk of nuclear civil war? When epstein gets away despite the existence of a totalitarian surveillance system that we were told would protect the children? When intel processors are made with standalone surveillance subprocessors that probably have their own wifi?
Every problem here doubles itself once you are in space doing anything other than telescope repair.
And the real truth is that they are going to be doing all of this anyway without telling the public, because that is the real nature of whatever the united states military and corporate oligarchy has become, as well as the entangling alliances. That seems to be the number one goal of mass media propaganda in the united states, they need people who can be easily convinced to go die in a distant land.
Or maybe even more distant. All I know is how much I don't know, and that there is a long list of powerful people who have not earned my trust, or are outright sinister. And they do not have my best interest at heart, this I know, so they are going to have a difficult time motivating me.
For something that looked like the right hand side of this equation, I might do anything. For something on the left hand side, I am going to do nothing at all. And that is going to apply to every being, every planet, and every spaceship.
https://archive.is/dmjdm [archive.is]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @12:01AM
I would really prefer not
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:22PM (19 children)
If a Starship ends up costing less than Falcon 9 to make, as has been hinted, that could really help.
The number is too ambitious IMO. Living on Mars is a raw deal compared to Earth. Even if you get a Mars One sized group of applicants capable of paying a $1,000,000 ticket and home price, many would and should chicken out. 10,000 sounds more realistic for 2050. That's much larger than McMurdo Station.
Musk seems to be indicating a 1 month travel time to Mars. Other people have come up with estimates this low before, but that's the first time I've heard it from SpaceX/Musk. Turns out that you can get a lot of delta-V by refueling in orbit. 3-6 month travel time would be for losers.
Jobs? We'll have to see about that. I think participants would be paying most of their expenses up front. A lot of the work could end up being done by robots, with a gig economy forming (but nobody starving, hopefully).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:52PM (8 children)
Try to get a robot to build a basic home on Earth. As close as we've come is a literally on-rails brick-layer that does half ass job. And something like this would be a million times easier on Earth than Mars.
I expect very near 100% of the work on Mars will be done by humans. Doesn't hurt that an average man will also be able to casually handle objects and hardware weighing hundreds of pounds! The first habs? What's spacious, pressurized, provides life support, is resistant to radiation and other outside forces? Flip a Starship on its side and give mobile home a whole new meaning. Mars is going to be an immense amount of work.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:11PM (7 children)
Maybe you don't use robots because it's necessarily easy, but because you want as much work finished as possible prior to the first people arriving.
Expect some progress on 3D printing structures in the interim between now and anything of note being done on Mars:
https://www.businessinsider.com/3d-homes-that-take-24-hours-and-less-than-4000-to-print-2018-9 [businessinsider.com]
Unrelated to SpaceX plans, there has been development of a concept Mars structure that would be built robotically before any crew arrives:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/a-new-home-on-mars-nasa-langley-s-icy-concept-for-living-on-the-red-planet [nasa.gov]
If lots of human labor is needed, that's just fine. I just don't believe that Settler #150,000's labor would be crucial whatsoever. At some point, most of the colony could run out of things to do (scientists would have no shortage of work since they have an entire planet to study).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:48PM (6 children)
3D printing has potential, though it is likely to have issues with tensile strength, which is a major problem when trying to contain an atmosphere.
Also - consider that The Boring Company is a spin-off of SpaceX - and I doubt underground highways are his primary interest. If a single semi-autonomous boring machine can dig and line hundreds of feet of tunnel per day, you're most of the way to building enormous amounts of habitat quickly and cheaply. Add an airtight liner and you've got a nearly indestructible habitat shell completely shielded from radiation and meteor impacts. Multiple semi-parallel tunnels with doors between them would allow for roads and houses. Or perhaps a long spiral tunnel for houses, intersecting radial "spokes" for roads? Such a structure could potentially grow to enormous total size quite easily, with sectors being sealed off and pressurized as needed, and additional spirals being dug beneath each other offset as horizontal sprawl becomes an issue.
Heck, in a pinch pressurized "tents" in unsealed tunnels would be a fast and easy way to establish temporary habitats - no need for all the many complicated layers of a Bigelow inflatable habitat, just enough puncture and abrasion resistance to avoid catastrophic atmosphere loss.
And as an interesting coincidence, you could fit a triangular trio of 12' diameter boring machines inside one 9m diameter Starship, with an extra half-meter around the edges for bracing, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @10:52PM (5 children)
How about the supply of cutting teeth, replacement curtains, curtain functionality without atmosphere, the soils removal gear, etc...
I think it's totally feasible to get hundreds or thousands of people to Mars. But getting the *SUPPLIES* needed to rapidly expand a living space sufficient for them all, plus the boring/mining/industrial equipment required to actually line such tunnels, ensure materials to seal any wear or fitment issues in agridomes, etc.
Even if it is doable, I see it costing a lot more than a million per person just in the resources required to not only make a liveable space for them, but also to excavate and extract sufficient mineral resources to being working towards being a self-sustaining colony. Because if it's not self-sustaining, as soon as something back here on earth, we'll have another ghost colony, just like happened to so many places across the American West during the last land rush. Only little chance of the natives giving us a hand this time, if there are any and if they saw what we did on Earth the last time.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:43AM (1 child)
The ones who get there first get to eat the ones who arrive later
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:02PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday January 20 2020, @02:59AM (2 children)
Those are no doubt engineering challenges - and I suspect ones that are being considered. What is a curtain in that context? If it's just dust containment, it should work much the same, only with an easier job since there is no air to help keep dust aloft.
Shipping a stack of cutting teeth, and even digging shields, is potentially going to be a lot cheaper than shipping all the materials necessary to build an above-ground pressure vessel (though tough "balloons" coated in concrete might be an interesting option)
Material removal is greatly facilitated when that material is in the form of endless stacks of giant compressed-earth "lego bricks" which can be used for above-ground construction. Even if they won't contain an atmosphere without a lot more work, they still provide great radiation and weather shielding. Mortared brick constructs with enough weight on them (a few meters of rock) could even contain atmospheric pressure through sheer mass, needing only an air-impermeable layer in their inner construction. At some point you could probably even stop with the bricks and dump loose material on top. And if you're containing Earth air pressure by weight, you get Earth-normal radiation shielding automatically.
Digging is energy intensive though - so it'd mean lots of solar panels or nuclear reactors. How many of those 10kW NASA Kilopower reactors needed to power a tunnel boring machine? Might be rough for the initial outpost, but probably quite attractive for ongoing construction once a reliable foothold is established.
How many minerals do they need to be a self-sustainging colony? To grow? Absolutely. But just to sustain, so long as they focus on easily recyclable technology they shouldn't actually need much. And there is work being done on extracting oxygen from Moon and Mars regolith, leaving a metallic alloy "soup" behind, which should be a valuable mineral source, including silicon for all those solar panels you're gong to want. And of course, with some luck and planning you may be able to dig some of those tunnels through relatively mineral-rich ground.
What they will need in endless supply is biological support - air, water, and food. Water ice is plentiful if you build your colony in the right place. Purification may be a challenge, but we're seeing some huge advances in the technology for unrelated reasons here on Earth. And if you have water, plus abundant ambient CO2 just waiting to be pressurized, all you need is light and the right "primordial soup" to rapidly and robustly generate food, oxygen, fuel, and with the right equipment, a nigh endless supply of incredibly versatile, food-safe industrial micro- and nano-celluose.
You're likely to get awful sick of eating algae, etc., but it'll go a long way toward keeping you alive, and is great feedstock for a more sophisticated ecology. With crop generations measured in hours, even devastating blows to your "herds" can be recovered from in days. And with minimal and low-tech mechanical components there's a lot less to go wrong, and it's easily fixable when it does.
It is likely to be expensive though, and I'm not sure there's enough wealthy hardworking dreamers to realistically pull it off without several orders of magnitude cost reduction.. Personally I suspect actual colonization (as opposed to a research outpost) will have to wait until after asteroid mining has become routine and driven down the cost of the necessary technologies dramatically. In the mean time a lunar outpost seems likely to have far more Earth-centric commercial applications to justify early investment, while also dramatically reducing the risks and travel times enough to be a viable tourism destination. It doesn't have the abundant ecological feedstock of Mars, but it'd still be a great technological testbed, and if nothing else a convenient source of fuel and radiation shielding for orbital construction. Not to mention the far side is an excellent location for radio telescopes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @05:24AM (1 child)
An airlock. But you can simplify: this word means anything that isn't a Martian rock - spacesuits, clothes, food, heat, air, waste disposal, the living facility, instruments, spare parts, power sources...
Not super likely, as above ground pressure vessel can be very thin and weigh a few tens of kg. However a TBM and expendable parts for it are extremely heavy. For example [efunda.com]:
Then you write:
Remember that all those books were written nearly a century ago. Back then the lower strata of the working class was larger, and writers logically assumed that in the future hungry and dirty miners will be getting subsistence money for working asteroids. However even today a human on a mining ship is a liability. He needs life support, he cannot work 24/7, he needs risk pay, and every ship has to carry a human at all times. It's more practical to have robot ships with remote control from the base. Miners, a few of them, will be on the base, assuming control of a ship when it arrives at the destination and releasing it to ship's autopilot when a boring trip from point A to point B is needed.
Not only minerals. They also need such natural resources as air and water, in huge amounts. But even worse is the fact they need to duplicate a good deal of Earth's technologies in a short time. Chemistry requires specific catalysts and large reaction vessels, that requires stainless steel, that requires all the additives, a smelter, a converter or an inert gas electric arc processing... such plants took decades to build on Earth, where everything is available. Some materials will not be available. Take oil, for example. Probably Mars has no oil, if it is a dead planet. If so, organic chemistry is out if the window - drugs, paints, sealants... There will be no CT and MRI scanners on Mars, they are too heavy and too fragile. Medicine will fall a century back; even bandages have to come from Earth.
So when all this can be overcome? With our today's technology... probably never. The lifeline to Earth is too thin, too expensive, too subject to political whims. My guess is that at some point the colonists will be brought back and the colony abandoned. It's even hard to imagine what colonists must produce to make the whole thing profitable - an elixir of eternal youth, perhaps? Everything else can be cheaper obtained on Earth. But even a functioning trade does not guarantee that colony will one day become industrialized. They need enough people, they need enough tools, and they need specific, very expensive parts from Earth (with full support.) Earth may be not interested in allowing the colony become self-sufficient!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 24 2020, @05:00PM
- Pressure vessels
If you're talking "balloon" pressure vessels, then yes - they can indeed be very thin and light, and I'm a big fan, but they're only step one. Unless you have convenient natural caves or tunnels to inflate them in, you still need a lot of heavy machinery to build radiation shelters around them. Which probably means shipping earth-movers and some sort of "cement" binding agent for rigidity, unless you want to count on air pressure alone to keep your structure from collapsing. Though hopefully some locally sourced binding agent can be developed in short order. Ice might be a wonderful one, but requires insulating it from the habitat inside. Which means you need either strong insulation that won't be crushed by the weight, or a "vacuum gap" that prevents using air pressure to help support the structure.
They also have the problem that it's likely to be a long time before you have the industrial capacity to make them on site - which means shipping them from Earth for every new structure for the indefinite future. *Excellent* for starting out - less attractive in the mid-term.
They're also liable to be considerably less light than you'd think . Unless you can sandwich them between layers of local concrete without inviting problems, they'll need to be thick enough to be extremely resistant to abrasion and punctures. It can be done, but you're talking something like the kevlar-armored inner wall of a Bigelow inflatable space station, not just a simple pressure balloon.
Definitely a great option - but if you're looking to make habitats and connecting tunnels for millions of people, having more than one option is a great idea.
It's also worth considering that there are almost certainly massive natural caves and lava tubes on Mars that would make excellent early habitat locations - and a tunnel boring machine would allow you to connect them efficiently
- Asteroid mining
I fully expect it will be mostly automated. But I find it extremely unlikely that it will be *fully* automated - you'll still want human ingenuity and dexterity on site to solve problems if nothing else. Even then it will likely mostly be telepresence operated robots doing the work, while operators remain safe in habitats, but you need low latency for that. And the asteroid belt has ping times to Earth in the range of 17 minutes to over an hour. It's commonly claimed that all the surface research we've done on Mars to date could have been done better in a single week with boots on the ground. You really think an asteroid mining company is going to want to try to do evaluation, diagnostics, and maintenance on those kind of time-scales while expensive mining equipment sits idle?
I doubt it - so I suspect we'll see (initially) limited-scale habitats attached to mining outposts, staffed by engineers, or at least technicians, and potentially researchers as well, working out ways to utilize all the waste materials (probably mostly gravel and huge quantities of iron) to build and expand mining infrastructure habitats - after all, the amount of resources are nigh-unlimited, and your profits depend on how quickly you can ship valuable ones back to Earth (or develop technologies and equipment to sell to others)
-Resources
I already addressed those - water and air is available on Mars in nigh-unlimited quantities, requiring only (presumably) some level of filtering, and plants to convert the CO2 to breathable air. And biotechnology can supply most of the rest. Algae being particularly good since it can grow so insanely fast - the biomass can double in 3 to 8 hours under ideal circumstances. That is in fact one of the things that makes Mars so much more appealing than almost anywhere else in the solar system - mild temperatures, unlimited air and water, and a day almost exactly the same length as Earth's.
We'd still need a source of trace minerals, but those can largely be recycled - the cellulose you'd extract as a raw material is made entirely from water and CO2, and are very useful: nanocellulose = gas impermeable "transparent aluminum", and fibrous algaes area potentially a candidate for making stronger-than-steel "superwood". Meanwhile clothing, bandages, etc - all easily made from plants long before we harnessed metals, and often to better effect - we largely use plastics because they're so cheap, not because they're actually better. Meanwhile all that biomass is also an extremely rich source of organic chemistry precursors. You want oil? Grow the right algae - some of them are almost half lipids by mass. Ditto for many other chemical feedstocks.
And of course stainless steel will be available in large quantities early on - after all, if a Starship is cheaper to build than a Falcon 9, it's unlikely to make sense to send a Starship back to Earth unless it's carrying passengers - all the supply rockets become so much raw material, conveniently pre-assembled into large pressure vessels, but easily reprocessed into pretty much anything else. And of course iron is everywhere on Mars, that's why it's red. And we know how to electro-refine oxides into raw metal. And of course silicates are pretty much everywhere, conveniet for solar panels and other semiconductors (though advanced things like CPUs will likely be imported from Earth for a long time to come. Fortunately they last almost forever with basic care).
MRIs? Perhaps you haven't seen the "miniaturized" versions available these days. Fragility could be an issue for launch - but only because they're not designed to survive such stresses. Remove what components can't be reinforced to containers that support them effectively, and re-assemble on delivery. And actually I'm not even sure they're not designed to survive such stresses - tap a screwdriver on something like a hard drive you'll subject it to dozen's of G's - far higher than you'll see during launch (though admittedly not sustained, and without the vibrations)
We converted the United states to a technological powerhouse in only a couple centuries, using far less technology than we have now, and very little imported hardware. The shipping times were even similar to what they'll be for Mars. Mars has the raw materials, what it's lacking is a friendly ecosystem - and that can be created with locally source pressure vessels and biotechnology that's mostly been around longer than primates, coupled with modern knowledge that lets us harness it efficiently and tweak it as needed without relying on selective breeding. (though between the breeding and mutation rates in above-ground algae farms, there's probably lots of potential for that as well.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:52PM (7 children)
I'd volunteer for Mars, but no way would I pay to go. Risking my life is one thing, but...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:09PM (5 children)
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/29/business/elon-musk-spacex-mars-starship-cost/index.html [cnn.com]
There's an estimate of $200k per person. Just bump that up to $1 million. You are obviously going to be paying for some sort of accommodations.
$1 million is comparable to what some people are paying for homes in expensive cities, although the median home price in the U.S. is more like $225,000. So some people would consider that a reasonable price for going to Mars and buying a home on Mars. If the price was $20-50 million, like what a Falcon 9 trip and vacation at the ISS would currently cost, that would not be reasonable for most people.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:22AM (4 children)
It's very likely it would be a one way trip. You are emigrating, not visiting. What would be the point of leaving assets on Earth?
You would buy your ticket and spend the rest of your total net worth on high-value/useful items and extra baggage allowance to carry them there.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 20 2020, @05:28PM (3 children)
While that makes plenty of sense, Musk has indicated that anybody who goes can get a free return trip. Which makes sense if the plan is to send back the Starships for continual reuse. Just put passenger(s) on one.
Elon Musk considers move to Mars despite 'good chance of death' [theguardian.com] (Nov. 2018)
Elon Musk: Moving to Mars will cost less than $500,000, ‘maybe even below $100,000’ [cnbc.com] (Feb. 2019)
The tweet mentioned:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1094796246613516289?lang=en [twitter.com]
So people who want to chicken out or have a medical non-emergency could hitch a ride back. There may be problems with the synodic period timing. Maybe it's possible to refuel with Mars-origin propellant and get more delta-V than you would from leaving Earth, shortening the return trip.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 24 2020, @05:35PM (2 children)
The Mars-to-Earth delta-V is the same in either direction, though Musk has clearly stated that the plan is to far exceed that for a faster trip (a minimum delta-V Hohmann transfer takes almost 9 months). Though while he has also said that a Starship could return to Earth directly from the surface of Mars, an orbital refueling their would certainly let the trip be shortened.
There is however no real solution for the 26 month synodic period. If the planets aren't in the proper alignment it's going to take a LOT longer for the trip - even traveling at many times the minimum necessary speed. Long enough that it's probably worth just waiting until the proper alignment is close before you launch. It's going to be something really urgent to be worth spending several extra months being blasted by radiation in a steel can, rather than waiting twice as long for the alignment and quick flight.
As for the free return trip - I suspect that would be necessary to get *any* sane person to consider immigrating. Dreams are nice and all - but committing to spending the rest of your life in a likely extremely limited and austere community, sight unseen? Many Europeans did something similar for the Americas, but that was mostly the poor and persecuted moving to a lush new paradise. And for colonizing Mars we're not going to need much manual labor, but instead the more marketable skills that would earn people a comfortable life here on Earth.
Plus if you're returning the rockets to Earth for reuse anyway, a few passengers doesn't change the cost much, so why not? Of course, with the move to stainless steel that becomes far less attractive, especially early on - they're a lot cheaper to "throw away", and the steel pressure vessels are going to be valuable raw materials on Mars, while the fuel to send them back will be eating into the colony's energy budget. It seems quite likely to me that they'd end up leaving many/most of the rockets there, though perhaps send back the expensive engines for re-use.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 24 2020, @06:13PM (1 child)
That is what I meant, obviously. Actually you have to start with having it fully refueled on the surface, using propellant produced on Mars. Then you have to have one or more additional Starships capable of doing the in-Mars-orbit refuel. They may be limited by the propellant production rate or storage.
In the short term, we'll just respect the synodic period and launch at the optimal time unless it's absolutely necessary. Later developments (nuclear rockets?) should speed things up. Also, cargo shipments might be sent at any time and any velocity as long as the cost to launch does not go up.
As I said in another comment, we should expect 10,000 Martians in the near future, not a million. I don't think it will be too difficult to find people who are relatively stable, can do some work, and would not mind dying on Mars. The age may be skewed towards older individuals.
Maybe the first 20-50 or so Starships will definitely stay there for use as habitats and scrap*. But if the number of Starships landing there reaches into the hundreds, there could be an effort to cycle them between Mars and Earth. Sending back a single one loaded with engines as cargo is a neat idea... hopefully it reaches the surface of Earth safely. Note that the target [twitter.com] for Raptor engines is about $200k each, so it might not matter that much.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday January 24 2020, @08:20PM
Well, *all* the Starships going to Mars will be capable of (receiving) orbital refueling, since they had to do it on the Earth side to get there. And from the early discussion it sounds like it will likely be a symmetrical process, i.e. any two Starship-class vehicles will be able to transfer fuel in either direction - though I wouldn't be all that surprised if that ends up being more challenging than planned.
Wow, I hadn't realized that Raptors were targeted so cheap, that's barely more than $1M for the Starship's full set! If the full ship costs ~$60M it'd probably barely be worth salvaging just the engines. (though as they say: A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money)
And I suppose, if we use the payload-to-orbit as a baseline for payload-to-Mars, the ship will mass roughly the same as its payload, so shipping rolls of steel (etc) might well be much more cost effective than recycling the rockets. Once adequate fuel production is established on Mars of course.
Now I'm curious - let's run the numbers. On the Earth side, 1200t LNG in a fully fueled Starship = 60,000MBTU At current spot prices of $2/MBTU = $120,000 of fuel per launch. Plus at least 12 additional launches to fully refuel the ship in orbit (100t payload = refueling fuel, per launch) = at least $1.6M worth of fuel to get to Mars. So, yeah - if the rockets are reusable enough that fuel is the primary cost, or even just a large fraction, it should be substantially cheaper to send raw materials than cannibalize the ships. I'm a bit surprised.
>...nuclear rockets...
They could speed things up - but you're still talking about ~5x the distance between nearest and furthest approach. Not to mention that pesky sun in your path when you're in opposition - in fact it's incredibly energy expensive to get anywhere near the sun, so your opposition trip distance might be pushing 4-5x your conjunction trip distance, so you're probably looking at at least twice the travel time (at much greater cost). Of course if that just means weeks instead of days... maybe not so bad.
I'm inclined to agree - though the governance might be a sticking point. It could be be hard hitting those numbers if you effectively became corporate slave labor. But having the option to return to Earth would be a major consideration - especially if Earth abandoned the colony. Which I think is quite likely to happen - it'll be expensive, and there's not really anything in it for Earth. Profits make the world go round - and while supporting a research outpost is one thing, supporting a colonyis quite another. Especially when as far as we know, there's nothing on Mars worth the cost of shipping to Earth to rectify the trade imbalance. Short of discovering unobtanium deposits, a Mars colony is likely to be an expensive multi-century charity project. I suppose artists, software developers, researchers, etc. could ship their wares to Earth for Earth currency - but for the most part the minute a colonist steps on the ship to Mars, they have all the Earthly wealth they'll ever have, and it becomes a question of how to fund the Earth-imports that they and their children will need to survive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:49PM
This is normal. I half suspect there is something genetic within us in relation to exploration.
I am one of the ones that would happily sell everything I have to afford a ticket to Mars just to go work my ass off even more once there. I'm also the sort of person that was perfectly happy in the US, but curiosity and adventure led to me living and traveling half way around the world. And no, I didn't come from money to say the least - so it was always extremely difficult.
And today I'm not in the least bit unhappy or discontent or anything like that. I just have this insatiable urge to explore new places and engage in new 'adventures.' I never feel attached to my place in life so selling it all to start all over again is not an issue. Just so happen to also be blessed with a wife who's of the same mindset as well.
So it just changes the queue. The first arrivals will be folks like me. If you're willing to exchange go into labor debt for your ticket, then I imagine there will be a huge demand for laborers within a matter of years after the initial settlements.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:57PM (1 child)
Has Mr Musk been secretly working on nuclear rocket engines?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:29PM
I have to find the right links, but no, you can theoretically do this with just chemical rockets like Starship. Musk was already anticipating 30-day (one-way) trips back during the ITS days:
Powerful rocket missions to Mars in 30 days one way and fast mission to other solar system destinations [nextbigfuture.com]
The big difference between Starship and conventional chemical rockets is that you can get the Starship into low-Earth orbit or even higher, and fill it right back up with propellant using in-orbit refueling. As if it was sitting on the pad fully fueled, except in space. This is a major advantage that could allow you to slash the travel time to Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, etc. If each Starship costs about $2 million to launch, it doesn't matter if you have to launch 10+ Starships to deliver diminishing amounts of propellant to the Mars-bound ship.
The estimate assumes an optimized launch date to take advantage of the Earth-Mars synodic period. So there would be a 26-month gap between waves of launches.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:50PM (8 children)
So where are those scientific studies showing that most humans are OK with Mars gravity for long term?
Oh yeah we sent this up and did lots of experiments NOT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module [wikipedia.org]
Yeah lots of money going into making big promises about Mars and sending NASA admins on holidays to Hawaii[1], but not enough to do actual useful science?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HI-SEAS [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:02PM (7 children)
You've posted about this before. There's no reason to believe that living in Mars gravity would be worse than microgravity, where astronauts have stayed for over a year and exercise can mitigate some of the effects.
If nobody pays for an artificial gravity experiment in orbit, the first Martians can become the guinea pigs. They will probably be expecting to die there anyway.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:31PM (6 children)
The evidence so far is you can survive 1 year in microgravity BUT lots of stuff still declines significantly. A fair bit of stuff returns to normal AFTER you go back to Earth gravity. Would Mars colonists have the option of returning to Earth gravity?
Exercise + vitamin D might help with some of the bone loss. But the other stuff?
The proper scientific method would be to test these things out first. Finding out a minimum acceptable gravity for "typical civilians" (it would be different for different people and scenarios) would be useful for future space colonies since higher G is likely to cost more. Such stuff is likely to remain useful for many generations assuming humans survive that long.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:56PM
Yeah, I agree that microgravity is awful for health. But 0.38g should at least alleviate known microgravity problems like blood and other fluids being distributed where they shouldn't be. There is an actual significant tendency for things to head "down" on Mars, or the Moon. Smaller satellites and Ceres (0.03g) could be questionable.
We will see small amounts of people sent to Mars before any serious attempt to create colonies with thousands or millions of people. The USSR and U.S. had no problem sending people into microgravity to experience unknown health effects, so I don't see why that can't happen with the first people sent to Mars. An alternative overly cautious option would be to fund a simulated Moon/Mars gravity module in orbit, then test it on small animals instead of humans, and finally test it on humans. As we know, the Nautilus-X ISS demonstrator did not get funded. Even worse, ISS could end up being deorbited after 2028.
About the return: Musk has said that there would be a return option. You can assume this would be included in the ticket price, and under the Mars infrastructure plan, Starships should be returned to Earth for reuse anyway. Might as well include people on some of the return trips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_transportation_infrastructure#Mars_early_missions [wikipedia.org]
The main obstacles would seem to be a failure to construct the propellant plant (for the first people there), and later, a need for initial settlers to live inside the Starship they came in (so they would need to use a landed cargo ship for return, and some will have to be kept on standby instead of being sent back).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:47AM (3 children)
By what infrastructure? The 100,000 people aren't going to arrive immediately so there would be plenty of time for whoever does go in the somewhat nearer future to do all that proper scientific methoding.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:28PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:49PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:40PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @09:35PM
people would just have to bone their asses off and the kids would be more acclimated. no big deal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday January 18 2020, @06:54PM (8 children)
In a world where money is the supreme god, any project without foreseeable economic return is unsustainable.
I predict Mars colony will be a pure sink for al kind of resources, from food to electronics, humans with best brains included, for at least 100-200 years. Sending just freaks is not an option.
We already have a good economic measure: costs of living at low orbit and failure to colonize Moon.
That means total costs will be in trillions to megatrillions, by technological and logistical similarity to current Earth military sector.
And someone here on Earth should pay taxed or work cheap very hardly for that.
Even Elon Musk is not in position to handle that scale.
This project, if realized, will collapse to pure slavery both here and there.
But I consider it another Barnum Circus in Musk's style.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:16PM (5 children)
No, you have a bad economic measure. You haven't acknowledged fully reusable rockets, and until you do that, your predictions will be flat wrong. And if you want to give me the "it won't work" line, then it doesn't matter because it is a prerequisite for all of Musk's Mars plans. No fully reusable rockets means no hundreds or thousands of ships being sent to Mars.
If there isn't significant population growth at the Mars colony, there is no reason that it will have to collapse. Basic needs like food can be met on Mars, and a few shipments of electronics or other luxuries will not be prohibitively expensive. Slavery doesn't make sense because in this time frame, you have to worry about robots taking all the jobs. On Earth, slavery could become an aspiration. People will be begging to become live-in sex slaves.
Thank you for your consideration.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:01PM (1 child)
Humans with best brains will stay on Earth. Mars will be a remote, expensive colony with little purpose, high risk and only basic medicine.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:15PM
Find everyone with a wingsuit [wikipedia.org] and send them.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:37PM (2 children)
I cannot acknowledge unproven and nonexistent technology. Just look at the costs of submarines, naval carriers or late combat fighters. Life support and logistics in space is comparable to that in those machines. That's in order of magnitude required for space economy, not just some particular cargo lifter.
I tell you what Musk is really doing: it's a Ponzi scheme. That's why he is asking naive people for money. We call that letadlo (aircraft), for a historic reason. Tulips all the way up. He will get lot of money, for sure.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:10PM
Your smackdown will come soon, yokai heretic.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:20PM
So what? I think we have already figured out how to turn unproven and nonexistent technology into proven, existing technology, particularly, when we're already most of the way there. Let's go over the list of takyon's and your moderately speculative technologies:
SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy already are close enough to fully reusable to count - the primary obstacles are economic at this point, finding enough demand to reduce launch costs further and increasing the size of the rocket somewhat to exploit payload size as an economy of scale. And having demonstrated that SpaceX can develop advanced rockets, means they are likely to be able to make the necessary improvements even if their present project turns out too ambitious.
Growing food is not a big deal. We already know that every nutrient that plants (and us!) need is present on Mars. Past that, plants need the usual stuff, and nontoxic soil. It might be tricky to provide all that, but it's something we've mostly already figured out.
We don't need robots capable of "replacing all the jobs", that just makes creating and maintaining the logistics easier and cheaper. And we already have robots that have already made things easier, such as more efficient manufacturing processes that reduce the cost and weight of the Falcon 9 cores (the first stage of the rocket which is also the basic building block of the Falcon Heavy).
Life support and logistics in space? Been there. Done that. We've figured out how to keep people alive for more than long enough to get to Mars and we have variations of greenhouses that could provide the basic life support to keep them alive for years. Same with logistics. It's just not that hard compared to Earth-side stuff like keeping Walmarts stocked in real time.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:02AM
It would be unsustainable even in a world where money isn't the supreme god.
Actually, we don't have a good measure of those things. NASA is an insane way to price anything. They increase by one or two orders of magnitude the cost of anything they do. That means, for example, the lower end of your alleged "total costs" for a 100k city could be tens of billions. Which isn't such a big deal.
Unless of course, the gap between his resources and the cost of the project meet.
Because?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:35PM
Justify that, please? Why not? I think sending just the freaks would be a fantastic choice. Change my mind.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by oumuamua on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:08PM (6 children)
On the plus side, it has allowed Musk to pursue a vision, likely impossible to accomplish by any group-think committee.
On the minus side, to pursue his goal, he's had to approach it in a round-about manner. Every step of the way must follow capitalism's golden rule:
No profit, no go. And if any of his ventures turn south so do his Mars dreams.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:30PM
So? He is planning to offer the 21st century interplanetary equivalent of the transoceanic voyage. Sell tickets and send them on their way.
I wonder if that is actually true. Does SpaceX get shuttered if Tesla goes bankrupt?
Starship development cost seems to be coming in at the low end of the $2-10 billion estimate that was given. So at least the creation of some working Starships could probably succeed even if Starlink fails to generate any revenue.
If SpaceX goes out of business, they can sell off the Starship design to someone else. Probably limited to U.S. companies due to export laws. Blue Origin is the obvious choice. Musk might not live to see his dreams realized, but he won't care after he's dead.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:41PM (3 children)
Primary reasons to colonise another continent/planet:
- overpopulation at home, check
- underemployment at home, check
- tradable resources in other place, hmm TBC
- competitive interest (see last point), check
All other concerns like tech to do it and living arrangements will be important but secondary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:28PM (2 children)
You offer only two points that are certain.
Overpopulation? Rather underpopulation in the first world. Growth does occur in third world, but they aren't likely to fly to Mars.
Underemployment? Yes, but it's a socioeconomic issue, and martians will take it with them to Mars. Roughly speaking, ditch diggers with picks and shovels are no longer needed on Earth. They will not be needed on Mars either - they won't be useful enough to earn their pay in air and water and living quarters. Martian colonists will be excellent specialists, and each will be able to do one or two unrelated jobs. For example, a hydroponics specialist will double as an electronics repairman and a doctor.
Tradable resources? Why should we on Earth pay tens of millions per ton of Martian dirt? What do you expect to find there that warrants shipping to Earth and commands a good price?
Competitive interest? None visible so far. As matter of fact, money can be invested on Earth with much better results and less risk. Musk has his ideas, but not too many business people share them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Saturday January 18 2020, @11:28PM (1 child)
The UK has been overpopulated ever since it went past 20 million. It is about 67 million now and rising all the time.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @01:29AM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:15PM
The only alternative is to go full China. There are too many myopic people for a western-style democracy to ever accomplish great projects now a days. Even just getting to the moon we're forced to pander to identity politics rather than the technological/scientific/human merit. You can spend a trillion bucks blowing up the Mideast, but spend a hundred billion on Space and you'll get attention seeking fools ranting above starving babies in Africa. So instead of focusing on real and meaningful reasons, we're focusing on putting somebody with a vagina on the moon. And once that's happened and people get bored of it on social media a week or two later, people will be right back to starving babies in Africa. Yay democracy.
Yet even 'full China' only works so long as they maintain a technocratic leadership. There's a surprisingly thin line between ideologies that get man colonizing Mars and ideologies that suggest trying to killing all a nation's sparrows to improve grain yields. That's part of the reason that I think decentralization, while much less efficient than centralized authority in the short run, is probably more reliable in the longrun. Same reason I'm a fan of a multi-polar world. Basically capitalism sucks, but it beats every alternative.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by seeprime on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:22PM
Belters need to be put in place, to really colonize the solar system.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:58PM (8 children)
When wagon trains settled the western US, a family could take a wagon full of stuff and some livestock and have enough to live indefinitely.
Perhaps 500 pounds of family and 5000 pounds of support stuff.
For a trip to the Earth's South pole, I can't recall anybody trying to get self sufficient.
But what is the transport weight to support one person there for a year?
Given there is no land, the North pole is probably harder.
Given that scale, how does Mars fit in?
Well, without seeing some sort of plan for creating self-sufficiently, I don't even have a frame of reference to judge.
Which says to me that this may be fun to talk about, but it seems only a dream for now.
That said, there is nothing wrong with doing first steps, to learn what the steps to make a colony that works might be.
Instead of talking about sustaining 100k or even 1k folks, let's actually get 10 working.
That would be in impressive lifetime accomplishment.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday January 18 2020, @08:17PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_transportation_infrastructure#Mars_early_missions [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Saturday January 18 2020, @11:57PM (6 children)
For a trip to the Earth's South pole, I can't recall anybody trying to get self sufficient.
Interesting thought. Overall, Mars is more challenging than Antarctica but it beats our polar regions in one interesting way: You get daily Sun exposure, unless you're a real masochist and land in the Martian polar regions. The Martian day is even comparable to ours in length! The cold is worse on Mars, but getting a daily shot of solar energy makes things easier--no need to lug tons of propane, not that it would burn on Mars anyway.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:56PM
Understanding "Why?" should drive the choice of many folks to send first.
There's a list above that may miss the point of why?
(Primary reasons overpopulation underemployment, etc)
I think the starting point is that humans learn a lot like other animals by trying random stuff and occasionally getting lucky.
It's probably in our genes, perhaps from hunter/gather?
Sometimes we can think thru a situation and find a solution, but for really new stuff dumb luck seems a primary algorithm.
That makes exploration a key driver. We want to go to new places because we are driven to go learn something useful.
There are examples where this drive can be stronger than hunger.
I think the top reasons for doing this are more like:
1) Exploration - to see what's there
2) Challenge - because we can
3) Exploitation - we found something there we need here
4) Colonization - we want a new place to call our own
Given the history of space exploration, it would be hard to say that there is not a bit of this well
0) Sell the dream - because we can make profit here by getting folks to dream of going there
Historically, a nation state has been able to get to step 3, but to get to deeply into step 3 and to 4 requires crowdsourcing.
That required some sort of individual incentive more than exploration or challenge.
I don't see this in the talk of 100k?
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:08PM (4 children)
You also get dust storms that last for months and cut the amount of solar energy arriving at the surface way down. Long term they're going to need something like nukes to supply steady energy.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday January 20 2020, @07:50AM (3 children)
That's an excellent point, which might be addressed here. [universetoday.com]. The gist is that if somebody is there to clean the panels the dust is less of a problem, and that you can avoid most of the dust storms by avoiding the regions that have stormy climates. Initially though, you'd probably want a few RTGs too. You'd want more power than you need, and to use the excess power to store energy somehow. Perhaps we'll be able to split H2O, or some other molecule we find, or maybe even some day we'll manufacture batteries there. Then we'll be able to explore the stormy parts of Mars more easily.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 20 2020, @06:36PM (2 children)
Remember when Mariner 9 arrived at Mars and the whole planet was covered with dust with only the peak of Olympus Mons visible for months? I wonder how much light reaches the surface during one of these planet wide storms that seem to happen on average, every 3rd year. Being able to wipe the panels will help but there has to be reduced power output.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars#Dust_storms [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 24 2020, @08:46PM (1 child)
Production will certainly be reduced - but that's why you install way more generating capacity than you need for survival, and then dial back fuel production, expansion, and other energy-intensive objectives during the storms.
Nuclear will no doubt eventually play a major role, but right now NASA's kilopower reactors are pretty much the only realistic option on that front, and even the high-end 10kW reactor isn't all that impressive when it comes to powering a colony. I mean that's what, a 10x10m solar array? Well, maybe 3 or 4x that once you factor in the continuous energy production. Maybe 2-3x that during dust storms.... probably a good supplement, but they'd look a lot better if almost all that 10x100m solar area couldn't be ultralight mylar reflectors concentrating power onto relatively small panels. Without meaningful wind* or other weather, you don't need anything like the structural supports and durability you'd need on Earth - just abrasion resistance for the sandblasting.
* Mars does sometimes see some really high wind speeds during storms, but they mostly top out around 60MPH, and the *force* of the wind depends on the mass as well as the speed of the air, with Force= speed^2*Air_mass. At 1% the pressure of Earth's atmosphere, a 60MPH Martian wind will hit with roughly the same force as a 6mph Earth wind.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday January 24 2020, @09:15PM
Good points. Another advantage of solar is it can be close to where needed, stringing up power lines seems difficult on Mars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:56PM
well, adastra was one miserable sci-fi movie in the same miserable league as space odyssee, either number.
the only thing going for ad astra was that it was a space sci-fi, at least we got one ... that year.
in any case, people not being st0pid mostly, the serious ones will try the least but realistic investment in mars to find if it's possible to self sustain. obviously there will have to some trade and the real question is if there's something, anything, worth importing from mars.
as for the moon, i guess the problem is hard radiation and the design for the helium-3 reactor.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Saturday January 18 2020, @09:58PM (7 children)
I would be angry if this were serious.
What is it with the greedy people who think they can go wherever they like and take whatever they want? Why should Musk get Mars?
We the human race need to think hard about what we want to be. Mars is still a relatively pristine natural object. We need to study it thoroughly, and do so before we start soiling it and exploiting it.
There's a very good chance there may once have been life on Mars. We mustn't blunder in and ruin precious specimens. I'm actually willing to bet money that there are fossils on Mars.
More importantly, there is still a remote possibility that life still exists on Mars. The more we find out about Mars and the history of our Solar System, the less silly that seems. We really shouldn't go barging in, accidentally killing any precious organisms or contaminating Mars with our Earth stuff.
Musk's plan isn't entirely serious. He wants to go to Mars right enough and he might get there, but I doubt he could realistically amass the resources required to develop and build the technology to send a million people and to sustain them there for any length of time. He still hasn't solved the problem of radiation shielding for the journey. And what about muscle and bone decay on the way?
Yes, I'm jealous. I wish I had that sort of money, and if I did my priorities would be different. But that's why I don't have that sort of money.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @10:26PM
Fuck that. I'm not with leaving humanity stuck on one rock to inevitably die out because some precious space fossils might get damaged. Why is this myopic self-hating shit in style nowadays?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @11:38PM
Ha, straight out of Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson predicted this response years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by isostatic on Sunday January 19 2020, @12:35AM
You know how we’re going to find those fossils? A million people digging around
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @02:41PM (3 children)
Jokes about certain countries and their willingness to ignore international treaties, and populate areas that are not their sovereign territory, I will leave to EtOH-Fueled, as it doesn't really matter who did the above, what matters is that it was allowed to happen at all.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:28PM (2 children)
That tells us how dumb such treaties are (since there's nothing on the Moon which would be harmed by such contamination). Keep in mind both the US and Israel aren't parties/signatories to the ill-thought Moon Treaty, for example, so they don't have to care that the treaty exists.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:44PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:06PM
So what are the US obligations [berkeley.edu] (pg 1) under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?
The key is "harmful contamination". Sorry, landing tardigrades on the Moon doesn't count because there's nothing there to harm. Moving on, the same link describes the COSPAR policies on contamination. Long story short, the Moon falls in Category 1 for out-going missions where contamination neither impacts other biological research missions nor has potential to harm existing organisms. But it does fall into Category 5 for protecting Earth from contamination by returning spacecraft, which might carry harmful organisms (and create the need for a quarantine process between Earth and Moon).
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 21 2020, @04:04PM
While Elon Musk is on the way to "Cheap" trips to Mars, there is yet to be an economic incentive to actually go to Mars. Sure, there's the initial investigation period, that might produce some interest. Unless, there's something that's hard to get on Earth, easy to get on Mars, and super useful on Earth, Mars is a pipe dream. No matter how bad the Earth gets in the next 100 years, Mars will still be worse. Even in a post Nuclear Armageddon, the Earth would likely be a nicer place than Mars or any place astronomically close. The only thing you'd need to be worried about from an atheistic point of view would be the entire destruction of the earth. As in a space rock big enough to literally crack the earth in two or in many more pieces.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"