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You need to get philosophical before you start thinking extending ageing is going to be a wonderful benefit.
There will be horrific consequences.
Firstly the planet's resources will be put under extreme stress. If no one dies over the next 200 years I guess we could be heading for a population maybe 50 times what it is now. So 300 billion. Is that a sensible population for a planet our size? I don't think so. Okay perhaps we can start developing other planets but I doubt Mars will be able to support half that population ie 150 billion in the next 200 years and there aren't many other potential homes in the solar system.
I am not saying Earth couldn't support 300 billion people but I am saying it would be a horrible place to live.
In any case there's no way you could support the huge number of immortals through the existing economy, in which only a small proportion of the population will be invovled. You would have to raise the retirement age, so the reality would be that whereas people only used to have to work 30 or so years, now they will have to work maybe 100 years.
Our social and biological structures are not designed to cope with extreme age or immortality. We currently (if we are lucky) feel close to and feel affection for our living family memebrs. How will we feel about 2000 living "close" family members. Most obviously they won't be "close". We will have to pick and choose...but how will that play out in terms of inheritance and wills?
The rythm of our culture which is based on the idea of brief youth, parenthood, grandparenthood and death will be completely destroyed.
You will have to reinvent culture but it's difficult to just summon up culture in a few years. Most culture develop over centuries through accretion. My point is that humans will be set adrift with no cultural anchors.
As I explained it's mostly about a University on the surface of Mars. But re Model 1, I think a University of Mars would want to set up a campus on Earth as well to prepare students for the Mars experience. The way I envisage Model 1 might be something like:
0.5 year Preparatory course on Earth - prep and training for Mars.
0.5 year transit to Mars
Year 1 degree course on Mars
0.5 year work experience on Mars
Year 2 degree course on Mars
1.5 years Paid work on Mars (with 25% of salary defraying costs of degree course which is otherwise subsidised)
0.5 (Optional - Return to Earth)
So a student would be committed for at least 5 years if they stay on Mars or 5.5 years if they return to Earth.
It's a big commitment but then you don't want people who are gadflies in terms of their involvement with Mars. Also, the model would be attractive to students in that they would pay no course fees, or fees for accommodation, food and subsistence. At the end of the course they would have guaranteed high paid employment on Mars. If they return to Earth. they will do so as high status individuals with a story to tell about their time on another planet. It's win-win all round.
I think both models could work but I like the idea of Model 1, integrating university education into the colonisation project.
Are you doing this University on the Mars surface and if not this topic applies too.
Mars Society "Mars University"
Two Approaches to A University for Mars
1. The Integrated Model
One proposal that might make a difference and accelerate the process of permanent settlers moving to Mars would be the creation of a University for Mars which could have campuses on both Earth and Mars. The purpose of the University would be to educate potential settlers to graduate or post graduate level, ensuring they were well advanced in the study of key disciplines, have a good grasp of Mars’s geology and of the terraformation process and also developed practical skills e.g. life support system maintenance or farming to a high level.
The course would incorporate training for the flight to Mars and for living on Mars. Their final year would be spent at the campus on Mars and would incorporate a field study, an exploration mission to a remote location. There students would undertake activities such as securing geological samples, road trail planning, setting up solar power way stations, taking atmospheric measurements, searching for meteorites.
Students would likely start their courses at some age between 18 and 25. There would be no upfront course fees and students would receive free accommodation, food and subsistence but students would sign a contract to go to Mars and work there for a minimum of say 18 months after graduation, during which time a large part of their salary (eg 25%) would be dedicated to contributing towards the cost of their university education.
The advantages of this approach would be: that people would experience Mars before they started a family; that the young people would be likely to form relationships with other people on the course and so would likely have partners also interested in settling on Mars; and that they would have a skills set that was relevant to Mars development.
Funding for the University could come from philanthropists, Space X and a Mars settlement administration. With a student body of 3000, you would have an annual supply of 1000 people ready to work on Mars. It might cost something like $2 billion pa to fund.
If half the students settle permanently on Mars, that would give you a population increase of 500 per annum, or 5000 per decade.
The University of Mars would be instrumental in spreading the idea that migrating to Mars will be not only possible but desirable. The whole ethos of the institution will be “Let’s Go To Mars”. Venite ad Martis. This won’t just be a case of course tutors communicating their enthusiasm to students, the University will also provide spokespeople to engage with the public whenever….public speakers for other universities, schools and so on.
Even if graduates return to Earth, their degree will likely be valued by employers and their presence in a firm will add "glamour" to the organisation.
2. The Transplant Model
This model would see one or more Universities from Earth create a (likely) post-graduate facility on Mars. Here there would be a mix of advanced teachng e.g. about Mars geology and research e.g. determining Mars's geological past and the location of various minerals. Of course if past or current life is found on Mars, there will be a "gold rush" of research and courses will be lean more to life sciences.
So we might see "Yale on Mars", "MIT on Mars" or "Oxford on Mars". I believe there would be a lot of competition between the most prestigious universities on Earth to "win" the right to establish a university facility on Mars.
Of course while the Universities might themselves invest big sums of money in the project, that does not precluded
The two models are not necessarily exclusive but the structure of the first model, The Integrated Model, would certainly aid colonisation.
NASA don't charge. Space X will unless they have lost all business sense. If I was directing Space X's media policy I'd offer some free highlights to news corporations. But otherwise, still images and videos would either be charged for or be copyright as part of programme content. These images will be iconic and continue to generate income for decades to come.
There is huge revenue to be earned from these images and video.
I think around the planet there will be a large number of people really interested in Mars and prepared to pay for Mars-related material through subscriptions and so on. Obviously not all 7.5 billion of us. But it only takes 100 million to be sufficiently interested to pay maybe $30 each year on average for books, TV channels, magazines and so on, and that's already $3 billion. But I think maybe 10 million around the globe will be very interested. They may well be prepared to subscribe to Mars TV channels for instance, subscribe to monthly magazine, internet channels and so on. Many will become interested in the idea of moving to Mars to live there, whether or not they actually go...here on Earth many people watch property programmes like "Escape to the Country" even though they never leave suburbia.
Maybe they will be prepared to spend $100 or even $500 per annum in various formats.
Cost of netfix monthly fee a low 9 to 20 range for importing to have movie night, cost of what you might charge for anything transmitted will be less...hulu charges low 6 to 65 which includes tv...
Do we pay for any of the public domain images or video's now so why would we do so once man is on the surface?
It would have been better if the USA had resolved to fully integrate Native Americans into US Citizenship, which might have involved massive investment in Native American settlements. I don't even see how you can have these autonomous regions operating outside of normal law under the US Constitution. Presumably the Supreme Court accepts it on some spurious grounds. Once again the "wisdom" of the Founding Fathers is found rather wanting.
SpaceNut,
Petition Congress to change the law. Congress is run by Democrats. The President is a Democrat. There will be no opposition anyway, because nobody cares except for the Native American tribes. The 1934 law is the law that's applicable to the Wampanoag. There's a legal process for changing the law, so use it.
Exactly so!
Every time someone wants to say something about Mars, they'll want a photo or a video. Space X are in business. They won't be giving it away for free and no one else (at least for a few years) will have these images, so they can charge the monopoly price.
For SpaceNut re #150
Your post would be correct if you are thinking of physical objects.
However, movies can be made on Mars and shipped to Earth via encrypted radio transmission. There is almost no shipping cost, and royalties can be earned for decades if the work is good.
An entire series of books has been written on this very subject.
If we set aside the idea of trying to export physical objects, and think instead of what is unique about Mars that can be shipped in electronic form, then we have a great deal of opportunity.
(th)
Well that's the low end estimate - it could cost a lot more to import tea, and of course you have to consider that as the population grows, it simply won't be possible to import all the foodstuffs. 1000 people consume something like 1000 tons of food over a two year period. So that could be taking up anywhere between 6 and 10 Starships. 10,000 people would need between 60 and 100 Starships every 2 years. Even if tea could theoretically be imported at a price below that of Mars ISRU agriculture, I just doubt there would be cargo space available (because 100 Starships mean perhaps 600 launches during a launch window - that will be straining Earth's launch capacity, I would suggest, especially when you factor all the other high priority imports for a community of 10,000 people...you'd probably have to add in another 20 launches minimum).
But, leaving that aside, let's run with 40 cents per 2 grams. Add on maybe 3 cents for the price of the tea itself, 43 cents per 2 grams. Yes, I don't see why not. They grow about 4,600 Kgs of tea per hectare on Earth. At $0.43 per Kg that would give $989,000 per hectare of cultivation.
https://www.o-cha.net/english/teacha/cu … ction.html
That's a lot of money to play with. Mars farmers are eventually going to get pretty good at their business, with cost cutting. Who knows how much it would cost to produce 4600 Kgs of tea on Mars? Intuitively I think they will be able to do it for under $215 per kg. $50 per Kg sounds more reasonable to me for Mars ISRU agriculture. Could be cheaper if we master the art of low pressure high CO2 farming under pressurised translucent plastic with reflective mylar screens to boost light and with innovative heating including use of waste heat from industrial processes.
Louis,
Teabags contain 1-3 grams of tea. At 2g per cup, we can get 500 cups out of a kg. If costs are $200/kg, can domestic tea really compete with a price of $0.4 per cup?
That's for a commonly consumed product. What about pharmaceuticals, another high value low mass product? It makes no sense for Mars to focus resources on manufacturing something that can be imported more cheaply. Better to have people doing the high value work and buying stuff in (comparative advantage). Does this make them dependent on Terra? Yes, but that's the problem that every country here has too - there's a tradeoff between economic development and security. Even worse for Mars, which will import all its workers. At least a country can justify tariffs on the basis of increasing domestic employment and rebalancing its economy. On Mars, there won't be those concerns, because no-one will ship people over if there isn't work for them.
Well you opened this by asserting the key factors that shape a culture - and you stated they related to geography. I don't disagree they are very important.
But you can hardly object to people saying what other factors shape a culture and you'd have a hard time arguing politics and the economy won't matter. It will be vitally important as to who gets to Mars first - whether it will be the CCP regime, Musk/Space X, NASA, the Russian government, the United Arab Emirates or someone else. Each will put their stamp on the culture. It's one of the reasons I am a huge backer of Musk's is that for all his faults he seems to have an understanding of the importance of freedom, free speech and human consciousness.
louis,
Okay, but this forum is about civilisation and culture, not politics and economy... I'd like to keep the conversation to how the environment of Mars may shape the culture of those who inhabit it please.
Why bother? Because tea could cost anything from $200 to $2000 per Kg to import.
Actually... I think Josh may have missed something important in his posts on productivity.
If Mars is trading with Terra, then the Martian economy is a subset of the combined Terra-Mars economy. Normal productivity estimates don't apply. How productive are the workers on an oil platform, if measured by revenue generated per employee? But of course, they will be consuming resources from 'less productive' sectors. If Mars has to grow its own tea, they will need to devote workers to this task... but tea is a low mass high value product that is pretty cheap down here, so why bother?
Still need exports though.
"Humans are humans". Crass and crasser I guess.
So you are claiming every culture is equal to every other culture, every religion is equal to every other religion, every corporation is equal to every corporation?
Where do we start?
How do you rate the Taliban against Quakers. Are you honestly saying you'd have no preference if asked whether you wished to be raised as a child by the Taliban or Quakers?
On one thing we can agree: Mars will not be a utopia.
But equally it is obvious:
1. Re the iniitial Mars colonisation programme (let's say the first 20 years) we won't be deliberately bringing in a cross section of humans (ie a representative sample including meth addicts, religious maniacs, habitual criminals, people with psychiatric disorders, flakey types, pregnant women, people with significant disabilities or people with gender issues).
2. So the issue is really how far you maintain controls over further migration to the planet.
Yes you can say "humans are humans" but what does that mean? Are you saying you want a complete representative sample of Earth-based humanity. And how is that "representative sample" going to be organised if that's what you want?
In other words, cut the virtue-signalling and tell us what you are proposing.
louis,
Humans are humans. Stop trying to create a utopia by keeping out "the wrong sort". You are welcome to try and do that in Montana if you'd like, no need to cross 75 million kilometres of space to do so.
Here in lies the problem.
Corporate:
The rocket is purchased for a trip to mars via a corporation that means those on it are employees to the work that the buyer is wanting done.
Sounds like NASA so far...
For the individual all of you time is allotted via that ticket paid for by the corporation. You can not make any earnings beyond the paid for work of the corporation.
BS. Depends on your contract. A standard employment contract allows you to go to your employer and say I want to do x additional work with another employer.
Sure your free time will allow for you to do what ever you would desire but since the ticket costs are more than a home mortgage you have no income that is extra to do anything with once on mars.
One moment you are saying the employer is paying your ticket, now you're saying you are paying for it yourself. Doesn't make sense. But whoever pays the ticket, there will be a lot of money sloshing around.
That leaves only bartering for a period of time until there is a cash source to make purchases with. That said the trip home for the corporate is probably only for a contingent for if you are sick otherwise its the contract that you sign as the employee. So there is no goods to go home that you may have produced with you free time.
What are you on about? Bartering!! The early pioneers will be paid in dollars or whatever back on Earth. They won't have to barter for anything! lol You're not making a lot of sense.
Agency nation
The agency is the one paying for the activity while on mars and most agencies can not earn any money from goods or activity that would be profit as that is how these are set up.
Uber and all the rest seem to do quite well back on Earth.
Tourist ride share seat
Limited contract for none crew or corporate employed. This has limits on resources that one is provided. They are free to do what they want but if these people have not a return trip clause for goods then they too are just site seers. So unless they can make there own rocket to return goods and or make a system on mars to provide beyond what is sent that people want there is no earnings.
This is just crazy stuff. Space X won't enter into any agreements with anyone unless everything is paid for up front there and back. People will work within those parameters.
Sponsor
That is a purchase trip but with hooks into what you can or can not do with that ticket. It is a subset of the ride share tourist.
Sponsors have always controlled the behaviour of those they sponsor...nothing new there. If it works on Earth, it works on Mars.
Thanks TA. Any observations from anyone welcome.
This was written a while ago. Musk was not then the (by some estimates) richest person on Earth, someone who could be the first trillionaire on Earth (that's $1000 billion folks). Musk's commitment to Mars colonisation is not in any doubt. I can't see how he would begrudge donating tens of billions of dollars to the project over time. Now some people might think "that's a cheat - that's not how a real economy works" but that is to forget that many of the first American colonies had rich benefactors: monarchs, landed nobles and wealthy merchants and that their colonisation projects would never had got off the ground without the involvement of these fabulously wealthy investors or benefactors.
I think it would be reasonable to suggest that Musk may well put something like $20 billion* into the Mars colonisation project from his personal wealth over the next three decades. That sort of direct capital injection will be hugely important in help make Mars an attractive place to live. If I was advising Musk I would suggest he invest his money in the creation of Earth-like-environments from artificial or natural gorges that can be pressurised and seeded with natural flora and fauna from Earth. These would be the equivalent of our city parks created by the filthy rich philanthropes of the Victorian era. Likewise he could kickstart an art market on Mars by paying artists to produce works of art on Mars. So many possibilities with that amount of money!
* That's a very low end estimate - it could be $200 billion.
For Louis re series ending in Post #23
Thank you for your generosity and patience ...
SearchTerm:Book unpublished by Louis
For SpaceNut ... please evaluate the proposals of Louis to see if they make sense to you ...
There appears (at first reading) to be an opportunity to add material to the On-Mars section.
(th)
Another reason energy will be cheap is that you don't have to purchase or rent the land for your energy systems.
As regards research, yes it will be a big earner because all those scientists will need transit, transport, accommodation and life support.
If life - old or current - is found on Mars then it will be like the Klondike...a complete gold rush of research.
Having reread this, it strikes me that Mars may indeed be able to create an advantage not present here...
Cheap energy. Mars can put in vast rectenna arrays for space based solar power without having to worry about environmental damage, the loss of valuable land, the need to keep power levels low to avoid boiling wildlife... this would make it far more viable than it is on Terra. The only time you wouldn't have power is at midnight, when no-one is working and almost everyone is asleep, and it would only be a short blip.
Whether or not this access to energy would change the economics enough to make certain exports viable, I do not know. They would be competing against high orbit and Luna, which have the advantage of short shipping times and frequent windows. But if Mars has large orebodies of valuable metals that are lacking on Luna, maybe it will work.
There's also information. As I pointed out in another thread, governments spends hundreds of millions of dollars on Antarctic research stations each year. That's pretty much the continents export - research. It's not unrealistic to expect this to happen to Mars, if the costs become low enough. One can imagine a Mars Trading Corporation, similar to the Hudson's Bay Company, that operates trading posts and infrastructure to provide the civilian support these bases will need. Over time, as we learn to live on Mars and the cost of the infrastructure is amortised, perhaps some rich adventurers will be able to establish the first private colony there...
As Antius pointed out, though, it's easier to come up with a business case for high orbit (power, vacuum, freefall) and Luna (gravity, metals) than for Mars, because of the far shorter and far more frequent transits available. Should this succeed, Mars may find a niche selling into the space economy, rather than the Terran one, enabling it to expand from a science research outpost into a true colony.
I was amazed to read a few years ago that the Russians had (small) "robot" tanks, rado guided I think, that they used in WW2.
SpaceNut,
The US had its first armed combat drones in 1944, but they were never used in combat. We had experimented with RC drone aircraft for at least a decade at that point. I think some of our first experiments with remotely piloted aircraft were not long after WWI, meaning 1920s. The Naval Aircraft Factory TDN-1 RPV was an optionally piloted twin-engine drone aircraft equipped with a single 2,000 pound iron bomb or Mk 13 torpedo. 4 prototypes and 100 operational examples were built during the war. As previously stated, tested in mock combat, but never used in actual combat. These aircraft were of wooden construction, had fixed tricycle landing gear, operated from carrier flight decks like normal carrier aircraft, and contained a television camera or radar system with the signal relayed back to a remote viewing station aboard a TBM Avenger aircraft located up to 8 miles away. Experiments were also conducted with a single airborne operator controlling multiple drones at the same time.
We had fully autonomous radar-guided glide bombs (the ASM-N-2 Bat was used operationally in the Pacific theater of war) that successfully sank or heavily damaged a number of Japanese ships in the Pacific. These guided weapons were equipped with 1,000 pound warheads from regular iron bombs. They were constructed of plywood, used Lead-acid car batteries to power the radar and flight control servos, were fire-and-forget weapons rather than radio-controlled / remotely-piloted, the airframe and electronics weighed 600 pounds, the weapons attained glide speeds of 140 to 210 knots, and a few dozen or so were used in successful attacks at ranges of up to 20 nautical miles when dropped from 25,000 feet. The length was just shy of 12 feet and the wingspan was 10 feet. The Bats entered into service in 1945 and were carried into combat by Corsair fighters, Catalina flying boats, and Privateer heavy bombers. 2,580 of these Bat glide bombs were built.
Regarding the above extracts in the three previous posts from me, I would add:
1. These are ideas for generating revenue back on Earth effectively, in other words generating dollars and other earth currency "back home".
2. However all the time Mars will be developing its own Mars-focussed economy. Obvious elements will include water mining, agriculture, energy generation, rocket fuel manufacture, rocket maintenance, Mars-based transport, retail, hospitality, leisure, health services, industrial production (supporting other sectors like agriculture and rocket maintenance) and so on.
3. The Mars-grounded economy will have productive value. At some stage, the Mars community may think it is the right time to adopt their own currency which can be traded with Earth currencies, notably the dollar. It can either be a floating currency or have a fixed exchange rate.
4. Energy generation will be a good marker for the Mars economy. Within a few years, the Mars economy will be bigger than that of small nations on Earth.
(continued from my previous post)
Phase 3 - Longer term (Years 20-50) $84.3 billion
Population rising from 100 to 5000
(a) Sale of land and bonds - $30 billion. As the economic potential of Mars becomes clear, so will the urge to invest. If there is a legal framework backed by a group of Earth nations or the UN, this will allow the effective sale of land (perhaps on the basis of long leases or even licences, if the idea of land ownership is considered to be ruled out by international law) and investment bonds. If a million square kilometres was sold off, or licensed off, at $10,000 a square kilometre, that would raise $10 billion. If the Mars Consortium can start earning say $1 billion per annum, then bonds of several billion dollars could be sold – let us say $20 billion.
(b) Luxury produce - $300 million. Once agriculture is up and running, there will be a significant market across Earth for luxury foods and wine from Mars. How about a bottle of “Mars Champagne” at $200,000? Any takers? There will be – the super-rich always want to prove they are super rich. Perhaps $10 million per annum.
(c) Luxury goods - $45 billion – There will be a huge market for luxury lightweight goods made on Mars such as a Mars Rolex watch for men, chiffon scarves, jewelry items and so on. The Rolex mechanism might be made on Earth, but the watch is finished on Mars with Mars gold. This could be really big I think. Imagine watches selling at $100,000. I see no reason why the Mars Rolex couldn't sell 5,000 of those per annum - $500million.
The UK jewelry market is worth £5 billion dollars per annum, so I am guessing the global market is worth something like $500 billion or more. I think it quite reasonable to assume Mars can capture at least 0.2% of that market – 1 billion dollars per annum.
(d) . Sale of “real time” interactive experience on Mars - $3 billion. Imagine going to a big city Science Museum and being able to pay a few dollars more there to be able to interact with Mars – to write your name on a rock face for instance, or to help move boulders using robots.
If we can beam back 3D data from Mars, there would be scope I think for interactive facilities on Earth.
Eg. on Earth you get to move replica rocks around with an automated digger, but the automated digger on Mars performs the same action. And perhaps drills into the rock to analyse it. This could be linked in with Mars museums or theme centres.
This could easily generate $100 million per annum.
(e) Mars tourism - $6 billion. If we can develop direct shot rocket technology, I think there will be scope for development of Mars tourism – people coming to Mars for perhaps 2 month stays and going on treks to the major tourist sites (e.g. Olympus Mons). Of course, initially, this will be the province of the super-rich but if the colonists can master home grown rocketry prices could come down significantly. By year 20 tourism might be taking off and it could generate several hundred million of dollars per annum even if there were only say 1000 tourists per annum. 1000 tourists paying $200,000 for the trip would equal $200 million.
(continued from my previous post)
Phase 2 - Medium Term (+5 to +20 years)
Population rising from 12 to 100
(a) Export of gold, platinum, diamonds and other precious metals and stones - $750 million (over 15 years) . With gold alone currently trading at something like 35,000 dollars a Kg, this category could be a major source of revenue. Of course it does depend on the colonists discovering exposed gold sources on the surface – no reason why not as no one else is prospecting for gold on the planet. Similarly other precious metals and stones could produce huge amounts of revenue. Earnings of $50million per annum don't seem impossible.
(b) Sponsored colonists - $3000 million (over 15 years). The “gap year” student. There will in our view be no shortage of young, suitably qualified personnel who would wish to be part of the experience of building the Mars colony as part of an interval between education and work. And, who can doubt that employees back on earth would be keen to employ young enterprising people who take part in this way and show determination, fortitude and a high level of skill acquisition? Of course the gap year concept will be extended somewhat – it may be a round trip of 2.5 years, with perhaps 1.5 actually spent on Mars. Earnings at $50m per person might give an average of $200million per annum in the medium term period.
Who would do the sponsorship? Firstly the super-rich providing the ultimate experience for their adventurous offspring. Secondly, international companies seeking to raise their profile and attract graduates. Thirdly, smaller space agencies wishing to make their mark on Mars and conduct experiments. Lastly universities and research institutions wishing to undertake research.
(c)University of Mars franchise $800 million. . Establishment of a University on Mars. This could be the subject of competition between the best endowed seats of learning on Earth. Those with a strong planetary science and astronomy bias might be tempted to sink a lot of money into such a project, especially if they were being guaranteed a head start over their rivals. Mars University of Harvard? Sorbonne Mars? Kyoto Mars University? It might begin as a small postgraduate teaching and research facility. A University, possibly with a benefactor’s backing might be prepared to sink several hundred million dollars into such a foundation and continue to fund at a significant rate. Endowments of $100-500m are not uncommon on Earth. So, I think a $500m endowment for this unique foundation is possible.
(d) Mars Museum Space X will be perfectly placed to develop a Mars Museum back on Earth, most likely in somewhere like Florida, long associated with the space industry and also a top holiday destination. A Mars Museum could easily match The Kennedy Space Centre has something like 1.7 million visitors per annum. So, let’s assume 1.5 million for the Mars Museum. Charging $40 per visitor, that would give revenue of $600 million over a decade.
(...continued)
From my unpublished book...probably needs updating!
This Chapter’s analysis looks at the scope for revenue generation in relation to the early stages of Mars colonisation. It’s useful to distinguish stages in the timeline because not everything can be done at the outset, and there will be a natural rhythm to economic development. Accordingly I have chosen to look at the following stages:
Short term (pre-mission and 0-5 years)
Medium Term (5-20 years after)
Longer Term (20 years plus)
The analysis assumes a figure of $20,000 per kg as the cost of Earth-Mars or Mars-Earth transit (surface to surface). It assumes that a Mars landing project will take ten years from conception to landing. It further assumes that the project will be undertaken by a consortium including national space agencies, private space companies, and philanthropists.
Short term (Year 0 - 5) - $19.25 billion or $1.925 billion per annum
Population rising from 0 to 12
(a) General and specific commercial sponsorship - $700million. The commencement of colonisation of Mars by humans from Earth will be an event of momentous importance. It will dominate news channels for many weeks. It will provide the basis for news and science documentaries, acres of newsprint and countless articles on the Internet. However, sponsors will benefit from a long build up to the mission, as well as the final landings. It is considered that Olympics sponsorship provides a good point of comparison.
General sponsors could include firms like Coca Cola,Microsoft, Nike etc.
The sponsorship available for the initial landings should be on a par with the Olympics. But there will be opportunities for ongoing sponsorship e.g. of exploration missions to Olympus Mons or the Grand Canyon of Mars or to the polar region. Commercial sponsorship of the Olympics amounts to about $1000 million over the Olympic cycle. Conservatively one could expect the Mars landings to garner at least $500million – possibly with staged release of funds over a ten year period.
It is expected general sponsorship could continue at perhaps $100 million per mission. It should be noted that the activities on Mars will be of continued interested to news and science programmes, and sponsors can gain from that continued interest.
There will be continuing opportunities for specific sponsorship for exploration missions e.g. perhaps a rover mission to explore Olympic Mons. Companies may well wish to secure sole sponsorship rights on these missions, so we might have “The Nike Expedition to Olympic Mons” for instance. Or “The Toyota Mission to the Mars North Pole”. Subsequent explorations should be able to clear at least $200million a time I would say, in the short to mid term.
(b) Sale of Mars TV rights $550 million. Clearly exclusive TV rights to the initial Mars landings would have huge value. A figure of $200-500 million seems reasonable – with the globe parcelled up into about 10 lots.
But later exploration missions TV rights (e.g. to Olympus Mons) will also command high prices. So we can expect something like $10 million per annum (with no significant mass transfer)
(c) Sale of regolith- $2000 million The Mars pioneers should be able to return with substantial amounts of Mars regolith. For the purposes of this analysis, let us assume that over a ten year period some 20 tons of regolith is returned. This will include no doubt a lot of “bog standard” iron oxide material but also a range of interesting looking rocks. All samples will be properly tagged with full information, including photos, of the site.
A figure of $100,000 per kg will be quite reasonable. Even ordinary Mars dust will be a very valuable commodity (as is ordinary lunar dust). In 2018 lunar dust was valued at $300,000 a gram (based on NASA’s figures from the 1970s) in today's values. So that would be $3 million per kg. Why the much lower valuation for Mars regolith? Space X will be able to return much larger amounts and universities might prefer to wait and see if the price comes down if the asking price was pitched too high. The figure of $100,000 per Kg reflects more the amount of money available across the world in Universities. It has to be remembered there are something like 20k univerisites on planet Earth. If half have significant geology or astrophysics departments, then each institution would need…
Of course Space Agencies and other research instiutes. In addition, large companies may well decide to put some Mars rock in a display case in their HQ lobby rather than purchase a painting or sculpture.
Space Agencies will not blink at spending $1 m on Mars regolith when it would take them $1 billion to set up a robot Mars sample return mission.
My analysis suggests several thousand institutes around the globe would be interested in acquiring Mars regolith (just as there is great interest in lunar regolith). Earnings of $200-$400 million per annum for the first ten years are certainly possible.
(d) Sale of meteorites - $2500 million. Meteorites on Earth are collected by both scientists and private collectors. Rare meteorites can be worth millions of dollars. Mars meteorites will be rare almost by definition. I think we could be talking about $500,000 per kg for the right meteorites. Geology.com offers advice over the web on the pricing of meteorites. At the cheap end these can start at around 50 cents per gram. But rare Mars and lunar meteorites may sell for $1,000 per gram or more – much more in some cases. So a kilogram meteorite could cost around a $1million or more. For the first ten years, I think the value of meteorite exports could be in the region of $250-500 million per annum. If 1000 universities, space agencies, private collectors and others are in this market, that is only between $250,000 and $500,000 per buyer per annum. Would some institutions be prepared to pay up to $5 million over 10 years to accumulate a top class meteorite collection?
(e) Space Agency contributions - $10 billion There are a number of space agencies around the world who would pay to be part of the first mission to Mars and to have one of their people be a member of the crew.
It should be noted that the total amount for all space agency budgets world wide is something in excess of $40 billion per annum. So for this Mars Mission we are looking for only something like $1 billion per annum - about 2.5% of the overall budget.
There is no reason to think that an average “going rate” of around $1billion per crew member (over 10 or more years) would be unreasonable in this phase. This would work out at about $100 million per annum. If Mission One were to land 6 crew members that would be $6 billion.
Likely participating agencies would include NASA, ESA (with possibly France, the UK and Germany separately), India, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Canada and Australia. Not all could participate in Mission 1. The “entry fee” for later missions would be reduced in price.
(f) Philanthropic contributions - $2 billion There is every reason to think that space philanthropists would help realise a mission to Mars. A figure of $2 billion seems a reasonable minimum during the initial development phase. Elon Musk could be expected to contribute a large sum from his personal fortune. But others might wish to join, particular if they get their name on some of the original habs. Maybe there will be a Bill Gates IT Centre on Mars or a Warren Buffet Mars Research Centre. Given the size of many personal fortunes, and the opporunities for naming on Mars, this seems.
(g) Scientific experiments - $500 million Thousands of universities, research institutes and private individuals would be prepared to fund specific scientific experiments on Mars. $500 million may be a conservative figure.
(h) Art installations - $ 1 billion There is every reason to suppose that super-rich artists like Damien Hirst would wish to become the first creators of art on another planet. Moreover, once created, these art works would have a market value and could be sold on.
To put this is in context – the global art market is worth over $60 billion per annum. Revenue of $100 million per annum would represent only some 0.17% of that overall market.
(i) Crowd funding - $3 billion Once people on Earth are aware that the mission really is going ahead, it should be possible to devise a whole range of crowd-funded initiatives to encourage financial contributions from a portion of the 6 billion people on Earth. These could include: paying to have your name inscribed on a rock face on Mars, paying to have ashes scattered on Mars, paying to direct a mini-robot on Mars. The possibilities for such funding are limitless.
(j) Sale of emphemera and memorabilia
https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment … igh-demand
There will undoubtedly be a market for notable items and emphemera from the early colonisation period back on Earth. We can take the Beatles memorabilia market as a reference point. A single drumskin from the group’s early period was sold for over $1 million dollars. Undoubtedly artefacts associated with the settlement of Mars will do equally as well or better.
Space X would be well advised to set up a professional agency to market these items and generate revenue. A lot will depend on how artefacts are marketed - for instance they could be sold along with samples of Mars regolith and signatures of early pioneers to add value.
...continued
Tesla does manufacture its vehicles in China:
https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/09/te … -in-china/
Whether China is using its infamous methods to secretly subsidise the SAIC model, I don't know but if so, the European and American consumer will benefit from the subsidy.
There's no evidence that EV batteries are more dangerous than ICEs which catch fire all the time.
The china GM vehicle is being made with subsidized low cost labor which is not the case for the Tesla being made by Musk. Just add up the cost for replacement parts and then you will see that the parts in the vehicle is and are being reduced in there use as a total sell able unit.
It was 2004 when I did my first designed charging for the Lithium ion batteries which would cause shorting the the cells and fire which was very hard to put out. These were being used in a self contained breathing apparatus when Desert storm was happening.
You might say "the beginning of the end" but it was late in the war (1944). 1400 Me 262s were built against 7700 Mosquitoes. My point is that had we ramped up Mosquito production from 1940 onwards at the expense of the very inaccurate big bombers, we would have won the war earlier.
I think I'd like to see some citation, as opposed to assertion, for this claim that the life of a Spitfire was longer than a Mosquito.
The first encounter of a Mosquito with a Messerschmitt Me 262 marked the end for the Mosquito. A wooden airframe was pulverized by the 30mm cannons of the much faster jet aircraft. The structure of the De Haviland wasn't designed for a long life span--it was an expedient design that was cheap to produce in quantities. kbd512 is correct in stating that Aluminum is much better and durable construction material.
Personally I feel the L Point stuff is a bit of a diversion and NASA seem to obsess about them but make no progress at all. Space elevators if possible are a long way off and will require development of new materials that we can't currently produce.
I'd worry more about what is going to happen to the Moon and Mars once we have easy access. Are we going to export all the ills of Earth or are we going to create new societies that are an example to those of us left back on Earth?
I don't think the Moon is very promising in terms of full scale colonisation and certainly wouldn't guarantee our survival as a species because it is too close to Earth.
Choke point: "a geographical feature on land such as a valley, defile or bridge, or maritime passage through a critical waterway such as a strait, which an armed force is forced to pass through in order to reach its objective." It's not just armed forces that are vulnerable to them of course - as everyone was reminded this year when the Suez Canal was shut by a civilian vessel.
Space may seem free and empty, but just like Terra, it has its own choke points. Certain locations are more valuable than others - there are only five lagrange points, for example, and only the polar regions on Lunar can access permanent solar power.
Additionally, resources are not evenly distributed. All of this suggests that there will be a strong first mover advantage for those who secure these sites. An organisation that acquires the Lunar subterran point and its antipodes would be able to exert control over any Lunar space elevators that are constructed (the two endpoints possible are L1 and L2). Given the substantial economic savings that space elevators could bring, it may then be possible for them to undercut any other settlement ventures and make themselves the hegemons of Luna.
There is both danger and opportunity in these choke points. The opportunity for a group to gain such a strong position that it can dictate terms. The danger that such a group will be Amazon Tether Services Ltd.
This EV - joint Chinese-GM venture (sounds pretty Chinese though!) - is totally outselling Tesla in China and I think is already getting healthy sales in Europe and North America.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56178802
An EV for under $5000!
Tesla is obviously going for the gas-equivalent automobile but there are other business models e.g. a tidy little urban run-around that can do 90% of what you use a car for. For a young couple with no or only small children, something like the Hong Guang Mini EV probably meets their needs and will be much cheaper to run and maintain.
My longer term optimism re EVs is that I think electric roads are going to win out, so battery size can be much smaller. That in turn will reduce pollution from tyre burn (due to lower weight on the tyres) and substantially reduce cost of EVs - possibly by as much as 50%).
Louis,
The cost of battery electronic vehicles greatly exceeds the cost of gasoline powered vehicles, which is why they're subsidized by the federal government to the tune of about $10,000. By your own assertion that cost wins, they're still non-competitive with gasoline.
Sticker Price at the Dealership:
Mazda 3 - $20,000
Tesla Model 3 - $50,000The $30,000 differential buys 500,000 miles of travel in the form of gasoline at $3.00 per US gallon. Each gallon of gasoline can provide 50 miles of range.
The electricity then adds more cost to the battery electronic Tesla Model 3.
500,000 miles * 350Watts per mile = 175,000,000Watt-hours = 175,000kiloWatt-hours
$0.10 (10 cents per kWh- and it's already more than that here in Houston, TX, using "green energy") * 175,000 = $17,500
California pays $0.20 per kWh.
UK currently pays more than $0.30 per kWh, so 175,000kWh costs $52,500
Whenever the power companies advertise a rate lower than $0.10 for "green energy", they conveniently forget to include all the fees they tack on for maintenance and power delivery. Before you assert that it's not the cost of the power, let me remind you that power is only yours to use after it's been delivered to your home or vehicle, so save the disingenuous argumentative nonsense.
$50,000 of the Tesla's cost I have to pay up-front, meaning at the time of purchase, which means I need a much bigger car loan at a higher interest rate, because banks want their money back. I can get a $20,000 loan for little to no interest.
$17,500 buys a complete replacement Mazda 3, so I can afford to have 2 gas vehicles and enough gas to drive 500,000 miles in 10 years.
Oil changes aren't that expensive, and by using synthetic oil, they don't occur very often, so $3,000 for 50 oil changes, at $60 a pop.
Tires and brakes are going to be similar in cost, but will favor the lighter and cheaper and more common gasoline powered vehicle.
I'll rediscover my optimism when you rediscover basic math.
I'm backing "green in my own wallet", rather than "putting my green in someone else's wallet to subsidize their green ideology".
The wealthiest people on Earth tend to be the most satisfied with their lives on Earth. I've made that point many times before. I am sure Musk would like to get highly skilled software managers to move to Mars...but they are going to have excellent salaries on Earth, nice homes, most likely have families with children in schools and their own friendship networks...plus parents who perhaps are beginning to age...but are also good with the grandkids. They'll not doubt have a very rich social life - a wide friendship network - and a lively involvement in the local cultural scene.
It will be very difficult to get such people to emigrate to Mars on a permanent basis.
I have suggested before that your best bet is to establish university post-grad campuses on Mars where you will attract young people before they get involved in established partnerships. The young people who go there to study, research and explore will have a great time and begin to associate being happy with being on Mars - they will also naturally hook up with people of their own age. If you can then further lure them to stay on Mars with excellent salaries, free accommodation and health care etc you might be able to get them to stay on a longer term basis which might then become a permanent basis.
RobertDyck wrote:SpaceNut: you don't need to bring back goods to make profit. As I said, the basis was charge passengers in Earth currency, but operate the ship from the Mars economy. Once set up, there's large profit.
"Build it, and they will come."
Of course, the plan to rely on ticket revenues creates the biggest selection criteria of all, bigger than intelligence or health or personality - you're relying on the small number of people who are wealthy enough to afford a ticket to sell everything they have and bet it all on Mars. But most of those people will have commitments here. They'll also skew older, which is not what you want if your plan is to *colonise* someplace. And eventually you will run out of immigrants and the company will fold.
You do understand that a sincere believer in Sharia law wants to see the destruction of the USA with its secular constitution, don't you?
Louis,
99% of all people of all religions have never hurt anyone, no matter who they profess to hate. For that reason, I don't care about Brennan's religious beliefs. I do care about a government official saying, "I'm a communist". That's no different to me than a government official saying, "I'm a nazi".
communist = socialist = nazi
They're all evil. All of them. Always. Period. There is no other story. All of them mass murder people, the very moment an opportunity presents itself to do so. They're all liars and they're all brutal thugs. A 5 minute conversation with any of them should remove all doubt. The victim / oppressor narrative is only about giving them an excuse to victimize more people. Who cares if some "special socialists" are also racist to boot when the end result of their thuggery is always exactly the same?
The nazis thought their own country's brand of socialism is best. They're still socialists. Hitler said he was a racist socialist who thought German / Aryan socialism was superior to any other socialism. To paraphrase that nazi collaborator Soros, "he was a bit of a nut with a purpose". Soros was actually describing himself in a television interview, but he may as well have been talking about Hitler.
"... I am a socialist, and a very different kind of socialist from your rich friend Reventlow. I was once an ordinary workingman… But your kind of socialism is nothing but Marxism." - Adolf Hitler
Here's the Washington Post's attempt to obfuscate history:
The right needs to stop falsely claiming that the Nazis were socialists
Why does the right need to continuously and correctly assert that nazis were / are a bunch of filthy socialists?
It's an absolutely 100% true and indisputable historical fact. That's why. The radical left has no answer for it, because they're duplicitous conniving liars, like all socialists, and are trying to conceal their horrifically evil nature by attacking their political enemies with, "Nuh uh, bro, that's you not me." All they have to say regarding their murderous nature is to point at another one of their murderous socialist groups, claim them to somehow be different than other socialists, and say, "It was them, not us."
The more people learn about human history unfiltered through the lens of marxist ideology, the less appealing the radical left becomes.
This is the opening line in the article:
Did you know that “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist”? That means that Hitler and his henchmen were all socialists. Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist, too. That means Bernie Sanders and his supporters are the same as Nazis … doesn’t it?
Well, no, because I'm as ignorant as every blue-haired screaming and chanting leftist lunatic on your typical college campus. In all seriousness, though, these are the exact same evil thugs who were claiming that they needed to bomb American cities to exterminate the Trump supporters who lived there. To add to that, they then went on to assert that we needed concentration camps for the unvaccinated. Don't look now, but that is not only the exact same language that the real historical nazis used, it's also what the real historical nazis literally did to all of their ideological and racial enemies.
This is the sort of nonsense that Vox (another radical leftist rag) uses as "proof" that Hitler was not a socialist (that he wasn't a marxist):
Your socialism is Marxism pure and simple. You see, the great mass of workers only wants bread and circuses. Ideas are not accessible to them and we cannot hope to win them over. We attach ourselves to the fringe, the race of lords, which did not grow through a miserabilist doctrine and knows by the virtue of its own character that it is called to rule, and rule without weakness over the masses of beings.
These Derpistanis over at Vox must think none of the Derps who subscribe to their marxist crapaganda can read, and given how few of the kids can carry on a conversation these days or spell out their words when texting each other, they might have a point there. However, most of the rest of us are totally disinterested in the monumental difference between a POH-TAY-TOE and a POH-TAH-TOE. It's nuance that doesn't matter, like the difference between being killed by a virus released by communists versus a nuclear weapon released by communists. Either way, you're still every bit as dead and the communists will still lie about it, because that's the nature of evil.
A mildly humorous note about Wikipedia is that while it doesn't put the German / Italian national socialist information on the same page as their socialist / communist information, they also have an entry on the socialist / communist page for the Chinese National Socialist and Vietnamese National Socialist movements. What was the defining characteristic of those socialists? They thought their own people were "the best socialists around", and all other people were of lesser quality than they were, by dint of where they came from and what they looked like. Where have I heard that crap before? Oh yes, from other national socialists.
If well over 150 million people hadn't been murdered under various forms of socialism, then watching these evil twits argue over the best form of their idiocy with each other would be a riot (not the antifa and blm variety). Unfortunately, the sad fact of the matter is that if we laid the end results of their ideology head-to-toe, their collective abject failure to demonstrate any humanity, then the bodies would circle the entire world almost 7 times!
Yahoo were the ones who had the mass hack and tried to cover it up for ages. Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. You were lucky if your details were not hacked.
For Dr. Johnson,
Please consider setting up a Yahoo email for your professional communication.
The account is free, and I have been using their service for decades, in addition to gmail, and other commercial services from time to time.
It is unacceptable (at least from my perspective) for you to be having to put up with this poor service.
(th)