New Mars Forums

Intellectual property doesn't require being on Mars.

EDIT: Also, to the rest of the thread: don't feed the trolls.

I believe this is a much larger hurdle than you are letting on. If you look at areas of active prospecting on Earth (e.g. the Canadian north), there is division between those who do the prospecting and those who prove out a run, and those who build and operate a mine. You see small groups of people, often individuals, seeking on the ground indications that a plot of land might be valuable and then filing mining claims. Then larger companies get involved that do detailed ground studies (core samples, etc.) to establish the size of the find, an entirely different company that buys up established mining claims as a portfolio of reserves, and then finally companies established to build and operate a single mine on that location.

There's 4 different stages here. And although sometimes various stages are done by the same people, or many times there are incestuous ownership tables, there are many examples to point to where the mining claim changes hands, sometimes multiple times, between each of these steps. One reason is that the pipeline is a steady transition from high-risk/high-payout to low-risk/steady-dividends that attract vastly different investor profiles. It's a feature that high-risk tolerance people and hedge funds can focus on the prospecting side and using their information asymmetry to make big bets, but just as importantly cash out as soon as the bet pays off. Likewise you need to support low-risk investors looking for steady, 4% per year return on their investment from mining out established reserves. They don't want the risk of being uncertain about whether prospecting will find anything, even averaged over a large area.

Furthermore, it is important that the divisions between these stages are regularly spaced at around 4-5 years or so, and no more than 10 years at the worst. This is because that's the timeline at which major investment funds operate -- stakes in projects are acquired over the coarse of a 10-year period, and then sold off or transitioned to different funds at the end of it. 30-year thinking is pretty much unique to companies like SpaceX, and enabled only because of the cash cow of the satellite launch and ISS resupply market. But going from prospecting to established reserves to mine construction to operation will take AT LEAST 30 years for a Martian mine. Probably 50. You're not going to find investment dollars for that kind of project, no matter the return, because the investment money is tied up with restrictions that keep it from being put on such projects.

This works because there is an established mechanism for acquiring and proving the provenance of exclusive-right mining claims, and seeking remunerations when claims are jumped. Those claims are established in the first step, and then resold at each step along the way, often with aggregate information regarding the magnitude claim entering into the public domain, or at least freely available within the industry and among investors. Without such a system of mining claims that information would need to be kept secret yet still acted upon by a vertically integrated organization over the coarse of 30-50 years, with absolute perfect information and operational security over two generations of career employee turnover. To say that is unrealistic is an understatement. The project will never get funded.

This is a domain I actually know a fair bit amount. I sell technology to investment banks and the larger fintech sector, an industry I entered into with the purpose of creating extraterrestrial commodity and mining claim markets. I've since found bigger fish to fry though and would happily pass this project to someone else.

Void, I for one value your contributions here.

Terraformer, you could mine it from another entrance. The tent idea works for the surface, but not underground resources.

Impaler, I'm quite surprised you hold that opinion, given what we've worked on together outside of this forum. Maybe my explanation wasn't clear? By "outside of the international law framework" I mean "not explicitly governed by existing treaties," and NOT "illegal." Contractual agreements have weight irregardless of whether the the subject matter is explicitly regulated or not. E.g. SpaceX can mandate everyone they fly sign contracts entering themselves into a private industry regulatory regime which is able to use regular old contract law to extract remuninations from any signatories that do business with claim jumpers. You could still claim jump, but you'd be effectively cut off from all supply lines. Economic incentives keep this going, not the threat of criminal convictions.

I don't think anyone is arguing differently, louis

The problem is the lack of mining claims -- the exclusive right to extract resources from an area. Without the ability to file and enforce mining claims we find ourselves in a situation where no one is willing to invest the capital necessary to build new businesses.

Commodity markets are more complex than that. There will be both industrial and speculative demand from both markets. And currency like commodities such as gold can be swapped between two markets. A faster way to cash out gold on Mars is to sell it, perhaps indirectly, to investors elsewhere who are pumping money into he economy.

If this doesn't make sense, consider that most gold on earth is stored in a handful of vaults and never moved. Not too long ago Germany wanted to repatriate the gold they had on reserve in New York and London, but backed out of doing so when it became clear that doing so would be prohibitively expensive, mostly due to security precautions. Yet gold doesn't trade at a discount in Frankfurt vs New York.

Tom, the only thing stopping people from doing just that is a lack of property rights and mining claim régime.

Robert, the most likely explanation is that they don't want to sponsor ITAR exemptions. Even if your role isn't ITAR or whatever, they still need to track in their HR system who can work on what and be careful about internal structures and information access and firewalls in a way that they simply don't want to be. They are a fast-moving startup, something I have experience with. The paperwork required to get you an exemption takes time & people resources that they don't have or don't want to spend. Not while there are qualified people that don't need that exemption, in any case.

Do you have a viable pathway to permanent residency? I would take what their recruiter says regarding that at face value -- if they say they'll reconsider with permanent residency, then I think they would.

Sadly gold is gold and will get golden treatment no matter where it is. One should expect a small variation in price due to differing industrial demand on Earth vs Mars, but this is likely to cause a premium or discount of only a few percent given the nature of how gold is used on the commodities markets.

Doesn't matter as Trump would never win the general electorate.

The default assumption for Hillary is what happened under Bill... which is a mixed history.

Rob, keep in mind the principle of comparative exchange. doing it alone is not always the best long term strategy even if you are strictly better than the competition