New Mars Forums

Is the disappearence of work really such a problem? Seems to me it's mainly the problem of a system and its adhering calvinist ethic.
To me, machines taking over manual labour is basically a good thing, it's only a matter of sharing the surplus. And it will bring back quality of service too. Personally, I think serving can be about as fulfilling as enjoying, but that notion is banned from the present day liberal rationale. Everyone is supposed to cherish equality. But what if socialist society will be hierarchical rather than levelled out and hierarchy is not a result of material deprivation of the masses, but actually fulfills fundamental social and psychological needs? Because a pyramid is a beautiful form?
If a chambermaid makes as much money in the future as an executive does today and decides to go on a luxury cruise during vacation, where she is instead served like royalty, is that really such a great problem?
Couldn't meaning be derived from hierarchical structures at least as well as drudging in a factory? Maintained as game of aesthetical form rather than of ethical demands?

Die leute an diesem Board sind gew?hnt auf Englisch zu schreiben. Wenn nicht alle die Mitteilungen verstehen k?nnen, w?rde es einfach nicht ganz h?flig andere Sprachen zu ben?tzen. Ich schl?ge vor dass Sie weiterhin auch so tun, wenn es m?glich ist.

Zu die Fragen:

1. Wir in Europa oder Amerika, vielleicht zusammen, k?nnen es so in zehn Jahren machen. Es ist alles eine Frage von der politische Wille (die leider jetzt im grossen f?hlt).

2. Die Mission muss von die Staatsmacht durchgef?hrt werden, glaube ich. Es kostet doch vielen Milliarden Dollars. Wirtschaftliche Kr?fte fordern Profit und Geld ist bei Natur konservativ, es sucht sicherliche Investierungsm?glichkeiten.
Damit nicht zu sagen dass die Wirtschaft unwillig zu folgen werde, wenn einige Grossm?chte Mars und die Weltraum im allgemein er?ffnet hat.

Freundliche Gr?sse und willkommen!
Gennaro

I've had time to browse through the webpage a little further now and I'm very impressed with it.

The initial cost for building the 5000 kg/day version is estimated to about 10 billion $ with an operating cost of 156 million $/year. Naturally, as you point out, successive elevators will be a lot cheaper, but that goes for for additional units in a fleet of advanced SSTO's as well. So that's only trivial.
The proposed larger version can handle 22 tons to GEO daily. Me like.

For comparison a new Titan use-and-forget booster which also can lift somewhat above 5000 kg (11 500 pounds) to GEO, costs $300 million (but could be had for 30 million according to Zubrin if NASA (or ESA) didn't adhere to private contractors within the current system). A Boeing 747 costs $100 million.
Have no idea what an individual nuclear SSTO would cost but with a rational financial setup, for example wholly government developed and built by contracting individuals rather than private, max profit space company dinosaurs, I wouldn't be surprised if an individual unit down the series would be three times as expensive as Zubrin's chemical Titan, or about 100 million $.
That's about the running costs for the elevator for an entire year!

What's really impressive are launch costs per kilogram to GEO compared with present day systems. $600 for the first elevator with prospects down to as low as $10! One way to GEO today costs as staggering $80 000/kg!

Other than individual unit cost for a serially produced advanced SSTO, system development, infrastructure, ground control etc is not included, not to mention the financing of Moon structures, which would be massive. (The basis of the Moon base in my original idea would consist in a "Luna Direct" plan and hence not immedeately related to the operation of gravity transcending vehicles, yet expanded as need be for industrial and transport purposes.)

What I personally find really appealing is that the elevators, perhaps a small cluster of them, make construction of a real "small town" sized toroid space station using Earth materials an actual possibility, as well as supplying it with space ship fuel and provisions.
The dream comes true.

Well, I guess one can say you have just about convinced me.

This is what Zubrin says about it in Entering Space, p.94:

Incidentally, since I hadn't started reading the book when I wrote the first post, Zubrin also has the following to say about the potential uses for the Moon (pp.95-96):

Of course, that comes as no surprise to people around here...

So far Zubrin.

Concievably, the Moon to Main Belt ships could of course be made for maximum Isp while still carrying break even amounts of cargo, while the Luna-Earth SSTO's that I proposed would be optimized for maximum thrust and heavy cargo payloads.

- No not stupid, practical. There was nothing in my scheme implying that the use of the Moon as a water extracting refueling station would have to be a permanent feature in the long run. Yet, to construct a space station you would probably have to build a Moon base anyway to supply relatively cheap construction material, not least for radiation shielding.
Naturally, one should plan not to exhaust polar water supplies in waiting for demand to rise on He3 exports, in which the Moon would find itself with largely a different role.

However, with the space elevator I admit that the entire outlook on these challenges changes radically and profoundly.

Okay, so a fission NTR isn?t feasible for ground launch and landing because of radiation from spent reactor fuel. Since I earlier took the appropriate shielding for granted in this regard (the hazard was never mentioned anywhere while it normally would be the first thing to think about when designing a SSTO), I might as well ask about another unclarified issue. What about emissions from the propellant exhaust? After all, the working fluid has run through the reactor.
I?ve tried to get some information on this ever since Nuclear Space frequented these boards, but nowhere have I seen an answer clearly spelled out. Obviously, I previously feared it also was a question too dumb to ask.

You mean public transportation? I could possibly imagine that, but that's probably only due to my awkward Socialist tendencies.

Gather they'll speak whatever language used by the nation who founds a given settlement.
:;):

Most will probably be English speaking though, because of the US and since it's the lingua franca in all of Europe. Chinese colonies however, will probably speak mandarin.

Oh really? I'm flattered. 

In many ways I agree with Cobra Commander. Rough, endless, unbreathable wasteland, although sometimes maybe rich in export potential, punctuated with domes and underground habitats for life, pressure, warmth and growing crops, set the precedent for the Martian political environment for decades or centuries after planetfall. To issue a territorial claim over the entire planet, whether by a Martian governmental body or a super power on Earth is both absurd, untenable and even politically hazardous, especially from a terran perspective.

Let me explain. The countries that are big enough and has the most aggressive and promising mindset today for settling Mars are China and the United States, but Russia and Europe both have the potential and then there's Japan, India, Taiwan and Korea (re-united).
The most natural prognosis in my view, is that several terran countries will want to put their own settlements on Mars to ripe some benefit combined with reasons of national prestige, especially if the first operation is an exclusive NASA venture. How will the United States react if there's a Chinese base on Mars and not a US one? Think the question answers itself. By the same token, a global claim on Mars of any kind will sooner or later run into serious political problems.
On the other hand, if no obvious benefit for settling Mars presents itself, or political conditions on Earth precludes anything but a purely scientific approach, possibly because of one semi-interested super power continually dominating Earth, the base there will remain an odd anomaly, much like the international south polar station in Antarctica for the foreseeable future.

Other than that however, since the Martian conditions are very special, there will for a long time, going through the exploration phase, base building phase and far into the settlement phase, be no need for anything but specialists of various kinds populating those settlements. These elite people will naturally be closely tied to their terran contractors.
At the same time, there will be no means of exerting administrative control over the harsh frontier from Earth and the colonists won't pay taxes, so there's no reason to create big over arching bureaucracies.
The capital transactions will limit themselves to commercial exchange, provided the Martians can find anything to trade for their imports. Rest assured, they will need a lot of imports. Every advanced piece of equipment, from ground penetrating radars and robotical mining gear to the latest computer games to soothe a young generation dreaming of Earth, will have to be imported.

As said, the political landscape of Mars would basically conform to the base surroundings and their operations in far away places. They will be tied to their Earth providers but essentially exist as self governed entities with their own political institutions, somewhat akin to the Greek colonies of antiquity. Territorial ownership will be judged by default, that is first to the mill.
If a colony or a group of settlements then break away from their terran bonds in some advanced state of development, well, good for them! It won't necessarily mean that the neighbouring colony will do the same.
The specific social conditions of Mars, having a population mainly consisting of various specialists, will also mean that terran constitutions and political institutions will not necessarily be duplicated. It may well be the case that a political culture will evolve where a colony is typically run by a self-propagating assembly of highly educated people, Plato's philosophers if you will (scientists are of course in classical terms natural philosophers), rather than a democracy based on public elections. Whatever will work in an environment essentially devoid of preconceptions and with very dissimilar social conditions from Earth.

You sure about this? Naturally, I reckoned that design thinking for NERVA type NTR's already included appropriate reactor shielding. If ground launches aren't feasible even with solid core NTR's, however, I really see no compelling reason to design such vehicles. The main purpose of nuclear propulsion according to me is exactly that it seemed to provide means for repeated Earth - interplanetary round trip transits. I don't care about Isp for speed, but for lifting capacity.
Oh well...

RobertDyck, I'd like to ask a question if I may.

- To me that sounds very discouraging. I was of the impression that those deposits held substantial amounts of water in the form of water ice and/or permafrost.

Do you feel that this web page is in disagreement with your description or even unwittingly manages to convey a false impression?

http://www.permanent.com/l-ices.htm

The initial estimates of water ice in March, 1998, were awesomely high. However, upon further collection and analysis of data, these estimates were dramatically increased by a factor of about 10 times by the time the next major report was published in September, 1998. It was initially thought that the hydrogen exists in the form of small crystals of water ice in concentrations of 0.3% to 1%, dispersed over a large surface area of 5,000 to 20,000 square kilometers at the south pole and 10,000 to 50,000 square kilometers at the north pole. However, as of the time of this writing in December 1998, the most recent data, analysis and predominating theory suggests a total of six billion metric tons of water are concentrated in a small number of lunar polar craters. As explained by Dr. Alan Binder, the Lunar Prospector principal investigator, "if the main source is cometary impacts, as most scientists believe, our expectation is that we have areas at both poles with layers of near-pure water ice" in the form of "discrete, confined, near-pure water ice deposits buried beneath as much as 18 inches (40 centimeters) of dry regolith", which is around the 50 centimeter maximum depth that Lunar Prospector can detect water.

First off, this isn?t related to Mars. Mars missions, in my opinon, should be conducted within the framework of the Mars Direct plan, for which the Moon bears no significance.
I?m thinking about the industrial expansion into space and more precisely the infrastructure needed for profitable asteroid prospecting and mining operations directly associated with the economy of Earth. 
It?s an idea I?ve been pondering for the last couple of days, although I can say nothing for its originality since I?ve only recently came to attain a detailed interest in these matters. Would be fun though to see how valid it could be. It might include grave misconceptions but then please don?t hesitate to point them out.

To begin with: Two US lunar missions, one in ?94 and the other in ?98, have reported the prevalence of substantial deposits of water ice in permanently shadowed craters on the lunar poles. A long term ESA mission, blasted off a few days ago with a Swedish designed mission pack (yay! :;): ), will more closely detail and confirm these deposits and, which I hope, as a consequence provide information on the level of its extractability.

If the lunar water could be extracted, for example by using a microwave regolith heating technique similar to the one described in The Case for Mars, pp 190-191, it would be able to supply a growing lunar base with water, provided the base is located at one of the poles (the northpole holds larger water deposits and is therefore preferable).
Through simple electrolysis, the same H2O could also provide oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H2) for both life support and chemical rocket propellant (hydrogen/oxygen). Concievably, both the extraction and electrolysis procedures would be powered by a nuclear reactor.
So the scene is amply set for a ?Luna Direct?, wouldn?t you say, with the noteworthy difference that the corresponding ?Ares? lifter would be powered by oxygen/hydrogen instead of methane/oxygen as in the Mars case.

It gets better.

Hydrogen, of course, is the preferred working fluid for nuclear thermal rockets. A NTR could therefore go from the surface of Earth to the surface of the Moon, where it could refuel before returning to Earth. Because the low Delta V needed to escape from the Moon's orbit however, such ships could also elect to go from the Moon to an asteroid mining site instead and presumably return on the same fuel tank with a whole lot of cargo. Now, if we could develop a simple and robust Single Stage to Orbit NTR design, we would get an economical cargo ship to use in the NEO-Moon-Earth system as part of the bargain!

What I propose is this: The design and development of a rugged hydrogen NTR SSTO workhorse, using improved lightweight materials associated with the X-33 (or whatever it was called) and the thrust, power and payload capacity of at least a solid core nuclear reactor spaceship.
The SSTO NTR shall be capable of blasting off from Terra and landing at the northpole lunar base, where it will refuel and load cargo before heading back to Earth. It is not supposed to be able to carry along enough propellant for both legs. Since the SSTO NTR by definition is a vehicle that uses thrust to manage descent (like in 50?s science fiction) and not aerobreaking procedures, the propellant mass requirement and thus the cargo capacity are about the same in both directions. Thus in the case of the Luna ? Earth transit, the ability to refuel is paramount. Alternatively, the basic design could refuel at the Moon and go to pretty much wherever it likes and return on the same fuel tank.
The main advantage of a SSTO is that it?s fully reusable. The vehicle in consideration must be robust and capable of several round trips with a minimum of preparation plus lend itself nicely to mass manufacture.

The Moon base built through a ?Luna Direct? program in this scenario would in other words be not least designed to function as a low Delta V transport node between asteroid mining sites and the terran gravity well, i.e, basically as a space station. Then, what is the advantage of the Moon in this respect to a huge toroidal construct in LEO, GEO or HEEO (high eccentric Earth orbit)?
Simply this:

1) It will provide its own propellant production, while propellant to a space station must be transported there one way or the other.

2) It provides an unlimited stock pile and the base capacity & functions (like SPS construction for example) can be expanded indefinitely without the need to build ?new ground?.

3) Bulk material for simple construction and radiation protection is readily available everywhere by processing of lunar regolith.

Consider the other scenario of building an orbital space station. Huge amounts of material (much of it manufactured on the Moon anyway to keep costs down) must be transported and then assembled in orbit in an engineering effort of gigantic proportions. Much of the lunar made components could be shot into space by a mass driver allright, but that only goes up to a certain size. Big and bulky stuff needs some other way of transportation. The one clear advantage I can see with a space station is the ability to produce a constant 1 g of artificial gravity.
So why not skip the space station stage entirely and use the Moon instead, at least to begin with?
One might argue that Delta V requirements still makes the space station the preferable point of departure for any kind interplanetary propulsion system, but is that really so?
Judging from the following graph, at least with my limited understanding of the subject matter, I can only conclude that the lunar surface is hugely superior to LEO, which still is deep down the gravity well and that by similar comparison, no discernible benefit can be reaped from GEO.

http://www.permanent.com/images/t-gravity-wells.gif 

As stated, the Moon base would primarily function as a huge interplanetary transport switch. In a mature state of lunar base development, because of the low gravity, rather economical craft, for example a fleet of comparatively low Isp ?steam ships? (NTR?s using water as a working fluid) that are specialized to access asteroids, could haul bulk freights from Near Earth Objects to the Moon. As water is a common component of asteroids, especially of the carbonateous chondrite class, these ships could refuel at both their point of departure and destination, given the appropriate hardware.
For diving from the Moon into the terran gravity well, a special cargo hauler could be designed, optimized for maximum payload capacity.
 
Thanks for staying with me through all of the above scribbling. It would be great to read your comments on this concept. Especially from people who have more professional insights into these matters than me. As said originally, I have no clue about the level of originality of this thinking. I?m simply not that experienced with different ideas for space expansion.

- Excuse me the layman's point of view, but say we be build a NTR to use within the Mars Direct concept, either solid core or gas core, wouldn't we then get sufficient thrust for the payload requirements of a decent (meaning rugged & reliable) artificial gravity system and sufficient radiation shielding against coronal mass ejections?
We need to test launch such a viechle before going to Mars anyway. Those flight tests can be used to explore the effects of artificial-g in space.

If successful it should also provide a good basis for a fully reusable SSTO workhorse.

Well, nuclear rockets have of course been discussed extensively on this site already, so I guess I might be taking the risk of repeating the obvious. Bottomline: all problems will be solved!