You are not logged in.
I think the time has come. Cost of air fare is going up, the main reason is rising cost of fuel. Cost to fly into my city, Winnipeg just north of North Dakota, is significantly higher than domestic flights within the US. Winnipeg used to be THE destination for conventions, it's the centre of the continent. But rising air fare has driven conventions away. I mentioned this to a college here in Winnipeg, and mentioned not only airport fees but the fuel surcharge. I feel any surcharge for fuel is unwarranted, that's a basic cost of airline operations so how can that add an additional fee? But they are. My college blames the cost difference on airport fees. He pointed out the US federal government pays for airports, but they'll have to start charging airlines like airports do in Canada. So his claim is air fare will rise in the US. Has this gotten to the point where people will accept an alternative?
In the 1950s the US air force worked on a nuclear jet engine for a bomber. The B-36 was the first big intercontinental bomber, predecessor to the B-52. The B-36 was intended to use nuclear jet engines, and able to circle near Russia for months. The only limit would be food and water for the crew. However, their design was an overly complicated thing with multiple heat exchangers, and radiation shielding was so good back then. They found sufficient shielding to protect the crew was so heavy the plane couldn't lift off. They did build a prototype, called the B-36N. Yes, there will be people who will argue the B-36 did go into service, but with conventional engines instead. There will also be people who point out the B-36N was only a prototype, but if you read documents about that plane's development, it was originally intended to have nuclear engines; it was changed to conventional engines only after they failed to get the nuclear ones to work.
The air force also developed a cruise missile, able to use a radar mapping terrain hugging autopilot. I thought cruise missiles were developed in the late 1970s, it was a shock to learn the air force worked on this in the 1950s. But more relevant to this discussion, the engine for "Project Pluto" was an unshielded nuclear reactor, configured as a ram jet. They got it to work, built a prototype. This unshielded reactor spewed its nuclear waste, technically called fission fragments, with its exhaust. While the reactor for the B-36 contained its waste, the missile known as "Project Pluto" didn't. They intended to air launch the missile from a B-52 over the ocean where nuclear waste wouldn't matter. It was to drop big nuclear bombs on Russian cities, so they saw any nuclear waste they spewed on Russia as a bonus. In fact, after the missile dropped its last bomb it would fly a figure 8 over another Russian city; they called this turning a peacetime liability into a wartime asset. The missile never went into production, but from my perspective the important thing was all that work on the nuclear jet engine.
So this brings me back to the point of this discussion. Several engineers have said that with today's technology, we could get a nuclear jet engine to work. The plane would be safe, and it would fly. Fuel would have to be highly enriched uranium. Plutonium is a richer fuel than uranium, but while uranium oxide is chemically not any more toxic than rust, plutonium is so poisonous that if a piece the size of a grain of sand got into a cut in your skin, you would be dead. The biggest danger from uranium is radiation, and that's very mild compared to radiation from nuclear waste. The primary danger would be to contain waste. Americium is also a rich nuclear fuel, but it's very expensive and doesn't occur in nature, it can only be made in a reactor from uranium. Because of cost, Americium isn't practical either.
A plane crash with nuclear jet engines wouldn't be any more dangerous than any other plane crash. So properly designed, safety isn't an issue.
The problem is public image. This same college immediately argued that you wouldn't want an airliner crashing out of the sky onto your house. Um, what!? This demonstrates the problem. Hollywood has always equated nuclear power with accidents. This was the same with robots in the 1950s. When an American engineer invented the first industrial robot, Americans would not accept it. They equated the word "robot" with Hollywood movies that always portrayed robots on a murderous rampage. Patents for the Unimate robot were files in 1954, granted in 1961. At first only Japanese car manufacturers would use it because they didn't have the Hollywood culture. When factory robots proved reliable and cost effective, they slowly grew around the world. Today Hollywood equates nuclear power with Chernobyl and Fukushima, and various disaster movies. Why let a little thing like reality interfere with movie mythology?
But air fares will rise much farther. Is now the time to move to nuclear aircraft? A nuclear jet airliner would be fuelled by nothing but uranium and air.
The V1 of WW2 was a cruise missile - it just wasn't referred to as such. The Russians also had robot tanks in WW2. Things were pretty advanced then.
I recall an interesting debate before the Great Crash about the earliest date at which humanity could have successfully got into orbit. It might easily have been the 1930s.
One of the topics here is what kind of environment is suitable to live in, on Mars. The first explorers are going to live in tin cans and glorified pup tents, for sure. Folks who stay are going to need something better, because of the mismatch between an un-terraformed Mars and what humans need long-term.
Up above somewhere Louis said:
"People live in all sorts of God forsaken environments on Earth."
I thought that both funny and appropriate, since I live in Texas. We here in the US had a Civil War general on the Union side, Sherman, who said that if he was faced with the choice, he'd rent out Texas and live in Hell. Life here was too tough for him. This from the guy who burned Atlanta and brought modern-style war-against-civilians to this world for the first time.
A few years ago out here on my farm, we had a plague of grasshoppers. I counted 100+ per square foot; you could not see the ground for them. Big things, 2+ inches long, some of them over 4 inches. They killed some of my trees by eating the bark off them, and tried to eat the siding off my house. Since then, things like that, just not quite as bad, have happened multiple times, including this year.
In Egypt long ago, Pharoah was a wimp: he gave up too soon because of various plagues, including "locusts", meaning grasshoppers eating everything in sight. We rural Texans are a tough bunch. I'm still here, still growing grass for the cows, and still growing peaches and figs. I actually like it here. No snow to shovel.
The people who go to Mars to stay, will have to be tough indeed. But there really are people like that.
That's not to say that tin cans will be adequate, but it's a start.
GW
Your post reminds me of a thought experiment I like to carry out - imagining a report by a distinguished Martian scientist submitted to the equivalent of NASA on Mars, detailing the risks of a Martian mission to Earth:
"In summary the landing will an extremely hazardous undertaking. Electric discharges from the huge wind and rainstorms that occur every day on Earth may shatter the lander during descent. The lander may have the misfortune of landing in the huge planet-encircling ocean, where the craft may be swamped by towering waves. Equally the lander may have the misfortune to land in the dense rainforest, which will almost certainly mean the mission ends in disaster.
EVA will be extremely difficult on Earth given the preponderance of savage beasts that might attack the crew. Floods on Earth, even in elevated locations, are very common and may sweep away the craft.
It might be thought that a policy of landing in the central areas of continental lands with thin vegetation may be the safest option. However these are some of the most dangerous locations - very violent if localised storms similar to but far more devastating than our whirlwind storms are extremely common there and could throw the capsule into the air and bring it down with such force on the ground that the capsule would be completely destroyed.
Desert areas are subject to massive sandstorms - far worse than our own in destructive force - which may completely bury the capsule so that the crew are buried alive without hope of rescue. But even areas of grassland carry huge dangers. Brush fires would quickly incinerate the capsule.
Many areas which look superficially attractive landing sites from orbit are now known to consist of regolith and organic matter saturated with water, so that a capsule would simply sink into the ground and be enveloped.
The ascent from Earth will be extremely challenging, given that planet's gravity is three times our own. It is not yet known whether we will be able to manufacture rocket fuel in situ, but the ascent will require something like ten times the amount of propellant a comparable launch on Mars would require. It cannot be acceptable that we send Martians to planet Earth simply to expire there in an extremely hostile environment without being sure we can return them home.
Our conclusion therefore is that we should undertake further studies with a view to effecting a landing in 30 sols' time, resources permitting."
Puts things in perspective I feel!
The more I think about it, the more sure I am that landing heavy items on Mars is a thing we can do far easier than we-the-community seem to think currently.
I think it takes low-thrust rocket braking during entry to the end of the hypersonics, followed by low-thrust rocket braking while your chute or ballute takes you subsonic, then high-thrust rocket braking for the final touchdown, probably without the chute, which would be pulling to one side, an instability factor. The idea is to use rocket thrust to make up the deceleration deficit that is inherently due to the extremely-thin Martian atmosphere, in both aero-deceleration phases.
I think the basic solution for rocket braking during entry hypersonics is multiple nozzles canted at around 10 or 15 degrees. That puts enough plume angle into the oncoming stream to make plume trajectory repeatable and steady-state. These engines fire right through open ports in the heat shield near its center, whatever that structure is. The "room" in which these engines are located needs to be sealed gas-tight behind the heat shield, so that there is no flow through that space. That no-throughflow feature is critical. That engine room space will pressurize like a pitot tube to the stagnation pressure during entry, but it will not heat to stagnation temperatures, as long as there is no throughflow. There is no better heat insulator than a static gas column, no matter what NASA says. We in the industry knew better. They didn't (see the segment joint designs in the shuttle SRB’s).
Myself, I'd separate the engines by "blast walls" of some sort, so that an explosion in one engine does not take out adjacent engines. Loss of an engine then means only that the remaining engines throttle up, but differentially, so that the same thrust is maintained, while thrust moments are still zeroed. This would apply to any chemical system, or to any nuclear thermal rocket system.
For the range between Mach 2.5-ish and subsonic, when chutes or ballutes are deployed, as long as the retro thrust remains fairly low, the plume massflow is small compared to the slipstream massflow, so that the aerodecelerators do not see a very-hot mixed flow field oncoming out behind the craft. Kevlar is good to about 290-300 F. Nothing magic there. You shed these aerodecelerators for final touchdown. Chutes or ballutes can be recovered after landing for re-use, by-the-way.
The final touchdown is then just standard rocket braking at throttled-up higher thrust. No different than Viking or the Apollo LEM.
How big a thing do you want to fly, and do you want it to be one-shot or reusable? I think we can do it, regardless.
As for ascent, if it's not reusable, leave the heat shield and any aeroshell surfaces at the landing site. Aeroshell surfaces can double as ramps for unloading content, by the way. The very same engines could serve for ascent, if the separable core has propellant tanks and a payload or crew cabin. Leave the descent tanks on the heat shield.
If it's nuke and reusable, just re-fold the unload ramps into an aeroshell, and just fly the whole thing back up.
I'd recommend a more-or-less conical shape, wider than it is tall, for at least the chemical one-shot version, with a slim core on the central axis for ascent. A fully-reusable nuke vehicle could be roughly as wide as it is tall. These sorts of shapes can prevent tip-over in a rough landing. Suspenders-and-belt.
Wild thoughts way outside the box, from an old rocket and ramjet guy who used to do wild-thoughts-outside-the-box for a living. It was called new product development work. Especially for products others thought impossible.
GW
Well I hope Space X are reading this and taking benefit of your advice GW!
louis wrote:
Musk and GW here also have been talking in terms in cantered thrust, which might well make all the difference. Plus a more obvious point: why can't you slow down your craft with reverse thrust way before you hit the atmosphere? And, also, some orbital capture might be part of the solution.I think NASA has in the past been overstating the difficulties (to excuse its own lack of action and perhaps to put off other space agencies) without actively investing in solutions and lots of commentators have been mesmerised by the negative stuff, taking it at face value. There's no doubt it's a difficult problem, but so was getting people into space and landing on the Moon in 1959. Ten years later people were walking on the Moon.
I don't think you quite got the difference of what I was proposing. Musk and GW's plan has been to use rockets fired at an angle to slow the craft, while avoiding turbulence. I presume their thought is to aerobrake AND use rockets to slow down quickly, then use rockets for the rest of the way down. You could do that, but basically the sooner you slow down, the less deceleration due to drag, and the more you need to use rocket power to slow down.
What I proposed is to use rockets only to control descent, keeping the drag at a roughly constant level as long as possible - until it has slowed so much that drag force has become less than 0.4g, while not falling below some safe altitude - perhaps a kilometer up. All the way up to that point, you will have been getting a net benefit from aerobraking, over the cost of using your rocket. This approach maximizes the free deceleration of aerobraking.
As to slowing before entering the atmosphere - yes, of course you could - but again at the expense of relying much more on rocket power. And more rocket power means more mass, more mass to be sent all the way from Earth at higher cost in dollars, or higher cost to other stuff you could otherwise have brought.
Well, people often end up saying that to me..."well, yes you could..." To which I respond - well why not? You then reduce the problem to simply getting enough fuel into LEO, which is probably a lot cheaper than developing new landing systems - which might take ten years, and involve hundreds possibly thousands of people being employed on the project. My approach in any case would be to have a pretty small descent craft and rely on supplies pre-landed for life support once you get to the surface. By making the descent craft fairly small, you reduce the problem to a manageable size.
So are you talking about entering the Mars atmosphere at a narrower angle so you pass through more atmosphere? Doesn't that create problems in terms of heat shield protection?
RobS wrote:Have you all seen this?
http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-m … ed-planet/
It basically says that you can't land a large manned vehicle on Mars with the standard heat shield-parachute-thruster combination because the heat shield can't be large enough to slow the vehicle down to Mach 2 (when you can deploy parachutes) before you hit the ground. The atmosphere is too thin. But it's too thick to fire thrusters straight ahead of you at Mach 2+ because the exhaust plume is too dynamic and the resulting shaking could shake your vehicle apart. It advocates a "hypercone," a big inflatable structure, at Mach 5, to slow down the ship. I suppose a super-large heat shield, assembled in Earth orbit, would do it as well; that possibility is hinted at.
Rather than use your rockets to slow you down, why not use a rocket pointed DOWN to keep you aloft while aerobraking at 2g or so? Assuming you are coming in nearly horizontally, you only need 0.4g acceleration to maintain a given altitude, so this should still be a net gain.
And you don't need 0.4g of "lift" acceleration for most of it, as you want to keep dropping at a pace that maintains the aerobraking fairly constant as long as possible, and when deceleration falls below about 0.4g, start a controlled descent with parachutes and rockets, from a modest altitude, sufficient to leave time to kill your remaining horizontal component before landing.
Musk and GW here also have been talking in terms in cantered thrust, which might well make all the difference. Plus a more obvious point: why can't you slow down your craft with reverse thrust way before you hit the atmosphere? And, also, some orbital capture might be part of the solution.
I think NASA has in the past been overstating the difficulties (to excuse its own lack of action and perhaps to put off other space agencies) without actively investing in solutions and lots of commentators have been mesmerised by the negative stuff, taking it at face value. There's no doubt it's a difficult problem, but so was getting people into space and landing on the Moon in 1959. Ten years later people were walking on the Moon.
Speaking Tours for returned Mars explorers. Put them under contract before they go to Mars. They get a living stipend and maybe a cut of the fees, with a requirement that they spend at least 2 years immediately after return "on the circuit" giving speeches and presentations and asking rich people for money. With a rate schedule varying from perhaps $25000 to speak to a large auditorium full of school kids, to $1M for a buddy-buddy presentation with some self-promoting star or politician. Plus they can ask for grants/funding for new missions.
Virtual speaking tours FROM Mars. Use holographic projection recorded on Mars (may actually be 3D graphics from motion recording, for cost reasons. Audience can record questions about an hour in advance of the Q&A session, and get "live" answers to validate to the audience that this isn't JUST a canned recording. Part of this experience must be that the explorers see their audience - especially those who asked questions. These might be big media events more like concerts. (Heck, maybe send along a famous performer and let them perform concerts from Mars.) Can also pair "live from Mars" presentations with a returned Mars explorer to give a better experience and extend the value of both live and virtual speeches. E.g the live explorer talks while the audience waits for their recorded questions to be selected and sent to Mars and transmitted back to Earth along with the explorer's answers. So the questioner gets the experience of their image having been sent to Mars and back as a bonus!
Figure an average of $200K per speech (including the cheap ones to school kids), average of 1 per day (some days with more than one, some days off). Maybe could keep that going for 2 years - about $150M income. Add sales of official Mars merchandize (T-shirts, hats, jackets, patches, flags, coins, spoons, etc) - overprice most of it with explanation that it all goes to support the Mars effort, and you could probably pull in $10M - $20M.
Personally signed prints of photos taken on Mars. Signed books.
Yes, all excellent ideas. I think in particular the speaking tours would be a guaranteed big earner in the early years.
The holographic tour is a good proposal. I think you're right about the "validation" element being important.
Book publication is certainly another revenue earner. I think there would be a big market for Mars-themed large "coffee table"/Christmas books, with colour photos. These can sell for $30-70 and should have appeal across the globe. I wouldn't surprised if the market was something like 30-50million copies globally within 2-3 years. The profit on that might be something like $10 per copy = anything up to $500million.
Lightweight textiles such as luxury gossamer scarves would have a high sale value on Earth. A scarf weighing a few grams could easily be worth several thousand dollars on Earth. Make maybe 500 a year - the income would be in the range of several million dollars.
Similarly commemorative medals struck on Mars would have high value.
Postage stamps produced by the Consortium in rare limited editions would also generate a good deal of income on Earth. Again we are talking potentially of several million dollars a year I would say. People would pay a lot to have their stamps franked with "Mars Base One" or whatever.
I am interested in the idea that the early colonists on Mars might be able to develop a rocket like the Mod that Armadillo have produced:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/A … ews_id=371
I was wondering how complex such a rocket would be...
I am wondering could the early Mars community build the fuel tanks, the tripod legs, the nose cone etc. What else would be involved in the rocket? Gyroscopes presumably are v. complex items that it would be simpler to import from Earth.
One might imagine a system that could then deliver rocket fuel to LMO, to fuel transit craft.
Later, perhaps the community could develop human rated capsules.
Generating revenue will be crucial to accelerating the development of human communities on Mars.
I've looked into this before now, but thought it will be interesting to bring it up to date and hear if anyone else sees other possibilities.
Basing my analysis on a figure of $10,000 per kg for transit from Mars to Earth, I think the following revenue earners could be pursued by early colonists.
1. Sale of regolith- I think 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).
2. Sale of meteorites. 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.
3. Export of gold, platinum, diamonds and other precious metals and stones. With gold currently trading at over 50,000 dollars a Kg, this 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 has been prospecting for gold. Similarly other precious metals and stones could produce huge amounts of revenue.
4. Export of Mars-produced jewelry. This will have great cachet value on Earth. It will be a real talking point at dinners and dances which will enhance people's status. A simple automated machine on Mars will be able to produce polished stones and so on. If gold is found, some simple processing may take place on Earth to create gold chains.
5. Export of luxury goods – e.g. a Mars Rolex. The mechanism might be made on Earth, but the watch is finished on Mars with Mars gold. Again, this will appeal to a very small but very wealthy market on Earth. This would probably be geared more to the male market for watches, given Mars's association with men.
6. General commercial sponsorship. 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 in the Olympic year. I think we could assume the initial landing could attract sponsorship of about $500million at least. Subsequent high profile explorations should be able to clear at least $100-200million a time I would say e.g. ascent of Olympus Mons, exploration of polar regions...etc.
7. Space agency personnel. The Consortium can sell transit, life support and habitation to space agencies who are not part of the Consortium but may wish to be part of the Mars project in terms of their public image, and in order to gain experience of space travel. They might engage in relatively minor projects: testing new space suits, new transport on Mars or exploration of parts of Mars.
8. Sponsored colonists. The “gap year” student. There will 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.
A multi-billion dollar company might well be prepared to spend 20 million dollars over say 3 years on such a sponsorship deal which can be used as the basis for a huge publicity initiative worth far more than $7million per annum. The super-rich might also wish to send their sons and daughters no this adventure of a lifetime.
9. University of Mars franchise. 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.
10. Sale of Mars TV rights. Clearly exclusive TV rights to the initial Mars landings would have huge value. I think we could be talking about $200-500 million – with the globe parcelled up into about 10 lots. But later exploration missions TV rights will also command high prices. A dedicated Mars TV channel back on Earth might be popular across the globe and might generate revenue in the tens of millions of dollars.
11. 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?
12. Sale of “real time” interactive experience on Mars. 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. You leave the centre with a DVD or similar showing how you have moved the objects on Mars.
13. Mars tourism. 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 rocket technology, this may come within the reach of the super-rich.
14. Data storage. Some archives - e.g. Vatican, US Library of Congress, seed banks etc may wish to use Mars as the ultimate back up for storage and may be prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars to gain that security.
15. Mars Art. I think there is great scope for developing a Mars art market. The first art made on Mars will have intrinsic value. I would envisage for instance a Mars Sculpture Park where some of the key artists on Earth, e.g. Damien Hirst (who are themselves worth hundreds of millions of dollars) remotely direct the erection of sculptures on the planet. These mega rich artists would part fund such projects themselves and then sell the art back on Earth. The beauty of art in this respect is that it does not require any transfer of mass. More recently artists like David Hockney had been making pictures on I Pads. Some artists might visit Mars and make such pictures which they will send back to Earth.
16. Sale of items used on Mars to technology museums. Old items may sell well on Earth e.g. space suits, clothes, control consoles etc. These should certainly be priced at more than $10,000 per kg. The Consortium should think in terms of branding all these items, down to the cutlery to enhance resale value back on Earth.
17. The Consortium may well be able to establish itself as a brand back on Earth - branding items such as clothing, kitchen, electronic gadgets. It might need develop several trading names.
MarsEx for Mars exploration missions. MarsHab for its settlement activity. Marstyle for space suits and clothing... MarsTech for gadgets.
18. Mars as a crematorium...there may be some scope for earning revenue from taking people's ashes to be spread on Mars. There may be a small market for this - far less than for the moon I think.
19. "My Explorer on Mars"... perhaps there would be a market for buying your own small rover that will explore Mars. A very simple rover that simply roves around taking photos. Perhaps the bodies could be built on Mars? Again, it may be a plaything for the rich or something very rich people buy for their children...The owner could decide on the route and would receive pictures back on a passworded website. As part of the price there would be a an insurance policy to be activated in the event that the rover goes over a cliff...
TO KEEP A COMPLETE LIST, I HAVE EDITED TO ADD LATER SUGGESTIONS (THANKS TO TWINBEAM FOR 20, 21 and 22):
20. Speaking Tours for returned Mars explorers. Put them under contract before they go to Mars. They get a living stipend and maybe a cut of the fees, with a requirement that they spend at least 2 years immediately after return "on the circuit" giving speeches and presentations and asking rich people for money. With a rate schedule varying from perhaps $25000 to speak to a large auditorium full of school kids, to $1M for a buddy-buddy presentation with some self-promoting star or politician. Plus they can ask for grants/funding for new missions.
21. Virtual speaking tours FROM Mars. Use holographic projection recorded on Mars (may actually be 3D graphics from motion recording, for cost reasons. Audience can record questions about an hour in advance of the Q&A session, and get "live" answers to validate to the audience that this isn't JUST a canned recording. Part of this experience must be that the explorers see their audience - especially those who asked questions. These might be big media events more like concerts. (Heck, maybe send along a famous performer and let them perform concerts from Mars.) Can also pair "live from Mars" presentations with a returned Mars explorer to give a better experience and extend the value of both live and virtual speeches. E.g the live explorer talks while the audience waits for their recorded questions to be selected and sent to Mars and transmitted back to Earth along with the explorer's answers. So the questioner gets the experience of their image having been sent to Mars and back as a bonus!
Figure an average of $200K per speech (including the cheap ones to school kids), average of 1 per day (some days with more than one, some days off). Maybe could keep that going for 2 years - about $150M income. Add sales of official Mars merchandize (T-shirts, hats, jackets, patches, flags, coins, spoons, etc) - overprice most of it with explanation that it all goes to support the Mars effort, and you could probably pull in $10M - $20M.
22. Personally signed prints of photos taken on Mars.
23. Book publication. There would be a big market for Mars-themed large "coffee table"/Christmas books, with colour photos. These can sell for $30-70 and should have appeal across the globe. I wouldn't surprised if the market was something like 30-50million copies globally within 2-3 years. The profit on that might be something like $10 per copy = anything up to $500million.
24. Lightweight textiles such as luxury gossamer scarves would have a high sale value on Earth. A scarf weighing a few grams could easily be worth several thousand dollars on Earth. Make maybe 500 a year - the income would be in the range of several million dollars.
25. Commemorative medals struck on Mars, to be sold on Earth.
26. Postage stamps produced by the Consortium in rare limited editions would also generate a good deal of income on Earth. Again we are talking potentially of several million dollars a year I would say. People would pay a lot to have their stamps franked with "Mars Base One" or whatever.
Any more ideas?
The Deep Space 2 probes massed 2.4 kg. Although they failed they show that it is possible to have an interesting and useful minimal surface mission in the nanosat class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2
But haven't we got Mars satellites in orbit? I imagine small devices would be able to speak to the satellites that then relay info back to Earth.
The smaller the load, the more impact it can sustain I would imagine e.g. if you have a 2 kg wrapped up in 3 kgs of sophisticated wadding. Or can you do a last minute mini launch before you hit the surface, so landing speed is really slow.
I really do not like the 6 to 8 month transit times proposed for manned Mars missions. So I wanted to explore generating high delta-v's to get approximately straight-line trajectories to reduce travel time. But I needed to know how high the speed needs to be to get this.
Found this reference after a web search for short Mars transit times:
Entry Velocities at Mars and Earth for Short Transit Times.
Abstract : Propulsion systems composed of a Shuttle External Tank, appropriately modified for the purpose, with a rocket engine that is either an SSME or a NERVA could inject a gross personnel payload of 100,000 lb on a trans-Mars trajectory from Space Station Freedom with aerobraking at Mars with transit times of less that 70 days. Such transit times reflect a significant reduction from the 200- plus days generally considered. The 100,000-lb payload would include the mass of a hypothetical aerobrake for aerocapture at Mars. The entry velocities at Mars compatible with such transit times are greater that 21 km/sec, to be compared with previously stated constraints of 8.5 to 9.5 km/sec for nominal Mars entry velocity. Limits of current aerobrake technology are not well enough defined to determine the feasibility of an aerobrake to handle Mars-entry velocities for short-transit-time trajectories. Return from Mars to Earth on a mirror image of 70-days outbound trajectory (consistent with a stay time of about 12 days) would require a Mars-departure velocity increment more than twice as great as that at Earth departure and would require a correspondingly more capable propulsion system. The return propulsion system would preferably be predeployed at Mars by one or more separate minimum-energy, 0.5-to-1.1-Mlb-gross-payload cargo flights with the same outbound propulsion systems as the personnel flight, before commitment of the personnel flight. Aerobraking entry velocity at Earth after such a transit time would be about 16 km/sec, to be compared with constraints set at 12.5 to 16 km/sec.
www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a272591.pdf
It gives the equations for the conic section flight paths you would get for high speed departures. For a departure from Earth orbit using an additional delta-v of ca. 8.8 km/s, the transit time to Mars would be about 70 days. See page 14, by the internal page numbering. However, the paper notes after a short stay of 12 days, to make a comparable short transit time of ca. 70 days back to Earth from Mars orbit would require a delta-v twice as large, ca. 18 km/s.
The paper gives both chemical and nuclear propulsion options. For the chemical propulsion it uses the SSME engine, and for the nuclear, NERVA. For the Earth departure, the chemical propulsion version uses a ET style tank at 1,600,000 lb. propellant load, 86,700 lb. vehicle dry mass, and 100,000 lb. payload.
Unfortunately, the paper does not give the structure that would allow a return trip to Earth at a 18 km/s delta-v. Presumably it would be refueled at Mars or Phobos, but it does not give the make-up of such a vehicle. For a delta-v this high it would have to be staged.
Some possibilities for the architecture:
First of all, we'll assume that there are propellant depots in Earth orbit and the vehicles carry along their own propellant production equipment to generate their own propellant on Mars or perhaps Phobos.
Then,
1.) The vehicle carries along an empty propellant tank to be refilled at Mars or Phobos for the return trip.
2.) The vehicle leaves Earth with two fully fueled stages. Only one stage is burned on the way to Mars. At Mars, the unfueled stage is used to land on Mars. The unburned stage is left in Mars to link up with the landing stage for the return trip.
3.)Two fully fueled stages leave Earth orbit, and again only one is burned but the vehicle lands now on Phobos. The unfueled stage refuels on Phobos. The unburned stage lands on Mars. The two stages link up in space fully fueled for the return trip.Bob Clark
Excuse my ignorance...
How does the SSME match up with the Falcon series? Is there anything there which could get you to Mars that quickly?
louis wrote:Thanks guys - looks like the Sunday Times took a "could" and made it a "will".
Are you sure that was a manned mission they were talking about in the Sunday Times article? Musk has spoken about getting a manned mission to Mars in the 10 to 20 year time frame.
BTW, another very important use of the Falcon Heavy would be for a Mars Sample Return mission. This has long been considered the Holy Grail of planetary missions by NASA:SPACEX FALCON HEAVY ROCKET: SHORTCUT TO MARS?
Scheduled for a 2013 maiden flight, the new rocket could make a Mars sample return mission a reality.
By Irene Klotz
Tue Apr 5, 2011 04:52 PM ET
http://news.discovery.com/space/spacex- … 10405.htmlThe problem was NASA had previously estimated the costs would be in the $10 billion range. But with the Falcon Heavy costing only in the range of $100 million, and using a couple of Centaur upper stages at a cost in the range of $30 million each, it could probably could be done as a low-cost "Discovery class" mission.
I'll write about it in the next couple of days on my blog.
Bob Clark
No, I am not sure - the article was short and short on detail.
One thing I am certain of is that Musk has his eyes firmly fixed on the prize. He knows if he gets humans to Mars he won't just be a footnote to the development of e commerce, electric cars and commercial space launches - he will be writing himself into history in a big way on a permanent basis.
I think when you look at Space X you see it's all really geared to that ultimate prize - it's certainly why he got into the business in the first place.
This notion that at 'Lets just do it' program that sends people to Mars would NOT conduct a number of validating missions first is absurd. As I've said even the 'go directly to the moon' Apollo program was preceded by Mercury and most importantly by Gemini. And Apollo was by no means a 'slow and lazy' program, nor was it risk-averse. If your an advocate for an aggreisive development program that aggressiveness is going to come in the form doing the validation missions at a fast clip with the various project dove-tailing together and replacing each other rapidly as the Apollo capsules rapidly replaced Gemini capsules.
Allusions to the age-o-sail are profoundly dis-honest, when Columbus sailed across the Atlantic it was in boats that were already common, affordable and which had been validated by a century of usage. That's why it was possible to RENT (as Columbus did) a Caravel cheap, the cost per week was equal to price of two cows! The first voyage was an absolute drop in the bucket for the state, which is why Spain could immediately follow it up the very next year with a flotilla of 17 ships and 1200 men which had the goal of establishing outright colonies, now that their was a justification for spending "real money". These vessels were not the Space-craft of their day they were the 747's of their day.
Arguing that our ability to send a 1 ton robot to Mars means we have the capability to send a human NOW at ANY price is again just absurd. The Viking landings can not possibly be construed to mean we have the capability to send a human 'since the 1980's'. Just because a mission would use rockets and heat-shield based entry is like saying that after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty-hawk it was then possible from a 'simple technological feasibility standpoint' to fly across the Atlantic. Your ignoring the need to mature a technology to higher levels of capability and reliability, work which can easily exceed the cost and complexity of just developing and demonstrating the core technology. Just as the American-Soviet space race was mostly technology maturation on existing ICBM technologies even the most intensive Mars mission would require a huge amount of maturation of the present space technology, and that maturation will need validation and time.
I'm not arguing that we need radically new Propulsion technology to actually Do a mission, Zubrin is right on that one point but ignores the fact that the cost to develop that massive hardware necessary for such a mission would requite so much time and money that the this development process would be indistinguishable from our current space program development path involving alternative near-term destinations like the Moon, Asteroids or Lagrange points. Their is nothing left but to advocate for budget increases that are never going to happen, even in a good economy. Technology developed and validated that can bring down the cost of a mission is what anyone who is serious should be advocating for, not this childish 'do it now at any price and suicidal risk' attitude.
That's all way too pessimistic and defeatist. I think you have been mesmerised by all the talking up of difficulties that has gone on over the years. Really the problem of getting people on to Mars is in reality several discrete problems and you need to break down the project into those discrete areas:
1. Launch
2. Orbital assembly
3. Long exposure to zero G and one third G
4. Protection from cosmic radiation/solar flares in transit and on Mars
5. Transit mode
6. Life support in transit
7. EDL for Mars
8. Return from Mars
9. Life support on Mars
10. Mars ISRU
In terms of technology maturation I think 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9 and 10 are really pretty much there, or - at most - existing technology needs to be tweaked and put in place (e.g. Mars ISRU - we already have independent energy production and rock drilling on Mars - it's really just an extension of things we can already do).
Some significant work needs to be done on 4 (more in terms of design it seems from what GW says), and on 7 and 8 (perhaps the trickiest element).
What is missing is a properly funded and focussed project, similar to Apollo (but far less costly). If we started now on a 10 year project we could mature the EDL technology while we worked on other design and build elements.
After the initial landings I believe Mars colonisation - although relatively slow to develop - will be self-funding so cost will no longer be an issue.
To gw, but the rest can chime in, you mention national priority. I think the failure in the argument is that there is some burning need to do this now, or in five years or in some accelerated fashion, but there isn't a definitive reason to do this now or in five years or in ten or in 50. It seems if we wait, technology gets better, costs go down, knowledge increases. Why not wait, or take a slow and steady approach?
You obviously subscribe to the "Slacker's Code" . LOL
Of course, why bother doing that marathon?....why bother landscaping your garden?...why go to all that trouble of doing up an old house?...why make a play for that member of the opposite sex when you might get hurt in the process?....
Kennedy said it best when he said "not because it is easy but because it is difficult".
The analogy from the body is probably a good one here - your body does need to be exposed to microbes, to danger, to develop its immune system. I think a healthy society does need to attempt difficult and somewhat risky things to keep alive its spirit, its creativity. Of course, if you want to live in Sleepy Joesville, that's fine...it's an existential choice.
Personally I just find life a lot more interesting when interesting things are going on around me and, as a taxpayer, I am quite prepared to pay for that bit of excitement and engagement with the big world out there.
Who's going to make parts off-limit though? I would think that China and Russia would take much umbridge with an American public-private partnership telling them that they're not allowed to colonise Mars...
I'd say, designate a few places Martian world heritage sites and allow a free for all everywhere else.
Yes some areas should certainly be heritage sites and protected from overdevelopment or pollution.
China and Russia would no doubt not attempt to plonk their bases in the middle of an already established site. IN this game, possession will be nine-tenths of the law. If land is taken up with PV panelling, habs, roads and the like, a kind of ownership by occupation will be established I think.
I think the enabling-technology boundary you are discussing here is not a sharp boundary. It depends very strongly on how much hardship and risk one is willing to endure, once the thing is feasible at all.
500 years ago it was possible for the very first time to cross the mid-Atlantic with ships from Europe. Magellan even took a fleet trans-Pacific, but about half his ships and men were lost, including Magellan himself. It took months to cross the Atlantic, years to cross the Pacific. Crews were dying of diseases like scurvy, and of spoiled food, all the time.
300 years ago the same Atlantic voyage took weeks, the Pacific took only months, and they had banished scurvy with citrus fruit. The ships were better and faster. Explorations and colonizations became far easier, so there were more of them. That's the way it worked.
We had the basic rocketry and capsules and a lander to go to the moon by the late 60's. In the 1970's, there was considerable experience with space station living with Skylab and the Salyuts. The remaining challenge that was recognized was a lander vehicle for Mars. The microgravity disease and radiation dangers went largely unrecognized or ignored back then. Long-term food storage and cooking was still unresolved.
But, from a simple technological feasibility standpoint, it had become possible to send men to the surface of Mars in the 1980's. That very mission had been on NASA's books for the 1983 opposition in the late 60's, and had been pushed back to the 1987 opposition at the time Apollo was cancelled and all manned flight beyond LEO forbidden in 1972.
In hindsight, we know the crew would more likely have died than survived, of microgravity disease, if not radiation. But we had an agency and an astronaut corps willing to go, back then. I know, that 1987 mission was my target via naval aviation and flight test school. It all went by the boards in 1972.
We know a lot more today, and have a lot more relevant experiences under our belt. There is a well-known work-around for microgravity disease, although most people still believe you have to build some "Battlestar Galactica" monstrosity to employ it. No, you don't. Nor do you need complicated cable crap, or gigantic space trusses, or any of that junk.
The same 20 cm thickness of water shielding that protects from solar flares also halves the cosmic ray exposure, without secondary showers. The "biggie" that we now have is experience at LEO assembly via docked modules - that's what's required to build the ship or ships that take men to Mars. We did that, it's called the ISS.
We still lack a viable lander. But that could be done, in about 5 years if a national priority. (That's just how we did the Apollo lander.) Mars is very hard to land big things upon, but there is a solution. It's called low-thrust rocket braking during hypersonic entry, followed by low-thrust rocket braking during chute or ballute descent, followed by a throttle-up to high-thrust rocket braking for the touchdown. You have to burn all the way down, at one thrust level or another. Multiple slightly-canted engines solves the retro plume instability problem during the hypersonics. The rest is tinkertoys we already have, we just never put them together for that application before.
If it were a national priority, if we as a people actually had the collective will, we could easily send men to the surface of Mars before 2020, and very likely get them home safely, not some "sometime in the 2030's” or later (which really means “never”, by the way). At today's launch prices, which are about 15 times cheaper than the shuttle, I do believe we could likely do it for under $100B.
We are in the analogous situation now relative to Mars, as were sailors 300 years ago trying to cross the Pacific. 300 not 500 years ago, when it was much more likely to fail. But it is still difficult and dangerous. No doubt about that.
I do not see the sanity of going all that way to Mars and not landing. What's the point? This is not a technical or science thing, this goes to the very heart of who and what we are. And what we have been, ever since that first migration out of Africa, maybe a million years ago, before we even became the species we are today.
Nope. If we go at all, we land. That's not even a proper topic for debate.
But on the other hand, I don't see the sanity of being hung up on the one trip - one landing model we used for Apollo. There's no such restriction on designs that rely on orbital assembly in LEO. Make several landings while at Mars, and visit the moons, too! But, you don't have to build "Battlestar Galactica" to do this, contrary to what most folks seem to believe.
You build a modest manned transit ship, and you build modest vehicles that take landers and the landing propellants, separately. You rendezvous all this fleet in Mars orbit, and then go to work exploring multiple sites, with rover cars that have drill rigs on them.
You go to find out “what all is there?” and “where exactly is it?”, and you try out your best “live-off-the-land” equipment while you’re there. That’s what we’ve always done, ever since that first migration out of Africa. Unless you get that done on the first visit to Mars, then any future base or colony will be “iffy” at best, and more likely fail. Same is true anywhere else we might go, too.
GW
Thanks for that informative summary, GW.
Thankfully we don't have to rely on NASA to deliver a Mars landing. Musk is determined to get there and will use Space X to realise the dream.
The idea of a public-private venture of some sort to settle new places is a proven one. Besides the Hudson Bay Company, there were the British and the Dutch East India Companies. All of these were government-licensed monopolies. It worked then. Why not now?
GW
Indeed!
I disagree that the initial stages of cargo landings in support of the first Manned landing can be considered validators. The start of the Manned mission would not be green-lighted until it's all it's key technologies are validated on prior missions, the lander foremost among these. NASA isn't going to get put itself in a position ware those cargo landers are at serious risk of failing because it would immediately scrub the whole mission for something like a decade while they go back to the drawing-board on the lander. Meanwhile all the other mission hardware for delivering the crew is collecting dust or worse has to be scrapped because it's incompatible with the new lander.
Basically you must consider 'loss of mission' as well as 'loss of crew' in assessing mission risk and failure to consider lose of mission is a huge over-sight in most Mars mission designs, while they bend-over backwards to avoid loss of crew (usually by organizing available assets such that any failure can become a loss of mission) they ignore loss of mission entirely (All Zubrin's work and a lot of the casual Aerospace industry stuff has this flaw running through it). But the political and public perception costs of loss of mission are extremely high, so high that it justifies getting firm validation of all the tech going in so the loss chances are kept to a minimum even when using a robot ware loss of mission is the only consideration.
As for more specific issues:
Radiation: While most of the radiation issue is a 'known' their are still some 'known unknowns' in their. Cosmic radiation is a bit different from the Fissile-material stuff were mostly dealing with here in our historic experience on Earth. Cosmic Rays are mostly protons, electrons and some high energy heavy nuclei, it's possible these are not equivalent to the weak non-penetrating Alpha particles were familiar with. If the Cosmic rays are worse then expected then our shielding numbers will be inadequate and we will have possibly killed a human crew. The Solar storm stuff is even less understood but we are sure we need some kind of heavily shielded storm shelter to survive, I can't see any deep-space mission until such a shelter have actually been through a storm and a some data points collected even if its with animals. I see EML as the closest location to test radiation mitigation at, and it has the key advantage that it can be evacuated (back into the magnetosphere) before a storm hits given the warning window we have now.
Phobos/Demos Visit: Lots of dismissal of this mission which I don't think is valid. This mission would be of the full duration of the landing mission with the same outbound and inbound duration and the landing duration replaced by an orbital stay. The moons are approached and landed on mainly for the benefit of reducing the crews radiation dose, they shield half the sky, more if your in a crater. It's the duration and propulsion that's mainly being validated here, I don't care what kind of return propulsion is being used it's the reliability and restartability after ~500 day hibernation that's at issues. The only problem I forsee is if zero-g limits that might make such a mission untenable, in that case I'd expect a complete un-manned shakedown of all the key interplanetary propulsion stages that are going to be used.
Mars Sample Return using ISRU: I'd consider this to be a 'Could validate' on the idea of the Large Rover Landing. ISRU equipment and power supply is going to be of that kind of size and mass. While its a good ISRU validator, and perhaps the Mars Assent stage fueled from it I don't see it validating the Heavy Earth return propulsion because a Sample return would bring back such a small amount.
I think you're living in the past if you think NASA are going to be leading this mission. It will be Space X in the lead.
What validation was done before putting someone on the lunar surface? Answer: v. little. I think if in the 1960s sensible planning could prove so successful I think it can with Mars as well. The challenge is bigger but our resources are much more developed as well in terms of computers, knowledge of what we will be facing and materials we can use.
I think if you do the long haul in space and maybe a simulation on the Moon with the additional weights as suggested, then you are ready to go, assuming your EDL has been tested with cargo to Mars and in other ways. Testing the radiation protection at EML might be good as well.
I cannot see the advantages of Phobos and Deimos. We will have ways of dealing with the radiation threat on the Mars surface e.g. ice shelters for the habs...
A lonely post so far.
I myself think that if some entity should have the neccessary arrogance as to presume to dispense with portions of Mars, the needed conditions would be a promise to acomplish a certain amount of "Improvements" to the section of land. First a bidder would make a promise, or would state intention to fufill a requirment of improvement, and then they would be allowed to "Lease" a section of land with the promise of ownership if they fufill the promise.
I have little objection to the Hudson Bay company, who knows? Maybe it actually could be them in some cases.
Much of Mars should be off limits for some time however in my opinion. Just the places where we want alterations and settlements should be handled in the manner suggested above.
I agree. There should not be a free for all. And as I have stated before the idea that the "Wild West" was a complete free for all is a misinterpretation of the historical facts.
Hmmm, what sort of market do you guys think there will be for a 5 tonne to LEO spaceplane in the foreseeable future? The ISS needs 100 tonnes a year roughly in resupply, which would be 20 flights of such a vehicle. We could even got smaller, to 2 tonnes... I'm thinking more along the lines of the DH-1 proposal to market them as space access vehicles rather than selling cargo space. Groups, which could be governments, companies, or even private individuals, could purchase one and buy say a Falcon Heavy launch to put their bulk hardware up there.
I'm thinking of a Methane/LOX ramjet-rocket SSTO vehicle; GW will know if it's feasible to build one for such a payload (2-5 tonnes)... use the rockets to get up to Ramjet speed, use the ramjet as much as you can, then transition back to the rocket to reach orbit,
Sounds good for ferrying people to LEO.
Now we can look at the mission suite and try to determine a minimum necessary group or groupings that validate all the techs needed for any particular long term goal. Not all possible technologies are necessary, for example closed loop life-support is considered optional my most experts for an initial Mars exploration mission because open-loop life-support is well understood and not prohibitive in mass.
The grouping for Manned Mars landing validation that I think is most likely to be conducted would be something like be this and in this order
EML Station
Lunar Polar lander
NEA Visit
Lunar Base
Phobos/Demos Visit
Heavy Mars Rover landingAt that point we would have validated all the tech necessary to do a Human Mars landing. But other mixes of missions could also occour with more or less risk involved as more or less techs are being validated in each mission.
If you think their are other good missions that you think should be included or validations I've missed on the existing missions please do post them and I'll edit the listing, perhaps creating a matrix as well that can visually organize everything.
INteresting posts.
I am still of the Apollo mindset. You plan for everything but you don't become bewitched by the problems.
I think there certainly have to be validation missions, as there were for Apollo, but they should be of a minimal nature.
Radiation protection can be achieved in lab conditions on Earth in my view. We know how to protect against radiation, to the extent we can.
We certainly need long mission in zero g. Would multiple figure of 8 passes between Earth and Moon not be a good idea? Then we need to test the zero g crew both on Earth and the Moon to see how quickly they can adapt to operational conditions.
Most importantly, I think we need a Mars Replica Environment on Earth - a big pressurised "warehouse" with Mars-type soil, the same temperature, atmosphere and so on, and a sol night-day sequence. It can have corners with 3D projections for "exploration". We would learn a lot that way.
I think Phobos and Deimos are a complete distraction and potentially quite dangerous.
The Introductory Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QoEEGyS … re=relatedAnd the Website:
http://mars-one.com/en/Interesting, looks like it could work, but I think the psychological effects of them knowing they'll die on Mars is too much.
Not to mention, it's pretty much a guaranteed that someone will die on Mars very publicly. A 2-year mission carries a tremendous amount of risk in terms of getting everything to keep working...
But an indefinite stay? It's pretty much by definition a "pull to break" test, that can only end one way, and not a way that will help space exploration's publicity.Not to mention, they'll need repair capabilities for everything, either that or constant resupply shipments.
I think a much better idea would be a station. That's how it's always been done, and with ISRU coming back isn't that much harder than going there.
Stage the missions so that with each successive mission, more crew arrives than departs, so the colony grows, while some astronauts can stay longer than others.
It's especially good for such an isolated mission - I can recall at least one example of an astronaut that got depressed and had to be returned to Earth from LEO.That capability simply won't exist with this mission. And they'll be staying a lot longer than 6 months.
Nice graphics, but not much substance - or did I miss their landing solution???
I think a non-return mission is asking for trouble. Part of the lure of Mars (as of exploration in the past on this planet) is the knowledge that you can return and be feted for your adventures.
That will be a major pull - so let's not destroy that. As you say, with ISRU, a return journey is not that difficult and - in any case - aren't we going to bring things back from Mars? If we're bringing things back, let's bring people too.
There is an interesting historical analogy to how a Consortium might operate on Mars - the Hudson's Bay Company.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson's_Bay_Company#Early_years
"The Hudson's Bay Company (French: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson), abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" ("La Baie" in French) is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada. The company is headquartered in the Simpson Tower in Toronto, Ontario.[1]
The company was incorporated by English royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay and functioned as the de facto government in parts of North America before European states and later the United States laid claim to those territories. It was at one time the largest landowner in the world, with Rupert's Land having 15% of North American acreage. From its long time headquarters at York Factory on Hudson Bay, the company controlled the fur trade throughout much of British-controlled North America for several centuries. Undertaking early exploration, its traders and trappers forged early relationships with many groups of First Nations/Native Americans. Its network of trading posts formed the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of Western Canada and the United States. In the late 19th century, its vast territory became the largest component in the newly formed Dominion of Canada, in which the company was the largest private landowner."
You'll see the article says they were the "de facto governement". And that's how I would see the Consortium operating, as a de facto government but not one laying claim to sovereignty. Under the Outer Space Treaty the USA could give the Consortium a "charter" to explore and exploit the resources of Mars and so open up the planet to development. Their Forts can be viewed as analogous to the bases that the Consortium will establish. There may have been no organised land claims, but it would have been clear what was controlled by the Company, and similarly that will be the case with the Consortium.
louis wrote:Glandu wrote:Louis : Gold mining is exactly the kind of operation that is extremely steel-consuming. Everything, in fact, will be steel-consuming, as everything will need tools, and most of the time tools are best made of steel.
We will need shitloads of steel. Period. It can't be replaced for many tasks, including the most basic ones for survival.
You also really are guilty of a basic error in thinking that gold mining on Mars will be like deep mine gold mining in South Africa. You don't need large loads of steel to dig gold ore out when it is at or near the surface.
Some steel may be involved in transport (although you can also used bamboo, fibre glass and other materials for trucks and barrows etc).
Sorry, even if the scale is lower, efficiency can only be reached through steel. Steel is tougher than bamboo, Steel is more shock-resistant than Fiber-glass or other fibers for composites. Fiber-glass is generally not very strong. Kevlar & carbon fibers are very tough to make, even here on earth(IIRC, only japanese know how to make carbon fiber).
And you have yet to prove there was enough volcanic activity on Mars to have provided the planet with interesting veins. That's why exploration missions are essential. 500 days, not 30 days. To find out what's really there & what can be done. Only once you've got a proper picture, you can accurately plan for settlement.
And there is another problem : while the colony works on exports, it does not work on self-improvement. As GW said, everything has to be built there : atmosphere, soil, water supply. Better focus on them than on random exports. Would be sad to see the colony lost due to excessive effort made into exports. That's one of the things that killed Norwegian settlements in Groenland - too much effort in capturing live polar bears & falcons, not enough on stabilizing wood supply & other essentials(cliamte change also was deadly to them).
El_slapper. Real facts are stubborn : it will be tough.
I agree it will be tough, but not impossible.
You seem unable to break free of the spell of how we do things on Earth. A bamboo tow truck for instance would, for instance, be perfectly capable of take a 100 kg load of gold ore (earth equivalent - everything will be lighter on Mars). Let's suppose we mine 100 tonnes of gold ore to get one tonne of 50% gold which we ship back to earth. And let's suppose we might the 100 tonnes of gold over 330 sols during an earth year, that will be 300 kgs per sol. I can imagine a team of say 3 working with power tools and a pressurised mini digger achieving that sort of throughput.
The mini digger could tow the trucks back to the mining base/processing centre. At periodic intervals a larger vehicle, an ISRU produced vehicle, would tow a series of trucks to the rocket launch site near the main base.
There would be need of steel but not vast amounts. The power tools and mini digger would come from Earth but things like replacement drills and electric motors could be made on Mars.
The miners might be earning $300,000 per annum and doing other stuff on Mars as well.
RobS: Indian culture could easily come to the realization they are over-paying for Gold and opt for different Jewelry styles, cultural practices are subject to change under market forces and they are changing no ware faster then in the rising Asian states. Meanwhile Political uncertainty that drives up Gold prices also makes financing of new Maned Space flight missions exceedingly unlikely so 'gold from space' is a self defeating idea, the stability necessary to make any space adventuring possible would deflate the gold price. The same logic can be applied to virtually any rare resource that might be obtained in space, if we haven't figured out how to recycle or substitute for those materials in coming decades were not going to be living in a world that can afford ambitious space programs.
clark: Actually I agree with you LIVING on Mars is insane, the serious people talk only about exploring Mars in what amounts to a Martian Apollo program.
GW: Nuclear Subs, ISS and every single long-duration isolation study show that tin-cans are perfectly adequate for a multiple years when you select tough individuals. A mars first landing expedition crew is going to be selected from people with nerves of steel and I have no doubt they will be able to cope with isolation and confinement if given space station levels of volume.
Well Musk talks about living on Mars, so take it up with him since he is the one building the rockets and capsules that will make it possible to get to Mars. I think it's highly arrogant to think people won't want to live on Mars. People live in all sorts of God forsaken environments on Earth. To live on Mars will be to be part of a highly interesting project that will bring the individual huge kudos when they return to Earth.
It's also arrogant to think Indians will give up on cultural practices that have been around for thousands of years.
Well, right after the initial "tin can" base setup, it might not be quite so confining if the folks there had supple, lightweight mechanical counterpressure suits, instead of the clumsy gas balloons we have been using. Think vacuum-proofing "underwear", and ordinary outer clothing suited to the weather and the job. We've known how to do this since 1969. Only inappropriate compression requirements are holding it back today.
Then there's habitats. Big open spaces inside, and good panoramic views outside, tend to support mental health. Sounds like the "tin can" approach is the wrong one, long term. The old science fiction transparent pressure domes concept points the right way, it just has to be done with regard to meteroid repair and radiation protection. Clear walls, solid roof.
The real problem is open-"air" agriculture on Mars. 7 mbar total P, 0 mbar water vapor partial-P. Ain't gonna happen until Mars gets terraformed some. That means dry-land plants and animals and soil organisms will need the same sort of clear-wall/solid roof dome that the folks live in, just whopping larger to cover the acreage. I dunno how to do that, but I bet we do know in less than 50 years.
Meanwhile, it might be possible to do aquaculture farming in ponds under an ice-plus-regolith cover. Done right, the water plus ice supplies the external pressure on the organisms. No spacesuit needed, just a wetsuit and oxygen scuba rig. No pressure dome. But because there is no pressure dome, this concept is scalable to very large acreages very easily. Underneath cover like that, we're talking artificial lights for the photosynthesis, whose waste heat keeps the water liquid.
There's clearly things we could do to keep folks on Mars sane and healthy and living productive lives. But it won't (and can't) look like Earth until the planet is terraformed.
I agree, living inside a tin can is definitely not the way to do it. Even nuclear sub crews need lots of time ashore.
GW
One option until we have the desired domes would be to put video display screens on the walls of habs showing live what is going on outside, to act as substitute windows. I think that would help.
I agree MCP suits should be developed asap.