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louis wrote:Grypd - Do you have a source for your claim that most countries including USA have signed the Treaty? Wikipedia indicates only 17 countries have signed and ratified or signed - and USA is not among them. Indeed only France among leading space nations has signed I think.
If there is a Treaty but it hasn't been signed then I think one can call into question its provision, althoguh I agree "custom" is important and of course the Outer Space Treaty does apply to the Moon.
Has Space X failed to invest? I think not. It's identifying the business opportunity and having big nation protection that is important. Space X is under the wing of the USA, but it has seen plenty of commercial opportunities in space.
The Law of the sea is here Wikisite Law of the sea
The fact that the law of the sea has so many similarities to the Moon treaty if you read them is what causes us problems. Space X is a commercial body but as part of the outer space treaty is considered to be a US organisation. It is going for commercial opportunities given by supplying the ISS and of course launching satelites into orbit it is not talking about mineral exploitation as its lawyers will be telling them just what I have said its too grey an area to get into. What is needed is to modify the outer space treaty to allow mineral exploitation.
An article on the Moon treaty The Space Review : The Moon Treaty: failed international law or waiting in the shadows?
From the Space Review article:
"The United States, the Russian Federation (former Soviet Union), and the People’s Republic of China have neither signed, acceded, nor ratified the Moon Treaty, which has led to the conclusion that it is a failure from the standpoint of international law.2 "
But my point stands, you only need another signatory to say "this is our company" and Space X can operate with them.
I think the key point that everyone understands is that none of the states on Earth should claim parts or the whole of celestial bodies as their own. That says nothing of course about companies operating there or indeed colonies establishing their own effective statehood.
If it were up to me I would from day one establish a functioning self-governing colony which would claim separate legal status from Earth States.
We have dual citizenship on Earth - no reason we shouldn't have it between Earth and Mars, so someone can be a US citizen say and a Mars citizen as well.
However, I realise things are likely to develop more haphazardly than that.
The Moon treaty is by its nature more or less a law of the sea for space. Most countries including the USA have at least signed that treaty. The Moon treaty does not stop commercial enterprises it just puts there regulation onto the UN and that any technology you develop has to be shared with everyone.
In international law there are two types of Law one is treaty law and the other is customs. The Moon treaty has some of the first but is strongest with the second. And since no one has put in place a regime or treaty to deal with commerce in space then the only thing to base dealings with that is the Moon treaty.
The other thing to note is that the treaties in space are not only similar to those that deal with Earths seas and Oceans but they also have been add ons to previous treaties. The treaties dealing with satelites and freedom to operate in space are part of the outer space treaty and much of the outer space treaty is also part of the Moon treaty.
The basic answer to all of this is it is far too much of a gray area and that makes buisness interests very unwilling to invest in something that could well lose in a court case.
Grypd - Do you have a source for your claim that most countries including USA have signed the Treaty? Wikipedia indicates only 17 countries have signed and ratified or signed - and USA is not among them. Indeed only France among leading space nations has signed I think.
If there is a Treaty but it hasn't been signed then I think one can call into question its provision, althoguh I agree "custom" is important and of course the Outer Space Treaty does apply to the Moon.
Has Space X failed to invest? I think not. It's identifying the business opportunity and having big nation protection that is important. Space X is under the wing of the USA, but it has seen plenty of commercial opportunities in space.
I can assure you that in space Microwave transmission works much better than here on Earth.
One way to build things on the Moon is to simply put regolith in a mold and microwave it making quick easy bricks.
Some plans to do that with making roads just involve a rover microwaving the regolith to make a hard surface.
That sounds great to me. That's exactly the sort of technology we should be looking to develop. We should make full use of energy (which comes from the sun and doesn't require replenishment from Earth) in our surface techologies.
GW- I'm not really so sure about that, on radiation, actually. Firstly, take a look at this section of the wikipedia article on MaRIE, which was an instrument used to measure the radiation environment around Mars. The following image (from this site) shows that we can expect at least about 14 rem per year on the surface of Mars.
http://www.solarstorms.org/MarsDosages_ … rie_br.jpg
According to this, NASA limits astronauts to 25 rem per space shuttle mission. In that case, I retract that statement; however, even if it is "only" 14 rem per year, that will certainly build up over the course of a lifetime.
That said, given that the colony's structures are going to have to be covered in about 4+ meters of regolith anyway (that is, IMO, the simplest and safest way to deal with the high internal pressures), radiation within the habs will be reduced to very low levels and so long as the person is not outside should not be an issue.
Certainly for the first mission or two, I don't think people are going to be outside that much. If the mission was structured the way I envisage I guess there would be a week during which there was a lot of external work as supplies were gathered together from the various robot drops. A lot of "outside" time would probably be spent in a pressurised rover/digger.
Here's a link to the Outer Space Treaty:
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/pdf/public … ACE11E.pdf
I think that there's v little in it to stop commercial exploitation of Mars or other celestial bodies. All it requires is authorisation by the appropriate state. If the Mars Consortium is registered in Panama, that's Panama I would say.
It would appear to prevent states appropriating parts of the planet for themselves. I am not sure it would preclude lease arrangements. There must be some implied rights of occupation - with the Antarctica Treaty, you can't just go and build your own base in the middle of an American base. As long as there was no permanent legal claim to the land, I think de facto long leases would be allowed as "administrative arrangements" i.e. good governance, just as arresting a man for murder in an Antarctic base does not imply a jurisdictional claim to the continent.
Terraformer wrote:Lunar regolith samples aren't the property of all mankind though, and neither are the cometary samples, or the solar wind samples... anyway, I'm sure the Outer Space Treaty doesn't mention that, only the ownership of real estate, and even then only by existing nations (tbh, if they wished to include private organisations they'd propably have to recognise them as non-signatory nations, giving them sovereignty at least...).
This will go off topic slightly but has to be said.
Currently all the samples from the Moon are scientific samples for the exact purpose of furthering knowledge. They where never commercial samples.
Many people consider the only treaty that space missions are bound too is the Outer space treaty. Unfortunatly that is not the case. The Moon treaty of 1979 is still present and for all intents the countries of the world have acceded to that treaty and it considers the USA to have done so. And all missions into space have to have a country of origin and even if a private company they are licensed by that country.
Trying for commercial mining and resource hunting even if selling asteroidal material could well have a sting in the tale as all mankind could ask for some of the profits.
Re The Moon Treaty, the following from Wikipedia:
"In practice, it is a failed treaty since it has not been ratified by any nation which engages in self-launched manned space exploration or has plans to do so (e.g. the United States, The United Kingdom, European Union, Russian Federation, People's Republic of China, Japan, and India) since its creation in 1979, and thus has a negligible effect on actual spaceflight."
Seems pretty irrelevant then.
IIRC The Outer Space Treaty does not prevent commercial exploitation of a planet.
To add some more ideas:
- Of course the artefacts used by the first mission on Mars will be v. valuable to collectors, museums and so on. There is no reason why many of the lighter weight objects shouldn't be brought back for auctioning.
- The first colonists should write and sign statements about their arrival on the planet, dated. First day statements would be worth a huge amount I would suggest - several million dollars. but later ones also would be worth large amounts - certainly more than $20,000 a gram.
- Setting up a space-postal service to Mars with stamps and franking would I think generate significant income. Rare stamps can sell for millions of dollars. I think the Mars service would start with a v. rare celebratory issue of maybe ten stamps to celebrate the arrival - perhaps containing letters from notables such as the President of the United States. I think income from the Space Postal Service could easily exceed $2 million per annum.
- Projecting people's photographs on to the surface of Mars. The photos would be despatched digitally to Mars, perhaps in an on board computer. Photos would be taken of the projections and returned to the people concerned so they have a record of their photo on Mars. This could be a very cheap way of generating income. Perhaps at a £100 a time it would be a novel type of birthday present appealing in particular to people interested in space and Mars.
Cosmic radiation is not the bugaboo that everyone thinks. The max radiation exposure occurs during solar minimum, and is just a tad beyond the yearly dose we now allow astronauts to receive anyway. At solar maximum, this exposure is cut in half by the solar wind, so that for most of the 22-year sunspot cycle, cosmic ray doses are under what is already allowed.
The real radiation danger is not cosmic rays, it is solar coronal mass ejections. Those, not cosmic rays, are what our magnetic field shields us against. Mars has none. Fortunately, these are brief events, a few hours to a day or so. About a meter of water or dirt works pretty good as a shield. Nothing special there.
GW
Thanks for the clarification GW. While we are on the subject, would you know if water irradiated by a coronal mass ejection is drinkable afterwards - or should I say potable i.e.non-injurious to health.
What do we need to start fuel mining? I can identify:
A supply depot in LEO and EML1 - say 2-4 crew each
A fuel craft to go between the two and another such craft to go from EML1 to the Lunar base (automated)
A manned craft that will go between the bases - say a Dragon capsule attached to a Bigelow module? (x2)
Mining equipment for the Lunar base
Base habitat
The automated fuel carriers can be designed as a stretched upper stage, so launching it is essentially free. Similarly, so can the fuel tanks in the depots. Say we use a Sundancer module in each of the depots - at 10 tonnes each, we're talking about launching 20 tonnes, though half of this will remain in LEO. Perhaps, then, the LEO depot can be launched all in one on a basic Falcon 9, with a stretched upper stage, and a Falcon 9 Heavy with a stretched upper stage may be able to throw the entire EML1 depot straight there. That's the two depots sorted, in two launches. Now, it might make more sense to use two F9H launches, and throw in additional fuel in the first one. If we do this, we could refuel some of our upper stages and use them to throw more mass at Luna.
Now, for the base. It may be that we could use the additional fuel in the first depot to launch directly there, but it's a delta-V of 6km/s to land. It might take two F9H launches. What we need is a habitat (say a Sundancer buried under regolith for added radiation protection), mining equipment (which is going to likely be jackhammer's capable of working at cryogenic temperatures, and then something to melt the ice dust), and a power array (possibly, an inflatable tower to take advantage of the near constant sunlight - it will need to rotate). I'm not to sure about how much this would mass.
Of course, we need our automated transport craft. Whichever craft delivers the base should be good enough to serve this role for the EML1-Luna trip, and the one used for the LEO-EML1 trip could have an initial payload of fuel for the manned craft. I don't know how this is going to work out yet, but probably somewhere along those lines.
Then we need to get our humans there. Something along the lines of a Dragon capsule docked to a cylindrical service module and it's upper stage for propulsion is what I'm thinking of at the moment. We could fit in maybe 9 people, especially given that that's only for the very first ride to orbit. Offload 3 people to get the LEO depot running, then burn to the EML1 depot and offload it's crew of 3, while topping up the tanks for the EML1-Luna trip (which is ~2.5km/s, so not much). We may have to risk stranding the crew for a while, before we can refuel it from in-situ LH2/LOX (modding the upper stages to hold hydrogen, as well as stretching them, will be required...) to reduce costs, but they'll have enough supplies for 6 months anyway. This would probably be a single F9H launch as well...
Now we've got the components of the basic infrastructure in place. Depending on how difficult it is to electrolyse water in microgravity, the fuel may be transported to the EML1 depot in the form of water, with only that which is needed for the manned transport and the automated trip being produced at the base, to save on launching solar panels to the Luna surface.
After 6 months, another manned craft, similar to the first, will be launched, along with a Dragon capsule, and will proceed through the system, allowing the crew to be replaced. Now that fuel on orbit is effectively free from the standpoint of increasing the systems capabilities, we can begin to enlarge the base into a proper mining base, with enough capability.
I know this isn't a very detailed post, but it's a start. I'd really like to get some numbers down so we can start looking at the cost of this thing (hopefully under a billion dollars upfront cost).
I think a lot depends on whether there really are clumps of water ice on or near the surface. If there are then this should be relatively straightforward. AS for the jackhammer, might it not help to use a microwave heater to loosen the permafrost or ice before the jackhammer gets going.
On the contrary, I believe that the existence of two tonnes of the material will be enough to drive the price down to below $200/g. I'm pretty sure that there is no stable element or natural mineral, rock, etc., no matter how rare, that costs $200,000/kg. That is, based on the charts that I looked at, more than four times the price of the rarest and most expensive elements, even Rhodium. I think that you would want to look at a price 5 or 10 times less than that, even if you're going to be optimistic.
Didn't you read the post above:
"Moon rocks collected during the course of lunar exploration are currently considered priceless. In 1993, three small fragments from Luna 16, weighing 0.2 g, were sold for US$ 442,500."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock
Or this:
http://www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/martians.shtml
You'll see references to meteorites being sold for $4000 to $10000 per gram - that's up to $10 million per kg.
I don't know why you are ignoring the evidence.
If you have say 10,000 universities, various agencies, and private collectors competing for these very rare items, you can see a 2 tonne load split into maybe 1000 lots ranging from $1million per kg items down to $50,000 per kg objects or sand and an overall value of $400 million being realised. Of course the rocks etc can be sold with photos of the collection sites which agencies and collectors could frame. (They were be returned digitally.)
Of course, if anything is found with a fossil on it the value would be far greater.
In addition, a huge number of valuable collector artefacts could be created e.g. handwritten statements by the first colonists written on Mars. A sale of the first items used on Mars - everything from knives and forks to shaving cream will have value for future generations. Many museums across the globe would be willing to pay to pay well over $50,000 per kg for such items.
I'm thinking some sort of steel-making plant is one of the first things a permanent base will need. Shipping the plant once (whatever it really is) is cheaper over the life of the base (decades+) than shipping steel stocks from Earth, almost no matter what the cost to LEO is.
The other is some sort of plastics-making plant. Not everything should be made of steel. Aluminum can come later. If you've got plastics and steel, you can pretty well cope for a while.
On Mars, concrete is going to be a bit of a problem, as limestone does not seem to be available, although water is. There has to be some equivalent with the minerals widely available there. It may take a while experimenting before we find it. But find it we must, concrete is just too useful to do without it. An ice-regolith composite reinforced by steel bars might serve in some applications, as long as material temperatures do not exceed 0 C.
GW
I agree we would want to have a scaled down steel plant at an early stage - maybe even Mission 1.
Plastics are problematic I believe. People who have worked with polymers before say it is a very complex process that might be beyond the abilities of a tiny colony. We will have glass, glass fibre, reconstitued basalt, metals and bamboo (wonderfully fast growing and versatile bamboo) for tools, containers, vessels and so on.
Limestone is an issue (for steel making as well I think). The evidence on calcium carbonate being present on Mars is a bit ambiguous. It does appear to be there - somewhere!
I think in the early years Mars brick with regolith cover will work for most construction requirements. I like the idea of Roman arch over trenches dug by mini diggers (permafrost being melted with microwave pulser).
Interesting what you say about ice-regolith composite. I have wondered about using ice for airlock doors: the ice is melted to "unlock" the door and water is frozen to create the lock. We certainly need some creative thinking along these lines.
Ice-regolith slabs might offer some additional protection against cosmic radiation - so the colonists can work out in the open under those protective layers.
Mars MTVs could easily be bringing back material worth $300 million. It will certainly slash the costs of missions - might even help make a profit when you throw in commercial sponsorship, sponsored crew etc.
Forth-coming paper
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10 … .2011.0660
We present a comprehensive model of martian pressure-temperature (P-T) phase space and compare it with that of Earth. Martian P-T conditions compatible with liquid water extend to a depth of 310 km. We use our phase space model of Mars and of terrestrial life to estimate the depths and extent of the water on Mars that is habitable for terrestrial life. We find an extensive overlap between inhabited terrestrial phase space and martian phase space. The lower martian surface temperatures and shallower martian geotherm suggest that, if there is a hot deep biosphere on Mars, it could extend 7 times deeper than the 5 km depth of the hot deep terrestrial biosphere in the crust inhabited by hyperthermophilic chemolithotrophs. This corresponds to 3.2% of the volume of present-day Mars being potentially habitable for terrestrial-like life.
News story http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/In_Sea … s_999.html
Very interesting. Potentially I guess, there might be a hot springs area on Mars. Is that a valid conclusion? I am still intrigued by the idea of creating a mini-earth in a deep canyon, which we would cover and give an atmosphere.
If there are microbes down there, which sounds increasingly likely the argument cuts both ways. There will be those who say humans should not "contaminate" the environment. But I would argue Mars is now the perfect target for exploration: the surface desert appears abiotic whereas we can search for organisms below the surface without disturbing that environment.
Thinking about this though, aren't there very likely to be places where multi-cellular organisms would have evolved...?
louis wrote:Rule 2 refers us to and recommends adherence to Netiquette. I was interested in Rule 6 of that -
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/rule6.html
I don't think that squares with telling others not to answer a perfectly ordinary question put by a poster eager to make use of others' expertise. If someone asked me a question about law, economics,
history or politics, areas I have some expertise in, I would do my best to answer the question.I would have replied to this sooner, but I had finals and had just about zero free time.
Anyway, with regards to my comment in the "Reusable Rockets to LEO" thread, I may not have said it correctly, but my essential point was that rule 6 mentioned in that guide cuts both ways. I and others on this forum do have a responsibility to share our knowledge and contribute constructively to discussion. But at the same time, the people who are asking for help have an equal (greater?) responsibility to make their best good-faith effort to use the means available to them to answer the question which they are posing themselves before asking other people to answer it for them. Given that you have been instructed how to answer your own question in such a way as to make it impossible for you to not come up with a ballpark approximation, and you have not done so, I did not feel that such a good-faith effort existed. I was also implicitly referencing the numerous (tens?) times which you have asked that question in the past, and in many cases actually received answers, if I am remembering correctly. Further, the question of the mass ratio required to get from LEO to Mars is totally unrelated to the topic of the thread. Though we were discussing delta-V, it was in the context of a rocket going to LEO, and your question really did not belong there anyway.
That said, the way in which I said it was out of turn, and for that I sincerely apologize.
Storm in a tea cup? No - storm in a tea spoon.
I do hope Hop returns though.
Grypd -
I have read that there are plenty of rare earths all over the planet but their extraction is a dirty business which is why the environmentally squeamish countries - somewhat hypocritically - leave it to China and elsewhere to do the mining and processing.
Red Dragon is a potentially revolutionary mission proposal from a partnership of SpaceX, ARC and JSC. Three comes together in this proposal:
1) Longstanding ARC interest in deep (metre or more) drilling on Mars to look for life (not just biomarkers) below the surface zone which has been sterilized by UV, cosmic radiation, and peroxides and turned over by regolith processes (wind, gravity flow, impact gardening). Such a mission would be need Discovery class funding (#425 million), of the technology is either off the shelf or at an advanced development.
2) Longstanding JSC interest in proving up human-class EDL at Mars, martian ISRU (especially water extraction and propellant production), and safety missions (biohazard being the greatest). Martian ISRU would probably be in the Fiscovery mission class, funding wise.
3) SpaceX's desire to develop the Falcon heavy and demonstrate the suitability of Dragon for beyond earth orbit missions. Dragon has flown successful twice, and should fly twice more this year. The Falcon heavy uses largely flight proven systems. SpaceX claim they can develop Falcon heavy, an unmanned Mars-capable Dragon, and send them to Mars for $190 million.
http://digitalvideo.8m.net/SpaceX/RedDr … 0-29-1.pdf
If successful the mission would land at a site known to have shallow ice and smooth terrain, either the Phoenix site or one of the many morthern mid-latitude sites where ice has been seen in small recent craters. It would deliver:
1) Breakthough science - such shallow ice deposits are habitable now (and were much more habitable a few million years ago when obliquity was higher has the success or failure to detect viable life there would essential prove whether or not Mars is currently inhabited (while leaving open the case for life in the deep past).
2) Demonstrate EDL of a payload at the low end (6 tonnes entry) of what is required for for human missions (and is eminently scalable), plus technologies such as supersonic retropropulsion and skip entry.
3) Demonstrate the two most important ISRU technologies - water extraction and propellant production.
4) Resolve the biggest safety issues for humans on Mars, which is whether or not there is a biohazard
All for a cost of less than half that MSL.
In addition it would allow development of the Falcon Heavy, break the stranglehold that JPL has on Mars mission thinking, and open up the possibility of other large unmanned missions, such as sample return.
There is a long road ahead for this porposal, and many questions need answering first, but it looks very promising.
This confirms that those of us who have put our faith in Space X have not been indulging in pipe dreams. This really is a feasible option. Musk is a visionary genius!
It's so good in so many ways. It seems to me that the basic technology is all there (and this is what Musk - a man in a hurry - has been working towards). We are talking now about refinement and add ons.
Humans on Mars within 10 to 20 years could definitely be a reality.
Josh -
The film refers to 21 peer reviewed papers published in scientific journals confirming LENR.
When you get the time do have a look - it's one of the best presentations on LENRcold fusion I've ever seen.
I agree that if increased revenue were to be a help to further settlement missions, then it would be a good idea to go after it if it did not lead to the scientific and practical aims of the first missions being compromised too much. However, I don't think that that will be the case. I do intend to respond to your thread in Mars Politics and Econ, by the way, but I don't have time for a long post at the moment so I'll probably do it tomorrow.
Selling Mars rocks to Universities vs. giving them away is one of the things that I would say may indeed be a legitimate source of revenue. However, I'm unsure as to what the extent of this market is, and unless it would represent at least a percent or two of the total cost of the mission I don't believe it to be worth it. You talk a lot about the value of Mars meteorites, but there is a very important difference between the meteorites gotten from Antarctica et. al., and rocks gotten from the surface of Mars as part of an ongoing series of exploration and eventually colonization missions: They are both high in value because they represent the sale of a limited resource. In part, I would imagine that the ability to get rocks back from Mars would drop the cost simply because of an increase in supply. Given that Mars rocks tend to be sold at auction etc. as opposed to at a fixed price, I would imagine that each increase in the availability of rocks would lead to a decrease in the price for quite a while.
The more important reason why the prices will drop is the promise of future materials. If we have a base on Mars, or even a serious colonization enterprise, those who would buy Martian materials know that the supply is increasing. For meteorites, that is not really the case, because the increase is at such a small rate that it might as well be zero. An example of the reverse effect is quite current, when the shutdown of Libyan Oil exports led to a significant increase in price, even though Libyan oil is a very small percentage of world oil production not due to an actual shortage but rather due to fears that there would be a shortage. Fears of an excess will lead to a similar drop in prices. Given the energy crisis I doubt we will ever see fears of an excess of oil, but the same cannot be said of Martian materials. Only so many people are in the top 1%, though given the prices you're talking about this is more like a top .001% endeavor.
I actually disagree that colonists will ignore raw profitability. Many of the things that will be imported are things that could conceivably be engineered around. For example, computer chips and chemical catalysts rightly should be used the minimum amount that is possible. Given that there is absolutely no way around the use of medical equipment, I agree that that would be subsidized, but I would put the subsidy at the very end of the line, e.g. have the government pay for a part of the cost of treatment. Raw profitability, assuming that the currency being used on Mars is relatively closely correlated to how much work is put into obtaining the product, is the best measure of efficiency.
I look forward to your comments on the economics thread.
You ask about the market for the rocks.
There are about 20,000 universities on planet Earth. There are probably a few thousand other institutions such as science museums, geological associations, planetariums, well endowed schools, space agencies and major mining companies who would be potential buyers.
I don't know how many people collect gem stones and rocks but clearly the market must run into hundreds of thousands or millions across the world. Among them are some very rich collectors for these intrinsically rare objects, such as meteorites or unusual gems.
To begin with I think the regolith, rocks, meteorites etc would sell at incredibly high prices. I think we would be talking at least $200 per gram. Institutions like Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, space agencies,research institutes etc will be competing for these first tranches. Two tonnes - producing revenue of $400 million - for Mission One sounds to me like a good target. Maybe that would be spread across a couple of hundred buyers. But that's just the start of the market. You still have tens of thousands of potential buyers out there. One can simply offer smaller lots then - instead of say offering 10-50 kg lots, you offer 500 gram to 5 kgs, and so on until you are reaching the mass market where people buy tiny slivers of rock. I don't think there will be any decline in the price per gram for many years - probably 20-30 years.
I think one should note that there will be a huge market for jewelry from Mars - polished gem stones will have great value well above $20 per gram. Probably in the region of $100 per gram I would say.
There will be some decline in the price per gram, but not a lot I think, and as the colony grows its ability to identify and harvest high value meteorites will grow. I think the trade will remain profitable, not least because the price of transit imposes a price floor (no one else is going to undercut you).
I obviously can't contribute much to the technical debate, but I am clear that there would be great value in finding a way of storing methane on the surface without the need to put it in pressure vessels. The reason is obvious: we are then relieved of the burden of either importing such vessels or trying to manufacture them on Mars. Remember, we don't have to worry much about the environmental impact of such storage - that's one great advantage of Mars: we have the space and lack of flora or fauna which will allow us to pursue such solutions in the early stages of the colony.
Josh -
Take a look at this - I think the scientific evidence for LENR is really persuasive:
Quite a discussion going on here. Anyway, specific points:
I don't think that it makes sense to try to get an operating profit out of the Mars base while it is still a "tour of duty" kind of place, and while it is not self sufficient. That seems to not make sense to me, in that before it is self sufficient (or nearly so, e.g. by self-sufficient I mean when it is capable of producing the vast majority of that which it consumes locally and to fill in the gaps with a minimal amount of imports paid for with locally generated funds), its primary goal should be getting to the point of self-sufficiency as opposed to generating income that will be absolutely minimal compared to the real program cost, e.g. the cost of developing equipment and getting there in the first place. It makes a lot more sense to me to do the stage where you're developing the colony's facilities and making it self-sufficient and, directly or indirectly, providing for hundreds of years of future development, correctly. Obviously if there's a way to make money that does not incur any additional costs, then by all means, but I tend to think that as long as the money being put into developing the colony is coming from Earth, it will not be economically feasible to even make an operating profit with exports.
As I mentioned before, though, all of this changes when the colony has its own internal economy that is basically separate from Earth. I saw that nobody replied directly to my argument that it does not make sense to talk about exports from a Martian colony in terms of profitability. That was in my post here; the reason for this is probably that that post was on the long side. Nevertheless, I do think that this is an important thing to keep in mind when talking about the economics of a Mars colony that is almost self-sufficient. If you would like to save some time, the stuff that I consider to be most important starts in the third paragraph.
With respect to the Antarctic bases, I think that there are definitely ways in which that is a good comparison. However, there are also ways in which it's not. The relatively low cost of transportation from the civilized world to Antarctica means that there is little impetus for local self-sufficiency, and given that most of the continent is covered in ice anyway it does not seem to me that there are actually many available resources that could be extracted on a small scale even if they were desired. That said, if you subtract out the cost of scientific materials from that $167,000/person, you can perhaps come to some kind of approximation of the total per-person cost of keeping one person alive in a hostile environment for one year, though there is of course a significant margin of error on that. Further, I would like to point out that because there is little attempt at self-sufficiency for an Antarctic base, a significant part of that remainder could be made up by the colonists working towards self-sufficiency by themselves. Our goal, of course, if we're trying to design such a colony is to make the amount that needs to be imported absolutely minimal.
I agree with your point about Antarctica. I was thinking of that myself. If you told 5,000 people, here's - say - $10 billion dollars to go and live self sufficiently on Antarctica, how difficult would it be for them? Not so v. difficult I think. We can imagine how they might settle there with huge solar arrays and wind turbines, produce their own food, grind down the regolith to create soil, grow food in heated domes etc etc.
I don't disagree that self-sufficiency (or more accurately, near self-sufficiency) should be the primary aim (since that is the quickest way to grow the colony). But if increased revenue allows you to launch more missions or import more complex technology, then surely that will help achieve the aim earlier.
The reality is that the first colonists will be bringing back regolith from Mars. You can either give it away free or sell it. I don't see anything wrong intrinsically with selling it.
I would say that the colonists will ignore raw profitability when it comes to imports and transits. They will effectively subsidise the cost of importing goods because those imports (medicines, communications equipment, rocketry etc) will be vital to the colony's survival and development. But there is scope for huge profit margins on exports from Mars to Earth.
Wait, I'm just trying to say that we don't know yet what Mars might have to offer economically. Whatever it is, it would have to be a very high value-added physical commodity, to justify the shipping costs. But, it might be an intellectual property, capable of being transmitted electronically. Or something else we simply haven't thought of yet. It will become clear, just give it time once folks are there.
I kind of doubt plain rocks would ever be that valuable. Lots of gold or diamonds might be, at least for a while before the market gets flooded. A supply of high-grade uranium or thorium might be worth it, if enriched and/or bred on Mars to high-grade fission fuels before transport to Earth. (Of course, that last would assume we get over our irrational fears about nuclear power, and proceed with rational solutions to the very real problems of waste disposal and plant vulnerabilities to natural disasters.) Not very likely for a while yet.
I quite agree that what I called "prospecting" would naturally occur, once manned bases get put on Mars. And having robots there working with the men at short distances, is exactly what needs to be done. I rather think we ought to do some serious exploring, based from orbit, at many landing sites, in a single first mission. Then the best 2 or 3 sites get the initial surface bases on the next mission, after we've had time to digest all the data from the first mission.
That's the most practical way to identify what actually might support a future colony. If you don't do that, the colonies never prosper: Spain's mistake 500 years ago with an extractive-mining-only model. Most of those colonies today are 3rd-world countries still.
GW
I am not sure how you can say the plain rocks of Mars won't ever be "that valuable" (I guess you mean in excess of $20,000 per kg if we take that as the cost of transit), given we have the clear example of ordinary bog standard lunar regolith in front of us.
"Moon rocks collected during the course of lunar exploration are currently considered priceless. In 1993, three small fragments from Luna 16, weighing 0.2 g, were sold for US$ 442,500."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock
Can you argue with that? I don't think so. That's $2billion per kg! Or $2 trillion per tonne...Is that enough value for you?
Of course scaling up you $2million per gram won't hold, but clearly there is huge value to be exploited there, particularly in the early years.
How do others envision solar thermal power on Mars? It seems logical to me to place the heat radiators/condensers within the colony itself, to reduce losses. This would make the system less efficient for electricity production, due to the lower temperature gradient, but the waste heat would end up heating the colony instead of being waste.
Also, which solar design would be most efficient in labor and raw materials vs power generated? What resources can be substituted to sacrifice efficiency for labor savings?
What matters on Mars - at least in the early stages of the colony - is not so much the efficiency of the system, but the mass that has to be ferried to Mars to put in place effective energy generation. We need to keep that to a minimum.
On that basis I favour photovoltaic panels for the initial phase and wouldn't waste too much time on solar thermal which would require piping. However, I would agree with you heating up of water within the hab will be a good idea - that way we won't need to heat much over night.
Once the base is established, I think it would be best to move on to solar concentrator technology and use concentrated solar radiation to heat a boiler and thus power a steam engine which in turn would generate electricity. We may wish to use the concentrated solar radiation to heat water tanks close to the hub. I am not sure - I always think of the problem of seals around any entry point for pipes .We want to keep seals to an absolute minimum.
Couldn't we just cover the clathrate in regolith and maintain the desired temperature range?
What, Bobunf - are you saying that less oil is being used on the planet now than when it's price was lower? Like to back that up with some graph references?
The links between supply and demand and price are much less clear in the real world as compared with textbooks.
The point about the Mars meteorite market (and other Mars products) is that it is a unique product and that it appeals to collectors, academic institutions and possibly the general public.
