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It is being predicted in the media that the number of ESA applicants will run into the tens of thousands.
I don't see why some people have been sceptical about my view that there will be thousands of well qualified people ready to work without pay on Mars.
Bob -
I'm not sure you've got this right.
As I understand it the Sun is a late arrival on the cosmic timescale there will be lots of similar solar systems from billions of years ago.
So your average and estimated times must be a bit misleading. Even if there are relatively few of these civilisations in the galaxy surely we should be receiving signals from all parts of the galaxy, many millions of light years away. Do signals survive inter-galactically? If so, we will be getting them from even further away
Hope it's not another Space Shuttle scam!
For those who are interested, this is a very good summary of the processes involved in the gold refining processes:-
http://www.nma.org/technology/refprocess.asp
Obviously this would require a lot of organisation and preparation of materials for the processing. I don't know to what extent one might be able to substitute energy for chemical processing, but if possible then that would probably be desirable in the conditions obtaining on Mars.
Gregori -
You make some good points.
Everything does indeed depend on whether there are the gold deposits, how close to the surface they are and where they are.
There is good reason to think there are such deposits - because gold deposition is associated with vulcanism and we know there has been vulcanism on Mars.
I think solar power can be provided fairly easily in most parts of the planet.
Water is another matter.
Whilst there will have to be some human outdoor working, I have seen automated diggers working on video. It's not particularly advanced technology. As long as the deposits are exposed at the surface we can simply have automated digging. Moreover the ore could be placed in automatic vehicles that use transponders to transport the ore to a base. However, it would probably make more sense to have a base in the mine area. Depends really on water resources.
Puncturing I don't see as a problem. Safety has got to be the top priority. We won't have any danger of puncturing of habitats by industrial processes. This is why in my proposals I have always argued for such processes to be sited a considerable distance from habitats - probably 200 metres or more. But remember, on my proposals the habitats will be covered in regolith and not easily punctured.
What we need to look at more closely is the gold refining process. I think this involves a series of settling tanks and electro-chemical processes.
I think the risk of injury or fatality from the gold mining process would be close to zero. We are not talking about mining or tunnelling. We are talking about small scale open cast mining with minimal human involvement.
Ciclops -
Really? That's good news if true. Is this cost reduction a generally accepted figure?
Bobunf -
There are always diseconomies of scale in a small community. I wouldn't recommend the village blacksmith attempt setting up a robot car factory by himself.
My other response is: Where can you find on earth gold deposits near the surface with a purity of 1000 ppm. The answer is you can't. All such deposits were long ago exhausted. Humans have been looking for good gold deposits for millennia now and we are down to the poor deposits. The economies of gold mining on Mars must start with the assumption that depoists of high purity do exist. That is a reasonable assumption.
I have already given you two examples of where people have worked voluntarily: young Jewish people go every year to Israel to give their labour freely to the Israeli community and young people help out with charity projects every year all around the world.
Are you seriously suggesting that no well qualified volunteers could ever be found for 2 years working on Mars, including some (but not exclusively so) gold mining? They would get their food and lodgings. But they wouldn't get paid. Are you seriously suggesting that there are no scientific or other institutions existing on earth that would fund scientists and technical personnel to go to Mars and help establish gold mining?
I don't find that credible. The motivation for working for free on Mars is twofold: personal satisfaction - you will be one of a tiny minority who has been to Mars - imagine the personal kudos attached to that and idealistic - you will be part of a wonderful enterprise of historic importance and a chance to build a better world.
Volunteers may be notoriously inefficient on the whole - doesn't mean a small number selected from thousands and judged to be highly competent and skilled will be.
Automated diggers? Well that is exactly what companies are looking at - using programmed automated diggers. However, the difference here is that there are hardly any places left on earth where you can extract gold like that, and so cheaply. You have to start digging deep into the ground and that is VERY expensive as anyone will tell you. The difference then is that on Mars we have the chance to engage in (small scale) open cast gold mining - which is the cheapest possible way to work any ore.
Bobunf -
I've made it clear I am talking about the initial colony phase up to about 100 residents. Most of the issues you refer to will apply to much larger communities.
The likelihood of people falling seriously ill will be quite remote I would say. How many people have been incapacitated on the ISS? Similarly with criminal assaults/murder.
Yes there will need to be planning. I think most of this will be around imported software. This will set out all the key actions. There will be some crew members who will be placed in charge of the gold mining operations. They will be responsible for the detailed planning e.g selecting days when there are no dust storms adn when energy is available etc . I think many of the processes would be automated. As indicated I have seen videos of automated diggers at work - perfectly feasible. I think essentially it's a case of selecting your gold ore site. Programming automated diggers to work at the regolith. Transfer of ore to automated processing machines which will then produce pure gold.
Bobunf -
You say:
"I can’t understand how you can believe that an industrial operation on Mars will be immune from administration and planning costs, from the things that taxes buy (like health, welfare and retirement benefits), and that capital will be free (no dividend payments)."
RESPONSE: Of course these costs will not apply. There are no planning laws on Mars. Administration will be absolutely minimal, because there will be no staff hierarchy, no neighbours, no legal structure, no contract monitoring etc etc.
You say:
“there be no salary payments”
I’d call that super-optimistic, not to mention totally unrealistic. But even then, the cost of transporting these people to and from Mars dwarfs the salary payments. And there’s also all of the costs of supporting them on Mars and in space when they’ll be doing nothing useful for a year."
RESPONSE: I have explained why there will no salary payments and you haven't really put up an argument against that. Firstly the basic crew are going to be there anyway if we want to colonise Mars. Volunteer and scientific staff will be prepared to work unpaid for this once in a lifetime opportunity to experience life on another planet - just as gap year students are only too happy to go abroad and help poor communities build wells and so on - except this will obviously be a v. high tech version of a gap year experience.
It is true the people have to be transported there, but do you want this colony to expand or not? What's the alternative? Here I am setting out a possible (I'll say no more) way of funding this expansion.
I don't think it would be fair to allocate all the cost of transporting people
to the gold operation, anymore than in the 19th century you would add the cost of transporting people to Australia to the cost of gold mining or sheep farming. It used to take 6 months to get people to Australia - and they also had to be fed all the way.
I do agree that the cost of transport is going to be crucial to this but I think we should really be looking to the gold mining operation to cover the cost of transport of the gold from Mars to earth.
Did reply quite extensively but obviously pressed the wrong button! Will try and reconstruct my reply as soon as I get the time.
They look great!
Hi there Bobunf,
I've been through some of these objections before with others elsewhere. Here is some food for thought:
1. Just as you will find that in say a country like Australia the cost of roads and ports/docks have been funded by the state, even though in many cases a gold or other mining operation will be the chief beneficiary, so something similar would obtain with the Mars base. We are there because we want to be. We are going to have an energy infrastructure, air provision, habitats etc. whatever we do. The object of gold mining would be to defray the costs of infrastructure provision which will inevitably arise from our desire to inhabit the planet.
2. Regarding energy costs, I think you would have to take a close look at the real costs of energy companies. How much is associated with the technology and how much with all the administration, planning, taxes dividend payments and other human costs involved in modern energy provision. Well I don't have the figures to hand, although I did look into that before, but they are a very high proportion (about 70% of the cost of fuel in the UK is tax). These costs don't apply on Mars. Again also the difference on Mars will be that we will be creating a large energy infrastructure (in this way it is more comparable to a road built by the Australian government into the desert interior which is then used by the gold mining company). We will be building in energy abundance. It would make sense to make use of the surplus efficiently. Profitable gold mining would be a very good use of the energy surplus. If we can create solar panel manufacture on Mars, the costs will be even lower.
3. Regarding labour costs, I think there be no salary payments as such. We will be using voluntary labour or labour by agreement (with scientific institutions). It is true that the labour needs to be housed and fed but again, I am assigning those costs to the infrastructure.
4. You say: "The machinery, supplies and infrastructure for Mars would certainly cost much more than twice what they would on Earth. " Well you may be on firmer ground here. It's difficult to tell. I think a lot will depend on the purity of the ore. I am assuming a very high purity on or near the surface of 1000ppm. This is very high but not impossibly so, given that Mars has never been prospected or mined - as far as we know. I think the average on earth in mines these days is much, much lower well under 10ppm (i.e. all the good deposits near the surface have been worked over the millennia). So the amount of machinery required to mine on Mars in my view would be FAR LESS. We are talking really about diggers - not boring in deep mines. I have seen videos of automated diggers. It's NOT advanced technology. But of course on Mars we would need advanced cold and dust proofing so they will certainly be more expensive than on earth and then you've got to get them to Mars - no small expense!
I did some work on this before, looking at real costs of gold mining on earth and then analysing what the earth costs of mining on Mars would be. The figures are indexed to 100.
Here's my speculative budget work:
-----------------------------------GOLD MINING COSTS
COST/PRODUCTION
FACTOR EARTH
(MARS FIGURE IN
BRACKETS)
Tax burden 25 (2)
Mineral Rights 10 ( 0)
Administrative costs 10 (1)
Land. 15 (0)
Energy 10 (5)
Labour 10 (2)
Machinery, 15 (30)
infrastructure
and supplies.
Transit to market 5 (20)
TOTAL 100 (60)
Notes:
1. Tax burden. The earth figure is low. In industrialised countries the tax burden on GDP ranges from about 35% in the USA to about 56% in Denmark. The figure is for all taxes e.g. national sales taxes, special mineral taxes, social security taxes, environmental taxes (e.g. landfill), income tax on employees, company tax and dividend tax.
2. Land costs. On earth everyone either has to purchase land or rent land to conduct economic operations – unless of course they own it to begin with. Mineral companies tend either to have to purchase or rent land. On Mars there will no land costs.
3. Mineral extraction rights normally have a value on earth. You have to pay for a licence to government, the Crown or a landowner.
4. Administrative costs on earth can be huge. You have to run a personnel department, interact with earth governments at national and local level re tax, health and safety etc etc, pay for legal advice, minute all your meetings, communicate with shareholders. prepare detailed accounts etc. None of these will be essential on Mars, though some might be desirable.
5. Energy costs. On earth, energy companies in turn have to pay for land, administrative, employees – all their earth style cost factors. Most of these will not be present on Mars. There will be some on going maintenance which will require some imports from Earth, but energy supply is essentially a sunk cost which will not appear on the balance sheet. However, the Mars cost here is conservative at 50% of energy costs on earth.
6. On earth virtually all labour has to be paid for by a mineral extraction company. On Mars this will not be the case. Firstly, many universities, research institutes and companies will be prepared to sponsor employee participation on the mining and peripheral activities. Secondly, a period of residence on Mars will be such an amazing experience and the lure of helping build humanity’s first off planet colony such an incredible pull, that much of the labour will be supplied voluntarily (just as in Israel for decades now young Jews have gone and given their labour for free to help build the Jewish homeland).
7. Machinery, infrastructure and supply. The key issue here is to what extent the Mars colony can build its own equipment and to what extent it needs to be supplied. A subsidiary question is to what extent we have to import materials in order to be able to create the ability to manufacture vehicles etc in situ.
Two points: firstly Mars based equipment does not have to be energy efficient. Energy is plentiful and cheap.
8. Transit. This is of course the crunch figure. How much will it cost to get the processed gold to market? At $20,000 a kilogram, it’s going to be $20million a tonne. But I think it is reasonable to suppose we without major technological innovation this figure could be reduced to $4million a tonne over the next 20 years. It has to be remembered that gold mining companies also often face high transit costs. Building say a 200 mile road to a desert gold mine for no other reason than to transport gold is an expensive proposition. Building a port/dock where there was not one before is an expensive proposition. By contrast Mars gold could be landed reasonably close to markets.
Bobunf -
I did do some speculative budget work. I'll see if I can dig that up. Obviously no one is in a position to predict if it's economical at the moment. But the price of gold has risen sharply. Indians love gold - there are a billion plus of them and they are getting richer all the time. I think it is reasonable to assume the price of gold will continue to rise.
You say:
" (Quoting me first) - “no licensing costs, no taxes, no environmental pollution control costs”
This situation will probably last for about five minutes. "
You've got to Think Mars when doing Mars economics. Any licensing or tax costs, were they to emerge would be income for the consortium - it would be the consortium paying itself. The net effect (apart from any administrative costs) would be zero. Obviously environmental pollution controls would cost but I can't see those being put in place for a long time, beyond some basic landscape preservation. "Pollution" on Mars could be seen as "terraforming" contribution.
Terraformer -
We only have your word for asteroid mining being cheaper. Others have raised technological objections.
Bob -
Some factors you've ignored:-
1. Spirit and Opportunity include the cost of the robot development which I think was a HUGE element in it. And of course the land. In term of determining the long term viability of gold trading you have to discount those one off costs and assume a mature technology i.e. an already designed lander that can carry loads of 10 tonnes between Mars and Earth.
2. Remember that on Mars there are no rental costs, no land purchase costs, no licensing costs, no taxes, no environmental pollution control costs, no administrative costs, no shareholder dividends, no labour or energy costs to speak of. (Against that I accept you have the problem of getting some expensive start up kit to Mars.)
3. Remember that if gold does exist on Mars it will exist in a very pure form a the surface because no one else (as far as we know!) will have been working it. So, purity levels could way, way above the average for earth mines and the mining costs could be much lower, since there will be no tunnelling and far less energy expended on purifying the ore.
Apologies for lack of space science...OK, sounds like a small one person pod might work and be more cost effective.
Terraformer -
You said it yourself - crops.
Mars has lots of raw materials: metals and ceramics, energy, the makings of a good soil.
However, in terms of tradable commodities the emphasis is going to be on gold or some other precious metal I think.
I think Gregori has brought in sharp relief the difference between the scientific approach and the colonisation approach - and I think he's given us a clue as to why NASA, who I believe is really dedicated to the scientific approach - keeps coming up with these way off estimates.
I don't believe the estimates. I've never believed them since I read they included provision for taking 2 tonnes of medical equipment with them. Someone's obviously said "go away and think of the most expensive mission you possibly can".
I say: Let's start with the minimal mission idea and work back from that.
As far as I can see the rocketry and the ISRU are essentially there. The main development effort would be required with the lander which needs to be radiation safe and capable of safe landing.
I think most of us here would invest however modestly if someone came up with a credible scheme. Credible would mean involvement of people like Elon Musk in my book.
The point about bonds is that they can have their own tradable value based on prospective worth.
I think that as long as people could see that Mars economic development was taking place the value would rise beyond nominal value and people would not be cashing them in after 20 years.
A lot of ifs, I know, but this would at least have the potential for financing a mission at low or zero cost.
Where I live land costs are about $300 per square metre I think. The point is that for your $100 bond you could be granted the equivalent of a several square metres of land in a prime location. It wouldn't necessarily be an actual allocation of land. It could be a nominal landholding on which after 20 years the Consortium could start paying "rent" - financed through economic activity on the planet. Maybe this could start off slow with say a 1% return on land holdings, but rising gradually to a 10% return over say 20 years.
A lot would depend on the extent to which Mars could secure income. It could be a scientific centre and a gold mining centre for instance. If there are no ways in which Mars can "earn its keep" then of course the scheme does not make much economic sense.
Don't know if anyone's seen that wonderful film of the guy who free fell/parachuted from the edge of space back down to earth in about 1960...
Wondered whether it is possible to free fall from LEO in a big space suit (maybe with a little push from a small rocket to get you heading back to earth?).
If so, how long would it take?
If it was possible, wouldn't it be the simplest way to get people back down to earth. So once you've got your Mars return craft up there, it only ever goes back to LEO and only very light launchers are then used to ferry personnel and supplies up to the craft from earth.
Sorry - in my haste I left out an important point...
NASA would be the chief consultant and contractor to the consortium.
Discussion on another thread made me want to outline briefly one sort of approach to a Mars mission which might work...
US passes the enabling legislation.
This would allow the creation of a US based "Mars Exploration Consortium".
The consortium would be controlled by a board of investors including US government and its partners. Partners might include private companies, individual donors, and other space nations. For example we might have consortium consisting of:-
US government, India, France, Brazil, Japan, Space X, Bigelow and large scale individual donors (let's say Bill Gates for sake of argument).
The Consortium would be empowered to issue Mars Bonds, back by the US government. These would be $100 bonds entitling the bond holder to land leases and mineral rights shares on Mars. These bonds would mature in 25 years' time and would be backed by the US government.
The mission would be part-financed through these bonds.
I think NASA lost credibility when they came up with the $400 billion figure for a Mars mission, which even they have now revised down I believe.
I'm not expert on this but my guess is that NASA is an arena of competing interests. Quite rightly so, as there are other things to do in space apart from colonise Mars and NASA is (again, quite rightly) very science based, so pure scientific research often gets priority.
My own feeling is that it would be better for the US government to set up the Mars mission as a separate entity from NASA, with NASA acting as a contractor and consultant. It would be great if the USA were to create a consortium also involving private companies and donors and a couple of other useful space nations from among the democratic countries.
Gregori -
You're right Gregori, it could end up like that but ISRU technology is far advanced beyond what was around 40 years ago. I think ISRU does allow us to create a permanent base for humans which will serve a platform for exploration and further expansion.
Marsman -
I agree entirely with your analysis:
"Lack of political will is the problem. "
This has always been the issue with exploration and colonisation going back centuries. It's why China, despiting having far greater technical and economic resources in 1400 AD to explore the world than did puny Europe chose instead to look inward and concentrate on its problems at home.
I actually think a Mars mission based fundamentally on existing technology and focussed on ISRU rather than science and "roving", would be relatively cheap - say $40 billion over 10 years - about $13 per person per annum in the USA.
Even if I'm wrong by a factor of 2 or 3 I still think it is eminently affordable and will repay huge dividends in terms of technological development and prestige.