New Mars Forums

Drop the the "n" at the end, and there you go! (Groete is a nice Afrikaans word.)

In a way, an Afrikaans speaking person would converse more easily with Flemish speaking person, than a Dutch person (that's my understanding anyway). The Afrikaans language is a delightful bastard of several languages, principally Dutch, but with some French and Malay thrown in for good measure.

To be honest, some of the Afrikaans adaptations to "computer" speak are quite hilarious, IMHO. Too often a literal translation from English - e.g. Windows becomes "Vensters" ...  :laugh:

Well - we all can't be poets, unfortunately ... <shrug>

My chief concerns in making 'Krazy Plan?' work is that your ability to generate financing is directly linked to the mass your able to place on Mars. There are also a minimum amount of the "bots" that you will have to sell before you can do anything. Lets say you use an Falcon V to launch your 4,200kg of payload. Of this, say 2,000Kg is your "useful" payload (your bots). For this single launch the per unit launch cost would be $60,000 (assuming 10kg's per bot, any smaller it wouldn't be usefull IMHO, thus 200 bots per launch and launch cost of $12 million.) Now add your development cost, a guestimate of $50 million (this is for bots, TMI Carrier / Lander, etc.) - "cheap". If you work on a recovery of $10,000 per bot,  you'll need to launch 25 payloads. This brings your unit cost to $70,000 per unit, on the ground. The development cost is fixed, useful size is (fairly) fixed (heck - even 10kgs is optimistic). Now the question is, can you sell (or finance) 5,000 of these at $70,000 a pop? If you up your launches by a factor of 10, the unit cost is $61,000 - still steep.

If you finance SpaceX to increase their lifting ability (let's say $500 million for the project) to 20,000kg (quintupled), with launch costs doubling (effectively halving your per kg cost), your per unit cost drops to $24,000 for launch, $2,000 for development of the bots and $20,000 for the development of the launch vehicle (at 25 launches) - a grand total of $46,000 per bot and $26,200 for 250 launches (and 250,000 bots). Ceteris paribus.

For a per unit break-even cost of around $2,000 it seems you need a vehicle that can lift 200,000kgs at $48,000,000 per launch ($240 per kg assuming 250 launches) ... Eish.

1. If their own costs start hitting the bottom line they'll shape up - the wonder of the free market.Remember, they own part of the company, so their own costs will come back to haunt them;

2. I only used Boeing et al as an example, it could just as easily be SpaceEx or Energia. The point is, to benefit from the cash going out, you have to put cash in. And there is a definite risk to them of obsolesence if they don't ...

3. Quarterly statements are for those that want to invest short term investments. This will not be a short term investment. This also the reason why initially the financing instrument is a bond with nominal interest - a long term investment instrument. To decrease the total risk of the company an expert investment manager must also be employed (to maximise return on the funds received from the issue - thus initially part of your company will almost work as a investment firm)

True.

It depends whether you want to know a lot about one thing ("do you kill one another") or a bit from a bigger perspective ("tell me about your life").

Either way you only end up with a bit of the puzzle. But it's nice to have an idea what the bigger picture looks like.

The meaning of a message or a sentence in-evitably depends on the meaning that the specific person places on the component words. This is true for communication between our fellow human beings as well. They way you work around that is to present as much information to the listener to give him an understanding of your message. The less you know about what your listener knows, the more you will have to say to make yourself clear.

True. The lack of initial start up cash and the lag time to first touch-down is a problem.

That's why I normally see such an bond issue being done by a company incorporated by the government, who also provide the initial funding (say $500 million).

Companies like Boeing, Lockheed etc. that will benefit from the funds spent by the project, will be "encouraged" to buy large tranches of stock / bonds. (E.g. only companies that hold stock will be considered for contracts. Size of contracts also proportional to investment).

Communication: Make a WiFi-type communications board part of the standard "brain" for each robot. Each robot would then form a node in a communications network, with a number of super-nodes acting as central routers / amplifiers / command & control.

Yes - it's a case of same game, different rules.   :;):

But back to this game:

Ask him for his name / life story?

You still win. The definition of winning is just slightly skewed.

Ah ... put if you don't play, you cannot win  :;):

I ran accross this webpage that might be insightful:

[http://www.spacefuture.com/habitat/law.shtml]Space law

Also from [http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_ … tion.shtml]here this should answer your question:

" ... activities in both the atmosphere and space are governed today by a complex regulatory framework which does not permit commercial passenger flights. For example, under existing space law the government is liable for damage caused by all launches from their territory."

Basically, it appears that you need permission from the country that you are operating from.

In the end it will come down to how well you market yourself to the world (i.e. you definetly don't want to be seen as a "Haliburton" or ExxonMobil), and how good your lawyers are on Earth (and they must be at least better than anyone that might contest your claim).

All of this is still legally a very grey area - there are no precedents to draw from. So the first person out there will be the one to set the precedent that will be followed by others.

Well I guess you'll have design in security to "discourage" any potential squatters. (Hey - i come from Southern Africa - I know all about squatters.  ) Having a hard coded shutdown signal for live support etc. should do nicely  :;):

As for the legal basis: As you rightly pointed out - on Mars someone from from Earth can do very little. I was just pointing out the legal basis applicable here on Terra. As for the Chinese: its intellectual property that they are abusing when they're infringing copyrights, and not actual physical "property". If the Chinese were wholesale stealing physical property it would turn into WWIII very quickly. But since it's only Brittney Spears, no-one cares (except Brittney and the RIAA, off course). Reffering to laws around salvage should also not be applicable, as for something to be regarded as "salvage", it would need to have been abandoned by its initially owner - and I assume you're not abandoning your base.

Off course any company that's still incorporated on Terra, can still be sued on Terra. International law (which would also be applicable in this case) also protects rights of ownership (of the base).

Also noted in the UN agreement is that permission of the signatory states would be required before in-situ resources could be used. This based in the fact that those resources belong to everyone. You would also need to notify the UN of your intention to build your base. The agreement appears to be based on the agreement for the use of the Antartic - case law there (if there is any), or precedent may prove usefull as well to determine the legal status of your Mars base.

Off course you can always incorporate your company in NE Nambabwe, a non-signatory state and not a UN member. Once on mars you declare yourself grand-supreme Pooba and claim ownership. 

Why it works out that way is of course the "anthropomorphic principle" ... it works out that way ... because if it didn't you wouldn't be here to observe it ...

Anyway ... breaking the rules is the first point in thinking outside the box (or the lines in this case). Maybe I should redefine my question then to within these lines to ... (drum roll please ...)

Please explain everything to me?