50 years after...

louis · 2012-05-29 19:16:03

What's your vision of human settlement of Mars fifty years after the first landing...if you need a starting assumption, let's assume that Musk leads a successful project to get human settlement started, with the landing taking place by 2020. So we are talking about 2070.

Here are some of my thoughts:

Population - I'd say more than a 1000, maybe getting close to 10,000.

Settlement mostly in the northern hemisphere, a little above the equator, with perhaps 3-5 main bases with populations in excess of 500.

Most of the bases will have been sponsored by the Musk-led Consortium...but they will have been joined by now by bases from Russia, China, India and Brazil.

Governance: somewhat diffuse. Individual bases will have strong governance structures, but no planet-wide authority. The UN will likely have a presence on the planet and there may be a UN committee back on Earth trying to exert influence, rather like a Spanish King trying to control the activities of a distant governor in central America. The Consortium will still be the main influence on the development of the planet - think Hudson Bay Company for a parallel.

Photovoltaic power will be the main source of power (assuming no advances in cold fusion).

The original Consortium will have sponsored a great deal of ISRU activity. There will be an almost self-sufficient industrial infrastructure, producing steel, plastics, glass, ceramics and chemicals. PV panels will be manufactured on Mars.

There will be several farm areas where most of the planet's food is grown in low pressure high CO2 farm habs.
Livestock will have been introduced including chickens (by far the greatest in terms of numbers), rabbits, guinea pigs, dwarf cattle and goats.

Transport. There will be well established "natural" roadways - paths cleared of boulders and protected from dust accumulation running between the main bases and to tourist attractions such as the Valles Mariensis. Most transit will be by pressurised electric vehicles.

There will be a Mars University with 200-300 students and staff.

The Mars economy will be booming. All that is holding it back really is the still substantial transit costs. Revenues will come from meteorite and regolith sales; service provision for universities and research teams; sponsorship; film rights; sale of luxury goods; art; tourism, to name the key sectors.

Among the attractions on Mars will be visits to Olympus Mons, Valles Mariensis, the Viking Landing Site, and the original hab used by the first humans on Mars. Also worth a visit: the First Sculpture Park of Mars, the Mars Crafts Centres, Mars Museum, and the pressurised Viking Gorge (offering an environment not unlike the Eden project in Cornwall, in the UK).

The first Mars-born babies will be teenagers now. But pregnant mothers are still having to spend the first 4 months of pregnancy in full 1G orbital facilities.

Aresians enjoy a very high standard of living. Their per capita power consumption is several hundred times that on Earth. They enjoy a full range of fresh foodstuffs. They benefit from spacious accommodation and free health care.

Homesteading is becoming increasingly popular, as thousands come to live on Mars either permanently or for a decade or so. Many people come to make their fortune. A construction worker on Mars might take home the equivalent of $200,000 per annum - most of which can be deposited in a bank back on Earth. Farmers can earn a million dollars a year supplying the workers, scientific research teams and university personnel. An egg on Mars might cost the equivalent of $100 back on Earth.

I say the equivalent. There is no Mars currency as yet. But there are a lot of financial transactions.

Food processing teams pay farmers for food.

People pay admin fees to the Consortium for land use licences. They also pay life support fees to the Consortium for air and water etc. unless they have the wherewithal to support themselves.

Some homesteaders make a good living from prospecting for gold, platinum and other rare metals and shipping them back to Earth. Others are meteorite hunters. They have to pay for transit of this material back to Earth.

Most transactions are in US dollars but the Consortium operates a kind of shadow Mars currency with a points system, rather like our supermarket loyalty points.

Total tonnage imports per annum: 3500 tonnes*. Exports: 6000 tonnes.

Well there are a few ideas!

Void · 2012-05-29 20:50:50

OK, I liked your thinking, but I can think of alternative futures, and so I will play the skunk as I often do, and stink up things a bit.

I agree that it may be a good plan to start by having orbital facilities for young babies. I will go further and say that perhaps it would be good to consider a possible future where indeed childhood involves prolonged presence in the orbit of Mars. I specifically am looking at Phobos and Demos. Any use of them will require a deaper definition of their nature, so a program of discovery specific to them is essential to planning for Mars in my opinion.

Specifically I am leaning on this type of question. What is the nature of Phobos and Demos? It is apparent that they have hollow space inside of them per this reference:

http://nineplanets.org/phobos.html

Phobos and Deimos may be composed of carbon-rich rock like C-type asteroids. But their densities are so low that they cannot be pure rock. They are more likely composed of a mixture of rock and ice. Both are heavily cratered. New images from Mars Global Surveyor indicate that Phobos is covered with a layer of fine dust about a meter thick, similar to the regolith on the Earth's Moon.

I cannot prove, and do not know if there is a significant ice content, but apparently it is not yet ruled out. Some speculation has it that Phobos and Demos are not Asteroids, but Outer Solar system objects. If so, then they started with a lot of ice, and may still retain some of it. Who knows, perhaps even some Ammonia deep down? (Nitogen).

I unlike many of you at this time would settle for an personed expidition to Mars which would be preceded by unpersoned probes, to futher analyze Phobos and Demos. That first personed expidition could first do some expiriments on utilizing the resources of Phobos and Demos, and hopefully would include the process of sintering the dust of the surface into a radiation shelter somewhere. Further hopefully they could dig into a moon to Ice. I am hoping that large sections of permafrost did exist, because it might suggest that hollows could be created in which spinning habitats could be built.

Obviously the ice would have value as life support and propellant.

I cannot give a date, but I will stick to your first mission date, 2020? Lacking any other notion of certainty.

A point I have read is that it is thought that Phobos and Demos will contain fragments of rock from various era's of the history of Mars. Certaily this would be a useful byproduct. Obviously the samples will fetch money from scientific institutions that which to test their theories of reality against the evidence it might offer. That point was where much of the early rocks of Mars have been altered those fragments on Phobos and Demos could be representative of pages of history for Mars.

I think that a mission to transport machines to Mars and also land them on the surface may be too ambitious. Yes, if contamination is not an issue, then perhaps a few landings of humans here and there, but I see that the main effort should be interplanetary travel, and no big effort for direct human landings from Earth.

I feel that Phobos and Demos could be integrated into a infant economy compising NEO objects, and Lunar telerobotic products. I feel that bases on Phobos and Demos could earn money by hosting scientists from Earth who would study rock samples from Phobos and Demos (Mars fragments), and indeed samples from Mars, and also with telepresence the environment of Mars.

I am satisfied that Phobos and Demos could be good happy places for a significant growing population. I would like to see at least 5000, as an Arc in case humans on Earth fall prey to their occasional bouts of mass stupidity.

I should think that that phase could last for 30 years, very optimistically from 2020 to 2050. But by 2050, I would have no problem imagining a very large orbital population. Perhaps 100,000.

It all depends on the evolvement of an economy, and technology. I feel that the human race is just on the edge of a real technology that could transport people from Earth orbit to Mars orbit at a reasonable cost, particularly if large amounts of water could be had from Phobos and Demos.

At some point in the developement of Phobos and Demos, yes a starter population on the surface of Mars. More of an experimental station, where methods to adapt to Mars could be worked on. Once that fire got burning, it would have a orbital economy to link to for it's growth.

At that point, it would seem reasonable to me to inject greenhouse gasses into the Martian atmosphere from Phobos and Demos, because they also appear to have significant Carbon. The injection of Hydrogen might scrub the Chlorine out of the Martian atmosphere, allowing the formation of some incresed Ozone.

So, by 2070, a path towards a Mars where the average pressure is 11 Millibars, and Ozone makes it easier for plant life to prosper on the surface. By that time gentic engineering may have also unlocked some of the impediments to primitive plant life living on Mars.

I know that it is typically supposed that it might take 100 years to warm Mars up with a facility on the surface producing greenhouse gasses, but what if Phobos and Demos really took off economically, as an integrated part of a near solar system economy? One short cut might be to add some greenhouse gasses and to then impact a NMO (Near Mars Orbit object) or two onto the CO2 deposits in the south polar ice cap. Perhaps that could short cut the 100 years to get to 11 Millibars average down to 50 years?

Summary: I think that if Phobos and Demos have the characteristics I have suggested above, that the habitation of Mars is best achieved by a two step process, habitation in orbit, and then habitation of Mars itself.

Last edited by Void (2012-05-29 21:40:00)

louis · 2012-05-30 06:16:09

Void wrote:

OK, I liked your thinking, but I can think of alternative futures, and so I will play the skunk as I often do, and stink up things a bit.
I agree that it may be a good plan to start by having orbital facilities for young babies. I will go further and say that perhaps it would be good to consider a possible future where indeed childhood involves prolonged presence in the orbit of Mars. I specifically am looking at Phobos and Demos. Any use of them will require a deaper definition of their nature, so a program of discovery specific to them is essential to planning for Mars in my opinion.
Specifically I am leaning on this type of question. What is the nature of Phobos and Demos? It is apparent that they have hollow space inside of them per this reference:
http://nineplanets.org/phobos.html
Phobos and Deimos may be composed of carbon-rich rock like C-type asteroids. But their densities are so low that they cannot be pure rock. They are more likely composed of a mixture of rock and ice. Both are heavily cratered. New images from Mars Global Surveyor indicate that Phobos is covered with a layer of fine dust about a meter thick, similar to the regolith on the Earth's Moon.
I cannot prove, and do not know if there is a significant ice content, but apparently it is not yet ruled out. Some speculation has it that Phobos and Demos are not Asteroids, but Outer Solar system objects. If so, then they started with a lot of ice, and may still retain some of it. Who knows, perhaps even some Ammonia deep down? (Nitogen).
I unlike many of you at this time would settle for an personed expidition to Mars which would be preceded by unpersoned probes, to futher analyze Phobos and Demos. That first personed expidition could first do some expiriments on utilizing the resources of Phobos and Demos, and hopefully would include the process of sintering the dust of the surface into a radiation shelter somewhere. Further hopefully they could dig into a moon to Ice. I am hoping that large sections of permafrost did exist, because it might suggest that hollows could be created in which spinning habitats could be built.
Obviously the ice would have value as life support and propellant.
I cannot give a date, but I will stick to your first mission date, 2020? Lacking any other notion of certainty.
A point I have read is that it is thought that Phobos and Demos will contain fragments of rock from various era's of the history of Mars. Certaily this would be a useful byproduct. Obviously the samples will fetch money from scientific institutions that which to test their theories of reality against the evidence it might offer. That point was where much of the early rocks of Mars have been altered those fragments on Phobos and Demos could be representative of pages of history for Mars.
I think that a mission to transport machines to Mars and also land them on the surface may be too ambitious. Yes, if contamination is not an issue, then perhaps a few landings of humans here and there, but I see that the main effort should be interplanetary travel, and no big effort for direct human landings from Earth.
I feel that Phobos and Demos could be integrated into a infant economy compising NEO objects, and Lunar telerobotic products. I feel that bases on Phobos and Demos could earn money by hosting scientists from Earth who would study rock samples from Phobos and Demos (Mars fragments), and indeed samples from Mars, and also with telepresence the environment of Mars.
I am satisfied that Phobos and Demos could be good happy places for a significant growing population. I would like to see at least 5000, as an Arc in case humans on Earth fall prey to their occasional bouts of mass stupidity.
I should think that that phase could last for 30 years, very optimistically from 2020 to 2050. But by 2050, I would have no problem imagining a very large orbital population. Perhaps 100,000.
It all depends on the evolvement of an economy, and technology. I feel that the human race is just on the edge of a real technology that could transport people from Earth orbit to Mars orbit at a reasonable cost, particularly if large amounts of water could be had from Phobos and Demos.
At some point in the developement of Phobos and Demos, yes a starter population on the surface of Mars. More of an experimental station, where methods to adapt to Mars could be worked on. Once that fire got burning, it would have a orbital economy to link to for it's growth.
At that point, it would seem reasonable to me to inject greenhouse gasses into the Martian atmosphere from Phobos and Demos, because they also appear to have significant Carbon. The injection of Hydrogen might scrub the Chlorine out of the Martian atmosphere, allowing the formation of some incresed Ozone.
So, by 2070, a path towards a Mars where the average pressure is 11 Millibars, and Ozone makes it easier for plant life to prosper on the surface. By that time gentic engineering may have also unlocked some of the impediments to primitive plant life living on Mars.
I know that it is typically supposed that it might take 100 years to warm Mars up with a facility on the surface producing greenhouse gasses, but what if Phobos and Demos really took off economically, as an integrated part of a near solar system economy? One short cut might be to add some greenhouse gasses and to then impact a NMO (Near Mars Orbit object) or two onto the CO2 deposits in the south polar ice cap. Perhaps that could short cut the 100 years to get to 11 Millibars average down to 50 years?
Summary: I think that if Phobos and Demos have the characteristics I have suggested above, that the habitation of Mars is best achieved by a two step process, habitation in orbit, and then habitation of Mars itself.

I can't see why P&D will be useful to human procreation or child raising since the gravity will be lower than on the surface, I presume.

I think if we could operate on the moons (which has its own peculiar challenges) I am sure we can get to the surface of Mars, and the surface is where we should be.

GW Johnson · 2012-05-30 14:38:30

If you want 1 G exposure on the surface of 0.38 gee Mars, then build a large conical merry-go-round type centrifuge, and spin it slowly (under 4 rpm). The vector sum of the centripetal acceleration and vertical acceleration of gravity need to add up to 1 gee. By then, we might actually know if less than 1 gee "is enough", and if so, precisely what fraction we need.

Of course, we ought to be working on that right now, but I see no one doing it except by very questionable surrogates, such as enforced bed rest at this or that angle. Bah, humbug! Where's the real data at real fractional gee? None of these space agencies have seen fit to tackle one of the fundamental design constraints for the first trip, much less a colony or base.

This next is really terraforming, but why not go find some really ice-rich bodies in the outer solar system, and deflect them to hit Mars. This is just a crude guess, but maybe half the ice vaporizes, and maybe half ionizes into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen that doesn't recombine with oxygen gets lost to space rather quickly, leaving a net gain in oxygen. How much, I dunno. Just guessing here.

But, do that a lot for a while, to the tune of a handful of cubic miles of ice, and things really add up. Eventually you add many dozens of mbar O2 on top of the existing 7 mbar CO2, plus you start filling the northern lowlands back up as an ocean (probably ice-covered, but still a great heat reservoir and rain source).

Voila! Terraformed Mars! In years, not centuries. No p-suit or O2-mask required. Just add organic matter and appropriate organisms from Earth to the dirt and start farming. The climate should resemble that of south-central Canada. Or south central Siberia. And, aerobraking with parachutes is finally practical for landing stuff from space.

Pardon me, I probably got too wild here. But if you can deflect NEO's to save the Earth from a hit, you have the means to deflect icy bodies in the outer solar system to hit Mars. Only the travel times are longer. (But not with pulse propulsion.)

We are getting closer to actually having this deflection capability, especially if somebody works out a water-NERVA, a way to stick it securely to the icy body, and a way to use the engine waste heat to melt some ice and use it in that water-NERVA. A robot could do that deflection. You just need to transport a real mining crew out there to install the equipment. Every site is different. Needs adaptability to site conditions, and that's men.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2012-05-30 14:47:00)

louis · 2012-05-30 18:27:07

GW Johnson wrote:

If you want 1 G exposure on the surface of 0.38 gee Mars, then build a large conical merry-go-round type centrifuge, and spin it slowly (under 4 rpm). The vector sum of the centripetal acceleration and vertical acceleration of gravity need to add up to 1 gee. By then, we might actually know if less than 1 gee "is enough", and if so, precisely what fraction we need.
Of course, we ought to be working on that right now, but I see no one doing it except by very questionable surrogates, such as enforced bed rest at this or that angle. Bah, humbug! Where's the real data at real fractional gee? None of these space agencies have seen fit to tackle one of the fundamental design constraints for the first trip, much less a colony or base.
This next is really terraforming, but why not go find some really ice-rich bodies in the outer solar system, and deflect them to hit Mars. This is just a crude guess, but maybe half the ice vaporizes, and maybe half ionizes into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen that doesn't recombine with oxygen gets lost to space rather quickly, leaving a net gain in oxygen. How much, I dunno. Just guessing here.
But, do that a lot for a while, to the tune of a handful of cubic miles of ice, and things really add up. Eventually you add many dozens of mbar O2 on top of the existing 7 mbar CO2, plus you start filling the northern lowlands back up as an ocean (probably ice-covered, but still a great heat reservoir and rain source).
Voila! Terraformed Mars! In years, not centuries. No p-suit or O2-mask required. Just add organic matter and appropriate organisms from Earth to the dirt and start farming. The climate should resemble that of south-central Canada. Or south central Siberia. And, aerobraking with parachutes is finally practical for landing stuff from space.
Pardon me, I probably got too wild here. But if you can deflect NEO's to save the Earth from a hit, you have the means to deflect icy bodies in the outer solar system to hit Mars. Only the travel times are longer. (But not with pulse propulsion.)
We are getting closer to actually having this deflection capability, especially if somebody works out a water-NERVA, a way to stick it securely to the icy body, and a way to use the engine waste heat to melt some ice and use it in that water-NERVA. A robot could do that deflection. You just need to transport a real mining crew out there to install the equipment. Every site is different. Needs adaptability to site conditions, and that's men.
GW

Yes, I like the idea of firing ice asteroids at Mars. Seems a good way to go. I also think we could achieve a lot of with covering huge swathes of the planet in heat retentive plastic sheeting and also devising billions of automated vehicles to go around sucking up and heating up the regolith and releasing gases. We have billions of cars on Earth, so billions of these (much smaller) mobile machines on Mars is not too much of a stretch.

I agree with your impatience about the lack of meaningful tests for gravity related issues. Bed rest doesn't cut it! But your 1 G simulation on Mars doesn't really help does it? I mean don't we need to get people into orbit around Earth and then simulate one third G there. Wouldn't that be more meaningful?

I think in the build up to a Mars mission we should also have the crews do repeat figure eights around Earth and Moon in zero G for several months and then (in separate exercises) get them to (A) land on the Moon (B) land on Earth and (C) transfer to a one third G facility in Earth orbit - whereupon they will be subjected to a very demanding task schedule. Let's see what happens in all three contexts. If we do that (plus realistic simulations on Earth in pressurised "warehouses") I think we will have a good idea about how people will cope with life on Mars.

Last edited by louis (2012-05-30 18:28:24)

Void · 2012-05-30 18:42:20

Lewis;

You apparently missed that I was proposing centrifuge type artificial graviation inside of or ajacent to a moon of Mars. I was not proposing to raise children in the gravitational field of Phobos or Demos alone.

I unlike many of you at this time would settle for an personed expidition to Mars which would be preceded by unpersoned probes, to futher analyze Phobos and Demos. That first personed expidition could first do some expiriments on utilizing the resources of Phobos and Demos, and hopefully would include the process of sintering the dust of the surface into a radiation shelter somewhere. Further hopefully they could dig into a moon to Ice. I am hoping that large sections of permafrost did exist, because it might suggest that hollows could be created in which spinning habitats could be built.

GW Johnson, I have been following the various posts about Orion type propulsion, and I have also because of it researched more. There apparently has been a lot of work done lately (10-20 years) on using anti-matter to trigger fission and fusion events to drive such a ship. This then would make the size of the explosions smaller and more comfortable to work with.

The Moon has Uranium, Thorium, and Helium-3 for fission and fusion.
The Earth of course can provide heavy water.

I do believe that you are on to something but it is even more wonderful than we think.

If you can build a tug to move a NEO or asteroid, surely it can be used for expiditions to Phobos and Demos.

If you can access those moons with mega equipment, then if they do have good resources, then they are construction materials, and fuel tanks, very convenient in fact in location.

I really think we should consider a stop at those Moons prior to the main event on the surface of Mars, because if science could get samples that include historical rocks from the early times of Mars, and on site and return samples were available, then quite a lot of funding could come from the science community. Further and parallel, the business community could make a profit from the other bulk materials.

If water ice, then the result is hollow spaces in the Moons where centifuge habitats could be constructed, as I said in my first post on this thread.

Going directly to Mars could lead to confilict between the Mars bugs and the Science community, while not attracting the business cummunity.

Going to Phobos and Demos first could attract both the Mars Bugs, the science cummunity, and the business community, if water can be shipped back to Earth orbit, for the moving of bulk materials to compose solar energy collectors.

An economy comprised of energy beamed to Earth, Platnum and such from the NEO's yes water from the NEO's, but I bet where the Earth/Moon proccesses are concerned you could hardly ever get enough water/fuel to move things about and to suport life and chemical processes.

I just have a suspission that doing this will get more to the Mars surface with greater assurance of the survivability of the settlements than just dumping people on the planet (If the high powers would even let you).

Also, the discovery of life on Mars would have various values. The search for it could come up empty, in which case the human race would poised perfectly to appropriate a new home.

SpaceNut · 2012-05-30 19:03:16

50 years at a 2 year and 7 week cycle means only 23 misson can be run and to go from zero to 10,000 is not only a massive flight count but also a mucher larger crew carrying capacity from LEO just to mars....and when factoring in the consumables to support the crew just on the way out means not even possible in my mind....

louis · 2012-05-30 19:36:05

SpaceNut wrote:

50 years at a 2 year and 7 week cycle means only 23 misson can be run and to go from zero to 10,000 is not only a massive flight count but also a mucher larger crew carrying capacity from LEO just to mars....and when factoring in the consumables to support the crew just on the way out means not even possible in my mind....

No, I don't accept that. We can still have direct shots for "light loads" i.e. human transit ni between the optimal transit times. Why is that not possible? If you want to give some fuel/propellant figures to show it is not possible then let's see them.

clark · 2012-05-30 20:16:03

Spacenut is right, the math is questionable. 10,000 people in 50 years is 435 people per mission cyle (23 total), which works out to 72 LEO launches (6 people per launch) every cycle, which is 1.5 launches every 2 weeks non-stop. Even if you assume sending people at sub-optimal transit times, you are still looking at a significant volume either way.

Impaler · 2012-05-31 01:14:05

Well louis you've basically given a plot summary of Red Mars and as Sci-Fi is at minimum one order of magnitude too ambitious that pushes the level of development you describe out to the year 2520. Colony level development on Mars is going to require an incredibly robust supply chain and deep mastery of ISRU. I've never seen any serious consideration of the level of industrial dependence of modern society, their are whole nations of Millions of people that would crumble if cut off from outside manufacturing capacity, and I'm not talking 3rd world either. Basically we won't be colonizing Mars until the myriad of technologies necessary to support life their are as old-hat as the ax, plow and rifle were to western pioneers.

Look at Antarctica, it is more attractive in EVERY conceivable way then Mars, closer, warmer, wetter, faster and cheaper to get people and supplies too and get resources from, I won't even contest the breathable air cause really it would freeze your lungs damn fast in the dead of winter. And the population ranges from 1k to 5k. But that took nearly 200 years and the activity is only at the Governmental research station and sporadic tourism level of development. The expansive self-sufficiency activities like farming, politics, education described do not start until the population is several orders of magnitude higher and are thus even further into the future.

Terraformer · 2012-05-31 02:13:04

I don't think we'll be going to Mars properly until we have an established cis-Lunar economy. If we can get started in 2020 on that, then I think we'll be in a position to colonise Mars in the early to mid 40's.

I must ask where you think Mars will get it's money from, louis. You're talking about billions of dollars being paid to workers on Mars each year, into Terran accounts, and hence acting to remove money from the Martian economy....

louis · 2012-05-31 09:13:47

clark wrote:

Spacenut is right, the math is questionable. 10,000 people in 50 years is 435 people per mission cyle (23 total), which works out to 72 LEO launches (6 people per launch) every cycle, which is 1.5 launches every 2 weeks non-stop. Even if you assume sending people at sub-optimal transit times, you are still looking at a significant volume either way.

Well either we accept there will be sub-optimal transits or we don't accept that. Once, you accept the removal of that artificial barrier, the traffic is far less intense. Once you have your transit vehicles in position, it's simply about how much fuel you can get into orbit either end. At the Mars end, the answer will, I suspect, be "a great deal". 10,000 people over 50 years is only 200 per annum on average.

I am not predicting 10,000 but I would certainly say it was possible.

This objection is a bit like querying whether it is possible for billions of people to be moved by aircraft on Earth. It happens, because there are the resources to do so, and because it is economic to do so.

louis · 2012-05-31 09:35:20

Terraformer wrote:

I don't think we'll be going to Mars properly until we have an established cis-Lunar economy. If we can get started in 2020 on that, then I think we'll be in a position to colonise Mars in the early to mid 40's.
I must ask where you think Mars will get it's money from, louis. You're talking about billions of dollars being paid to workers on Mars each year, into Terran accounts, and hence acting to remove money from the Martian economy....

That's a bit like saying to the British in 1800 "I don't think we can establish ourselves in Australia until we have a fully functioning Empire in India." Clearly a strong British presence in India, helped the British establish themselves in Australia but it wasn't a necessary condition.

Well I listed a number of sources of income:

Meteorite and regolith sales

Service provision for universities and research teams

Sponsorship

Film rights

Sale of luxury goods (e.g. watches, jewelry, chiffon and other lightweight items)

Art

Tourism

You can probably add some others e.g. rocket fuel sales (it will be less costly to launch the fuel from Mars, than from Earth); data preservation vaults (Mars is the ultimate secure location for data preservation); sale of precious metals; cemetery services (probably less so than for the Moon). I'll think of some more....gotta go now.

Void · 2012-05-31 15:17:55

As far as populating the proximity of Mars, what about constructing habitats with centrifuge gravitation included from Lunar and/or NEO low grade materials, filling them with people, and navigating them over a period of 10 years from Earth to Mars orbit using a combination of Solar Methods(Sails, electric), gravity slingshots, and perhaps some pulsed method (Fission/Fusion//with antimatter trigger)?

Upon entering a location favorable to import of materials from Phobos and Demos, the inhabitants of each could go into a process of habitat expansion, to accomidate new children I suppose.

That might get you outside of the limitations imposed by having only so many launch windows.

Suppose that Earth/Moon business did get lucrative, and as a side effort such habitats could be built, 1 / year with perhaps 2000 per habitat?

Just wild numbers. Presumably this would be financed by the travelers liquidating their assests on Earth, and also perhaps loans that could be paid off by expanding the habitat upon relocation to Mars Orbit, and so making room for children and immigrants as well.

Just speculating.

SpaceNut · 2012-05-31 17:38:21

louis wrote:

10,000 people over 50 years is only 200 per annum on average.

Mars launch cycle is approximately bi-annual....so its 400 plus each cycle...

Consumable weigth for that is somewhat variable depending on the Earth mars distance even with a large MTV..and the time is somewhat also depended to a degree with respect to the delta v used.......

GW Johnson · 2012-05-31 17:41:02

Population growth has always been exponential, not linear, regardless of all known circumstances. The first trips to Mars will be small handfuls of people, even when we finally decide to establish our first (probably experimental) bases. Very late in the 50 year interval proposed in this thread will be actual colonization ships. There are pulse propulsion ships we can conceive right now that could carry 10's of thousands, or more, even 100’s of thousands, in a single trip. Typical exponential growth, just different circumstances than we have seen before.

The best near-term solution to finding out "how much gee is enough" is the proper experimental facility in LEO. It's a multi-level centrifuge, shaped like a frisbee disk, spinning. 1 gee at the rim, less (proportional to radius) at each deck closer to the center. It has to be large so the rotation rate can be slow enough not the bother the typical human middle ear. That's somewhere under 4 rpm.

Radius for 1 gee is 56 m at 4 rpm. We're not talking "Battlestar Galactica" here. How about several thin pie-slice sections launched separately by existing launchers, and just docked together in LEO the same way we built the ISS? What is so bloody hard to understand about that? Or to do?

I rather suspect that once we actually investigate this, we'll find 0.38 gee on Mars is more-or-less enough to maintain some acceptable level of health, just maybe not quite as good as we enjoy here at home. I'm not so very sure that 0.17 gee on the moon will be enough, but I know nothing for sure. If it is, fine. If not, then that conical centrifuge idea is something the base will need for long-term residents. Size it for a vector sum 1+ gee at its rim, at spin rates under 4 rpm. It's nothing but right triangle trig.

Perhaps 4 hrs per day exercise at 2 gee would be efficacious. Who knows? We need to run the damned experiments with that frisbee-shaped lab in LEO, that we have never had. We need to do it now! There is not much more important for NASA (and ESA and JAXA and Roscosmos and all the rest) to do, than that. Except maybe re-start nuclear propulsion of all kinds.

As for Deimos/Phobos first-or-not, it makes more sense to me to make one damned first trip, and visit the surface and one or both moons, all in the one trip. Just get it done. Since you don't really know what you'll really find as "ground truth" on any of those 3 locations, you have to carry the fuel and supplies to make the trip, regardless. Carry ISRU gear and try it out, but absolutely do not bet the crew's lives on it. Not that first trip.

Depending on what you actually find on those surfaces, subsequent-trip missions might look quite different. But the history of Mars exploration is that our picture radically changes each time we send a new probe. Each one's findings overturns some part (up to and including all) of all previously "thought-to-be-known" results. It won't be any different when we as a species finally summon-up the gumption to actually send men there.

Ground truth has always, always, always been at least 98% at variance with what we thought before we went there (robot or manned). And, no two sites have ever been the same anywhere, not here, not the moon, not Mars. (I predict not anywhere.)

You have to take that into account when planning a mission, manned or not. Most of the manned mission architectures I see proposed for the moon, Mars, or the NEO's, ignores that very inconvenient fact of life. As a species (or as any individual institution) we have not adequately learned that lesson yet. But we certainly need to. It would make life easier. And more certain.

Just some thoughts from an old guy. This stuff really is more art than science. (Something corporate managers desperately hate. Politicians and bureaucrats, too. )

GW

louis · 2012-05-31 17:41:37

Terraformer wrote:

I don't think we'll be going to Mars properly until we have an established cis-Lunar economy. If we can get started in 2020 on that, then I think we'll be in a position to colonise Mars in the early to mid 40's.
I must ask where you think Mars will get it's money from, louis. You're talking about billions of dollars being paid to workers on Mars each year, into Terran accounts, and hence acting to remove money from the Martian economy....

You need to look at this the other way round. The total value of the Earth economy currently is something like $75,000 billion dollars. That's quite a lot of money. The idea that the Mars economy will be unable to skim off a few billion from that, let's say 0.01% - say $7.5 billion dollars per annum - seems v. unlikely to me. For one thing there are many billions of dollars available in the universities, research institutions and space agencies. Mars is well placed to attract those billions. And Mars itself is of intrinsic interest, which will make its products and serves very marketable.

louis · 2012-05-31 17:51:33

GW Johnson wrote:

Population growth has always been exponential, not linear, regardless of all known circumstances. The first trips to Mars will be small handfuls of people, even when we finally decide to establish our first (probably experimental) bases. Very late in the 50 year interval proposed in this thread will be actual colonization ships. There are pulse propulsion ships we can conceive right now that could carry 10's of thousands, or more, even 100’s of thousands, in a single trip. Typical exponential growth, just different circumstances than we have seen before.
The best near-term solution to finding out "how much gee is enough" is the proper experimental facility in LEO. It's a multi-level centrifuge, shaped like a frisbee disk, spinning. 1 gee at the rim, less (proportional to radius) at each deck closer to the center. It has to be large so the rotation rate can be slow enough not the bother the typical human middle ear. That's somewhere under 4 rpm.
Radius for 1 gee is 56 m at 4 rpm. We're not talking "Battlestar Galactica" here. How about several thin pie-slice sections launched separately by existing launchers, and just docked together in LEO the same way we built the ISS? What is so bloody hard to understand about that? Or to do?
I rather suspect that once we actually investigate this, we'll find 0.38 gee on Mars is more-or-less enough to maintain some acceptable level of health, just maybe not quite as good as we enjoy here at home. I'm not so very sure that 0.17 gee on the moon will be enough, but I know nothing for sure. If it is, fine. If not, then that conical centrifuge idea is something the base will need for long-term residents. Size it for a vector sum 1+ gee at its rim, at spin rates under 4 rpm. It's nothing but right triangle trig.
Perhaps 4 hrs per day exercise at 2 gee would be efficacious. Who knows? We need to run the damned experiments with that frisbee-shaped lab in LEO, that we have never had. We need to do it now! There is not much more important for NASA (and ESA and JAXA and Roscosmos and all the rest) to do, than that. Except maybe re-start nuclear propulsion of all kinds.
As for Deimos/Phobos first-or-not, it makes more sense to me to make one damned first trip, and visit the surface and one or both moons, all in the one trip. Just get it done. Since you don't really know what you'll really find as "ground truth" on any of those 3 locations, you have to carry the fuel and supplies to make the trip, regardless. Carry ISRU gear and try it out, but absolutely do not bet the crew's lives on it. Not that first trip.
Depending on what you actually find on those surfaces, subsequent-trip missions might look quite different. But the history of Mars exploration is that our picture radically changes each time we send a new probe. Each one's findings overturns some part (up to and including all) of all previously "thought-to-be-known" results. It won't be any different when we as a species finally summon-up the gumption to actually send men there.
Ground truth has always, always, always been at least 98% at variance with what we thought before we went there (robot or manned). And, no two sites have ever been the same anywhere, not here, not the moon, not Mars. (I predict not anywhere.)
You have to take that into account when planning a mission, manned or not. Most of the manned mission architectures I see proposed for the moon, Mars, or the NEO's, ignores that very inconvenient fact of life. As a species (or as any individual institution) we have not adequately learned that lesson yet. But we certainly need to. It would make life easier. And more certain.
Just some thoughts from an old guy. This stuff really is more art than science. (Something corporate managers desperately hate. Politicians and bureaucrats, too. )
GW

I agree GW - at this juncture a lot more effort should be put into gravity health research in the way you outline. Also, I think we need to try and separate out whether some of the effects on the immune system are due to isolation as much as anything else. Perhaps people will do better in zero G if regularly exposed to viruses and bacteria in a controlled manner, to keep their immune systems in response mode. Certainly, if exercising in 2G could make a real difference, we should go for that.

One thing I've noticed, I think the big space agencies keep their zero G health info pretty close to their chests. To a certain extent it serves the purposes of the USA and Russia to play up the difficulties, so as to force those coming after them, e.g. China and India, to reinvent the wheel when it comes to manned space flight.

I can't personally get enthused about Phobos and Deimos - especially since their surfaces if I recall correctly will have you waist-deep in dust.

louis · 2012-05-31 18:04:20

Impaler wrote:

Well louis you've basically given a plot summary of Red Mars and as Sci-Fi is at minimum one order of magnitude too ambitious that pushes the level of development you describe out to the year 2520. Colony level development on Mars is going to require an incredibly robust supply chain and deep mastery of ISRU. I've never seen any serious consideration of the level of industrial dependence of modern society, their are whole nations of Millions of people that would crumble if cut off from outside manufacturing capacity, and I'm not talking 3rd world either. Basically we won't be colonizing Mars until the myriad of technologies necessary to support life their are as old-hat as the ax, plow and rifle were to western pioneers.
Look at Antarctica, it is more attractive in EVERY conceivable way then Mars, closer, warmer, wetter, faster and cheaper to get people and supplies too and get resources from, I won't even contest the breathable air cause really it would freeze your lungs damn fast in the dead of winter. And the population ranges from 1k to 5k. But that took nearly 200 years and the activity is only at the Governmental research station and sporadic tourism level of development. The expansive self-sufficiency activities like farming, politics, education described do not start until the population is several orders of magnitude higher and are thus even further into the future.

No, I don't agree - even though I've never read Red Mars. LOL (Have heard of it though.)

I think you are really underestimating our abilities and how quickly things can move. Personally I have been amazed to learn in the last couple of monhts that Nevada has already given out licences for driverless cars and in the UK we just had a test on the motorway of a computer-controlled truck and car convoy. Suddenly we are in a new age of driverless cars.

In terms of Mars, I think you seriously underestimate our ability to scale down our industrial infrastructure and package it off to Mars.

If you haven't read any serious consideration of our industrial dependence I suggest you haven't been reading some of the posts here.

Clearly we do not need to make everything on Mars, anymore than the people of Guadeloupe make all (or indeed even very much) of the industrial products they depend on.

Certainly medicines and computer circuit boards don't need to be made there. They can be imported. But Mars is well placed for a steel industry, for glass and ceramics production, for production of electric motors etc. It can make its own vehicles, its own farm tools, its own energy generation equipment and so on.

The Antarctica analogy is misplaced because the continent is close enough and transport is cheap enough to import nearly everything there, though the bases do now grow their own salad vegetables. Antarctica whilst fascinating in its own way is a lot less interesting than Mars.

I think your analysis is wrong as well in thinking of Mars as a self-contained society. It won't be. The university for instance will not be there primarily to serve the inhabitants of Mars, it will be there to serve the inhabitants of Earth, especially astrophysicists, geologists, chemists and the like.

SpaceNut · 2012-05-31 18:58:03

True GW that population is expotential in nature but what I was going for was the constant size of the consumables for large numbers of people....

http://www.mendeley.com/research/mars-l … t-systems/

The estimated requirements for consumables for a crew of six for round trip to the surface of Mars....

A critical element of planning human missions to Mars involves life support systems. The requirements for air, food, water and waste disposal materials in human missions to Mars total well over 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 200 metric tons.

http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/00 … 6_0005.pdf

This would require roughly 6 to 12 launches with a heavy-lift launch vehicle (125 mT to low Earth orbit (LEO)) just to provide life support if neither recycling nor use of indigenous water from Mars were used.

louis · 2012-05-31 19:11:36

SpaceNut wrote:

True GW that population is expotential in nature but what I was going for was the constant size of the consumables for large numbers of people....
http://www.mendeley.com/research/mars-l … t-systems/
The estimated requirements for consumables for a crew of six for round trip to the surface of Mars....
A critical element of planning human missions to Mars involves life support systems. The requirements for air, food, water and waste disposal materials in human missions to Mars total well over 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 200 metric tons.
http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/00 … 6_0005.pdf
This would require roughly 6 to 12 launches with a heavy-lift launch vehicle (125 mT to low Earth orbit (LEO)) just to provide life support if neither recycling nor use of indigenous water from Mars were used.

Rarely have I read such nonsense as that analysis of mass requirement for life support. What a pyramid of piffle! Why on earth would you need to take a water shower every two days? MOst astronauts tell us how wipes are by far the best hygiene solution in zero G. Why would you need to wash clothes so often? I remember from the 1960s my brother going off on a hiking holiday with paper underwear... Even if you do need to wash clothes, scientists have been working on cleaning systems that don't involved water.

Honestly, if you are basing your analysis on that, you are not going to come away with any sensible answers.

And of course we would use recycled water PLUS ISRU water from Mars.

Your tonnage requirements are absurd and Musk will prove them so, over the next couple of decades.

SpaceNut · 2012-05-31 19:50:01

As a private mission there will be minimal astronauts after the beginning, so will common people go months on end with the next member of a crew smelling up the place....
I do believe that there is an over exageration to the numbers but what we have to do is analyze what we have in the ISS, the analog stations of Mars Society and apply the changes to what we can do....
It is bad that the threads with the info is gone.....

Void · 2012-05-31 22:11:36

Well it is good to have this conversation, but I always like to have a Plan a, b, c, .........

As GW Johnson has said we do not have enough facts about the real "On the ground situation".

It is good that certain persons will debate in favor of "a" while I might propose "b", (As plan B), and perhaps someone else will bring in "c". This is not bad, it is good.

We don't know yet what the medical implications are for alternative gravitational fields, or simulated graviatation for that matter.

We don't know what Phobos and Demos are. Are they a great deal? Are they dry dust bunny's in orbit?

We don't know all the surprises that Mars has to offer. Perhaps it has quite a few favors to offer us that we don't know about yet.

We don't know what the geopolitical situation will be in the future. It is likely to deviate from what it is now. That has implications for funding, and even for premissions to go forward.

We don't know if there is life on Mars.

If there were life on Mars, is it merely a branch of the same family as Earth (Transpermia), or is it utterly unique?

If Space X, Falcon Heavy turns out to be the permanent most low cost launch, then we will eventually get a stabilized notion of what equipment can be delivered to orbit to facilitate habitation of the Mars/Phobos/Demos region. But I am guessing that it could keep changing for a time.

We don't know what telerobotics is going to do to deliver materials for the same purpose from NEO and the Moon.

So, I have a hard time when people try to pour concrete.

However by all means it is great when you take your debate position and bring light to a possible future. Just don't be too eager to blow out other peoples candles.

Eventually when some things mature, then it will be time to pick a best plan, with enought flexibility to adapt to the unexpected discoveries that are likely, and then it may be wrong to not rally around it.

But we are not there yet.

Impaler · 2012-05-31 22:57:24

Louis: Your driver-less car analogy makes the classic mistake that all futurists/tech-enthusiasts makes when they claim rapid advancement in technology, you apply the performance growth rates of computer and information systems to mechanical, physical and chemical systems. Interplanetary transportation and human life-support on Mars are NOT problems amenable to bulk information processing solutions like for example beating the best Human chess player or driving a car autonomously. Going to Mars is a problem of engineering ware the bonding energy of Hydrogen and Oxygen and the Human bodies radiation tolerance produce fundamental constraints and our progress is at best linear not the exponentiality that we take for granted in Computing.

I'd very much like to see some credible work on miniaturizing and simplifying Industrial infrastructure (got some links?), so far all I've seen are weak appeals to things like rapid-prototyping systems which will supposedly make everything we need. My family is one of tool and die makes and we understand the iterative nature of all these tools, simple tools make complex tools which make yet more complex tools. A rapid prototyping machine is for just one thing prototyping, it's not a substitute for a full industrial infrastructure, it lacks the volume, reliability or flexibility of fundamental industrial tools like a lathe.

Any kind of Mars raw material production like glass, steel, ceramics is incredibly hard to do, these things are cheap on Earth because they are made in HUGE quantity (efficiency of scale) using equally huge amounts of cheap fossil fuel. Attempting to produce these things in small scale let alone on another planet is going to be far too expensive until the scale of production reaches thousands of tons and populations would need to be in the range of 100k to millions to both need that much and to make that economically attractive.

Remember that the cost-benefit analysis to create locally vs imports is not just a lineal comparison between a piece of manufacturing equipment vs a pile of finished goods. Equipment will require a continuous stream of replacement parts and spares, it will require additional energy supplies and supporting infrastructure too. And most importantly Labor devoted to using the equipment and actually making the goods that are no longer being imported. More people means every import that people need which the new local productivity is not satisfying increases and cascading 'multiplier' effects cause yet more multiplication. In the end the volume of imports ONLY GOES UP as a place becomes more established and more sophisticated, the very idea of sending equipment for 'living off the land' as a means to reduce imports is fundamentally self-defeating. You pay the cost to establish local production of a settlement that has already grown past the tipping point for cost effectiveness so more of the supply stream can be devoted to growth. You establish local production so you can send MORE not LESS to the colony.

Last edited by Impaler (2012-05-31 23:09:25)

louis · 2012-06-01 02:19:46

Impaler wrote:

Louis: Your driver-less car analogy makes the classic mistake that all futurists/tech-enthusiasts makes when they claim rapid advancement in technology, you apply the performance growth rates of computer and information systems to mechanical, physical and chemical systems. Interplanetary transportation and human life-support on Mars are NOT problems amenable to bulk information processing solutions like for example beating the best Human chess player or driving a car autonomously. Going to Mars is a problem of engineering ware the bonding energy of Hydrogen and Oxygen and the Human bodies radiation tolerance produce fundamental constraints and our progress is at best linear not the exponentiality that we take for granted in Computing.
I'd very much like to see some credible work on miniaturizing and simplifying Industrial infrastructure (got some links?), so far all I've seen are weak appeals to things like rapid-prototyping systems which will supposedly make everything we need. My family is one of tool and die makes and we understand the iterative nature of all these tools, simple tools make complex tools which make yet more complex tools. A rapid prototyping machine is for just one thing prototyping, it's not a substitute for a full industrial infrastructure, it lacks the volume, reliability or flexibility of fundamental industrial tools like a lathe.
Any kind of Mars raw material production like glass, steel, ceramics is incredibly hard to do, these things are cheap on Earth because they are made in HUGE quantity (efficiency of scale) using equally huge amounts of cheap fossil fuel. Attempting to produce these things in small scale let alone on another planet is going to be far too expensive until the scale of production reaches thousands of tons and populations would need to be in the range of 100k to millions to both need that much and to make that economically attractive.
Remember that the cost-benefit analysis to create locally vs imports is not just a lineal comparison between a piece of manufacturing equipment vs a pile of finished goods. Equipment will require a continuous stream of replacement parts and spares, it will require additional energy supplies and supporting infrastructure too. And most importantly Labor devoted to using the equipment and actually making the goods that are no longer being imported. More people means every import that people need which the new local productivity is not satisfying increases and cascading 'multiplier' effects cause yet more multiplication. In the end the volume of imports ONLY GOES UP as a place becomes more established and more sophisticated, the very idea of sending equipment for 'living off the land' as a means to reduce imports is fundamentally self-defeating. You pay the cost to establish local production of a settlement that has already grown past the tipping point for cost effectiveness so more of the supply stream can be devoted to growth. You establish local production so you can send MORE not LESS to the colony.

No I don't think I was making the schoolboy error of thinking rockets are like computers but GW elsewhere has given the data for how US rocket costs have come down from $27,000 per lb to about $1000 within a few years - thanks to Space X. A huge, momentous reduction. With launch costs now just above $2000 per kg, we can do so much more in terms of transferring technology to Mars.

I think you make the mistake of assuming technology has to be cheap on Mars. It doesn't. It doesn't matter if it costs you $1000 per kg to make steel on Mars. Firstly, you don't need a lot of it. Secondly activities on Mars will be well funded.

We can I think agree we won't be exporting coal to Mars. We will take PV panels. Energy infrastructure will be the first wave of the ISRU industrial infrastructure. The other waves follow on from that. First up will be mining/resource extraction - water to begin with then iron ore and other metals.

I have also grown convinced that 3D plastics printing on Mars will be a logical step forward.

Anyway I will see if I can put up some helpful links.

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