Musk's plans for Mars

GW Johnson · 2016-07-01 08:41:07

Now there's an intriguing prospect. Go to a place like Ceres that does show bright spots, and mine the bright spots. Leave it in solid form for shipment (unless it sublimes, in which case it will have to be enclosed), and take it where you need the volatiles. Then decompose it with heat when you get there.

The ammonium carbonate apparently decomposes to all-gas products. My uneducated guess would be the more dominant sodium carbonate would decompose into some gases plus a sodium-bearing solid. Not something you'd want to expose to oxygen or to water, I'd hazard the guess.

GW

Terraformer · 2016-07-01 13:47:30

Wouldn't Sodium Carbonate decompose to Sodium Oxide and Carbon Dioxide? It would dissolve in water I think, but Sodium Oxide isn't much of a problem, surely?

GW Johnson · 2016-07-08 10:59:11

Hi Terraformer:

I don't know what sodium carbonate might do. I'm no chemist, at least not that stuff. My "chemistry" is on-the-job stuff making solid propellant and burning all sorts of fuels with air.

If the products really are sodium oxide and carbon dioxide, I'm guessing the decomposition temperature environment may play a role. You could overheat the sodium oxide to create metallic sodium. At least, I would worry about that.

But the better chemists out there would know.

GW

SpaceNut · 2016-07-09 11:47:28

I think its time to get back to what is in the cards of the Musk plan for getting to mars.
Line up of what does he need to design:
While the Mars colonial transport = this is a deep space habitat and hopefully one designed with artificial gravity
Landing capabiity of Red Dragon while its a small cargo downmass we need this to be enlarged and capable of what we need for mass
Most mars plans rely on insitu resource use to survive and for fuel I see little for it to cahnge if step 2 is not obtained for preloading the landing site...

GW Johnson · 2016-07-09 13:24:54

I got the impression that Musk's MCT is the equivalent to a container ship that operates between LEO and the Martian surface. It is a propelled empty shell rigged for surface landings on Mars, equipped for surface refuelling, and set up to carry inside itself a variety of pressurized and unpressurized cargo containers, some of which could contain people.

Details are entirely lacking; perhaps that will be rectified at the September meeting where Musk is scheduled to reveal more about his Mars plans.

GW

GW Johnson · 2016-09-27 17:52:30

From what I posted 6-28-16 in post #93 above:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

What little I could find on the internet about Musk's MCT plans indicated he has not yet decided whether he needs to provide artificial gravity for folks travelling one-way to Mars. I think he is still waiting to follow NASA's lead on this. And as y'all know, I think NASA has its official head up its collective rear on the artificial gravity issue.

The MCT "ship" appears to be (at least conceptually) the upper stage of his giant rocket, to be refueled on orbit before departure to Mars. There was talk about it carrying individualized containers for the occupants, to be off-loaded once down on Mars. Sort of like the spacegoing equivalent of an Earthly container ship on the high seas. There are no solid data on the geometry by which to judge how artificial gravity might or might not be incorporated into the design.

The rest of the idea seems to be to use propellant manufactured on Mars to refuel the thing for the trip home. It'll have to fly relatively unladen, in order to have the mass ratio to ascend, escape Mars, and capture at Earth for the next trip. That is, if he intends to reuse them at all. None of this is set in stone, however. Maybe we'll see more at the September meeting where he is supposed to describe some more about this plan.

Right now all we have is a few hints and a lot of speculation. The most solid hint we have is really just the announced intentions to start sending stuff one way to Mars at every opposition, followed by men about 2025.
--------------------------------------------------

I looked at the video posted on-line, and the only available update to that assessment seems to be no artificial gravity. He does seem to want to fly faster than Hohmann min-energy transfer, maybe 100-180 days to Mars 1-way. Could be from 100-200 passengers, based on the video he showed at the IAC meeting in Guadalajara. I saw that video on-line. It really didn't say that much.

His presentation suggested four key things: (1) reusability, (2) on-orbit re-fuelling, (3) propellant production on Mars, and (4) selecting the right fuel. Production on Mars makes that selection LOX-LCH4 for sure. He did mention ice. Which means he thinks he knows his site has ice, or that he will know, by the time he starts shooting stuff there in 2 years.

Reusability is not new, because we have known this was needed since before the mid-1950's (see my own posted 2016 Mars mission ideas over at "exrocketman". "We" just didn't know how to reuse anything until very recently, and then it's only Spacex and Blue Origin that are doing it.

His presentation still says his giant rocket should start flying about 2022. We'll see. His video indicated Cape Canaveral, but I do not believe that. There are no facilities there expandable to a 600-foot-tall rocket size.

I saw nothing to change my opinion his giant machine is 2-stage to LEO, then refuel stage 2 on-orbit in LEO with 2nd and 3rd shots as tankers, and use it as the spaceship to Mars and back. His concept seems to show a broadside (belly-first) entry at Mars, followed by a retropropulsive landing.

This still starts with Falcon-Heavy/Red Dragon shots in 2018, every opposition, to start sending hardware there, to pave the way for the big rocket. I presume that means propellant-making equipment for the return trip.

GW

louis · 2016-09-27 18:34:09

An article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ … ars-colony

Glad to see he's running with our ideas! lol

But yep, fuelling the big interplantary transporter in earth orbit makes sense. Then you can reuse the transporter. And making methane (presumably) from water and carbon dioxide on Mars makes sense.

I still feel his numbers are a bit ambitious. Does he really mean to take in 100 people from the get go. There doesn't seem to be any sort of intermediate stage...

I just feel it makes more sense to have smaller sets of pioneers, gradually laying the infrastructure groundwork.

I am not saying his approach is impossible, but it must be very expensive, because it means you need to fly in a hell of a lot of infrastructure in my view, and it will be an Earth-dependent infrastructure in my view. To get a 100 person base established immediately just doesn't feel right to me.

For one thing, it throws in another set of problems - group dynamics. There's no way you can really control a group of that size without military style discipline.

Has he thought that all through? The 100 are supposed to be permanent colonists I believe, but that raises huge problems in itself. I think it's more important to have permanent settlement to begin with rather than permanent colonists.

Personally I would favour beginning with much smaller mission, but doubling up every couple of years - maybe six personnel for the first mission, then 12, 24, 48 etc. I think the aim would be first to get a well established R&D community with people returning to Earth after a 2 year tour.

Last edited by louis (2016-09-27 18:35:51)

louis · 2016-09-27 19:04:19

Would the Mars-manufactured propellant be methane do you think?

GW Johnson wrote:

From what I posted 6-28-16 in post #93 above:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
What little I could find on the internet about Musk's MCT plans indicated he has not yet decided whether he needs to provide artificial gravity for folks travelling one-way to Mars. I think he is still waiting to follow NASA's lead on this. And as y'all know, I think NASA has its official head up its collective rear on the artificial gravity issue.
The MCT "ship" appears to be (at least conceptually) the upper stage of his giant rocket, to be refueled on orbit before departure to Mars. There was talk about it carrying individualized containers for the occupants, to be off-loaded once down on Mars. Sort of like the spacegoing equivalent of an Earthly container ship on the high seas. There are no solid data on the geometry by which to judge how artificial gravity might or might not be incorporated into the design.
The rest of the idea seems to be to use propellant manufactured on Mars to refuel the thing for the trip home. It'll have to fly relatively unladen, in order to have the mass ratio to ascend, escape Mars, and capture at Earth for the next trip. That is, if he intends to reuse them at all. None of this is set in stone, however. Maybe we'll see more at the September meeting where he is supposed to describe some more about this plan.
Right now all we have is a few hints and a lot of speculation. The most solid hint we have is really just the announced intentions to start sending stuff one way to Mars at every opposition, followed by men about 2025.
--------------------------------------------------
I looked at the video posted on-line, and the only available update to that assessment seems to be no artificial gravity. He does seem to want to fly faster than Hohmann min-energy transfer, maybe 100-180 days to Mars 1-way. Could be from 100-200 passengers, based on the video he showed at the IAC meeting in Guadalajara. I saw that video on-line. It really didn't say that much.
His presentation suggested four key things: (1) reusability, (2) on-orbit re-fuelling, (3) propellant production on Mars, and (4) selecting the right fuel. Production on Mars makes that selection LOX-LCH4 for sure. He did mention ice. Which means he thinks he knows his site has ice, or that he will know, by the time he starts shooting stuff there in 2 years.
Reusability is not new, because we have known this was needed since before the mid-1950's (see my own posted 2016 Mars mission ideas over at "exrocketman". "We" just didn't know how to reuse anything until very recently, and then it's only Spacex and Blue Origin that are doing it.
His presentation still says his giant rocket should start flying about 2022. We'll see. His video indicated Cape Canaveral, but I do not believe that. There are no facilities there expandable to a 600-foot-tall rocket size.
I saw nothing to change my opinion his giant machine is 2-stage to LEO, then refuel stage 2 on-orbit in LEO with 2nd and 3rd shots as tankers, and use it as the spaceship to Mars and back. His concept seems to show a broadside (belly-first) entry at Mars, followed by a retropropulsive landing.
This still starts with Falcon-Heavy/Red Dragon shots in 2018, every opposition, to start sending hardware there, to pave the way for the big rocket. I presume that means propellant-making equipment for the return trip.
GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-09-27 19:48:04

What else could it be? Musks rocket engines specifically run on Methane and oxygen, he wants to use the same engines for launch, orbit transfer, landings on Mars, and for taking off again. His whole idea depends heavily on reusability and refueling, he eventually wants to establish refueling depots all over the Solar System. Looks like the spaceships just fly in zero gravity all the way to Mars. If he wants to go to Jupiter or Saturn, he'll need to spin for gravity, as the transit time would otherwise take too long.

Some of the pictures were evocative of Chesley Bonestell.

Some of the ideas Musk has had are very old, and go way back to the 1950s when you think about it. The "throwaway mentality" began in the 1960s.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-09-27 20:02:51)

GW Johnson · 2016-09-28 00:03:07

Spacex has the video of Musk's IAC presentation on their website. It's nearly 2 hours. I tried without success to download the slides. Maybe soon....

Louis: he wants to start the Mars trips with the big ships in 2022. This is only a handful of people, and around 100 tons of hardware, primary of which is the propellant-making plant. The large passenger-count flights are still decades away. I think I heard him say half a century to a century to reach 1 million people on Mars.

Louis & Tom: yes it's liquid methane, but it's also LOX. The r factor should be near 3:1, meaning 3 tons of LOX for every ton of liquid methane. They must do ice mining, and they know it.

By establishing those same kinds of propellant factories further on out, his future concepts uses that same basic ship concept out to Jupiter and Saturn as well.

Musk seems to understand he cannot raise the $100's of billions to do all of this by himself. He's hoping for public-private partnerships to do all these things. Multiple companies, multiple governments.

GW

Rxke · 2016-09-28 00:30:37

GW Johnson wrote:

I tried without success to download the slides. Maybe soon....
GW

reddit's subreddit spacex has the technical slides and a bunch of other stuff

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/

Rxke · 2016-09-28 00:33:04

GW Johnson wrote:

He's hoping for public-private partnerships to do all these things. Multiple companies, multiple governments.
GW

like KSR red,green and blue mars novel then.

some big corps will be raging to be first in line on the new market.

louis · 2016-09-28 10:59:31

I too think a lot of big corporations would get behind a major project that had NASA's blessing and co-operation.

Companies like Coca Cola, Nike, Ford, Toyota, BP and so on would definitely want to be associated with such a high tech, adventurous enteprise that will feature high in news bulletins and the media generally over so many years.

If Musk gets a good sponsorship in place, I think he could well bring in revenue in the billions over a couple of decades.

I see the following main areas:

1. Sponsoring a Mars Rover.

2. Sponsoring the space suits to be worn.

3. Sponsoring the main base building.

4. A range of smaller sponsorships e.g. for the interplanetary craft, the rocket fuel plant.

5. Lead broadcaster rights - being given special access.

6. A University research centre.

7. Sponsorship by Space Agencies - effectively paying to be part of the mission.

8. Public sponsorship e.g. maybe to have your name permanently displayed on the planet as a sponsor - from $100 per person.

Rxke wrote:

GW Johnson wrote:
He's hoping for public-private partnerships to do all these things. Multiple companies, multiple governments.
GW

like KSR red,green and blue mars novel then.
some big corps will be raging to be first in line on the new market.

GW Johnson · 2016-09-28 11:01:21

I did get the presentation successfully downloaded today. It's a pdf file. 60-some slides all jammed together in one document.

Actually, I and many others guessed fairly good about what this giant system was, before his reveal at the IAC meeting in Guadalajara. We had it down to a large two-stage with refueling in LEO, with the second stage the interplanetary vehicle.

I did miss the size a bit; I thought it would be closer to 600 feet tall. It’s really about 400 feet tall.

This thing is predicated upon propellant production on Mars in order to get home again. I missed when/how that is to be done. I thought he would be sending some of that equipment ahead with his Red Dragon missions. No, the core of the first small propellant plant goes with the first big Mars ship. He’s betting crew lives that all this will work without the need to return home early if some mishap occurs.

It appears that the Red Dragon missions will be focused upon finding the right site. Somehow, he’s got to find ice they can mine for usable water. Without such water, they cannot make propellant, because they need its hydrogen and its oxygen. This is not just about making methane out of Martian “air”, you cannot do that without hydrogen. And methane does you no good if you don’t have oxygen to burn it with.

His presentation shows this launching from the pad at Cape Canaveral that sent Apollo 11 to the moon. I have some doubts about that, based on the size of this rocket, and its 28.7 million pound thrust level at liftoff, per the presentation. This thing has to be built where it is launched, it is too big to ship around the country. People live too close to Cape Canaveral for a noise level that high. It is one reason why we never built and flew the “Nova” rocket concept back in the 1960’s.

I was surprised by how high the Raptor engine chamber pressure is: shown as 300 bar, or pretty near 4500 psia. That's high! The sea level form uses expansion area ratio 40, while the vacuum form uses 200.

I have some worries about that lethal noise problem for the south Texas site. I don’t know exactly where their place is down there, but I hope it’s isolated enough to protect neighbors from such sounds.

All in all, this concept and plan is an amazing piece of work. It gets the per-person price tag for a one-way trip to Mars down to the median price of a US house. One slide projects about $140,000.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-09-28 11:04:09)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-09-28 11:10:26

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/ … all-three/
Here is the article I got on Yahoo. I wonder if Trump would go for this. We are about to get a new President in any case. Musk could probably have a billionaire to billionaire chat with Donald Trump about this if he becomes President.

RobertDyck · 2016-09-28 11:20:51

GW Johnson wrote:

I have some worries about that lethal noise problem for the south Texas site. I don’t know exactly where their place is down there, but I hope it’s isolated enough to protect neighbors from such sounds.

Wikipedia: SpaceX South Texas Launch Site

During 2012 through mid-2014, SpaceX was considering seven potential locations around the United States for the new commercial launch pad. For much of this period, a parcel of land adjacent to Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas was the leading candidate location, during an extended period while the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted an extensive environmental assessment on the use of the Texas location as a launch site. Also during this period, SpaceX began acquiring land in the area, purchasing approximately 41 acres (17 ha) and leasing 57 acres (23 ha) by July 2014.

Terraformer · 2016-09-28 15:47:40

Given that it's expendable capacity of 500 tonnes to LEO is only about 10% than Sea Dragon, perhaps it would be best to launch it from the sea...

RobS · 2016-09-28 17:11:31

Musk said that the pad at Kennedy had been built big enough for the ITS and its big booster, and he said he'd launch it from Boca Chica as well. In the question and answer period (which you can listen to on the video at the Spacex website) he said the booster would have to be built along the Gulf coast and transported by water. He said they were looking at Michaud in New Orleans (I think he meant where the shuttle tank was built).

The time from Earth to Mars is always less than 120 days. He said it was as low as 80 days and could even be as low as 30 days eventually. This solves two problems that has NASA wringing its hands: radiation and zero gee. The ITS aerobrakes--not bottom end first, but sideways like the shuttle--then turns vertical, does supersonic retropropulsion, and lands.

Musk's plan of building a launch vehicle with a take-off mass of 10,000 tonnes--22 million pounds--with a launch thrust of 28 million pounds generated by 42 Raptor engines (plenty of engine out capability!)--is shocking, innovative, and a complete game changer. The ITS is the second stage, it reaches LEO empty, and it requires up to 5 refills before it heads to Mars. The fuel cargo version can carry 370 tonnes to LEO at a time, so the ITS heads to Mars with as much as 1850 tonnes of methane and oxygen. That's a big f---ing rocket for LEO! No wonder it can fly 500 tonnes to Mars in 80 days. If you saw the Musk video, it shows the booster landing BACK ON the launch pad, so it can be refueled and launched again. It doesn't have to be moved; it lands within millimeters of where it has to be!

Musk also said that the booster stage--with the 42 raptor engines--is the easy thing to develop and build, because it is essentially a scaling up of the Falcon technology. The exception is the replacement of lithium-aluminum alloy with carbon fiber; the entire booster will be made of carbon fiber. But otherwise it has the same steering fins and it will return to the landing pad from only 5,700 mph of delta-v. Musk said that 7% of the propellant has to be reserved for the return and they think eventually they can get that down to 6%.

Musk also said that the methane and oxygen would be deep cryo because you can get 10% more into the tanks by densifying them. The tanks will be pressurized by gassifying the propellant rather than using helium, which will eliminate pesky helium bottles. The booster is supposed to be reused 1,000 times. I figure if you can put a tonne of cargo on Mars for $140,000, as he says, and it requires a total of six launches (including to get the fuel to LEO), then the cost of launching to LEO must be closer to $20,000 or $25,000 per tonne. Can you imagine that! That's about a thousand times cheaper than the space shuttle! A vacation in low Earth orbit would cost maybe $20,000 for the launch alone!

I suspect Musk will pull this off over 10 or 12 years, after some changes in the plan and some setbacks. He has just blown STS and NASA's Mars plans out of the water. They aren't dead yet, but they will become an embarrassment in two or three years. The next President will have to reconsider everything. Zubrin's Mars Direct plan--alive only in the sense that the Mars Society still talks about--is also dead. Chang-Diaz's VASIMR engine is dead. Plans to create solar-electric propulsion ultimately are dead. Plans for nuclear engines are dead; if you can get 2,000 tonnes of methane and oxygen into LEO for $40 million, why spend billions to develop other systems? There are no plans to use the system to go to the moon yet, but you can be sure those will come along in the next few years. The Russians, the Europeans, ULA, the Chinese: they will have to rethink everything or be left in the dust.

This is a revolution.

louis · 2016-09-29 03:59:21

Great summary Rob. I too am a Musk fan. He has achieved so much in such a small amount of time (only 14 years since Space X was founded and only 8 years since the Falcon 1 first flew) and he is in a hurry to realise his dream before he's too old. There have been lots of setbacks along the way (he must be into double digits with rocket launch and landing failures) but the progress has been astounding.

I think he can do it. And I think one reason may be that the funding proves easier than anticipated.

Might Musk not want to use lunar orbit and lunar landing/living as test grounds for the Mars mission?

RobS wrote:

Musk said that the pad at Kennedy had been built big enough for the ITS and its big booster, and he said he'd launch it from Boca Chica as well. In the question and answer period (which you can listen to on the video at the Spacex website) he said the booster would have to be built along the Gulf coast and transported by water. He said they were looking at Michaud in New Orleans (I think he meant where the shuttle tank was built).
The time from Earth to Mars is always less than 120 days. He said it was as low as 80 days and could even be as low as 30 days eventually. This solves two problems that has NASA wringing its hands: radiation and zero gee. The ITS aerobrakes--not bottom end first, but sideways like the shuttle--then turns vertical, does supersonic retropropulsion, and lands.
Musk's plan of building a launch vehicle with a take-off mass of 10,000 tonnes--22 million pounds--with a launch thrust of 28 million pounds generated by 42 Raptor engines (plenty of engine out capability!)--is shocking, innovative, and a complete game changer. The ITS is the second stage, it reaches LEO empty, and it requires up to 5 refills before it heads to Mars. The fuel cargo version can carry 370 tonnes to LEO at a time, so the ITS heads to Mars with as much as 1850 tonnes of methane and oxygen. That's a big f---ing rocket for LEO! No wonder it can fly 500 tonnes to Mars in 80 days. If you saw the Musk video, it shows the booster landing BACK ON the launch pad, so it can be refueled and launched again. It doesn't have to be moved; it lands within millimeters of where it has to be!
Musk also said that the booster stage--with the 42 raptor engines--is the easy thing to develop and build, because it is essentially a scaling up of the Falcon technology. The exception is the replacement of lithium-aluminum alloy with carbon fiber; the entire booster will be made of carbon fiber. But otherwise it has the same steering fins and it will return to the landing pad from only 5,700 mph of delta-v. Musk said that 7% of the propellant has to be reserved for the return and they think eventually they can get that down to 6%.
Musk also said that the methane and oxygen would be deep cryo because you can get 10% more into the tanks by densifying them. The tanks will be pressurized by gassifying the propellant rather than using helium, which will eliminate pesky helium bottles. The booster is supposed to be reused 1,000 times. I figure if you can put a tonne of cargo on Mars for $140,000, as he says, and it requires a total of six launches (including to get the fuel to LEO), then the cost of launching to LEO must be closer to $20,000 or $25,000 per tonne. Can you imagine that! That's about a thousand times cheaper than the space shuttle! A vacation in low Earth orbit would cost maybe $20,000 for the launch alone!
I suspect Musk will pull this off over 10 or 12 years, after some changes in the plan and some setbacks. He has just blown STS and NASA's Mars plans out of the water. They aren't dead yet, but they will become an embarrassment in two or three years. The next President will have to reconsider everything. Zubrin's Mars Direct plan--alive only in the sense that the Mars Society still talks about--is also dead. Chang-Diaz's VASIMR engine is dead. Plans to create solar-electric propulsion ultimately are dead. Plans for nuclear engines are dead; if you can get 2,000 tonnes of methane and oxygen into LEO for $40 million, why spend billions to develop other systems? There are no plans to use the system to go to the moon yet, but you can be sure those will come along in the next few years. The Russians, the Europeans, ULA, the Chinese: they will have to rethink everything or be left in the dust.
This is a revolution.

louis · 2016-09-29 04:04:57

"Somehow, he’s got to find ice they can mine for usable water."

Is it that difficult? I think several good candidates for ice lakes, glaciers, and also good water permafrost have been found...

GW Johnson wrote:

I did get the presentation successfully downloaded today. It's a pdf file. 60-some slides all jammed together in one document.
Actually, I and many others guessed fairly good about what this giant system was, before his reveal at the IAC meeting in Guadalajara. We had it down to a large two-stage with refueling in LEO, with the second stage the interplanetary vehicle.
I did miss the size a bit; I thought it would be closer to 600 feet tall. It’s really about 400 feet tall.
This thing is predicated upon propellant production on Mars in order to get home again. I missed when/how that is to be done. I thought he would be sending some of that equipment ahead with his Red Dragon missions. No, the core of the first small propellant plant goes with the first big Mars ship. He’s betting crew lives that all this will work without the need to return home early if some mishap occurs.
It appears that the Red Dragon missions will be focused upon finding the right site. Somehow, he’s got to find ice they can mine for usable water. Without such water, they cannot make propellant, because they need its hydrogen and its oxygen. This is not just about making methane out of Martian “air”, you cannot do that without hydrogen. And methane does you no good if you don’t have oxygen to burn it with.
His presentation shows this launching from the pad at Cape Canaveral that sent Apollo 11 to the moon. I have some doubts about that, based on the size of this rocket, and its 28.7 million pound thrust level at liftoff, per the presentation. This thing has to be built where it is launched, it is too big to ship around the country. People live too close to Cape Canaveral for a noise level that high. It is one reason why we never built and flew the “Nova” rocket concept back in the 1960’s.
I was surprised by how high the Raptor engine chamber pressure is: shown as 300 bar, or pretty near 4500 psia. That's high! The sea level form uses expansion area ratio 40, while the vacuum form uses 200.
I have some worries about that lethal noise problem for the south Texas site. I don’t know exactly where their place is down there, but I hope it’s isolated enough to protect neighbors from such sounds.
All in all, this concept and plan is an amazing piece of work. It gets the per-person price tag for a one-way trip to Mars down to the median price of a US house. One slide projects about $140,000.
GW

Antius · 2016-09-29 04:29:46

A superb achievement. I only hope that US and European governments get behind the man and give him the support he deserves.

The big weakness in Musk's plan and indeed all Mars colonisation plans is the absence of any meaningful export that can sustain a Mars colony once it is established. Some 400 years ago when colonists arrived at the new world, they were able to pay for required imports by exporting agricultural products like sugar and tobacco, things that could not easily be produced in Europe at that time. The need is even more pressing on Mars, because we need a lot of technology simply to produce breathable air, potable water, food and all of the stuff that was either freely available or producible using low tech means in the Americas. What does Mars have that can be exported back to Earth in order to fund all of this? Unless we figure that out, a Mars colony will be shabby and poor, rather like the 11th century Viking settlements of Greenland. At least the Vikings had air that they could breath.

This is one of the reasons I think that Mars is not the ideal first choice for space colonisation. The near earth asteroids can provide minerals that can conceivably be exported to pay for things.

Last edited by Antius (2016-09-29 05:20:16)

Rxke · 2016-09-29 06:12:45

So, who wants to buy a ticket?

I'm afraid I'll be too old and had given up all my Mars dreams, but now I'm with my mind on Mars again. every day. sigh.
My wife knows me, she knew I started dreaming again, I'm having a hard time deciding against it all, this was a lifelong dream, I'd given up on, and now i have a wife and a son..... If I hadn't I would start making preparations straightaway.

RobS · 2016-09-29 06:33:48

Water shouldn't be a problem if you land at the right place. The trick is finding the right place without spending billions of dollars. There appear to be sublimating glaciers on the floor of Valles Marineris and sublimating lakes near Elysium; both in low latitudes. But the only way to be sure is to send something or someone there to check.

Yes, exports are the key to long term stability. Otherwise the colony is dependent on subsidies perpetually. But if he can get the cost of launching to Earth orbit to $20,000 per tonne, then surely the launch costs from the Martian surface to Earth will be close to that as well; maybe $50,000 per tonne. We have exploited all the rich mineral veins on Earth, so gold and such are extremely expensive, and demand keeps going up. Deuterium is easier and cheaper to extract from martian water, also, because it is enriched six or seven fold. So there may be some minerals that can be exported if they can be found. If a really rich platinum meteoroid body is found on Mars it may provide a source of income as well.

Antius · 2016-09-29 07:46:24

RobS wrote:

Water shouldn't be a problem if you land at the right place. The trick is finding the right place without spending billions of dollars. There appear to be sublimating glaciers on the floor of Valles Marineris and sublimating lakes near Elysium; both in low latitudes. But the only way to be sure is to send something or someone there to check.
Yes, exports are the key to long term stability. Otherwise the colony is dependent on subsidies perpetually. But if he can get the cost of launching to Earth orbit to $20,000 per tonne, then surely the launch costs from the Martian surface to Earth will be close to that as well; maybe $50,000 per tonne. We have exploited all the rich mineral veins on Earth, so gold and such are extremely expensive, and demand keeps going up. Deuterium is easier and cheaper to extract from martian water, also, because it is enriched six or seven fold. So there may be some minerals that can be exported if they can be found. If a really rich platinum meteoroid body is found on Mars it may provide a source of income as well.

Minerals are a possibility. Deuterium I doubt, as this is very energy and capital intensive to produce. An 8 fold increase in concentration is a weak advantage if you have to transport the equipment to another planet.

One thing that the Earth needs in ample abundance is energy, especially electrical energy. This makes me wonder if it would not be possible to adapt the Gerard O’Neill solar power satellite scheme as a Mars export. With much lower gravity, modular SPS components can be launched into Mars orbit using a reusable SSTO and assembled using a system of flanges. The Martian surface has gravity for casting, all of the elements needed to refine metals and a near vacuum, non-oxidising atmosphere. When the SPS is assembled in low Mars orbit, it can be transferred to GEO using a mass-driver tug, with the SPS itself providing the necessary power.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-09-29 07:54:48

Antius wrote:

A superb achievement. I only hope that US and European governments get behind the man and give him the support he deserves.
The big weakness in Musk's plan and indeed all Mars colonisation plans is the absence of any meaningful export that can sustain a Mars colony once it is established. Some 400 years ago when colonists arrived at the new world, they were able to pay for required imports by exporting agricultural products like sugar and tobacco, things that could not easily be produced in Europe at that time. The need is even more pressing on Mars, because we need a lot of technology simply to produce breathable air, potable water, food and all of the stuff that was either freely available or producible using low tech means in the Americas. What does Mars have that can be exported back to Earth in order to fund all of this? Unless we figure that out, a Mars colony will be shabby and poor, rather like the 11th century Viking settlements of Greenland. At least the Vikings had air that they could breath.
This is one of the reasons I think that Mars is not the ideal first choice for space colonisation. The near earth asteroids can provide minerals that can conceivably be exported to pay for things.

Does Mars have gold? Mars has craters, some of the asteroids that have crashed into it undoubtedly have gold. So what's the price of gold in today's market? The price of gold, when I checked was $1,319.47 per troy ounce, there are 12 troy ounces in a pound, which makes gold $15,833.64 per pound. There are 0.45359 kilograms in a pound, that means a kilogram of gold is worth $34,907.38. A ton of gold is worth $34.9 million, that exceeds $50,000 per ton by almost a factor of one thousand. Now it will cost something to mine the gold out of Mars, and first we have to find out where the gold is. How much will it cost to prospect Mars for gold? We have a whole planet here, I'm sure there is some gold here. Hire some geologists from some gold mining companies to find the gold, I'm sure they have some idea on where to look. Mars is next to the asteroid belt, the difference is the asteroids in the belt are spread out, the ones that crashed into Mars are relatively close together and they have craters marking where they crashed.

Tell me, how did the 49ers find gold? they panned for gold nuggets in streams. There are stream beds on Mars, I am sure, if we can find gold nuggets in those stream beds, we just follow those streambeds to their point of origin and find out where that gold came from. Does that sound like a plan or what?

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-09-29 08:01:24)

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