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I'd love to visit for a couple of weeks but it's a long way! lol Not really the pioneer type. I certainly hope to live to see us begin the colonisation of Mars. Also in a few years' time I would hope we can at least experience a 3D replica of being on the planet.
I can see a lunar care home for the elderly might not be a bad idea if old age brings arthritis...that might be more practical! Maybe people will go to the Moon to die. You could just be laid out on the surface...you won't decompose, or at least it will be a very slow process.
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.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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This is something I have focussed on here in the past. From my reading I think I established (a) gold is a by product of vulcanism, and Mars has had that in the past and (b) there is no reason why on Mars veins of gold might not be found at or near the surface. If gold is found at the surface in high concentrations, it might require nothing more than a power drill to mine. However, I think you would still have to process the ore, which is not that simple. Perhaps gold nuggets or flakes might be found in dried up river beds? Or frozen in glaciers?
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?
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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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.
I agree some mineral exports may be part of Mars's economy but we shouldn't get too bound up in an earth model.
Mars has lots of other possibilities for economic development. Here are some examples:
1. University and scientific research facilities. What major university won't be desperate to get on board with Mars exploration? If you can make it affordable for them - in the tens of millions of dollars, then they will bite I believe, because those who don't will lose in this prestige battle. Universities will also pay large amounts of money for ordinary regolith from Mars to add to their geological collections.
2. The UN, Library of Congress and other institutions may wish to deposit "back up copies" of data on Mars, where they will be safe from an Earth-wide catastrophe.
3. Mars luxury products - assemble Swiss watches on Mars with some Mars product added to them. Super-rich men in particular will be eager to buy such products. Mars wine, Mars clothing...all we attract the interest of very rich people.
4. Mars Explorations: these will all attract major sponsorship while the planet is being explored.
5. Mars Art. Plenty of rich artists will be prepared to pay to be the first to create art objects on Mars and so ensure their place in the history books. Plenty of speculators will be prepared to pay commission to own such art objects. "First On Mars" will be a recurrent theme...lots of "firsts" will attract funding.
6. Mars as the Ultimate Gap Year. Lots of the super-rich will pay for their offspring to visit Mars and take part in building the colony and exploring the planet.
7. A dedicated Mars TV channel back on Earth could easily attract millions of viewers across the whole of Planet Earth.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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8. How about the Mars Olympics? What would it take to hold an Olympics competition on Mars, all sorts of records would be set on the planet. What would happen of you brought some Olympic Athletes to Mars, and you engaged them in traditional sports competition? You could set new records for the high jump and the long jump. Imagine if you built a soccer stadium on Mars under a dome. Would you like to watch wrestling in Martian gravity? I think it would be hard to get a pin. What about sprinting, would that be a problem in low gravity. I think swimming might be altered as well, certain strokes such as the butter fly would tend to propel the swimmer completely out of the water.
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8. How about the Mars Olympics? What would it take to hold an Olympics competition on Mars, all sorts of records would be set on the planet. What would happen of you brought some Olympic Athletes to Mars, and you engaged them in traditional sports competition? You could set new records for the high jump and the long jump. Imagine if you built a soccer stadium on Mars under a dome. Would you like to watch wrestling in Martian gravity? I think it would be hard to get a pin. What about sprinting, would that be a problem in low gravity. I think swimming might be altered as well, certain strokes such as the butter fly would tend to propel the swimmer completely out of the water.
No good at all. Far too speculative and nowhere near valuable enough to motivate the required investment. Needs to be a solid commodity that you can export for lots of money, like Saudi oil. Something that all the Earth needs and is prepared to pay for.
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Depends on how much it costs to get to Mars.
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Tom, the wonderful thing about gold is that it doesn't need to get shipped back. You get it out of one hole in the ground, purify it, and then put it right back into another hole in the ground, this time with armed guards. It doesn't matter to traders on Wall Street or City of London whether the asset they are trading is under Fort Knox or Hellas Basin, just that it exists.
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I'd like to think that gold on Mars will for once be appreciated for what it is, an excellent electrical conductor.
The Former Commodore
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Sadly gold is gold and will get golden treatment no matter where it is. One should expect a small variation in price due to differing industrial demand on Earth vs Mars, but this is likely to cause a premium or discount of only a few percent given the nature of how gold is used on the commodities markets.
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Rxke, you and me both. Back in my college days I would have been the first to buy a one-way ticket. Now I have a wife, two adorable daughters, and broader interests. There's a warm stirring in my heart at the prospect of Martian colonization in the very near future. But that's no longer in the cards for me. The cost of going is just too high.
I support those who want to go though, and look forward to living vicariously through them in the years to come.
Last edited by Mark Friedenbach (2016-10-01 14:17:30)
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The price of returning materials for mars regardless of the commodity will unless there is an up swing of demand cause a drop in the price that it will yield which unless the costs of getting it from mars drops will become to costly to continue initially. There needs to be an increase of demand to allow for the much higher costs of returning it to earth to make it worth while.
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Sadly gold is gold and will get golden treatment no matter where it is. One should expect a small variation in price due to differing industrial demand on Earth vs Mars, but this is likely to cause a premium or discount of only a few percent given the nature of how gold is used on the commodities markets.
What if the gold is still in the ground and unmined? It is there now. Why can't you buy and sell the Martian gold right now without mining it? I'm sure there is more gold in Mars right now than in the vaults of Fort Knox. I kind of suspect you have to do something with the gold other than leave it in the ground before you can buy and sell it. The difference between gold on Earth and gold on Mars is that you can't make jewelry out of gold that has been unmined and still on Mars. Or imagine this, a Hollywood star at the academy awards, wearing the latest fashion, and hanging on a string around her neck is a photograph of a necklace that was made out of gold and is still on Mars, and they Hollywood star insists that its hers to the reporters that ask. Gold on Mars is not the same as having gold on one's person.
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Commodity markets are more complex than that. There will be both industrial and speculative demand from both markets. And currency like commodities such as gold can be swapped between two markets. A faster way to cash out gold on Mars is to sell it, perhaps indirectly, to investors elsewhere who are pumping money into he economy.
If this doesn't make sense, consider that most gold on earth is stored in a handful of vaults and never moved. Not too long ago Germany wanted to repatriate the gold they had on reserve in New York and London, but backed out of doing so when it became clear that doing so would be prohibitively expensive, mostly due to security precautions. Yet gold doesn't trade at a discount in Frankfurt vs New York.
Tom, the only thing stopping people from doing just that is a lack of property rights and mining claim régime.
Last edited by Mark Friedenbach (2016-10-02 08:37:57)
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As Mark said, you can't buy and sell Mars gold now, because even if you can prove it's there you can't claim ownership of it. However, we've already established the precedent that you can acquire ownership of resources in space if you mine them, at least if you're a government (sample return missions, Apollo...). Under the law of the sea, fish caught in international waters belong to those who catch them, though it's regulated in most places.
Historically, though, there has been a trade in mining claims. At the moment, it's hard to see a mining claim regime emerging for space, but it's not difficult to imagine the ownership of mined gold being recognised. Whilst a vault on Mars itself would already be high security, even without guards, perhaps an orbital vault would be even better.
Mining gold for storage on Mars might be quite lucrative, though you have to take care to not crash the market. Also, the price will be different. It might be lower, because of the high withdrawal fees, but it could also be higher, because of the ultra high security.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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The Moon is also a source of Gold, and all you need is a mass driver to send it to Earth. Platinum also has a high melting point, you could just chuck it at Earth as is, it will survive entry into the atmosphere and make a crater when it hits the ground.
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I've digested Musk's Mars presentation at the IAC in Guadalajara, and a lot of the comment and criticism it has generated. My analysis is posted over at http://exrocketman.blogspot.com. It is too long to attempt posting here, although I have posted pieces here, relating to various subtopics. See "Musk Reveals His Plans for Mars", dated 10-2-16.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-10-02 15:54:20)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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Interesting response Gary. The Mars Colonial Transporter is a reusable two-stage to orbit vehicle with two different second stages, one for carrying passengers and cargo and the other is a fuel tanker for refueling the passengers and cargo module. The ship relies on a chemical methane-oxygen combustion to not only achieve orbit but also to make the trans-Mars injection, no use of ion, plasma, or nuclear drives is mentioned. The crew-cargo module also has a fan-shaped deployable solar power array to power the ship during its cruise between planets. The passengers float around in zero-g during the cruise, the ship lands without a parachute and then produces its fuel for the return journey. I assume there is some sort of nuclear reactor of the type Zubrin mentioned to power the manufacture of return fuel, but perhaps extensive arrays of photovoltaic panels could do the same job if there are enough of them. Either the first explorers will be brought home, or we'll have to keep on resupplying them from Earth. We'll need long range rovers to do a thorough exploration of Mars around the landing site and to search for water, not the type of rover Mark Watney had to jury rig in the movie The Martian. We probably should preposition several long range rovers for the explorers to use, and plenty of spare parts to repair the same rovers. the rovers should be pressurized, because its hard to live in a spacesuit for those long journeys across Martian terrain, and the rovers should either have an airlock if a docking port for externally mounted spacesuits. I think an airlock is a better idea, as it allows the space suits to be cleaned and maintained within the pressurized rover.
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Musk's design has interesting features. I've argued for self-launching space station modules. Frankly, this was after talking with engineer Janyce Wynter. She had made a presentation at a Mars Society convention about this. But I remember Skylab; it was a brilliant design. And during the Shuttle era, many people called for launching Shuttle external tanks into LEO as station modules. I have posted a couple times what that would take. Modification of a Shuttle ET would be extensive, and so much launch weight that the Shuttle wouldn't have been able to carry any cargo. All it could launch would be the ET itself. That would have been a valid mission, an ET would have been a huge station module. But notice what SpaceX did. Their second stage is integrated with the spacecraft. Video they released of a reusable Falcon 9 with Dragon showed more than what is flying now. I think that's because the video showed what they wanted to do. It showed the second stage also return to the launch site and land. They never did get the second stage reusable. That would have been 3 components: Falcon first stage, Falcon second stage, and Dragon. This design has just two components. The second stage and spacecraft are integrated, and fully reusable. Brilliant!
However, I do have concerns. Interior of the spacecraft is not detailed. It looks like the bland open space of a 1950s comic book. Or the TV mini-series "Ascension". The ship in Ascension was supposedly Dr. Freeman Dyson's vision from the late 1950s and early 1960s of using nuclear pulse propulsion to travel to Proxima Centauri in just 100 years. The show was fun, started with great promise, but ended with the usual Hollywood tropes.
But this is real life, not some silly TV show. A vast open space to play is great for a tourist trip to LEO, but not appropriate for Mars. For Mars, you want living space. Elon's emphasis on "fun" appears to be targeted at rich potential customers. But a colonial transport means settlers will travel to Mars for the rest of their lives. A few months trip time is exciting, but small compared to Mars itself. I suppose he tried to avoid the issue of artificial gravity with two features: short trip time, and make zero-G an asset by giving passengers plenty of open space to play. I would disagree with both.
Text in announcements say 80 days to Mars. As Dr. Zubrin pointed out, a free return trajectory works out to 180 day (6 month) transit time. That's a safety feature. Apollo engineers deliberately designed Apollo to use a free return trajectory to the Moon, and Apollo 13 demonstrated why that's important. With a shorter transit time, if your braking rockets don't work, you're on a trip to the asteroid belt. Or Jupiter if your speed is that high. I doubt the ship will have food and life support for a trip that long. The presentation included a chart with trip time, each launch opportunity having radically different trip times, ranging from 80 days to 150 days.
However, we could assume the colonial transporter is for much later. I would argue:
unmanned orbiter - demonstrate aerocapture
unmanned robotic Mars sample return - demonstrate ISPP.
- Keep it small, a single mission about the size of Phoenix, with a rover the size of Sojourner
unmanned rover with core drill - characterize ice at base location
human missions, all at the same location, building up equipment to expand the base with each mission
- reusable Interplanetary Transit Vehicle (ITV), designed for 12 missions = 26 years. I talked about this since 2002, so I said 12 missions long before Elon did. 4 crew members per mission.
expand base using in-situ resources.
- Mars Homestead starts with 12 crew living permanently on Mars. Then doubles the base to 24 crew. Then they build a separate base to receive the first 100 colonists.
Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-10-03 11:11:44)
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In his presentation at about the 54 minute mark Musk discusses that the second stage in its tanker form or in its spaceship form will be able to reach orbit when used as a single stage. He states though the tanker will not be able to land, presumably because of insufficient reserve fuel. Then it could still be an expendable SSTO.
However, he states it could be used as cargo ship for fast intercontinental deliveries. In this case it would need to land so presumably he means this would be at speeds just below orbital.
http://youtu.be/H7Uyfqi_TE8?t=3240
Also, notable is that the upper stage at about a third the size of the booster could instead be used as the booster for a smaller launch system. You would then develop also a smaller upper stage. This results in a system about 1/3rd the size so could transport 1/3rd the number of people, about 35 or so.
This is interesting because Elon said they may have a development upper stage within 4 years, which could then be used instead as the booster. It may even be possible to use an existing upper stage on an existing rocket for the smaller ITS upper stage we now need, such as the Delta IV upper stage or even the Ariane 5 core used as upper stage. This would clearly reduce the development cost if we could use an existing upper stage.
A quite high payload to LEO could be done using the Ariane 5 core as the upper stage in this scenario:
3820ln(1 + 2500 ÷ (90 + 170 +240)) + 4650ln(1 + 158 ÷ (12 +240)) = 9,100 m/s
So we could get 240 metric tons to LEO with this much smaller system.
Bob Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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Robert, I'm pretty sure the layout shown in the video is just demonstrating the structural components. I doubt it will be what actually flies. Note that there is no bunks, no private rooms, no seats for liftoff and landing, etc. Just the structural walls.
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I also wish Mr. Musk all the luck possible with his plans, but NASA has yet to deliver on key technologies required for his plan to work and I don't think SpaceX can do some of the things they want to do without some basic technology assistance from our government.
* CL-ECLSS
There really is no acceptable excuse as why this has not been funding priority #1 from the days of our first space stations. No other single technology is as important to the feasibility of long term human habitation of space and other planetary bodies.
* ISPP
Even if we hadn't thrown away our expensive and hard-won nuclear in-space propulsion technologies, all reusable rockets have to refuel somewhere. If NASA's goal is to explore and live on other planets, this has to be funding priority #2. Again, there's just no acceptable excuse as to why there hasn't been a single experiment to refuel a cryogenically propelled rocket in space.
* In-Space Propulsion
Apart from ignorance-backed public hysteria over all things nuclear, there was no good reason why in-space propulsion technologies stagnated for decades by forcing rocket scientists to abandon nuclear propulsion as soon as the associated development programs started bearing fruit. We've known for many decades that nuclear propulsion technologies typically function as required, grossly out-perform chemical propulsion technologies in terms of propellant mass expended for velocity achieved, and virtually every new nuclear technology, that has come along has its funding pulled the moment fully functional solutions are developed. Our oligarchs in Washington and our pseudo-intellectual eco warriors are largely to blame for that nonsense.
As a result, we're still stuck with 1950's nuclear power and propulsion technology. If nuclear scientists were permitted to use 1970's nuclear power and propulsion technology, Mars exploration would be in NASA's rear-view mirror, and there'd probably already be a colony on Mars, so discussions of Musk's plans for Mars would likely be academic in nature.
The future of space power and propulsion technologies for human space flight isn't solar panels and batteries, it's fission, fusion, and anti-matter, in that order. The very first time someone flips a switch on a hot fusion reactor and demonstrates sustainment of the reaction for a day, I'll be a believer. Anti-matter propulsion is even more fanciful than fusion at this moment in time, although if we were willing to spend the money, we could figure out a way to produce and store enough positrons to make chemical and nuclear thermal rockets superfluous for in-space propulsion.
The only way we'll escape rocket equation purgatory in our lifetimes is when peoples' reaction to the word "nuclear" changes from fear and dread to something that they understand is reliable and not particularly dangerous when properly designed and monitored, even if they don't understand every little detail about how it works. Chemical power and propulsion technologies are obscenely wasteful, but somehow two thirds of all energy production here on Earth still revolves around technologies that were in use before indoor plumbing and electricity were commonplace.
* MCP Space Suits
After nearly four decades of space flight we're still using the same space suit, very nearly unchanged, with technologies that predate micro-electronics. This one is funding priority #3. There won't be an EVA per day during Mars surface exploration missions absent massive improvements in current space suit technology. I think Administrator Newman has the right idea here.
* Artificial Gravity
NASA hasn't even attempted to address the only debilitating health effect from long duration space travel since one of their Agena docking targets malfunctioned and caused a mission abort. Anyone else here think control has improved just a little since those days?
Conclusion:
Absent CL-ECLSS, a fully functional ISPP plant, and MCP suits, I don't see Musk's rocket ever leaving the surface of Mars after it gets there, let alone any ability to support more than a few humans living there for more than the duration of a long stay exploration mission. Without those key technologies, every mission is flags-and-footprints.
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kbd512, the great thing about those things (life support, ISPP, and MCP suits) is that they don't require billion dollar budgets to develop - whilst the total development cost might be measured in the billions, the different components can be developed separately. The best thing various space organisations such as Mars Society could be doing is probably to support such work.
As regards Musk's mega rocket, I'm more interested in the possibilities for building a new space station, a combination of a depot, space business park, and research centre for the things we'll need to colonise space.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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...
Text in announcements say 80 days to Mars. As Dr. Zubrin pointed out, a free return trajectory works out to 180 day (6 month) transit time. That's a safety feature. Apollo engineers deliberately designed Apollo to use a free return trajectory to the Moon, and Apollo 13 demonstrated why that's important. With a shorter transit time, if your braking rockets don't work, you're on a trip to the asteroid belt. Or Jupiter if your speed is that high. I doubt the ship will have food and life support for a trip that long. The presentation included a chart with trip time, each launch opportunity having radically different trip times, ranging from 80 days to 150 days.
It should be noted though that Apollo did you use aerocapture on return to Earth. The reason is the Earth has an atmosphere so can be used to slow down just as Mars does.
Bob Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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No, I think we've been through this before. The Outer Space Treaty says any private organisation working off Earth has to do so under the authority of a signatory state. It also says no one can claim the celestial bodies.
It most definitely does not prohibit mining.
I would argue once a metal is extracted ownership would follow Earth laws. So if US courts finds that the gold belongs to the company or state that mined it, as I expect they would, then those ownership rights would be respected within the USA.
As Mark said, you can't buy and sell Mars gold now, because even if you can prove it's there you can't claim ownership of it. However, we've already established the precedent that you can acquire ownership of resources in space if you mine them, at least if you're a government (sample return missions, Apollo...). Under the law of the sea, fish caught in international waters belong to those who catch them, though it's regulated in most places.
Historically, though, there has been a trade in mining claims. At the moment, it's hard to see a mining claim regime emerging for space, but it's not difficult to imagine the ownership of mined gold being recognised. Whilst a vault on Mars itself would already be high security, even without guards, perhaps an orbital vault would be even better.
Mining gold for storage on Mars might be quite lucrative, though you have to take care to not crash the market. Also, the price will be different. It might be lower, because of the high withdrawal fees, but it could also be higher, because of the ultra high security.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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I don't think anyone is arguing differently, louis
The problem is the lack of mining claims -- the exclusive right to extract resources from an area. Without the ability to file and enforce mining claims we find ourselves in a situation where no one is willing to invest the capital necessary to build new businesses.
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