Venus First

Terraformer · 2008-05-05 05:42:31

Plus Asteroids are cheaper to mine. If a Gold/Platinum/Iridium Asteroid was found that came near the Earth say once every 1.5 years, how much will do you think there'd be in Mining it? With costs so high that, in the words of Elon Musk, 'Even if there was a load of Purified Crack Coccaine up there, it wouldn't be economical to retreive it.'

In fact, I think there are some asteroids like that.

louis · 2008-05-05 07:33:21

Bobunf -

I did do some speculative budget work. I'll see if I can dig that up. Obviously no one is in a position to predict if it's economical at the moment. But the price of gold has risen sharply. Indians love gold - there are a billion plus of them and they are getting richer all the time. I think it is reasonable to assume the price of gold will continue to rise.

You say:

" (Quoting me first) - “no licensing costs, no taxes, no environmental pollution control costs”

This situation will probably last for about five minutes. "

You've got to Think Mars when doing Mars economics. Any licensing or tax costs, were they to emerge would be income for the consortium - it would be the consortium paying itself. The net effect (apart from any administrative costs) would be zero. Obviously environmental pollution controls would cost but I can't see those being put in place for a long time, beyond some basic landscape preservation. "Pollution" on Mars could be seen as "terraforming" contribution.

Terraformer -

We only have your word for asteroid mining being cheaper. Others have raised technological objections.

louis · 2008-05-05 07:48:32

I did some work on this before, looking at real costs of gold mining on earth and then analysing what the earth costs of mining on Mars would be. The figures are indexed to 100.

Here's my speculative budget work:

-----------------------------------GOLD MINING COSTS

COST/PRODUCTION
FACTOR EARTH
(MARS FIGURE IN
BRACKETS)

Tax burden 25 (2)

Mineral Rights 10 ( 0)

Administrative costs 10 (1)

Land. 15 (0)

Energy 10 (5)

Labour 10 (2)

Machinery, 15 (30)
infrastructure
and supplies.

Transit to market 5 (20)

TOTAL 100 (60)

Notes:

1. Tax burden. The earth figure is low. In industrialised countries the tax burden on GDP ranges from about 35% in the USA to about 56% in Denmark. The figure is for all taxes e.g. national sales taxes, special mineral taxes, social security taxes, environmental taxes (e.g. landfill), income tax on employees, company tax and dividend tax.

2. Land costs. On earth everyone either has to purchase land or rent land to conduct economic operations – unless of course they own it to begin with. Mineral companies tend either to have to purchase or rent land. On Mars there will no land costs.

3. Mineral extraction rights normally have a value on earth. You have to pay for a licence to government, the Crown or a landowner.

4. Administrative costs on earth can be huge. You have to run a personnel department, interact with earth governments at national and local level re tax, health and safety etc etc, pay for legal advice, minute all your meetings, communicate with shareholders. prepare detailed accounts etc. None of these will be essential on Mars, though some might be desirable.

5. Energy costs. On earth, energy companies in turn have to pay for land, administrative, employees – all their earth style cost factors. Most of these will not be present on Mars. There will be some on going maintenance which will require some imports from Earth, but energy supply is essentially a sunk cost which will not appear on the balance sheet. However, the Mars cost here is conservative at 50% of energy costs on earth.

6. On earth virtually all labour has to be paid for by a mineral extraction company. On Mars this will not be the case. Firstly, many universities, research institutes and companies will be prepared to sponsor employee participation on the mining and peripheral activities. Secondly, a period of residence on Mars will be such an amazing experience and the lure of helping build humanity’s first off planet colony such an incredible pull, that much of the labour will be supplied voluntarily (just as in Israel for decades now young Jews have gone and given their labour for free to help build the Jewish homeland).

7. Machinery, infrastructure and supply. The key issue here is to what extent the Mars colony can build its own equipment and to what extent it needs to be supplied. A subsidiary question is to what extent we have to import materials in order to be able to create the ability to manufacture vehicles etc in situ.

Two points: firstly Mars based equipment does not have to be energy efficient. Energy is plentiful and cheap.

8. Transit. This is of course the crunch figure. How much will it cost to get the processed gold to market? At $20,000 a kilogram, it’s going to be $20million a tonne. But I think it is reasonable to suppose we without major technological innovation this figure could be reduced to $4million a tonne over the next 20 years. It has to be remembered that gold mining companies also often face high transit costs. Building say a 200 mile road to a desert gold mine for no other reason than to transport gold is an expensive proposition. Building a port/dock where there was not one before is an expensive proposition. By contrast Mars gold could be landed reasonably close to markets.

bobunf · 2008-05-05 09:50:55

"Mars based equipment does not have to be energy efficient. Energy is plentiful and cheap." ???

What is this plenitful and cheap source of energy on Mars? How about we use whatever it is on Earth?

Bob

Terraformer · 2008-05-05 10:27:18

We only have your word for asteroid mining being cheaper. Others have raised technological objections.

These technological objections sound interesting. I'd like to hear them.

I just thought that it would be cheaper due to the lower delta v to get to the Asteroids, the fact that they're closer, and no gravity well to lift the materials out of.

But that won't matter. We can throw energy at the prblem. We'll have plenty of it.

The only power source that can deliver what you are talking about is Nuclear. I don't think Politics will allow a Nuke Reactor to be launched into space.

bobunf · 2008-05-05 10:55:59

Most taxes in industrialized countries go to support health, welfare and retirement benefits. You figure on Mars nobody will get sick or live long enough to retire?

Administrative costs for a Mars operation would be much higher. Planning and logistical operations would be much more complex, critical and lacking in fall back options. You better do it right the first time, so you better plan carefully. What tasks are there on Earth that you don’t have to do on Mars?

How can energy possibly be less expensive on Mars than on Earth? On Mars there’s
> No hydro, geothermal, or fossil fuels (even if you had fossil fuels, there’s no oxygen to burn them with);
> Nuclear would be much more expensive to build and run;
> Wind would be much less viable with 1% of the air density of Earth.
> Earth has greater solar insolation (about 2.3 times as much), no necessity for overnight storage (since all kinds of alternate supplies are available) and easy access to all the raw materials needed for thermal or photovoltaic.

How can labor possibly be less expensive? Just the cost of transporting a worker to Mars with a reasonable amount of air, food, water, clothing and other personal items, plus habitat items that can’t economically be procured on Mars would cost $1,250 per hour--assuming a low low $5,000 per kilogram cost of transport and a two year contract. Plus he’d want to get paid. His wages and benefits could easily be more than an order of magnitude higher than the wages and benefits of a worker on Earth.
> Mars workers cost $1,400 an hour—and that’s really low ball
> Earth workers cost from $10 to $100 an hour—and that’s really realistic.
Which operation will have lower labor costs?

Any robotic mining or processing operation would be much cheaper to run on Earth, considering transport costs alone. But, on Earth, it would also be much easier and more flexible in hundreds of ways. The tech, for instance, can just walk up to the machine, take his gloves and googles off, eyeball the thing up close and personal, feel the trouble area and make the necessary tweak. Hard to do in a space suit, and no worries about lubricant behavior in a vacuum, the effects of overnight 100 degree temperature changes, super abrasive dust, radiation dangers and dozens of other problems.

The machinery, supplies and infrastructure for Mars would certainly cost much more than twice what they would on Earth. This will be very specialized, mostly “one off” stuff with requirements very different from Earth based operations. Different gravity, vacuum, temperatures and temperature changes not experienced on Earth, pervasive and abrasive dust, radiation, no ability to use fossil fuels, extremely limited water and oxygen for processing, and on and on.

And then there’s the cost of transporting this stuff to Mars. Mining machinery, supplies and infrastructure doesn’t approach $5,000 per kilogram in cost—maybe $100 per kilogram for really expensive stuff. The transportation costs alone mean that the equipment will cost 50 times what it would on Earth

Plus none of this stuff would have any resale value.

Also, your transit to market figure is too low--by a lot.

Bob

louis · 2008-05-05 16:40:54

Hi there Bobunf,

I've been through some of these objections before with others elsewhere. Here is some food for thought:

1. Just as you will find that in say a country like Australia the cost of roads and ports/docks have been funded by the state, even though in many cases a gold or other mining operation will be the chief beneficiary, so something similar would obtain with the Mars base. We are there because we want to be. We are going to have an energy infrastructure, air provision, habitats etc. whatever we do. The object of gold mining would be to defray the costs of infrastructure provision which will inevitably arise from our desire to inhabit the planet.

2. Regarding energy costs, I think you would have to take a close look at the real costs of energy companies. How much is associated with the technology and how much with all the administration, planning, taxes dividend payments and other human costs involved in modern energy provision. Well I don't have the figures to hand, although I did look into that before, but they are a very high proportion (about 70% of the cost of fuel in the UK is tax). These costs don't apply on Mars. Again also the difference on Mars will be that we will be creating a large energy infrastructure (in this way it is more comparable to a road built by the Australian government into the desert interior which is then used by the gold mining company). We will be building in energy abundance. It would make sense to make use of the surplus efficiently. Profitable gold mining would be a very good use of the energy surplus. If we can create solar panel manufacture on Mars, the costs will be even lower.

3. Regarding labour costs, I think there be no salary payments as such. We will be using voluntary labour or labour by agreement (with scientific institutions). It is true that the labour needs to be housed and fed but again, I am assigning those costs to the infrastructure.

4. You say: "The machinery, supplies and infrastructure for Mars would certainly cost much more than twice what they would on Earth. " Well you may be on firmer ground here. It's difficult to tell. I think a lot will depend on the purity of the ore. I am assuming a very high purity on or near the surface of 1000ppm. This is very high but not impossibly so, given that Mars has never been prospected or mined - as far as we know. I think the average on earth in mines these days is much, much lower well under 10ppm (i.e. all the good deposits near the surface have been worked over the millennia). So the amount of machinery required to mine on Mars in my view would be FAR LESS. We are talking really about diggers - not boring in deep mines. I have seen videos of automated diggers. It's NOT advanced technology. But of course on Mars we would need advanced cold and dust proofing so they will certainly be more expensive than on earth and then you've got to get them to Mars - no small expense!

bobunf · 2008-05-05 16:56:11

I can’t understand how you can believe that an industrial operation on Mars will be immune from administration and planning costs, from the things that taxes buy (like health, welfare and retirement benefits), and that capital will be free (no dividend payments).

“there be no salary payments”

I’d call that super-optimistic, not to mention totally unrealistic. But even then, the cost of transporting these people to and from Mars dwarfs the salary payments. And there’s also all of the costs of supporting them on Mars and in space when they’ll be doing nothing useful for a year.

Bob

louis · 2008-05-06 01:48:50

Did reply quite extensively but obviously pressed the wrong button! Will try and reconstruct my reply as soon as I get the time.

louis · 2008-05-06 13:34:22

Bobunf -

You say:

"I can’t understand how you can believe that an industrial operation on Mars will be immune from administration and planning costs, from the things that taxes buy (like health, welfare and retirement benefits), and that capital will be free (no dividend payments)."

RESPONSE: Of course these costs will not apply. There are no planning laws on Mars. Administration will be absolutely minimal, because there will be no staff hierarchy, no neighbours, no legal structure, no contract monitoring etc etc.

You say:

“there be no salary payments”

I’d call that super-optimistic, not to mention totally unrealistic. But even then, the cost of transporting these people to and from Mars dwarfs the salary payments. And there’s also all of the costs of supporting them on Mars and in space when they’ll be doing nothing useful for a year."

RESPONSE: I have explained why there will no salary payments and you haven't really put up an argument against that. Firstly the basic crew are going to be there anyway if we want to colonise Mars. Volunteer and scientific staff will be prepared to work unpaid for this once in a lifetime opportunity to experience life on another planet - just as gap year students are only too happy to go abroad and help poor communities build wells and so on - except this will obviously be a v. high tech version of a gap year experience.

It is true the people have to be transported there, but do you want this colony to expand or not? What's the alternative? Here I am setting out a possible (I'll say no more) way of funding this expansion.

I don't think it would be fair to allocate all the cost of transporting people
to the gold operation, anymore than in the 19th century you would add the cost of transporting people to Australia to the cost of gold mining or sheep farming. It used to take 6 months to get people to Australia - and they also had to be fed all the way.

I do agree that the cost of transport is going to be crucial to this but I think we should really be looking to the gold mining operation to cover the cost of transport of the gold from Mars to earth.

JoshNH4H · 2008-05-06 14:32:06

to go back to venus: If it were terraformable, it would be worth it. I would suggest sequestering the atmosphere to oxalic acid, H2C2O4. This will require 10^19 kg H2.

bobunf · 2008-05-06 18:25:33

What happens if somebody gets sick and can’t work? Do you just toss him out the airlock? (Makes for difficult recruiting and really bad publicity.) Or, who pays for medical care? Supporting this guy till he gets well or dies? Who pays the funeral expenses? This might apply even if you do just toss him out the airlock.

When there are kids, who pays for pre-natal care, birthing, day care, schooling, medical care, etc?

If somebody is murdered or something is stolen, what mechanism is in place to find out who did it and to apprehend the perpetuator? Who pays for these mechanisms as well as all the legal processes? Presumably incarceration won’t be necessary since you can simply toss him out the airlock, unless you want to avoid that bad publicity and difficulty in recruiting.

Somebody has to decide who sleeps where, what’s for dinner, who gets to go where and how, and a million other things.
Somebody has to organize the work and the workers: who works when, where and doing what.
Somebody has to plan how often things are cleaned, lubricated, filters changed, a host of other preventive and other maintenance issue.
Somebody has to decide what machines and personnel to use for everything, including mining, processing and transporting.
Somebody has to arrange to get the people, machines and supplies where and when they are supposed to be.
Somebody has to adjudicate disputes about work assignments and allocation of resources.
Planning where and how to mine, process and transport will be uniquely critical.
There has to be planning for the provision of medical and dental care and the supplies and equipment that goes with it.
Somebody has to monitor that all of these functions get done, done right and done on time.
Somebody has to keep productivity, accounting and many other records.

These are a few of the reasons that taxes (or their equivalent in payroll costs), administrative and planning costs will be large and completely unavoidable.

Bob

louis · 2008-05-06 18:41:03

Bobunf -

I've made it clear I am talking about the initial colony phase up to about 100 residents. Most of the issues you refer to will apply to much larger communities.

The likelihood of people falling seriously ill will be quite remote I would say. How many people have been incapacitated on the ISS? Similarly with criminal assaults/murder.

Yes there will need to be planning. I think most of this will be around imported software. This will set out all the key actions. There will be some crew members who will be placed in charge of the gold mining operations. They will be responsible for the detailed planning e.g selecting days when there are no dust storms adn when energy is available etc . I think many of the processes would be automated. As indicated I have seen videos of automated diggers at work - perfectly feasible. I think essentially it's a case of selecting your gold ore site. Programming automated diggers to work at the regolith. Transfer of ore to automated processing machines which will then produce pure gold.

bobunf · 2008-05-06 18:55:43

“the basic crew are going to be there anyway”

Don’t these guys have anything to do besides mine gold? This might be your first disputed work assignment from one of the PhD’s, “I came here to study Martian tectonics, not shovel rock. Besides, you could get killed doing that.”

“Volunteer and scientific staff will be prepared to work unpaid...” You’ll need lots of luck with that one.

The sponsoring institutions won’t go for spending tens of millions of dollars sending a very highly trained specialist to Mars with all his really expensive equipment so he can shovel rock. That’s called an opportunity cost, and it won’t fly.

The personnel plan seems to be to spend many millions of dollars to send people who volunteered for a minimum of three years doing unskilled labor in an unpleasant and really dangerous environment, so (as they may see it) some organization can make lots and lots of money off their backs. Volunteers are notoriously unproductive, and they will probably get a lot more unproductive after the first two or three are killed.

Gap year students may be only too happy to help poor communities build wells and so on, but they don’t get much done, especially when they start dying.

People went to Australia in the 19th century because they were forced to, they saw an economic opportunity, or they came to convert the heathen. You’re not suggesting that any of those motives apply to Mars and the gold mining operation.

Bob

bobunf · 2008-05-06 19:02:11

“Programming automated diggers to work at the regolith. Transfer of ore to automated processing machines which will then produce pure gold.”

Why not just use these machines on Earth thus avoiding enormous transportation and other costs?

Bob

bobunf · 2008-05-06 19:07:34

“I am talking about the initial colony phase up to about 100 residents.”

You seem to be suggesting dis-economies of scale, which has certainly not been the mining experience on Earth.

Where has such a scheme ever worked? In which some company has convinced people to mine gold for nothing and give the gold to the company for their profit?

What a fairy tale that would make.

Bob

louis · 2008-05-07 01:58:11

Bobunf -

There are always diseconomies of scale in a small community. I wouldn't recommend the village blacksmith attempt setting up a robot car factory by himself.

My other response is: Where can you find on earth gold deposits near the surface with a purity of 1000 ppm. The answer is you can't. All such deposits were long ago exhausted. Humans have been looking for good gold deposits for millennia now and we are down to the poor deposits. The economies of gold mining on Mars must start with the assumption that depoists of high purity do exist. That is a reasonable assumption.

I have already given you two examples of where people have worked voluntarily: young Jewish people go every year to Israel to give their labour freely to the Israeli community and young people help out with charity projects every year all around the world.

Are you seriously suggesting that no well qualified volunteers could ever be found for 2 years working on Mars, including some (but not exclusively so) gold mining? They would get their food and lodgings. But they wouldn't get paid. Are you seriously suggesting that there are no scientific or other institutions existing on earth that would fund scientists and technical personnel to go to Mars and help establish gold mining?

I don't find that credible. The motivation for working for free on Mars is twofold: personal satisfaction - you will be one of a tiny minority who has been to Mars - imagine the personal kudos attached to that and idealistic - you will be part of a wonderful enterprise of historic importance and a chance to build a better world.

Volunteers may be notoriously inefficient on the whole - doesn't mean a small number selected from thousands and judged to be highly competent and skilled will be.

Automated diggers? Well that is exactly what companies are looking at - using programmed automated diggers. However, the difference here is that there are hardly any places left on earth where you can extract gold like that, and so cheaply. You have to start digging deep into the ground and that is VERY expensive as anyone will tell you. The difference then is that on Mars we have the chance to engage in (small scale) open cast gold mining - which is the cheapest possible way to work any ore.

Gregori · 2008-05-08 06:33:55

There is also the logistics on the planet to think about.

Where the Gold desposits are may not be where water or solar power is. This will mean importing loads of materials etc

There are no roads for transporting.

All this mining will have to be done in space suits and air sealed vehicles which are very awkward.

Because you working with heavy machines on rocks, stuff will get broken and punctured, which will be constant danger. On earth, punctures on a factory don't depressurize the facility and kill everyone inside.

The risk of fatality or serioous injury on Mars would be much higher, so health&saftety + insurance costs will go through the roof

Desposits of Radon Gas could also be a huge problem

Honestly, I think automated mining of asteroids will happen first. Manned space flight is just too expensive. People are not so bothered about a robot dying.

louis · 2008-05-08 11:05:30

Gregori -

You make some good points.

Everything does indeed depend on whether there are the gold deposits, how close to the surface they are and where they are.

There is good reason to think there are such deposits - because gold deposition is associated with vulcanism and we know there has been vulcanism on Mars.

I think solar power can be provided fairly easily in most parts of the planet.

Water is another matter.

Whilst there will have to be some human outdoor working, I have seen automated diggers working on video. It's not particularly advanced technology. As long as the deposits are exposed at the surface we can simply have automated digging. Moreover the ore could be placed in automatic vehicles that use transponders to transport the ore to a base. However, it would probably make more sense to have a base in the mine area. Depends really on water resources.

Puncturing I don't see as a problem. Safety has got to be the top priority. We won't have any danger of puncturing of habitats by industrial processes. This is why in my proposals I have always argued for such processes to be sited a considerable distance from habitats - probably 200 metres or more. But remember, on my proposals the habitats will be covered in regolith and not easily punctured.

What we need to look at more closely is the gold refining process. I think this involves a series of settling tanks and electro-chemical processes.

I think the risk of injury or fatality from the gold mining process would be close to zero. We are not talking about mining or tunnelling. We are talking about small scale open cast mining with minimal human involvement.

louis · 2008-05-08 11:13:29

For those who are interested, this is a very good summary of the processes involved in the gold refining processes:-

http://www.nma.org/technology/refprocess.asp

Obviously this would require a lot of organisation and preparation of materials for the processing. I don't know to what extent one might be able to substitute energy for chemical processing, but if possible then that would probably be desirable in the conditions obtaining on Mars.

SpaceNut · 2018-09-18 17:06:26

A reason for why it should not be last but on a more equal oportunity....

JoshNH4H · 2018-09-18 17:56:10

Wow, we've really been kicking around the same arguments for the last ten years I guess.

bobunf wrote:

Most taxes in industrialized countries go to support health, welfare and retirement benefits. You figure on Mars nobody will get sick or live long enough to retire?
Administrative costs for a Mars operation would be much higher. Planning and logistical operations would be much more complex, critical and lacking in fall back options. You better do it right the first time, so you better plan carefully. What tasks are there on Earth that you don’t have to do on Mars?
How can energy possibly be less expensive on Mars than on Earth? On Mars there’s
> No hydro, geothermal, or fossil fuels (even if you had fossil fuels, there’s no oxygen to burn them with);
> Nuclear would be much more expensive to build and run;
> Wind would be much less viable with 1% of the air density of Earth.
> Earth has greater solar insolation (about 2.3 times as much), no necessity for overnight storage (since all kinds of alternate supplies are available) and easy access to all the raw materials needed for thermal or photovoltaic.
How can labor possibly be less expensive? Just the cost of transporting a worker to Mars with a reasonable amount of air, food, water, clothing and other personal items, plus habitat items that can’t economically be procured on Mars would cost $1,250 per hour--assuming a low low $5,000 per kilogram cost of transport and a two year contract. Plus he’d want to get paid. His wages and benefits could easily be more than an order of magnitude higher than the wages and benefits of a worker on Earth.
> Mars workers cost $1,400 an hour—and that’s really low ball
> Earth workers cost from $10 to $100 an hour—and that’s really realistic.
Which operation will have lower labor costs?
Any robotic mining or processing operation would be much cheaper to run on Earth, considering transport costs alone. But, on Earth, it would also be much easier and more flexible in hundreds of ways. The tech, for instance, can just walk up to the machine, take his gloves and googles off, eyeball the thing up close and personal, feel the trouble area and make the necessary tweak. Hard to do in a space suit, and no worries about lubricant behavior in a vacuum, the effects of overnight 100 degree temperature changes, super abrasive dust, radiation dangers and dozens of other problems.
The machinery, supplies and infrastructure for Mars would certainly cost much more than twice what they would on Earth. This will be very specialized, mostly “one off” stuff with requirements very different from Earth based operations. Different gravity, vacuum, temperatures and temperature changes not experienced on Earth, pervasive and abrasive dust, radiation, no ability to use fossil fuels, extremely limited water and oxygen for processing, and on and on.
And then there’s the cost of transporting this stuff to Mars. Mining machinery, supplies and infrastructure doesn’t approach $5,000 per kilogram in cost—maybe $100 per kilogram for really expensive stuff. The transportation costs alone mean that the equipment will cost 50 times what it would on Earth
Plus none of this stuff would have any resale value.
Also, your transit to market figure is too low--by a lot.
Bob

SpaceNut · 2018-09-18 18:59:43

Sure return on investment,, will not get us there only the drive of the rich and governments that want too will....

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