Mars Is Not America

Terraformer · 2021-11-01 07:09:55

Mars is not America. There are no fertile soils ready for planting. There is no large river system splitting the planet in half and making navigation easy. No herds of animals that can be hunted for sustenance. The very air you breathe has to be manufactured from gases extracted out of a soft vacuum.

My point is, it's not comparable to the settlement and expansion of the US of A. Maybe, at a stretch, one could compare it to the Norse settlement of Greenland. Consequently, the culture that was formed by the American expansion will not be replicated on Mars, where pressurised space costs time and resources and soil has to be built out of toxic dirt. It will be something different, something that can survive such a harsh environment.

Rugged individualism won't cut it. Martians will not spread out across an icy desert - they can't afford to be so far from help. With all the various specialities needed to build and maintain habitable environments, from air filtration to soil making to greenhouse manufacture to chemical industry etcetera etcetera, those looking to live on Mars will have to learn to live in compact villages surrounded by a tight ring of intensively farmed land. They are not exempt from the same rule that holds on Terra - geography shapes culture.

tahanson43206 · 2021-11-01 07:21:53

For Terraformer re new topic ... best wishes for success with your new venture here! At the very least, I ** hope ** that slavery is not introduced to Mars in the early period, so it has to be removed later.

Involuntary servitude was a practice in England at the time America was settled, although the English put a stop to it long before the English transplanted to America were persuaded to give up the practice.

There is ** another ** example from history that is worth noting .... "Voluntary" servitude was quite common at the time. I'd like to see ** that ** practice eliminated from consideration for the Mars undertaking.

"Voluntary" service still exists today in the form of contracts signed by those who enter the military in most Nations on Earth.

I'm not sure of the details, but I understand that something like voluntary servitude still exists on Earth, in the Middle East in particular, but everywhere that unscrupulous employers can get away with it.

(th)

kbd512 · 2021-11-01 09:26:58

Terraformer,

Considering the fact that nobody outside of America is anywhere close to having the ability to colonize Mars, that's a curious statement. When America was first colonized, there were no aquaponics or aeroponics, no interplanetary rockets, no motorized vehicles powered by batteries or combustion engines or fuel cells, no microchips, no computers, no internet, no cell phones, no laser communications, no 5G networks, no solar panels, and no nuclear reactors.

Due to the simple historical fact that America was founded, we now have interplanetary rockets, personal pocket supercomputers with internet access, microchips galore to exert computer control over everything from toasters to interplanetary spacecraft, the internet / information superhighway, cell phones and cellular networks, lasers, low cost mass-produced motorized vehicles, fuel cells, practical photovoltaic panels, and nuclear reactors.

We are starting with the technologies that exist right now, not the technologies that existed 200 years ago. The people who colonized America 200+ years ago were starting with the technologies that were available 200 years ago. Times have changed a lot, and that's a good thing. All of that stuff happened because once upon a time, there existed a collection of those rugged individualists who were willing to take terrible risks for the ultimate benefit of everyone. None of them lived to see the ultimate fruits of their labor, but they still conceptualized, designed, and then built the world we live in today.

I can tell you that without a healthy measure of individualism, the very first problem encountered that can't be solved by any amount of collectivist mentality will deliver everyone so afflicted to death's doorstep. The evidence-free assertion that "all of us aren't as dumb as one of us" is plainly wrong. A collection of people with a bad idea is no better than a single person with a bad idea, and arguably much worse, because the true believers will mercilessly torment anyone who thinks differently. The ideologues believe what they're doing is justified and will ignore any evidence that does not reinforce their belief system.

A great many people once thought the world was flat. They were all wrong and all equally ignorant on that specific point, which was not a minor one. It didn't make the least bit of difference that their beliefs about the shape of Earth were widely held. That one guy who thought the Earth was a sphere, the one that the rest of them persecuted and tormented endlessly for holding a different belief, that guy was still correct and everyone else was still wrong. That is an absolute, it's not open to interpretation or re-imagining of history. True collectivists will never admit when they are wrong, because to do so would be to admit to themselves that their beliefs about humanity were in error.

Furthermore, rugged individualism doesn't mean cutting yourself off from the rest of humanity. That is a popular narrative amongst leftists who think anyone who puts some physical distance between themselves and hordes of screaming / chanting lunatics means that the person doing that doesn't want any part of humanity. It actually means that they're trying to save their own humanity by not being dragged into the maw of rampant ideologically-motivated insanity masquerading as "caring" or "not caring" about this / that / the other. That's why you see an increasing number of individualists trying to leave cities to put some distance between themselves and people who cannot be reasoned with or bargained with. Those individualists are intelligent enough to know that they're not going to get the collectivists to stop and think about what they're doing to other people and that it's foolish to try.

tahanson43206 · 2021-11-01 09:57:45

For kbd512 re #3

Nice Volley!

For Terraformer ... It is possible more than one forum reader will be looking forward to your carefully reasoned, calm reply.

kbd512 has a distinctive combative style that can cause unneeded emotional responses in the unwary,.

You have certainly stirred up a debate topic with some potential to go the distance, by combining the focus of the entire forum with the combative energies of the US based membership.

I'd like to see someone bring forward the evidence that most ideas developed in the United States would have developed in other Nations if the US had not been on the scene, or if the native Americans had been able to fend off the Europeans at the beginning of the great European expansion 500 years ago.

(th)

Terraformer · 2021-11-01 10:28:54

Friendly reminder that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, not America. That it was the oldest and most developed parts of America where it caught first, not the rugged frontier. That America's major contribution - the transistor computer - came in long after the frontier closed.

I can tell you that without a healthy measure of individualism, the very first problem encountered that can't be solved by any amount of collectivist mentality will deliver everyone so afflicted to death's doorstep.

Yes, but a 'healthy measure' falls far short of individual homesteads. Those will deliver people to the grave as soon as they experience a problem that can't be solved by the limited skillset on hand.

Mars *does not care about your political and cultural ideas*. You might want a Mars of spread out homesteads. Mars says, okay, but the price of that is a high death rate.

We are starting with the technologies that exist right now, not the technologies that existed 200 years ago. The people who colonized America 200+ years ago were starting with the technologies that were available 200 years ago.

And the technologies they had 200 years ago were largely of the sort that an individual, and at most a small community, could repair and replicate by themselves. The technologies that exist right now are of the sort that rely upon a long and fragile supply chain involving at a minimum millions of people... and if they fall apart, you have minutes to hours to repair them before dying, not days to weeks. There's no going to Croatan if things fail on Mars.

kbd512 · 2021-11-01 12:02:22

tahanson43206,

I think I have a habit of distilling arguments down to the underlying ideas represented by the words selected by other people to convey their ideas. If a challenge to the same tired ideas that have never worked before is seen as combative, then so be it. Collectivists never have adequate responses regarding why their ideas continually fail.

The Soviet Union had a myriad of opportunities to send a crewed spacecraft to the moon, yet they failed to ever do so. China still hasn't done it with more resources than the Soviet Union could ever muster. Europe hasn't launched one silly little crewed space capsule into space, despite all the money and technical knowledge and manufacturing capabilities they have to draw upon. At this point, the Indians are much closer to sending a crew into space than the Europeans.

The reason is simple, and it is ideological in nature. No matter the challenges encountered or the difficulty involved, at least one group of Americans is absolutely determined to adapt and overcome. We're perfectly willing to bear any burden and pay any price. That is the very essence of rugged individualism. The Russians were not. That's why America / capitalism / individualism made it to the moon and Russia / communism / collectivism failed. It wasn't because we were smarter or better than they were in any way. That's elitist / snobbish nonsense. We decided it was a national priority, so then we went out and did it.

An individual living and working here in America has the audacity to imagine that he can help bring about the colonization of another planet, tens of millions of miles from Earth. Rather than talking about it, he's actually doing it.

Which of the many billionaires in socialist Europe or communist China has the audacity to think that they can go colonize Mars or Venus, for example, or that it's worthwhile to even try?

There aren't any. People with those kinds of dreams only end up in one place, and that is America.

Why is that?

If it's not the ideology that's different here, then what else is it?

Terraformer · 2021-11-01 12:11:15

I think I have a habit of distilling arguments down to the underlying ideas represented by the words selected by other people to convey their ideas.

Unfortunately, whilst you have a habit of doing so, you don't have the ability required. As demonstrated by your interpretation of "colonies will put in stringent immigration requiremenTs" AS "14 MARTIAN ARYAN MASTER RACE 88!!!!!"

Terraformer · 2021-11-01 12:26:33

The gist of it is simple: as much as people like to pile on louis for thinking we can run everything on solar, y'all are just as deluded about how harsh Mars is. Almost everyone who wants to settle space suffers from Home Depot syndrome. The closest equivalent we have is Antarctica. Are Antarctic base personnel really selected at random from the population? Of course not. Because the majority of people, myself included (a miserable little pile of dysfunctions) would be a burden at best and an active danger at worst. Do they live scattered across the ice fields in individual houses and commute via snowbile? AFAIK, no.

You have the frontier mentality, when what space settlement insists upon on pain of death is the garrison mentality. The frontier mentality works in a solar system where Mars is flowing with canals and the air is breathable, Venus is a tropical paradise, and we made first contact with the intelligent Europans in the 50s when an American took his atomic rocket there. But that is not the solar system we have.

kbd512 · 2021-11-01 12:27:08

Terraformer,

If the limited on-hand skillset can't solve the problems required by a homesteader to stay alive, then there simply won't be any homesteaders, or there will be many failures along with the handful of successes. Many colonists died after coming to America, but that didn't stop some of them from succeeding and thriving. That didn't stop more from coming, either.

The only things that kill people in seconds to hours, or perhaps days, are loss of atmospheric pressure, loss of water, filtration failures, etc.

Fixing an atmospheric leak is a matter of plugging a hole. Ditto for loss of water. If a filter fails, then you replace or clean the filter.

If the power generation infrastructure is unreliable, then you can't live there.

If you can't grow enough food to feed people, then you can't live there.

Any system you're betting your life on has to be utterly reliable, or you can't live there.

Any life support technology we send to Mars will have to be very durable, very simple, and very easy to maintain, or it will be untenable, and then you will have very few Mars homesteaders.

You're simply not going to find many people who want to be herded like cattle into a stockade built for humans.

kbd512 · 2021-11-01 12:50:49

Terraformer,

Terraformer wrote:

The gist of it is simple: as much as people like to pile on louis for thinking we can run everything on solar, y'all are just as deluded about how harsh Mars is. Almost everyone who wants to settle space suffers from Home Depot syndrome. The closest equivalent we have is Antarctica. Are Antarctic base personnel really selected at random from the population? Of course not. Because the majority of people, myself included (a miserable little pile of dysfunctions) would be a burden at best and an active danger at worst. Do they live scattered across the ice fields in individual houses and commute via snowbile? AFAIK, no.

It's a jab at an ideology, not a specific person, that says there's only one solution to a civilization scale problem, or the notion that very dilute energy is preferable to very concentrated energy.

How is it that the Eskimos managed to survive in the Arctic long before snowmobiles or Home Depot ever existed?

Were they specially selected for their IQ?

Why do you think you would be an "active danger" to anyone?

What makes you think you couldn't be trained to overcome any lack of knowledge?

What is more unique about living on Mars than, say, living in a submarine?

We train everyone we put on submarines. They do tend to be reasonably intelligent, but not substantially more intelligent than any random person selected from society. They do have other personality attributes that are selected for, such as refusing to give up, even when the outcome is certain. This is because submariners are a cross-section of society.

Can we put someone on a submarine who is severely mentally retarded? Probably not, at least not with good results. If we have to transport someone by submarine who is mentally retarded, then we'll have someone stay with them at all times, but we're not going to eject them out of a torpedo tube because they don't fully understand the machine they're living in.

louis · 2021-11-01 17:08:30

True, as far as it goes, but if you are making a point about colonisation why was it that most early attempts to establish colonies in what is now the USA completely failed despite it being a fertile and verdant land? Two answers in brief: absence of high technology and absence of a detailed understanding of the land and its potential. These days a 100 colonists on a GPS navigating ship would have no problem setting up a successful colony in such lands.

I agree that geography does to a large (not complete) extent govern culture. And Aresians will be governed by the challenges of living on Mars. But we know already that humans were able to live for a week on the Moon and have lived for years in the same habitat in outer space where there is not even regolith to sustain you.

So let us not underestimate our technological prowess.

We know how to harness energy on Mars - whether it's solar, nuclear or possibly heat differential energy systems.

We know there are copious amounts of water on Mars - the most essential commodity for human life. And we know how to extract it.

We have already grown food in outer space and we grow it indoors on Earth.

Although I am not a member of the "romantic homesteaders" here, I can't see why an individual or small family couldn't live in their own habitat away from the main settlement, growing food for themselves and maybe for sale. There's no reason why not. They could periodically take their produce to market in the main settlements and purchase things they need for their farm while there eg solar panels, electric cable, lights, batteries, seed and so on.

Terraformer wrote:

Mars is not America. There are no fertile soils ready for planting. There is no large river system splitting the planet in half and making navigation easy. No herds of animals that can be hunted for sustenance. The very air you breathe has to be manufactured from gases extracted out of a soft vacuum.
My point is, it's not comparable to the settlement and expansion of the US of A. Maybe, at a stretch, one could compare it to the Norse settlement of Greenland. Consequently, the culture that was formed by the American expansion will not be replicated on Mars, where pressurised space costs time and resources and soil has to be built out of toxic dirt. It will be something different, something that can survive such a harsh environment.
Rugged individualism won't cut it. Martians will not spread out across an icy desert - they can't afford to be so far from help. With all the various specialities needed to build and maintain habitable environments, from air filtration to soil making to greenhouse manufacture to chemical industry etcetera etcetera, those looking to live on Mars will have to learn to live in compact villages surrounded by a tight ring of intensively farmed land. They are not exempt from the same rule that holds on Terra - geography shapes culture.

Last edited by louis (2021-11-01 17:09:02)

SpaceNut · 2021-11-01 17:52:37

Reposting

Ships carrying woman were considered bad luck early on in ocean voyages. I have seen girls that would wreck me so its not a question of what sex to send but fitness to perform tasks into space.

Just because you send the " top 10% (120+ IQ)." does not mean they can think there way out of a box. You need a combination of skills to go with that brain that can reason through a problem as there is nothing but what you have to solve it with you at any point in time when you are on mars.

The talk of living off the land only happens once you have structures to support the activity unlike earth we are going to need energy to be able to leverage to all things that we need beyond the ship and stuff that we bring. Which makes the research islands perfect for the learning of how to do with less.

louis · 2021-11-01 18:21:58

Watched something on the very woke BBC last night. The belief that women are unlucky on a boat is alive and well among Cornish fishermen in the UK. I don't think we have to worry about that for Mars. I think the early missions will be nearly 50-50 on gender and have a wide ethnic background.

I would agree that "living off the land" - what I would call "homesteading" - requires the establishment of a secure base settlement first. That would be at least 10 years down the line I think - probably more. But I think homesteading might be useful...letting people go off to create farms in good craters some miles off from the main settlement. The point is it doesn't require planning - you just let individuals make the decisions based on whether they can create viable businesses. I am sure there will be mega farms close to the base but these individual homestead farms could add up to a major resources. They would be good in a biosecurity way as well. If you had some sudden deadly plant disease circulating at the base settlement, these isolated farms could still be producing healthy food and reliably so.

SpaceNut wrote:

Reposting
Ships carrying woman were considered bad luck early on in ocean voyages. I have seen girls that would wreck me so its not a question of what sex to send but fitness to perform tasks into space.
Just because you send the " top 10% (120+ IQ)." does not mean they can think there way out of a box. You need a combination of skills to go with that brain that can reason through a problem as there is nothing but what you have to solve it with you at any point in time when you are on mars.
The talk of living off the land only happens once you have structures to support the activity unlike earth we are going to need energy to be able to leverage to all things that we need beyond the ship and stuff that we bring. Which makes the research islands perfect for the learning of how to do with less.

kbd512 · 2021-11-01 18:53:53

SpaceNut,

Sailors with poor seamanship or navigational or weather reading skills were and are bad luck. Captains who fail to adequately prepare their crews are worse luck. The fact that sailors blamed women for their poor skills is quite telling, regarding their level of professionalism or lack thereof. Women and children are none of the above, but they are absolutely essential for the continuation of humanity.

Louis,

I agree 100%. Having some biodiversity through experimentation is essential for humanity's survival. That's why we have seed banks around the world. We recognize that the loss of biodiversity in industrial agriculture represents a real threat to our survival, should a blight circulate amongst the existing crops. We guard against that eventuality with seed banks. It would be more preferable to continue using a myriad of different species of food plants to guard against diseases.

Terraformer · 2021-11-02 02:46:06

Where is a young child safer - on a small fishing vessel, or on a cruise ship?

If something goes wrong in a single family homestead, the adults are going to have their hands full fixing the problem. Meanwhile little Jimmy is wandering off to play with the airlock, because no-one can keep an eye on him.

If something goes wrong in a Martian village, the people who's designate job it is to fix the problem will be fixing the problem. If things go really wrong, the village can spare a few adults to watch the children in the emergency shelters whilst the others go and patch up the hole in the habitat, or whatever the issue is. If Jimmy wanders off, he's going to be spotted by someone else long before he can do any damage. A village of say 500 can also afford a doctor - not just seeing one via satellite, but an actual in person doctor.

My point being, the Martian environment is not friendly to tiny groups that want to spread out and build homesteads and hamlets. The near vacuum means that people will be living close together, in rowhomes and apartments to maximise the use of the costly pressurised space. The difficulty travelling means that you want to be near other people, because you can't easily drive over to see them when you need to. The harsh environment means that you need a broad set of skills to stay alive, skills which even if you have in a tiny group will see survival sometimes be a full time job that takes away from important things like stopping little children from accidentally killing themselves.

All this to say, Martian colonisation is going to be a lot more like Classical Greece than the American West, with cities establishing new cities rather than settlers spreading out and finding somewhere to stop and farm. It will select for being able to live together in a dense settlement, not sprawling across the landscape. Because it's harsh, and lethal, and you can't afford to only rely on yourself.

louis · 2021-11-02 20:43:36

I don't really see isolated homesteads being particularly dangerous environments.

They'll have a lot of medical equipment in situ e.g. oxygen, defibrillators and so on.

If someone is in need of medical attention, unless they need very specialist attention, you'll probably just get in your pressurised transport rover and head to the big city.

I doubt there will be charges for health care on Mars. People will be just too precious for them to be left to be sick or die.

I see no reason why people will have to live in row homes on Mars. Sounds like that old Mars One mission.

Pressurised units can simply be imported from Earth with built-in air locks for pressurised vehicles. The only requirement of a homesteader is that you have enough money to pay for the structure, the life support and the maintenance. Either you come with the money or you earn it through doing something like growing food or maybe making furniture. I doubt in the early missions there will be any rent charged for using land.

Once Space X or a Mars Consortium are producing accommodation on a production line, the costs will fall dramatically. I suspect the (spacious) living space for a 4 person family with built in life support might be only something like $200,000. Then if you were a farmer you'd have to add on cost for agri-habs. Those would be a lot cheaper per sq metre.

Food will be very expensive on Mars, compared with Earth, so a farmer will be able to make a good living from a relatively small amount of produce. I think homesteaders will basically supplying market niches - vegetables and fruits that have a strong demand within a section of the population.

I think it's too early to say how colonisation will go. Probably most people - 90% will be in cities and sizeable settlements but 10% maybe will be living a very free existence as family units. There will be no problem getting your children to school as long as you are say within 20 kms of a school. Robot vehicles will transport them to and back from school.

I don't think you've made the case for saying homesteading will be difficult. You seem to be referencing an age before we had robot vehicles. Now the farmer doesn't need to take their produce to market. They don't need to drive their kids to school. They don't need to head into town personally to purchase some propane or whatever. Well they don't need propane as they have a load of PV panels providing all the energy they require.

Homesteading seems to me a perfectly viable option but of course I would agree the vast majority of people will want to access the amenities of a large settlement.

Terraformer wrote:

Where is a young child safer - on a small fishing vessel, or on a cruise ship?
If something goes wrong in a single family homestead, the adults are going to have their hands full fixing the problem. Meanwhile little Jimmy is wandering off to play with the airlock, because no-one can keep an eye on him.
If something goes wrong in a Martian village, the people who's designate job it is to fix the problem will be fixing the problem. If things go really wrong, the village can spare a few adults to watch the children in the emergency shelters whilst the others go and patch up the hole in the habitat, or whatever the issue is. If Jimmy wanders off, he's going to be spotted by someone else long before he can do any damage. A village of say 500 can also afford a doctor - not just seeing one via satellite, but an actual in person doctor.
My point being, the Martian environment is not friendly to tiny groups that want to spread out and build homesteads and hamlets. The near vacuum means that people will be living close together, in rowhomes and apartments to maximise the use of the costly pressurised space. The difficulty travelling means that you want to be near other people, because you can't easily drive over to see them when you need to. The harsh environment means that you need a broad set of skills to stay alive, skills which even if you have in a tiny group will see survival sometimes be a full time job that takes away from important things like stopping little children from accidentally killing themselves.
All this to say, Martian colonisation is going to be a lot more like Classical Greece than the American West, with cities establishing new cities rather than settlers spreading out and finding somewhere to stop and farm. It will select for being able to live together in a dense settlement, not sprawling across the landscape. Because it's harsh, and lethal, and you can't afford to only rely on yourself.

SpaceNut · 2021-11-03 20:14:50

Where does that money come from on mars for the people to pay for those expensive items you need shipped from Earth?

What is that income generated from?

tahanson43206 · 2021-11-04 07:00:42

For SpaceNut re Post #17

Louis has written extensively on how the people of Mars can generate income.

His posts are present in the archive of the Forum.

Your question reveals that all his hard work has faded from our collective memory.

***
For Louis ... you have invested a great deal of time and thought in attempting to answer the question SpaceNut has posed ...

Rather than start all over again from scratch, please think about how all your hard work might be encapsulated in a single post, full of links to your earlier work, with brief (one sentence) summary statements as to the content.

If we had a dedicated archivist in the group, that person might have already created such an index to your work.

Unfortunately, you are the only person presently qualified to carry out this labor.

(th)

kbd512 · 2021-11-04 11:22:40

Terraformer,

Little Jimmy won't be able to open an airlock when there's pressure on the other side. If there's no pressure, then little Jimmy won't be playing with the airlock unless little Jimmy is already wearing a space suit, because little Jimmy will otherwise be dead. This is how ISS airlocks work. They're manually opened by hand and are inward opening. As a result, no human is strong enough to open a door held in place with 14.7psi, because each square foot of airlock or hatch has almost 1 metric ton of force keeping it sealed shut.

Plugging a pinhole O2 leak involves stuffing a tiny piece of silicone rubber adhesive tape or silicone caulk in / over the hole. Tape is probably the cleanest / fastest option. If there's a catastrophic failure of the pressure vessel, then whatever little Jimmy is or isn't doing is irrelevant, because everyone inside will be dead. In the event of a normal leak, Mommy will put her face mask / helmet on so she has Oxygen to breathe, then she will help little Jimmy put his mask and suit on, while Daddy finds the pinhole and plugs it. This is very similar to the instructions passengers receive when boarding a plane. The kids and adults will practice mask drills, same as we do aboard military ships with gas masks, so that they can put their mask on in mere seconds.

Children are at equal risk aboard cruise ships and fishing boats, merely in different ways. The cruise ship has a myriad of ladders that represent trip / fall hazards. The fishing boat is far more subject to "the motion of the ocean" type problems causing falls. Even so, some couples have toddlers on their sailing boats. Every environment presents different hazards.

On Mars, neither of those two analogies work. You spend most of your time in a buried habitat module or greenhouse or other pressurized environment. Every so often, maybe once per week, you get to go outside to explore. I would not choose to take 3 year olds into an immediately lethal environment, but by the time the kids are 8 to 9 or so, they understand simple concepts like "hot" and "hurt". By the time they're teenagers, they don't need much in the way of supervision after they understand the rules. We learned that stuff in Kindergarten.

louis · 2021-11-04 13:23:23

From my unpublished book...probably needs updating!

This Chapter’s analysis looks at the scope for revenue generation in relation to the early stages of Mars colonisation. It’s useful to distinguish stages in the timeline because not everything can be done at the outset, and there will be a natural rhythm to economic development. Accordingly I have chosen to look at the following stages:

Short term (pre-mission and 0-5 years)

Medium Term (5-20 years after)

Longer Term (20 years plus)

The analysis assumes a figure of $20,000 per kg as the cost of Earth-Mars or Mars-Earth transit (surface to surface). It assumes that a Mars landing project will take ten years from conception to landing. It further assumes that the project will be undertaken by a consortium including national space agencies, private space companies, and philanthropists.

Short term (Year 0 - 5) - $19.25 billion or $1.925 billion per annum

Population rising from 0 to 12

(a) General and specific commercial sponsorship - $700million. The commencement of colonisation of Mars by humans from Earth will be an event of momentous importance. It will dominate news channels for many weeks. It will provide the basis for news and science documentaries, acres of newsprint and countless articles on the Internet. However, sponsors will benefit from a long build up to the mission, as well as the final landings. It is considered that Olympics sponsorship provides a good point of comparison.
General sponsors could include firms like Coca Cola,Microsoft, Nike etc.
The sponsorship available for the initial landings should be on a par with the Olympics. But there will be opportunities for ongoing sponsorship e.g. of exploration missions to Olympus Mons or the Grand Canyon of Mars or to the polar region. Commercial sponsorship of the Olympics amounts to about $1000 million over the Olympic cycle. Conservatively one could expect the Mars landings to garner at least $500million – possibly with staged release of funds over a ten year period.
It is expected general sponsorship could continue at perhaps $100 million per mission. It should be noted that the activities on Mars will be of continued interested to news and science programmes, and sponsors can gain from that continued interest.

There will be continuing opportunities for specific sponsorship for exploration missions e.g. perhaps a rover mission to explore Olympic Mons. Companies may well wish to secure sole sponsorship rights on these missions, so we might have “The Nike Expedition to Olympic Mons” for instance. Or “The Toyota Mission to the Mars North Pole”. Subsequent explorations should be able to clear at least $200million a time I would say, in the short to mid term.

(b) Sale of Mars TV rights $550 million. Clearly exclusive TV rights to the initial Mars landings would have huge value. A figure of $200-500 million seems reasonable – with the globe parcelled up into about 10 lots.
But later exploration missions TV rights (e.g. to Olympus Mons) will also command high prices. So we can expect something like $10 million per annum (with no significant mass transfer)

(c) Sale of regolith- $2000 million The Mars pioneers should be able to return with substantial amounts of Mars regolith. For the purposes of this analysis, let us assume that over a ten year period some 20 tons of regolith is returned. This will include no doubt a lot of “bog standard” iron oxide material but also a range of interesting looking rocks. All samples will be properly tagged with full information, including photos, of the site.

A figure of $100,000 per kg will be quite reasonable. Even ordinary Mars dust will be a very valuable commodity (as is ordinary lunar dust). In 2018 lunar dust was valued at $300,000 a gram (based on NASA’s figures from the 1970s) in today's values. So that would be $3 million per kg. Why the much lower valuation for Mars regolith? Space X will be able to return much larger amounts and universities might prefer to wait and see if the price comes down if the asking price was pitched too high. The figure of $100,000 per Kg reflects more the amount of money available across the world in Universities. It has to be remembered there are something like 20k univerisites on planet Earth. If half have significant geology or astrophysics departments, then each institution would need…
Of course Space Agencies and other research instiutes. In addition, large companies may well decide to put some Mars rock in a display case in their HQ lobby rather than purchase a painting or sculpture.
Space Agencies will not blink at spending $1 m on Mars regolith when it would take them $1 billion to set up a robot Mars sample return mission.

My analysis suggests several thousand institutes around the globe would be interested in acquiring Mars regolith (just as there is great interest in lunar regolith). Earnings of $200-$400 million per annum for the first ten years are certainly possible.

(d) Sale of meteorites - $2500 million. Meteorites on Earth are collected by both scientists and private collectors. Rare meteorites can be worth millions of dollars. Mars meteorites will be rare almost by definition. I think we could be talking about $500,000 per kg for the right meteorites. Geology.com offers advice over the web on the pricing of meteorites. At the cheap end these can start at around 50 cents per gram. But rare Mars and lunar meteorites may sell for $1,000 per gram or more – much more in some cases. So a kilogram meteorite could cost around a $1million or more. For the first ten years, I think the value of meteorite exports could be in the region of $250-500 million per annum. If 1000 universities, space agencies, private collectors and others are in this market, that is only between $250,000 and $500,000 per buyer per annum. Would some institutions be prepared to pay up to $5 million over 10 years to accumulate a top class meteorite collection?

(e) Space Agency contributions - $10 billion There are a number of space agencies around the world who would pay to be part of the first mission to Mars and to have one of their people be a member of the crew.
It should be noted that the total amount for all space agency budgets world wide is something in excess of $40 billion per annum. So for this Mars Mission we are looking for only something like $1 billion per annum - about 2.5% of the overall budget.
There is no reason to think that an average “going rate” of around $1billion per crew member (over 10 or more years) would be unreasonable in this phase. This would work out at about $100 million per annum. If Mission One were to land 6 crew members that would be $6 billion.

Likely participating agencies would include NASA, ESA (with possibly France, the UK and Germany separately), India, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Canada and Australia. Not all could participate in Mission 1. The “entry fee” for later missions would be reduced in price.

(f) Philanthropic contributions - $2 billion There is every reason to think that space philanthropists would help realise a mission to Mars. A figure of $2 billion seems a reasonable minimum during the initial development phase. Elon Musk could be expected to contribute a large sum from his personal fortune. But others might wish to join, particular if they get their name on some of the original habs. Maybe there will be a Bill Gates IT Centre on Mars or a Warren Buffet Mars Research Centre. Given the size of many personal fortunes, and the opporunities for naming on Mars, this seems.

(g) Scientific experiments - $500 million Thousands of universities, research institutes and private individuals would be prepared to fund specific scientific experiments on Mars. $500 million may be a conservative figure.

(h) Art installations - $ 1 billion There is every reason to suppose that super-rich artists like Damien Hirst would wish to become the first creators of art on another planet. Moreover, once created, these art works would have a market value and could be sold on.
To put this is in context – the global art market is worth over $60 billion per annum. Revenue of $100 million per annum would represent only some 0.17% of that overall market.

(i) Crowd funding - $3 billion Once people on Earth are aware that the mission really is going ahead, it should be possible to devise a whole range of crowd-funded initiatives to encourage financial contributions from a portion of the 6 billion people on Earth. These could include: paying to have your name inscribed on a rock face on Mars, paying to have ashes scattered on Mars, paying to direct a mini-robot on Mars. The possibilities for such funding are limitless.

(j) Sale of emphemera and memorabilia

https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment … igh-demand

There will undoubtedly be a market for notable items and emphemera from the early colonisation period back on Earth. We can take the Beatles memorabilia market as a reference point. A single drumskin from the group’s early period was sold for over $1 million dollars. Undoubtedly artefacts associated with the settlement of Mars will do equally as well or better.
Space X would be well advised to set up a professional agency to market these items and generate revenue. A lot will depend on how artefacts are marketed - for instance they could be sold along with samples of Mars regolith and signatures of early pioneers to add value.

...continued

Last edited by louis (2021-11-04 16:10:35)

louis · 2021-11-04 13:25:47

(continued from my previous post)

Phase 2 - Medium Term (+5 to +20 years)

Population rising from 12 to 100

(a) Export of gold, platinum, diamonds and other precious metals and stones - $750 million (over 15 years) . With gold alone currently trading at something like 35,000 dollars a Kg, this category could be a major source of revenue. Of course it does depend on the colonists discovering exposed gold sources on the surface – no reason why not as no one else is prospecting for gold on the planet. Similarly other precious metals and stones could produce huge amounts of revenue. Earnings of $50million per annum don't seem impossible.

(b) Sponsored colonists - $3000 million (over 15 years). The “gap year” student. There will in our view be no shortage of young, suitably qualified personnel who would wish to be part of the experience of building the Mars colony as part of an interval between education and work. And, who can doubt that employees back on earth would be keen to employ young enterprising people who take part in this way and show determination, fortitude and a high level of skill acquisition? Of course the gap year concept will be extended somewhat – it may be a round trip of 2.5 years, with perhaps 1.5 actually spent on Mars. Earnings at $50m per person might give an average of $200million per annum in the medium term period.
Who would do the sponsorship? Firstly the super-rich providing the ultimate experience for their adventurous offspring. Secondly, international companies seeking to raise their profile and attract graduates. Thirdly, smaller space agencies wishing to make their mark on Mars and conduct experiments. Lastly universities and research institutions wishing to undertake research.

(c)University of Mars franchise $800 million. . Establishment of a University on Mars. This could be the subject of competition between the best endowed seats of learning on Earth. Those with a strong planetary science and astronomy bias might be tempted to sink a lot of money into such a project, especially if they were being guaranteed a head start over their rivals. Mars University of Harvard? Sorbonne Mars? Kyoto Mars University? It might begin as a small postgraduate teaching and research facility. A University, possibly with a benefactor’s backing might be prepared to sink several hundred million dollars into such a foundation and continue to fund at a significant rate. Endowments of $100-500m are not uncommon on Earth. So, I think a $500m endowment for this unique foundation is possible.

(d) Mars Museum Space X will be perfectly placed to develop a Mars Museum back on Earth, most likely in somewhere like Florida, long associated with the space industry and also a top holiday destination. A Mars Museum could easily match The Kennedy Space Centre has something like 1.7 million visitors per annum. So, let’s assume 1.5 million for the Mars Museum. Charging $40 per visitor, that would give revenue of $600 million over a decade.

(...continued)

Last edited by louis (2021-11-04 13:26:12)

louis · 2021-11-04 13:29:07

(continued from my previous post)

Phase 3 - Longer term (Years 20-50) $84.3 billion

Population rising from 100 to 5000

(a) Sale of land and bonds - $30 billion. As the economic potential of Mars becomes clear, so will the urge to invest. If there is a legal framework backed by a group of Earth nations or the UN, this will allow the effective sale of land (perhaps on the basis of long leases or even licences, if the idea of land ownership is considered to be ruled out by international law) and investment bonds. If a million square kilometres was sold off, or licensed off, at $10,000 a square kilometre, that would raise $10 billion. If the Mars Consortium can start earning say $1 billion per annum, then bonds of several billion dollars could be sold – let us say $20 billion.

(b) Luxury produce - $300 million. Once agriculture is up and running, there will be a significant market across Earth for luxury foods and wine from Mars. How about a bottle of “Mars Champagne” at $200,000? Any takers? There will be – the super-rich always want to prove they are super rich. Perhaps $10 million per annum.

(c) Luxury goods - $45 billion – There will be a huge market for luxury lightweight goods made on Mars such as a Mars Rolex watch for men, chiffon scarves, jewelry items and so on. The Rolex mechanism might be made on Earth, but the watch is finished on Mars with Mars gold. This could be really big I think. Imagine watches selling at $100,000. I see no reason why the Mars Rolex couldn't sell 5,000 of those per annum - $500million.

The UK jewelry market is worth £5 billion dollars per annum, so I am guessing the global market is worth something like $500 billion or more. I think it quite reasonable to assume Mars can capture at least 0.2% of that market – 1 billion dollars per annum.

(d) . Sale of “real time” interactive experience on Mars - $3 billion. Imagine going to a big city Science Museum and being able to pay a few dollars more there to be able to interact with Mars – to write your name on a rock face for instance, or to help move boulders using robots.
If we can beam back 3D data from Mars, there would be scope I think for interactive facilities on Earth.
Eg. on Earth you get to move replica rocks around with an automated digger, but the automated digger on Mars performs the same action. And perhaps drills into the rock to analyse it. This could be linked in with Mars museums or theme centres.
This could easily generate $100 million per annum.

(e) Mars tourism - $6 billion. If we can develop direct shot rocket technology, I think there will be scope for development of Mars tourism – people coming to Mars for perhaps 2 month stays and going on treks to the major tourist sites (e.g. Olympus Mons). Of course, initially, this will be the province of the super-rich but if the colonists can master home grown rocketry prices could come down significantly. By year 20 tourism might be taking off and it could generate several hundred million of dollars per annum even if there were only say 1000 tourists per annum. 1000 tourists paying $200,000 for the trip would equal $200 million.

louis · 2021-11-04 13:38:11

Regarding the above extracts in the three previous posts from me, I would add:

1. These are ideas for generating revenue back on Earth effectively, in other words generating dollars and other earth currency "back home".

2. However all the time Mars will be developing its own Mars-focussed economy. Obvious elements will include water mining, agriculture, energy generation, rocket fuel manufacture, rocket maintenance, Mars-based transport, retail, hospitality, leisure, health services, industrial production (supporting other sectors like agriculture and rocket maintenance) and so on.

3. The Mars-grounded economy will have productive value. At some stage, the Mars community may think it is the right time to adopt their own currency which can be traded with Earth currencies, notably the dollar. It can either be a floating currency or have a fixed exchange rate.

4. Energy generation will be a good marker for the Mars economy. Within a few years, the Mars economy will be bigger than that of small nations on Earth.

tahanson43206 · 2021-11-04 13:55:47

For Louis re series ending in Post #23

Thank you for your generosity and patience ...

SearchTerm:Book unpublished by Louis

For SpaceNut ... please evaluate the proposals of Louis to see if they make sense to you ...

There appears (at first reading) to be an opportunity to add material to the On-Mars section.

(th)

louis · 2021-11-04 17:40:55

Thanks TA. Any observations from anyone welcome.

This was written a while ago. Musk was not then the (by some estimates) richest person on Earth, someone who could be the first trillionaire on Earth (that's $1000 billion folks). Musk's commitment to Mars colonisation is not in any doubt. I can't see how he would begrudge donating tens of billions of dollars to the project over time. Now some people might think "that's a cheat - that's not how a real economy works" but that is to forget that many of the first American colonies had rich benefactors: monarchs, landed nobles and wealthy merchants and that their colonisation projects would never had got off the ground without the involvement of these fabulously wealthy investors or benefactors.

I think it would be reasonable to suggest that Musk may well put something like $20 billion* into the Mars colonisation project from his personal wealth over the next three decades. That sort of direct capital injection will be hugely important in help make Mars an attractive place to live. If I was advising Musk I would suggest he invest his money in the creation of Earth-like-environments from artificial or natural gorges that can be pressurised and seeded with natural flora and fauna from Earth. These would be the equivalent of our city parks created by the filthy rich philanthropes of the Victorian era. Likewise he could kickstart an art market on Mars by paying artists to produce works of art on Mars. So many possibilities with that amount of money!

* That's a very low end estimate - it could be $200 billion.

tahanson43206 wrote:

For Louis re series ending in Post #23
Thank you for your generosity and patience ...
SearchTerm:Book unpublished by Louis
For SpaceNut ... please evaluate the proposals of Louis to see if they make sense to you ...
There appears (at first reading) to be an opportunity to add material to the On-Mars section.
(th)

Last edited by louis (2021-11-04 17:45:04)

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