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Super-productivity.
Comparisons are odious particularly between two planets with very different needs but I think it is reasonable to suggest that Mars will enjoy a superproductive economy compared with the whole of Earth and even the most productive parts of the home planet (viewed on a per capita basis of course). This will be because of the following factors:
- The energy system will, from the outset, provide a much higher rate of energy generation per capita than on Earth.
- Initial high level of capital investment will endow the Mars community with very advanced robotic and automated systems. This confers on Mars a huge advantage over Earth where such capital investment per capita is simply not possible.
- Unlike on Earth, the whole of the Mars population in the early colony will be highly productive. All persons, unless ill, will be economically active. They will happily work long hours. There will be no children, no retired people, (likely) no chronically sick people, no women at home or on maternity leave and no part time workers.
- The Mars city will be designed to facilitate robots and automated systems. Currently Earth cities are designed to facilitate humans. This will enable the Mars community to deploy robots and automated systems in ways that are very difficult on Earth.
- Mars will avoid many of the costs (resource use) on Earth that prevent us from investing in improving productivity (incidentally this is a big issue in the UK which has a poor record on productivity). For instance, it will not need to deploy resources to maintain a defence force or administer a complex tax and benefits system or provide complex medical treatment for a large proportion of its population (surgery and so on – there will be some but not much) or provide welfare to people who cannot work or provide people with pensions. Pollution control will be far simpler on Mars as well. Furthermore, Earth will be paying for its education system in the early colony period until procreation gets going on Mars. So, all these huge demands on resources will be absent, which means the Mars settlers can increase hugely their capital investment in improving productivity.
- The Mars City will be designed with efficiency to the forefront. For instance there will be easy access to all utilities. There will be no "digging up of roads", and also no need to maintain huge amounts of road signage. All these sorts of things are a drag on producitivity on Earth in terms of producing food, housing, communications and goods that people want.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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If mars is a power house of energy and robotics then why would people go there....
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For SpaceNut re #2 .... Referencing the UBI topic...
Why, to live on the UBI of course!
(th)
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Not so sure about this. I'm going to play devil's advocate. What does a Mars colony offer that a similar colony in Antarctica, Greenland or Northern Canada does not? Getting there and getting any equipment you need to the surface, is going to be far more expensive. Energy production will indeed be much higher per capita on Mars because it will have to be for people to survive. Food will need to be grown in heated, pressurised greenhouses. Kaching! Those greenhouses will be made from steel, glass and plastics that have to be chemically reduced and manufactured from basic, oxidised compounds, like CO2 and metal oxides, using an electricity source that is shipped from another planet. Kaching! Air and water are mostly free on Earth. On Mars, O2 will need to be created from CO2 or through electrolysis of water. That's about 15MJ per person per day. Kaching! Water is frozen as hard as stone and mixed in with dirt underground. You will need to mine it from the ground mechanically and melt it or pump enough heat into the ground to melt it insitu. Either way, you are looking at an energy cost of at least 1MJ/litre for water on Mars, about the same as concrete on Earth. Kaching! Going outside for work or leasure, requires warm clothing in polar regions on Earth. On Mars, it requires a pressure suit with a breathing system. Kaching! Buildings on Earth are either gravity stabilised masonry structures or portal framed structures. On Mars, all habitable structures must be pressure vessels, with either tensile skins or massive gravity stabilised berms to provide enough backpressure to prevent a masonry structure from exploding. Kaching! If you want plastics for any purpose, you need to manufacture it from CO2 using electrolysis derived hydrogen, rather than simply mining hydrocarbons from the ground. Kaching! Metal ores can be mined using electrically powered mining equipment. For a long time to come, that mining equipment will need to be shipped from Earth at a cost of at least hundreds of dollars per kg. Kaching!
On the population front, you are probably right. Old people and people with health problems won't be coming to Mars in huge numbers. With continuous high rates of migration from Earth, demographics will skewed away from the young and the old for a long while to come. Investment per capita will be high, but the cost of keeping people alive in such an environment and delivering and setting up any kind of capability, will be extremely high. It is not obvious to me why you would expect a huge number of people with very deep pockets to empty those pockets into any kind of Mars based infrastructure. Elon Musk is prepared to do so because he sees himself as a pioneer and architect of the future. But once the excitement wears off, Mars is a cold and barren planet. Staying alive there is difficult. Sending things there is an expensive hobby.
Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-09 17:41:52)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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1. Spirit of adventure
2. Achieving a higher status
3. Ensuring a bright economic future for yourself and your family
4. To be part of a great collective endeavour (terraformation).
If mars is a power house of energy and robotics then why would people go there....
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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What does a Mars colony offer that a similar colony in Antarctica, Greenland or Northern Canada does not?
Firstly a huge range of novel research opportunities. The Klondike moment on Mars would be if current or past life forms were to be discovered. But even the geology and planetary science will be enough to attract people.
In terms of the living environment, I think one could say living on Mars will probably be slightly easier than living in Antarctica and the Far North. You don't get winds with the force of a 200 MPH wind on Earth. The wind force on Mars is puny. You don't get snow drifts. If you build your settlement in the middle to low latitudes you get a good day's length all year round, unlike in Antarctica or the Far North. Yes, you haven't got a breathable atmosphere, but in reality people don't go outside to breathe the air much in Antarctica! Most of their time is spent indoors or in vehicles - or so wrapped up they might as well be wearing an MCP. Will be similar on Mars.
What Mars can offer is free exploitation of the land. No need to apply for licences, pay rents or purchase land.
Mars has the same land surface pretty much as Earth. Its minerals are, as far as we know, in a virgin state ie easily accessible at the surface.
Getting there and getting any equipment you need to the surface, is going to be far more expensive. Energy production will indeed be much higher per capita on Mars because it will have to be for people to survive. Food will need to be grown in heated, pressurised greenhouses. Kaching!
As far as I know, when Sweden sends its GDP figures to the OECD it doesn't put in parentheses: [A lot of this GDP is to do with stuff like heating, lighting, transport, and hydroelecticity because it's so cold and dark up here we need to compensate for that, so please ignore all that stuff, it's just making us poorer than we would be otherwise.] As someone I know likes to say "It is what it is." As long as you can cope with the challenge, as Sweden can, then "one man's challenge" is "another man's job and livelihood". So it will be on Mars. The issue is, "can people live on Mars?". On that I am fully onside with Musk. There is nothing I can see that will stop us living there. Once people are on Mars mining water ice, growing food indoors, manufacturing methane, running restaurants, going to restaurants, popping down the gym, doing maintenance on rovers etc etc you will have a functioning economy.
How "wealthy" that economy will be will only really become apparent when it has its own currency which it trades with currencies on Earth. But I am confident the people of Mars will be high earners by all Earth measures.
Those greenhouses will be made from steel, glass and plastics that have to be chemically reduced and manufactured from basic, oxidised compounds, like CO2 and metal oxides, using an electricity source that is shipped from another planet. Kaching! Air and water are mostly free on Earth. On Mars, O2 will need to be created from CO2 or through electrolysis of water. That's about 15MJ per person per day. Kaching! Water is frozen as hard as stone and mixed in with dirt underground. You will need to mine it from the ground mechanically and melt it or pump enough heat into the ground to melt it insitu. Either way, you are looking at an energy cost of at least 1MJ/litre for water on Mars, about the same as concrete on Earth. Kaching! Going outside for work or leasure, requires warm clothing in polar regions on Earth. On Mars, it requires a pressure suit with a breathing system. Kaching! Buildings on Earth are either gravity stabilised masonry structures or portal framed structures. On Mars, all habitable structures must be pressure vessels, with either tensile skins or massive gravity stabilised berms to provide enough backpressure to prevent a masonry structure from exploding. Kaching! If you want plastics for any purpose, you need to manufacture it from CO2 using electrolysis derived hydrogen, rather than simply mining hydrocarbons from the ground. Kaching! Metal ores can be mined using electrically powered mining equipment. For a long time to come, that mining equipment will need to be shipped from Earth at a cost of at least hundreds of dollars per kg. Kaching!
I've posted before now about automated PV panel production. It's highly automated. There will be no problem with setting up automated production on Mars. Beyond that, use of state-of-the-art 3D printers will allow the Mars colony to begin 3D printing of the components of a PV panel production line. Within a few years they will likely be able to manufacture on Mars 90% of a PV panel manufacturing facility.
So eventually any income is going to be feeding back into the Mars economy not flowing back to Earth when it comes to energy generation. Same with production of methane and hydrogen. Yes, initial the production equipment will come from Earth but gradually it will be replaced by Mars ISRU production.
On the population front, you are probably right. Old people and people with health problems won't be coming to Mars in huge numbers. With continuous high rates of migration from Earth, demographics will skewed away from the young and the old for a long while to come. Investment per capita will be high, but the cost of keeping people alive in such an environment and delivering and setting up any kind of capability, will be extremely high. It is not obvious to me why you would expect a huge number of people with very deep pockets to empty those pockets into any kind of Mars based infrastructure. Elon Musk is prepared to do so because he sees himself as a pioneer and architect of the future. But once the excitement wears off, Mars is a cold and barren planet. Staying alive there is difficult. Sending things there is an expensive hobby.
If you've ever tried sleeping out of a night in the UK, I can tell you that, even in summer, it's effing cold and in winter you are likely to die of hypothermia without an appropriate sleeping bag and clothing. So the UK, let alone Siberia is really a pretty lethal environment - not so different from Mars. Add to that Mars does not have dangerous weather as on Earth (with the exception possibly of the minor irritation of dust storms) - certainly no hurricanes, highly destructive tornadoes, tsunamis, hailstorms, blizzards, rainstorms, icestorms etc etc. - and no major earthquakes or volcanoes. Earth weather imposes really huge costs on the Earth economy in terms of building structures that can cope, diverting rainfall away from population centres, flood defences, earthquake protection etc etc. None of that will apply on Mars. The simply fact you don't have to deal with rainfall must be a huge saving, not just in terms of drainage but also road maintenance.
I am pretty sure no one has done an analysis of how all these cost savings and cost requirements pan out across the board. But there are definitely two columns to the ledger. If a Mars colony can save 20% on social/health care, maybe 5% on weather-proofing of infrastructure and maybe 10% on land costs (rent, purchase or licensing), then that could put them on a par with an Earth-based economy when it comes to covering the additional costs relating to Mars e.g. increased per capita energy usage, life support and additional requirements of pressurised habitats .
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Obviously I want Mars colonisation to succeed. But this is an area of discussion vulnerable to confirmation bias. We tend to assume things will work the way we want to and there is a tendency to assume that problems will be solved and to downplay and ignore difficulties. If you want to really understand the challenges and contribute in a lasting way, confirmation bias is something you must be able to get past.
Land costs tend to be a function of the value of a location. Land on Mars is free at present, precisely because it has no utility to anyone. Land in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia, is very cheap as well for the same reasons. You at least have air in those locations and potable water, whilst not easy to source, is simpler to obtain than it would be on Mars. There is no point comparing Martian land to prime building land in London, because Martian land is not in London. And it is not useful in any of the same ways. The cost of weather proofing is pitifully small compared to the cost of building structures as airtight pressure vessels, which must sustain pressures measured in tonnes of force per square metre. You need to grow food. You have about the same solar flux at equatorial Mars as you do in Alaska. But Alaskan greenhouses will not experience the same extreme diurnal temperature fluctuations. And they don't need to be pressure vessels. You need to make steel and plastics? How easy would that be in Alaska, using solar panels to run electric furnaces and electrolysis units to reduce locally sourced iron ores? How much will that steel cost in Alaska do you think? Is there any reason to suppose it will be cheaper on Mars, given the cost of shipping to Mars?
Regarding your idea of using solar powered factories to make solar panels. Are you aware of how complex and energy intensive these processes are? Polysilicon factories are large electric furnaces reducing pure silicon dioxide quartz that is sourced for minimum impurities. It is reduced using high grade metallurgical coke that is manufactured from anthracite or pyrolytic carbon to remove impurities. The embodied energy of polysilicon is quite enormous. The Chinese build these things next to coal mines feeding coal burning powerplants, employing forced labour in Xingjiang. Why do you think that don't use solar farms in Manchuria instead? Thin film PV is a lot more than just doped silicon. It requires huge quantities of glass for panels, steel for frames, doping elements (usually rare and toxic); silver for top contacts, copper and aluminium for inverters and transmission. This is before we consider the battery requirements for storage. The resource requirements per unit of harvested energy are around 1E2 greater than electricity produced from nuclear power or fossil fuels. You really think you are going to refine these necessary materials from base rocks and manufacture this huge amount of infrastructure on Mars, using imported solar panels from Earth, exploiting a solar flux comparable to that of Alaska? This is beyond delusional. It is what happens when confirmation bias are completely unchecked and you just believe whatever happens to appeal to you.
If you remember, I carried out a net energy analysis of your concept several months ago and posted the results on here. Over its lifetime, a PV plant on Mars might just about harvest enough net energy to replace itself, with a small surplus. No good at all for the rapid growth in energy supply needed by an expanding population, on a planet where energy requirements per capita are several times higher than on Earth. This is a consequence of low EROI. EROI is basically a measure of the resources that must be used for each unit of energy. Absent market distortions, Low EROI = High cost. On a planet where you need a lot more energy to survive and even more to invest in new infrastructure that allows you to grow, expensive low EROI energy simply won't do. Net energy analysis allows us to understand the physics reasons behind the role of resources in economic growth. It helps to explain for example why the UK economy cannot grow, even though interest rates are low and BOE are practically giving money away. Less available energy means less activity. It should be easy for everyone to understand, but for some reason it isn't.
Incidentally, TH shared an article yesterday written about a group of former SpaceX engineers who are developing a 1.2MWe modular nuclear power source. Do you notice anything familiar about that 1.2MWe figure? Could it be that those engineers have gone through exactly the sort of analysis that I did, probably with better knowledge and tools, and reached the same conclusion?
Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-10 09:53:00)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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Obviously I want Mars colonisation to succeed. But this is an area of discussion vulnerable to confirmation bias. We tend to assume things will work the way we want to and there is a tendency to assume that problems will be solved and to downplay and ignore difficulties. If you want to really understand the challenges and contribute in a lasting way, confirmation bias is something you must be able to get past.
Well true. There was a lot of confirmation bias going on with the various American colonisation projects that were tried over a 200 years period. Probably a large majority of the projects failed pretty dismally.
I would say that there are a number of factors that suggest I at least am not operating off confirmation bias.
1. Unlike the early American colonists with respect to their preferred locations we already have a wealth of information about Mars and understand pretty well how its weather and climate work. Many colonies have previously come to grief because of weather and climate e.g. tropical diseases, poor water resources, damaging and frequent hurricanes, crop-killing frosts and so on.
2. There have been huge technological advances that mean we now have everything in place to live successfully on Mars: telecoms, satellite technology, inflatable Bigelow style structures, computers, food storage, hydroponic farming, LED lights, robot vehicles, ground radar, 3D printing, materials recycling, water recycling (I could go on but you get the idea).
3. The Mars colonisation project is, happily, backed by the richest person on Earth. I don't agree with all his plans (they are not realistic) but even if he succeeds by only 5% in terms of population (a city of 50,000 within 3 decades) the colony will be very secure.
Land costs tend to be a function of the value of a location. Land on Mars is free at present, precisely because it has no utility to anyone. Land in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia, is very cheap as well for the same reasons. You at least have air in those locations and potable water, whilst not easy to source, is simpler to obtain than it would be on Mars. There is no point comparing Martian land to prime building land in London, because Martian land is not in London. And it is not useful in any of the same ways. The cost of weather proofing is pitifully small compared to the cost of building structures as airtight pressure vessels, which must sustain pressures measured in tonnes of force per square metre. You need to grow food. You have about the same solar flux at equatorial Mars as you do in Alaska. But Alaskan greenhouses will not experience the same extreme diurnal temperature fluctuations. And they don't need to be pressure vessels. You need to make steel and plastics? How easy would that be in Alaska, using solar panels to run electric furnaces and electrolysis units to reduce locally sourced iron ores? How much will that steel cost in Alaska do you think? Is there any reason to suppose it will be cheaper on Mars, given the cost of shipping to Mars?
I don't accept potable water will be difficult to obtain on Mars. 97% plus pure water ice has been identified in the Erebus mountains area by NASA/JPL lying a few feet below the surface. There are millions of tonnes of the stuff just sitting their waiting to be extracted. With advanced water recycling within the colony, Mars will have a plentiful water supply. Minimal cleansing will make it safe for humans to drink.
Land is free on Mars because no one can legally claim it. I think it we had a free market in land on Mars today with portions of land being sold off by, say, the UN, there would definitely be buyers.
But that's not how it's going to be. We may see a system of licensing with licence charges grow up on Mars which will in effect become a type of holding but certainly in the early decades I think the land will be free so that anyone who can get approval for a project will be able to obtain land at no cost. IIRC land/rent costs average something like 10% for businesses. So that is significant.
You make a great deal of pressurisation requirements. But in many cities on Earth you have pretty demanding earthquake-resistant building requirements or anti-flooding defences. In many northern cities huge amounts of labour power and capital investment go into snow removal.
In terms of growing food, I recall from previous discussions that it should be possible to grow plants under plastic structures in low pressure 100% CO2 environments (I think Robert Dyck has info on that). That should substantially reduce the cost of the farm hab construction compared with the human habs.
Comparing Mars with Alaska is not very helpful. If you are going to establish a successful colony and city you need motivation.
For many early colonies in America there was a strong religious or political impulse, The impulse came first, the colony second. So it is with Mars. The impulse is in the dream of making humanity a multi-planet species and terraforming Mars into something closely resembling Earth. That seems to be a coherent objective that will give the colony real impetus. People aren't going to move in numbers to Alaska just to prove they can do it. It's also worth remembering that great cities on Earth like Mecca have been built up out of nothing much simply for religious reasons.
So the impulse is there and it will be bolstered by lots of other reasons for going to Mars: scientific curiosity, national pride, personal status raising, escaping bad things on Earth and commercial opportunities etc etc.
Regarding your idea of using solar powered factories to make solar panels. Are you aware of how complex and energy intensive these processes are? Polysilicon factories are large electric furnaces reducing pure silicon dioxide quartz that is sourced for minimum impurities. It is reduced using high grade metallurgical coke that is manufactured from anthracite or pyrolytic carbon to remove impurities. The embodied energy of polysilicon is quite enormous. The Chinese build these things next to coal mines feeding coal burning powerplants, employing forced labour in Xingjiang. Why do you think that don't use solar farms in Manchuria instead? Thin film PV is a lot more than just doped silicon. It requires huge quantities of glass for panels, steel for frames, doping elements (usually rare and toxic); silver for top contacts, copper and aluminium for inverters and transmission. This is before we consider the battery requirements for storage. The resource requirements per unit of harvested energy are around 1E2 greater than electricity produced from nuclear power or fossil fuels. You really think you are going to refine these necessary materials from base rocks and manufacture this huge amount of infrastructure on Mars, using imported solar panels from Earth, exploiting a solar flux comparable to that of Alaska? This is beyond delusional. It is what happens when confirmation bias are completely unchecked and you just believe whatever happens to appeal to you.
Yes I am aware they are very energy intensive, of course. The energy payback period for solar panels is usually given as something like 2.5 years these days (by analysts other than yourself, who seems unable to accept the consensus on this). With would translate on Mars to maybe 5 years. We've had solar panels working on Mars for 12 years or more. So, no reason to think they won't get past the energy pay back period. Of course for the first few years you will be dependent on your imported energy systems. But Mr Musk is a very rich man, and the colony is going to small for a few decades. A few Starship cargo loads can ensure an abundance of energy.
If you remember, I carried out a net energy analysis of your concept several months ago and posted the results on here. Over its lifetime, a PV plant on Mars might just about harvest enough net energy to replace itself, with a small surplus. No good at all for the rapid growth in energy supply needed by an expanding population, on a planet where energy requirements per capita are several times higher than on Earth. This is a consequence of low EROI. EROI is basically a measure of the resources that must be used for each unit of energy. Absent market distortions, Low EROI = High cost. On a planet where you need a lot more energy to survive and even more to invest in new infrastructure that allows you to grow, expensive low EROI energy simply won't do. Net energy analysis allows us to understand the physics reasons behind the role of resources in economic growth. It helps to explain for example why the UK economy cannot grow, even though interest rates are low and BOE are practically giving money away. Less available energy means less activity. It should be easy for everyone to understand, but for some reason it isn't.
Incidentally, TH shared an article yesterday written about a group of former SpaceX engineers who are developing a 1.2MWe modular nuclear power source. Do you notice anything familiar about that 1.2MWe figure? Could it be that those engineers have gone through exactly the sort of analysis that I did, probably with better knowledge and tools, and reached the same conclusion?
Yes I do recall, and I recall I didn't accept you inserting your own estimates over those generally accepted by industry analysts. As explained above when the colony is small your strictures, even if true, nevertheless don't apply because it will be receiving an expanding energy system directly from Earth in imported solar panels. In fact, as long as Mars can pay for the imports, there's no particular reason why that could not continue. But I, like Musk, am interested in creating a self-sufficient Mars, so I would like to see it get into manufacturing solar as soon as possible.
One factor I think you neglect is how big an energy sector is within an economy. In the UK the energy sector accounts for just over 2% of GDP (it was at 10% at the height of the N Sea oil boom). There's no reason why on Mars the energy sector wouldn't account for 20% of GDP. Yes, it will be less efficient and more costly than on Earth but it will still do the business: create an energy surplus that secures Mars's economic future. I believe both energy and agriculture will on Mars be much larger parts of the economy. But on the other hand things like car manufacture, motorway maintenance, railway infrastructure, airports, paper manufacture and so on will be a much smaller or absent part of the Mars economy. It will be swings and roundabouts.
Of course solar is not the only energy form that might be used. Wind power is puny on Mars but we might be able to harness it. I certainly think heat differential systems, making use of the large temperature swings on Mars could prove to be very effective energy generators. We might be able to exploit natural methane reserves as well, using perhaps oxygen generated by CO2 consuming plants to achieve combustion. And of course nuclear power is an option on a desolate Mars, though I don't see that really coming to the fore in the first couple of decades.
I think I reached a figure of about 1.6 MwE figure for a solar powered system for the first colony. So very much the same figure, given the need to store solar. The difference is that solar is pretty much ready to go. These nuclear power designs are not and will create all sorts of regulatory problems and concern in countries around the globe. Don't go there!
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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The energy payback time of ten years for solar PV, comes from the EROI analysis of Spain's PV industry carried out by Hall and Pietro, which calculated an overall EROI of 2.45. Assuming a 25 year average system lifetime, that is an EPBT of 10 years. The Hall and Pietro study included energy costs that are not usually captured in EPBT estimates of PV systems, but are none the less essential.
But even an EPBT of 2.5 or 5 years, would be problematic. The plant must generate enough power to replace itself in 25 years and enough surplus to provide for growth in power supply, along with the infrastructure investments needed to grow the colony and meet subsistence energy costs of the colony. An EROI of 10 is weak by those standards. An EROI of 5 is unworkable.
The EROI of its principal energy sources, reflects the wealth of a society and its ability to support growth. Between 1930 and 1970, the EROI of oil production was about 30 according to Hall - much higher than today. During that narrow 40 year window, the world that we know today was made. Practically all of the infrastructure of OECD countries was built in that period. We went from using biplanes and steam ships and horse and cart, to crossing the Atlantic on 747s, driving privately owned cars and flying to the moon. Living standards grew far beyond the expectations of previous generations. The middle class came into existence, private car ownership became the norm, foreign holidays available, food scarcity disappeared, free higher education became mainstream for the middle classes and large fractions of the working class.
All of this growth in living standards and the supporting infrastructure, required huge amounts of additional energy. Between 1930 and 1970, global oil production doubled every decade. In the 50 years since 1970, we have failed even one doubling. This is a direct result of collapsing EROI and falling surplus energy. Less surplus energy means less spare energy to invest in new things and a higher cost even when we do. It is why in the years since 1970, we have been coasting compared to the dramatic improvements that came during that narrow window of supercharged growth in wealth, infrastructure and new technology.
That is the sort of power that high EROI energy affords a society. It determines whether or not our children will be jetting off to other planets and doing fantastic new things, or shivering with cold in crumbling victoriana houses and shovelling dirt in subsistence agriculture. It was the incredible bounty of stored liquid fuel that could be sucked out of the ground almost for free, that allowed the complete transformation of Western societies in just a few decades. It is because of this inconvenient fact of life that I keep pushing the case for nuclear power as an almost moral imperative. What we do in terms energy really will effect our future prospects. It is about as far from being an abstract consideration as it is possible to get. It is the single most important thing that stands between where we are and Medieval levels of hardship.
We need something even better on Mars, because of all the extra energy costs we need to cover. This is why PV will be no more than a niche solution, something that is used in marginal situations, like powering small pieces of remote equipment. That plays to its strengths. Trying to power steel works and synthetic fuel factories using PV on Mars is a fool's errand. And you are correct that it will rely upon the energy source being imported from Earth. The problem here is the sheer amount of mass required, as the number of MW needed by the colony stacks up over time. You are basically relying upon Musk and others having infinitely deep pockets that they generously empty to keep the colony subsidised. Sooner or later, probably sooner, this will stop working.
Last edited by Calliban (2021-11-11 11:22:59)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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Here is the answer for solar
Solar Power Got Cheap. So Why Aren’t We Using It More? It turns out there’s a lot of inertia built into the energy system.
Its that embedded energy cost that Calliban reminds us of, to make them which we keep saying for why on mars we will be not looking to making them for quite some time.
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There is way too much scope for statistical jiggery pokery when it comes to EROI. Nuclear power is very labour intensive. I've argued before you should include the energy content of the tarmac car parks at nuclear power stations and the road journeys to and from the power station as well as all the daily inputs including material for the staff canteen. I very much doubt these are included in nuclear power EROI estimates. When it comes to EROI, people tend to stop where they want to stop.
This is why I say that in the end the best judge is price - the unsubsidised price in an energy market where there is a reasonable amount of free competition. Price reflects all the real energy inputs as well as the labour input (which is crucial, because if someone is engaged working on your energy infrastructure, they can't make vehicles or construct homes). That has its own problems of course but at least it has some direct relation to reality.
The energy payback time of ten years for solar PV, comes from the EROI analysis of Spain's PV industry carried out by Hall and Pietro, which calculated an overall EROI of 2.45. Assuming a 25 year average system lifetime, that is an EPBT of 10 years. The Hall and Pietro study included energy costs that are not usually captured in EPBT estimates of PV systems, but are none the less essential.
But even an EPBT of 2.5 or 5 years, would be problematic. The plant must generate enough power to replace itself in 25 years and enough surplus to provide for growth in power supply, along with the infrastructure investments needed to grow the colony and meet subsistence energy costs of the colony. An EROI of 10 is weak by those standards. An EROI of 5 is unworkable.
The EROI of its principal energy sources, reflects the wealth of a society and its ability to support growth. Between 1930 and 1970, the EROI of oil production was about 30 according to Hall - much higher than today. During that narrow 40 year window, the world that we know today was made. Practically all of the infrastructure of OECD countries was built in that period. We went from using biplanes and steam ships and horse and cart, to crossing the Atlantic on 747s, driving privately owned cars and flying to the moon. Living standards grew far beyond the expectations of previous generations. The middle class came into existence, private car ownership became the norm, foreign holidays available, food scarcity disappeared, free higher education became mainstream for the middle classes and large fractions of the working class.
All of this growth in living standards and the supporting infrastructure, required huge amounts of additional energy. Between 1930 and 1970, global oil production doubled every decade. In the 50 years since 1970, we have failed even one doubling. This is a direct result of collapsing EROI and falling surplus energy. Less surplus energy means less spare energy to invest in new things and a higher cost even when we do. It is why in the years since 1970, we have been coasting compared to the dramatic improvements that came during that narrow window of supercharged growth in wealth, infrastructure and new technology.
That is the sort of power that high EROI energy affords a society. It determines whether or not our children will be jetting off to other planets and doing fantastic new things, or shivering with cold in crumbling victoriana houses and shovelling dirt in subsistence agriculture. It was the incredible bounty of stored liquid fuel that could be sucked out of the ground almost for free, that allowed the complete transformation of Western societies in just a few decades. It is because of this inconvenient fact of life that I keep pushing the case for nuclear power as an almost moral imperative. What we do in terms energy really will effect our future prospects. It is about as far from being an abstract consideration as it is possible to get. It is the single most important thing that stands between where we are and Medieval levels of hardship.
We need something even better on Mars, because of all the extra energy costs we need to cover. This is why PV will be no more than a niche solution, something that is used in marginal situations, like powering small pieces of remote equipment. That plays to its strengths. Trying to power steel works and synthetic fuel factories using PV on Mars is a fool's errand. And you are correct that it will rely upon the energy source being imported from Earth. The problem here is the sheer amount of mass required, as the number of MW needed by the colony stacks up over time. You are basically relying upon Musk and others having infinitely deep pockets that they generously empty to keep the colony subsidised. Sooner or later, probably sooner, this will stop working.
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That article ignores the fact that as far as Earth goes we haven't yet found a cheap enough storage solution to enable a 100% green energy system implemented. Somewhat important I think! If you bought out the fossil fuel industry tomorrow and said you were going to convert to green energy within 5 years you'd have economic meltdown and mass starvation.
You have to be able to put in place a reasonable-cost storage solution first. I do believe we are very close to that. But we are not quite there yet.
But for Mars, cost is not a big issue in the early colony. Solar panel and battery costs are trivial compared with getting a rocket to Mars.
Here is the answer for solar
Solar Power Got Cheap. So Why Aren’t We Using It More? It turns out there’s a lot of inertia built into the energy system.Its that embedded energy cost that Calliban reminds us of, to make them which we keep saying for why on mars we will be not looking to making them for quite some time.
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No storage required in Net Metering of the power created during hours that you produce, so do not use more than you create when the system is off...
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That article ignores the fact that as far as Earth goes we haven't yet found a cheap enough storage solution to enable a 100% green energy system implemented. Somewhat important I think! If you bought out the fossil fuel industry tomorrow and said you were going to convert to green energy within 5 years you'd have economic meltdown and mass starvation.
You have to be able to put in place a reasonable-cost storage solution first. I do believe we are very close to that. But we are not quite there yet.
But for Mars, cost is not a big issue in the early colony. Solar panel and battery costs are trivial compared with getting a rocket to Mars.
SpaceNut wrote:Here is the answer for solar
Solar Power Got Cheap. So Why Aren’t We Using It More? It turns out there’s a lot of inertia built into the energy system.Its that embedded energy cost that Calliban reminds us of, to make them which we keep saying for why on mars we will be not looking to making them for quite some time.
Indeed. A wind or solar powerplant is basically a natural gas powerplant, with the wind / solar contribution cutting the fuel bill by 30%. If you've got very expensive gas (we have right now) then the combined system might break even against the gas plant alone. The most promising way forward is to overbuild wind infrastructure for the intended electrical load and use the excess to produce storable heat in grid connected storage heaters. The gas turbines then fill in much smaller gaps in base load power demand. But controlling millions of separate storage heaters is no small challenge.
The labour intensity of a power source is a strong function of scale economies. Build 100 identical powerplants, and labour intensity is lower than it would be for just one. For highly complex systems with high power density, like nuclear reactors, that effect is powerful. It is how the French power industry came to dominate European electricity supply. They produced dozens of identical, 900MWe PWR units. Labour intensity is low. And until their recent dip stick president decided to screw things up, their power was the cheapest in Europe.
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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Nuclear power is not low labour intensive on any measure compared with wind or solar energy! And I don't trust any accounting from the French nuclear industry. Margaret Thatcher discovered to her chagrin that the UK nuclear power industry just made up figures whereas the reality was it was virtually bankrupt. And virtually all nuclear power industries are given government guarantees which mean they don't have to take out insurance (lucky for them - because they could never afford the premiums!). The guarantees mean that you and I, the taxpayer, will stump up the cost of dealing with any nuclear power station catastrophe.
Anyway, to bring it back to the topic of this thread, the early colony on Mars will be super-productive whatever energy system is being used. I would say that for probably the first couple of decades the Mars colony will be the beneficiary of a huge energy system donation from Earth...Space X will from its coffers essentially donate to Mars a huge energy system that gives it an extremely high energy generation output. There is nothing odd about that - nearly all the early American colonies had benefactors who donated a lot of capital at the outset in return for land and monopolies. The huge energy per capita ratio will allow the Mars colony to make full use of robots and to build its own energy generation/storage systems.
louis wrote:That article ignores the fact that as far as Earth goes we haven't yet found a cheap enough storage solution to enable a 100% green energy system implemented. Somewhat important I think! If you bought out the fossil fuel industry tomorrow and said you were going to convert to green energy within 5 years you'd have economic meltdown and mass starvation.
You have to be able to put in place a reasonable-cost storage solution first. I do believe we are very close to that. But we are not quite there yet.
But for Mars, cost is not a big issue in the early colony. Solar panel and battery costs are trivial compared with getting a rocket to Mars.
SpaceNut wrote:Here is the answer for solar
Solar Power Got Cheap. So Why Aren’t We Using It More? It turns out there’s a lot of inertia built into the energy system.Its that embedded energy cost that Calliban reminds us of, to make them which we keep saying for why on mars we will be not looking to making them for quite some time.
Indeed. A wind or solar powerplant is basically a natural gas powerplant, with the wind / solar contribution cutting the fuel bill by 30%. If you've got very expensive gas (we have right now) then the combined system might break even against the gas plant alone. The most promising way forward is to overbuild wind infrastructure for the intended electrical load and use the excess to produce storable heat in grid connected storage heaters. The gas turbines then fill in much smaller gaps in base load power demand. But controlling millions of separate storage heaters is no small challenge.
The labour intensity of a power source is a strong function of scale economies. Build 100 identical powerplants, and labour intensity is lower than it would be for just one. For highly complex systems with high power density, like nuclear reactors, that effect is powerful. It is how the French power industry came to dominate European electricity supply. They produced dozens of identical, 900MWe PWR units. Labour intensity is low. And until their recent dip stick president decided to screw things up, their power was the cheapest in Europe.
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What is that magical "energy system" in the first post that is running the automation and robotics that mean I am not working?
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Solar, with storage as methane probably but hydrogen possibly.
Robots will be applied where they produce a benefit. There will be plenty of work for humans. Labour will be in very short supply on Mars in the early decades. That's why you will have the robots. Robots will mine water, clean solar panels of dust, clean human habs, tend plants in farm habs and collect waste...among other things.
What is that magical "energy system" in the first post that is running the automation and robotics that mean I am not working?
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