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Fascinating ideas. I would put roads and other public rights of way under and between domes. It would be relatively simple to develop a city plan that reserves 50 or 100 meter rights of way on a grid, probably with a 500 meter or 1000 meter spacing. You wouldn't want rights of way to go through domes because if a dome depressurizes, the road has to be closed, or it will depressurize a whole line of domes.
Zubrin suggests that a 100 meter dome might cost $1 million to make and the land inside, divided into 20 by 20 meter lots, would cost $50,000 each. This is quite affordable, but it also highlights the high cost of developed Martian land ($400,000 per acre in this case). When land is that expensive, on Earth it isn't expropriated; one tunnels under it for transportation.
-- RobS
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Health care costs something like 8-10% of the gross domestic product of Canada, the U.K., France, and Germany, I think. The US is more like 12%, if I remember right. It's not clear to me the U.S. has bought better quality, either; the World Health Organization says France has the best health care system in the world (or so they said a few years ago).
Calculating Martian health care costs is quite tricky for these reasons:
1. The demographic pyramid. The biggest health care costs are generated by the oldest people. Babies and infants are probably second. People aged 15-60 are in the lowest category. If Mars has a steady immigration of 22-35 year olds, the demographic pyramid will have a relatively small "apex" of the oldest people. Birth rates are hard to predict, but considering the high level of education and the need for both men and women to work, birth rates will probably be low (below the replacement level; say, 1.4 to 1.5 live births per woman). The birth rate no doubt could be raised through generous tax supports and employment benefits (six-month maternity leave with full pay guaranteed, maybe paternity leave as well). But all this suggests to me that the Martian population with probably be of a healthier age distribution than the terrestrial population. If tobacco consumption is virtually nonexistent and alcohol consumption is moderate, that will cut health care costs drastically (and neither vice is likely to be encouraged on Mars, unless the planet is settled primarily by Russians who import lots of vodka!).
2. Technology. As medicine has gotten more dependent on technology, it has gotten much more expensive. Mars is likely to have a quite technology-intensive medical system. This is especially likely when you consider that (1) no one can go to Earth for treatments, so Mars with a few hundred or a few thousand people will probably have the equipment of a metropolitan area of a million people, but it will be underutilized; (2) there will be huge import costs for everything.
3. A very "experimental" medical environment. Martians will be exposed to far more radiation than terrestrials, will deal with 1/3 gravity, will be exposed to microscopic dust, and will be eating food raised in soils with rare elements. Their diets could have problems in terms of iodine and other trace elements. There will be a lot of pressure to study the population intensively to determine its true medical risk. Hence there will be an incentive to create lots of medical studies that involve very thorough medical care, and the studies will be heavily subsidized. It may be that most Martians will sign up for medical studies in order to get free medical treatment. In that case, much of the medical costs will be subsidized by research budgets, not health insurance. And later after the studies are finished, the medical system will be geared to extensive testing and checking, and so it will be even more expensive.
-- RobS
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Let's not fall into the trap of expecting to duplicate everything we have now without change. That would defeat the point of starting over on a new world. One problem on Earth is excessive taxes. Canada has federal income tax, provincial income tax, the federal Goods and Services Tax, provincial sales tax, gasoline tax, excise tax on air conditioners, property tax, business license, Winnipeg has a business premises tax and 84 specific industry licenses. When I worked for the city government, one co-worker who worked on the computer system to collect those industry licenses said all revenue from them was spent on collecting them; so there was no net revenue at all. The U.S. doesn't have GST or any other form of federal sales tax, but it does have municipal and county sales taxes; Canada doesn't. The list of taxes goes on and on, the total tax load exceeds 50%. That means the government takes more of your money than you get to keep yourself; and that's before paying rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, and transportation to/from work. What's left? How many people can afford to start a small business? It is stifling the economy.
I could detail how to calculate your total tax load, I was about to say so here but there are a fair number of calculations. Let's just say it's unreasonable.
I did start talking about my idea for Mars with assertion that it's a corporate government. That also means the corporation pays for administrative expense of the federal government executive, as well as any differences between operating costs and expenses. The additional expense is just a cost of doing business, and comes out of profit from Mars business.
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I think that a repersentive Republic would work well, where state, and persons rights are protected from the federal gov. A weak federal gov is very important, otherwise it get too much power. Thats what happened in the USA, and the main reason why the civil war was fought. Not slavery!
I love plants!
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A Transhumanist AI Solar system Constitutional government?
'Between $100B and $10T'
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1159964499975135232
Mental health, difficult people and crime?
Antarctica scientist stabbed colleague for spoiling book endings
https://nypost.com/2018/10/30/antarctic … gs-report/
Humans Will Never Colonize?
https://gizmodo.com/humans-will-never-c … 1836316222
The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to humans.
Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system, and that’s not saying much.
Economy?
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1 … 5591245833
The modeling was based on extensive US economic data so was realistic except the key assumption is that we can “skinny down” the supply chain by redesigning everything to reduce the number of unique parts and materials. E.g., instead of using 1000 types of bolts, use just 100./1
an other future developments, changes and innovation and future ideas coming?
An atomic battery, nuclear battery, radioisotope battery or radioisotope generator is a device which uses energy from the decay of a radioactive isotope to generate electricity. Like nuclear reactors, they generate electricity from nuclear energy, but differ in that they do not use a chain reaction. Although commonly called batteries, they are technically not electrochemical and cannot be charged or recharged. They are very costly, but have an extremely long life and high energy density, and so they are typically used as power sources for equipment that must operate unattended for long periods of time, such as spacecraft, pacemakers, underwater systems and automated scientific stations in remote parts of the world.
http://www.gizmag.com/smaller-nuclear-battery/13076/
'Dhaka has done awesome research measuring how magnetic susceptibility and microwave susceptibility of minerals are correlated and how, from this fact of nature, we can build a lunar landing pad with much lower energy & cost than we previously believed. (Patent pending tech)'
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1 … Sfh6spAAAA
Why "Humans" Will Never Colonize Mars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcXZfXi_MNQ
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-08-08 03:44:08)
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Human Rights on Mars Won’t Be the Same as Those on Earth
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic … e-on-earth
Does Mars need a constitution? Eventually, but there are more urgent questions to address first, such as how to get there.
Sanna Marin: Europe needs strategic autonomy in energy, food and technology
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/ … technology
The 10 Best Utopian Sci-fi Films
https://www.tasteofcinema.com/2022/the- … -fi-films/
Here are ten works of science-fiction that celebrate a hopeful outlook, most of them now several decades old. Given that the future will probably look very different to what was widely imagined half a century ago, it is likely these will only continue to grow in popularity as objects of nostalgia.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-09-13 17:33:28)
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