4Frontiers

GCNRevenger · 2005-09-09 21:59:30

"cooperation, not exthortion"

So do gangsters... Criminal? No, but if they go patenting a plethora of ideas like IP-based companies do, particularly simple ones and they fight like mad in court, then their entire business model is counter to their stated goal of advancing humanity to space. The people that will fall victim to their legal attack-dogs will be NASA and other space companies! And we are to just kind of trust that they will be nice and not start patenting "overgeneral silly stuff?" Or maybe even our stuff and claim it for their own? The company is run by an Intel exec you know.

To "fisk" a few bits of SpaceNut's document...

"Starting in approximately 2010, economically viable commercial launchers will enable potential export of thousands of tons in orbit"

That B.S... Thousands of tonnes? 2010? Heck, Elon's Falcon-IX will hardly be flying by then.

"opportunities and expansion for business and
government efforts"

Like? ...Dude, you have heard about NASA's SDV, right?

"discovery of new IP in the near term"

*dumDumDUM* (scarry sound here)

"asteroid-mining capabilities... highly profitable... asteroids can provide a large variety of rare, raw materials"

Haha! Fools! They don't have a CLUE what they are up against. And if we have all this cheap, easy launch from Earth, then what in the world do we need asteroid mining for? Its way easier just to smelt the metals and bottle the fuel here and send them up.

"a core technology roadmap... and a profitable posture"

Really? Where? A link to the MarsHomestead page? And "posture" does not profit make.

"material exploitation from Mars and its moons in support of Earth orbital and Lunar development."

Haha! Lets see here... launch from Earth from our MASSIVE industrial base and "everywhere is shirtsleeves" environment, ooorrr Mars/Phobos/Deimos, then lug everything some tens of millions of kilometers back to Earth. I don't know what these guys are on, but its gotta be some good stuff.

"...sale and lease of future private and commercial facilities on Mars will begin to generate cash flow. After scheduling the first heavy-lift launch for the Mars settlement material-recovery agreements for Mars and its moons will generate significant revenue."

Worth less (worthless?) then the paper they are written on. Sell a few Martian condos to (rich?) "space enthusiasts" and run all the way to the (Swiss) bank.

"Our expertise in this area is unparalleled"

I think there might be some folks at JSC who might beg to differ. And they sure aren't going to pay 4Frontiers.
___________________________________________

There are but two possibilities:

-The company is a wolf in sheeps clothing to patent ideas, perhaps from "Mars enthusiasts" they "partner" with, and use the courts as an income source in the future.

-The company is just another AltSpace venture with no future run by a bored computer industry exec.

deagleninja · 2005-09-10 09:33:39

The radar evidence is that Mercury has ICE at the poles; not just disseminated frost. Arecibo spotted it, but did not detect ice at the lunar poles. So the current evidence does indeed favor a lot of ice at Mercury's poles.
But I wouldn't regard Mercury as a great future destination for these reasons:
1. We have no idea what its mineral reserves are. It will have PGMs just like the moon from smashed meteorites. The planet has a huge metal core, but it's a thousand miles underground. If Mercury's crust is just an accumulation of dry volcanic rocks, like the moon, it won't have any significant ores. If it has (or had) some water and volatiles inside, then it may have magmatic processes that make copper, silver, gold, etc., like many ore formation process on Earth. But we really don't know.
2. Over most of its surface it has way too much sunlight for months, then none at all for months. When the sun is up the regolith heats up to a scorching 800 degrees or so; lots of infrared radiation for cooling systems to deal with. I wouldn't move vehicles or maybe even robots around during the day. Most of the planet will have to be explored at night using headlights; not the best way to explore anything. Any "settlements" outside the polar regions will have to be deeply buried and will probably need nuclear power for the lengthy nightspan. No one will live on most of Mercury unless that spot has incredible mineral wealth.
3. The poles have areas with perpetual sunlight, so maybe it will be possible to build greenhouse modules in those areas where horizontal sunlight can be spread around and used to raise food. But Mercury's surface will have micrometeoroids; it has no atmosphere like Mars. And it will have fierce levels of solar radiation, which will be even fiercer at the poles where Mercury's magnetic field will concentrate it. The auroras will be pretty (if there are enough atoms around to get excited by the solar radiation) but they signal a deadly problem.
4. The delta-v between Mercury and anything else in the solar system is pretty high because it is so deep in the sun's gravitational field. I think one way between Earth orbit and Mercury is 10 km/sec. This will make transportation expensive and will require advanced propulsion. Maybe solar sails will eventually be good for moving cargo to and from Mercury, since sunlight and gravity both increase by the inverse square of the distance. I doubt Mercury will be able to export PGMs, gold, or anything else profitably compared to the moon and Mars because of higher transportation and production costs. Possibly it will have a lot of Helium 3, but then it will compete with the moon if He3 is really of any value.
-- RobS

1. Mercury has vast metal reserves at or near the surface thanks to meteorites that haven't been used by humans over thousands of years. There's no reason that these reserves would not be enough to start a fledgling industry even assuming that the crust of Mercury is devoid of accessable ore.

2. Forget 99% of the surface of Mercury for a moment. I'd be mad to suggest that we brave 800+ degree temperatures in search of materials. Think instead of a crater rim near the poles. On the rim you can have perpetual sunlight that yeilds an incredible amount of solar power. Just beyond the rim you have perpetual darkness in which our colonists, should there be any, can live and work in safety.

3. The dual problems of micrometeoroids and radiation can both be solved by building your base undergorund. It would also be best to grow any plants, should they be needed, underground in a controlled environment. Yes, indoor lighting intense enough to grow plants is expensive energy-wise, but luckily our colonists will have more energy than they know what to do with.

4. And yes, due to Mercury's depth in the Sun's gravity well it is very expensive to ship raw materials anywhere else in the solar system, at least if you assume that conventional or nuclear transport are used. But by the same token it is much cheaper to ship materials to Mercury in order to start your operation. Transmitting energy in the form of microwaves is NOT affected by the Sun's gravity and therefore a wonderful means of turning a profit.

And I'm so thrilled you mentioned solar sails. When people tend to think of solar sails they think of a sail miles in diameter powered by natural sunlight. Perhaps this is due to romanticism, I don't know, but this is hardly the best use of a solar sail. The best use of a solar sail is to make them small, perhaps the size of a football feild and beam the energy to the sail. Not only do you not have to deal with a fragile sail that is at the whim of our Sun and the decreasing efficency as you move away from the Sun, but you also keep them to a size that is much easier to deploy, compact enough to pack into a small rocket, and best of all....disposable.

The ability of Mercury to ship raw materials and energy around the solar system cheaper than anyone else can is what will drive buisness to it.

RobS · 2005-09-12 22:20:38

. Mercury has vast metal reserves at or near the surface thanks to meteorites that haven't been used by humans over thousands of years. There's no reason that these reserves would not be enough to start a fledgling industry even assuming that the crust of Mercury is devoid of accessable ore.

Huh? The moon will have just as many; so will Mars; why go all the way to Mercury?

Think instead of a crater rim near the poles. On the rim you can have perpetual sunlight that yeilds an incredible amount of solar power. Just beyond the rim you have perpetual darkness in which our colonists, should there be any, can live and work in safety.

Why would you live in the perpetual darkness, and why is it safer? As you said, to be safe, you want to be buried.

4. And yes, due to Mercury's depth in the Sun's gravity well it is very expensive to ship raw materials anywhere else in the solar system, at least if you assume that conventional or nuclear transport are used. But by the same token it is much cheaper to ship materials to Mercury in order to start your operation.

Why is it cheaper to ship to Mercury than from it? The delta-v is just as high both ways and Mercury has no aerobraking. I'm afraid the delta-v makes it expensive to ship to Mercury.

Transmitting energy in the form of microwaves is NOT affected by the Sun's gravity and therefore a wonderful means of turning a profit.

At the moment we don't have the technology to ship microwave power any distance at all, let alone the moon, and you want to ship it from Mercury? What do you do when the sun gets in the way for a week every four months? It'd be cheaper to build a solar power farm at an Earth-sun lagrange point and concentrate sunlight on the array using a thin-film mirror.

deagleninja · 2005-09-14 19:18:32

Quote:
. Mercury has vast metal reserves at or near the surface thanks to meteorites that haven't been used by humans over thousands of years. There's no reason that these reserves would not be enough to start a fledgling industry even assuming that the crust of Mercury is devoid of accessable ore.

Huh? The moon will have just as many; so will Mars; why go all the way to Mercury?

Huh? Because Mercury is a better location. The reserves will be deeper. There is much more solar energy available on Mercury as well.

Quote:
Think instead of a crater rim near the poles. On the rim you can have perpetual sunlight that yeilds an incredible amount of solar power. Just beyond the rim you have perpetual darkness in which our colonists, should there be any, can live and work in safety.

Why would you live in the perpetual darkness, and why is it safer? As you said, to be safe, you want to be buried.

Why would you want to live in darkness?
-Hopefully you wouldn't. But the sunlit side of Mercury is around 800 degrees. Artificial lighting deals with the problem of darkness quite easily.
Why is it safer?
-I would think that was obvious Rob. The largest hazard to organic beings on Mercury is radiation. The areas of highest radiation will be those lit by the Sun's rays.
To be safe you want to be buried.
-Yes indeed. But if our industry is to take advantage of Mercury's rich resources, then mobility on the surface is needed. It just plan makes more sense for any mining operation to take place inside a crater, and out of the sunlight.

Quote:
4. And yes, due to Mercury's depth in the Sun's gravity well it is very expensive to ship raw materials anywhere else in the solar system, at least if you assume that conventional or nuclear transport are used. But by the same token it is much cheaper to ship materials to Mercury in order to start your operation.

Why is it cheaper to ship to Mercury than from it? The delta-v is just as high both ways and Mercury has no aerobraking. I'm afraid the delta-v makes it expensive to ship to Mercury.

You are of course correct if no solar sail is deployed.

Quote:
Transmitting energy in the form of microwaves is NOT affected by the Sun's gravity and therefore a wonderful means of turning a profit.

At the moment we don't have the technology to ship microwave power any distance at all, let alone the moon, and you want to ship it from Mercury? What do you do when the sun gets in the way for a week every four months? It'd be cheaper to build a solar power farm at an Earth-sun lagrange point and concentrate sunlight on the array using a thin-film mirror.

-And what do you do when your solar power farm at the lagrange point needs replacing in a few years?
Cheaper? Hardly.
You just pointed out to me the costs of getting around the solar system as being to high to warrent a base on Mercury. The problem with Lagrange points is

a)you have to go to them
b)you have to bring resources with you

By comparison a solar farm on Mercury can be built and serviced with automation of today's technology.

Look, I'm not saying that the Moon and Mars aren't decent spots for resources, or that we shouldn't go to them first. All I am saying is that from a buisness stand point, Mercury is where real money is to be made.

Our solar economy will need two things as cheap as possible: energy and resources. Mercury is the leader in both.

GCNRevenger · 2005-09-14 21:59:00

I don't think that you appreciate just what a hardship it is to have to confine all your operations on Mercury to a big, dark crater or two. Because you will be limited to only one site, you won't have access to other scatterd sites over the surface. This is a big deal, since the types of asteroids are important. Aluminum and Titanium are plentiful on the Moon in the dust, but the real prize are rocks with PGMs and C/H/O. These will be more rare, and if they are anywhere on the Mercurian surface other then the always-dark craters, you'll be out of luck.

Furthermore, abundant solar flux on Mercury will do you limited good, because you can't build or maintain solar cells/collectors in the "light" since your work crews would be incinerated. Furthermore, if your base is in a crater near the poles, then "day" will last for months on the sunlit side of the crater. High temperatures aren't very good for transmission lines or transmitters either. On the Moon, there is no such problem, because no place on the surface is "too hot to handle."

The mineral reserves on Mercury will not be any deeper if all you are doing is mining fallen meteorites versus the Moon too.

You can bury your base on the Moon too. In fact, it would probobly be a little easier, thanks to the Moon's nanoscopic-iron laden dust ("Mooncrete") and lower gravity.

The ability to solar-sail is woefully overrated I think. But, if you are going to use a beam-powerd sail, then the Moon is the obvious choice. First of all, its closer to where your destination is, so you can easily push sails around in Cislunar space from the Moon: this is a bigger deal then it sounds, because beamed energy dissapates with distance. So, even though Mercury may have a higher flux available to capture, the longer distance it would have to beam the power makes it less attractive then the Moon.

Don't forget solar power will likly be even easier to get on the Moon since you won't be converted into a puff of smoke like a struck match head if you go out into the light, so you can afford to build huuuge solar arrays. And huge arrays is what you want: new solar technologies like amorphous Ga/As thin film arrays or photo-active polymer nanocomposite are dirt-cheap to make, but have lower efficiency and thermal/radiation tollerances. This means you would be stuck with crystalline silicon cells on Mercury, which will very soon be obsolete for large-scale power production.

This brings me to my last point, beamed power: Beaming microwave power over long distances requires a proportionatly larger transmitter (which will definatly be phased-array type). On the Moon, the transmitter for cis-Lunar space could be a few kilometers wide and still provide decent coverage. It might even reach all the way to Earth, or at least HEO... On Mercury however, the transmitter would need to be huge. REALLY huge. Easily tens or hundreds of kilometers in diameter to reach Earth, perhaps even wider then the whole planet to get decent focus! You obviously aren't going to fit that in one little crater.

Oh! And before I forget, the coverage would be bad too... if you need gobs of power and large transmitter nodes spread around the crater near the poles, then you will be pretty limited in only being able to "fire" parallel to the poles. No good for microwave-beamed solar sailing along the ecliptic to Earth.

Mercury isn't as good as you make it sound, deagle. Mercury has energy allright, too much!

Edit: And get any ideas of big lasers to cheat the dispersion problem out of your head if you are talking economics, because beamed laser power will never be economical. Why not? Simple, because lasers are horribly inefficent: the best lasers will be throwing away 80-90%+ of the power put into them as waste heat. Even a regenerative system wouldn't be able to reclaim but ~20% of the waste. Microwave transmitters only throw away 10-20% of their energy as waste heat. Capturing beamed laser power for electricity isn't very efficent either, which makes Mercurian electricity even less attractive.

BWhite · 2005-09-14 23:55:11

You can bury your base on the Moon too. In fact, it would probobly be a little easier, thanks to the Moon's nanoscopic-iron laden dust ("Mooncrete") and lower gravity.

That nanophase iron is really, really cool, isn't it? Sinter it with microwaves and make dust free roads, as another example.

Grypd · 2005-09-15 04:31:47

You can bury your base on the Moon too. In fact, it would probobly be a little easier, thanks to the Moon's nanoscopic-iron laden dust ("Mooncrete") and lower gravity.
That nanophase iron is really, really cool, isn't it? Sinter it with microwaves and make dust free roads, as another example.

Stick it in a furnace and a large magnetic source and you get magnetic bricks that just want to stick together

GCNRevenger · 2005-09-15 05:55:37

Build a reuseable microwave-permiable "form" (like a concrete form) and pour the sifted dust into it. Then, bring your portable high-power microwave source, blast it throughly, and there you go. A contiguous, relativly study surface.

Unfortunatly, there isn't enough iron in the dust to make the bricks very magnetic.

deagleninja · 2005-09-15 08:03:17

I don't think that you appreciate just what a hardship it is to have to confine all your operations on Mercury to a big, dark crater or two.

I never said that ALL operations had to be confined to a crater or two.

Furthermore, abundant solar flux on Mercury will do you limited good, because you can't build or maintain solar cells/collectors in the "light" since your work crews would be incinerated.

It would be stupid to send people to do a task that robotics can handle wouldn't it?

Furthermore, if your base is in a crater near the poles, then "day" will last for months on the sunlit side of the crater. High temperatures aren't very good for transmission lines or transmitters either.

This is trivial and easily solved. If burial of the lines and/or cooling of the lines doesn't work, then replace them ever so often. Hardly a deal breaker.

The mineral reserves on Mercury will not be any deeper if all you are doing is mining fallen meteorites versus the Moon too.

False. The ultimate fate of all comets we can see is to one day join the Sun. This is also true of many asteroids as well as they slowly spiral down into the Sun over the eons. Since the Sun is the final destination of so many celestial objects, doesn't it make sense that Mercury has intercepted more debris than the Moon which only occasionally gets in the way?

Don't forget solar power will likly be even easier to get on the Moon since you won't be converted into a puff of smoke like a struck match head if you go out into the light

LMAO, come on guys, it's only 800 degrees! If I can touch the sides of my household oven when it is in cleaning mode (900 degrees) then sure we can build a rover capable of withstanding those temps indefinately. You people make it sound like this is some kind of impossible enginering task, it's not. People work everyday in nuclear power plants around the world without fatalities in an environment that is every bit as dangerous. But they do it so successfully because it is so well planned out.

Mercury isn't as good as you make it sound, deagle.

Fine. I'm willing to accept that judgement.
But it isn't as bad as you make it sound either.

The challenges facing Mercury are technical ones. History has proven that when profit is to be made from abundant energy and/or resources, technical problems get solved and rather quickly I might add.

TwinBeam · 2005-09-15 09:55:05

Two small points:

Mercury rotates so slowly, that you could drive at 11km/hr and stay in darkness - and that's at the equator! So you could probably find a series of craters near the poles, build your bases there for protection during the day, and simply hop operations from base to base about once every two-three weeks. Plenty of time to drive far from the poles prospecting and mining.

WRT cooling a rover in continuous 800F - you need a way to dump heat, or eventually any insulation will let through enough heat to let the inside reach equilibrium with the outside. However, with no atmosphere, dumping heat to space amounts to putting up reflectors to block the sun and reflected/re-radiated surface heat, so that radiators can dump heat reasonably efficiently to space. That might be awkward for a rover, but you could use it to produce enough ice to stock a rover for several hours of operation.

GCNRevenger · 2005-09-15 10:59:17

"...doesn't it make sense that Mercury has intercepted more debris than the Moon which only occasionally gets in the way?"

No. The density of rocky/icey material in the earlier solar system is not nessesarrily distributed by the strength of solar gravity. In fact, the material is generally seperated by material denisty, so asteroids bearing valuble volitiles or planetary bodies with lighter metals (Al, Ti) will infact be further away from the Sun... convienantly near Earth and the Moon.

"It would be stupid to send people to do a task that robotics can handle wouldn't it?"

It would be stupid to send robots to do a job that they are obviously not up to the task to accomplish. Human crews will inevitibly be needed, at least to maintain the robots and perform delicate jobs. The notion that robots alone can do the job is nonsense, and the superior efficiency of human crews on the Moon will trump the economics of robots on Mercury.

"This is trivial and easily solved. If burial of the lines and/or cooling of the lines doesn't work, then replace them ever so often. Hardly a deal breaker."

No. The problem was not with the cables requiring replacement, the problem was that as the temperature increases, the electrical conductivity decreases!. Hot power lines are worthless, and you will not be able to keep them cool by shallow burial and active cooling will be far too difficult to construct or maintain. A big power hog too... Another feature of a Lunar or Cislunar solar farm superior to a Mercurian one.

"come on guys, it's only 800 degrees"

800F temperatures are easy to manage on Earth because you have some place to put the unwanted heat. You will have no such bennefit on Mercury! Again, the problem is not the temperatures, in fact just 200F would be a huge problem, if you can't get rid of the heat somehow. Mercury is airless much like the Moon, and so the only way to reject unwanted heat is with radiators. BIG radiators. Carrying these is not practical on any rover, which will woefully limit their endurance reguardless of their energy supply. It will also make spacewalks extremely difficult, hazardous, and uneconomical. Since there is much less solar flux and lower equilibrium temperature on the Moon or Cislunar space, the cooling systems are far, far smaller and easier to deal with.

"But it isn't as bad as you make it sound either."

I see no reason to accept this statement... There are abundant mineral and energy reserves on the sea floor on Earth too, rich untapped mineral wealth and vast, vast supplies of natural gas bound up as clathrates... but we aren't mining them yet, and they are just a boat ride off the coast.

RobS · 2005-09-15 12:32:17

I agree with GCN:

1. Mercury should have have less nickel-iron at the surface than the moon. The studies of bombardment rates suggest that Mars has a higher bombardment rate than the moon because it is closer to the Asteroid belt, which is the source of most meteoroids. Most likely, Mercury has a lower bombardment rate. As far as I know, very few objects fall into or toward the sun. Jupiter's gravitational perturburations usually move things away from the sun. An accidental gravity assist from Jupiter is more likely small than large, so Jupiter is more likely to sling objects into collision courses with Mars than Earth, Earth than Venus, Venus than Mercury; Mercury will probably have the lowest bombardment rate.

And if Mercury has active volcanism--which it might even today, we don't know, it has large smooth areas--more meteoritic material may have been buried than on the moon.

2. Working "outside" on Mercury will be very difficult even with robots, and that's another way to say expensive.

3. Transportation between Mercury and Earth is guaranteed to be more expensive than between the Earth and moon or Mars, and since the moon and Mars are more likely to be developed and will have larger infrastructures, they'll probably have lower operating costs. An injured worker on the moon or Mars will probably have access to better hospital facilities, for example, simply because both will probably have larger populations. And if the hospital on Mercury is as good as the one on the moon, its costs per patient will be higher because of the smaller population.

4. Beaming power between Mercury and the Earth strikes me as ridiculously expensive, and it will be unavailable for days or weeks every few months because the sun is in the way. It will be cheaper to build a rail gun on the moon to shoot raw materials to a lagrange point, where the earth is more available for emergency assistance in emergencies and where eclipses never block sunlight. Or it will be cheaper to build extensive solar facilities on the moon. Or more likely (I suspect) it will be cheaper to cover everyone's roofs with panels in the suburbs and build larger transmission facilities to move solar electric power around from sunny to cloudy areas on the Earth.

5. On most of Mercury, power will be expensive because of the lack of sun months on end.

Mercury may be able to export PGMs (or even gold, who knows) if the price is so high their higher operating costs can be covered. Mercury probably has enough ice to support a large population if there ever is one. Mercury may have very unusual mineral resources because of high-temperature, low-volatile conditions in cooling magmas. We don't know because no one can simulate the conditions without more data about Mercury's conditions. Mercury, like Antarctica, is very likely to have a scientific population some day, and because of the isolation it's likely to have a small community, including families, on an economic base of subsidized scientific exploration. But it will probably always have a smaller population than Mars: Mars has an atmosphere, less extreme conditions, a wider range of minerals, a very complex earth-like geology, possibly life or fossils, and Mars has myth. Myth creates emotion and that can provide money. Mercury right now has much less myth.

-- RobS

deagleninja · 2005-09-15 16:20:28

I agree with GCN

I see no reason to accept this statement...

SpaceNut · 2005-09-17 17:50:36

New company sets goal of settling Mars

4Frontiers Corp. is eyeing some expansive horizons. The company's mission: to open a small human settlement on Mars within 20 years or so.
Sure, it may sound far-fetched. And the company's initial plans are a lot more terrestrial than ethereal, like developing a 25,000-square-foot replica of a Mars settlement here on Earth, then charging tourists admission.
To begin, 4Frontiers plans to gather patents and engineering ideas that would enable a small crew to land on Mars with home-building materials and the manufacturing capability to keep adding on.
The hot topics would include ways to miniaturize key industrial processes - like making plastic or steel - and methods for exploiting Martian resources, such as the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, iron in the dirt or the water bound up in Martian ice.
As the company gains expertise, it expects to sell consulting services to aerospace companies or NASA. It envisions getting work designing Mars sets for movies and Mars rides for amusement parks.
Meanwhile, it plans to construct a mock-up of its Mars home and begin selling tickets to it by 2007. Potential sites in Colorado, Florida and New Mexico are being considered.

Commodore · 2005-09-19 14:50:59

Actually, I think the hardest part of operating on Mercury will be the trip there and back. Without almost crippling amounts of radiation shields everytime the sun sneezes our astronauts will turn into a floating blob of goo. Significant mass will have to be devoted to all forms of radiation protection, even for cargo missions due to sensitive electronics.

If we land as night falls with a nuclear power source, we have about 3 months to get all our gear buried deep enough to provide sufficient thermal and radiation protection. Then we can shut our reactor down and operate under solar power. The following night we run buried pipe and electrical lines to robotic encampments devoted to collecting water on the poles. Once our water source is secured, mining can begin. For safety reasons this will probably be done by drilling tunnels outword from underground bases.

SpaceNut · 2005-09-21 05:31:14

It would be a great day if NASA had to have bake sales

An interesting opinion editorial prospective on the moon mission of Nasa's Space exploration vision vehicle of choice announcement and the 4frontier's thoughts to make a business out of going.

publiusr · 2005-09-23 15:35:56

Hmm...

SpaceNut · 2005-09-27 08:59:25

Hum.. another red tape tie up or something useful... ???

www.alliancespace.net

The purpose of the "Alliance for Commercial Enterprises in Space - ACES" is to engage a new business model for achieving research and development (R & D) in low-earth orbit consistent with the present and future goals of the U.S. Space Program. Our objective is to create an Alliance that will aggressively pursue science, technology and commercial development programs with clearly defined roles for government, industry, and academic partners.

Alliance for Commercial Enterprises in Space Formed and October Forum Announced

A team of pro-commercial space advocates has formed the Alliance for Commercial Enterprises in Space (ACES). Our goal is simple. We are organizing to break open the heavens for health and wealth on earth. Forty years of investment in the space biosciences has paid for itself many times over in life saving advances and commercially lucrative products.

redhorizons · 2005-09-27 09:48:35

Hey people, not that I have not been enjoying the Mercury debate, but, forgive me if I am overstepping my bounds, isn't this supposed to be a post about 4Frontiers.

Okay now that I have said that. I wish the best to this company and I applaud their courage and motivation. The sooner we get to mars and the more people we have trying to get us there the better.

I feel that if other companies with even bigger ambitions, like LiftPort Inc. are showing small success towards a much larger goal, then start ups like 4Frontiers may have some luck. Even if they fail someone will learn from that and start anew.

SpaceNut · 2005-11-08 09:34:43

Here is an update on the progress that they are making.

MIT Alums Race to Mars With Start-Up Company

“We’re looking at permanent trips, establishing civilization on the Red Planet
dedicated to building a self-sustaining settlement on Mars by 2025.
The first journey is targeted to launch in 2025 with 12 space pioneers. After a six month one-way journey, Mars pioneers would develop the infrastructure to support the initial habitation space, life support systems, nuclear power generation, and mining. The settlement’s purpose would be mining minerals on Mars and making these materials available and accessible to the Earth.

GCNRevenger · 2005-11-08 11:34:28

More like "MIT alums race off a cliff!"

There really isn't any other way to say it: they're crazy or liars. Pick one.

noosfractal · 2005-11-08 13:13:22

Article says they raised $30 million, so they're going to be around for a few years unless they start taking out Superbowl ads.
_

redhorizons · 2005-11-08 13:47:58

My guess is that they are crazy and liars. But really smarty ones with good PR skills. Hey probably a lot like a politician or a successful lobbyist.

noosfractal · 2005-11-08 14:40:39

crazy, liar, blah, blah, blah

I don't get it. Everyone here thinks this can be done, that someone will do it, and that one day it will be profitable. The only arguments are over when, who and how much credit they'll need in the meantime. 4Frontiers is certainly bold to answer: now, us and whatever we can get. But when did having courage become crazy?
_

SpaceNut · 2005-11-08 14:49:26

Article says they raised $30 million, so they're going to be around for a few years unless they start taking out Superbowl ads.
_

I look at it this way the more cash they raise the more likely they will be to succeed. Also for what they have raised thus far they could probably buy a Soyuz and a progress with just a little more. With a few more pieces launched they could make the first stripped down run to the planets with humans if only just to go, circle it a few times and come back. Thus staging a proof of concept that it can be down.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#26 2005-09-09 21:59:30

Re: 4Frontiers

#27 2005-09-10 09:33:39

Re: 4Frontiers

#28 2005-09-12 22:20:38

Re: 4Frontiers

#29 2005-09-14 19:18:32

Re: 4Frontiers

#30 2005-09-14 21:59:00

Re: 4Frontiers

#31 2005-09-14 23:55:11

Re: 4Frontiers

#32 2005-09-15 04:31:47

Re: 4Frontiers

#33 2005-09-15 05:55:37

Re: 4Frontiers

#34 2005-09-15 08:03:17

Re: 4Frontiers

#35 2005-09-15 09:55:05

Re: 4Frontiers

#36 2005-09-15 10:59:17

Re: 4Frontiers

#37 2005-09-15 12:32:17

Re: 4Frontiers

#38 2005-09-15 16:20:28

Re: 4Frontiers

#39 2005-09-17 17:50:36

Re: 4Frontiers

#40 2005-09-19 14:50:59

Re: 4Frontiers

#41 2005-09-21 05:31:14

Re: 4Frontiers

#42 2005-09-23 15:35:56

Re: 4Frontiers

#43 2005-09-27 08:59:25

Re: 4Frontiers

#44 2005-09-27 09:48:35

Re: 4Frontiers

#45 2005-11-08 09:34:43

Re: 4Frontiers

#46 2005-11-08 11:34:28

Re: 4Frontiers

#47 2005-11-08 13:13:22

Re: 4Frontiers

#48 2005-11-08 13:47:58

Re: 4Frontiers

#49 2005-11-08 14:40:39

Re: 4Frontiers

#50 2005-11-08 14:49:26

Re: 4Frontiers

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