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#1 2005-05-02 21:16:45

MarsDog
Member
From: vancouver canada
Registered: 2004-03-24
Posts: 852

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

Earth was settled by adventurers, nomads, trappers and hunters,
goldminers, moving to opportunity.

Setting off to land, unclaimed, beyong the regimented villages,
the Martian pioneer, will have a mobitat towing a
greenhouse, only http://www.vegansociety.com/html/environment/land/]300 m^2 if he is Irish potato eater
100 m^2 solar array, aweraging 10 KW
workshop on wheels to manufacture what he needs.
and a nuclear electric generator, just in case.

After he finds a good spot to settle, build a permanent base
and send an email to his girlfriend on Earth to join him.

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#2 2005-05-02 23:36:12

RobS
Banned
From: South Bend, IN
Registered: 2002-01-15
Posts: 1,701
Website

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

I suspect it will be many decades after humans first reach Mars before the technology for "homesteading" is practical. At minimum you'll need a several-tonne vehicle and a trailer to tow everything else. You'd have to deploy the solar panels periodically as you go and the greenhouse would remain a deflated ball of plastic until you reached your destination. A nuclear reactor will be too expensive for individual use (not to mention the legal issues, trusting people with radiactove substances, etc.). I am not sure what the economic basis of homesteading would be, either.

                    -- RobS

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#3 2005-05-03 01:57:01

Trebuchet
Banned
From: Florida
Registered: 2004-04-26
Posts: 419

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

The economic basis for homesteading on Mars is likely to be agricultural, just like 'classical' homesteading on the US frontier, although an interesting idea would be the ressurrection of the idea of the 'tree claim'. During the age of homesteading, the notion had taken root that the flora in an area helped determine the climate and richness of the soil... which is sort of right, but the idea was taken a lot further. Anyways, the US government gave 'extra' parcels of land to anyone who was willing to plant trees on the extra land and participate in a terraforming project of sorts. Whatever Martian colonial regime pops up could do worse than to trade parcels of land for assistance in terraforming activities (releasing greenhouse gases, etc)

Actually, I believe that the idea of homesteads - single family or smaller habitations - spread out on Mars isn't too inconceiveable. The analogy of trapper/adventurer type is the wrong one, there's nothing on Mars which is economically extractable by those means. But farmer-type homesteads would be a cheap way of establishing a workable food base for the colony. Besides, it's not like their intellectual capital is out of touch with the greater colony; this is the age of telepresence, after all, and they can assist remotely with a lot of things, providing software and possibly even services all the way back to Earth. (Nothing says that an accountant working on Mars can't work up your tax returns, right? ) The relevant travel time to Mars will be twenty minutes, not the half a year physical trip.

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#4 2005-05-07 20:51:25

srmeaney
Member
From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810
Registered: 2005-03-18
Posts: 976

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

Actually, I believe that the idea of homesteads - single family or smaller habitations - spread out on Mars isn't too inconceiveable. The analogy of trapper/adventurer type is the wrong one, there's nothing on Mars which is economically extractable by those means. But farmer-type homesteads would be a cheap way of establishing a workable food base for the colony.

There is little in the way of economy to support small homesteaders. Food will be produced collectivly at the colony.
Mineral resources will be the property of "the government" because they will pay for your way there and all you produce will be focussed in paying off the bills. That is why exercise equipment will be keyed to the production of electricity.

An Olympus Mons Mining colony is more likely to require the massive importation of Ice from the nearby northern polar cap. Despite an ability to produce just what it needs, more ice will allow for accelerated production. An economy of food for ice is more likely to support a small family homesteader or village group. Considering you will want to produce a ten ton block of ice for delivery to the Colony every week for movement by a flyer powered by hydrogen/oxygen rocket motors, food (and the occasional bit of equipment/medicine) will be the incomming cargo for family ice mining homesteads.

Minerals contracts are more likely to be restricted to the occasional contract to take rock and core samples and deploy remote siesmic and environment monitoring stations as your mobile habitat passes through a region. Keyed to an exchange of cargo blocks (a.k.a. food for rocks).

Only as a colony grows will you get private collectives involved in the mass production of food. Such groups will be located at points on the surface where movement converges to a node of activity. Minerals processing will probably occur here by way of hand powered mills and hydraulic presses for small scale materials engineering.

As to homesteading, you will more likely get access to such a way of life after your ten years of "government employment" at the mining colony. Retirement to a familily/village ice mining project will be the most likely followed by mobile Samples prospecting and then nodal agriculture/materials processing colonies (more likely to be a government colony) on the surface as the prospectors expand beyond their own reach.
Homesteading will be encouraged after retirement. Their bunks will be picked up by a continuous supply of new colonists looking for space to stay in a rapidly expanding colony.

The similarity between society disposing of old folks out on the nearest glacier and homesteaders taking up ice mining at the northern martian polar cap probably shouldnt be lost.

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#5 2005-05-07 23:24:56

MarsDog
Member
From: vancouver canada
Registered: 2004-03-24
Posts: 852

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

Some bored and ambitious Mars colony members would want to make use of decommissioned and spare equipment. Spending free time in the workshop, dreaming to do what no one has done before.

Possible analogy to prospectors, miners, fur trappers, wagon trains, pony riders bringing mail, bush pilots, cities on wheels of the Mongols, Eskimos, family small business, hermits ?

Trade with established colonies, because technological self sufficiency is not easy.

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#6 2005-05-08 01:32:25

Rxke
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2003-11-03
Posts: 3,669

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

I'm thinking more about  some kind of medieval-esque guilds, small subunits of like-minded people that go out and start a smallish subcolony to manufacture stuff made purely from Mars 'stock'
launch prices being so high, i'd bet there are several things that could be mf-ed on mars 'economically' (ie: even a tiny bit less horribly expensive than sending it from earth.)

I'm thinking about stuff as sophisticaded as *drumroll* computers for instance.
Not the terabyte/gigaHertz stuff we use at home/the office, but the more basic ones, 1970's era, like the pdp8 series. http://www.pdp8.net/#pictures]like this, but w/o the screens, just use orinters for output.
Heavy beasts costing about $120 000 at the time, but usable for a lot of things, i'm sure... controlling environmental variables, steering solar panels,  back-up rad-proofed stuff... Would be *a lot* of work to build one but worthwile for series, And you never have enough computers on Mars, with all that dust, heehe.
Been reading up on the tech requirements for building 70's era computers and I'm pretty sure it's doable (IC's not yet needing cleanrooms for starters....)
So, dedicated workshops, one making sheetsteel, another one glass, another one assembling the stuff, all the time trading stuff.
Not as efficient maybe as everything in one place, but i guess after a while inevitable..

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#7 2005-05-08 08:52:13

reddragon
Banned
From: Earth
Registered: 2005-01-24
Posts: 193

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

Why make 70s era computers instead of modern ones. I doubt there would be much market for them. For the things you mentioned ( "controlling environmental variables, steering solar panels,  back-up rad-proofed stuff") a small computer perhaps built  directly into the system would be a lot easier to use than a large, out-dated one with much less capability. I suspect by the time we go to Mars nano-computers will be common cousehold things that will be integrated into most appliances and such things. I imagine modern computers would probably be easier to manufacture than 70s ones and they'd certainly have a lot more functionality. There will be a computer business on Mars anyway for home, office, government, whatever use. There's no need to build outdated machines.


Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

             -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
              by Douglas Adams

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#8 2005-05-09 07:39:43

srmeaney
Member
From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810
Registered: 2005-03-18
Posts: 976

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

I'm thinking more about  some kind of medieval-esque guilds, small subunits of like-minded people that go out and start a smallish subcolony to manufacture stuff made purely from Mars 'stock'
launch prices being so high, i'd bet there are several things that could be mf-ed on mars 'economically' (ie: even a tiny bit less horribly expensive than sending it from earth.)

Very unlikely to occur. At least in the first hundred years of economic control by government. You are more likely to have a black market economy involved in the manufacture of Socialy unacceptable products on a Mars colony. Perhaps the production of Vodka from Potato peels that didnt quite make it to the waste recycle facility being brewed up using old engine components converted into a still.
Real goods from real mars resources that are useful on a large scale will be under the control of MarsGov You can pretty much guarentee that anything profitable export-wise will be paying of the 'national debt of Mars'.
As people retire to Pioneering life after ten or so years of Government employment you will probably get a secondary 'Mars economy' where retired & semi-retired citizens of Mars can pretty much set up an industrial collective producing interlocking dome shielding tiles (curved puzzle pieces that are about a cubic foot of iron oxide ceramic-each interlocking to support their own structural mass) that they can trade for food and water. This is the sort of economy of trade you might get between a Central government Space port (which will continue to expand) and Private contractors (who would be working for a share of resources).

These will struggle to compete with the 'Government manufactured' modular dome tiles from Microwave deposited Carbon (Basicly big thick interlocking block tiles of Diamond) providing see-through domes. Such small scale objects are currently made from CO2 but we are talking about a cubic foot of diamond (or possibly Diamond lens windows in a generic iron oxide ceramic tile). Mass production supported by a government stockpile of CO2 in the realm of a million tonnes.
Obviously there will be nothing that Matches the Glittering diamond domes of the MarsGovernment Spaceport. You might get low scale mining concerns operating out of Iron oxide dome communities, but there will be very little beyond individual freedom that the Government won't control on Mars or the Earth.
It will be pretty much like that until the cost of colonization is paid off.

Some bored and ambitious Mars colony members would want to make use of decommissioned and spare equipment. Spending free time in the workshop, dreaming to do what no one has done before.

There will be no such thing as spare equipment. Government property will only wind up in the hands of private concerns if it is better that certain industry be relocated from the Space port. Ice mining equipment will go to private concerns out near the polar cap, Other tech to the location it is best suited to be. Critical systems at the central colonization nexus will be retained and continually added to by new equipment as industrialization is bought on line.

Market goods traded beyond the reach of Government are what you are looking for. These might include artisan specific items such as "marscoffecup by BillSmith" a 'ceramicist' operating out of a private dome in some small cultural product producing community who uses part of his energy quota to produce "martian pottery". Bills brother on the other hand decided to throw in with a buddy to manufacture iron statuettes which thread onto the bolts holding dome frames together so the end isn't exposed to corrosion. Larger than an endcap nut, but culturaly unique for a Mars civilization.

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#9 2005-05-09 07:50:58

Rxke
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2003-11-03
Posts: 3,669

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

Being a nano-enthousiast/dreamer myself, I'd prefer to think what's possible with off the shelf tech today. If the whole nanobiz turns out to be a dud, we're nowhere...
Building modern computers/processors on Mars has one very big drawback: the chips need quite a bit of infrastructure, cleanrooms etc., currently there are a very few players on the chipmarket just because of that. Starting up a state of the art plant is a very big investment, while 'olden-days' computers can be built a lot more easy.
Of course there will be modern computers around, but in the end building at least a part of the computingpower 'native' should be more economical.
BTW don't underestimate the pdp's, they were quite capable, for instance to control industrial processes etc.
My ramble was just a way of thinking out loud how one could start 'native' industry with a bare minimum of hardware to be sent up.
(been reading some more, i think 80's computers are possible, too, heehee.)
Of course, after awhile industrial capablility would grow, but it would be some time before Martian industry could start considering designing/producing "2000's" chips. There has to be a biiiiig market to make the huge initial investment worthwile.

OTOH, one could just ship the bare cpu's, in big, rad-proof containers and build the rest, less complex stuff 'natively'. Probably the best solution?
How much would a chip cost, when sent from Earth, how much would one cost, produced on Mars.
Not *everything* need 64bits computing, (washing machines, elevators, domotica, vehicules... do just fine usiing 'old' chips...so simpler designs would have a reason to 'live' too...

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#10 2005-05-09 08:47:01

srmeaney
Member
From: 18 tiwi gdns rd, TIWI NT 0810
Registered: 2005-03-18
Posts: 976

Re: Settling the Land - Pioneer Homesteading on Mars

A private economy on Mars will be keyed to the mass production of asthetic cultural objects that complement, replace, and improve simple existing objects. Say statuettes (like a rolles-royce hood ornament) were designed to function a sealing nut for a threaded rod. The designers might consider the product a better option to the continued import of the regular item from a Government central spaceport and industrial city. You get a culturally significant product that if patented at the government registry, might become something tradable in bulk private production. Of course over in Daria station, you probably get something similar. They produce a five sided pyrimid (with hieroglyphs) end nut (marketing to a certain artistic style) instead of a Gothic-Martian look with the statuette of a person. Product variation.

Of course, once people get into cultural production you might wind up with a bunch of like minded individuals banding together to build something that will be their legacy to the future generations of Mars: A Church out on some rock outcrop near a small 'single religion' community or a domed public park for use in social gatherings such as weddings and music festivals.

Industry products for use by the economy might well be chemistry equipment made from local glass, easier to produce such things localy than import the fragile item. Eventually such products would become 'one of the things produced by every community'. Like the wheel. It may not sound glamerous but there is going to be a great interest in Iron-ceramic wheels and gears and steam engines powered by a Uranium fuel rod (the only imported component).

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