>Until Mars settlers can build things in-house, they need constant economic support from the earth
This is where digital manufacturing (CNC, laser cutting, 3D printing) actually makes sense. You go with the base materials and blueprints, and you can survive without transferring goods. You manufacture on-demand, and the blueprints can change based on feedback/results. Mars SHOULD have a prototype culture, the same as with explorers. With engineering/research help from earth, a fab lab on mars would be incredibly valuable. Science the shit out of it!
(And probably the transportation cost will be still high enough to make it mot profitable.)
Nobody is talking about using Mars as a manufacturing base to transport to Earth, it's all about creating a self-sustaining colony. There has to be stronger incentives for people/companies to move there. Even on earth there are many economic zones incentivized by lack of regulation etc.
The economy is just not going to work.
The parent comment isnt saying there will be an economy of building things on Mars and sending them to Earth, they're saying Mars can sustain itself without sharing an economy with Earth. Which I believe is true.
And for what it's worth, I'm actively working to build better robots with commodity 3D printers[1] and I hope to build self sustaining communities on Earth with 3D printed micro factories that produce all the goods humans need for survival.
I believe it is possible to make economically closed self sustaining communities. Both on Mars and on Earth. We've done it on Earth for a long time.
Self-sustaining community that can economically fund itself is out of reach even here on Earth. And, frankly, 3D printing isn't magic: it won't help that much. Can you 3D-print a glass window that can withstand 1 atm and has anti-UV coating?
I'm talking 10-20 years out for having a self sustaining community that manufactures its own hard goods. But I believe it is possible and I'm working on making it real.
I'm not relying on magic.
My (very uninformed) guess is that you could probably build a self-sustaining community using 3D printing, on the Alps or the Appalachian. (After all, our ancestors managed with stone tools.) Doing that on the South Pole will be challenging. Mars, forget it.
If you are persistent enough you could probably 3D print everything, I guess. Maybe you could 3D-print concrete and ceramic blocks to build a furnace that will be used to produce steel which will be shaped into a pipe (by another 3D printed machine) to transport hot gas to melt silicon oxide and produce glass.
However, after a few iterations, I guess people will ask "Why don't we just pour concrete over here in conventional way? That's much easier and cheaper."
I do think, however, that robotics and additive manufacturing will be critical to building significant parts of the machinery and buildings on Mars.
Certainly, sometimes you will use traditional manufacturing methods to construct things. But additive manufacturing has different capabilities and it will be used for different things. And unlike some people who claim additive manufacturing can't be used for anything, I believe that a mixture of traditional manufacturing methods and additive methods will be critical to building a colony on Mars.
Imagine for instance that you want to build some buildings. Lets say both pouring concrete and additive manufacturing methods would work. You need to build 40 habitats. Would you rather work all day in a space suit in the hazardous near vacuum of Mars to build the forms needed to pour concrete for the structures? Or sit in your pajamas in a habitat on a computer designing and controlling the robots that will do it for you? And in that case, maybe you will want to have the robots make forms and pour the concrete for you, but perhaps you will use additive manufacturing methods.
I can imagine the latter is easier for robots, and using robots is easier for humans than doing the labor themselves.
Of course, to build a robot that will manufacture a home out of concrete, you need to build the mechanical parts of that robot. How will you do that? Probably not with CNC machines and blocks of aluminum (making such parts was my job for 7 years BTW). Instead I imagine that you will keep a library of feedstocks for 3D printing and you will print out the robot parts in your lab.
Interesting fact: there are now some extremely high performance plastics available for common home-style 3D printers, including carbon fiber filled PEEK. At $850 per kg that's a material I don't think you'd use unless you had to, but if I were building a colony on Mars at $500k a head I think I'd bring 100kg of that stuff.
100kg of carbon fiber filled PEEK plastic will make a lot of concrete extruding habitat constructing robot frames.
You'll have to bring the motors and electronics separately. At least until you build that foundry....
See what I mean when I say 3D printing can help make a self sustaining economy possible?
The goal of Mars colonization is to create a second (eventually) independent base, so humanity has a chance in case of a catastrophic event.
I'd say even if it costs a trillion dollars, it's worth it. US GDP is what, 18 trillion per year?
If humanity is wiped out on Earth, people in Mars are fucked anyway: they will be one depressurization accident from extinction.
How could they even begin to try to rebuild civilization when they can't even go outside without an apparatus that took thousands of years of science to produce? What is the speed divisor for advancement of a society marooned on a world it didn't evolve to live on?
I'm all for Mars colonization, but as a backup plan for Homo sapiens, it kind of sucks.
It is when a private company is doing it.
That said, I am also doubtful. I don't foresee a trade-hub attracting 1 million people - if there are really a million people who want to go. Who the hell wants to risk their life and net worth just for the privilege of living on a rock less hospitable than Antarctica?
Launches, yes, but landings? Athmosphere is your enemy during launches, but your friend in landing.
Mars has an atmospheric pressure less than one percent of that of earth. That makes losing speed other than with rockets a problem, and that requires bringing lots of fuel.
In addition, the athmosphere that's there can be windy and turbulent. That can directly affect a spacecraft, but also causes dust storms that can make it hard to measure distance to ground.
In other words, I believe that Mars' appeal is a mirage. Musk and company are seeing it as another Earth where people can live like here, with a little terraforming.
I think it would be much more difficult. Of course I could be wrong, or I could be right but, even then, Musk could be modern Columbus.
- Water and free carbon dioxide are hugely more abundant on Mars than on the Moon. These are essential supplies for increasing biomass and making fuel.
- There's a nice, somewhat-protective atmosphere.
- There's a 24.66 hour day.
- Temperatures are relatively moderate.
[1] - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6908408/ns/technology_and_science-...
If you can get net energy by fusing He3, you can also do it by fusing deuterium, which is easier. And the end product of deuterium fusion is He3! (Half the time directly, the other half producing tritium which decays to He3.) So instead of sifting through millions of tons of dirt on the moon, you can just make He3 on Earth and gain energy in the process.
Deuterium fusion produces neutrons but they're lower energy than D-T neutrons. Fusion startup Helion (funded in part by YCombinator) is working on a hybrid D-D/D-He3 fusion reactor, and says only 6% of the output energy would be as neutron radiation.
That's pretty much the whole of the economics. People and governments will jump at the chance to send humans to Mars, if there's a way to do it at a reasonable price.
The cost of the things that are necessary on Mars that will have to be shipped from Earth will be rolled into the ticket price. Hence the first few rounds of tickets will probably be quite expensive.
How exactly do you know that? The only experiment about creating closed human colonies was deemed complete failures and not to be replicated due to ethical concerns.
And a base on Mars will not be a closed system. It will continuously draw in raw materials from the surrounding environment. Mars is enticing for this because carbon dioxide and water are abundant, giving you the three most important elements for fuel and food production.
We've never done this on any significant scale with success.
Think of it more like a nuclear submarine with a greenhouse full of potatoes attached -- we can most likely do that.
Nobody's going to try to launch an entire mangrove forest on the first go. Biosphere2 is a failure of experimental design, not a failed experiment.
Maybe, but if we want to make Mars economically self sustaining the correct analogy is nuclear submarine that never surfaces and can totally self repair, including building new nuclear reactors and eventually replace all parts in itself.
There was Biosphere 2 experiment few decades ago, but they could not keep the biosphere stable.
There's just a huge psychological difference between knowing that you're in space, millions of miles from Earth or any kind of help and knowing you're in a simulation on Earth.
I suppose it's possible to fool people that they're in the former while actually being in the latter. But the ethical issues surrounding such an experiment would make it out of bounds for NASA. It might make for a fun scifi story, though.
To make the colony self supporting, you need to transfer factories, chemical plants, machine industry, mining industry, etc.
The really cool thing about this is that methane can be used as a feedstock to produce many plastics and the oxygen can be used for humans to breathe.
The MCT is a prototype for a seed factory style Von Neumann probe.
Everyone's keeping quiet about the inevitable role of RTGs or fission reactors in early human Mars exploration.
Solar will come either via an abundance of payloads delivered to Mars as things ramp up, or via panels produced on Mars itself.
Other viable methods for power generation that are amenable to in-situ production include geothermal heat loops and solar concentrators.
Like they said, most of the cost is transportation. Which gets cheaper.
If the real extraction happens on asteroids, then Mars or even the moon are a better base of operations just due to the smaller gravity well. And Mars isn't without its own mineral wealth. Several that would be important for growing food.
If you look at the delta-v map of solar system, everything massive like planets, is not going to be hub or center of extraction of minerals for other places. Mars would sit at the bottom of gravity well and be economical sink.
Deep space mining (robotic or semi automatic) of asteroids can be economically viable, but just few relatively small asteroids would provide Earth or Mars for centuries.
But raw materials are not enough, you would need industry to build all stuff you need and maintain it. If you can't manufacture 3D printer or CNC milling machine by yourself, you need to buy it from Earth. Just being able to make cast iron is not enough, you need high-tech equipment and manufacturing for them to survive.
Making Mars self sustaining circular economy would be massive systems engineering challenge.
>Following the example of colonial America, let’s pick as the affordability criterion the property liquidation of a middle-class household, or seven years’ pay for a working man (say about $300,000 in today’s equivalent terms), a criterion with which Musk roughly concurs. Most middle-class householders would prefer to get to Mars in six months at the cost equivalent to one house instead of getting to Mars in four months at a cost equivalent to three houses.
Colonization of America was extractive. You send colonists and they survive on their own and even pay taxes and you get products back. That's not what would happen on Mars. There is nothing so valuable that it would be worth carrying back to Earth. At the same time it would take huge amount of money to support high-tech colony in Mars until it can support itself.
I imagine that the cost of moving people would be insignificant compared to the "colonization kit" that would enable the colony to become self sufficient. Developing that kit would probably cost more than all technology needed to move people to Mars. Just imagine the amount of technology transfer needed to build and maintain maintain systems for breathable air (air tanks, seals, valves, inspection equipment, instrumentation, automation electronics) without help from the Earth. Until Mars settlers can build things in-house, they need constant economic support from the earth.
ps. We don't even know how to sustain biosphere in closed environment yet.