Astronauts landing on the planet Mars

[akerkarprashant]

Summary:: Astronauts landing on Mars

When will the Crewed space mission for Mars exploration event taking place in future?

Do you feel that in case life exists for survival on Mars planet,
the future generations may actually
visit and stay there for many years?

Do you feel there will be a ticket fare in US$, Euros€, Pounds£ etc currencies for traveling to planet Mars and back to planet Earth from the sponsoring spacecraft ?

Training package will be charged.

 

[russ_watters]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human...Mars_and_Moon_to_Mars_Programs_(2015–present)

 

[akerkarprashant]

Thanks.

I mean the future generations of the 22nd century.

Human beings from Planet Earth will migrate to Planet Mars in 22nd century?

 

[berkeman]

Thanks.

I mean the future generations of the 22nd century.

Human beings from Planet Earth will migrate to Planet Mars in 22nd century?

Please remember that we do not allow speculation at PF, especially in the technical forums. Have you found any reliable sources that look that far out?

 

[PeroK]

Human beings from Planet Earth will migrate to Planet Mars in 22nd century?

It's not even certain there will be human beings in the 22nd century!

Actually living permanently on Mars seems to me to be too far in the future even to estimate.

 

[Astronuc]

Human beings from Planet Earth will migrate to Planet Mars in 22nd century?

Why?

When will the Crewed space mission for Mars exploration event taking place in future?

Do you feel that in case life exists for survival on Mars planet,
the future generations may actually
visit and stay there for many years?

NASA has looked at missions to Mars since as far back as the 1960s during the Apollo program. There was a design for a NOVA rocket, much bigger than the Saturn V.

I participated in a program during graduate school that looked at scenarios for mission to Mars as part of a NASA sponsored program. My area was nuclear propulsion.

It was clear that we needed to establish a transport infrastructure, which has yet to be accomplished. At the time, the Space Station (ISS) was downsized from original design, while the costs soared. Then we lost one Space Shuttle, Challenger (January 28, 1986), and then lost another, Columbia (February 1, 2003). Gross mismanagement and negligence were involved in the root cause.

There has been some consideration of using ISS and/or moon as a way station for missions to Mars.

I had recommended a station in orbit around Mars, as well as a shielded transport vessel to send a crew to and from Mars.

It would take 10 to 15 years to develop and qualify the technology just to start putting the infrastructure in place. That has yet to happen.

As of now, the future of ISS is uncertain, we have a bare bones infrastructure for getting people to LEO. Let's see if we can get people to the moon and back first. Then maybe, we'll be ready to send folks to Mars and back.

I'm skeptical.

This is more of an Aerospace Engineering topic than Astronomy or Astrophysics.

 

[berkeman]

This is more of an Aerospace Engineering topic than Astronomy or Astrophysics

Good point. Thread moved to Aerospace Engineering.

 

[256bits]

Do you feel there will be a ticket fare in US$, Euros€, Pounds£ etc currencies for traveling to planet Mars and back to planet Earth from the sponsoring spacecraft ?

New York-London ticket is about $1000 base fare.
NewYork- Mars is about 40,000 times as far, so the cheapest ticket by that criteria expands into a $40 million.
That is flying on a plane with approx 300 passengers sharing the cost of plane, fuel, airport infrastructure,...
Assume space flight is 100 times as expensive as Earth aviation and you are now looking at a fare of $4 Billion.
Add in your 'hotel' fee at Mars where you pay a part for a living infrastructure built ahead of your arrival, and who knows how much that would cost, since quite a few flights would have had to have come and go with workers and supplies. Assume 1$ Billion per person per occupancy - a debatable figure since its not been done yet - and a 10 day stay adds in $10Billion more for your vacation. it;s certainly no going to be cheap.

So sure, tickets to and from Mars would be readily available for anyone who could afford it.
Do you know anyone with that amount of cash lying around?

 

[phinds]

Do you know anyone with that amount of cash lying around?

And who is willing to go on what for the foreseeable future will likely be a suicide mission.

 

[Astronuc]

Do you know anyone with that amount of cash lying around?

Elon Musk.

Putting aside the economic considerations, one should solve the engineering and technical issues, which must be addressed before putting a cost on it.

Before landing someone(s) on Mars, it would be prudent to send a craft to land on Mars, and more importantly, lift off Mars to orbit, and then return to earth. Then we can begin to define a manned mission. And perhaps before that, send a crew to Martian orbit, and then bring them home to earth.

How long would such a mission last? One year or perhaps more likely two years or more. Note, the orbital period of Mars about the sun is 687 days, while Earth's orbit is 365 days.

Mars oppositions happen about every 26 months. Every 15 or 17 years, opposition occurs within a few weeks of Mars' perihelion (the point in its orbit when it is closest to the sun).

https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/night-sky/opposition/
https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/night-sky/solar-conjunction/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_Mars

Next opposition - Mars will reach opposition – when Earth will pass between Mars and the sun – on December 8, 2022.

Planetary Society - Humans Orbiting Mars, before Humans on Mars.
https://hom.planetary.org/

In 2014, the National Academies released a report which concluded that NASA's current plans for getting humans to Mars could not happen earlier than 2046 without a massive (and unlikely) increase to the human spaceflight program's budget.

In response, The Planetary Society held a workshop in the Spring of 2015 to explore a proof-of-concept plan which could get humans near Mars over a decade sooner. This is known as orbit-first.

Instead of landing on the first go, NASA could lay out a series of missions that use existing programs, strategically build experience and capability, and spread out cost. The orbit-first concept would send astronauts near the Moon throughout the 2020s, to Mars orbit and Phobos in 2033, and finally to the surface of Mars by 2039 to begin an ongoing program of exploration.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/n...eded-in-space-nuclear-propulsion-technologies

https://www.ida.org/-/media/feature...-a-human-mission-to-mars-by-2033/d-10510.ashx

https://www.nap.edu/read/12409/chapter/26

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19710011960/downloads/19710011960.pdf

There needs to be infrastructure 1) around earth, the departure point, 2) transit system to and from Mars, 3) around Mars, the arrival point, and 4) surface of Mars for those landing and remaining for some time or permanently.

ISS could be such a facility, assuming it is still viable for the next 10 to 20 years. There needs to be some orbiting station around Mars (with food, water, oxygen). Related to infrastructure item 2) is a periodic supply system (unmanned). Most likely, supplies for a manned mission would be sent in advance of 2), 3) and 4).

There have been lots of studies on missions to Mars, including putting a manned base on (actually in) Phobos, which is close to Mars (nominal (mean) distance from Mars, 9377 km).
https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/moons/summary/

 

[anorlunda]

I think that the more interesting speculative question is how long until the Mars Colony becomes self-sufficient?

Not putting the first people, first materials on Mars, but putting the last people, last materials needed.

What makes it interesting is the cost. Not the cost of the first men, but the cost of the project up until completion.

And if it never becomes self-sufficient, what's the point?

 

[Klystron]

I think that the more interesting speculative question is how long until the Mars Colony becomes self-sufficient? ...

Excellent question that emphasizes the extreme differences between human exploration and migration on Earth compared to human exploration of the solar system. Understand viscerally what one knows intellectually: unprotected humans cannot live on Mars.

No breathable atmosphere. No food nor potable water. Little protection from electromagnetic radiation.

As a STEM optimist, technology will solve these and other problems but at great cost and only with a cooperative educated realist society. When humans migrated on Earth they found fresh air, edible plants and animals, drinkable water or water ice; conditions much like at 'home'. Polar explorers could breathe, melt ice to drink, even eat the odd roving animal. Space colonists must supply everything a human requires.

Not putting the first people, first materials on Mars, but putting the last people, last materials needed.

What makes it interesting is the cost. Not the cost of the first men, but the cost of the project up until completion.

And if it never becomes self-sufficient, what's the point?

As a technological optimist I answer the last question with an aphorism "Because it is there.".

I reside firmly in the camp that space exploration benefits humanity. Underestimating difficulties of human colonization with facile comparisons to human migration on Earth misses the point.

 

[256bits]

And who is willing to go on what for the foreseeable future will likely be a suicide mission.

I would.
But only if they pay me.

 

[Tom.G]

YOU ARE HIRED! Payable by in-person demand after successful return.

 

[DaveC426913]

And if it never becomes self-sufficient, what's the point?

There will always be pioneers - people who prefer carving their lives straight out of the land, rather than by following in the well-trodden footsteps of others.

 

[PeroK]

There will always be pioneers - people who prefer carving their lives straight out of the land, rather than by following in the well-trodden footsteps of others.

The problem is that these pioneers would need $10 billion each to set them up.

 

[mfb]

The calculation in post 8 makes no sense whatsoever. "Moving into the new house in the same street took me $100,000, so moving to another continent will cost me billions! Oh and I'll multiply the cost by 100 because I'll use a different mode of transportation, so now it's trillions!"

There needs to be infrastructure 1) around earth, the departure point, 2) transit system to and from Mars, 3) around Mars, the arrival point, and 4) surface of Mars for those landing and remaining for some time or permanently.

ISS could be such a facility, assuming it is still viable for the next 10 to 20 years. There needs to be some orbiting station around Mars (with food, water, oxygen). Related to infrastructure item 2) is a periodic supply system (unmanned). Most likely, supplies for a manned mission would be sent in advance of 2), 3) and 4).

Why would all these things be necessary? They might turn out to be useful, but direct Earth surface -> Mars surface (with refueling in Earth orbit) and back is possible and conceptually much easier. You need to develop far fewer vehicles.

 

[PeroK]

The calculation in post 8 makes no sense whatsoever. "Moving into the new house in the same street took me $100,000, so moving to another continent will cost me billions! Oh and I'll multiply the cost by 100 because I'll use a different mode of transportation, so now it's trillions!"

It's impossible to estimate the cost of building or buying a "house" on Mars. It's not even clear in which century you could move in.

 

[Astronuc]

Why would all these things be necessary? They might turn out to be useful, but direct Earth surface -> Mars surface (with refueling in Earth orbit) and back is possible and conceptually much easier. You need to develop far fewer vehicles.

Necessary for a round trip.

If it's one way, i.e., permanently to the surface of Mars, then the infrastructure requirement is less.

Part of it depends on how quickly one wants to get to and from Mars, and how much radiation (both from the solar wind and GCR, and the secondary radiations from the structure of the craft) one is willing to accept.

 

[mfb]

It's not necessary for a round trip. Mars surface to Earth surface can be done with a single stage. If you don't produce any fuel on Mars then the payload ratio will be really bad, but an import of hydrogen would improve that massively already (using CO2 from the atmosphere), and all the resources to produce methane and oxygen can be found on Mars.

 

[PeroK]

all the resources to produce methane and oxygen can be found on Mars.

There's a chemical plant on Mars? Who built that?

 

[mfb]

People on Earth. Do you expect the astronauts to arrive there just with their spacesuits?

 

[Oldman too]

NASA and that SpaceX guy both seem to have plans.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190025283/downloads/20190025283.pdf

 

[PeroK]

NASA and that SpaceX guy ..

Elon Musk believes we'll have cities on Mars in the near future, so I think you have to take his plans with a pinch of salt.

 

[bob012345]

I think the only practical way to populate Mars to any degree is to perfect the landing and use of automated or remotely controlled construction and manufacturing capabilities to build up the necessary life sustaining and fuel producing infrastructure remotely first. Then send a few people. These ideas have been studied for decades and the example I know of is the 1980 NASA summer study Advanced Automation for Space Missions by Freitas and Gilbreath;

https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/1982-Self-Replicating-Lunar-Factory.pdf

I don't know why the title in the pdf is different from the overall document but perhaps because that is the biggest example discussed. Anyway the concepts could be applied to Mars.

Also, I don't think this is something the governments or NASA will ever drive beyond a possible Apollo style one-shot mission to collect rocks and claim glory. Elon Musk just might attempt building a permanent settlement and perhaps various governments and national space programs will be in a supportive role. I think the Starship vehicles being developed by SpaceX have at least the potential to do this in the long run if Musk can build the funding of it into his business enterprises.

 

[anorlunda]

I think the only practical way to populate Mars to any degree is to perfect the landing and use of automated or remotely controlled construction and manufacturing capabilities to build up the necessary life sustaining and fuel producing infrastructure remotely first.

Build WiFi first. If they have WiFi, people will come.

Seriously, think of our experience with mining, tunnel boring, and deep sea drilling equipment. How long do they last without repairs?
Automated factories need automated repairmen. So as a trial run for automated construction of a city on Mars, try building a city on Earth with automated machines but with no people to help.

 

[bob012345]

Build WiFi first. If they have WiFi, people will come.

Seriously, think of our experience with mining, tunnel boring, and deep sea drilling equipment. How long do they last without repairs?
Automated factories need automated repairmen. So as a trial run for automated construction of a city on Mars, try building a city on Earth with automated machines but with no people to help.

Of course but machines can be designed for autonomous operations within perhaps a more limited range of operation and certain design principles can be applied to make Terran operations cheaper and easier.

It would be useful to be able to automate building refugee cities or other temporary habitations by robotic construction and assembly.

 

[Oldman too]

Of course but machines can be designed for autonomous operations within perhaps a more limited range of operation and certain design principles can be applied to make Terran operations cheaper and easier.

It would be useful to be able to automate building refugee cities or other temporary habitations by robotic construction and assembly.

That would be very useful right now in Eastern Europe.

 

[Tom.G]

Perhaps researching Biosphere 2 would clarify things a little. That was an attempt to create a sealed, self-supporting, environment for Human habitation.

It failed, and now is a tourist attraction.

https://biosphere2.org/

 

[phinds]

It failed, and now is a tourist attraction.

As I recall, that sentence should start off with "It failed BADLY, and ... "

 

[bob012345]

Perhaps researching Biosphere 2 would clarify things a little. That was an attempt to create a sealed, self-supporting, environment for Human habitation.

It failed, and now is a tourist attraction.

https://biosphere2.org/

As I recall, that sentence should start off with "It failed BADLY, and ... "

It was a noble experiment and I think a lot was learned but if the suggestion is that it is foolish to go to Mars and stay there I disagree. A Martian settlement does not have to be a perfect 100% sealed and self-supporting environment at first. That can be learned over time. It could as well be learned over time with Biosphere 2 or 3 or 4 if the money was there. It is not impossible, just difficult. After all, the ISS has had a successful life support system for over 20 years now. Certainly it has improved and a Martian system would likely get closer to 100% recycled over time. Biosphere 2 was an attempt to do it with nature instead of with hardware. That is harder on a small scale it seems but not critical to building settlements on Mars.

 

[mfb]

Elon Musk believes we'll have cities on Mars in the near future, so I think you have to take his plans with a pinch of salt.

If you want to call the end of this century the "near future", I guess. Sounds less ambitious than landing people on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

Biosphere 2 tried to do everything - tons of different environments with different plants working together, and everything gained from somewhat natural conditions. It's not a good model for a potential Mars habitat. A Biosphere 3 focusing on living conditions for the crew would be interesting.

 

[PeroK]

If you want to call the end of this century the "near future", I guess. Sounds less ambitious than landing people on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

Landing on Mars is a long way short of building a city and living there. For example, the UK is building a new high-speed rail line (HS2). That is schedued to take 20 years. That's the reality of major construction projects on Earth. Building a city on Mars is not ambitious, it's pure fantasy!

 

[mfb]

You think going to the Moon wasn't been called fantasy in 1890? People called the idea of airplanes pure fantasy at that time. Do you want to repeat that mistake? 80 years is a very long timespan for technological progress. So long that our actual achievements usually surpass even optimistic expectations. Some project in the UK being poorly done isn't changing that.

 

[sciFax]

Well, there are a number of ways to define what constitutes a "city" - do an online search for "smallest city" in your favourite country. But we could set a quota of, say, 1000 inhabitants as a rough guideline for "smallest (or first) city on Mars." Then we could do the sums to figure out what the necessary basic supplies and hardware to support such a population would be. That's the easy part.

Not so easy is finding the funds, and doing the necessary work, here on Earth to ship the basics to Mars to support the population of Mars City.

From my perspective, it would be most sensible to have a much smaller population to start with - say a group of 20 to 50 individuals, consisting of engineers, geologists, chemists, physicists, biologists, doctors and medics - to stay for an extended period (at least 5 or 10 years?) to see whether living on Mars is actually feasible. Let's say this group is supplied with decent power supplies (solar, nuclear), sufficient air and food and entertainment, comms, machine tools, prefab habitation modules, and construction machinery to dig into create underground living quarters to mitigate the effects of solar and cosmic radiation. Water would come from ice deposits nearby (prior research would identify such sites.)

Having settled in, members of this group would rove around outside (on foot or in vehicles) to do geological surveys or reseach, and possibly also some mineral prospecting. Others might do repairs and maintenance, some astronomy, or medical research, or tend to hydroponic farms. As all this is going on, certain issues would have to be monitored, including effectiveness/stability/usability of living quarters and of protective suits used outside, constant monitoring of radiation doses received while outside the living quarters, what effects the ubiquitous and highly abrasive Martian dust would have on practically everything, and what physiological effects the much lower Martian gravity would have on the people.

Only when the negative issues have been considered and addressed, would it be sensible either (1) to transport more people and equipment to Mars, or (2) abandon the project altogether. It's not going to be an easy ride either way.

 

[PeroK]

You think going to the Moon wasn't been called fantasy in 1890? People called the idea of airplanes pure fantasy at that time. Do you want to repeat that mistake?

That doesn't make everything possible. You still have to judge each project on its merits. Going to the Moon was extraordinary, but we haven't been back since. You would have been dead wrong if you'd predicted in 1969 that we would be living on Mars by now. It works both ways. In terms of transportation, technology has not fundamentally changed in 50 years: cars, trains, aeroplanes and space travel are much as they were in 1970.

80 years is a very long timespan for technological progress. So long that our actual achievements usually surpass even optimistic expectations.

That's not true at all. Space travel, AI and robotics are three that have done nothing like what was expected of them 40-50 years ago. These have proved tough to develop. And supersonic commercial air travel has come and gone.

Some project in the UK being poorly done isn't changing that.

The project isn't poorly - not yet, anyway. That's the planned timescale, if all goes well. The new line across London (Crossrail) is struggling and has been going for 15-18 years now.

The point about Mars is not so much technology as logistics and economics. Those cannot be magicked away by some technological innovation. We could definitely go to Mars and back if we really wanted to, but building a civilisation there is not logistically or economically viable.

 

[Klystron]

We have sent automatic and semi-autonomous machines into space and nearby planets on a fairly regular schedule. Humans require habitat, conditions and resources that machines do not.

 

[mfb]

It's one thing to be pessimistic, it's another thing to just claim it's pure fantasy. Things claimed to be pure fantasy are routinely achieved. Not everything, but do you really want to have a 50% or even a 10% track record of "pure fantasies" becoming reality? Would you call this successful? I would not.

The point about Mars is not so much technology as logistics and economics. Those cannot be magicked away by some technological innovation. We could definitely go to Mars and back if we really wanted to, but building a civilisation there is not logistically or economically viable.

The technological innovation changes the logistics and the economics of it. You can't build a permanent South Pole station with husky sleds, but you can do that with trucks and airplanes. We are in the middle of a rapid price drop for spaceflight. Falcon Heavy is a factor ~10 cheaper today than previous US rockets (per mass to orbit), and Starship should beat that by another factor 10 even with pessimistic assumptions. And that's just the 2010s-2020s.

Imagine how air travel would look like if aircraft couldn't land. Every flight you jump out with a parachute and the airplane crashes into the ocean. Plane tickets would cost a million or so. You would dismiss a world where middle-class people fly for vacations as pure fantasy because the logistics and economics of it wouldn't work. You would miss the innovation that airplanes can be reused, which makes all that possible.
The Wright brothers didn't invent being in the air, hot air balloons beat them by over 100 years. So why do we remember them? They made being in the air far more useful. Rapidly reusable rockets are the equivalent in rocketry.

You can be pessimistic in terms of their viability. But I don't think it's wise to dismiss things as pure fantasy just because you don't see how they could happen. This has been shown to be wrong over and over again.

 

[PeroK]

You can be pessimistic in terms of their viability. But I don't think it's wise to dismiss things as pure fantasy just because you don't see how they could happen. This has been shown to be wrong over and over again.

Why not set up a colony at the centre of the Sun, then? Why not build a FTL spaceship?

Why not cure cancer? (That should be really easy - what is stopping a cure for cancer? Nothing except excessive pessisism?)

Why not achieve world peace? It's 2022 and we have war in Europe. Is that sheer pessimism?

Why do we not have a Moon colony 50 years after we first visited?

Why are commercial aircraft limited to subsonic speeds?

Why are we still burining coal, oil and gas? What happened to nuclear power? What happened to fusion? (That was just around the corner in 1980.)

Your everything-is-possible optimism has been shown to be wrong over and over again.

PS And, of course, we are unable even to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change on Earth. Why can't we stop that? Where's the technology to retain the necessary climate on Earth?

 

[PeroK]

Imagine how air travel would look like if aircraft couldn't land. Every flight you jump out with a parachute and the airplane crashes into the ocean. Plane tickets would cost a million or so. You would dismiss a world where middle-class people fly for vacations as pure fantasy because the logistics and economics of it wouldn't work.

The most I've ever paid for a return plane ticket was about £1000 (to fly to New Zealand and back in 2003).

Are you really saying that 80 years from now I'll be able to fly to Mars and back at an affordable price for the average person?

There's a middle ground. I can imagine asteroid mining. That's plausible. I don't simply dismiss everything.

You're confusing the plausibly futuristic with the implausible and impractical - asteroid mining compared to living permanently on an asteroid, for example. One is possible and one is nonsensical.

 

[mfb]

Your everything-is-possible optimism has been shown to be wrong over and over again.

Where? Supersonic commercial aircraft have flown, commercial nuclear power exists, nuclear fusion reactors exist (and ITER will very likely reach Q>1). Cancer mortality is far lower than it was 50 years ago, some types went from death sentences to almost 100% successful treatments. Deaths from wars keep decreasing, not in every country in every year, but as long-term trend.

Where's the technology to retain the necessary climate on Earth?

It's there, we are just lacking the political will to actually use it on a large scale. Same for the Moon base.

Even including the silly examples we get ~50%. Pretty good success rate for something you want to call impossible.
You seem to mistake "possible" with "guaranteed to happen", because you keep arguing against "guaranteed to happen".

The most I've ever paid for a return plane ticket was about £1000 (to fly to New Zealand and back in 2003).

Yes, because the aircraft landed safely and was making its next flight the following hour. That's something rockets don't do at the moment, and that's the reason they are far more expensive.

Are you really saying that 80 years from now I'll be able to fly to Mars and back at an affordable price for the average person?

At the cost of "I sell my house for that"? Maybe. I don't know. I think it's foolish to call it impossible.

 

[anorlunda]

I wish the English language had two distinct words.

The word Impossible (capital I) means that the laws of physics tell us it can't happen. Perpetual motion machines for example.

The word impossible (lower case i) means Possible but so difficult that we can't imagine success. We cheer speeches from visionaries about "making the impossible possible."

Do other languages have distinct words for those two meanings?

 

[PeroK]

The word impossible (lower case i) means Possible but so difficult that we can't imagine success. We cheer speeches from visionaries about "making the impossible possible."

I spent a lot of the latter part of my career on (usually large) government IT projects. I would ponder what percentage success you should be looking for?

Technically, we need to establish what we mean by success. An analysis that our company did showed that there was a clear split into projects that ran more or less to time and budget and then projects that bombed. These are the projects that either get abandoned, overrun by years and/or ultimately deliver much less than planned. There were projects in between, but there was a clear pattern of the two extremes.

The reality was that ideally no more than one project in ten would bomb. From a commercial point of view, if we make a margin of 20% on a successful project and a deficit of 100% on a failed project, then for ten projects at 10 units each with one failure we have:

Income is 10 x 10 = 100 units

Costs: (9 x 8) + (1 x 20) = 92 units

And that is sustainable. Although, if we didn't get paid anything for the failed project, then we would just about be breaking even.

The reality is that possible/impossible is not the issue for a large project. The reality is that it has to be almost certain of success (say 90%) to be viable.

This, IMO, was part of the problem with large government IT projects: the government departmemts would judge them as possible. And they themselves would use language like cutting-edge, world-leading, ambitious etc. Possible meant perhaps 20%-50% chance of success. Most, in my experience, fell into the "bombed" category.

In that sense, a commercial project to do something on Mars that had only a 10% chance of success would be technically possible, but commercially impossible to undertake.

Moreover, projects with only a 10% chance of success have a relatively high chance of complete failure. I.e. you deliver nothing and/or lose all your investment.

In that sense, these projects are almost impossible to finance because no one wants to go into a project where they expect to lose a lot of money. The 20% chance of success that looks like a golden opportunity to the research scientist looks like a commercial disaster to a corporation.

 

[anorlunda]

The reality was that ideally no more than one project in ten would bomb. From a commercial point of view, if we make a margin of 20% on a successful project and a deficit of 100% on a failed project, then for ten projects at 10 units each with one failure we have:

Income is 10 x 10 = 100 units

Costs: (9 x 8) + (1 x 20) = 92 units

And that is sustainable. Although, if we didn't get paid anything for the failed project, then we would just about be breaking even.

Very interesting. I spent most of my career with a consulting firm bidding on non-government projects. I did the identical analysis, assuming that one in five bids would turn sour. How much premium would we need to add to the other 4 projects to compensate? But I gave up the whole business after realizing that the real road to profit was to underbid, then charge exorbitant fees for contract changes. It was just too distasteful.

But regarding impossible, my favorite is from my own youth. I started reading SF in the 1950s, and much of the fantasy was space travel to places like the moon. Obviously, that was impossible. But 1960s proved that very wrong. I even got to work with GE's Saturn V / Apollo Project team (but on a different project).

 

[PeroK]

Very interesting. I spent most of my career with a consulting firm bidding on non-government projects. I did the identical analysis, assuming that one in five bids would turn sour. How much premium would we need to add to the other 4 projects to compensate? But I gave up the whole business after realizing that the real road to profit was to underbid, then charge exorbitant fees for contract changes. It was just too distasteful.

Your numbers are probably more realistic. It was the same in IT services. We were ethical up until about 2003. The first problem was when we started to get a cut from hardware and license sales and that was the thin end of a slippery wedge! A year before I retired I was speaking to a woman who said she didn't like to attend client meetings any more because she felt she was lying by omission. People like me were definitely kept out of client meetings!

 

[russ_watters]

I wish the English language had two distinct words.

The word Impossible (capital I) means that the laws of physics tell us it can't happen. Perpetual motion machines for example.

The word impossible (lower case i) means Possible but so difficult that we can't imagine success. We cheer speeches from visionaries about "making the impossible possible."

Implausible? Impractical? Unfeasible? Uneconomical? (to me the last two are pretty much the same).

Ironically I was just in an argument on Reddit last night about the difference between "possible" and "feasible". He (an engineer!) claimed there was no difference (...and therefore nuclear power is "impossible"). But I think he was just trolling me.

I share Perok's view here that the idea of a future where commercial travel to Mars is feasible/economical is highly implausible. Obviously nobody knows for sure what the extreme future holds, but right now we're just not on a trajectory that gets us there.

I think the backwards motion on commercial supersonic flight somewhat mirrors the backwards motion on human space exploration. They've proven possible, but not feasible/economical enough to keep doing them. People are still trying to make them feasible/economical, but it's been a long time and it isn't going that well. I foresee travel to Mars going the same way. Eventually we'll do it just to prove it's possible. And then we won't do it again for a very long time because it is unfeasible/uneconomical. Widespread commercial travel into LEO or the moon isn't on anyone's time horizon. A hotel on Mars is so far beyond that it may as well be science fiction/fantasy.

 

[phinds]

 

[anorlunda]

A hotel on Mars is so far beyond that it may as well be science fiction/fantasy.

"I'm sorry sir. I realize that you traveled a long way, but I just can't find your reservation."

 

[phinds]

"I'm sorry sir. I realize that you traveled a long way, but I just can't find your reservation."

And I understand the spaceport lost your luggage, but we DO hope your stay on Mars will be enjoyable.

 

[PeroK]

"I'm sorry sir. I realize that you traveled a long way, but I just can't find your reservation."

A "hotel" on Mars is entirely possible. We just relabel one of the Rovers as the "Mars-dorf Astoria". It may not look like a conventional hotel, or have the expected facilities, but it could win you a bet!