Why colonize Mars and not the Moon?

[SafetyNow]

Hi,
As I see it mining minerals in space is where the greatest benefits will come from. To do that it would be best to find a fairly close moon or planet to refine the ore. However transporting it back to the Earth economically is beyond us at the moment. You could consider Mars as a staging post though.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I don't think that would be the case. In a harsh but potentially rich environment, you tend to either thrive or die. There is not much struggling.

I re-read this. There are many kinds of hell that involve no hard work. I would find it hell to be sitting on an ever growing pile of gold for ten years in a tin box with no view of fields rivers or wildlife. I can't imagine what would be "rich" about the environment on Mars unless it were successfully terraformed and that would be centuries away (millennia even?) No one enjoyed life on the Klondike and very few returned with a lot of money. Only the metal dealers and whorehouse owners made a profit. Would the CEO be in residence on Mars, do you think?
I think you should replace "thrive or die" with "survive or die".

 

[Al_]

Why would it be different "underground" on Earth from how it would be in the sort of enclosures necessary on Mars.

You have to build either sort of base/bunker well ahead of time.
You have to have enough notice so you can dive into the Earth bunker when the alarm goes. Not likely.
You have to know how long to stay in the Earth bunker ahead of time to put in enough stores.

Elon's idea to 'spread out or die out' is, in the long run, correct, but I agree that :

This thread is not actually about the WW3 scenario. It's about commercial development

I would find it hell to be sitting on an ever growing pile of gold for ten years in a tin box with no view of fields rivers or wildlife.

A better analogy is totally unfriendly environments we have here on Earth. The oceans, or the south pole, for example.
Compare the first fishing canoes with big tuna boats, and then on to luxury cruise liners with anti-roll stabilisers and indoor spas and a show every night after dinner.
Who would sit on big pile of gold in a tin can? You'd call up the space base architects and order their best most expensive space palace.
If you need a landscape, I'm sure they can do a great 3D screen wall.

The corporations will try to run things from Earth, sure. But there is no substitute for being able to make commercial decisions based on having close familiarity with an environment. It puts you ahead of the competition, even if you start small.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Who would sit on big pile of gold in a tin can? You'd call up the space base architects and order their best most expensive space palace.

That's where you are almost certainly wrong. The guys making all the money will not be living on the outposts. They will, as usual, be living somewhere nice on Earth. The operatives will be having a quality of life that 'just' pays for their discomfort. Why would you imagine it would be any different from how it is on Earth?

If you need a landscape, I'm sure they can do a great 3D screen wall.

If that would satisfy you, it certainly wouldn't satisfy me.

The corporations will try to run things from Earth, sure. But there is no substitute for being able to make commercial decisions based on having close familiarity with an environment. It puts you ahead of the competition, even if you start small.

Do the CEOs spend much time on Oil rigs (long enough to sample the bad weather and the stress)? Do they go down mines or spend time operating machinery in factories? They pay intermediates (of course) to assess the on-site situation and the same will apply for many generations of colonists. Look at history to find what the bosses in the East India Company were up to in the Eighteenth Century. Nothing changes.

 

[Al_]

That's where you are almost certainly wrong. The guys making all the money will not be living on the outposts. They will, as usual, be living somewhere nice on Earth. The operatives will be having a quality of life that 'just' pays for their discomfort. Why would you imagine it would be any different from how it is on Earth?

If that would satisfy you, it certainly wouldn't satisfy me.

Do the CEOs spend much time on Oil rigs (long enough to sample the bad weather and the stress)? Do they go down mines or spend time operating machinery in factories? They pay intermediates (of course) to assess the on-site situation and the same will apply for many generations of colonists. Look at history to find what the bosses in the East India Company were up to in the Eighteenth Century. Nothing changes.

Nothing changes indeed! In the time of the British Empire there were many examples of individuals who went to the colonies and made fortunes. Some of them started their own corporations there. Eventually, many of the corporations in the colonies became more wealthy than those that stayed at home. Some of those are still there!

The point I was originally making about the behaviour of the people in the colony, is not that they would ALL be successful entrepreneurs, but that SOME of them will be, and they will be the ones who make the colony comfortable, safe and attractive to new independant colonists.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Nothing changes indeed! In the time of the British Empire there were many examples of individuals who went to the colonies and made fortunes. Some of them started their own corporations there. Eventually, many of the corporations in the colonies became more wealthy than those that stayed at home. Some of those are still there!

The point I was originally making about the behaviour of the people in the colony, is not that they would ALL be successful entrepreneurs, but that SOME of them will be, and they will be the ones who make the colony comfortable, safe and attractive to new independant colonists.

I'm not sure that the timescale you have in mind is relevant to this discussion. In the very distant future it's possible that the technology would be able to cope with absolutely any eventuality but, that would also have also included successfully putting Earth's environment back to rights and getting population and food sorted out. I have a theory that, if you scratch the surface of anyone who is wildly in favour of space colonisation, you will find a SciFi fan with pictures of Star Wars, Star Trek and Azimov in their heads. In SCiFi, all the historical difficulties and aggravations are always assumed to have been sorted out - except for a single issue that the story is dealing with. That is the weak line in nearly all SCiFi. More interesting discussions include many more factors than the plot of a single film or book.
You are right, of course, about successful colonies which turned out to make money for the few individuals and success was usually based on cheap labour or slavery. If it's the wealthy few who you identify with, I can see the attraction but the majority of colonists did not have good lives for generations.
But, for the Moon / Mars question, the answer, for me, has to be Moon first; it's a much cheaper option and would it not be very short sighted to go all the way to Mars when we could expect to find all we want on our doorstep?

 

[Al_]

success was usually based on cheap labour or slavery.

There's no such thing as cheap labor in space! Life support is very expensive. But there could be cheap robot labor.

Moon first

Yes, that's also my view!

the majority of colonists did not have good lives for generations.

I'm not sure that the timescale you have in mind is relevant

A timescale long enough for the technical problems to be solved, with the aid of robotic cheap labor, sufficiently well for the independant colonists to be able to make themselves very comfortable. That's about the same time it will take to create a viable colony, because it's more or less the same thing.
Why do the people at the top always seem to make themselves very comfotable? Because compared to the huge resources they control, comfort is a small cost. It will be the same in space, except people can only exist at the top, because the lower jobs are only possible for vacuum and radiation tolerant robots.

 

[Rive]

... In the time of the British Empire there were many examples of individuals who went to the colonies and made fortunes.

There is an important addition for this: successful colonies always had some goods that could be sold at high price at some home market.
So the first question is that what special goods can be produced on a colony of Mars/Moon/deep space what is not available on Earth and can be sold for high price?

I think Moon and Mars has nothing like that. The most they can produce is some research data. Is that enough?
However, deep space has one special thing, what is not available at Earth, and that is the zero-g environment. Maybe something could be produced there.

But, for the Moon / Mars question, the answer, for me, has to be Moon first; it's a much cheaper option and would it not be very short sighted to go all the way to Mars when we could expect to find all we want on our doorstep?

I'm not sure if it's actually cheaper on mid-term and upward. For the moon, you have to carry all the return fuel down lo the gravity well. For the Mars, you have the option to produce fuel locally. It's a big help.

My opinion: for the first really successful colony (not outpost, not research station: colony) it'll be neither Mars or Moon. It'll be some zero-g place where fuel and raw material are available at low delta-V.
Maybe Ceres or such?

 

[mfb]

Some crystals can only be produced in zero-g. Currently that is too expensive for commercial applications, but with cheaper rockets it could become interesting.

it's a much cheaper option and would it not be very short sighted to go all the way to Mars when we could expect to find all we want on our doorstep?

We cannot find all we want on Moon. It is a dead rock. Extracting anything apart from oxygen and a few common metals will be incredibly hard.What do the various desert cities export we have on Earth? Sand? No. They "export" their strategic location on trade routes (works for both Moon and Mars), they export intangible goods, they import tourist money, and sometimes research funds.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Why do the people at the top always seem to make themselves very comfotable? Because compared to the huge resources they control, comfort is a small cost. It will be the same in space, except people can only exist at the top, because the lower jobs are only possible for vacuum and radiation tolerant robots.

This raises an interesting issue. You could be right about the very narrow pyramid of wealth associated with space exploration but that won't apply to the general population of the Earth. That could produce a clash of two social models. (A classic SciFi scenario, of course) The recent proliferation of news about the possible and not-to-distant prospect of robots replacing many kinds of labour makes me think that in the more developed countries, the relationship between personal resources and work will change. Population growth may reduce or even go negative but it will still be necessary to find something for millions more unemployed to do with their time whilst, at the same time, providing them with the resources (practical and emotional) to cope with this radical change of lifestyle. It will be essential to remove the stigma of being unemployed and living on handouts - even lavish ones. It's interesting that those of us who are discussing such problems usually assume that such problems will not affect us; that we will not be part of the 'masses' who will be fed Bread and Circuses from birth to death. The colonisation of Space is actually just a small part of this potential problem but it seems to me that changes could be much too fast for us to cope without serious disruption and even revolution.

 

[sophiecentaur]

We cannot find all we want on Moon. It is a dead rock. Extracting anything apart from oxygen and a few common metals will be incredibly hard.

That's a bit of a sweeping statement, isn't it? The Moon is a pretty vast area on which more or less any part could be used to cherry pick materials (no Oceans, nobody's back yard. What exactly do you mean by "dead rock"? Is there any reason to suspect that the abundance of desirable metals (per square meter) would be any lower than on Earth? In low g, mining and processing could actually be quite a bit cheaper than on Earth as long as it's mainly robot led. (But that wouldn't be classed as a 'colony', perhaps.

 

[Rive]

In low g, mining and processing could actually be quite a bit cheaper than on Earth

Well, the rock is ~ the same but any truck used would work like it's dancing on ice.
Also, is there any kind of natural process on the Moon what would produce deposits?
I have some doubts.

 

[nikkkom]

That's a bit of a sweeping statement, isn't it? The Moon is a pretty vast area on which more or less any part could be used to cherry pick materials (no Oceans, nobody's back yard. What exactly do you mean by "dead rock"? Is there any reason to suspect that the abundance of desirable metals (per square meter) would be any lower than on Earth?

Metals no, but carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and other volatiles are in short supply on the Moon.

Even "water ice in polar craters" could well end up being some regolith with about the same fraction of water by weight as concrete on Earth. Extracting actual water from that is not much fun.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Metals no, but carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and other volatiles are in short supply on the Moon.

Even "water ice in polar craters" could well end up being some regolith with about the same fraction of water by weight as concrete on Earth. Extracting actual water from that is not much fun.

I take your point. A shortage of reagents for reducing ores could be an embarrassment but I would have thought that PV energy would achieve most of what's needed - only in a different way.

 

[nikkkom]

You need carbon and hydrogen to produce any sort of plastics, oils, paints, solvents. Many of them also require nitrogen and/or sulfur. Fertilizers need nitrogen. Chlorine is widely used in industry, and IIRC it is also depleted.

Metal production on the Moon will not be the most impacted industry. At least metals are there, even though different processes to produce them may be needed (for example, both iron and aluminium production we use on Earth require carbon).

 

[Al_]

I think Moon and Mars has nothing like that. The most they can produce is some research data. Is that enough?

Did you read the thread? I know it's quite long, but there is a lot about raw materials, transportation costs, and manufacturing.
The Moon is a great place to get materials at first, and then so are lots of the zero-g bodies further out.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/why-colonize-mars-and-not-the-moon.899537/page-19

For the moon, you have to carry all the return fuel down lo the gravity well. For the Mars, you have the option to produce fuel locally

Again, did you read the thread? You can make fuel on the Moon. It has ice. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_moon.html

Even "water ice in polar craters" could well end up being some regolith with about the same fraction of water by weight as concrete on Earth. Extracting actual water from that is not much fun.

No. "nearly pure ice crystals " - see the NASA link above.

A shortage of reagents for reducing ores

Then don't reduce ores. Or only small amounts. A huge amount of stuff can be made from raw, non-oxidised metals found on the Moon, from iron meteorites. Lots of stuff can be made from basalt e.g. basalt fibre. Bulk things can use raw iron or cast stone blocks. The fiddly little things with exotic materials can be shipped from Earth at low cost.
Sure, maybe processes will adapt, materials will be substituted, but not as much as you think. the Moon is BIG. We will find stuff.

some zero-g place where fuel and raw material are available at low delta-V.
Maybe Ceres or such?

It's hard to send people there. And robots aren't smart enough to mine on their own. And remote control (telepresence) is just not feasible due to the signal transmission time delay. But it is feasible on the Moon, so that's where we should start.

 

[nikkkom]

No. "nearly pure ice crystals " - see the NASA link above.

"Analysis of the results indicates concentrations of roughly 6% water in the impact area, including nearly pure ice crystals in some spots."

In my book, as water content, that's concrete with frost on it.

 

[Al_]

"Analysis of the results indicates concentrations of roughly 6% water in the impact area, including nearly pure ice crystals in some spots."

In my book, as water content, that's concrete with frost on it.

Plenty there.

"Subsequent data from Lunar Prospector taken over a longer period has indicated the possible presence of discrete, confined, near-pure water ice deposits buried beneath as much as 18 inches (40 centimeters) of dry regolith, with the water signature being stronger at the Moon's north pole than at the south (4). The ice was thought to be spread over 10,000 to 50,000 square km (3,600 to 18,000 square miles) of area near the north pole and 5,000 to 20,000 square km (1,800 to 7,200 square miles) around the south pole, but the latest results show the water may be more concentrated in localized areas (roughly 1850 square km, or 650 square miles, at each pole) rather than being spread out over these large regions. The estimated total mass of ice is 6 trillion kg (6.6 billion tons)."

 

[mfb]

Is there any reason to suspect that the abundance of desirable metals (per square meter) would be any lower than on Earth?

The average can be similar, but Moon is lacking the geochemical processes to concentrate them.
As an example, uranium makes up 3 parts per million of the Earth's crust. Uranium mines are built in places with 1000 to over 20,000 ppm uranium - a thousandfold concentration relative to the average.
On the Moon, the average concentration is lower at 0.3 ppm, but that is not the point: the highest known concentrations are just 2 ppm, an enrichment of less than a factor 10. Source.

How exactly do we transport things around on the Moon, by the way? Rovers will be generally slow (and limited to the day) if they have to run with solar power, they don't have a practical range with chemical storages or batteries, and the idea of nuclear powered rovers is questionable. Wheels will have a hard time with the regolith. It is easy to point out that "some place on the whole Moon has this", and "some other place has that", but that means we have to transport things over hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Just for basic things like water...

 

[Rive]

Did you read the thread?

Yes and no. No, I did not read all the 500+ posts, just the ~ the last 70-80. And yes, this topic is roughly the same as such topics usually are.

The value of the presence of ice is traditionally overestimated. What it actually means is, that if there is something valuable enough on the Moon that it's price can cover two industrial centers and the local ligistics then it's doable.
But diamond won't be enough, not even close.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The average can be similar, but Moon is lacking the geochemical processes to concentrate them.

That's an interesting point. Would the same apply to meteorites that have landed all over the surface. (That was actually what I was thinking of as much as anything.) Is the typical composition of meteorites as homogeneous as the original lunar surface?
If the availability on the Moon is as low as you suggest then there may not be a point in trying to exploit it. I imagine that some serious prospecting would be needed to prove this one way or another.

 

[glappkaeft]

That's an interesting point. Would the same apply to meteorites that have landed all over the surface.

Generally yes although the meteorite/asteroid population is very diverse. The asteroids that meteorits come from have even less geological processes that can concentrate elements but they are also less differentiated than the moon, often much less so. This can be both good or bad if differentiation makes an element concentrate in the core or the crust. Even so the concentration in the crust of a differentiated asteroid are much lower than good locations on earth.

Asteroids that are large enough to be differentiated are also small enough to be shattered. Iron meteorites are thought to remnants of the core of such shattered asteroids. They are extremely rich in iron, nickel, cobalt (together up to 95%) and (to a much lesser extent) other elements who like to snuggle up to iron. They are however pretty rare.

 

[backspace]

Here is something to think about:
We don't have to go to the classic and historical ways we colonized.
The closest to a "mars type colonization" we have is the Amundsen-Scott base at the south pole.
200 people in the summer and only 50 in the winter.
-constant resupply - aircraft extraction for major medical problems -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen–Scott_South_Pole_Station

Couldn't find anything on Amundsen-Scott sanitary engineering but I found this article:
Ya got to have a janitor 'cause 50 - 200 people got to go - but we tend not to think about that.

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

Funding space/mars/moon colonies : Come on! You're not going to get every country to contribute 5% of their GDP.
Consider this Oxfam Report.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world

 

[sophiecentaur]

Here is something to think about:
We don't have to go to the classic and historical ways we colonized.
The closest to a "mars type colonization" we have is the Amundsen-Scott base at the south pole.
200 people in the summer and only 50 in the winter.
-constant resupply - aircraft extraction for major medical problems -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen–Scott_South_Pole_Station

If they had started off with the "Earth Closet" in a big way, and avoided the "Water Closet", many 'city' drainage problems could have been avoided and our rivers would have remained sweet for a couple of hundred years. We now associate that whoosh of water with the 'natural and satisfying way' to deal with our body waste and that has to be seriously un-learned. All that stuff that goes through us is full of things that we can use and any colony, anywhere, will need efficient waste management. In fact, very little is actual Waste. The way stuff is dealt with in space is really not comparable with how the colonists will need to do things. The only similarity would be the need for an extractor fan.

Come on! You're not going to get every country to contribute 5% of their GDP.

I couldn't agree more.

 

[mfb]

You're not going to get every country to contribute 5% of their GDP.

Why 5%?
GPD is $120 trillion (purchasing power parity adjusted). Let's say SpaceX underestimates the ITS cost by a factor 10 for some reason, and the global expenditures for a Mars colony are 0.01% of the current GDP or 12 billions per year. Then we can still afford to fly thousands of people to Mars per year (in groups every 26 months), more than enough to start some sort of settlement. What is 0.01% of your income? Would you even notice that difference? It gets even less if trips are funded privately.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Why 5%?
GPD is $120 trillion (purchasing power parity adjusted). Let's say SpaceX underestimates the ITS cost by a factor 10 for some reason, and the global expenditures for a Mars colony are 0.01% of the current GDP or 12 billions per year. Then we can still afford to fly thousands of people to Mars per year (in groups every 26 months), more than enough to start some sort of settlement. What is 0.01% of your income? Would you even notice that difference? It gets even less if trips are funded privately.

I certainly would not be interesting in funding this out of my taxes and I reckon most other people would feel the same about giving a selected few an exotic holiday (which is how it would be viewed). It's hard enough to justify major rail and road projects out of taxes, when everyone could benefit in a relatively short time. Just because you feel enthusiastic about the project, you can't assume that the rest of us are as keen.

 

[mfb]

I'm not personally interested in thousands of things tax money is used for. That doesn't mean those things shouldn't be funded. Many of them have positive long-term effects for many to everyone (typical for research), some just have positive effects for some people (typical for local projects). I don't say governments should fund holidays for people. Governments should fund fundamental research, and sometimes subsidize developments that need some help to get started but get commercial successes later: It has a great positive long-term effect, but the timescale can be too long for companies to work on that.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Governments should fund fundamental research,

Absolutely and the choice of which research methods would be best is coloured by 'glamour' and adventure. We could get enormous returns from small manned expeditions but the returns from your "thousands" of visitors would be limited. A fraction of that money, spent on robot expeditions could produce much the same results. Things could be different if the results of robot expeditions were to show that human expeditions could actually pay for themselves.
The recent burst of publicity about AI developments could be the harbinger of a very different approach to the possibilities of space exploration.

 

[mfb]

Things could be different if the results of robot expeditions were to show that human expeditions could actually pay for themselves.

That is the idea of a colony. The first expeditions will be science-focused and won't pay for themselves - they will need government funding. But later they could become a profitable business.

 

[sophiecentaur]

That is the idea of a colony.

But that assumes a colony is the 'best way' to get hold of whatever we would be needing from Mars. Also, "the idea" is really not well defined and there are as many ideas as contributors to this thread.
We only 'colonise' the appropriate parts of Earth for our purposes, as a matter of fact. There have been no colonies on the sea bed, for instance (apart from Cousteau's efforts and a very few other projects), yet we make a lot of use of what's down there. It's all a matter of cost benefit and there is nothing on Earth with a comparable cost.
And the other thing - what happens when some disaster hits Earth. That's an entirely different matter and is hardly something that would be planned. In the very distance future, if there happens to be a large established colony on Mars, there would be the possibility of a very few of Earth's population that could be taken in. But, as we have seen recently, refugees are not too well received by many established communities. It could have the makings of a full scale war.