Why colonize Mars and not the Moon?

[AFTT47]

[QUOTE="mfb, post: 5723430, member: That's exactly what SpaceX wants to do. And is doing already.[/QUOTE]

I don't see that. They're building a launch infrastructure better than anything we've had before and that's great. But the next step is to use that launch infrastructure to build an infrastructure allowing you to economically harvest space-based resources. Going to Mars before doing that is like trying to out-sprint Usain Bolt before you have even gotten off all-fours.

I don't even see the point of Mars as a colony. As an outpost for scientific exploration, yes. As a colony, no. Similar situation with the moon. It's a possible industrial or mining outpost but not a realistic colony location. Only a rotating artificial structure in space is guaranteed to deliver the physiological parameters required to both sustain healthy adults and provide what is needed for developing children.

As a new member, I may not have a good grasp of what constitutes the standards of staying on topic here so if I am violating that standard, please let me know and I will endeavor to modify my future posts to conform to that standard.

My contention is that neither Mars nor the Moon is a realistic choice for a colony but that both are suitable as outposts for different goals. I believe the Moon as an outpost is a necessary (or at least a logical) step for a lunar colony, Mars colony or rotating, artificial colony. Uplifting stuff from Earth is going to be very costly until/unless we build an Earth-space elevator. We're not certain that's even possible at this point. We do know we could do it on the moon - even with existing materials. That means mining lunar resources will eventually be economical. I will grant that we don't know for sure what resources there are to be had there. At minimum though, there is bulk material which could serve as a radiation shield for a rotating colony. There is pretty strong evidence that the south pole contains substantial amounts of water ice, also. This alone, screams to me that the Moon is the next logical step.

 

[rootone]

There is pretty strong evidence that the south pole contains substantial amounts of water ice, also. This alone, screams to me that the Moon is the next logical step.

I agree with that, but then apart from it proving it being possible to have a human habitat there, what else would be the point?
There as an Island in the mid Altantic called Rockall, but there is nothing there other than a resting place for seabirds,

 

[AFTT47]

I agree with that, but then apart from it proving it being possible to have a human habitat there, what else would be the point?
There as an Island in the mid Altantic called Rockall, but there is nothing there other than a resting place for seabirds,

I don't believe it is necessary to have a human habitat there to harness the ice which can then be reduced by solar energy to its H2/O components.

I'm not suggesting anything on a time-scale anywhere near approaching what Musk suggests. I think he's wildly optimistic. But we have to start somewhere. I contend that if you want to be a real-life Tony Stark and you have the resources to be anything like that, you swallow your ego and just build the infrastructure to make your grand dreams possible. That by itself will secure your legacy as a great human being. You build a step which those who follow can stand upon and build the next step. That's the realistic way to go. Embrace your dreams and don't give them up but just do what you can realistically do. Content yourself with building shoulders that others will be able to stand upon and go from there.

 

[nikkkom]

First of all, I LOVE Elon Musk. At this point, I think he's the most important person on the planet. That said, he is a human being and thus imperfect. His imperfections are not hard to spot. At times he is callous and downright irresponsible IMO. I think he's great and a treasure to humanity overall but I think he's seriously off-base and misguided in his obsession with Mars.

Did you consider the possibility that Musk is right about Mars, and you are not?

First, I'm amazed at the fact that Musk (and so few posters in this thread) seem to ignore the fact that we have no idea if people can live in health long-term in 38% of Earth's gravity. Even more amazing to me is the assumption that you can raise children in that gravity environment and have them develop properly. We don't know for sure that they can't but what we do know is not encouraging at all.

How are we to know without testing it?

I'm also surprised (and dismayed) at the apparent ignorance of the work of Dr. Gerrard K O'Niel. His timetable was certainly as unrealistic as Musk's but I think he makes a great case that floating space stations using centrifugal force for simulated gravity make far more sense for human colonies in space than do the surface of planetary bodies.

I have no information that Musk is against O'Neill habitats.
However, O'Neill habitats require raw materials, millions of tons of them. This would require mining asteroids (or larger bodies). To mine millions of tons, you pretty much require permanently operated mines. And MINERS. And housing for them. And oxygen. And food. IOW: you need a colony. On an asteroid/Moon/Mars.

There were myriad discussions where exactly the first colony is better to be placed (asteroid/Moon/Mars?). Moon and Mars are considered about equally good. Musk is in the Mars camp. There is nothing wrong with it.

1. An artificial space colony can be spun to give you exactly the gravity you want. Absent radical genetic engineering, this by itself may render any other solution implausible.

(1) Why "radical"? You know for sure that (if 0.38g is bad for health for unmodified humans), an addition of a gene or two to boost bone regeneration definitely wouldn't be enough, that a "radical" genetic engineering is needed?

(2) Genetic engineering is going to progress in the future, and will likely be able of more and more radical things. If anything, needs of space colonies will boost R&D in this area!

3. In an artificial space colony, you are not trapped in a huge gravity well. You can travel to other space colonies, planets or asteroids without the tremendous energy penalty of reaching escape velocity.

Moon and Mars' gravity wells are quite a bit less huge than Earth's.

The next frontier here is robotic/automated mining, processing and assembly in space. I think you need to go there first before you start realistically talking of a human, self-sufficient colony in space at ANY location.

No one stopping you from starting developing that right away. When you have prototype equipment and ready for testing in zero-G, Musk will provide you with cheap access to space. I'm sure he has nothing ideological against "robotic/automated mining, processing and assembly in space".

 

[Al_]

So the evidence is that on average the moon has less valuable minerals.

I do recognize that point concentrations are different from average concentrations. But since you have no evidence about point concentrations, claims that they are higher is just speculation.

Argument based on probability not acceptable then. I'm guessing you're not an Astronomer?

 

[Al_]

3. In an artificial space colony, you are not trapped in a huge gravity well. You can travel to other space colonies, planets or asteroids without the tremendous energy penalty of reaching escape velocity.

More importantly, resources can travel to you.
A fleet of robotic miners and ion-thrust tugs taking years to travel the distances involved, but delivering an almost continuous stream of elements of all types from all over the solar system.
Industrial game on!

 

[Dale]

Argument based on probability not acceptable then.

An argument based on personal speculation about probability is not acceptable. A professional reference making an argument based on probability would be fine.

 

[mfb]

I don't see that. They're building a launch infrastructure better than anything we've had before and that's great. But the next step is to use that launch infrastructure to build an infrastructure allowing you to economically harvest space-based resources. Going to Mars before doing that is like trying to out-sprint Usain Bolt before you have even gotten off all-fours.

If the ITS gets really as cheap as they hope, they can launch stuff to orbit for 10-30 dollars/kg. That is similar to the price of raw tin, and way cheaper than all production processes converting raw materials into something more interesting. Apart from counterweights for space elevators, massive dumb shielding materials or other bulk objects there is no need to harvest space-based resources in the near-term future if the ITS delivers. If it does not, and if no other system reduces launch costs significantly, expansion into space will stay very slow.

 

[nikkkom]

Cost projections in this field are notorious for not being met by a large margin.

What if ITS would "only" lower costs to, say, $250/kg?

 

[mfb]

Predictions are always hard, especially about the future, but let's make some estimates.

The planned Psyche orbit mission will get a budget of something like half a billion dollars. It won't land, it won't do anything on the surface, and it won't come back.
There is a concept of an Europa lander to take some small samples from the surface and study them. It will land and do something on the surface, but it won't come back. Cost estimates are in the 2-4 billion range.

Developing a mission that can land somewhere, do largely automated mining, and bring a lot of stuff back is much more challenging than those missions. $10 billions up to a mission returning relevant amounts of matter is probably a very conservative estimate.

With $250/kg and a budget of $10 billions, we can launch 40 million kg of useful payload.

• The cost estimate was for an initial asteroid mission - such an initial mission won't get 40,000 tons of materials back. We would need additional missions, at unclear costs.
• Those asteroid mining missions have to be launched as well. Higher launch costs will also make asteroid mining more expensive (but not proportionally).
• Things launched from Earth can be built on Earth. Building things like space station modules needs the cooperation of hundreds of companies - we won't be able to do that in orbit anytime soon. Asteroid missions could provide some bulk material, but most of the mass would still be launched from Earth.

A station that can use 40,000 tons of raw materials from asteroids will probably have a mass of 200,000 tons or more, 500 times the mass of the ISS, with living space for thousands, if that is the goal of the station.

 

[CosmologyHobbyist]

The Moon will always have more colonists than Mars. Location location location. Already nearly a dozen people have been to the Moon. Mars score : zero. Distance to Mars is quite debilitating compared to moon, no trips home in an emergency. Even operating robots incurs 15minutes--1hour of time lag, compared to 3seconds for the moon.

Mars is actually not much more earthlike than the moon. Mars 1/3 Earth gravity instead of moon 1/6. Mars 1/100 Earth air pressure instead of moon 1/10000 Earth air pressure. The only edge Mars can have is if airbursting nukes over Mars south pole vaporizes enough dry ice to raise the martian air pressure to 1/10 of earth, then Mars could be terraformed, if objections of purists could be overcome.

 

[nikkkom]

Mars is actually not much more earthlike than the moon.

Yes, Mars is more Earth-like than the Moon, and it was discussed in this very thread. Please read it.

In short: existence of atmosphere and presence of volatiles in the ground on Mars are two "big deals" for a colony. For example: you can make rocket fuel on Mars merely from electricity and atmosphere, same for oxygen humans need to breathe. Try that on the Moon...

The whole reason why there are endless Internet battles about "Moon first" / "Mars first" is that both Moon and Mars have advantages, neither is a clear win. Moon is much closer; but Mars is much better.

 

[mfb]

The Moon will always have more colonists than Mars.

This statement is obviously wrong: Currently both have 0.
And for the future you cannot be sure. While some speculation can be acceptable, don't write speculations as fact, please.

Even operating robots incurs 15minutes--1hour of time lag, compared to 3seconds for the moon.

That is an argument in favor of humans on Mars. They reduce the lag.

Mars is actually not much more earthlike than the moon. Mars 1/3 Earth gravity instead of moon 1/6. Mars 1/100 Earth air pressure instead of moon 1/10000 Earth air pressure.

Mars is more Earth-like in both aspects. And you forgot the availability of CO2, water ice, nitrogen, and various other elements.

 

[AFTT47]

The more I look at this, the crazier it seems to me.

I can see outposts on either the moon or Mars. By "outposts," I mean teams of adult volunteers with no ambitions of procreating. Lunar outposts would most likely be pioneers of mining space-based resources. Martian outposts would be scientific heroes and perhaps (very early) terraforming pioneers, putting in place the groundwork for future generations to build upon.

Those going to either the Moon or Mars in the near future with the goal of procreating there are misguided at best and outright criminals at worst, IMO. Conceiving and raising children in 38% gravity (Mars) at this point is nothing less than biological experimentation on human subjects. The data we have is NOT encouraging. Furthermore, it is prudent to expect that problems will develop we do not yet anticipate due to our limited experience of human physiology in low-g environments. And you want to do this in a frontier environment where your resources are very limited? At the very least, we need to have data gleaned from raising primates in controlled, low-g environments before we even think of attempting it with humans.

 

[mfb]

The data we have is NOT encouraging.

We have zero data about living in a low-g environment for more than 3 days.
And the best way to get data is to send people there and see what happens. If it turns out to be impossible to live there for a longer time, then colonies are dead. Yeah, might happen. But we can discuss what happens if low-g environments turn out to be fine.

 

[russ_watters]

We have zero data about living in a low-g environment for more than 3 days.

I expect that NASA would disagree and consider their ISS health data applicable.

 

[russ_watters]

In short: existence of atmosphere and presence of volatiles in the ground on Mars are two "big deals" for a colony. For example: you can make rocket fuel on Mars merely from electricity and atmosphere, same for oxygen humans need to breathe. Try that on the Moon...

Or on Earth! The ease at which we could manage to scrape-by an existence on the edge of death on Mars is consistently overblown by advocates of Mars exploration.

 

[nikkkom]

I expect that NASA would disagree and consider their ISS health data applicable.

ISS is zero-g.
0.3 g might be different.

 

[nikkkom]

Or on Earth! The ease at which we could manage to scrape-by an existence on the edge of death on Mars is consistently overblown by advocates of Mars exploration.

My point wasn't that Mars is "easy". My point is, Moon is harder. Such common materials as plastics, paints, oils, will always need to be imported - no matter how advanced your Moon manufacturing tech is, you can't make carbon-containing material without carbon! Same for nitrogen, chlorine, etc...

 

[mfb]

I expect that NASA would disagree and consider their ISS health data applicable.

It is interesting, but it only serves as worst case, and NASA doesn't claim living on Mars would be like living on the ISS.
If living on Mars has health effects similar to living on the ISS, then we won't colonize Mars. But it looks unlikely that 0.4 g don't help at all. In fact, NASA expects that low-g is much better than zero-g - they planned a low-g module for the ISS for the crew. It didn't make it for funding reasons, unfortunately.

The ease at which we could manage to scrape-by an existence on the edge of death on Mars is consistently overblown by advocates of Mars exploration.

No one says it would be easy.
It is probably possible - at least no show-stopper has been found so far. It will need a lot of clever engineers and various scientists finding ways to do so.

 

[russ_watters]

My point wasn't that Mars is "easy". My point is, Moon is harder.

I seriously doubt that is true. The things you describe to be done on Mars are really, really hard and in some cases we don't really even know how we would do them, which makes them little more than wild guesses. Can you tell me how much it will cost to manufacture a million cubic feet (at STP) of oxygen on Mars...to the nearest order of magnitude or two or three? I can tell you how much it will cost to manufacture it on Earth and ship it to the Moon.

 

[mfb]

Everything we need on Mars we also need on Moon. It just costs more delta_v to get there (unless we have a space elevator) and the raw materials are harder to obtain.

For the comparison it does not matter how much it will cost to produce x amount of oxygen on Mars - it will cost more on the Moon because we cannot just use CO2 from the atmosphere.

CO2 to oxygen systems exist for the ISS already, which is much easier to supply. It wouldn't make sense to ship oxygen to Mars (apart from what is needed during the trip).

 

[russ_watters]

It is interesting, but it only serves as worst case...

Right, so >0 data.

If living on Mars has health effects similar to living on the ISS, then we won't colonize Mars.

Well, we're getting off track (or maybe I just don't care), but if a colony is to be permanent, there is no requirement for them to be able to survive back on Earth. But it could be a problem for an exploratory mission.

No one says it would be easy.

Why do people keep saying that? No one said anyone said it would be easy! If you are going to respond, respond to what I was saying, please (in context).

 

[mfb]

Right, so >0 data.

Yes, but with the same argument you can say living on Earth provides data. It gives the best case. Where is 0.4 g between these two extremes? We don't know. As many biological responses are nonlinear, 0.4 g is probably closer to 1 g than it is to 0 g, but we don't have experimental data.

Well, we're getting off track (or maybe I just don't care), but if a colony is to be permanent, there is no requirement for them to be able to survive back on Earth. But it could be a problem for an exploratory mission.

I was thinking about health effects even if people are staying on Mars. Exploratory missions for 2.5 years should be fine based on zero long-term health effects of MIR/ISS stays.

Why do people keep saying that? No one said anyone said it would be easy! If you are going to respond, respond to what I was saying, please (in context).

How are we supposed to interpret "the ease" then?

The ease at which we could manage to scrape-by an existence on the edge of death on Mars is consistently overblown by advocates of Mars exploration.

 

[sophiecentaur]

And the best way to get data is to send people there and see what happens.

I have a feeling that a hefty dose of Ethics is called for here. Experimenting on humans in that way is not acceptable (at least not in my book). Several successful generations of cattle would be needed before we even considered having humans - particularly children - for long stays on Mars. I would even suggest that primates should be excused that particular pleasure - bearing in mind what is being discovered about consciousness in higher apes.

 

[mfb]

The quote is a statement about initial missions. The first humans going there are adult volunteers, well aware of all the risks, with permanent medical screening and years of training to reduce the risks as much as possible. If healthy adults can stay on Mars for longer periods of time, we can see how various animals perform there, and think about raising various animals. Basically the same what has been done at the ISS already, just on a larger scale and going towards mammals with the research. But that is a very long time into the future.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The first humans going there are adult volunteers, well aware of all the risks,

Do you mean just like the soldiers who stood out in the open to test the effects of the early nuclear tests? I would not rely on the system to 'inform' those who will take part in early work - particularly in view of how some people seem to regard a trip to Mars as the Holy Grail. They would sign up to anything.

 

[rootone]

...They would sign up to anything.

Sadly there seems to be death wish in some human beings for all manner of illogical reasons.
Going to Mars and only surviving for a few days is at least ambitious.

 

[mfb]

Do you mean just like the soldiers who stood out in the open to test the effects of the early nuclear tests? I would not rely on the system to 'inform' those who will take part in early work - particularly in view of how some people seem to regard a trip to Mars as the Holy Grail. They would sign up to anything.

You seem to underestimate the education of astronauts massively.

 

[AFTT47]

I have no issues with truly informed adult volunteers to take whatever risks they are willing to take. I have massive issues with said adults indiscriminately procreating in low-gravity environments because that amounts to human experimentation. Offspring may be severely compromised - if they survive to term at all. In my view, it is irresponsible and unethical to, "see what happens" there. I sure wouldn't want to be a baby born in an alien environment and observed to, "see what happens." I'm not going to address the issue of the morality of primate experimentation as that is probably an issue for another thread. I maintain the position that seriously considering a self-sustaining colony ANYWHERE where only partial earth-gravity is available at this point is pure folly. I don't discount the possibility in the far future but seriously attempting it at this point is irresponsible and unethical.

The logical next step after achieving substantially cheaper access to earth-orbit is to establish an infrastructure to harvest space-based resources because that will substantially increase what is possible and practical for you. Going off half-cocked to Mars with the ambition to establish a self-sustaining colony before you even have the necessary knowledge to make that work - or even know that it's possible given human physiology - is insane. It's like a 19th century entrepreneur deciding to establish a self-sustaining colony at the summit of Mt. Everest before even researching whether or not it's possible or practical for humans to live long-term at that altitude - let alone birth and raise children in it.