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Company to Settle and Mine Mars
Rutgersen writes "Wired is reporting that a new startup is planning to colonize and mine Mars by 2025. From the article: 'The new company, 4Frontiers, plans to mine Mars for building materials and energy sources, and export the planet's mineral wealth to forthcoming space stations on the moon and elsewhere.'"
As the old saying goes, "if it's too good to be true, it probably is."
Still, it's nice to see someone attempting to hold to their dreams. And I'd dearly love to believe that they will carry out such dreams. Unfortunately, I (and many others here) understand what a massive undertaking it is to reach Mars at all, much less place a settlement there. Nearly every company in existance bases itself on existing infrastructures. This company would be able to leverage very little infrastructure, if any at all! (Especially if they chose to use the wealth of undeveloped space technology.)
I'd love to see their breakdown of exactly how they plan to make this mission happen, and on what buget they think they're going to acheive it on. Will they use existing rocketry technology, or will they develop their own? What are the precise economic goals? Will they be relying on any other efforts (e.g. the CEV) to achieve their goals? Just how do they think they're going to get approval for nuclear propulsion? (See the Jobs page under Engineering.) Do they have any experience in these areas, or are they making it up as they go?
No. There are far too many variables to count for me to take this on face value. There simply isn't enough info. Perhaps others could shed some light on their long-term plans?
Update: It looks like the partly plan to make their money by building the technological infrastructure themselves. According to this document, they feel that they could be turning a $29.7 million dollar profit by 2010, 15 years before they establish their settlement! This document supposedly shows their plan of attack, but it seems so preliminary that it suggests that the company plans to make it up as they go along.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I know the typical Slashdot geeks will wet their pants over this, but this simply isn't reasonable, guys.
Mine WHAT? The economics and physics of the situation are such that Martian material is valuable for using on Mars or in Mars orbit. That's IT. And even then, what does Mars have? The only really importnant thing is organic chemicals and suchlike, because otherwise it is boring mineral slag.
All of these future claims are just investment ballons floated to fleece the easily duped. There are plenty of technological problems associated with mining Mars including lifting the mined material off the surface. Bob Park wrote in his book "Voodoo Science" that it would cost more than $800USD to put ~$300USD of gold into orbit. His conclusion was that if gold were available in low-Earth orbit, it wouldn't pay to go get it. That is the first thing they teach in an economic geology course.
The materials on Mars are no different than here on Earth, only the abundances are different. So you mine a bunch of aluminosilicates and then what? Do these people realize how much energy it takes to break those bonds? Where is their proposed power source? The amount of solar energy reaching Mars is less than here on Earth. I hope they weren't counting on that source. Nuclear energy might be useful, but I don't know of anyone who has done a uranium assay of Martian ores. Are we going to ship power to Mars? How is that cost effective?
Unless these people have gone through a complete analysis of what it costs to go to Mars then I can't see how any of them can make any claim of profitability, let alone put a target date on their venture.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
if you're interested in knowing maybe you should read the article
Is a very good thing. That ultimately is what will drive manned space exploration.
Of course, the temporary ban will eventually become permanent.
Can't happen? It already has -- See Antarctica. No one owns it. Most of the countries of the world have a treaty not to exploit it.
Think they'll just say, "Let them try and stop us? We're there, they aren't. We have guns." Please. Get over your frontier fantasies. That was possible when you had frontiers with fairly hospitable terrain (even if harsh). With Mars, there's no way you can set up a self-sufficient colony right away. They'll HAVE to have support from Earth. If Earth wants to shut them down, they'll just stop the supply rockets from going.
Planetary colonization will NEVER happen in this solar system. Look to asteroids and colonies in space for your space travel future.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
As long as they need to trade with Earth for at least one essential items, Earth will be able to browbeat them into accepting copyright conventions.
Won't we ever learn from our past mistakes?
We learn plenty from our mistakes. We have numerous State and Federal departments whose intention is soley the protection of the environment.
What we don't do is implement what we learn.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Dude parent was joking.. And yes he was talking about those things.
Think of it as the ultimate X-Prize. An entire planet for the taking.
Good point. I'll let you colonize Mars, build up some nice infrastructure--then I'll drop rocks on you from orbit. The first person can plant their flag--but unless you can defend it, too, that doesn't do you a whole lot of good. And the value of the Mars settlement is directly proportional to the interest a marauder would have on taking it away.
There's not a lot of legal protection, either, as naturally all of our treaties encompass only earth territories. Even a formal declaration, should there even be one, from the UN that the first person to the New World gets to lay claim to it is only as good as long as it's enforceable--the French planned to take the Louisiana territory back from us, even though we had legally bought it.
So go ahead, lay claim all you want. But you better look over your shoulder, too.
--
$tar -xvf
I am so glad to see capitalism working the way it was intended. To him who gets there first is rewarded with the spoils.
Other than the fact that the company is private/public and not a government agency, this has nothing to do with capitalism. National property boundries are purely political.
Yea! Lets rob another planet of it's resources and destroy it in our wake!
Explain this. Who is being robbed? Although the entire plan is ludicrous, isn't it better to use resources on an uninhabited planet in a way that cannot impact the earth's environment, where evereyone lives... of course you probably believe the the removal of the minerals from Mars will reduce it's mass, resulting in changes in gravitational balance in the solar system, resulint in use moving closer to the sun, resulting in more global warming...
Won't we ever learn from our past mistakes?
I'm tyring to remember the last time we mined something from another planet... must have missed that in my history books. Got a link?
No problemo, it has all been taken care off. It will be a priveledge working with such a great company that gets things done so well. See you there...Gusev Crater, then to the left of the Beagle 2 crash site, if I recall correctly...
Ok I know all the sci-fi lovers out there are all super excited about the prospect of a space gold rush.
but let me ask this.
Do we really have to destroy another planet to satisfy the energy/consumption needs of HUMANS?
I say right now someone should draft a universe wide anti exploitation bill.
All planets and moons should be off limit to commercial interests, to prevent said exploitation, until these planets are well understood.
I think its despicable that this is even being proposed and I really think any though of commercial exploitation is premature before we even understand the ecology of the planet.
I mean look at the destruction around you.
Do you think it was caused by chipmunks?
Everyday I drive by useless Mc Mansions and new mall developments destroying forests and natural clearings and creating more detritus, consuming more energy per person to keep up than is warranted only to serve the vanity of some insecure, empty and shallow human shells.
why should other planets be made to pay for the retardation of the human species?
fools.
We never learn.
Content + Container; Content = Container; Content â Container... which is the question?
For Mars to become worth colonizing, it has to have something that is worth more than it costs to ship it back to Earth. At the moment, I simply can't think of anything that would qualify due to the high costs of getting it out of the gravity well and to Earth, Only when a material runs out on Earth and easily farmed asteroids will Mars become a profitable source, and the only thing I can think of that we're near running short on would be oil, and Mars isn't exactly Saudi Arabia, if you get my drift.
We'd be better off skipping Mars and heading to the asteroids for metals, comets for water, and the gas giants for methane/hydrogen/whatever. Personally, I think Mars may only become useful to inhabit if it was used as the anchor for support space stations for deep space mining elsewhere. Then it may be worth building an elevator to the surface and transporting up more common materials you'd otherwise get from Earth or asteroids.
Nevertheless, there is a decent chance that once there are regular commercial interests in deep space, Mars may be colonized for other reasons than resources. It may make a fine home for some group that wants to get well away from the rest of the Earth's population and can use existing commercial technologies to get them there cheaply. I'm thinking of survivalist groups, certain religious ideologies or simply highly independent people who want to go somewhere where they can live without interference from others. Say what you like about these groups, but they often take the hits in opening up wastelands and other undesirable places for eventual mainstream settlement.
>
> Good point. I'll let you colonize Mars, build up some nice infrastructure--then I'll drop rocks on you from orbit. The first person can plant their flag--but unless you can defend it, too, that doesn't do you a whole lot of good. And the value of the Mars settlement is directly proportional to the interest a marauder would have on taking it away.
Which is why I added two caveats in my original post.
1) The country that makes the declaration has to pay "at least lip service" to property rights. That barely knocks China off the list. Japan's fine. Most European nations (EU or otherwise), as well as the current USA are also probably OK.
2) "...and that has sufficient weapons to back up said property rights on behalf of shareholders. " In other words, the Principality of Sealand doesn't count. Neither does Canada.
The weapons I spoke of are those currently operated by Earth-based governments, and currently employed to defend the interests of the Terran shareholders, not the Martian homesteaders.
> There's not a lot of legal protection, either, as naturally all of our treaties encompass only earth territories. Even a formal declaration, should there even be one, from the UN that the first person to the New World gets to lay claim to it is only as good as long as it's enforceable--the French planned to take the Louisiana territory back from us, even though we had legally bought it.
Correct.
Not to bring the French into it again -- but the French could have use force to defend their economic interests in their oil contracts with Iraq in early 2003. They chose not to - and probably for everyone's benefit. Had they chosen to defend those assets with force, the US would have been placed in an... interesting position, to say the least.
> So go ahead, lay claim all you want. But you better look over your shoulder, too.
Exactly.
But with all that in mind -- let's go back to your original rock-dropping proposal: Whether MarsCorp's Terran assets are protected by the nuclear weapons of the USA, China, Great Britian, Russia, India, or France, or whether they're simply defended the rock fortresses of Switzerland and Japan, wouldn't it be cheaper (in terms of not having to rebuild the devastated infrastructure from scratch) for the Mnemnonician government to simply tax its citizens and authorize itself to simply buy a 20% interest in MarsCorp?
The better parallel isn't so much the French taking back the Louisiana Purchase, but the Chinese government (through CNOOC) attempting to purchase oil and gas assets by proposing mergers with Western producers.
It's better to pay dollars (even if those dollars are immediately exchanged or gold or Euros) for Western oil and gas assets than to risk war by taking them by force. The rising price tag of our own adventures to secure Gulf oil assets is but one example -- considering the current price tag, we probably should have simply outbid the France/Germany axis and bought the goddamn country out from under Saddam, with all its oil assets intact.
I read about this story when it first came out - it's old to me now, their business plan is obviously not going to work, so I'm just not too into it ;)
:)
Seriously - a startup claiming that they're going to Mars, one of the most complex and expensive endeavors proposed for our generation by humankind. They might as well have said "We're going to the center of the Earth". It'd be a bit more believable if they weren't just a startup. If they can get some accomplishments under their belt, then I'll take them at least a little seriously.
I mean, heck - mining ore for return to Earth is itself hugely problematic. It's questionable whether even platinum would be valuable enough to justify the return trip - and whatever you mine would have to be mostly processed on Mars so you're not shipping back waste mass. A triangle trade with asteroid belt mines might make sense (in the very long term), but direct martian mining-and-return essentially requires very major launch cost reductions (in addition to a staggering amount of in-situ Mars-Tech).
Son, a woman is a lot like a refrigerator. They're six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm...
Constructing a futuristic mega-corporation out of a Western and a Japanese name is so 1988.
Now Weyland-Huifang, that's a little more like it.
For now, anyway.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.