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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.'"
From their site: Development of intellectual property applied to the four frontiers, R&D programs, educational and demonstration programs for students and the public at large will frame the uniqueness of 4Frontiers.
How exactly is "intellectual property" going to be enforced once you leave the confines of our planet? Assuming they (or someone) can create a viable, long term colony on mars, the moon, a space station, wherever, no laws will apply to them. They could manufacture anything they want. Want a SpaceBose stereo? How about a copy of MicroSpace Windows? Who wants a MoonPorche?
I really hope the US doesn't assume the role of pushing our laws and practices into the 'final frontier.' But the question is, who gets to start the process? Do we leave it up to private companies? Whoever has the strongest military?
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
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?
They are betting on the fact that people don't require any of that to give money away. They are "hiring" people for a company that is full of freedom and is pro-exploration but gives no solid foundation of how they will remain employed.
Making plastics is great and all but how do you expect to get people there and start the colony so that people can actually make these items w/the materials that are so readily available?
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.
Just as I pointed out before, without actually saying it, this is very similiar to any dotcom startup in the 1990s. No true business model, no real plan, and no real company. Just a bunch of money and the web.
This is nothing more than an advertisement to gain capital.
Who Should Own Mars?
Think of it as the ultimate X-Prize. An entire planet for the taking.
The day anyone comes up with a viable business plan (which the guys in the Wired article, unfortunately, haven't done yet - and probably can't do so long as there are no private property rights in space), put me on the first colony ship of homesteaders.
Never underestimate the economics of scale.
For reference, here's the Delta-V chart that I'll be referencing.
Now getting on and off of Mars is the most expensive part. Yet at 4.1 km/s, it's far from unachievable. Because of the way that rocket engines work, the greater the Delta-V that is required, the more expensive the rocket must be. Since the delta-v for Low Mars Orbit is a bit more than half that of Earth. So it is quite feasible that existing rocketry could be used at a far lower cost.
Once in LMO, things become quite inexpensive. A Delta-V of 0.9km/s is all that's required to reach Phobos. With that tiny amount of Delta-V (which can be cheaply obtained via the use of ION engines), the spacecraft could pick up a ride on the Interplanetary Superhighway. This transfer orbit would allow the craft to get its cargo to Earth on little more than station keeping fuel.
Once at Earth, the cargo could then be decelerated and dropped into the ocean, riding atop a simple, mass produced, heat shield. The epoxy solutions used in the capsules should work extremely well and would be inexpensive to mass produce. The cargo craft could then boost itself back to the Superhighway (again with inexpensive ION engines) and repeat the process. Things become even more efficient when cargo is sent both ways.
A more in-depth analysis would be required to determine the precise craft and materials necessary to turn a profit, but it certainly *is* doable with modern technology. And with a colony on Mars, we could support Asteriod mining, a far more profitable venture.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Also if you can find extraterrestrial (not from Earth) fissionable material (uranium or thorium) that means you can avoid the risks and expense of having to launch it. A lot of people get upset if there's a proposal to launch a 100kg RTG. Well, to power a mining colony, they will need a lot more than 100kg of fission fuel. What kind of public reaction would there be to the proposal of launching several tons of uranium? It would be much better if they could dig it up on Mars and use it on Mars.
Some of the terraforming projects require moving asteroids of ice to Mars. Again, the only way you can do that is with a nuclear-powered mass driver on the asteroid, and it would be nice to not have to launch that much uranium from Earth.
So when my company starts its Mars base, the first thing we're going to do is find the uranium, and then we'll sell electricity, H2 and O2 to all the other companies that want to (effectively) sell dirt and water. I suspect there's a lot better markup on electricity than there is on dirt and water.
I assume there is uranium on Mars, but I've never heard of anyone looking for it or discussing it. It seems to me that if there are no extraterrestrial sources of uranium, that's going to be a big problem for colonization of space, because it really will take thousands of tons of uranium to provide all the power that's going to be needed for serious mining and fuel production. And no, solar power is not going to work for this. Mining and fuel production requires too much power for solar to be a realistic option. For any activities beyond Mars, solar gets even less realistic. As long as solar is the power source, power is going to be a very tight limiting factor, whereas if you've got a few hundred tons of uranium, power will not be the limiting factor.
Also I wonder if uranium would make a good radiation shield? It seems like DU would be quite effective for that?
The good news is that if you set up a reactor on one of Mars' moons or on an asteroid or in Mars orbit, you can make it enormous and not need any real containment structures. If the uranium is available, it might be much cheaper to build extraterrestrial reactors than it is on Earth.
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