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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.'"
This is the kind of news I expect to read in 2005. Cool.
I hear this company is using the following computers:
6.8GHz 1TB RAM and 2TB HDD Laptop
Something about companies that have numerals in their names just makes them seem so reputable and trustworthy! I'm gonna sell my house and buy a butt-load of stock in them!!
i don't care
Today bleak despair swept across our fair world when it was revealed by the Council that the invaders from the evil blue planet have formalized their invasion plans, and may arrive in force in as little as ten years.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, stressed that there was no cause for alarm:
During the hyper-patriotic riot that followed, several Citizens were trampled. In its infinite Wisdom, the Great Council has posthumously decorated them as war heroes.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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
Proof of an extinct alien life form then - fossilized bricks and dynamos.
Meta will eat itself
Great, there goes the neighborhood!
Someone should inform NASA so that they can remove any of their probes on the Martian surface. They cost a lot of money and I'm sure NASA would want to know if they are in danger.
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!"
Hmm... their real website seems to be slashdotted:
http://www.ua-corp.com/
This is one of the better ideas for a startup company I've heard, but then again I've spent the past 15 years or so on the Internet.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
if you're interested in knowing maybe you should read the article
Welcome to BS day on Slashdot. Although by 2025 they may well have a 6 gHz laptop with 2TB of disk space to take along.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
What did you say? I didn't read your response.
I DID read the article. Someone please tell ME how they are going to achieve this.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Anyone got a Martian calendar? I bet it says "April 1st."
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.
Rumour has it that a little known company, Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), is also funding the project! Even then Budget was too minimal, so HTSC (harsh terrain survival kits) and duct tape were cut off the budget.
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.
C'mon guys, this news is WAY old. All of the plans have been on display for fifty years at the local planning office on Alpha Centauri.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
I had planned to lead a Miners Revolution on Mars in 2026. That and deformable terrain ;)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
For funding we will leverage our current investnments in the golden gate and brooklyn bridges, which we just bought off some guy.
Why are they going to start colonizing other planets the same year I start to hit a midlife crisis? I'll never make it off this rock at this rate!
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
I hear RedPeace are going to be heading out to Mars with them.
This is me. Don't like it? That's unlucky.
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.
Take a look at Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" to get a clue.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
On the Bios page, the company's IP attorney is listed before the scientists and advisors.
Maybe, it's nothing.
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.
First, their CEO is going to declare himself King of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat. Then he's going to take a ride on a magic carpet to see the King of the Potato people, and beg for a pickaxe. Then, he will dig around endlessly until he finds the vault with a teleportation trap that leads to Fort Ludios. After slaying Croesus and a half dozen dragons, he'll take the money and invest it in a biotech company; that money will generate large amounts of biodata, which he'll exchange with Trade Master Greenish for a ride on the Inevitably Successful In All Circumstances to Mars.
On the surface of Mars, he'll carefully scour the surface, dodging renegade robots and flesh-eating insects. Eventually, he will find Torg, the robot that kidnapped Santa Claus, and use him to mine the planet. Naturally, the rock will need to be loosened first with the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Piling it up, he'll take the return trip through a Gate Corps gate, reenter Earth's atmosphere in a spaceship shaped like a Galleon, (insert missing step here), and profit.
Son, a woman is a lot like a refrigerator. They're six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm...
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?
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?
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
" this has nothing to do with capitalism. National property boundries are purely political."
...And your point is? It's still capitalism and I don't see where national property rights or boundries have anything to do with this one.
"Who is being robbed?"
The planet, as I stated. Are you fimiliar with the term 'personification'? Nobody lives in the ocean on this planet, does that mean it is ok to pillage it of it's natural resources?
"I'm tyring to remember the last time we mined something from another planet... must have missed that in my history books."
Perhaps you have missed a lot more than you think. The history you should take an example from is our own, on this planet. Any plan to export our methods of extracting resources on another planet had ought to be measured against our past history of devistation that we have already caused with such activities. The plan as proposed by this company is no more than an exportation of our past and current mining operations on earth with a lesser regard to it's effects on the environment there than we have taken here. I would suggest a quick search on google for 'mining catastrophies' as a start for a refresher on the things you admittedly have missed.
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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If you'll cast your minds back, about 65 million years ago, the Chicxulub crater, (that's the one that was left from the impact that wiped out all the dinosaurs,) was a mere 145 to 180 km in diameter (70 to 80 miles for the metrically challenged.)
Imagine that you want to be the BIG ASS BOSS of everybody and everything, no lip from anybody, period. And they can even make lots of bucks doing it.
You know what damage a 145 to 180 km kinetic weapon can cause. Extinction! Bad for business. Now think small. Real small.
What would a missile a few kilos of mass do if it was nudged from orbit, dropped down and hit the ground at terminal velocity. Were talking about a geosynchronously guided killer dead weight here.
And it requires very little energy to launch 'em, toss 'em and park 'em in LEO, from Mars, where there's lots of dirt waiting to be wrapped in plastic with a couple of little guidance rockets to give 'em a li'l shove.
The first one who gets off this dirt ball doesn't have to go far to get some REAL leverage. It doesn't even have to be thay complicated, or expensive, or long term or difficult.
If I can think this way, so can anybody else. (I bet Balls-mer would just love to have something like this right now. It would make it so much easier to dict..., uh, negotiate with the EU.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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.
I'm not challenging your numbers - do enough polls and you'll get almost any result - but I wonder if you can tell me the poll you saw. The numbers I saw doing a google search are 55% (Nov. 2004), 47% (Nov. 1991), and 42% (Aug. 2005) of Americans believing in Creationism.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
But on Mars it's a lot easier than on Earth. First, safety is not as much of a concern. If you have a big radioactive spill on Earth, you've caused a lot of problems. On Mars, well, no one is drinking the groundwater anyway and the whole place is already uninhabited. So that greatly simplifies your factory.
Second, you don't need to run on 100% uranium fuel. Here on Earth, no one wants to generate plutonium for reactors because of proliferation fears (founded or not). On Mars, proliferation is not a concern. Anyone who has the technology to get to Mars should be able to build atomic weapons fairly easily, and atomic explosives will probably be needed for engineering work, so spending time worrying about proliferation on Mars is silly.
The good thing about being free to burn plutonium is that it's easy to make plutonium from the left-over depleted uranium. All you need is a big neutron flux, pump that through the depleted uranium, and you get plutonium fuel.
What this means is that on Earth, you need to mine 140 tons of uranium metal to get one ton of U235, which is the only kind that works as fuel. On Mars, you mine 140 tons of uranium metal, extract the 1 ton of U235, and use that to convert the remaining 139 tons of U238 to plutonium. We can't do that on Earth for political / military reasons, but we can do it on Mars.
So yeah, many of the same problems remain, but the whole process of going from uranium ore to energy would be a lot simpler on Mars.
Once you have a basic reactor going (enough to generate fuel) you can start lifting your raw uranium ore into Mars orbit. It's a lot easier to get off the surface of Mars than it is to get off of Earth. Then you refine it in orbit, where you can be as unsafe and messy as you want, you blast all the waste products into the sun, and you send back down your refined U235 or plutonium fuel rods.
The idea is so preposterous that it is unimaginable (just like the laptop story earlier today). All the posts explaining *precisely* why the idea is idiotic probably took something like a few thousand man hours to write/read.
What a waste of space. Nobody is going to make money going to Mars in the next 20 years. Bank on it. Nobody is going to Mars in the next 20 years. Bank on it.
The only money to be made on this boondoggle is by fleecing money from dreamers.
Space exploration with meat in the exploration vehicles is a total waste of time and money. Send a robot. The current Mars successes are wonderful reasons why we shouldn't send meat to Mars.
By 2025, we'll all be so jacked into our VR worlds banging Jenna Haze that we won't give a shit if we go to Mars anyway.
As a reference, I cite Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines, which I refer to by shorthand as "the porn fantasy book." We're all going to be circuits and software someday anyway, so the idea of saving humanity by exploring space is ridiculous anyway. We'll be able to send ourselves anywhere in the universe without the meat, given enough time, starting in about a hundred years, if we haven't solved Fermi's Paradox ourselves the hard way.
Lots of petrified grits
So you get to Mars, somehow, and start digging up "valuable" minerals for the space stations. Only one glitch-- how do you deliver the goods? You think UPS Air is expensive, try UPS Vacuum. At least $10K a pound, and what if they're not home?.
the Virginia company? I bet the only way they will turn a profit is by Martian slave labor.
cabg x3 is a life changing event...