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NASA Boss Says Mars Colonization Will Be Corporate Only
99luftballon writes "The head of NASA Ames Research Center has said that he expects any colonization of Mars, the Moon or asteroids to be done by private companies rather than by NASA. There's some interesting parallels with the East India Company, although that was hardly a triumph of capitalism. From the article: 'Dr. Simon Worden, director at NASA Ames Research Center, told The Register that the agency was firmly enmeshing itself with the private sector, citing cooperation on the Dragon capsule being developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX team as a good example. NASA developed a heat shield material called PICA (Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), capable of withstanding 1850 degrees Celsius (3360 degrees Fahrenheit), and gave it to SpaceX, who manufactured it.' The article also mentions Google's head of space projects, who has 'Intergalactic Federation King Almighty and Commander of the Universe' on her business cards."
Well - we already even have a business plan.
Colonization of Mars will be done by China. What's it got to do with NASA?
I wonder how many people will end up as indentured servants unable to purchase transport back to earth, working in dangerous working conditions on a world run by corporations. They'll be lured by false promises, or maybe even sent by countries with overpopulated prisons.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
And, of course. the government and NASA will help make sure the big corporations will lock out small business and startups from even getting going.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
From what we know so far, it's primarily just a gigantic rusted ball.
If it turns out that there are more precious materials further below the surface than the tiny rovers that we have sent so far have scraped off, or, even better, albeit probably much more of a stretch, if there are compounds that have never been discovered here on earth and exist naturally there which have sufficiently desirable properties, it might very well end up being worth their while to start sending manned expeditions there regularly..
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
*bingbong* "It looks like you're low on oxygen. Please insert another oxygen canister to continue.......... Oh I'm sorry, that doesn't seem to be a MarsCo(r) Brand Oxygen Experience Unit(tm). Aftermarket canisters such as yours are not supported. Suffocation in 5...4... this death is brought to you by..."
At least they give out cool job titles. I would work for Google if they let me have "Diabolical Overlord, Master of Men's Minds." Pretty much in a heartbeat.
Facehugger anyone? Seriously though, how many of us would sign up for a one-way trip? I'd do it in a heartbeat, but the wife would kill me.
So much like Total Recall P. K. Dick really did have a direct line on the future.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
The fact is, that NASA can not afford to do prolonged bases. We have already seen the damage that CONgress can do to us over and over and over. Back in the mid 90's, the republicans destroyed NASA's ability to go BEO. Then they gutted them again in 2001. Likewise, they are doing everything possible to gut private space now, to push their SLS. Sadly, CONgress members like Hatch, Coffman, Wolfe, Shelby, Hutchinson, Nelson, etc. are fighting to destroy private space while continuing the funding of SLS until 2020, along with having Russia do our launches for another 10 years.
What is needed is for Bolden/Obama to get funding for private space for the next 3 years. That should include enough to fund 3 human launchers along with getting bigelow aerospace going. Once this has happened for the next 3 years, then it will be impossible for those people to stop private space.
What is so odd about this, is that America is within several years of turning space from a cost center into being not just taxable, but the next internet boom. Yet, certain members of CONgress wants NASA to be a jobs programs, rather than developed of America's space and aeronautics systems.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nope, more like UAC.
I really hope they don't start working on teleportation technology. If they do, they had better stock up on plasma rifles and miniguns first.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
"In 2291, in an attempt to control violence among deep space miners, the New Earth Government legalized no-holds-bared fighting. Liandri Mining Corporation, working with the NEG, established a series of leagues and bloody public exhibitions. The fights' popularity grew with their brutality. Soon, Liandri discovered that the public matches were their most profitable enterprise. The professional league was formed; a cabal of the most violent and skilled warriors in known space, selected to fight in a Grand Tournament. Now it is 2341. 50 years have passed since founding of DeathMatch. Profits from the Tournament number in the hundreds of billions. You have been selected to fight in the professional league by the Liandri Rules Board. Your strength and brutality are legendary. The time has come to prove you are the best. To crush your enemies; to win the Tournament." (video here)
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Unless there is a MAJOR breakthrough with getting mass into orbit.
It is unlikely that a criminal will have any skills you'd need that would be worth the expense of lifting him into orbit and keeping him fed and watered and breathing.
Nope. Nations will back this just to be part of it. My guess is that the first team will include about 6 ppl on a one-way mission with 3 to 6 nations being represented.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But I'd bet the Chinese are considering mining operations off planet
I find the above quote a little bit too ironic
The first one who talk about space mining wasn't the Chinese, it was the Americans
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr_lcVVoDIY
Before any corporation would attempt Mars, the logical stepping stone is the Moon. Any products returned to earth derived from the moon would fall under this law. Helium 3 would fall under this. Moon Bases would complicate ownership. Who is going to verify land ownership for these Corporations if we cant even own a simple Moon Rock?
The "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is a great future history that lays out a credible way the Mars colonisation could play out, including the inevitable revolt against the megacorporations. Enjoyed it last summer. The books were written in the early 1990's, evidenly with the best knowledge about Mars available then. At times it feels like the author had visited the place in person... There is no technobable, no miracle technology, this is hard sci-fi at its hardest. But much of the story is really about social effects, the tensions between early Mars settlers, newcomers, people who want to terraform Mars and those that desire to preserve it, and the corporations that just want to extract maximum profits from Mars. Earth future history is also explored with the unexpected discovery of a life-prolonging treatment (who gets it?), and an environmental crisis caused by volcanism in the Antarctic (a huge flood, but not fashionably by global warming).
Neither NASA nor any other Earth space agency has the right to determine who can/can't travel to Mars. On my space airline, corporate passengers will be prohibited.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Laws can be changed? Doesn't seem that complicated a concept. If they have value beyond novelty as moon rocks then they'll have to allow them to be owned.
Right now moon rocks are valuable because going to the moon is novel, rocks are rare, and they have intrinsic value because they are rare (and worth studying), and even have value as display items because they are from the moon, even if they are, in all other ways, identical to, or more boring than earth rocks. That necessarily requires rules to deal with scams, and ideas of ownership that might normally apply to rocks from other places.
All that changes very quickly if they have a commercial value to be mined or the like. They could go a number of ways with it, who mines it owns it, some organization or government could own it and you buy a licence etc. etc. etc. Right now there is a state monopoly on moon rocks. But there's no reason it will have to stay that way if circumstances change.
I wonder what the first man on Mars will drink... Coke, Pepsi, or recycled & filtered urine?
Exactly what NASA doesn't need. Yes, start offering LEO to corporate entities. There is not enough guarantee or immediate return for Mars, asteroids, etc.
However, private companies are involved whenever NASA does do things, because Private companies generally build the stuff NASA specifies.
It doesn't seem like he gets that. It took government money for the Christopher Columbus mission; which was needed to lay the path..as it were.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"...the logical stepping stone is the Moon."
why? I can think of a lot of research that can be done on the moon, but it doesn't have to be a step.
When Columbus stumbled upon the Americas, the Spain owned every rock and item. That falls to the side with colonization
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The summary somewhat misrepresents what Worden said. From the article, here's Worden's actual statement, which seems quite sensible to me: "Governments can develop new technology and do some of the exciting early exploration but in the long run it's the private sector that finds ways to make profit, finds ways to expand humanity. ... Most of private individuals I've talked to about interest in settling on Mars, including Elon Musk, talk about in the next few decades they think the private sector will fund settlement missions - whether to the Moon, Mars, or asteroids. As a government laboratory our job is to develop to enable those kinds of things by developing technology and early exploration, and we hope the private sector will find a way to do something like that."
What could go wrong? Ok, they might discover that the ancient Martians developed genetic engineering that turns evil people (such as professional wrestlers turned actor) into monsters but... Wait, that sounds wrong somehow.
Expect a quick change of mind after the first Chinese lunar colony is established.
No, we will call them "Old ones".
Send the banksters there.
Excuse me... that's quite an expensive way to lose a load of night soil. Think again, please.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The shift form pubic to private is
Never other than private my form pubic was, my young padwan, shift it back not needed is.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I still remember several good novels on that topic (privately funded Mars missions).
Indeed. It would be a quiet source of entertainment (perhaps some irony?) to see another alien race converted by human preachers.
There is also the not so mirthful possibility that they will be a first contact for another race, declare them to be demons, fire on them, and doom the rest of the human race (as this race seeks revenge by removing the human scum).
I am John Hurt.
Entertaining, but owing to the maxim outlined in Good Omens -> the more impressive the title, the less power they have. ;-)
I am John Hurt.
*shrugs*
Human beings are expensive to transport, not too expensive to grow. Wait, this isn't the Mars Mining Corporation shareholders meeting? *Waves hand* forget I said anything.
I am John Hurt.
And you're the only male. I am not seeing the issue here.
I am John Hurt.
By, I don't know, not being an American citizen?
I am John Hurt.
True. While colonizing the moon may be a good idea, you're still dealing with gravity. Reduced gravity, but still gravity.
A Lagrange point would, instead, be a better idea.
I am John Hurt.
Not so much. Religion tends to eschew science as an often necessary evil, with the heaviest promotions in a religious organization going to the least scientifically curious (sadly, the religions which tend to prosper the most are those who take a hands-off approach to scientists...but we all know that sooner or later, some dogmatist will make a power play against a resident scientist, refuse to acknowledge his own lack of understanding, get the resident authorities to side with him and piss off the entire community). As such, space, being a hard vacuum, can be incredibly unmerciful when a hull breach happens, or the oxygen generation breaks down (and no spare parts can be had).
Only human beings care about charisma. The universe does not, or the noted efficacy of prayer would be much greater than that of hard thought / labor. The human being is adapted to Earth, and only Earth (time spent on other planets might change this). Moving elsewhere in the universe requires, at this time, some uncommon knowledge. What does this mean? The typical tyrannies of religion will, in all likelihood, annihilate entire sects of people who prefer the words of their priest over the guidance of their scientists ("Uh, we need that piece of red wire you're using for tinsel around your makeshift altar" "Sinners!" "Plus, you probably shouldn't be lighting a fire in space, in a pure oxygen / zero gravity environment..." "Heathens! Be gone!"), especially when dealing with matters in the material realm. Communicable diseases (hello Syphilis / the flu) that the priests will say can be cured with prayer will run rampant and destroy entire colony ships before they make it halfway to their destinations, while the doctors on hand are shouted down for not placing enough faith in God's hands.
You'll notice that in the US, it's a practical requirement for all astronauts (save the educator / teacher in space types) to have a STEM degree. If you're going to be on a star-ship, for the next few hundred years or so, they're going to ensure you're not dead weight (if something breaks, they want people who can fix it from scratch). Not much demand for people in funny clothes, carrying around brass plates, and reading from a book. You may want to play the part of Kirk, but if you can't speak the language of McCoy, Spock, or Scotty, you don't get to be Kirk.
I am John Hurt.
Indeed. It would be a quiet source of entertainment (perhaps some irony?) to see another alien race converted by human preachers.
Maybe they're the "sheep from other folds" that Jesus is said to have made passing mention of.
There is also the not so mirthful possibility that they will be a first contact for another race, declare them to be demons, fire on them, and doom the rest of the human race (as this race seeks revenge by removing the human scum).
Or reduce us to slavery.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
.... on mars will there ever be any significant corporate interest in going there.
Some may decide it's a good place to conduct operations free of legal constraints.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Maybe solve the problems of overpopulation on earth - send the billion Chinese to Mars, the 2 billion Muslims to Venus, and a billion Indians to say one of Jupiter's moons, and the world's population will be down to 3 billion, and that too a bulk of who are not reproducing @ replacement levels e.g. the Russians.
Pretty expensive operation there.
Plus people are probably breeding faster than we'll ever be able to ship them off to colonies.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The shift form pubic to private is
A scam to put public money in private pockets, as always.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nope, more like UAC.
I really hope they don't start working on teleportation technology. If they do, they had better stock up on plasma rifles and miniguns first.
I'm Locked and Loaded, Sir!
Yes, the 'tard is strong in that one.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
How do we inspire corporations to build things or invest on other worlds? How do they make a profit? If they can't then all their focus will be on getting things into low earth orbit.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Corporations only care about projects that have a good chance of profits in 5-10 years, which is why private spacecraft are only in LEO. Space exploration is something that might be very important 100 years later, but today it's mostly an expensive scientific project. Which is why corporations aren't interested in it, and why it has to be pioneered by governments. What this statement really means is that NASA has no intentions in a manned Mars mission.
it's rather simple, you incorporate in cayman islands.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A fish rots from the head and that is particularly true at NASA. NASA used to be an amazing organization driven by engineering, now it's a top-heavy, risk-adverse bunch of middle managers spouting complete nonsense and handing out grandiose gag business cards. It's a mish-mash of gutless leadership and money-sucking contractors.
Colonization of Mars will never be profitable, no company is going to make that kind of investment. How far would we have gotten waiting on corporate sponsorship for the moon landings?
We need a new NASA with engineering leadership.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Middle East money, Iranian, Pakistani and Malaysian technology: the Muslim Ummah taken as a whole is perfectly capable of an ideological colonisation.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I doubt that any companies would be too interested in Mars. It appears to be a desolate hole and it's too far from every company's major markets.
However religious types don't seem to mind traveling long distances, suffering high death-rates and they may even be able to raise the money from their followers. The only problem then is that religious wars tend to be the most vicious and long-lasting of all types of war - so giving them a whole planet to fight over may not be the best idea.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
...quaint little nation states on Earth-that-was are less well known than the various city-states of Ancient Greece.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"no miracle technology"
Apart from all the nano-tech
And the biotech that did the colonisation for them
or the space elevator
Or the fact that the temperature warmed faster (it is brought up to earth temperatures in less than 100 years) faster than the energy input from the sun would allow
Or my personal favourite, using windmills to power electric heaters to warm the planet.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the books, but no some things were IMO unrealistically optimistic and some like the windmills were just plain wrong.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Any company that causes or supports the colonization of the Moon or Mars is going to bankrupt itself. The immorality of causing or supporting the birth of a human being on Mars or the Moon is so obvious that lawsuits are inevitable It is impossible to imagine that the results would be less than enormous sums for each and every human being who is robbed of 4 billion years of genetic legacy - the natural right to be born and live on the Earth. If I were a lawyer, I would love to have such cases.
And if you are thinking that laws can be passed stripping legal rights from people forced to be born on the Moon or Mars, well, if our country does something like that it puts the lie to everything it professes to stand for. It may as well reinstitute slavery.
E Proelio Veritas.
I wondered what "her" was "king" and decided- she can call herself whatever she likes... it's not sillier than the rest of her title anyway.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I think the first time we encounter bona fide evidence of alien life that is irrefutable (i.e. they land on earth in say, Trafalgar square), the world's monotheistic religions are going to pitch a complete fit and most of them will go into heavy denial. The polytheistic religious folks should be okay, since they tend to be more accepting and adaptable - if harder to define. Religions that insist there is only 1 God and we are his creations may have difficulty dealing with an alien species - not mentioned in any of their texts - and choose to see them as inherently evil collectively. Expect religious assassinations galore. :(
Hopefully the rest of us will have become more rational and peaceful by this point of course, but I don't hold out my breath. I think the odds are greater that we will be living in a world dominated by mega-corporations operating on a more or less feudal like system in 100 years...
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If the government does it, it has to be wrong. If a private company does it, it has to be right. Even if that means paying a private company 2x as much to do a job the government has been more than capable of for 50 years.
There's no profit motive for scientific research and that's exactly what the first Mars missions will be since, until the tech is well established, there won't be a profitable way to get to Mars. The only way private industry goes first is if the US government (I don't think China, Russia, or the ESA is that stupid) overpays Boeing to do it for them while losing all the new tech patents in the same process so that they'd have a monopoly on the routes.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
After watching the movie, Total Recall, I realized that Mars is the perfect place for a corporation to setup. You have complete control over your employees including the oxygen they breath. Any problem with an employee can be resolved with an airlock malfunction. It's a sociopathic CEO's dream come true.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
.. it's all theirs now?
Check your premises.
I'm surprised that no one got the Doom reference. (as far as I can tell)
Then again, it is Friday.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Our masters say Mars exploitation by robotics will eliminate costly colonization, until it is safe for them to rule US, EU, CN, RU ... fools.
Slavery will be eliminated, by fiat, long live our ruling class and robotics. Fuck the masses; slaughter them, if they won't die from famine.
It is not a distopia when there are only wealthy bosses with robots providing sustainment, no need for robot income taxes or medical and social problems.
Mars will be our first human utopia. Earth will be our second human utopia, after extinction of the non-worker-mass extinction (who needs them with robotics) and improved global environmental conservation.
Humanity has a very bright future, an extremely dark heritage, and survival skills for aristocrats and plutocrats. Where is our next hitler, god, king ....
The survival of the qualified privileged few out-weighs the needs of the untermenchen many.
Plutokraten, Plutokraten über alles ... you know the tune, just sing along for US, EU, RU, CN ....
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Not really. With out fast transport and no good ways to block nearly all radiation, an outbound trip will be 2/3 of a year. But a RETURN trip will be several years. As such, a return trip vastly increases the amount of radiation that a person gets and shortens a life by 10-20 years. OTOH, if you send ppl on what they expect to be a one-way mission and lets say that in 10 years, we finally start NERVA drives. At that point, it is feasible to do a several month trip back. Then these ppl can be offered a trip back, IFF they want it. My belief is that anybody that travels to mars and is there for minimum of 5-10 years, will want to stay there and build out their legacy. IOW, they will want to be settlers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In all fairness, he did say the windmills added insignificant amounts of heat to the atmosphere.
Its almost pitiful watching the west (both US and EU) cheerfully gallop towards oblivion as political, economic, and technological powers.
The private sector will colonise Mars? With what money, I ask. Who is going to pay the hundreds of billions needed for this complex operation?
Our leaders have just given up. They haven't a clue what is wrong (or are in complete denial about it, e.g. peak oil) and think that if they just pray to the invisible hand everything will magically turn out OK. They are like Mayan priests desperately ramping up the human sacrifices as the crops fail around them. Clinging to their faith even tighter the more it conspicuously fails to deliver tangible results.
Let me offer a simple prediction. SpaceX will end up being slip into a profitable, but unremarkable, satellite launch business, and a separate manned spaceflight business. Having a monopoly on US human spaceflight, the latter will cheerfully gouge NASA for every penny they can, as part of their fiduciary duty.
US human spaceflight will stagnate even further. ESA will remain a non-presence in human spaceflight. The last of Russia's Soviet-era technology will be retired and they won't be able to replace it with anything decent. China and India will take the solar system. The End.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
NASA should declare victory on getting space into commerce and throw a party before their funding is completely eliminated.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Columbus sailed west in search of a shorter route to India, and since he thought he'd landed in India of course they named the natives "Indians". I have no idea why the name stuck after they discovered their mistake.
And there are no native Martians; not yet. The first generation born there will be native Martians.
Free Martian Whores!
If the colonists don't surrender, we'll just cut off their oxygen. Including the three-breasted mutant hookers.
Yeah, and while we're still talking about it the Chinese will be up there actually doing it
The you mention are plausible extrapolations from the state of technology in the 1990's, not "unobtainium", although we now know the time table was way too optimisitic, as usual. As noted by another poster, the thousands of small windmills were aknowledged to be a bad idea even within the books (their inventor Sax Russell attends a conference on terraforming, where one paper accounts for the warming effects of various methods, and dismisses the windmills). As for solar warming, remember the terraforming also tapped geothermic (areothermic?) energy (the "moholes"), and collected more solar energy than the surface area of Mars allows by the use of space mirrors (the "soletta" of the books).