Richard Branson 'Determined To Start a Population On Mars'

RocketAcademy writes "British billionaire Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company is backing the development of SpaceShip Two, has told CBS News he is 'determined to start a population on Mars.' He said, 'I think over the next 20 years, we will take literally hundreds of thousands of people to space and that will give us the financial resources to do even bigger things. That will give us the resources then to put satellites into space at a fraction of the price, which can be incredibly useful for thousands of different reasons.' Branson isn't the only billionaire interested in the Red Planet. Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), wants to put humans on Mars in the next 12 to 15 years."

Comments

How much dough does this man have!?

[Penguinisto]

I like (no, love!) the idea of colonists living in space.

On the other hand, has this man taken even a cursory glance at the spreadsheets before making such pronouncements?

For that many people, we're talking more money than he, Gates, and four other random billionaires combined have.

Re:How much dough does this man have!?

[DJ Jones]

This is why we need to tax the rich more more than 10%.

Re:How much dough does this man have!?

[Areyoukiddingme]

I like your optimism, but it's rather crazily optimistic.

Your basic premise falls down on the very first step. Designing a successful seed factory would be extraordinarily expensive. It is not a small step from current factory automation. It is a very large, very complex, very expensive step from current factory automation, and that step is utterly useless. A seed factory that works in Earth conditions will not work in off Earth conditions. At all. People don't really think about it much, but almost nothing we build on Earth will work without Earth conditions, or at least not for long. Our primary power sources depend on free oxygen, our lubricants depend on temperatures that surround the human comfort zone for fluidity, our gaskets and seals all depend on the same, our machinery is built with the explicit requirement of a 9.8 m/s^2 G field, ALL of our chemical processes are designed to deal with the presence of Earth's atmosphere in one way or another, even the formulations of our metallic alloys depend on atmosphere to behave normally (ever heard of vacuum welding?). I won't even talk about cosmic rays and solar radiation. Nothing we build, except for rockets and satellites and rovers, will work off Earth, and we all know how ridiculously expensive those things are.

All of these things are solvable problems, and in a very very small sector of the economy, many of these problems have indeed been solved. We do build satellites and they do work on orbit for many years. However, no one has ever smelted metal in orbit. No one has ever manipulated a megaton of matter in orbit (gold mining companies on Earth do so routinely). No one has ever doped silicon in orbit. No one has ever manufactured a lubricant in orbit. Indeed, no one has ever designed a machine with sliding components that must repeat the same motion thousands or tens of thousands of times in orbit to be needing a lubricant in the first place.

And all of that pales in comparison to the other problem: orbit is empty. Your seed factory isn't going to expand without matter to work with, and with the exception of the trash we've been generating, there isn't any matter to manipulate in Earth orbit. The closest accumulation of matter that's dense enough to be useful is the Moon (the Earth/Moon Trojan asteroids are as small and diffuse as the junk in orbit. Neither is useful). Running a factory on the Moon actually makes one problem a little easier. We're so used to assuming the presence of a gravity field that even 1/6th G is an improvement over microgravity. Unfortunately the fairly bizarre behavior of lunar surface dust brings its own entirely new set of problems, to add to all the others I've already mentioned.

Could we do it? Yes. Could we do it as you describe, in a tightly coherent focused package Factory Of Everything? No. We can't. We're literally incapable. You're talking about bundling all of human industry into a nice neat package with a bow on top. The human race is not physically capable of doing that. We don't have the management skill to do it. We don't have the generosity to do it. You're talking about gathering together the best in class process engineers for everything we make on Earth, from smelting metals to refining chemicals all the way up to producing CPUs, and building an integrated system that doesn't get in its own way, and you're talking about doing it in the face of a world wide capitalist system, where what I know is what feeds me and I have a vested interest in making sure you don't find out what I know in consequence. It can not be done.

Nor will it be done. If and when the human race expands its industry into space, it will be done piecemeal, as a thousand, a hundred thousand individual independent inefficient confused bumfuzzled efforts that will only work half by accident. That's how we do things. Get used to it.

Re:Seriously

[isorox]

How can you not love this guy?

He's great at publicity. Let's talk Mars when he's got people doing regular low-orbit flights.

Musk makes remarkable allusion to the Great Filter

[D4C5CE]

that would explain the Fermi Paradox of "where are they (intelligent species in space) ?":

now for the first time in almost four billion years, it's been possible - very difficult, but possible - for life to extend to another planet. [...] who knows how long that window will be open?

Re:To what end?

[lister king of smeg]

So you want to tax the guy more because he want to pay to build and research the technology and build the space craft to advance us as a species? this guy is wanting to do more for humanity than the government would do. They (the government) would simply put it in the general fund or squander it on a war or pork barrel funds for campaign contributers.

Re:Must he be the father?

[khallow]

I can't begin to describe the ethical, legal and moral problems presented by such a venture

Then don't bother. My view is that it is better to try things out with human volunteers rather than attempt inadequate studies that just won't yield the results you want even in twenty years. And work on the problems as they appear.

Re:Must he be the father?

[Anonymous Coward]

'has an accent' - AKA he can talk? Seriously, what a retarded thing to say...

If you didn't 'have an accent' you would be mute.

(I thought the sarcastic tone would be nicer than a comment on stereotypical americans thinking they're the centre of the universe)

Re:Will Branson send his own son to Mars ?

[chilvence]

Thats not up to Branson you muppet, it would be up to the son. Just like it would be up to the people who would volunteer for such a job... You know, like the people who volunteered to discover America and to go to the poles and to fly space rockets to the moon and such. Nobody held a gun at their heads!

Re:dibs

[ogdenk]

They cannot do science more cost effectively than a robot. They cannot colonize because it will take GEOLOGIC time to terraform it.

BS. One guy and a jeep for a week could have gotten more accomplished as far as data gathering and analysis goes than all of the mars probe launches combined. Launching probes ain't free. It's incredibly costly as well.

So really. We should just stop being interested in Mars because it's like old and dusty and stuff. And we can't build a house or have anywhere to float a yacht. And it would be all uncomfortable and stuff. And stuff that takes a long time isn't worth doing. And it might be dangerous. And doing stuff like traveling millions of miles costs money. And it'd be all boring and junk.....

Jeez, when did Americans become whiny pussies? We used to be badasses, a shining symbol of freedom and courage. Now we're just money grubbing thugs who are willing to spend more money trying to install politicians in Middle Eastern countries than on mankind's progress. Sad.

Re:Must he be the father?

[Anonymous Coward]

My view is that you are volunteering the kids.

Re:dibs

[TechMouse]

I would be divorced if I were him.