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Life On Mars: Elon Musk Reveals Details of His Colonisation Vision
Elon Musk has put his Mars-colonization vision to paper, and you can read it for free. SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO published the plan, which he unveiled at a conference in Mexico in September 2016, in the journal New Space. From a report: The paper outlines early designs of the gigantic spacecraft, designed to carry 100 passengers, that he hopes to construct. "The thrust level is enormous," the paper states. "We are talking about a lift-off thrust of 13,000 tons, so it will be quite tectonic when it takes off." Creating a fully self-sustained civilisation of around one million people -- the ultimate goal -- would take 40-100 years according to the plans. Before full colonisation takes place, though, Musk needs to entice the first pioneers to pave the way.
It is a little cold, but we can warm it up. It has a very helpful atmosphere, which, being primarily CO2 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere.
Just by compressing the atmosphere...? How do you compress an entire planet's atmosphere?
Low G retirement. Live to be 150, maybe. The moon might be better, but we really don't know what the ideal G load for old farts raised in 1 G is.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because it's the ultimate in real exploration and a frontier needing a million problems to be solved, both technical and physical.
I wouldn't expect to ever come back again; I wouldn't really care. Though I'm sure eventually some people would be able to return I'd think that would be pretty rough with years spent in the lower gravity of Mars.
I could easily turn the question around though, and say - I can't imagine not wanting to go, so why NOT go? It makes no sense to me, for any reason.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Taking the sun's-eye view of Life As We Know It, it can all go away with a massive asteroid (that we can't see), a freak solar storm (that we'd see for about 8 minutes), or other event that could take us all out.
After that, all the science, all the technology, all the things we've done to separate ourselves from the rocks we kill each other with are gone. All because we are on a semi-closed system (planet Earth can take new mass in, and ejects minimal amounts of hydrogen).
It seems prudent to me that we make the ark (Stephenson wasn't the first to name it) and get at least some life (some of it with the ability to sustain the rest) off of this planet. That gives us a non-zero probability of surviving if an extinction level event should happen. We have a budget of billions of dollars spent on items of less importance, sometimes I wonder how we get priorities like this.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
I believe Musk's stated reason is that it's good for the long-term survival of mankind to not have all of our eggs in one basket. It could take centuries to create a colony on Mars that is self-sufficient enough to live on indefinitely should Earth get stricken by an extinction level event. If we wait until an unavoidable threat to Earth is on the visible horizon, there might not be enough time left to build such a colony. Even if we ignore all that, however, a perfectly valid reason for going to Mars is simply because we can. Humans dedicate time and resources to all manner of endeavors that serve only to stoke our collective egos over what we're able to accomplish. If Musk and a ton of other people want to go to Mars simply because they think it would be a cool adventure, then that's good enough reason for them to do it.
It's not really an adventure if you are dead within 1-3 months.
Going to Mars is not like going to the "Frontier" of old, where conditions may have been harsh, but ultimately survivable because the environment was fundamentally compatible with your biology.
A very significant percentage of people going to "the frontier of old" DID die within a short period of time.
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Who would you rather have on Mars with you, one 300 lb man, or three 100 lb women?
That's not hard to choose at all - the one guy uses less oxygen than the three women, not to mention if it comes down to it that one 300 pound guy provides a lot more calories than three thin women.
Cost to get there is the same for both right, based on weight?
See: Oxygen. Plus you could half the food rations for the 300lb guy figuring he can live party off his own body weight for a while at least.
In fact if they were smart they'd send only really fat people up in the first few missions so they could ship up very little food.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not really an adventure if you are dead within 1-3 months.
Going to Mars is not like going to the "Frontier" of old, where conditions may have been harsh, but ultimately survivable because the environment was fundamentally compatible with your biology.
When you consider the levels of technology involved in the two cases, actually it is. I'm just back from Iceland, a place where in 871 CE the first Norsemen landed to find no trees, and the Arctic fox as the only animal. Everything else had to be brought in. And not on the high-tech ships Columbus used centuries in their future, but more like rowboats with sails. Once there, they had to build everything they needed out of stone and driftwood. That gave them the toehold it took to advance their hunting skills so that whale meat and whale bone could be added to their usable resources.
Today we have robot emissaries already crawling around on potential new worlds, pre-experiencing what humans will have to face. Knowing what awaits us on Mars, including being able to test manufacturing essentials, beats lack of atmosphere. In any given era, it is human nature to take any frontier we can take.
Or make sure half of them are and make sure they all sign waivers saying the understand that all rooms are monitored by cameras and they agree to be televised back on earth...
That was a joke answer but actually I think that would be pretty amazing for the world be to able to follow along with the lives of all people on Mars, and I'll be most volunteers would agree to it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How are you going to smelt these minerals? Burn coal?
Electric arc furnaces. Probably driven by solar but nuclear might also be a possibility. Smelting such on industrial scales would create free oxygen to add to the atmosphere. If they could find a source of hydrogen or carbon which seem fairly rare on Mars, that could be turned into more water and carbon dioxide. In long term, it might make a bit of difference to the Martian atmosphere, but pretty much only because it is already so thin that it would be considered a medium vacuum here on Earth.
Don't we have better things to be doing then this?
What, like invade third-world countries that pissed us off? Or sponsor another iteration of the Olympics? Or look at amusingly captioned photos of catst?
In a lot of cases, the potential benefits of doing something are impossible to know in advance, but maybe you just do it anyway because it looks like it would be a cool thing to do. This is one of those cases. If you don't think it's a promising avenue, go do something else instead; nobody will stop you.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What?
Don't they need to do a 5 year EIS? Mars is pristine. What if they introduce pathogenic that wipe out whatever life may be hiding there?
Not really. The entire planet is covered with perclorates which are sterilizing agents.
In any given era, it is human nature to take any frontier we can take.
How many people are living in Antarctica? Actual colonizing: growing their own crops, raising children, manufacturing their own essentials, etc. How about interior Greenland? Gobi desert? How can you say that we're ready to colonize Mars when we haven't even colonized all the frontiers on this planet?
Not really. Survival rate on the Oregon Trail was about the same the rest of the world at the time. As your own link points out, the cholera outbreak along the Oregon Trail was part of a worldwide pandemic. Cities were hit as hard, if not harder, than frontier settlers.
The sea dragon was a gigantic rocket designed to be as simple as possible. It was never done full scale, though small scale tests were done and the design was considered viable. It was designed to bring 550 tons to LEO, which is about the same as Musks's super rocket.
A few awesome facts about the sea dragon :
- 2 stages, with a single engine (the same) for each stage
- The first stage of the Saturn V can fit in the engine bell
- It is a pressurized tank design. No turbo-pumps, the engine is basically 2 valves and an igniter
- The first stage burns kerosene + LOX. Regular kerosene, not the more expensive RP-1. The 2nd stage uses hydrogen
- Designed to be launched directly from the sea, with most of the rocket being underwater. The rocket would be powerful enough to destroy any launchpad anyways.
- Made from 8mm sheet steel, in a ship yard, using the same techniques they use to build submarines
- Reuseable. It is designed to be able to resist a fall back into water. No costly delicate parts to break
The whole idea behind this rocket was to make things BIG instead of complex. It is terribly inefficient compared to current designs but it is so huge that it doesn't matter.
and making city air clean. And making clean manufacturing. And What about the upcoming potable water crisis? Mars doesn't exactly solve that one. Now, if we're going there to get more Helium after venting it all into space to make party balloons I might be for it (electronics require Helium)
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How can you say that we're ready to colonize Mars when we haven't even colonized all the frontiers on this planet?
We can say this because it may in fact be easier to get to Mars and create a colony there than some places on Earth.
By "easier" that does not mean only technologically or logistically but also politically. Settling some places on Earth can mean getting your house bombed by someone that doesn't want you to live there, that's a political hurdle. Technologically it can mean things like trying to get to the Antarctic interior means battling harsh winds. We can (quite likely) land something on a windless (relatively) Mars a lot easier than on Antarctica. Continuing the Antarctic example there would be political problems of putting a permanent settlement on the ice there, there are stations there now and they took a lot of negotiations to get them there. Creating a settlement with families living there is a different matter.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You claim if "any of that happens you are dead" but...
Well, if shit breaks you can get spare parts
Which you obviously pack more of on a ship to Mars, then in many scenarios get shipped to you about once a year while you are there.
Also of course, you do realize you ship a lot of spare equipment out ahead of time and don't go until you know it's safe???
Low on food?
How would that realistically happen on the trip out which would have packaged meals to last the trip + one year minimum on Mars (probably more). It's the time past that where growing the food may become an issue but that's quite a long point beyond the main goal which is simply to live on Mars and advance a colony. Even if you all day you have at least prepped something for those that come after.
And again you would have shipped extra food out ahead of you so you know if you arrive you will have enough to eat for X number of days.
Low on air? Simply make more
This is the only realistic danger to my mind but with enough spare oxygen redundantly stored on the way out along with scrubbers you should be OK. At least in this area we actually have a lot of experience providing long term oxygen supplies in space.
Once you get to Mars you can also make more.
Got a fire? Lots of water to put it out.
Guess what fire needs to burn, and you can't find in space or in much abundance on Mars... Lots of small compartments easily voided mean fire is less of an issue.
All of the issues you raise apply to the space station to some degree, even though it can get new supplies that does not happen with greta regularity. Yet it has been around for a long time without major issues.
The biggest danger at all is landing, but there again is where landing a few un-manned supply ships of the same design ahead of time ensures a higher degree of confidence in being able to land. In an era where we can land a rocket on a freaking floating barge in the ocean I'm pretty sure we can land on a stable rock.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like many, I am excited about what SpaceX is trying to do. I am often trying to fill in the blanks they've left, though. Here are a few:
1. Gravity. I've long advocated a broad pill-shaped vessel for distant space travel. Spin can be used to simulate gravity but too much will create an uncomfortable corealis effect (dizziness, and the feeling of being pushed walking one way, pulled walking the other). Zero corealis is when the spin is 2 rpm or less but even at 8 rpm, the effects are reasonably negligible. For 2 rpm and Earth-like gravity, the craft would have to be 400 meters in diameter.
The colonial transporter does seem to have bare walls in the lower occupiable deck. It looks like they may be able to put spinning crew quarters in there with perhaps a bit better than moon-like gravity. One could design a toilet to flush with splash-guards in that environment. If a curfew is put into effect, one could increase the rate of spin after lights out, such as to perhaps greatly reduce the long term effects of weightlessness... then slow it back down again just before wake-up time. The transition between a weightful and weightless environment can be disorienting but I presume one could reasonably adapt in low gravity to no gravity.
2. Carbon Monoxide. For the colony on Mars itself, nobody (not even NASA) seems to be talking about the CO risk. CO will inevitably find itself way into habitation chambers and at some point, silently kill. Mars CO levels are trace gas but in deadly percentages. CO is very small and is not easily contained--it will seep through most containment materials.
My solution would be to standardize on hydrogen combustion for heating, cooking, smelting, and other activities requiring high heat. The ambient air will draw in the CO with the oxygen destroying it. Of course, CO monitors must be kept in working order at all times. Hydrogen is easily obtainable through electrolysis of water--which is plentiful in the soils of Mars.
3. Oxygen Toxicity. This criticism has been made of the Mars One project's published plans. In order to grow enough food to feed a certain number of people, you will inevitably also create more oxygen than they can consume and convert to CO2 through breathing. When too much oxygen builds up, it ultimately freezes the lungs from which the crystalization causes irreparable cellular damage... and death.
My solution for Oxygen Toxicity is the same as for Carbon Monoxide--combust hydrogen to create heat. Any combustion will consume large amounts of oxygen but combusting hydrogen also solves the CO problem. Mars is very cold and heat it needed for many things.
4. Heat Dissipation. Most seem concerned with generating and retaining heat in Mars' cold environment. However, heat loss on Mars will not be as rapid as it is on Earth because the atmosphere is thinner. Yes, thin atmosphere equals cold. However, exchange of heat requires molecules to come in contact with each other and when the air density is 1% or even a bit less than on Earth, don't expect the freezing to happen within seconds. A well insulated habitat is likely to over-heat, if no cooling system is available... even perhaps from body heat.
I propose running cooling coils spread out into the Martian regolith, with ammonia as the heat exchange liquid. The regolith will be fully cooled and, mostly of silica, will very rapidly move heat away. Ammonia will not freeze at Martian temperatures and is readily made by the human body--in pee.
5. Mental and Emotional Well-Being. Elon Musk's claims that the voyages will be fun seems hopeful but naive. Zero-G games, crew quarters, movies, and lecture halls, and a restaurant (aka glorified cafeteria) will all become old, quickly. Although the privacy of personal quarters, the challenges of games, and various forms of leisure are highly saught after on Earth, that is because we work so much. The truth is, having the stress and feeling of importance of your activities are more essential for human happiness.
The gravitation on Mars has nothing whatsoever to do with the temperature of the core, and is about 0.38 times that of Earth. The rate of atmospheric loss is negligible over human timescales, it took billions of years for it to thin to today's state and Mars supported long-lived bodies of liquid water for billions of years. And as for radiation, the current atmosphere of Mars already provides about 2-3 times the shielding that Earth's magnetosphere does, and shielding human habitats doesn't require covering the entire planet with a magnetic field.