Plan to colonize the moon and mars.

[Scia]

So anyways how do i get it funded who do i go to? Goverment or private sector

 

[D H]

You don't. One person, even a person as rich as Bill Gates, could not fund such an undertaking.

There are many problems with this thread. First and foremost, it is science fiction rather than engineering. Some other problems:

You are basing your plans on technology that does not exist (yet) (e.g, SSTO, a big spinning space station), that is at a very immature stage of development (e.g., VASIMIR), or is inappropriate (a big spinning space station in a eccentric orbit). This might be OK for a science fiction writer. It is not engineering.

The thread assumes that colonization of the Moon and Mars are the right things to do in space. Why, and why Mars? The Moon, maybe. Mars is too much of a long shot. There are a number of people, including some rather influential people in space policy development, who will fight tooth and nail to make sure human landings on Mars never happen if Mars is shown to presently support life in any form.

Even the Moon is a long shot. I have doubts that any single nation could replicate the Apollo program today. Perhaps China or India, but certainly not the US and certainly not ESA (which isn't one nation). If we can't replicate the Apollo program, why shoot even higher? Your plan is politically doomed to failure.

Assuming for the sake of argument that we do have the means to send lots of people into space, why go back down a gravity well? What is wrong with setting up lots of those spinning space stations in low Earth orbit and have the colonization base be in space, and sending out probes/manned missions to asteroids for mining? Getting into orbit is a very costly endeavor. Going back down into a gravity well takes many all of the advantages of getting those people/material into space. The presence of some valuable resources on the Moon would be a viable argument for down to the Moon.

Regarding your spinning space station in an eccentric orbit: That eccentric orbit doesn't buy much. Arguably it adds a lot of cost and risk. It certainly adds an incredibly health risk. That orbit crosses the Van Allen belt twice per orbit. Moreover, you have vastly increased the delta-V needed to dock at perigee and undock at apogee compared to just going to the target directly. A space station in a reasonably inclined orbit in low Earth orbit makes sense from a science fiction point of view. (The ISS is not in a reasonably inclined orbit.) Do keep in mind that building such a thing currently remains in the realm of science fiction.

 

[Scia]

You don't. One person, even a person as rich as Bill Gates, could not fund such an undertaking.

There are many problems with this thread. First and foremost, it is science fiction rather than engineering. Some other problems:

You are basing your plans on technology that does not exist (yet) (e.g, SSTO, a big spinning space station), that is at a very immature stage of development (e.g., VASIMIR), or is inappropriate (a big spinning space station in a eccentric orbit). This might be OK for a science fiction writer. It is not engineering.

The thread assumes that colonization of the Moon and Mars are the right things to do in space. Why, and why Mars? The Moon, maybe. Mars is too much of a long shot. There are a number of people, including some rather influential people in space policy development, who will fight tooth and nail to make sure human landings on Mars never happen if Mars is shown to presently support life in any form.

Even the Moon is a long shot. I have doubts that any single nation could replicate the Apollo program today. Perhaps China or India, but certainly not the US and certainly not ESA (which isn't one nation). If we can't replicate the Apollo program, why shoot even higher? Your plan is politically doomed to failure.

Assuming for the sake of argument that we do have the means to send lots of people into space, why go back down a gravity well? What is wrong with setting up lots of those spinning space stations in low Earth orbit and have the colonization base be in space, and sending out probes/manned missions to asteroids for mining? Getting into orbit is a very costly endeavor. Going back down into a gravity well takes many all of the advantages of getting those people/material into space. The presence of some valuable resources on the Moon would be a viable argument for down to the Moon.

Regarding your spinning space station in an eccentric orbit: That eccentric orbit doesn't buy much. Arguably it adds a lot of cost and risk. It certainly adds an incredibly health risk. That orbit crosses the Van Allen belt twice per orbit. Moreover, you have vastly increased the delta-V needed to dock at perigee and undock at apogee compared to just going to the target directly. A space station in a reasonably inclined orbit in low Earth orbit makes sense from a science fiction point of view. (The ISS is not in a reasonably inclined orbit.) Do keep in mind that building such a thing currently remains in the realm of science fiction.

Look on page 3 I rewrote then plan
and the VASIMR is at technology readynes level 6/10 its going along very well

 

[D H]

The VASIMR is at technology readynes level 6/10 its going along very well

That was the VX-50, which produced a paltry 0.5 Newtons of thrust. The VX-200 (flight test in 2013) is maybe at TRL 6 if you look at it with rose colored glasses. The VX-200 is expected to produce 5 N of thrust. That is not the kind of thrust that is needed to move huge colonization vehicles around. Think of it this way: The Saturn V third stage produced 1 million Newtons of thrust, and that was what was needed to put a tiny little vehicle on a path to the Moon. (The first stage produced 34 million Newtons of thrust). You are implicitly assuming that VASIMIR can scale up by six orders of magnitude or more! That is not engineering. It is science fiction.

 

[Scia]

That was the VX-50, which produced a paltry 0.5 Newtons of thrust. The VX-200 (flight test in 2013) is maybe at TRL 6 if you look at it with rose colored glasses. The VX-200 is expected to produce 5 N of thrust. That is not the kind of thrust that is needed to move huge colonization vehicles around. Think of it this way: The Saturn V third stage produced 1 million Newtons of thrust, and that was what was needed to put a tiny little vehicle on a path to the Moon. (The first stage produced 34 million Newtons of thrust). You are implicitly assuming that VASIMIR can scale up by six orders of magnitude or more! That is not engineering. It is science fiction.

As i said in my plan it will only be used in space. The VASIMR can't be used to to take off from earth. Also the specific Impulse is much higher then the saturn 5

 

[D H]

scia, I was talking about the Saturn V third stage. That too was only used on orbit.

From post #45,

After that we take a small shuttle using VASIMR technology to a second station orbiting the moon.

How big is this small shuttle? How many people will it carry? How long will it take to go from the LEO station to the lunar station?

One plan for the supposedly TRL 6 VX-200 (five Newtons of thrust) is to use one to carry cargo from the Earth to the Moon -- in six months time. Low thrust engines, and five Newtons is very low thrust, cannot do what you envisioned in post #45. You are ignoring the huge discrepancy between the five Newtons of thrust to be tested in 2013 and the millions of Newtons required by your plan. That is not engineering. It is science fiction.

 

[Pattonias]

It seems to me that the closest trigger that we may see lead to another real move into space exploration would be successful fusion. If ITER is able to produce stable fusion then we may see a clear road to space exploration as many of the power challenges could be overcome with a plentiful power source. Unfortunatly, even if ITER is successful it will probably be 50 to 75 years after ITER that we will see real implimentation of fusion power in a big way. Until then, we will still be confined to probes and unmanned exploration in space, due to the high cost.

 

[sophiecentaur]

You do not seem to rate "probes" as being very exciting. Could you imagine a manned crew, launched at the time of the Voyager probe, being capable of anything but going mad, by now? Don't knock robots. They are the way forward.

 

[Pattonias]

Probes aren't very exciting when compared with manned exploration. The goal is manned exploration, what's the point if the closest we ever get to the rest of the solar system is a robot. I'm not naive enough to think that we will be walking on other planets in my lifetime, but to think that probes are the end product doesn't really make me very excited. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about the progress we have made with probes and the information that they can give us, but why confine ourselves to them?

 

[Scia]

Probes aren't very exciting when compared with manned exploration. The goal is manned exploration, what's the point if the closest we ever get to the rest of the solar system is a robot. I'm not naive enough to think that we will be walking on other planets in my lifetime, but to think that probes are the end product doesn't really make me very excited. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about the progress we have made with probes and the information that they can give us, but why confine ourselves to them?

But NASA says there going to put a man on Mars in the 2030's

 

[sophiecentaur]

It depends on what you find exciting. The sort of information that 'probes' can yield is likely to be at least as useful and exciting as the information that a manned expedition might yield. A manned mission is never going to reveal gravity waves, for instance.

What did the Moon landing actuall tell us that an unmanned mission couldn't / hasn't, apart from the fact that it was possible?,

 

[Scia]

It depends on what you find exciting. The sort of information that 'probes' can yield is likely to be at least as useful and exciting as the information that a manned expedition might yield. A manned mission is never going to reveal gravity waves, for instance.

What did the Moon landing actuall tell us that an unmanned mission couldn't / hasn't, apart from the fact that it was possible?,

The point of manned missions is to pave a path for colonization
or showing off to russia

 

[sophiecentaur]

Showing off to Russia I can agree with. Nothing in this thread has given credance to the colonisation thing.

 

[Scia]

Showing off to Russia I can agree with. Nothing in this thread has given credance to the colonisation thing.

... the goal isn't just scientific exploration ... it's also about extending the range of human habitat out from Earth into the solar system as we go forward in time ... In the long run a single-planet species will not survive ... If we humans want to survive for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, we must ultimately populate other planets. Now, today the technology is such that this is barely conceivable. We're in the infancy of it. ... I'm talking about that one day, I don't know when that day is, but there will be more human beings who live off the Earth than on it. We may well have people living on the moon. We may have people living on the moons of Jupiter and other planets. We may have people making habitats on asteroids ... I know that humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond.

– Michael D. Griffin

 

[Pattonias]

Hopefully, this thread won't be used by our world leaders to find justification for space exploration.

To me the attraction of space is that it is the next stage of human evolution. Even Steven Hawking believes that in order for our species to survive we will have to leave this planet. (Of course, he also believes that we should restrict the signals that we send out to space to prevent aliens from taking advantage of us.)

 

[Scia]

Hopefully, this thread won't be used by our world leaders to find justification for space exploration.

To me the attraction of space is that it is the next stage of human evolution. Even Steven Hawking believes that in order for our species to survive we will have to leave this planet. (Of course, he also believes that we should restrict the signals that we send out to space to prevent aliens from taking advantage of us.)

I Agree its the next step for human civilzation

 

[luma]

Send me to Mars to die after a few months with no prospects and I'd snap call.

Get people to Mars before NASA's funding disappears and it never happens.

 

[Scia]

Send me to Mars to die after a few months with no prospects and I'd snap call.

Get people to Mars before NASA's funding disappears and it never happens.

I will make it a private industy

 

[Scia]

So guys should I take this to the government or the private sector? I am leaning twords the private sector

 

[D H]

The private sector is not going to undertake some effort that will require the wealth of nations and hundreds of years of time (if ever) to realize a profit.

 

[luma]

What's the problem with the NASA Design Reference mission? It's supposedly within NASA's current budget.

 

[D H]

What's the problem with the NASA Design Reference mission? It's supposedly within NASA's current budget.

First off, the Mars Design Reference mission is not a colonization plan. This thread is about colonization. The Mars DRM is a plan to send a small number of astronauts to Mars and then return back to Earth after spending some time on Mars. Secondly, while defining/refining that Design Reference Mission is within NASA's budget, allocating money to implement those plans is not.

NASA uses design reference missions as the basis for costing a concept. Think about it this way: NASA (or any organization, for that matter) needs to have some idea regarding how much something will cost before approving and allocating monies for that activity. The Mars Design Reference Mission provides the basis for that costing exercise. Those missions are not within NASA's budget. The costs far exceed NASA's budget.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The private sector is not going to undertake some effort that will require the wealth of nations and hundreds of years of time (if ever) to realize a profit.

People will only put their hands in their pockets when the first asteroid looks seriously as though it's going to swipe us. It would have to be that scale of emergency.
Lets face it, the Great Public aren't interested in long term ecological threats on Earth. Why should they be interested in long term (thousands of years) planning for Space Living?

 

[spacester]

any good plan needs a timescale. We're talking in terms of at least une hundred years for this one. When you consider a really worthwhile project like Fusion, that's the order of magnitude involved and, until energy ceases to be a problem, the Dan Dare stuff will not be affordable. There are one or two other projects that could also be said to have priority.

Hi sophiecentaur, before I comment let me just say that I really like your posts elsewhere. But when it comes to this subject you are way off target.

Saying it is hundreds of years away as a founding premise is a total load of crap. Talk about a defeatist attitude.

Some of us like working on this stuff and you can keep that week stuff to yourself if you don't mind. I've read all this thread's posts to date and I'll deal with your more substantive criticisms in a few minutes.

I will commend you for your constructive criticisms if and when I find them.

The word galactic in a company's name proves what? Hello? Get a grip, please. Rationality is not to be applied here?

Energy will always be the issue. Are you saying mankind is too darn stupid to even try to solve the conundrum? Answers are in fact abundant.

 

[spacester]

I actually, seriously doubt that space colonisation will be a reality within hundreds of years because there is so little in it for us compared with the cost. It may be one of the sexiest idea around but it is way at the back of a very long queue of justifiable "challenges".
The very name "Virgin Galactic" says it all. What is "galactic" about the project"? It's a Fun Project in which a few rich people will see a black sky, felt microgravity and feel that they've been 'in space'. Mr B has spotted an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground. To my mind it represents extremely bad value compared with feeding the existing population. We are a long long way, even from that.

In the following, "We" = Space development enthusiasts and "You" = Those who think like sophie, who is far from alone in her perspective.

We refuse to let our dreams be held hostage due to a failure of Your imagination. You do not think any of this can be done, so You don't sit around finding solutions. Solutions abound. If you want to hear them, great, stick around, and put your listening cap on please.

So many fallacies in the above post. Funding is not perfectly fungible. Allocations to space development do not automatically come from funds for feeding "the existing population". By the way, those who pursue that noble goal could use a dose of the kind of scrutiny space flight development plans always work under. Bunch of fuzzy headed liberals who don't know how the real world works, for the most part. You can't even define the problem.

. . . an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground.

That's all it is?? A complete failure of Your imagination. First, this endeavor will have a huge cultural impact and today's kids will grow up in a world where visiting space is a growth industry. Secondly, these rich bastards - look, I am as egalitarian as they come, but that just means we have a green light to exploit rich bastards - will pay off the capitol investment in the new space infrastructure ALLOWING COSTS TO COME DOWN. Third, it doesn't stop with this generation of hardware, this business model has no limits.

To deny that the future space tycoons such as Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, Sir Richard, Jeff Bezos, John Carmack et al are working to lower costs so that very large numbers of people of moderate means will have the opportunity to visit space is to call every one of them a liar. That's what they all want.

You darn tooting the numbers matter. I'm all over the numbers, just try me. And cost/benefit isn't the only way to look at things, at least not on the time scales our corporate consumer culture operates.

 

[spacester]

Well, you devote yourself to the development of better agricultural tech, and those of us whose interests are different will devote our lives to those things we want to happen.

(snip)

Now, if we want to be productive; we should help the OP learn what tech is lacking at the moment for him to see his dream come to fruition, and maybe he will be the one who makes a breakthrough in the field that allows his vision to become reality. (And he might just do it in his garage, thus saving you from having to worry about the GDP)

BRAVO! Well done!

 

[spacester]

BUT there are certain actual quantities associated with the sort of space use that is proposed here which make it very, very tenuous. Why are people ignoring that on this thread ?

It's just the Boys' Own, 1950s romantic thing that I can't take seriously. I sometimes think that people actually believe the Azimov trilogy is fact - right down to the Psychohistory thing. At least do some serious sums before you get too carried away with Space fiction.

sophie, were you beaten by a toy rocket as a child? Did Asimov's whiskers traumatize you?

J/K

This sounds a lot like projection - to whom exactly do you refer that suffer this tenuous grasp of reality?

Sorry, I'm on a roll at this point.

You know, psychohistory is not that far beyond current marketing strategies.

Anyway, I'll do all the serious sums you want. What exactly would you like to see addressed?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Hi spacester.

The posts are coming thick and fast!

A few rather 'judgemental' adjectives there, I think.
"Defeatist" implies that I'd go for it if only it weren't too much trouble. My main objection is to the priority which has been given to this idea. A fully thought out project, aimed at fruition in, yes, several hundred years' time would get my serious interest, as a theoretical exercise.
I have read a lot of stuff since Space Travel (Unmanned) was achieved and much of what Arthur Clark and others published before and after it was an actual fact. I can't imagine that anyone would seriously quote from practical information from so far back when talking about Electronics, Medicine or Computing in order to justify future plans in those fields and I am determined no to go overboard when shown pictures of '50s designs for spacecraft , either. Film clips from Kubrick's 2001 fall equally flat; they made my heart flutter in 1980, or whenever it came out. I really question whether some of the people posting on this particular thread are aware that Star Trek etc. is, actually, fiction. There are soooo many issues involved with the notion of space colonisation and what it would mean for the Human Race. It really would have to be the very last ditch solution to life becoming unsustainable on Earth - basically, a lifeboat exercise - not a Christopher Columbus style mission.
If I appear not to be constructive in this thread it's because I can see so many more exciting (in a real sense) things that we can do with our intellect and energy than to plan zapping about the Solar System as tourists or establishing what would be a penal colony on Mars. The fact that there have been no serious responses about funding this stuff, sort of makes my point for me.
My heart still flutters when I see a guy mending the Hubble Space Telescope - live on TV and when I hear of plans for yet another long term mission to observe the heliopause or
to find gravity waves. That is the true exploration and it's here and now.
"Virgin Galactic" is a lovely piece of Hyperbole and aimed at a just-achievable investment. Sir Richard, as usual, has a keen eye for the mid-term return on his investments. But what he offers to the punters is not really much more than a fairground ride - I'd love to be able to afford that but I have a bit of a conscience about my carbon footprint for such a jaunt.

"Energy will always be the issue. Are you saying mankind is too darn stupid to even try to solve the conundrum? Answers are in fact abundant."
Answers in both directions, I think? There is a certain amount of stupidity revealing itself in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment.

 

[spacester]

I have thought a lot about this and I have now realized why I 'took against' the idea.
It was nothing to do with the engineering aspect at all. I don't think I have made any serious adverse comments about that, although there are several 50 year old ideas in the proposal. Von Braun and Clarke were giants in their time but the politics, economics and technologies are not the same now. The date in "2001 a space odyssey" shows how wrong one can be!
My problem was, essentially, with the social aspect of the ideas in the original model. The word "tourism" strongly suggests a privileged elite enjoying the benefits of their wealth. Yes, there is a certain amount of 'spreading around' of that wealth in the tourist locations and there are spin-offs but, in what would be a very high-tech project, who would benefit? Tourism is not an altruistic affair. How many space trips would the average / underprivileged citizen expect and who would be prepared to subsidise some rich guy's holiday?
Also, there may be a good reason for space exploitation - getting materials from the Moon and Mars. That would be a very laudable idea and could make economic sense. But that wouldn't involve 'colonisation'. To be economically viable a space mining project would be more like a deep water Oil rig which, even though only a few miles offshore, is very spartan and not, by any stretch, a 'colony'.

So my objections are basically against the two words "tourism" and "colony" and have not been against the Physics or Engineering aspects at all - which is, surely, what the forum is about. More power to your elbow when you want to discuss practical solutions.

"who would benefit? Tourism is not an altruistic affair. How many space trips would the average / underprivileged citizen expect and who would be prepared to subsidise some rich guy's holiday?"

Subsidize? What are you talking about? It works the other way around: the rich bastards pay thru the nose so we-all go go cheaper later.

Ah, but you got us on "Colony".

It is my well considered observation that any plan that talks about Mars "Colonization" is fatally flawed from the start. Don't get me wrong, I want Man on Mars and I want it bad. But we cannot Colonize until we've Settled. I am adamant on this point. First we have to go, with the intention of staying, but with the purpose of finding out if and how we can colonize.

Settlers go and stay for life, or bug out and go home. They do not make babies if they know the babies will likely die. Colonists by definition make babies.

We are a long ways from making babies in a gravity field other than our home. We have to settle for Settlement as the initial master goal.

 

[sophiecentaur]

spacester
I think we may well be arguing in quadrature about a lot of this. My early posts were really a reaction to what appears to be a very dated view of space travel. The Universe is not actually 'shrinking' fast, like the Earth is. You can't just extrapolate from same day meetings anywhere in the World and project same-year jaunts to anywhere much outside the Earth. Neither can you extrapolate Cost Reduction ad infinitum.
I am presuming that Warp Drive etc. are not on the menu so where do we go? There's Mars, The Moon and a few other Moons around some other planets. Beyond that, we're talking human generations worth of travel time - almost whatever engines we develop. That certainly couldn't be called "tourism".

"beaten around the head with a space rocket" HaHa.
I did read about one Sci Fi book per week for several years and I enjoyed the fiction but even Azimov was a bit over glib about the Galactic Empire thing. Fair enough, in his day, but don't we know better now?

My Son is in marketing and tells me they can predict what people are going to do - but only to some degree. He hasn't got his Aston Martin yet!
Keep em coming.

 

[spacester]

To make your "plan" to colonize the Moon and Mars cost-effective, you need to find a valuable resource (hopefully very, very valuable) that can be mined and/or produced on them but cannot be found/produced on Earth. For example, the first thing that I think of when "mining" and "the Moon" are mentioned together is Helium-3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3). I'm not sure what you could mine on Mars however, perhaps some rare minerals or something.

Overall just returning soil/rock samples of the moon and/or Mars would never cover costs, because the more you returned the less valuable it would become. By the time they were colonized, their dirt would be worthless (where as right now they're basically priceless).

Hello, my fellow ME.

Years ago, I figured out the resource on the moon that will drive the killer app that makes commercial activity on the moon a reasonable business proposition.

I do not know how many posts I've made to reveal and explain this answer to our space development conundrum. I have approached the subject every way I know. But the next person who gets it will feel like the first. It's not like people argue against it, they invariably ignore it. I consider this a failure on the part of my personality, not of the resource statement itself.

What can you do on the moon that has very very high value and that cannot be had on Earth or elsewhere? Physical substances, whether manufactured or merely gathered, cannot possibly meet these criteria, certainly not at anywhere near today's cost of transportation.

There is only one answer: The Experience of Being There.

Space Tourism is such a lame term for the kaleidoscope of human activity on the Moon for which people will receive value and pay good money. Doing things on the moon would be the fulfillment of the dreams of the ancients, and if you cannot market that you cannot market anything.

So we can go and do science and extract water and oxygen and make structures from local resources. But nobody is willing to "fund" such activity just for the sake of doing it. It MUST be an investment, one that will see at least some value returned to someone sometime and all those to a degree where a significant number of investors jump on board.

So we need to set up a lunar industrial park with a singular purpose: to learn how to build facilities to host visitors who pay good money for experiences. Once we learn how, we build those facilities and exploit them for revenue and close the financial loop.

Note that this strategy need not wait for actual humans to show up. Think lunar rover rentals, operated by customers using PCs at home.

 

[D H]

Ah, but you got us on "Colony".

It is my well considered observation that any plan that talks about Mars "Colonization" is fatally flawed from the start. Don't get me wrong, I want Man on Mars and I want it bad. But we cannot Colonize until we've Settled. I am adamant on this point. First we have to go, with the intention of staying, but with the purpose of finding out if and how we can colonize.

Settlers go and stay for life, or bug out and go home.

You are still missing a basic step: Exploration. Sending settlers without having a pretty good idea that the settlers won't "bug out and go home." That basic step of exploration is beyond the financial means of anyone country given current technology. It is very important to remember that this is the engineering section of PhysicsForums, not the science fiction section.

Another problem is that you are still begging the question, why settle/colonize Mars? A couple of reasons not to:

• Assuming we have the technology to send large numbers of people into space (essential for colonization or settlement), why go back down into a gravity well?
• Mars may harbor life. If it does, I venture that that would mean all plans for settlement would be off. Why plan for something that has a very real likelihood of being precluded from happening?

 

[spacester]

spacester
I think we may well be arguing in quadrature about a lot of this. My early posts were really a reaction to what appears to be a very dated view of space travel. The Universe is not actually 'shrinking' fast, like the Earth is. You can't just extrapolate from same day meetings anywhere in the World and project same-year jaunts to anywhere much outside the Earth. Neither can you extrapolate Cost Reduction ad infinitum.
I am presuming that Warp Drive etc. are not on the menu so where do we go? There's Mars, The Moon and a few other Moons around some other planets. Beyond that, we're talking human generations worth of travel time - almost whatever engines we develop. That certainly couldn't be called "tourism".

"beaten around the head with a space rocket" HaHa.
I did read about one Sci Fi book per week for several years and I enjoyed the fiction but even Azimov was a bit over glib about the Galactic Empire thing. Fair enough, in his day, but don't we know better now?

My Son is in marketing and tells me they can predict what people are going to do - but only to some degree. He hasn't got his Aston Martin yet!
Keep em coming.

Hi sophie, thanks for being such a good sport.

I read more SF than you did, so there. I was also fortunate enough to read a stern lecture from Harlan Ellison early in my reading career (this would be the mid to late 60's).

Modern media has adulterated the nature of Science Fiction (the kind found in books) in the public's mind, and it's a darn shame.

SF HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT PREDICTING THE FUTURE

It still isn't.

SF is about exploring the human condition under speculative circumstances, often those caused by possible future technologies. All the way back to Hugo Gernsback and Alfred Bester, it is about how humans are and how they might be. If SF writers limited themselves to predicting the future, it would be a shriveled shell of what we enjoy. Even Jules Verne was about lots of societal things besides future tech. Even today's authors do not often mine the field of predicting the future. That's what Popular Science is for (and of course they are always wrong).

Those of us who know this, and I certainly am not alone, are completely inoculated against the syndrome you seem to diagnose. We never expected flying cars in the first place.

To be sure, there are plenty of people found on the internet who live in a star trek mind set. They conceive that having transporter beams and replicators are just a matter of time.

But those people are not the people here. The posters on this thread are in my observation all about real world answers to this most difficult conundrum.

If ever there was a problem worthy of mankind's collective intellect, it is the development of space in spite of the fact that the most energetic possible chemical reaction is barely energetic enough to achieve orbit. A little more gravity and there's no way. A little less and it would be easy and done by now.

 

[spacester]

You are still missing a basic step: Exploration. Sending settlers without having a pretty good idea that the settlers won't "bug out and go home." That basic step of exploration is beyond the financial means of anyone country given current technology. It is very important to remember that this is the engineering section of PhysicsForums, not the science fiction section.

Yes I was missing that step, but I left it to you to fill the gap and so you did.

IOW I agree.

Feel free to slap me if you truly think I am straying into SF territory. But I am very cautious not to, so I do ask that you consider that charge well before making it. I was delighted that this thread landed on this forum and it has stayed here.

Certainly any Mars Settlement plan will need to consider exactly how initial expeditions would serve the goal of settlement. The conventional view would be that these missions would be essential before sending large numbers of people. Even so, one of my design alternatives would have us skip manned precursor missions and instead emplace the habitat robotically and have it operated remotely for a full 26 month cycle before people move in.

So your point is taken that there is a lower level of mission than Settlement, and that requiring Expeditions for the purpose of finding out if settlement is feasible is just as reasonable as saying that Settlement is needed to see if Colonization is feasible. But expeditions might be bypassed in some architectures.

Another problem is that you are still begging the question, why settle/colonize Mars? A couple of reasons not to:

• Assuming we have the technology to send large numbers of people into space (essential for colonization or settlement), why go back down into a gravity well?
• Mars may harbor life. If it does, I venture that that would mean all plans for settlement would be off. Why plan for something that has a very real likelihood of being precluded from happening?

I have two completely different answers for why to live on Mars and Moon. First, why go to space at all? Answer: Becoming a space-faring species is its own goal, because the benefits to mankind will certainly greatly overwhelm the cost.

So at the most basic level, the reason for going to both locations is simply that when that becomes reality ipso facto we will be space faring. It is certainly possible to become space-faring and stay out of gravity wells, but that is not what this thread is about.

More specifically, however, we go to Moon to turn it into a playground and to establish things that will last forever. For example, a record of life on Planet Earth that will last for eons. Many of the things we will do on the Moon will be because we can and we want to and it is fun. The idea is to use the power of economic activity, in a word, profit, to make it all go. The profit motive will be central but opportunities for government and private foundations to subsidize the early stages will abound. The profit equation will be stretched over generations.

Mars is completely different. First of all I feel like I shouldn't even be required to answer the question, because there are so many people involved with trying to make it happen. The 'cause' does not need my voice to be legitimate. But I'll answer anyway.

Mars is about exploration, expansion, insurance and science.

Mankind explores. We just do, there is no denying it. What happens when we cease to explore new terrain? (Yes I know the oceans offer another spectacular frontier, but deep water pressures are prohibitive.) Luna will be fun, but Mars is much more diverse.

Mankind needs to feel like it can expand. We need a safety valve. No one is talking about a mass exodus into space or starting over elsewhere, that's rubbish. We just need a safety valve, and Mars can fill that role.

Insurance against extinction of humanity is no small achievement and of great worth, cynics among us notwithstanding. Mars can offer that, that's what a colony would be about at its most basic level.

Science on Mars will be in little bits and pieces even after manned expeditions. It will not see its golden age until we at least settle there.

So those are the reasons why, as to your reasons not to. Gravity wells have resources and a stable maintenance free platform to build your facilities on.

Life on Mars as the show-stopper: not going to happen. Why let the possibility handcuff us from planning? That is "letting the terrorists win" - not moving forward as a society due to a fear response to a threat. If life is there it is deep and isolated and we can be cohabitants. Indeed there will be an imperative to have people on site to study it.

 

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Yes I was missing that step, but I left it to you to fill the gap and so you did.

This is the Engineering section of PhysicsForums, spacester, not the science fiction section. Far too many here have been leaving out that step.

Feel free to slap me if you truly think I am straying into SF territory. But I am very cautious not to, so I do ask that you consider that charge well before making it. I was delighted that this thread landed on this forum and it has stayed here.

The way this thread is going it is not going to stay here long. It started on a bad footing and has not improved all that much.

I have two completely different answers for why to live on Mars and Moon. First, why go to space at all? [Preaching elided]

Way too much preaching, here spacester.
Answer: Becoming a space-faring species is its own goal, because the benefits to mankind will certainly greatly overwhelm the cost.

It is certainly possible to become space-faring and stay out of gravity wells, but that is not what this thread is about.

Unfortunately, no. This thread has begged the question about why should we colonize the Moon and Mars from post number one.

Mars is completely different. First of all I feel like I shouldn't even be required to answer the question, because there are so many people involved with trying to make it happen.

Who? Members of the Mars Society? Certainly not at NASA or Roscosmos or ESA. NASA has a small number, a very small number, of people working on exploration of Mars by humans. The number of people at NASA who are working on colonizing Mars is very close to zero.

Mankind explores. [Preaching elided]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but one more time: This is the Engineering section of PhysicsForums. Please stop the evangelizing.

Life on Mars as the show-stopper: not going to happen.

If life is found on Mars, I would put even odds on humans being precluded from setting foot on Mars, let alone colonizing it.

You've read science fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mar faction is very real. There are several people who are highly influential in charting NASA's course (a lot more influential than Zubrin) who will work very hard to preclude terraforming or colonizing Mars human colonization should life be discovered on Mars.