
A roadmap to an industrially self-sufficient Mars base in the minimum time - robbiep
http://caseyexaustralia.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-roadmap-to-industrially-self.html?m=1
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ph0rque
> Cuba, North Korea, Australia and Russia all have populations well over 10
> million but are entirely dependent on trade to obtain advanced technology
> such as computers, aircraft, container ships, engines, cars, and so on.

Sorry, but it's hard to take this author seriously when he thinks Russia
doesn't manufacture "advanced technologies" such as "aircraft, container
ships, engines, cars".

~~~
Gatsky
Russia has semiconductor fabs? And produces biopharmaceuticals?

~~~
themihai
I believe they do.

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Gatsky
Yes, they do.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabric...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants)

~~~
jessriedel
That list of 100+ fabs lists just 2 in Russia (in Zelenograd and Voronezh),
both operated by Mikron. One was opened in 1959 and operates at >900 nm, and
the other operates at >90 nm. (EDIT: as mentioned elsewhere, even this lab was
built by Germans with German tech.) For comparison, state-of-the-art
facilities are <30 nm, and the US has >60 facilities on that list, which is
still much more than Russian on a per capita basis (pop. 321M vs. 144M).

I know nothing about this industry, but looking only at that list it seems
very possible to me that Russia is, for all intents and purposes, completely
dependent on the global economy for semiconductor fab.

~~~
calgoo
I think the difference is that Russia has the resources to create the
factories if they need too, its just a lot easier and cheaper to outsource it.

~~~
jessriedel
Sure, but the point of this part of the blog post is that there is a minimum
viable sizes for modern industrialized civilization, and it is bigger than
Australia (pop. 24M), and probably even Russia (pop. 144M). Russian can't
itself manufacture all products it needs simultaneously even if it could do it
for any individual product.

Folks in this thread seem to have mistakenly interpreted this as a value
judgement about Russia from the author. "Russia is sophisticated enough to
produce any of these products!" is a retort to that claim, buts it's
completely besides the point.

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phkahler
I said this before Elon got excited about tunnels. The people of mars will
want to create usable space and the best way to do that will be tunnel boring
machines. They'll need a way to reinforce and seal them, but with a boring
machine they can have people constantly creating new living and working space
with a minimum of materials. This will also provide some mining capability
should there be any rock of value there.

What will become currency? In other words, how can you use free markets to get
people to provide work most efficiently? In software, OSS seems to be the most
efficient development model but it lacks payment for the effort. Likewise once
people are making stuff, it would be a waste of resources to have multiple
competitors making similar things. I suspect not having patents is the
quickest way to get efficient production in a low resource environment. A race
to the bottom may be OK when everyone starts at the bottom.

Lastly, It seems like a good idea for Mars to have a product or service that
is extremely useful to the people of earth. This would allow them to exchange
that for continuing shipments of materials they desperately need. An
information service would seem to fit the bill, due to zero mass for shipping
it back and few resources needed to create it. But what? Engineers could live
and work on mars, but not enough to create a shortage of those services on
Earth. Is there any use for the time delay inherent in transmission to Mars?
For example, with HFT in the stock market, could a more "fair" system be built
with transactions taking place on Mars where there is a large latency built
into the system? Of course you'd have to keep locals on Mars from trading in
that system. With our constant quest for higher speed an low latency it seems
wrong to seek a solution that depends of guaranteed long latency. Something
like that, of high value that is unique to the situation could go a long way
toward preventing abandonment by Earth but I really don't know what that would
be.

I don't thing what it takes to build a minimum viable civilization on Mars
will be determined until there is one.

~~~
robbiep
Love the tunnels and boring. How good would it be to live in an entire city
carved and sculpted into canyons so large they make earths look pathetic.

I think your economic analysis is really overcooking it... we are talking
about some wild shit here, we can't even begin to imagine what the system they
will create will look like. Although I hope it's like something from the mars
trilogy.

This is going to be an entirely science and technology focused outpost of
society. Basically cut off from the baggage of earth because of the distance.
Initially currency is going to be proper basic units. Maybe energy, hydrogen,
oxygen, essentials. And it's going to be an innovation centre because of
necessity. Once that place half scales it's going to be outrageous.

~~~
thwarted
_How good would it be to live in an entire city carved and sculpted into
canyons so large they make earths look pathetic._

Ben Bova's "Welcome to Moon Base" has a lot of content and estimates on this,
although not at that scale. It's specific to the moon, so things like low-
gravity self-powered flight might not make it into the recreation
possibilities of Mars, but as for living underground in huge vaults made of
the regolith, it makes an interesting case.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1005249.Welcome_to_Moon_B...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1005249.Welcome_to_Moon_Base)

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nabla9
It's nice to see economic considerations.

For many everyday things we must assume that Mars needs aerospace level
reliability and safety. Typically it's assumed that there is at leas factor of
ten increase when developing with aerospace standards. So multiply value of
everything that can affect health with 10, including housing, fire alarms,
ventilation and outdoor gear.

It can't be assumed that settling Mars is preplanned. Every form of
manufacturing and every process must constantly adapt and innovate to overcome
the obstacles not seen beforehand. This takes lots of time and timelines will
slow down. You can't just keep sending up robots in massive amounts. You need
to send small batches and refine and constantly adapt them. This requires
highly educated manpower.

I's probably hard to find millions of people ready to sentence themselves into
very low life standards and lower life expectancy once the hype wears off.
There are lots of dreamers cheering who eventually balk or don't survive. How
do you get millions of "right stuff" to live the life of constant maintenance.
Maybe you need to have cult like sci-fi religion like Mormons :)

~~~
fsloth
"Typically it's assumed that there is at leas factor of ten increase when
developing with aerospace standards. "

To my understanding Skunk Works developed e.g. the Blackbird from scratch with
much better cost efficiency than a modern greenfield project would if they
followed best practices written in stone. I think high quality engineering can
be implemented with far less cost if the project allows for iterative
development and efficient communication and ownership between stakeholders
(e.g. the engineer and the machinist can figure things out on their own
instead of rotating everythong through cost and quality control authorities).
Ben Rich [0], an ex Skunkworks director laments at length of the inefficiency
of bureaucratic style of product development - which is probably an outgrowth
of the same phenomena that causes so many bullshit jobs. So, to my mind what
things like F-35 cost and what are the intrinsic costs of proper, durable
engineering are not entirely related.

[0] Rich, _Skunk works_

~~~
nabla9
I'm not talking about developing experimental aircraft, I'm talking about
manufacturing and maintaining safety critical equipment for everyday use.

If you could order wide body jet without the attached standards, they would be
able to build exact replica of the fleet with fraction of the cost.

Same aluminum pieces with random quality inspections is much cheaper than
every piece of aluminum checked and tested before installing, plus verifying
that it's tested and inspected. Installing that piece would be cheaper if
there would be no inspectors for every phase of work doubling or tripling the
manpower. Just tightening a bolt is cheap. Tightening it the right amount,
cheeking that it has been done correctly etc. are costly.

Astronauts living in ISS periodically inspect every hatch and every safety
critical device. Their days are filled with checklists. Things wear down and
break and small undetected error can end life.

~~~
fsloth
I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. I just pointed out that it's not
obvious what are the necessary costs of durable systems and engineering. As
for my example, I think it meets the criterion for a good example. Blackbird
was not 'experimental', it was designed as a workhorse and functioned and
operated as such.

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vivekd
We may be taking the first steps to establishing a permanent undersea colonies
_1_. I'd like to see that happen before trying permanent outer space colonies.

Establishing a permanent settlement in an area uninhabitable by humans seems
like an incredible challenge that humanity has never attempted. It will likely
have so many unforeseeable contingencies that are impossible to provide for
before we actually try it. If we are going to try something like that, I'd
much rather the first time be under the Ocean where there is a relatively easy
out if we run into problems rather than in outer space where you're just stuck
with no way out.

_1.[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29031512*](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29031512*)

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Hasknewbie
Honest question: assuming all the other technical/economical roadblocks could
be solved, how are we supposed to colonize Mars on a long-term basis, as my
understanding is that the gravity there will either kill or cause serious
health issues for most of the population?

If the low gravity makes peoples' fitness decay over a decade or two, parents
can't raise their kids, and in fact kids can't develop either.

~~~
jessriedel
What makes you think that 1/3 gravity has long-term health effects? Even zero-
gravity health effects are manageable; they of course lead to temporary
fragility when you return to full Earth gravity, but that's not really a key
issue for a permanent Mars colony.

Providing radiation shielding in an economical and psychologically benign way
seems much more challenging.

~~~
Hasknewbie
Zero-gravity (and by extension low-gravity) health effects are manageable,
but: for months (so far), and by military-grade athletes with the self-
discipline to exercise every single day. This is quite different from: a whole
population, and for many decades.

The long-term health effects of low gravity are not a solved issue as far as I
know: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-
spending...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-spending-
prolong/) [https://www.wired.com/2014/02/happens-body-
mars/](https://www.wired.com/2014/02/happens-body-mars/)

I asked about gravity and not the (many) other issues because we have at least
some hints on how to handle say radiation shielding, however we have no idea
how to change gravity if it does indeed prove to be a blocking point for
permanent settlements.

~~~
jessriedel
First, I don't think the extension of ill-effects to low-gravity is obvious at
all. (I.e., no reason to expect this is linear. The benefits of exercise on
Earth have greatly diminishing returns, and I expect the same for gravity
exposure.) Second, I don't see why we expect ill-effects to go from manageable
to unmanageable with normal people. Astronauts on MIR weren't dropping dead
before the started the rigorous exercise programs.

By all means, file this under "possible, as-yet unquantified risk". It's
certainly conceivable that there is some killer disease the crops up in 1/3
gravity if you don't exercise daily. But right now I don't think we have any
data that's inconsistent with the reasonable first guess that normal people
will be basically fine in 1/3 gravity. (This maybe just a question of what we
mean by "basically". To me, a 10% lowering of life-expectancy is acceptable
and expected when colonizing another planet. The trip itself will probably be
a few percent chance of death.)

On the other hand, we have fairly large, well-quantified risks for radiation
exposure of long-term living on Mars, and we have no obvious way to solve it
without huge concrete structures, underground tunneling, or as-yet-uninvented
magnetic shields. EDIT: Actually, I retract my claim that this is a bigger
worry than low gravity as I am no longer sure. The radiation exposure is less
than I thought, and likely reduces life expectancy by less than 5%.
[https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/1_NAC_HEO_SMD...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/1_NAC_HEO_SMD_Committee_Mars_Radiation_Intro_2015April7_Final_TAGGED.pdf)
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0074988)
[http://www.space.com/18753-mars-radiation-manned-
mission.htm...](http://www.space.com/18753-mars-radiation-manned-mission.html)

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kyriakos
For tldr the general idea is that we'll need self replicating robots to do the
bulk of the work since transportation and human labour is extreme costly.

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spacecity1971
Every analysis I've seen about the Mars settlement problem follows from the
idea that we need to adapt the Martian environment to our needs. Perhaps it is
ourselves that need to adapt. Synthetic bodies may be a better long term
solution; isolate our nervous system in a compact support module, and connect
it via neural interface to xeno-fit bodies.

~~~
Coffeewine
The plot of
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Plus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Plus)
!

~~~
spacecity1971
Ha! Parallel evolution of ideas never ceases to amaze me. Thanks (Have to find
that book now).

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phreeza
How would such a settlement meets its energy needs? How do you bootstrap an
industrial civilisation without fossil fuels? My guess would be that the time
to amortise a solar cell is quite long because of the distance from the sun,
and wind is also not very viable because of the thin atmosphere. So that
really only leaves nuclear?

~~~
fenaer
From the article:

"Copious and reliable electrical power will be required on Mars, provided most
likely by a nuclear fission plant(s) or solar, but is beyond the scope of this
discussion."

~~~
masklinn
Problems are defined as beyond the scope of this discussion, therefore this
plan has no problems.

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salesguy222
Nuking Mars' polar ice caps is a good place to start.

It will force greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, which will promote the
raising of temperatures and formation of liquid water.

Then maybe people will want to live there- the rest will be history :)

~~~
sonium
The problem is really the lack of a magnetic field. Even if you manage to
increase the atmospheric pressure, ionizing particles strip it away. What you
would need to build is a superconducting ring on the equator to generate a
artificial magnetic field. Unfortunatly the amount of material required with
current superconducting materials (for a magnetic field compared to earth's)
is several times the world-production and we don't even know how abundant the
materials are on mars. But we can always hope for a breakthrough in super-
conductance research.

~~~
mrfusion
This has been debunked many times. Even with no magnetic field an atmosphere
can last thousands of years.

