
Colonizing Mars: A Critique of the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System - huragok
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/colonizing-mars
======
nabla9
I don't understand the economics of colonization.

>Following the example of colonial America, let’s pick as the affordability
criterion the property liquidation of a middle-class household, or seven
years’ pay for a working man (say about $300,000 in today’s equivalent terms),
a criterion with which Musk roughly concurs. Most middle-class householders
would prefer to get to Mars in six months at the cost equivalent to one house
instead of getting to Mars in four months at a cost equivalent to three
houses.

Colonization of America was extractive. You send colonists and they survive on
their own and even pay taxes and you get products back. That's not what would
happen on Mars. There is nothing so valuable that it would be worth carrying
back to Earth. At the same time it would take huge amount of money to support
high-tech colony in Mars until it can support itself.

I imagine that the cost of moving people would be insignificant compared to
the "colonization kit" that would enable the colony to become self sufficient.
Developing that kit would probably cost more than all technology needed to
move people to Mars. Just imagine the amount of technology transfer needed to
build and maintain maintain systems for breathable air (air tanks, seals,
valves, inspection equipment, instrumentation, automation electronics) without
help from the Earth. Until Mars settlers can build things in-house, they need
constant economic support from the earth.

ps. We don't even know how to sustain biosphere in closed environment yet.

~~~
olegkikin
Not everything we do is for the monetary incentive.

The goal of Mars colonization is to create a second (eventually) independent
base, so humanity has a chance in case of a catastrophic event.

I'd say even if it costs a trillion dollars, it's worth it. US GDP is what, 18
trillion per year?

~~~
mortenjorck
Worst case scenario, what would that actually be like? A few hundred people
who gave up their lives on earth to live in habitats on an inhospitable planet
one day learn that the worst fear of the 20th century came true, and there's
nobody left back home. It's just them, the only remaining sentient beings in
the known universe, without 99% of the technology that got them where they are
now.

How could they even begin to try to rebuild civilization when they can't even
go outside without an apparatus that took thousands of years of science to
produce? What is the speed divisor for advancement of a society marooned on a
world it didn't evolve to live on?

I'm all for Mars colonization, but as a backup plan for Homo sapiens, it kind
of sucks.

~~~
mrfusion
That's kind of a straw man. Musk envisions a city of a million. No one claims
a few hundred is a viable back up.

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haalcion3
> SpaceX has no prospect of being able to afford the very large investment —
> at least $10 billion — required to develop a launch vehicle of this scale.

Adjusted for inflation, US gov't spent the equivalent of $65 billion/yr in the
1960's to get a man to the moon:

[http://www.popsci.com/real-cost-nasa-missions](http://www.popsci.com/real-
cost-nasa-missions)

~~~
qaq
I remember Musk sayin the primary purpose of accumulating wealth for him was
so he can fund this project.

------
marze
The SpaceX Mars architecture: it is the answer to an unknown question, an
artifact from the future time traveling back to the present. The objectives
and constraints that were used in the design process are not revealed. It is
like Phouchg and Loonquawl getting the answer 42 from Deep Thought. People
generally have no clue what to make of it.

I'd guess that if the objectives and constraints used in the design process
were revealed, it would all make complete sense. Elon has a track record of
making technical and business decisions that turn out to be 100% correct in
retrospect. The epic size of the vehicles are a feature, not a bug, for
instance.

~~~
fizixer
Ok I'll mention the elephant in the room.

Musk has been surprisingly silent (or has seriously downplayed) on the
radiation question, which is a pretty big deal for travel beyond earth's
magnetosphere.

But here's the thing, IMO: Musk is offering ITS as a transport facility,
nothing more, nothing less. If you have payload (a living human) that is
fragile (sensitive to radiation) you bring your own extra styrofoam (you
include weight of shielding water or lead or what have you as part of the
payload).

But if he says that out loud, it'll hurt the momentum of the movement.

So there you have it.

~~~
mden
If I remember correctly from the presentation, Must claimed radiation was not
a significant concern with the exception of things like solar flares. Can
anyone comment on the accuracy of that?

~~~
snrplfth
Well, it's not _nice_ out there, but hardly crippling. Cosmic radiation on the
ISS is about 150 milliSieverts a year. Interplanetary space could get up to
about 800 mSv a year. Not good, but if you can get there in, say, three
months, then you've cut your exposure down to what an ISS crewmember would get
in a year. The actual danger is solar flares, and for that you'll need some
kind of shielding compartment onboard. The ISS is reasonably well-protected
from those, but they'll really roast you if you're caught in interplanetary
space.

~~~
djokkataja
I think Musk mentioned it somewhere in the presentation, but the initial plan
for shielding if you're aware that there's going to be a solar flare is to
angle the spaceship so that the engines are between the Sun and the crew
compartment, and then have everyone packed near the water tank... or something
along those lines (it might have been in response to a question in the Q&A
time afterwards; I don't remember).

I don't know that they'll have this on the first trips there, but I'd guess
that magnetic shields might eventually be a standard component:

[http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3772/how-much-
power...](http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3772/how-much-power-would-
a-spacecrafts-magnetic-shield-require)

~~~
SolarNet
I mean authors have been using that idea for years. The Red Mars trilogy for
example (which was an _at the time_ scientifically accurate example of mars
colonization).

~~~
wott
Each of the stuff for which we read here people jumping and yelling
"visionary!" "revolutionary!" "unforeseen breakthrough!" "brand new plan!"
"disruptive improvement!", has been dealt with dozen of times in hundreds of
SF novels in the last 80 years, which explored all the possible problems
(problems are a more exciting matter for a novel than everything-goes-fine-
and-as-planned).

But since for most of those people, SF and anticipation is limited to Star-
Wars + a couple of other movies/series and super-hero block-busters, they are
not aware, and all these stuff appear as genuinely unprecedented technical and
sociological thought breakthrough.

------
M_Grey
To be honest, I'm still hung up on the lack of viable radiation shielding, a
way to protect people from the harmful effects of microgravity, and
micrometeorite impacts. I don't doubt that given time and experience, payloads
can be sent to Mars, I just doubt that functional, healthy humans can be under
this kind of scheme.

~~~
ceejayoz
The amount of radiation received on a Earth-Mars trip gives a cancer risk
roughly that of being a smoker. Not awesome, but certainly survivable. Plus, a
hundred people's worth of water stored in the walls should make a pretty nice
shield (not to mention the propellant tanks, which they plan to aim at the Sun
to absorb the brunt of radiation).

People already stay on the ISS two to four times as long as Musk's proposed
travel time to Mars, and they'll be landing somewhere with a third of Earth's
gravity. They might all need to hang out for a day or two to get their Mars
legs, but I don't see an issue here either.

Micrometeorite impacts haven't done the ISS any appreciable damage in its
nearly 20 year service history. Again, doesn't seem like a problem.

~~~
erikpukinskis
It's not really the trip that worries me, it's living on Mars. You need to
live under five meters of soil in order to get the same radiation protection
as Earth's atmosphere provides. You're basically mole people. Which means the
difference between living on Mars and living in windowless apartment complex
on Earth is that you can do a couple space suit jaunts through the Martian
deserts each week.

People can definitely survive living almost entirely indoors. I expect VR will
be big on Mars. But I think the lack of natural light will really limit the
comfort level.

If someone can invent an invisible electromagnetic radiation shield that would
change the game.

~~~
elihu
Artificial light isn't the best, but it can be made to resemble daylight; I
don't see that as a show-stopper.

If we can find some nice lava tubes that can be sealed and pressurized, it
might make for some rather spacious dwellings. But yes, I expect the first
Martians to effectively be mole people.

I imagine living on Mars would be a lot like living in a place like Whittier
Alaska [1] (a town where everyone lives in the same building). Not for
everyone, but some people might like it.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2015/01/18/378162264/welcome-to-
whittier-...](http://www.npr.org/2015/01/18/378162264/welcome-to-whittier-
alaska-a-community-under-one-roof)

~~~
M_Grey
Sounds like a recipe for madness, suicide, and homicide to me, especially
given the lack of escape.

------
exBarrelSpoiler
Robert Zubrin has been planning for Martian colonization for decades. He's
like the Kurzweil for the movement, his Mars Society has been on a quixotic
quest. Hopefully SpaceX hires him on as a consultant.

~~~
100ideas
I would hire Kim Stanley Robinson first :)

~~~
T-A
For Mars? I doubt it: "It’s important to say that the idea of Mars as a
lifeboat is wrong, in both a practical and a moral sense." ... "My feeling now
is that faced with the extreme expense, technical challenge, and danger of
going to Mars, interest is going to shift to the moon as a destination that
can actually be reached and occupied during some of our lifetimes."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/why-
elon-m...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/why-elon-musk-s-
mars-vision-needs-some-real-imagination)

~~~
snrplfth
Ah, Kim Stanley Robinson. Smart guy. If only he understood any economics, at
all.

~~~
100ideas
Hydrazine is the new gold standard.

------
DennisP
It's interesting to see that water on Mars has 6x the deuterium concentration
of water on Earth.

It's unlikely to be a worthwhile export though. One in 2500 hydrogen atoms in
Earth's oceans is deuterium. There's enough in your morning shower to provide
all your energy needs for a year, and enough overall to run civilization until
the sun goes out.

Isolating the deuterium takes some effort, but it's not terrible, and
certainly easier than transporting it from Mars, even if isolating it on Mars
were free.

------
elihu
I'm glad Zubrin brings up the economics of Mars colonization, since that's
easy to neglect. Once you're there, how do you make money?

Mining might be lucrative if Mars has gold or platinum or some valuable
mineral that's easy to extract and worth more than its shipping cost back to
Earth.

I'm skeptical that patents are going to be a major export. Inhabitants of Mars
presumably will have better uses of their time than filing patents, and they
would be competing against Earth-bound innovators against whom they don't have
any particular advantage other than necessity. (Ideally, Mars wouldn't itself
even be subject to patent law.)

Space Tourism will be a thing unless there's some explicit policy to prevent
wealthy thrill-seekers from going to Mars if they don't plan on doing any
actual work while they're there.

Science and exploration might be valuable professions. Like, if people on
Earth put bids on locations, saying "I'll give you a thousand dollars if you
drive your rover out to this location and take a few pictures and pick up some
rock samples". Mining companies might be especially interested, but so would
Earth-bound scientists who just want to know more about Mars.

Real-estate speculation might be another cottage industry. Developers are
going to want to establish homesteads in valuable locations, and then they can
sell adjacent lots to newcomers. (This assumes some kind of sane framework for
land ownership. Hopefully such a thing will strike a sensible balance between
being able to claim "dibs" on entire landscapes vs not having property rights
at all.) As long as the population of Mars is growing, this could be a
lucrative profession.

------
pmoriarty
One serious danger I haven't heard anyone mention mention in regards to the
Mars colonization project (though it was considered to some extent in Arthur C
Clarke's _" Contact"_ and probably some other science fiction) is the
possibility of terrorism against either the fragile spacecraft or colony.

Musk has said there will be no screening of the Mars colonists, and that
anyone could go. That means someone who's mentally unstable and/or wants to
make a name for himself (ala Herostratus[1] or any number of modern publicity-
seeking terrorists and murderers) could go and attempt to harm the spacecraft
or colony, both of which would be incredibly vulnerable to such intentional
attempts at destruction and are guaranteed to get massive publicity were they
to be destroyed or even merely attacked.

This could become even more likely if living on Mars long-term actually
becomes viable, and people wind up spending decades on there. Some people will
likely go stir-crazy and attempt to harm themselves and/or others.

People who are allowed to go live in Antarctica or out in to space are
currently screened very carefully to be compatible with each other and able to
psychologically withstand the rigors of life there, and the relative
isolation. But there will be no such screening for the Mars colonists,
according to Musk, and the isolation and danger on Mars will be even worse
than it is in Antarctica.

The isolation and danger will be hugely stressful and difficult to deal with
over the decades people will live on Mars. I've read that even in Antarctica,
people are rotated out within a year or so because of the psychological
difficulties of living there, and no one's been in space for much more than a
year.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus)

------
sssilver
If humanity somehow managed to build a self-sustaining long-term colony on
Mars, it'd be fascinating to watch how the martian humans would evolve over
the next million years.

~~~
Hondor
Probably no more fascinating than what we've seen of human evolution on Earth
already. If you were living that far in the future, the differences between
Earth people and Mars people would be mundane common sense to you already,
just as we're not fascinated by how different chimpanzees are to humans.

------
pixie_
Musk said 5% of SpaceX is working on the project and that number will increase
over time. That's already 250 of the smartest engineers in the world working
full-time on the Mars project. They've already test fired the Raptor engine
for the rocket and produced a full scale tank of the fuselage for testing.
These guys aren't going for 'exploration' like Zubrin wants, they're going for
full scale colonization.

Every ship produced is a new member of the fleet that continually moves
between both planets. Opening up an interplanetary transportation corridor. If
you're someone with the spirit of a colonist, an explorer, an adventure seeker
(there are many in the world with that attitude) then Mars is going to be the
place you want to prove yourself on. It is romantic, risky, badass, and there
are no shortage of people who are going to take the challenge.

An ever increasing number of ships leave every 2 years, and you always have
the option to come back. I can easily see people doing fundraisers to go,
universities offering scholarships, governments setting up stations to claim
some land, companies sponsoring infrastructure projects to say they have a
presence on Mars, etc..

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Musk said 5% of SpaceX is working on the project and that number will
increase over time. That's already 250 of the smartest engineers in the world
working full-time on the Mars project."_

Correction: some of the smartest engineers in the US, maybe. But US laws don't
allow SpaceX to hire anyone from outside the US.

~~~
Inconel
It is actually possible to get ITAR exceptions for candidates who aren't US
Persons. I know there are engineers at SpaceX from the UK, Canada, and I'm
pretty sure Australia as well. It is a pretty long and expensive process from
what I understand so it is used only for those with very specific skills or
knowledge. I'm sure it would also be quite a bit harder or impossible for
candidates from China/Russia or less "friendly" nations.

This of course isn't to imply that SpaceX has a monopoly on talented
engineers, I'm sure they exist all over the world.

