Martian Futures, Will man really colonize the planets? |
Martian Futures, Will man really colonize the planets? |
Guest_DonPMitchell_* |
Jul 16 2006, 11:39 PM
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This started out as a reply on the thread about the Bigelow Aerospace station, and why I think it may be goofy, but it is still a step in the right direction.
Space exploration is a magnet for crank science. It's nearly impossible to talk about something like intersteller propulsion and keep people on the same page as real-world physics and engineering. And it's even more difficult to talk about far-reaching ideas like colonizing planets without drifting into the realm of science fiction. But here I go anyway. Consider the famous scenes in 2001, where a NASA official flies to a beautiful space station operated by Pan Am airlines and then on to a Lunar colony. You're looking at a simulated trillion dollar infrastructure, but why was it built? Who is using it? Who is paying for it? How does it make money? What are people doing on the Moon that is worth all this? These are issues that science fiction simply overlooks. As in 2001, the analogy is often drawn between the airline industry and a future spaceflight industry. The difference is, on the Earth there are real destinations to fly to. There are countless social and economic reasons to travel from one populated region to another on the Earth. This is not the same as spending billions of dollars to fly to Mars, pick up a rock and return to Earth. For spaceflight to be practical and large-scale, there must be a reason, there must be a destination. People talk about things like mining helium-3 on the Moon. Both technically and economically that's nonsense. At present, there is nothing remotely valuable enough to pay for the cost of mining and interplanetary transport. But more importantly, these ideas represents a fundamental misconception about wealth, in the sense defined by Adam Smith. Real estate is valuable because people want to live there and work there. Human activity is the true definition of wealth, and human presence is what makes a destination interesting. Thus, colonizing space is a bootstrapping problem. it is a problem in economics, not engineering. If Mars had an atmosphere and a population, it would be of incalculable value, and people would pay to travel there and back. But how do reach that point? The technology of cheaper travel and terriforming Mars is fascinating to speculate about. I believe it could be done almost entirely with robotic technology. But that is not what blocks us from proceeding. The real problem is developing a mechanism for funding, when there is a huge return on investment but a turnaround time of centuries. You would have to create a Martian Futures Market that people have genuine confidence in -- a serious enterprise that makes steady progress, backed by corporations with proven expertise and probably at least one first-world government. Maybe you have to engage people's territorial and competative instincts. Let's say America declared that it was going to unilaterally colonize Mars and annex it? After the obligatory student protest marches all over the world, I believe other nations might start a competing program! And then it's hard for anyone to back down. If both programs make enough progress, investors will want them to merge and cooperate eventually. It is just too expensive to duplicate the effort. |
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Jul 17 2006, 03:52 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Everyone is making good points, here.
Don, you're absolutely correct that there needs to be a motivation for human expansion into the solar system that will attract a long-term investment process. David, you're absolutely correct that people have, in the past (and more and more as time has gone on) *created* destinations where none had previously existed. Destinations that, until they were created, did not posess what anyone would have seen as any intrinsic economic value. Jason, you're absolutely correct that there have historically been other motivators for colonialism, especially religious grounds. One quick look at a newspaper, or ten minutes watching headlines on TV news, will tell you that modern human civilization is still just as contentious over its varying religious beliefs as it's ever been -- and our level of technology (and sheer numbers) have made the consequences that much more threatening to all of us. I think that, in the end, it may all come down to a resources issue. We are not really close to running out of most metals on Earth, but we are close to running out of some easily-accessed metals and other materials. I read somewhere that most of the soft iron within easy mining range, across the entire globe, was mined out during WWII. Since then we have been expending more time and energy than before, getting our iron out of harder ores such as taconite. If we could somehow demonstrate that terrestrial sources of various metals and other useful (or essential) materials will become harder and harder to find, we can begin to convince people (especially those people who control the money) that we will not only require extra-terrestrial resources within a given span of time, we need to start working *now* to develop the technologies needed to make access to those resources economical enough to make their use possible. The hardest thing about this, of course, is that it requires people to think more long-term than human nature usually pressures us to think. And any plan that starts with the basic tenet that "all we need to do is change human nature, just a little tiny bit..." will *always* fail. No exceptions. However, if we're gonna utilize extra-terrestrial resources in the future, I think we *have* to start with the asteroids. Energy requirements to get to and from a lot of near-Earth bodies aren't that much more than getting to Mars (and in some cases are less), light-time lags are shorter, allowing more ground control of early robotic probes, you don't have nearly as large a gravity well to climb into or out of to get to, and remove, their metals... and as you end up with manned mining colonies on the larger rocks, you have nice, big rock piles to shield their crews from cosmic rays. I would much rather see the first manned trip out of the Earth-Moon system to be headed towards an asteroid, rather than towards Mars. But that's just my opinion... -the other Doug -------------------- The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right. -Mark Twain
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