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Martian Futures, Will man really colonize the planets?
Guest_DonPMitchell_*
post 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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David
post Jul 18 2006, 07:48 PM
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My own imagination of the form that solar system exploration / exploitation will take is perhaps a little different from some of the other assumptions. My imagination doesn't leap ahead to planetary colonies, because there seems to be so much to do in the interim, so many unanswered questions, so much to learn about the nature of the solar system first. In the past you couldn't know very much about the lands you were going to explore without going there first. Now we have robot explorers. I'm sure that if Ferdinand and Isabella could have sent a remotely controlled ship across the Atlantic to scout and map the area, they would have.

So the first order of business, it seems to me, is to map the solar system: learn all we can about its major bodies, what their topography is, their geological history, their atmosphere (if any), what they are made of, what potential resources there are for future human travelers. We're just beginning to acquire this information about Mars, and even our knowledge of the Moon isn't quite as good as it should be. Other planets and satellites remain largely unknown and unmapped to the extent that space travelers would find useful. If I send a human being to another solar system body, I want to know where he (or she) is going to land, what the conditions of the landing are going to be like -- and, of course, what she (or he) is going to do there. Imagine if we'd tried sending a human being to land on Mars in the 1990s, only to have the lander crash because we didn't understand the Martian atmosphere well enough. And much the same could be said with respect to the characteristics of other planets.

For the manned space program, there are quite a lot of things to do yet that are (relatively) low risk while the unmanned program does the job of mapping the system; returning to the Moon, for one thing, and for a more adventurous program, a series of "landings" on small Near-Earth asteroids.

Assuming we conquer the problems of long-term radiation exposure, and bone density loss, and all the other things that make moving biological organisms through space so much more difficult than doing the same with machines, I think we'll start with non-permanent visits. We may not even start by landing on the planets themselves. If we decide to go to Venus, for instance, landing is obviously out of the question. That doesn't preclude a scientific investigation of the planet. I'd suggest creating a large interplanetary spaceship with attached remote probes as well as a return vehicle. This spaceship could be put into permanent orbit around Venus as a space station, from which astronauts could directly control the landers, balloons, or what have you without that unpleasant time lag. Other astronauts in smaller craft could relieve those already stationed, because quite frankly, nobody wants to live on a space station for the rest of his or her life, while supplies and additional probes could be sent without human accompaniment.

I think this model of human-staffed scientific exploration stations can be repeated throughout the solar system, and that's the model of human exploration which would have to precede any type of colonization, even on Mars. Mars luckily has its own two "space stations", bigger than anything we could build, already in orbit, and they could serve as platforms for further exploration. This type of exploration also addresses, at least initially, the question of contamination, if it turns out the Mars has some form of microscopic life.

On Mars, again, I think nobody will want a permanent assignment there at first. A good deal of hardware will have to be trucked to Mars, both to make sure that people who land on Mars have adequate supplies and shelter to stay more than a few days, and also to make sure they can get off again! Surface stations would, I think, start out as mere adjuncts to stations in space (or on Phobos) and crews would be regularly rotated out and home again. By that time, we should have been able to figure out -- on our Moon -- whether it's really practicable to maintain humans in space outposts indefinitely. If it is practicable, and if Mars has the resources necessary to maintain human life with minimal resupply, then we could move forward to colonization in the sense of having outposts permanent enough that new generations of human beings grow up on other planets. But that is not a concept for the immediate future.

As for "terraforming" -- at the moment I have to put this sort of project in the same sort of column with grandiose schemes for moving asteroids, changing planetary orbits, building artificial shells around stars, and interstellar travel -- it's so far out of the range of the possible as to produce useful speculation only for fiction (like the four centuries of imaginative, but eminently impractical, fictional "voyages to the moon"). Human beings who explore the solar system are going to be confined to artificial habitats for thousands of years, and that's something that needs to be taken into account.

I'd like to see human beings on Mars; heck, I'd like to see human beings poking around the rubble of the Kuiper Belt. But there are very real problems other than "political will", or "failure of imagination", and they have to be addressed. Additional funding won't make all of them go away. I can't align my imagination either with that of the extreme pessimists, who argue that humans are bound to Earth for eternity, or the extreme optimists, who think that we're just one Big Check away from a fully-functional manned Mars program and Martian colonies.

The one thing I do miss is a long-term, flexible plan -- presumably, a multi-century plan -- for exploring the whole solar system, that could be the context and justification for the things that a space program needs to do in the very near term. But there's a good deal of justification for focusing on the near-term things and not on the more distant and speculative goals.
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- DonPMitchell   Martian Futures   Jul 16 2006, 11:39 PM
- - David   Isn't that getting ahead of the game? Coloniz...   Jul 17 2006, 01:15 AM
- - volcanopele   As David alluded to, I think that many of the same...   Jul 17 2006, 02:00 AM
|- - Stephen   QUOTE (volcanopele @ Jul 17 2006, 02:00 A...   Jul 17 2006, 12:33 PM
- - dvandorn   Everyone is making good points, here. Don, you...   Jul 17 2006, 03:52 AM
- - hendric   Tourism is a viable enterprise for many locations ...   Jul 17 2006, 04:10 AM
|- - Stephen   QUOTE (hendric @ Jul 17 2006, 04:10 AM) T...   Jul 18 2006, 07:54 AM
|- - David   QUOTE (Stephen @ Jul 18 2006, 07:54 AM) T...   Jul 18 2006, 05:12 PM
|- - climber   QUOTE (David @ Jul 18 2006, 07:12 PM) How...   Jul 18 2006, 05:34 PM
|- - Stephen   QUOTE (David @ Jul 18 2006, 05:12 PM) How...   Jul 19 2006, 01:18 AM
||- - climber   QUOTE (Stephen @ Jul 19 2006, 03:18 AM) I...   Jul 19 2006, 07:01 AM
|- - climber   QUOTE (David @ Jul 18 2006, 07:12 PM) The...   Jul 19 2006, 11:50 AM
- - hendric   dvandorn, I dunno. There are so many resources ...   Jul 17 2006, 04:18 AM
- - DonPMitchell   I think the science of colonizing Mars is pretty s...   Jul 17 2006, 09:39 AM
- - Stephen   QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ Jul 16 2006, 11:39 ...   Jul 17 2006, 11:19 AM
- - Stephen   A few stray thoughts on Martian colonisation and i...   Jul 17 2006, 11:39 AM
- - DonPMitchell   It is not a foregone conclusion that mankind will ...   Jul 17 2006, 06:05 PM
|- - Marz   QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ Jul 17 2006, 01:05 ...   Jul 17 2006, 09:38 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Oh, where to begin? There *are* motivations other...   Jul 17 2006, 09:48 PM
- - Toma B   We will never live on Mars...sadly but that's ...   Jul 18 2006, 06:36 AM
|- - djellison   B)-->QUOTE(Toma B @ Jul 18 2006, 07:36 AM...   Jul 18 2006, 06:52 AM
- - DonPMitchell   You might see tourist trade for low Earth orbit, i...   Jul 18 2006, 08:11 AM
- - djellison   Something like the deployed area of the ISS array ...   Jul 18 2006, 08:30 AM
- - climber   I agree on solar panel the way you say Doug. They...   Jul 18 2006, 09:53 AM
- - David   My own imagination of the form that solar system e...   Jul 18 2006, 07:48 PM
- - DonPMitchell   I pretty much agree with you David, although I hav...   Jul 19 2006, 12:25 AM
- - DonPMitchell   I think what most people are agreeing on, whether ...   Jul 19 2006, 03:06 AM
- - ljk4-1   Move Into Space, but Where? http://www.kurzweilai...   Sep 26 2006, 02:07 PM
- - MarkG   QUOTE We will never live on Mars...sadly but that...   Oct 3 2006, 11:55 PM
- - PhilCo126   You can be sure mankind will move to Mars and beyo...   Nov 7 2006, 08:49 PM
- - J.J.   Great post, DonPMitchell. <<Consider the fa...   Nov 11 2006, 11:13 PM
- - PhilCo126   This is nice ! http://manconquersspace.com/   Nov 12 2006, 05:07 PM
|- - Stu   QUOTE (PhilCo126 @ Nov 12 2006, 05:07 PM)...   Nov 12 2006, 05:57 PM
||- - nprev   QUOTE (Stu @ Nov 12 2006, 09:57 AM) Oh wo...   Nov 14 2006, 02:08 AM
|||- - Stu   QUOTE (nprev @ Nov 14 2006, 02:08 AM) Lov...   Nov 14 2006, 06:33 AM
||- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (Stu @ Nov 12 2006, 05:57 PM) Oh wo...   Dec 24 2006, 11:02 PM
||- - nprev   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Dec 24 2006, 03:02 PM) ...   Dec 25 2006, 12:47 AM
||- - Stu   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Dec 24 2006, 11:02 PM) ...   Jan 14 2007, 09:01 AM
|- - lyford   QUOTE (PhilCo126 @ Nov 12 2006, 09:07 AM)...   Nov 14 2006, 03:40 AM
- - djellison   I've followed MCS for a few years - the lenths...   Nov 12 2006, 06:10 PM
- - nprev   Oh, man...I'm drooling!!! THIS wil...   Nov 12 2006, 06:32 PM
- - nprev   Yeah...but what a great idea! This is EXACTLY ...   Nov 14 2006, 04:08 AM
- - lyford   Don't forget the cast member-plot device that ...   Nov 14 2006, 07:13 AM
- - PhilCo126   Two more ‘ Martian future ‘ weblinks: http://www....   Nov 14 2006, 06:00 PM
- - nprev   At the risk of sounding overly optimistic, this fi...   Nov 15 2006, 02:39 AM
- - PhilCo126   Just sharing another great website with superb com...   Dec 8 2006, 08:06 PM
- - PhilCo126   And: http://www.marsproject.com/tour.htm   Dec 24 2006, 03:15 PM
- - MaxSt   http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn10...s-mis...   Jan 14 2007, 07:36 AM
- - Stu   Talking about "Futures", the poet Diane ...   Jan 14 2007, 09:57 AM
- - Myran   QUOTE MaxSt wrote: The figure is a bit off, don...   Jan 15 2007, 05:07 PM
- - dvandorn   Steve Squyres came up with a ratio of MER time to ...   Jan 15 2007, 05:43 PM
|- - JonClarke   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 15 2007, 05:43 PM) ...   Jan 21 2008, 07:46 AM
- - lyford   If you told MER and a human geologist to go sample...   Jan 15 2007, 11:09 PM
- - MaxSt   I believe Steve also said that 2 rovers at 2 diffe...   Jan 17 2007, 03:02 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Humans and rovers would both have a role to play, ...   Jan 17 2007, 12:47 PM
- - mps   Some more russian pipe dreams. Last time it was to...   Jan 8 2008, 12:13 PM
- - PhilCo126   Colonize Mars? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ne...   Jul 13 2008, 10:32 AM
- - imipak   All these points and counterpoints are well laid o...   Jul 13 2008, 02:02 PM


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