The Space Review: Echoes from the past: the Mars dilemma Comments

Thomas Matula

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 21:50:05 +0000

The Harvard Business Case approach has its limits and if it was strictly followed a lot of the things we take for granted like aviation, the Internet, space flight, social media and smart phones might never exist. There was no business case for the Wright Brothers at first, they just wanted to fly. It was afterward they looked at how to make money doing so. This is why I expect so many folks have trouble understanding Elon Musk and SpaceX. They are trying to fit settlement of Mars into the modern corporate view of the world whereas Elon Musk is one of those visionaries that follows his instincts and beliefs. Your business case model only applies if he was trying to find corporate investors or borrow from banks. From what I have heard neither is part of his strategy. Also as far as colonies go, if I recall there wasn't much of a business case for the original Mormon Colony in Utah. It was basically a case of following Brigham Young if you did want to be lynched and hoping for the best. The same could be said for Iceland and the various Polynesian islands. Even the business case for the first English settlements was questionable at the start. BTW, although Mars has an atmosphere it is not thick enough to prevent railguns from working. You just need to streamline your payload, coat it to protect against the heat and allow for atmospheric resistance in your design. It is doable if more difficult than the Moon but much easier than the Earth where there have been a number of proposals for building railguns for launching basic commodities to orbit. The problem has not been the technology being impossible, but that there is no demand at the moment for such systems.

TheRadicalModerate

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 20:56:13 +0000

You can't start a colony without a business case. Without some kind of profit being thrown off by the enterprise--or at least the ability to break even--a colony is subject to Stein's Law: "If something can't go on forever, it will stop." Unlike asteroid mining or a space colony, Mars doesn't even have the advantage of being at the top of gravity well. Unlike the Moon, it can't eventually launch payloads by railgun--even if there were something to launch. Other than a vague hope that it might be terraformed one day, it's the least promising piece of real estate in the solar system. So its sole exports will be information, trading on an areology data set of exceedingly finite value, and the sheer coolness of living on Mars, which can be parlayed into some limited amount of entertainment value--get ready for "Real Housewives of Chryse Planitia"! But there's no way that this is going to throw off a revenue stream to balance the half-billion a year that will be necessary to keep the thing afloat, to say nothing of the R&D investment to do it in the first place. Musk has to know this; he's a smart guy. So what's he up to? I can only think of two things: 1) Blind faith, of the "if you build it they will come" variety. Maybe he's chosen this to break his pick on, in the hope of serendipity. 2) It's a loss-leader, intended to enable a much larger market elsewhere. My bet's on #2. Generate enough excitement about Mars, even temporarily, and you've got a reason (and some support) to build up launch tempo for an ultra-heavy lift system. And where there's tempo, there's reliability and predictability. That allows other companies to think up lots of nifty things to do with the ability to throw 100t to LEO at sub-$500/kg prices. Unlike a colony on Mars, I suspect that there are a whole bunch of applications for for 100t payloads with launch costs at about $50M. But the only way to get your investors to build that kind of capability may be to hang it on something that may ultimately be quixotic, but have just enough of a PR shelf life to make the whole thing possible. Note that this theory isn't inconsistent with John's question about how SpaceX survives in a market that's increasingly oriented at small payloads. If your bread-and-butter business is about to fall victim to a host of lighter, cheaper competitors, maybe it's time to move up-market, even if that requires creating the market from scratch. If the cost of the capability to have space colonies, SSPSes, Moon colonies, and asteroid mining is a sad little outpost on Mars that fades away after 20 years of so, that sounds like a pretty reasonable price to pay. And who knows? Maybe if Elon builds it, they really will come.

Neil aka BCFDU

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 12:16:18 +0000

Well after reading the above posts I've come to the radical conclusion that no one has a good idea of what EM has in mind. This is not surprising to me anyway. However that being said, I think that Sept' will be quite surprising. One thing is pretty plain and that is that SpaceX has been on a single journey to Mars since its inception. It's the entire reason for its existence. Everything they've done has been to support this cause. EM is fanatical about this and drives his people to achieving this and it would seem that he believes he has or has access to resources sufficient for at least the next stage. Good luck EM, I'm rooting for you. Bring on September. Cheers

Alex Tolley

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 04:38:22 +0000

Nitpick. The movie "Destination Monn" doesn't end with the rocket returning and landing on Earth. It stops as it is about to reenter the Earth's atmosphere.

observation

Thu, 9 Jun 2016 16:44:23 +0000

Its all about the money - without it no-one goes...so the only question is will Musk have enough. Eventually yes - near future - unknown. Still a ton of support work to be done before we are close to going with a proven ability to 'live off the land'. And being of retirement age - no - no way in h*ll I'll spend a lifetime's worth of work for a trip to Mars. Most folks my age and older are decidedly into their comfort, families and assured medical care. Space exploration will be for the young...and will not happen on the financial backs of the old.

ghk1

Thu, 9 Jun 2016 01:14:23 +0000

I think of Musk as the Juan Terry Trippe of our age. Trippe wanted to build an intercontinental airline when there were few airlines and few people had ever flown intercontinental anywhere. He had to get the manufacturers to build big airplanes-flying boats initially and later multi-engine piston land planes, and eventually jet airliners and eventually jumbo jets. But before he could put an airline in place he had to establish fuel and spare parts depots, resort hotels so that passengers had places to stay, For forty years he was hugely successful. It was in large measure due to his foresight that we got jet passenger planes, and jumbo jets, and air travel to a wide variety of exotic locations and the airline infrastructure we have today..

Dave Robinson

Wed, 8 Jun 2016 18:53:25 +0000

Going all the way back to the article: There's nothing stopping SpaceX from deploying multiple satellites on the same launch, they've already done it. SpaceX can already serve the small satellite market, and with a fully reusable BFR/MCT they should be able to serve it even more cost-effectively, and do it without giving up the heavy lift market. The whole point of BFR/MCT is that it's going to be cheaper in absolute terms than F9/FH. Yes, the plan is 100MT to Mars, but if the system is cheap enough it's going to drive out competitors even in the small launch market. As for Swala, it's about 1% of the threat to SpaceX that putting an upper stage on an upgraded New Shepard would be. The big advantage of propulsive VTVL is that most of the mass cost of the system is additional propellant; you're not adding additional major systems, just carrying more fuel.

andrewrlong

Wed, 8 Jun 2016 04:32:54 +0000

>> "we haven't been back to the Moon because there is no good reason to do so" LOL

Michael Ross

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 23:39:47 +0000

Musk has some interesting ideas about Mars.He says commerce between Earth and Mars is unlikely - too expensive. Mining would be for use in the Solar System, but it is far easier to access minerals on Earth than to drop them through the gravity well. He envisions a self supporting Mars based colony. Likewise he thinks mining asteroids for earthly use is a non starter. The consensus seems to be put a large water reservoir between the colonizers and the suns radiation. The water is needed and can be a sufficient radiation shield. It is clear that travelers can transit to Mars without gravity and not be harmed. Proven on the ISS that the time necessary is doable. I haven't heard what the lower gravity of Mars might do long term. The Falcon Heavy use is largely designed into the Falcon 9 boosters and second stage. Not that they can't change their minds. That does make successfully launching Falcon Heavy a more likely and less risky proposition - with reusable components to keep costs down..

DougSpace

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 21:43:42 +0000

Shouldn't we start by considering Musk's own explanation for how missions to Mars will be paid for? He has clearly stated on several occasions that we wants to get the price of a ticket down to about $500,000 because that is how much money an upper middle class person could come up with by selling their home and other assets and then move to Mars. So, presumably we're talking retirees here. These people wouldn't be moving with profit in mind. Their accumulated wealth would pay for the support of the settlement. We don't need to speculate upon the value of exported Martian rocks. The money would have been made at another time and place in Earth markets. We may not find the idea of retiring on Mars to be appealing. But we're irrelevant. The real question is, "How many other people are there that would be interested in doing so"?

Urgelt

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 19:57:07 +0000

Naw. The author isn't wrong to point to a rising market for small satellites, but he misses the point of developing a heavy lift capability. It's not Mars. It's everything else. Customers for heavy lift include science missions (government-funded). Falcon Heavy will be able to send cargoes anywhere in the solar system - anywhere, and do it far more cheaply than any existing launch capability. Cheaper launch equals more science missions. There is a huge backlog of such missions left unfunded, mainly because launch is so expensive. But some *are* funded. Their costs will fall as Space-X's cheaper launch capability is harnessed (and other launch providers are crowded out), which means more missions can be funded. Space-X will hijack revenue streams and permit more to be accomplished with them. But even that is only a first step. As robotics advances, prospecting for useful mass in microgravity, from near-Earth orbit objects all the way out to the Oort Cloud, will become interesting. The point isn't to bring the mass back to Earth, but to use it to construct space infrastructure. Solar arrays, radio telescopes, transport vehicles that we don't have to lift out of Earth's gravity well, even colonies, eventually. We probably won't ever be able to afford to lift mass from Earth to build and sustain colonies, but we can lift the robots to do the job for us using materials already in space. You can't think conventionally about capitalism and get very far with space colonization as a concept. Capitalism, even as practiced by Silicon Valley venture capitalists, has a short time horizon guiding decisions. A longer view is required. But the advantages of that longer view could be transformational for the species - and not solely because of the 'put your eggs in multiple baskets' argument. With a long enough time horizon, you can think about things like terraforming Mars by bombarding it with comets captured in the Oort Cloud and nudged inward to impact on the surface of Mars, heating it up, thickening its atmosphere, adding to available water. You can think about robots building underground cities on Mars (which could take decades, at least), *then* sending colonists. On Earth, the benefits of the technology developed for these purposes will have use locally, and will turn a profit, too. Why bother? Science. From our little corner of the universe we can't see enough. We can see more if we build out a space infrastructure - a *lot* more. With no atmosphere to get in the way, with few limits on the size of instruments we can build from space resources and robots, with no need to lift most of the mass to accomplish goals in space, the sky's the limit.

Ray Parker

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 17:11:48 +0000

Elon Musk has said it, Stephen Hawking has said it ... if we don't find a way off of this planet the human race is doomed. Asteroid strike, run-away global warming, nuclear winter, malevolent AI, antibiotic resistant superbug or some other calamity will eventually take us out. One of the reasons I like Musk so much is that it seems his business decisions are tempered with a desire to do well by humanity. Perhaps through his incredible work with SpaceX a small colony can be established on Mars that will serve as our "Ace in the hole" should unthinkable tragedy ever strike.

Lee

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 16:03:20 +0000

In another thread, some posited that Musk's reason for going to Mars, and why he could make a profit off of doing so, were related to transporting goods to and from Mars. My comments on that thread apply just as well here: Let's think about how this "transport" profit motive would work. For it to involve profit, someone has to pay Musk for the flights. How many flights would be required? Let's assume that at least for the first few earth years, each colonist would need 500kg/earth year (which seems ridiculously low to me). If we have 50 colonists (which also seems like a low number to me), so that we have a redundancy and breadth of skills necessary to maintain the colony, that comes out to 25,000kg/year. The FH can throw about 13,600kg to Mars, and the Dragon weighs about 4,200kg empty, which gives you a net payload to Mars of about 9,000kg. That means you need at least 3 flights/earth year for resupply. Profit assumes one of four things, at least as I see it: 1) The colonists themselves have sufficient funds to pay for all resupply flights independent of anything they are doing on Mars. This seems unlikely, because I can't see a colony being made up by a large number of people who are wealthy enough to be able to support these flights. 2) Someone on earth pays for the resupply out of the goodness of their heart. Possible, but also seems unlikely. 3) Some government pays for the resupply flights. Also seems possible but unlikely. 4) There is some kind of "backhaul" cargo from Mars that is valuable enough to completely pay for the outbound and inbound journeys. We have no current evidence that such a product or products exist. This possibility also increases the number of resupply flights dramatically, since there has to be sufficient mass to be able to get the backhaul back to earth. The backhaul would also have to be very valuable, since the total mass that would be able to be returned to Earth would be pretty small. If you scale down the colony, you lower the number of resupply flights, but you make the colony less self sustaining and less able to produce anything valuable enough to pay for resupply. If my estimate of how many kg/earth year each colonist needs is low, and/or my estimate of the number of colonists needed as a minimum is low, then the situation only becomes worse. I can see Mars being a destination for two-way "extreme" tourists. I just can't see any way that a colony could possibly be supported. So given the above, what am I missing in thinking that there is no way that Musk can make a profit off Mars?

Daniel Roberts

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 13:47:31 +0000

There is no compelling reason to send humans to Mars. Scientific research can be done with robots which do need life support and are a lot cheaper.

Fred Willett

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 06:51:14 +0000

Each year the space economy grows. The most recent figures I could find were for 2014 which put the space economy at $330B which puts NASA's entire budget of $19B(proposed) in context.(17%) The global space economy is growing around 7-8% annually. NASA's budget has been flat for decades. So are we going to Mars? The power of compounding growth will ensure we get there. I recommend just sitting back and watching for a few more years. Someone will go. If not Musk, someone else. The only certainty is it will not be NASA. Not unless the tooth fairy puts a few hundreds of billions under NASA's collective pillow.

Coastal Ron

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 02:15:31 +0000

"Trying to send humans to Mars and return them to safely to the Earth without-- artificial gravity- is pretty much of a death trip. And Elon really hasn't shown much interest in developing artificial gravity." Everyone involved knows the facts at hand, probably better than you do. And they may not share your interpretations of the facts either. Plus, it's obvious that despite the negative factors people are still willing to risk not only their own money, but their own lives. And that is all that is required - the desire to risk. And people do that everyday already here on Earth, so it's not that unusual.

Marcel F. Wiliams

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 00:56:12 +0000

Trying to send humans to Mars and return them to safely to the Earth without-- artificial gravity- is pretty much of a death trip. And Elon really hasn't shown much interest in developing artificial gravity. So Space X is definitely not going to be sending humans to Mars in the 2020s. Walking on Mars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruVHZCAf24 Gravity is a massive problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1Pvtv_A4k If We're Serious About Going to Mars, We Need Artificial Gravity - http://www.space.com/24904-gravity-for-mars-missi... SLS Derived Artificial Gravity Habitats for Space Stations and Interplanetary Vehicles http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2016/04/sl... What if you were born in space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTL_sJycQAA

offnexus

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 00:40:05 +0000

The market for heavy space lift is in Low Earth Orbit (Tourism and Space Business Parks), and on the moon (mining and manufacturing). Mars is the stretch goal to keep public interest up.

Thomas Matula

Tue, 7 Jun 2016 00:17:24 +0000

"So if there are no overwhelming political, strategic, or commercial reasons for going to Mars, when it comes to the point the state won’t pony up the billions needed. This leaves SpaceX stuck with a market that may be too small even to justify its reusable launch prices." True, but that is irrelevant. Elon Musk is going to Mars because he wants to and has enough money to do so using his own systems. Period. So I will say it again, ROI or political support are simply not relevant. NASA may tag along and buy a seat if they wish. Or ESA. Or some other nation. But if they don't it doesn't matter, Elon Musk is going anyway. Elon Musk has Mars Fever and enough money to satisfy it. That is the difference between the old paradigm where space advocates had to justify going to Mars to the government. The new paradigm is that a billionaire like Elon Musk just decides they want to go and is willing to spend the money to do so. Its why he will succeed while government will fail. The role of space advocates in the new paradigm is just to cheer him on. As for the ROI, it will likely emerge once he gets to Mars. The Virginia Company came to the New World to mine gold. They found and became rich on tobacco instead. The Transcontinental railroads wanted to reach California and the gold/silver fields. But they made their money shipping cattle and wheat to Eastern markets instead. And if it doesn't emerge for Mars than the space billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Larry Page, Sir Richard Branson, etc., will find it in asteroid mining or lunar development, or ??? Its how a free market frontier works.