Human colony on Mars in 2023?

[ben m]

If living on Earth is like putting all of our eggs in one basket, then, at present given that we haven't tried to push ourselves, a Mars colony is like taking your emergency-backup egg and throwing it into pounding surf on a rocky shore of South Georgia Island. Fixed...

I contend that even after we've pushed ourselves, a Mars colony would be a precarious, resource-starved, miserable place, dependent on complex life-support systems but without access to tools or materials to maintain them, much less to expand.

 

[theprestige]

If living on Earth is like putting all of our eggs in one basket, then, at present given that we haven't tried to push ourselves, a Mars colony is like taking your emergency-backup egg and throwing it into pounding surf on a rocky shore of South Georgia Island. Fixed...

You're fixing the wrong problem. The problem you should be trying to fix is this:

For any arbitrary human habitat on Mars, a vastly more cost-effective human habitat will be possible on Antarctica.

Humans doing real science on Mars? More humans, doing more science, at less risk, costing less resources, on Antarctica.*

Self-sustaining human colony on Mars? More humans, self-sustaining at a higher profit margin, at less risk, with less startup costs, on Antarctica.**

Viable long-term human civilization on Mars in the event of an apocalyptic asteroid strike on Earth? More viable, higher-population, longer-term human civilization on Antarctica.***

That's the long and short of it, right there. The kind of civilization that could do awesome things on Mars could do even more awesome things, at much lower cost, here on Earth.

Look how much it cost to send a one-ton mobile science package to Mars. For the same cost, look how many tons of science package--including actual human scientists who are at far less risk of death!--can be sent to Antarctica.








* Right now, the cost difference between these two is so great that while it makes sense to send Scientists to Antarctica, it only makes sense to send probots to Mars.

** "Profit margin" here doesn't mean capitalist greed, but rather the amount of surplus resources left over, after reaching the break-even point to sustain the colony, to grow the colony, stockpile for a rainy day, etc.

*** The kind of event that would make Antarctica substantially less habitable than Mars, for any kind of established human civilization, is probably so are that it would be incredibly wasteful to spend resources hedging against the risk.

 

[theprestige]

I don't know why the big controversy. I am all for it. Got to start somewhere. I'd apply myself if I was 10 years younger and in better health.

Yes, I'd probably die. No, it wouldn't be in vain. No more than Robert Falcon Scott's death was in vain. Everyone knows it has to be done.

How was Scott's death not in vain? What did he do, that had to be done so urgently, and was so successful, that its results were worth the deaths it caused?

ETA: And, more importantly in the context of this thread, what needs to be done so urgently on Mars, that you will do for us with such great success, that the resources it would cost us to send you there to do it, and your subsequent death, would be worth it?

 

[Iamme]

To you and me, maybe. Not to people who hold the purse strings. In 1960's and 70's there was a number of underwater habitats throughout the oceans. They were doing oceanographic research, as well as research on how human body behaves under pressure. Quite a bit of this research was sponsored by oil companies interested in undersea drilling. Now only one such research habitat remains (two IIRC got converted into underwater hotels). The reasons for lack of interest:

1. Oceanographic research turned out to be more cost-effective with ROV's. Same for underwater oil exploration.

2. That leaves studying humans themselves under water. And it is not a sufficient, for it is circular reasoning.

Congress: "You want to live underwater? OK, what for?"
Woods Hole Institute (or similar research body): "In order to study how to live underwater"
Congress: "Ummm... bye"

Same in space, except far more expensive.

Hahaha.
I thought i heard once of talk of trying to create an atmosphere on the moon or Mars.
That`s the way i`d ever even consider going. I wouldnt go live somewhere in some bubble. Not i said the little red hen.
Always wondering when the next meteor shower`d be coming your way. Nope.
Not unless the biospheres were domed with 6 foot thick lexan.
But actually not even then. Too claustrophobic.

 

[ben m]

No settlement is going to be self sufficent anytime soon unless you are prepared to use multiple Orion type lifting vehicles to put the infrastructure in place to start with... Even then, without doing prototying and trial runs you won't know what technology works to lift into place in the first place!

Here's an idea. Can you sketch our your idea for the "machinery budget" for a Mars colony equipped to maintain and expand itself?

a) List, in as much detail as reasonable, the different materials (alloys, rubbers, plastics, ceramics, semiconductors, adhesives, medicines, solvents, refrigerant gases, welding gases, fertilizers, abrasives, dyes, battery acid) that you want a colony to be able to manufacture on its own. List the raw materials needed and how hard they are to find on Mars. (Silicate ore? Easy. Phosphate ore? Very, very hard. Gold? Maybe nearly impossible.)

b) List, using reasonable but not crazy sci-fi if you need to, the machinery needed to produce that list of stuff. A mining-drill and a ore truck; two or three different kinds of smelting and casting plants; a rolling mill, a hammer mill; a mill, a lathe (maybe two of each, so one can make spare parts when its twin breaks); a refrigeration plant, a compressed gas plant, a kiln, a polymer-chemistry plant; etc.. Make sure those machines are made of stuff that's on the materials list, so the machines can be repaired.

 

[Iamme]

If a pharoah was running the show, i bet such a project would be undertaken. Or a John Kennedy.

 

[GlennB]

No settlement is going to be self sufficent anytime soon unless you are prepared to use multiple Orion type lifting vehicles to put the infrastructure in place to start with... Even then, without doing prototying and trial runs you won't know what technology works to lift into place in the first place!

'Prototyping' has already been done through previous Mars landings. And then there's plain physics and its amenability to calculations.

Given the known Martian gravity and the low density of its atmosphere there's a limit to the payload we can reliably deliver. Parachutes can only be so big and suffer so much g force. Powered final descent requires a certain mass of machinery and fuel, which adds to the load on the parachute in the critical deceleration phase. It's a fine line.

I've mentioned it before but the Curiosity payload, at ~1 tonne, was at the very limit of known technology which is why they implemented that magnificent but oh-so-precarious 'space elevator' system.

 

[theprestige]

If a pharoah was running the show, i bet such a project would be undertaken.

A cyclopean tomb would at lest have the merit of housing the dead from such a project.

 

[dlorde]

This 'billion-dollar-gram' image gives a good visualisation of the amount in billions of dollars spent/used/wasted on various major items over the years. You can see roughly how big a manned Mars mission would be in comparison to the Iraq war and many other things.

 

[theprestige]

This 'billion-dollar-gram' image gives a good visualisation of the amount in billions of dollars spent/used/wasted on various major items over the years. You can see roughly how big a manned Mars mission would be in comparison to the Iraq war and many other things.

Wars are both expensive and wasteful. News at 11.

What the image doesn't tell me is the scope of such a mission, or its intended purpose.

I'm sure we could send a single person (Lady Gaga, perhaps), on a Mars flyby, for far less than the cost of the Iraq war. But why would we bother (unless, in the case of Lady Gaga, it's a one-way trip)? And why would the cost of the Iraq war be the relevant metric?

 

[dlorde]

What the image doesn't tell me is the scope of such a mission, or its intended purpose.

Naturally, it wasn't intended to.

I'm sure we could send a single person (Lady Gaga, perhaps), on a Mars flyby, for far less than the cost of the Iraq war. But why would we bother (unless, in the case of Lady Gaga, it's a one-way trip)? And why would the cost of the Iraq war be the relevant metric?

I dunno, gives a sense of scale & value, I guess - ask Beelzebuddy:

...Compare the projected costs of a colony on Mars (add a 300% budget overrun, for yucks) to that of the financial bailout, or the Iraq War.

 

[Mark6]

There is a huge difference between a manned Mars mission, and a colony. Yes, I can believe that a single mission could cost $230 billion. A colony means many such missions over the years.

 

[theprestige]

There is a huge difference between a manned Mars mission, and a colony. Yes, I can believe that a single mission could cost $230 billion. A colony means many such missions over the years.

Any manned mission to the surface of Mars would need to also deliver a man-rated launch vehicle capable of safely delivering at least one person to Mars orbit from the surface of Mars. Unless that could somehow be done for about a ton of payload, the Areonaut would have to assemble it on-site.

I can't imagine a mission that did only that would cost any less than $230 billion. Send a person to Mars. Send their return vehicle. Send their lander. Send their LMO launch vehicle. Send their launch facility. Send all the consumables they'd need to live long enough to get there, assemble their launch vehicle, and get back. Put a price tag on that, and how much room is actually left in the budget for some kind of science payload?

What's the actual science payload of Curiosity? And that's a one-way mission whose "life support consumables" consist of a few pounds of highly cost-effective heat-producing minerals.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Do you NOW understand the concept of "intermediate goals"?

... those aren't intermediate goals. Intermediate goals are things you go to Mars to do while the long-term "setting up a self-sustaining colony" thing is still in the works. Things like research and exploration.

You need a different term for what you're asking for. Since your objection is that the colony will be wholly dependent on the good graces of an historically fickle funding body, might I suggest "independent revenue streams?"

One relying on regular supply landings, I presume?

OK - upthread I estimated a mission cost for a similar thing and made a start on listing some of the vital characteristics of such a colony. Now you have a turn instead of just throwing around cheap+nasty comments.

Assume a colony with turnover of personnel who stay for a substantial length of time, like the ISS. Give us your estimate of the number of deliveries of gear, supplies and robotic collection/assembly devices that would allow it to be habitable from the first arrival of humans and allow them to perform some task that might be of use either now or in the future. Don't forget that these people need to get back home.

Assume that the current limit of ~1 tonne payload climbs to ~2 tonnes with superior technology that is developed 'soon'.

That's all. Put some plans and numbers on the table, however rough they are.

Before I start, I want to say I wasn't trying to be nasty when I said you were a naysayer. Projects, especially expensive projects, often stand to benefit from someone playing the role of the cynical old coot, for whom nothing is ever cheap enough nor good enough to bother with. And to your credit, when your mind does get forcibly changed it tends to stay that way, which is a rare enough quality on the internet that it should be appreciated no matter the context. So the least I could do is humor your request for numbers of my own.

That said, you're wrong, ya cynical old coot.


First off, I'm going to toss your 1 tonne limit. I don't know where you got it, but I assume it's a weight limit for pure parachute-based landing (the thin Martian atmosphere sucks for parachutes), and as such has no relevance for the powered landing that any sensible plan would be based around. Mars Direct relies on a bit of aerobraking, but certainly comes down engines hot.

As for budget, I'll refer to the Mars Direct cost estimates from ESA and NASA. Since they're dominated by the need to design a new class of heavy-lift rocket with about twice the capacity of the currently-planned Falcon Heavy, cheaper plans involving multiple smaller launches (Mars For Less) do exist, but let's stick with the classic for simplicity. The least optimistic estimate, NASA's, pegged Mars Direct at $40 billion for development/first trip (composed of two separate launches), and $7 billion for every trip thereafter. They also predicted a 50% overrun, so let's show them how waste is done and double it, and add a bit to skim off the top. Call it $100 billion for the first round, and $15 billion for each pair of launches thereafter. You know what, we're probably going to want to do some fiddling with each launch, so let's add $5 billion for R&D to make it an even $20 billion for subsequent trips. Sound about right?

That's, as you so blithely put it, for just a visit. But what does just a visit get you?

Well, if you'd believe the Mars Direct plan (if not, take it up with them), it gets you 60 tons of payload onto Mars. It gets you a crew of four with living space, power, rovers, and everything they'll need for life support for two and a half years. It gets you equipment to dig for ice, electrolyze it into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to convert into methane for the return trip. In short, it gets you 80% of the way there.

But four people isn't enough for a colony. It's barely enough for a good porn flick.

Let's send 'em ten more flights.

Ten flights of 4 each is $200 billion dollars, for a total of $300 billion for forty-four people, plus some amount of "free" equipment. We're building a long-term colony here, we don't need eleven escape vehicles fueled up and ready to go. Let's keep five on hand in case of alien attacks, and use the mass that the rest would have spent on engines and such for more habitation space. If NASA's estimate of $4 billion to design the Mars habitat is acceptable, with our doubling+ the stretched hab only takes $10 billion of our $50 billion R&D budget, so we can start thinking about more experimental launches.

First off, there's long-term survivability to add. Our little pilgrims have oxygen, heat, and water aplenty, but no food that didn't come from Earth and only enough other supplies to last a couple of years.

Let's send up a few greenhouse modules of various designs. I don't know how many we'd need, as it depends on how expandable they turn out to be (pretty expandable - it's just heaters, pumps and tightly-sealed plastic sheeting), but I'll guess 4 modules, so two flights of those. Based on the old Russian closed-system testing, that leaves food 85% self-sufficient if the colonists grow starchy crops and live off jerky, or more if a wider variety of food is grown. Since there's gravity on Mars, they won't need fancy hydroponics and can close the loop a bit more by using feces for compost. Let's call it 95% for a starting self-sufficiency. Do I need to go into the variety of crops they'd need for a healthy diet? We're only at $340 billion, not even half the bailout, and just over 10% of Iraq, so there's lots of room yet for more seeds and modules if need be.

Let's tack on a trip's worth of cost filled with nothing but long-lasting food - vitamins, Twinkies and powdered milk - and see where we are. A grown human eats 0.62 kg/day, the whole colony needs 27.28 kg/day, call it 30 kg/day, at 0.95 efficiency that's 1.5 kg/day Earth food, so 60,000 kg should last us more than a century. Yeah, we're good.

And then there's that "other supplies." Medical equipment, spare parts, new instruments, etc. Let's get two trips worth (120 tonnes) of all that stuff. We're at 16 trips, or $400 billion dollars, and our 44 people can live happily for their and their children's lives.


But are we making this self-sufficient, or just dicking around?

Let's send up a drilling machine. Giantass tunnel bore, to gouge more living space straight out of Martian regolith, assuming there aren't any adequate caves. We've got some research money saved up to develop it, and it'll need to be split into multiple launches and assembled on Mars. Call it 5 flights, for 300 tons.

Lots more power, too, and equipment to make the hollowed caves livable. 10 flights.

44 people is hardly a community. Let's send another 10 one-way flights (8 people each) to live in the fancy new digs, for a total of 124 citizens.

If they're willing, maybe a flight with just frozen embryos to ensure genetic diversity as the colony grows.

And a couple of flights with one caretaker each launch and a bunch of livestock (with livestock embryos). 4, to keep the numbers even.

That gives us lots of room and lots of regolith. Let's send stuff for processing local materials into actual industry. I don't have the slightest idea what would be necessary vs could be built in-situ, so I'm just going to call it here.

We're at 46 flights, for a grand total of $1 trillion. We've got a mostly self-sufficient colony, on another freakin' planet, for a third of what we felt was justified to secure Halliburton a firmer stake in the Middle East oil market and bump off the guy we put on the throne in the '70s to begin with. For just 50% more than what two administrations decided was worth it to pull our own bankers' nuts out of the vice after they screwed the economy so hard they accidentally screwed themselves with us. And that's an upper bound, assuming a degree of wasteful spending that even NASA isn't accustomed to.

Yeah, I think it'd be worth the money.

 

[halleyscomet]

Given it's a one-way trip with no plans or possibilities for establishing a generational presence, it's more of a planned death camp than a colony, isn't it?

 

[Mark6]

... those aren't intermediate goals. Intermediate goals are things you go to Mars to do while the long-term "setting up a self-sustaining colony" thing is still in the works. Things like research and exploration.

You need a different term for what you're asking for. Since your objection is that the colony will be wholly dependent on the good graces of an historically fickle funding body, might I suggest "independent revenue streams?".

Whew! Yes, it was a failure in communication, and yes, the need for independent revenue streams is what I was talking about. Sorry about poor phrasing.

 

[GlennB]

....
First off, I'm going to toss your 1 tonne limit. I don't know where you got it, but I assume it's a weight limit for pure parachute-based landing (the thin Martian atmosphere sucks for parachutes), and as such has no relevance for the powered landing that any sensible plan would be based around. Mars Direct relies on a bit of aerobraking, but certainly comes down engines hot.
...

Well, as this is obviously a critical point, I got it from an interview with Rob Manning of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"But mention sending a human mission to land on the Red Planet, with payloads several factors larger than an unmanned spacecraft and the trepidation among that same group [space scientists] grows even larger. Why? Nobody knows how to do it."

 

[ben m]

Beelzebuddy, thanks for the long detailed post. I think this is exactly where these discussions need to start.

Well, if you'd believe the Mars Direct plan (if not, take it up with them), it gets you 60 tons of payload onto Mars. It gets you a crew of four with living space, power, rovers, and everything they'll need for life support for two and a half years. It gets you equipment to dig for ice, electrolyze it into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to convert into methane for the return trip. In short, it gets you 80% of the way there.

That's everything they need for life support to sit in their payload and play pinochle, conduct limited science/exploration surface missions. It does not give them the ability to do repairs, construction, heavy lifting, etc. This ice-digging equipment, for example, is outside the habitat. Do they have the ability to repair their ice-digging equipment, for example? While wearing spacesuits in a freezing near-vacuum?

This is the sort of question I wish The Mars Society would focus on. They seem to be having fun building these wacky habitats and asking questions about Human Functioning Under Confinement Stress. I would much rather see them do this:

a) Buy a Toyota Prius. Ask a mechanic what the most common breakdowns are, and request a 200-kg basket of spare parts.
b) Drive it hard until it stops running altogether. Don't diagnose the breakdown.
c) Airlift it to where your four Mars Society enthusiasts are living in a tent and simulating a Mars mission.
d) Drop the car 2 miles from the tent. Give the astronauts the pre-planned spare parts basket. Tell them to fix the car and drive it back to the tent. They are not permitted to remove their gloves or helmets at any time, nor to exceed five hour (or whatever) excursions. They also have to maintain their full base-maintenance schedule, despite the manpower devoted to the car situation.

It's not a perfect simulation. Obviously a Mars mission would design equipment for easy astronaut repair access, as much as possible, whereas a Prius was designed to be repaired while on a car lift. But it's a start.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

a) Buy a Toyota Prius.
b) Drive it hard until it stops running altogether. Don't diagnose the breakdown.
c) Airlift it to where your four Mars Society enthusiasts are living in a tent, with their spacesuits and their airlock, to simulate a Mars mission.
d) Drop the car 2 miles from the tent. Tell the astronauts to go fix it. They are not permitted to remove their gloves or helmets at any time, nor to exceed five hour (or whatever) spacewalks.

I could probably do that. I once bought a car for $1. The deal was if I could get the 1964 Volvo running, I could have it. The mechanic had it 2 weeks and had given up. Took about 30 seconds to conceive of a solution, and a minute or two till it fired up and I drove it off the lot.

As long as they didn't do something major requiring machine work or pre-manufactured parts, should be easy enough.

 

[theprestige]

As for budget, I'll refer to the Mars Direct cost estimates from ESA and NASA. Since they're dominated by the need to design a new class of heavy-lift rocket with about twice the capacity of the currently-planned Falcon Heavy, cheaper plans involving multiple smaller launches (Mars For Less) do exist, but let's stick with the classic for simplicity. The least optimistic estimate, NASA's, pegged Mars Direct at $40 billion for development/first trip (composed of two separate launches), and $7 billion for every trip thereafter. They also predicted a 50% overrun, so let's show them how waste is done and double it, and add a bit to skim off the top. Call it $100 billion for the first round, and $15 billion for each pair of launches thereafter. You know what, we're probably going to want to do some fiddling with each launch, so let's add $5 billion for R&D to make it an even $20 billion for subsequent trips. Sound about right?

Interesting. Much lower than I expected.