News Elon Musk wants to put millions of people on Mars.

[T.Neo]

It may be the number of deaths would be made up by the influx of new colonists.

Yes, but you're not really putting yourself in any different a position than you'd be in without births in the colony. The fact remains that such an influx of new colonists is unrealistic.

It is critical for such predictions that the costs to space would be cut dramatically. Elon believes they can be cut to the $100 to $200 per kilo range by reusability. This would be a revolutionary technical change if true.

I am fairly sure that everyone understands that such a reduction in cost would be necessary to make Musk's musings even remotely possible. However, the cost of launch to LEO is not the only cost that needs to be considered. The cost of transit to Mars, landing on Mars, and survival on Mars must also be considered.

It should be pointed out that these three things (and many other factors) are currently outright impossible, let alone possible only at a prohibitative cost.

And "Elon believes X" means very little. I believe that I can build a rocket my backyard! I believe that I can climb Mount Kilimanjaro using only my teeth! I believe I can fly faster than the speed of sound using a bicycle, a paperclip and a piece of chewing gum! etc.

Can I do any of those things? Of course not. Musk has not demonstrated that his company can cut cost to LEO down to $100-$200 per kilogram. He hasn't even demonstrated that his company can launch at the (much higher, but still strikingly low) launch prices advertised on its website. It's an incredibly difficult task and there is huge reason to be skeptical.

It would be like overseas airline flights that cost $1,000 now, suddenly being cut to the $10 to $20 range.

Maybe that would be a good analogy to the entire space launch situation, if it were taken very loosely. But from a personal perspective;

1. It's far easier for someone to afford $10-20 than it is to afford the $7000 that it'd cost merely to launch the 'dead weight' of a human into space (ignoring all other necessary hardware and cost factors).

2. Airliners usually fly to worthwhile destinations, unlike Mars.

3. Cutting the cost of an airline ticket to $10 is impossible. Actually, that makes it a perfect analogy to cutting the cost/kg to LEO by two orders of magnitude... :shifty:

There would be a much greater desire to travel to space and to settle, literally, a new world than to travel to Greenland.

We need to see the reality here: Mars may literally be a new world, but as worlds go, it is unfortunately a fairly awful one. It's an environment that has nothing to offer that somewhere like Greenland does not, and is deficient in things that even Greenland has (breathable air at pressures that don't boil water, fish stocks, mineral and petrochemical resources that are economic to export, etc).

If people do not realise that Mars is not dissimilar from wastelands on Earth, then they will surely realise it once the idea of people on Mars becomes mundane, and they can relate first-hand its desolate nature.

Mars is an exciting place and one where there is much to learn. But it is a poor place to live, and a poor place for an economy to prosper. It's just another place in the universe, like Earth, and its environment should be treated no differently than the environments here.

The establishment of a Mars colony is a really cool idea, but logically speaking, there are many problems with it.

 

[Codz]

I can fly faster than the speed of sound using a bicycle, a paperclip and a piece of chewing gum!

Best sentence I've read all week.:rofl:

 

[RGClark]

...
And "Elon believes X" means very little. I believe that I can build a rocket my backyard! I believe that I can climb Mount Kilimanjaro using only my teeth! I believe I can fly faster than the speed of sound using a bicycle, a paperclip and a piece of chewing gum! etc.

This is not a criticism, but are you a native english speaker? In english the phrase "X believes Y is possible" is understood by the context to mean something different than something like "X believes in Zoroastrianism."
One could use various circumlocutions to get the point across like "Elon and his engineers have looked at the capabilities of their engines and their thermal protection systems and have concluded from their mathematical and computer simulations that their rocket stages can lift-off and return to the launch site multiple times, thereby getting a fully reusable system."But it's understood by the context by saying, he believes he can cut the cost to space multiple times by reusability.


Bob Clark

 

[kamaz]

Let's try a simple thought experiment.

Suppose that tomorrow, Santa Claus gives us a perfectly functioning stargate, paired with another one on the surface of Mars. The stargates are free to operate. In other words, we can send people and stuff to Mars for free.

Okay. Now: how do we build a Martian economy capable of supporting 1 million people?

 

[N_Molson]

capable of supporting 1 million people?

More than 1,999,999, because millions was plural.

 

[kamaz]

3. Cutting the cost of an airline ticket to $10 is impossible. Actually, that makes it a perfect analogy to cutting the cost/kg to LEO by two orders of magnitude... :shifty:

Yes, because most of that is fuel -- unlike spaceflight. In spaceflight, fuel is miniscule part of the mission cost. And ironically, Musk's very idea is to make spaceflight economy like the airliner economy:

"If you look at something like a Boeing 747 -- that's over a quarter of a billion dollars, buying a 747," he said. "You need two of them for a round trip. But nobody is paying half a billion dollars to fly from L.A. to London. It's a few thousand dollars, and that's because you reuse that aircraft multiple times, you use it thousands of times."

"The acquisition costs -- the cost of building that aircraft in the first place -- is only a small portion of your ticket price," he said. "If we could then have a reusable rocket, then the cost of the flight would be a lot closer to the cost of fuel."

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/elon-musk-put-man-mars-roughly-12-15/story?id=16940287#.UCbeR6Pue39

 

[T.Neo]

This is not a criticism, but are you a native english speaker? In english the phrase "X believes Y is possible" is understood by the context to mean something different than something like "X believes in Zoroastrianism."

I realise that, it's just that I presumably saw the sentence in a different context than you did.

One could use various circumlocutions to get the point across like "Elon and his engineers have looked at the capabilities of their engines and their thermal protection systems and have concluded from their mathematical and computer simulations that their rocket stages can lift-off and return to the launch site multiple times, thereby getting a fully reusable system."But it's understood by the context by saying, he believes he can cut the cost to space multiple times by reusability.

Considering that we have no way of knowing whether engineers at SpaceX have performed such calculations (and/or whether the $100-$200/kg figures ever 'worked' in their calculations), and the considerable difficulties involved, there is good reason to be skeptical.

And ironically, Musk's very idea is to make spaceflight economy like the airliner economy:

The logic is sound at its core, but the issue is that there's a cost to reusing things as well. One of the challenges is to reduce that cost.

 

[RGClark]

Let's try a simple thought experiment.
Suppose that tomorrow, Santa Claus gives us a perfectly functioning stargate, paired with another one on the surface of Mars. The stargates are free to operate. In other words, we can send people and stuff to Mars for free.
Okay. Now: how do we build a Martian economy capable of supporting 1 million people?

Haven't read it yet, but this book by Robert Zubrin is supposed to be about creating a settlement on Mars:

How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet [Paperback].
Robert Zubrin (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/How-Live-Mars-Guidebook-Surviving/dp/0307407187

To get to the stage of millions of colonists would take several decades.

Bob Clark

---------- Post added at 12:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:24 AM ----------

Colonizing Mars | A Preview of the Upcoming Documentary.
http://moonandback.com/2012/08/11/colonizing-mars-preview-of-upcoming-documentary/

Bob Clark

 

[T.Neo]

To get to the stage of millions of colonists would take several decades.

Such an extraordinary claim begs an explanation. I'll wait, as I'm not going to spend two days worth of food on an another book by Robert Zubrin.

 

[RGClark]

Just saw this on NasaSpaceflight:

It features Robert Zubrin and Elon Musk. Zubrin introduces Musk at about the 58 minute mark.

Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

What I dislike about Zubrins books, is the lack of solid data. The books aren't bad in general, but they are only discussion starters, not argumentation aids. I consider putting it on my birthday wish list, I can never have too many books.

Generally, you have to remember the requirements of humans: Not only metabolism, but also well-being, not only survival, but also purpose.

 

[RGClark]

Yes, because most of that is fuel -- unlike spaceflight. In spaceflight, fuel is miniscule part of the mission cost. And ironically, Musk's very idea is to make spaceflight economy like the airliner economy:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/elon-musk-put-man-mars-roughly-12-15/story?id=16940287#.UCbeR6Pue39

Good point. It is an important fact to realize that the costs to orbit are wildly out of whack with respect to the actual energy costs to understand why it is that the launch costs can be cut dramatically by reusability.
If based purely on energy costs, the cost to get to orbit would only be $1 per kilo. So the prevailing launch costs are 10,000 times what the actual energy costs are. So cutting the costs to orbit by two orders of magnitude is actually conservative. That would only bring the cost down to 100 times the energy cost, still well above the industry average for example for airline travel.
This web page calculates the energy cost:

Cost to Orbit.

A Kilowatt-Hour of electricity usually costs less than a dime, so ten
Kilowatt-Hours costs less than a dollar. So the energy cost of
putting a kilogram (slightly more than two pounds) into orbit is less
than a dollar.
Now if I'd done this calculation exactly, I'd taken account of the
fact that gravity decreases with altitude. This would decrease the
energy slightly. I'd also have calculated the exact orbit velocity,
which is slightly less than eight km/sec. Either way, the energy
would be slightly less than 36 million Joules.
Suppose I get even more picky. Suppose I say "I can't put a payload
directly into orbit. I have to put a rocket, with a payload on top
of it, into orbit. So I have to put the rocket mass, including fuel,
into the equation as well." Even if I do this, and assume I need ten
to twenty kilograms of rocket mass (including fuel) for each kilogram
that goes into orbit, I can still put one kilogram into orbit for an
energy cost of ten to twenty dollars.
http://home.earthlink.net/~kstengel226/astro/cost2orbit.html

Peter Diamandis makes this point as well in this TED lecture at about
the 6 minute mark:

Jerry Pournelle also argues this here:

THE SSX CONCEPT.
Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/SSX.html


He notes it takes about the same amount of fuel to get to orbit as to
take an airline flight from the U.S. to Australia.


Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

A kWh of electricity costs about 22 cent on Earth in the first world! That is the problem in your calculations. You can't get the same prices somewhere else, without also putting all the infrastructure there, that creates this price. If you would for example generate your electricity only by a tiny 2 stroke generator, you would pay way more per kWh - ask the US Army in that context, they really know how expensive electricity can get in a combat zone.

Even if you operate your own nuclear power plant: Each kWh electricity would cost a few Euros if you have to pay for cold water and disposal of nuclear waste without getting support in form of taxes.

And if you need electricity for staying alive on Mars, but have none, electricity gets priceless.

 

[RGClark]

A kWh of electricity costs about 22 cent on Earth in the first world!

This was an argument for why cutting the costs to LEO by two orders of magnitude is actually a conservative estimate. And as Robert Heinlein so insightfully observed once you get to LEO you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

This was an argument for why cutting the costs to LEO by two orders of magnitude is actually a conservative estimate. And as Robert Heinlein so insightfully obverved once you get to LEO you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system..

Bob Clark

Conservative estimate? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Good joke. You don't even know which model to apply there to make any prediction, and still you proclaim it to be on the conservative end of the error margins.

That is like me proclaiming that I will live forever as conservative estimate, because I had zero cases of death in my life yet. Yes, it is that stupid.

What causes the price of electricity?

 

[RGClark]

Conservative estimate? :lol: :lol: :lol:
Good joke. You don't even know which model to apply there to make any prediction, and still you proclaim it to be on the conservative end of the error margins.
That is like me proclaiming that I will live forever as conservative estimate, because I had zero cases of death in my life yet. Yes, it is that stupid.
What causes the price of electricity?

It's not my estimate. It's the estimate of experts in the industry who have looked at the question of reusable rockets to orbit.
For the price of electricity, lots of forces I would assume including the price of coal and fuel oil since many electric plants are run on them.

Bob Clark

 

[RisingFury]

Well, for anyone who cares...

I just run the numbers. I assumed energy costs to be similar to electricity prices and calculated what you'd have to pay for the *energy* alone. That's just energy needed to get you to 300 km orbit. It came out to about 80 USD per kg.

That's assuming you just magically shot your payload into that orbit. I didn't bother taking into account the fact that you have to transport fuel and rocket parts up there along with you. My gut feeling is that you can add a Ln[m0/m1] at the end of that calculation, which for a mass ratio of 5% would put the cost of energy alone to about 250 USD per kg.

Again, this doesn't take into account the materials, construction costs, wages, maintenance of launch site,...

 

[Urwumpe]

Oh the weasel words:

It's not my estimate. It's the estimate of experts in the industry who have looked at the question of reusable rockets to orbit.

Who are these experts? How did they calculate their estimates? Citation please.

For the price of electricity, lots of forces I would assume including the price of coal and fuel oil since many electric plants are run on them.

Construction, Distribution, Generation, Maintenance, Fuel

And the fuel costs are pretty harmless compared to other costs.

 

[VincentMcConnell]

I believe Musk can do what he says he will. He's fulfilled every promise so far and it looks like Dragon is man-rated. Now all they need is a few manned test flights. Musk is working with the guy making VASIMR and he doesn't need to worry about politics or congressional funding. If he wants a space mission, by Armstrong he gets one!

I think Red Dragon is going to do great and I hope someday I'll get the chance to fly it.

 

[RGClark]

Well, for anyone who cares...

I just run the numbers. I assumed energy costs to be similar to electricity prices and calculated what you'd have to pay for the *energy* alone. That's just energy needed to get you to 300 km orbit. It came out to about 80 USD per kg...

That's about 80 times higher than the numbers I've seen. What's your kilojoules to orbit per kilo, and your price per kilowatt-hour(kwh) for electricity?

Bob Clark