How does it become profitable though? Maybe Musk can fund it as a very expensive pet project, but if the Mars base doesn't produce anything that can't be gotten more cheaply closer to Earth, the money must run out at some point.
I've been doing a compare&contrast to SpaceX colonies on Mars vs 15th century colonies to the new world.
Travel time to "home" seems close enough in terms of months long voyages. Haven't decided which journey is the more treacherous option.
The 15th century colonists came to a place that was resource rich in whatever a colony could need: food, water, building material, etc. Martian colonists will not have that luxury.
New world colonists faced an indigenous poplulation that Martian colonists won't have. Probably a good thing, as the examples provided by the new world colonists on how to interact with indeginous people does not bode well (at least for those who continued to follow).
Communication time back to home is actually in the Martian colonist's favor. As is the fact the area will have been surveyed quite exetensively in advance of arrival, so preparations can be better made with that knowledge. Full detailed maps will be available as well. This will help finding more barren wasteland even easier than just wandering around looking for barren wasetland. Effeciency will be key with the constrained resources.
> The 15th century colonists came to a place that was resource rich in whatever a colony could need: food, water, building material, etc. Martian colonists will not have that luxury.
But this is the key point: there were plenty of desirable things in the Americas. There is absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever on Mars that can't be found much, much more easily on Earth.
The adventure and freedom to shape a new society (relatively) free from historical constraints might be valuable in itself for some people. I might be interested, but the quality of life and size of closed system habitats would need to improve by a large factor compared to what exists currently.
That's anti-value: it is much harder to live in ungoverned land than decently governed land. If you're fleeing North Korea, you'll flee to China or South Korea, not to an anarchy.
Once the powers that be regarding the colonists realized ownership issues were going to be had with the indigenous population, those relationships didn't go so well though. that's what I meant by those who followed. "Hi, here's a lovely friendship blanket" doesn't speak well for relationships with those indigenous people.
I’m not sure what the intersection is of people (1) rich enough to do this, (2) willing to slum it in a tin can where none of the wealth they’ve accumulated thus far would even let them retire because the entire economy has to be constructed ex nihilo first, (3) have nobody binding them to Earth, either because they don’t exist or because they came with them to Mars, (4) is not too anti-social to function despite #3.
Don’t get me wrong, when Musk first announced this I was very interested, and could just about afford the target price. But then I tried a much more minor relocation — Cambridge to Berlin — and found myself much lonlier than I’d been primed to expect by my experience moving to Cambridge in the first place after I graduated.
It might be fine, I just wouldn’t assume that now.
The uber rich person doesn't necessarily have to be one that goes. It just so happens this one wants to. Some uber rich person could see it as just another way to generate money, so funds the endeavor while spending those earnings on terrafirma.
Depending on cost, Starship could fund itself purely off space tourism. Numbers as low as $100 per kg to LEO are flying about.
If SpaceX hit something like that, we enter a whole different paradigm because a trip in relative comfort to orbit becomes comparable to middle class holiday prices.
If you can send an average person to orbit for the price of a trip to Disneyland, your launch demand functionally becomes infinite. This would become the thing to do for so many people.
It's sort of like CPU manufacturing: making a CPU is a peak technology, multi billion dollar undertaking - but because we can sell the things for like $250, everyone on the planet now has one.
Space access may go the same way if SpaceX get anywhere near those lower numbers. Blue Origin did one interesting thing recently, and that was launching William Shatner suborbital - if you can send a 90 year old, you can send anyone.
Building the official hotel would become the next obvious thing, complete with spin gravity. It would be a while new dimension.
A $300 billion trust fund with 5% inflation-adjusted returns gives you $15 billion per year indefinitely. At $1.5 million per launch, that’s 10,000 Starship launches per year just out of the trust fund. About 1 Megaton IMLEO indefinitely. Anything else, like servicing a permanent NASA and international base on Mars or the Moon or Starlink or whathaveyou would be on top of that.
One way it becomes profitable: paying colonists for research.
There are plenty of people here here who could benefit, possibly even financially, from research there. Paying what is essentially a monopoly on research capability on mars would be one avenue of profitability for the project.
Also think about this: once there's a profitable economy there of some kind, you'll get all sorts of capital interplay that doesn't actually need physical financial instruments to make happen, only networking.
This is the biggest issue with Musk's Mars colonization plans right now. He seems to be taking the approach of "build it and they will come" with his efforts to bring down the cost of getting payload to orbit (and thus the cost of interplanetary transportation), however even if he succeeds at that goal I don't really see how that's going to result in a self-sustaining city on Mars.
We've had the technology to colonize Antarctica pretty cheaply for quite some time now. I don't see any self sustaining cities there; just small research bases. Why should Mars be different?
Musk talks frequently about a self-sustaining Martian city becoming a "backup for humanity" in the case of some global extinction-level event (Asteroid impact, nuclear war, etc), which is all well and good. But who's going to pay for it? In order for Mars colonization to actually happen, it needs to be not only affordable, but profitable!
To what end? "We should colonize Mars because then we could go to Europa more easily" just kinda begs the question; what economic incentive exists for going to Europa?
It's like saying we should colonize Antarctica because then we'd learn things that would make it easier to colonize the North Pole. Doesn't really answer the question.
At the end of the day, space is what's next. Humans are explorers. We left the safety of the cave, we built ships to cross the vastness of the oceans. We're now building ships to cross the small section of the vastness of space we can.
So far, it's private money moving that direction. It's not tax dollars. If some uber rich asshole wants to spend his money on this, so be it. It's his money. If it doesn't work out, okay, we learn from it. But not going is just not going to happen. It's part of the human experience to ask "what's next" and then do it. Less adventurous can sit at home. The meek shall inherit the earth, the bold are going to space!
By all means; spend your money however you want, but a few billionaires using their personal wealth to fund Mars colonization efforts "just because" isn't going to be nearly enough to build a self-sustaining city there. Musk is talking about sending hundreds of Megatons to orbit every year, for the foreseeable future[1]. He wants an armada of one thousand Starships departing for Mars every 26 months[2]. That's what it would take to build a self-sustaining city on Mars, and it's a multi-trillion dollar effort; not the sort of thing that can be funded by a few wealthy donors.
The only way I can see large-scale Mars colonization happening is if there's a strong economic incentive for that. It isn't going to happen just because a few people want it to, or think it's the "next step for humanity".
In theory Mars can put stuff in orbit for a much lower cost than Earth can. The delta v is so much lower that you could supply Earth orbit from Mars with less fuel than launching from Earth.
Great, here's some more Martian rocks for space. We don't have a lot of variety here on Mars, but what we do have, we've got plenty of it. We got some red rocks, some slightly less red rocks, we got some red dust, we got some red sand. Is that what we really want to launch into orbit?
Mars has water (probably, or there won’t be any colonies), and CO2. Water, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Methane, all of which there could be a demand for in orbit.
But according to GP, those rocks are really expensive to get off the ground, so, enjoy these nice Martian rocks instead. They're the generics to your name brand.
