Author Topic: Economical feasibility of sending resources from Mars to Earth  (Read 17778 times)

Offline Stormbringer

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just a random thought. have you seen this plan to send a probe with an automated drilling rig to the moon?

http://www.space.com/27807-private-moon-mission-lunar-one.html

it is intended to drill from 20 to 100 meters down under the moons surface.
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Offline RanulfC

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If it is economically feasible to send resources from Mars to Earth. How much more economically feasible would it be to mine the ocean floor and send resources from the bottom of the ocean to the surface? Why are there no colonies under water that do that?

The obvious answer of course is that you don't NEED a "colony" to extract and ship resources, it just takes some robots and remote equipment. Of course having your "support" on the surface of the ocean for all this stuff is WAY cheaper than having that same support network on Mars in ANY situation.

I very much suspect that it COULD actually become economical to ship resources from Mars to Earth. But the underlying circumstances are that you ALREADY have to have the transportation system established and on-site support in place. In other words it MAY at some point become economic for a Mars colony to ship 'something' back to Earth at a "profit" as long as you assume all the "sunk" costs of getting there and setting up are never included in your "pricing" plan.

Randy

not to mention the technology developed and the exploration done. But hey, even the virginia company went broke, and the people on the mayflower would never have been able to pay for all the exploration missions of the new world. But guess where todays most powerful nation is. And all that without the spices columbus set out to get.

certainly. The public funds of Portugal and Spain were responsible for exploring most of the New World. The british colonies originally only settled a very tiny part of it.

most of it had already been explored by the original settlers after they entered the land from the Beiring Strait.

"Technically" the "funds" that were responsible for the exploration and exploitation of the New World, (specifically when talking Spain and Portugal) were from stripping massive amounts of very easly portable, high value, zero-invested labor costs resources and shipping them home. And "technically" the funding and political support for the exploration and settlement of North America was based on trying to either tap into this resource stream (piracy) or find another source of the same stream.

I somehow don't think either is ever going to be a realistic basis for trade between Mars and Earth :)

Randy
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Offline aceshigh

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as I said, "most of it had already been explored by the original settlers after they entered the land from the Beiring Strait.".

So we can use the original settlers as a better comparison, as they became totally isolated from the old world.


for our european settlers example to be more accurate, therefore we would need to have a martian civilization (alien?) already on Mars... :)

Offline aceshigh

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One problem: the scale height on Mars is quite a bit greater than on Earth, so atmospheric pressure, though it is much less at the surface, also falls off more slowly with height, making the climb-out more difficult than you might assume. At some altitude, Martian atmospheric pressure becomes greater than that on Earth at the same altitude. (Unless I miss my guess, though, the same effect makes ballistic re-entry easier on Mars, all other factors being the same.)

you are right, the top of Olympus Mons has a pressure of 70 pascals, which I gather is about 51km height on Earth?




Offline Donosauro

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One problem: the scale height on Mars is quite a bit greater than on Earth, so atmospheric pressure, though it is much less at the surface, also falls off more slowly with height, making the climb-out more difficult than you might assume. At some altitude, Martian atmospheric pressure becomes greater than that on Earth at the same altitude. (Unless I miss my guess, though, the same effect makes ballistic re-entry easier on Mars, all other factors being the same.)

you are right, the top of Olympus Mons has a pressure of 70 pascals, which I gather is about 51km height on Earth?

Wikipedia's Atmosphere of Mars page says the pressure at the peak of Olympus Mons is 30 pascals.

Offline aceshigh

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as you said yourself, because of Earth´s greater gravity, the pressure falls faster. From 70 to 30 pascals on Earth is only 6 km: 30 pascals at 57 km height.

Offline Elmar Moelzer

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The obvious answer of course is that you don't NEED a "colony" to extract and ship resources, it just takes some robots and remote equipment. Of course having your "support" on the surface of the ocean for all this stuff is WAY cheaper than having that same support network on Mars in ANY situation.
Ok, I am not sure whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with me. I just don't see how sending resources from mars to earth could be economical if mining the sea floor is not for anything but oil and maybe gas(obviously, or we would be doing it now).

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