My basic point, I think, was that earth to LEO, LEO to anywhere else, is just a transportation system. Like all mass transportation systems
But what we can guess is that demand for LEO and GEO is likely to increase as existing services (telephony, TV, imagery) are expanded, improved and delivered to many more consumers across the globe
and new services, both imagined and as yet unthought of are implemented ( space based solar power, server farms, ?).
What we can further guess is that the technology to deliver these payloads will improve, because it always has, and that prices will come down as the demand goes up. We can further imagine that as prices come down new or old ideas become economical and demand increases further in a virtuous spiral.
Now when I brought up Antarctica I wasn't suggesting it created a demand for air travel, rather I was positing that the fact that 3 million people can fly from London to New York every year makes it fiscally more possible for thousands of people to be transported to and supplied on a barren remote dangerous continent. Just as the costs of a Mars population would be reduced by a vibrant and robust LEO/Lunar/NEO/? transportation system. Neither result would be the driving mission of any transportation system, but they are possible results that can just drop out from the ongoing nature of things.
Doesn't really sound comparable. We know from other transportation technologies that the former is true, a plane ticket today is a fifth the value of one thirty years ago, cars, boats and trains all show the same thing. We also can guess that demand is going to rise over the coming decades as satellite technologies begin to spread more evenly delivering more services to more consumers. While we also know that demand for 150 room mansions has fallen dramatically over the last 200 years and have very little scope spreading of costs. You can query the base costs and you can query how quickly they might come down but to suggest they won't or can't for a transportation system seems strange.
Two assumptions for a quick hand wave.First, the 2010 price of a ticket to: LEO is ~$10 million The Moon is ~$100 million Mars is $1 billionSecond assumption, rising demand, improving technology and amortization of development and operational costs will roughly halves those costs every ten years.The result is that by 2160 Mars is roughly as expensive as Antarctica is today, which has a population of ~10000 or so scientists but no tourists because they are effectively banned. So by 2160 Mars could easily have around 20000 people on it, half scientists and half tourists.Your assumptions may vary.
Quote from: gospacex on 07/06/2010 03:06 pmI am 100% certain, if it would be possible to go to Mars one-way today, thousands, if not millions, would sign up.If thousands, if not millions were willing to go to Mars one-way today, it would be possible.But there aren't, so there's not.
I am 100% certain, if it would be possible to go to Mars one-way today, thousands, if not millions, would sign up.
Changes to current space treaties will have to be made. What drove the settlers from the eastern USA to set out for the West? One of the drivers was the promise of free land. The Martian colonsist would have to own the land they occupy. Otherwise Mars will never become more than an Antarctica style science outpost. Without land ownership, there will be no need for more than just a few people on Mars.
Quote from: Gene DiGennaro on 07/07/2010 02:38 pmChanges to current space treaties will have to be made. What drove the settlers from the eastern USA to set out for the West? One of the drivers was the promise of free land. The Martian colonsist would have to own the land they occupy. Otherwise Mars will never become more than an Antarctica style science outpost. Without land ownership, there will be no need for more than just a few people on Mars.Yeah, because we're so lacking in land here on Earth, and farming the Sahara or the Outback or Greenland or Antarctica or New Mexico or the ocean surface would be SOOO much harder than farming on Mars.Fail. Try again.
You sound so certain, without a shred of evidence to back up your absolute opinion on the matter.
Lets see some poll figures eh?
Actually not. Making the outback or the sahara livable would require some rather massive shifts in global weather patterns and climate, which would cause massive damage to other nations that have livable climates now. Similarly, making Antarctica or Greenland into habitable arable land would likewise require a massive shift in global climate and a 200 meter rise in sea levels which would cause many trillions of dollars in damages to other nations. So none of that stuff is allowed here for legal reasons.Not so on Mars. We can mess around with the Mars climate all we want without annoying the climate of some Earth nation. Therefore, colonizing and terraforming Mars is much more possible than making uninhabitable areas of Earth habitable.
Quote from: kfsorensen on 07/07/2010 03:33 pmQuote from: Gene DiGennaro on 07/07/2010 02:38 pmChanges to current space treaties will have to be made. What drove the settlers from the eastern USA to set out for the West? One of the drivers was the promise of free land. The Martian colonsist would have to own the land they occupy. Otherwise Mars will never become more than an Antarctica style science outpost. Without land ownership, there will be no need for more than just a few people on Mars.Yeah, because we're so lacking in land here on Earth, and farming the Sahara or the Outback or Greenland or Antarctica or New Mexico or the ocean surface would be SOOO much harder than farming on Mars.Fail. Try again.Actually not. Making the outback or the sahara livable would require some rather massive shifts in global weather patterns and climate, which would cause massive damage to other nations that have livable climates now. Similarly, making Antarctica or Greenland into habitable arable land would likewise require a massive shift in global climate and a 200 meter rise in sea levels which would cause many trillions of dollars in damages to other nations. So none of that stuff is allowed here for legal reasons.Not so on Mars. We can mess around with the Mars climate all we want without annoying the climate of some Earth nation. Therefore, colonizing and terraforming Mars is much more possible than making uninhabitable areas of Earth habitable.
I would guess there would be at least thousands. This planet has more than six billion people in it. Thousands of volunteers only requires one in a million. Since suicides in the US are almost 18 per 100,000 per year, one in a million once for something that is probably a much more exciting way of leaving this planet seems entirely reasonable. I would expect a lot higher.
It's not really about finding people who would go if they had the chance. It's about finding a lot of really rich people motivated enough to want to spend all their money and life to go live on Mars. I can imagine a religious movement doing this, but not much else.Tourism would be an incredibly small market for a long time because the trip times are going to be very long for the least expensive trips. Traveling to Antarctica doesn't take a $100 billion space ship and doesn't take a year and a half round-trip. To get trip times below half a year or comparable to a seasonal outing to Antarctica would take trillions of dollars if it can be done at all.It's possible, just not exactly very likely. Let's try to think of realistic and unique ways which could make it happen.The only force strong enough to make this feasible would be a century of intense technological progress driven by very cheap energy.
Quote from: KelvinZero on 07/10/2010 09:56 amI would guess there would be at least thousands. This planet has more than six billion people in it. Thousands of volunteers only requires one in a million. Since suicides in the US are almost 18 per 100,000 per year, one in a million once for something that is probably a much more exciting way of leaving this planet seems entirely reasonable. I would expect a lot higher.I am not persuaded by your suicide statistics. People commit suicide usually because they find some component of life intolerable. It is not clear that a one way ticket to Mars would make life any more tolerable for these people. If a guy is suicidal because his wife left him, going to Mars won't assuage his pain. I doubt that many people commit suicide by losing themselves in the Alaskan or Canadian wilderness and seeing low long they can stick it out. The gun or bottle of pills is generally seen to be more effective medicine for what ails them.And as I said in my response to Mike, it all depends on what they're signing on for, which at this juncture is completely unknown. If the Chinese are assembling a group of political dissidents and hardened criminals to ship to Mars to work in a slave labor camp to mine (say) D2O I doubt anyone, suicidal or not, will be volunteering to join them.
Er.. I am sort of comforted that you are not convinced by my plan to populate the first crews to mars with a thousand suicidal manic depressives. That wasn't quite what I was trying to say.
What I am trying to say is that for a thousand volunteers from a planet of 6 billion (lets assume 1 billion after factoring out old, young, untrainable) you only need that one in a million person to volunteer. The number of suicides in one million people is just an example of the extreme range of life choices you can find in a large group.
It is true that what the actual conditions are is a factor, but the immense cost of going there rules out the absurd ones. For example sending political dissidents and hardened criminals would be too absurd for china to do, but probably not absurd enough to prevent one in a million people volunteering.Finding volunteers for any plausible mission would not be the bottleneck.