Dr. Metzger's model of economics of starting a city on Mars

[su27k]

There're some other threads discussing similar topics but I think it might be better to have a thread focusing on this specific model.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1468772477333557248

Hey Mars settlement fans: I modeled the economics of starting a city on Mars, including the use of Mars resources to build over a few decades, and including income to offset costs. The model indicates much cheaper than @elonmusk estimated here:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1159964499975135232?s=20
.../1


2/ For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau, the bureau of labor statistics, etc etc, assuming most segments of the economy will be built on Mars. A portion of the residents will work in the services sector (NAICS 51) just as in the US economy, so...


3/ ...exports from those workers will be "massless", easy to transport back to Earth. Including only those exports, the settlement can completely pay for ongoing imports of materials from Earth within a couple decades, thus keeping total cost low...


4/ I was surprised. Using Elon's transportation cost estimate and actual all-sectors economics data, the total Elon would need to outlay looks quite low. This is a zero-interest J-curve (i.e., the loan covered by Elon). It goes no lower than $2.5B at the deepest point.


5/ Certain segments of our current economy would be totally omitted (e.g., leather and wood) and the new costs for making air & water plus doing indoor agriculture are not that large compared to the total economy, thus easily absorbed.


6/ The biggest challenge was to estimate the number of unique items manufactured in a closed (self-sustaining) supply chain. Do we make 100,000 unique electronic components? What capital assets are needed to make them? Can we redesign everything to use fewer unique parts?


7/ Some researchers I know are working on reducing the number of unique parts for an off-planet economy. The extreme limit is a "general self-replicator" where *one* machine is able to make all of itself. This new model avoids fanciful extremes, so...


8/ ...it only assumes a modest reduction in supply chain breadth. Instead of 1000 types of bolts, Mars might start out by making only 100 types of bolts and design everything for just that. But this question is IMO the biggest source of uncertainty in the model.


9/ Everybody who knows me knows I am more of a cislunar person: put industry in cislunar space using lunar and asteroid resources to save the Earth (and get revenue servicing Mars transports). This modeling result surprised me. I no longer think settling Mars will be that hard.


10/10 I plan to present this model on Friday at the ESA's Space Based Solar Power workshop as part of a discussion on how we can use space resources to build clean energy for Earth.

[su27k]

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1468787591889793027

The label was bad on the graph. That was net imports/exports but did not include initial hardware development costs or human immigration costs. Those costs can never be recouped (per this model) so Elon & immigrants will need to just pay them. A rough estimate says… 1/2


2/2...only $10B for the initial habitat extrapolating from NASA's design reference mission + this cost estimator: https://globalsecurity.org/military/intro/reference/calc/AMCM.htm#Block%20Number with economies of scale and cheap transport reducing further. The model includes ongoing habitat expansion via self-funded in-situ industry.

[colbourne]

"My question is, what’s your current estimate on the total cost of having a self-sustaining civilization on Mars?"

If we assume that there will be no inputs from Earth to be classed as self sustaining (Maybe Earth civilisation has been destroyed. This is the eventuality that Elon wants to prepare for to allow human civilisation to be more robust ). This requires the seed technologies and resources to allow a civilisation to grow. I expect it would start small as too many mouths to feed and provide living space for would be harder.
They would need the ability to make sealed  tunnels, produce enough food, process minerals (meteorites) , manufacture suits and airlocks, and some kind of power source (probably solar or wind). Solar could be PV panels or reflectors (powering a turbine which might be simpler to construct than PV  ).
I think we need to work out how to sustainably fulfill these few critical tasks and then we could have a chance at a sustainable growing civilisation on Mars. Big might not be better initially. Ten people with the right skills might have the best chance of being the seed.

[JohnFornaro]

For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau...

This seems to be a faulty assumption.

[JohnFornaro]

The extreme limit is a "general self-replicator" where *one* machine is able to make all of itself. This new model avoids fanciful extremes, so...

An extraordinary claim, if not an extreme one.

[Twark_Main]

For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau...

This seems to be a faulty assumption.

It's an *imperfect* assumption to be sure (like all analogies), but do you have a better suggestion about what assumption should have been used instead?

[JohnFornaro]

For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau...

This seems to be a faulty assumption.

It's an *imperfect* assumption to be sure (like all analogies), but do you have a better suggestion about what assumption should have been used instead?

[Edit, 12-31-21. 

I am watching his presentation, linked below.  Although I still hold that the modeling assumption of the entirety of the US economy is "faulty", I would like to walk back the apparent severity of my terse summary above.]

The salaries of the astros involved are immaterial to the costing, as I see it.  In a competitive world, fairly administered, plenty of qualified volunteers would be available for no cost whatsoever.  NSoV.  No Shortage of Volunteers.

Also, Musk will throw out a twit and a hundred thousand people will salute it.  This doesn't mean that Musk cannot accurately estimate costs and profits.  When a contractor gives a homeowner a price that spans two orders of magnitude, the homeowner knows that it is not a guaranteed price in the least.

[lamontagne]

The element that worries me the most would be the evaluation of the cost of food on Mars, that may not have been properly evaluated from the brief mention in the tweets. Enclosing everything in a pressure vessel must add to the cost of living :-)

Looking forward to seeing the model though.

[Twark_Main]

For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau...

This seems to be a faulty assumption.

It's an *imperfect* assumption to be sure (like all analogies), but do you have a better suggestion about what assumption should have been used instead?

The salaries of the astros involved are immaterial to the costing, as I see it.

I see nothing in those tweets to suggest that this is how the model works.

[su27k]

Dr. Metzger's presentation starts at 2:43:15:

[JohnFornaro]

Dr. Metzger's presentation starts at 2:43:15:

Thanks for this.  Metzler presents Economics of Space Derived propellant here:

[Edit:  The time stamp feature didn't work properly on this post]

See the index for various time stamped conference sections.

[JohnFornaro]

For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau...

This seems to be a faulty assumption.

It's an *imperfect* assumption to be sure (like all analogies), but do you have a better suggestion about what assumption should have been used instead?

The salaries of the astros involved are immaterial to the costing, as I see it.

I see nothing in those tweets to suggest that this is how the model works.

His model is based on economics, which includes the salaries of all participants in the model.  My point, poorly worded, is that there would be a large number of *colonists* who would make the trip and work without pay for some time.  If true, this suggests that the *economic* costs might be lower.   However, I think the total costs will be far higher than suggests, which is not an argument not to make the attempt, but rather an argument to tighten up the estimate.

[Robotbeat]

Yeah, kind of like people going on the Mars Analogue missions for The Mars Society. They aren't paid. If anything, I think they might have to pay for them.

[su27k]

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1479235313394462724

I’ve done a lot of work on this question and it is surprisingly affordable (relatively speaking). Making air etc. is negligible cost compared to iPhones and everything else so is easily absorbed. But the problem is the scale needed to be self-sufficient. It requires O(1M) ppl /1


2/…or possibly O(100k) ppl.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1479257235591245833

The modeling was based on extensive US economic data so was realistic except the key assumption is that we can “skinny down” the supply chain by redesigning everything to reduce the number of unique parts and materials. E.g., instead of using 1000 types of bolts, use just 100./1


2/ i had to make a crude guess at the amount we can narrow the supply chain in each sector. The mode then assumes that we only increase population as we build the factory machines that need people to operate them (or whatever other kind of job is needed) so no extra ppl to feed.


3/ The model assumes we import everything from Earth but evolve toward sufficiency by building capital equipment & buildings over time. We retire first those sectors that produce the most mass per capital mass to reduce import mass ASAP. Move through the sectors over time.


4/ The model found that it takes about 40 years by this lowest-expense method before the economy can be self-sustaining, but that figure depends heavily on my guesses at how much we can narrow the supply chain.


5/ The cost of establishing this industry (a full supply chain on Mars) is offset be “massless” exports (data, services, tech licenses, etc.) back to Earth. Using US economic data for these sectors the exports can be very substantial and keep net costs quite low.


6/ By the time about $150k ppl live in Mars the debt per capita on Mars is comparable to the cost of an Orlando home. By about 20 years or so the settlement is profitable so debt is decreasing. (But this assumes Elon covers the cost of initial settlement on a zero interest loan.)


7/7 These results are preliminary and I plan to make the model more rigorous before publishing. But I was surprised that it came out as optimistic as it did.

[Slarty1080]

There are some trades that are really difficult to unpack at the moment. They are also subject to change over time:
How expensive will it be to shift mass to Mars?
How much money will be available and for how long to support the effort?
What proportion of the Mars cargos can be replaced with locally produced materials instead and how quickly?
What is the correct balance point between importing people and materials?

[Genial Precis]

The model appears to depend on Mars being able to sell services (as opposed to goods) to Earth. I don't understand how/why that would happen.

[deltaV]

The model appears to depend on Mars being able to sell services (as opposed to goods) to Earth. I don't understand how/why that would happen.

My guess is that the Mars exports that will be best able to compete with Earth versions will be goods and services where an authentic Mars version is a lot more valuable or marketable than Earth equivalents. For anything else the Mars version will be too expensive to compete with Earth-built equivalents due to Mars's inhospitable environment making everything expensive and/or the cost of shipping the goods or services to Earth.

Examples of possible exports:
* Mars soil and rocks can be sold to scientists and collectors
* Tourists will need lodging, food, air, tour guides, and so on
* Film movies set on Mars.
* Books on life on Mars written by Mars residents (with ghost writing and editing done on Earth)
* Televised sports with athletes beating many Earth records due to the low gravity and/or thin atmosphere.
* Can't afford to visit Mars in person? Instead rent a Mars robot for a day and walk around the settlement, write your initials in the Mars soil, or whatever. (You'd need a lot of artificial intelligence so the customer can give high-level instructions that work with the many-minute speed of light delay. You could also do this with a human with video cameras following instructions instead of a robot.)

[Genial Precis]

In the model services are broken out specifically as things not requiring transport of material. Tourism not a part of it.

Selling pet rocks on Earth has been proposed before. To make that work you need a cult like NFTs, MLM, Trump merch etc.

A lot of other stuff is probably killed by the 10-40 min latency in communications, especially as Earth stuff is increasingly habituated to more automation.

So, as I said, I don't understand how it could work. If the author understands, that is not clear to me.

[high road]

For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau...

This seems to be a faulty assumption.

It's an *imperfect* assumption to be sure (like all analogies), but do you have a better suggestion about what assumption should have been used instead?

At least acknowledge that to make it work as a model, Mars needs to import as much as the US does in quantity, at Mars-import cost.

edit: ah, having now seen the presentation, the model is: if we ignore the setup costs (which is Elon's 100 billion - 1 trillion dollars), the cost to transport the infrastructure that works on Earth (but would not on Mars at that price due to environment and supply chain dependencies) and handwave the part that explains how imports would evolve over time, and transport that at an admittedly low estimate of less than 1/3 of the current best price to LEO, and ignore that Mars would actually be paying for transporting exports (by having to compete with Earth prices to sell their stuff), that all amounts to a much smaller amount than the setup costs themselves. Which I assume he forgets that this amount is either part of or in addition to the setup costs.

So yeah, not really sure what kind of information we can get from this. Maybe it would be better if we would reduce the exports to mass-less exports and see how long it would take then to cover the total of the imports? Assuming we're making abstraction of what is being imported. That still assumes those kinds of exports would be comparable to the US economy for some reason, but as a thought expirement I see the value. You might indeed want to invest more in those industries and postpone ISRU with lower import mass savings.

[high road]

Dr. Metzger's presentation starts at 2:43:15:

What does SBSP have to do with an economic model for Mars?

Edit: the Mars part starts at 2:57:35 ish.

[JohnFornaro]

For this model, I used actual data from the US Census bureau...

This seems to be a faulty assumption.

At least acknowledge that to make it work as a model, Mars needs to import as much as the US does in quantity, at Mars-import cost.

edit: ah, having now seen the presentation, the model is: if we ignore the setup costs (which is Elon's 100 billion - 1 trillion dollars), the cost to transport the infrastructure that works on Earth (but would not on Mars at that price due to environment and supply chain dependencies) and handwave the part that explains how imports would evolve over time, and transport that at an admittedly low estimate of less than 1/3 of the current best price to LEO, and ignore that Mars would actually be paying for transporting exports (by having to compete with Earth prices to sell their stuff), that all amounts to a much smaller amount than the setup costs themselves. Which I assume he forgets that this amount is either part of or in addition to the setup costs.

So yeah, not really sure what kind of information we can get from this. ...
[/quote]

Bingo.

I had started a list along the lines of what you present.  Thanks for beating me to it!

One minor thing you slightly overlooked was Metzger's comment about reducing the number of parts by several orders of magnitude.  This reduction is mentioned in his list, as if it were of equal import.  It is not, since importation from Earth will be far cheaper for the first several synods than manufacturing "bolts", say, on Mars.

In a different forum, I contested Metzger's unsubstantiated assertion that: "Making air etc. is negligible cost compared to iPhones and everything else so is easily absorbed."  He responded by saying that he was "working" on providing that costing.

[JohnFornaro]

What does SBSP have to do with an economic model for Mars?

Note that he didn't mention nuclear power.  Electricity will have to come from somewhere.

[lamontagne]

Is the actual model available, or just the presentation?

[Genial Precis]

If he's written anything other than those tweets about the model, it doesn't show up on Google Scholar. I would be interested in reading about it.

[su27k]

I believe Dr. Metzger is writing a paper, but it's not finished.

As for the model, I think some of the summary above is incorrect:
1. Export is assumed to be massless, modeled after massless export from the US
2. Initial setup cost from Musk is not $100B to $1T, that's Musk's own estimate for the entire endeavor. The initial investment is R&D of hardware and get an initial habitat up and running, the latter Dr. Metzger gave a $10B estimate.

Edit: This tweet clarified things:

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1480550237672464393

I think it is actually quite doable to build a city on Mars. It will take about $10B to $100B initial cost (not counting Elon’s expense to develop transportation) then it becomes self-funding after a while. I am working on a model that gave these preliminary results. Publish soon

[JohnFornaro]

I believe Dr. Metzger is writing a paper, but it's not finished.

As for the model, I think some of the summary above is incorrect:
1. Export is assumed to be massless, modeled after massless export from the US
2. Initial setup cost from Musk is not $100B to $1T, that's Musk's own estimate for the entire endeavor. The initial investment is R&D of hardware and get an initial habitat up and running, the latter Dr. Metzger gave a $10B estimate.

$10B to get an initial hab "up and running"?  This is roughly the cost of SLS.  Metzger is overconfident, and under researched in the cost of this project.  Again, I'm not against the idea at all.  I'm for accurate costing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

[Lar]

I believe Dr. Metzger is writing a paper, but it's not finished.

As for the model, I think some of the summary above is incorrect:
1. Export is assumed to be massless, modeled after massless export from the US
2. Initial setup cost from Musk is not $100B to $1T, that's Musk's own estimate for the entire endeavor. The initial investment is R&D of hardware and get an initial habitat up and running, the latter Dr. Metzger gave a $10B estimate.

$10B to get an initial hab "up and running"?  This is roughly the cost of SLS.  Metzger is overconfident, and under researched in the cost of this project.  Again, I'm not against the idea at all.  I'm for accurate costing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

With mature transport 10 B is not totally unreasonable as an initial investment. Don't do it ISS style with a standing army groundside.

[high road]

What does SBSP have to do with an economic model for Mars?

Note that he didn't mention nuclear power.  Electricity will have to come from somewhere.

Yeah, but it wasn't related. it's two separate subjects, both of which he built an economic model for.

[JohnFornaro]

What does SBSP have to do with an economic model for Mars?

Note that he didn't mention nuclear power.  Electricity will have to come from somewhere.

Yeah, but it wasn't related. it's two separate subjects, both of which he built an economic model for.

Well, I think it's perfectly reasonable to include in one's model of the economic costs of a martian base, to include a model for how the power would supply that base.  Define "separate subjects".

[JohnFornaro]

I believe Dr. Metzger is writing a paper, but it's not finished.

As for the model, I think some of the summary above is incorrect:
1. Export is assumed to be massless, modeled after massless export from the US
2. Initial setup cost from Musk is not $100B to $1T, that's Musk's own estimate for the entire endeavor. The initial investment is R&D of hardware and get an initial habitat up and running, the latter Dr. Metzger gave a $10B estimate.

$10B to get an initial hab "up and running"?  This is roughly the cost of SLS.  Metzger is overconfident, and under researched in the cost of this project.  Again, I'm not against the idea at all.  I'm for accurate costing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

With mature transport 10 B is not totally unreasonable as an initial investment. Don't do it ISS style with a standing army groundside.

The *estimate* did not include "mature" transport.  The *estimate* assumes from scratch.  I'm not sure of your definitions.

[high road]

What does SBSP have to do with an economic model for Mars?

Note that he didn't mention nuclear power.  Electricity will have to come from somewhere.

Yeah, but it wasn't related. it's two separate subjects, both of which he built an economic model for.

Well, I think it's perfectly reasonable to include in one's model of the economic costs of a martian base, to include a model for how the power would supply that base.  Define "separate subjects".

He doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

[JohnFornaro]

He doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

[lamontagne]

He doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

Doesn't really matter as long as a cost for the infrastructure and production costs are included in the model.  Could be nuclear, could be solar and wind with storage, could be orbital solar or could be geothermal.  A significant part of the local economy will be producing the energy infrastructure.
I just hope the energy to produce the food and the greenhouses/grow rooms/biological reactors is included in the model or else it will be really off.  On Earth we don't count solar input in most models (as far as I know) as it is a given and common to all, but on Mars it's a big deal.  A bigger deal than making air, IMHO.

[JohnFornaro]

[Metzger] doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

Doesn't really matter as long as a cost for the infrastructure and production costs are included in the model.  Could be nuclear, could be solar and wind with storage, could be orbital solar or could be geothermal.  A significant part of the local economy will be producing the energy infrastructure.
I just hope the energy to produce the food and the greenhouses/grow rooms/biological reactors is included in the model or else it will be really off.  On Earth we don't count solar input in most models (as far as I know) as it is a given and common to all, but on Mars it's a big deal.  A bigger deal than making air, IMHO.

[Metzger] doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit.

Maybe you, lamontagne, could explain h-r's argument to me?

[lamontagne]

[Metzger] doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

Doesn't really matter as long as a cost for the infrastructure and production costs are included in the model.  Could be nuclear, could be solar and wind with storage, could be orbital solar or could be geothermal.  A significant part of the local economy will be producing the energy infrastructure.
I just hope the energy to produce the food and the greenhouses/grow rooms/biological reactors is included in the model or else it will be really off.  On Earth we don't count solar input in most models (as far as I know) as it is a given and common to all, but on Mars it's a big deal.  A bigger deal than making air, IMHO.

[Metzger] doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit.

Maybe you, lamontagne, could explain h-r's argument to me?

Don't know about High Road's argument.  So I looked at the video.  The point seems to be that space based solar power for Earth would be a good thing, reducing the impact of moving to a fully renewable energy form 25% of the economy (a huge change) to something between 25% and 6% (the present importance of the energy sector).
Developing Mars will create a space based economy, that will be able to supply the construction of SBSP from space (Mars/asteroids/moon) rather than from Earth.
The information on his Mars model is minimal.  I hope I can lay hands on the slides.  It seems to be a model of a mini US, on Mars.  The model would show that if Musk funds the settlement construction entirely out of his pocket for a cost of about ten billion dollars, the martians could live on Mars with a financial cost equal to the one that exists for living in Florida.  I.E a martian would have the same level of debt than a Floridian.  These martians could produce goods and services to build SBSP installations for Earth at lower cost than from Earth, and therefore have a viable export economy, as Earth would pay for SBSP using cheaper space based materials.

Make sense to you?

My question would be about the Martian energy requirements, that should be much higher than the ones on Earth and if his model takes that into account.  Living on Mars should always be much more costly than living on Earth because of the energy costs.  My hope is that he integrates his self replicating production ideas into the martian economy.  This way MArs gets very cheap energy, food costs are reasonable and then Martian do live rather like floridians.

[IRobot]

Any economics model of Mars will have to compare it with asteroid mining or a lunar base.

Mars must not only prove it can have a sustainable economical project, but also that it can compete with asteroid or lunar economical models.

[su27k]

I believe Dr. Metzger is writing a paper, but it's not finished.

As for the model, I think some of the summary above is incorrect:
1. Export is assumed to be massless, modeled after massless export from the US
2. Initial setup cost from Musk is not $100B to $1T, that's Musk's own estimate for the entire endeavor. The initial investment is R&D of hardware and get an initial habitat up and running, the latter Dr. Metzger gave a $10B estimate.

$10B to get an initial hab "up and running"?  This is roughly the cost of SLS.  Metzger is overconfident, and under researched in the cost of this project.  Again, I'm not against the idea at all.  I'm for accurate costing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

I rewatched the presentation, he said it's $10B to $100B for the initial base.

[su27k]

[Metzger] doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

Doesn't really matter as long as a cost for the infrastructure and production costs are included in the model.  Could be nuclear, could be solar and wind with storage, could be orbital solar or could be geothermal.  A significant part of the local economy will be producing the energy infrastructure.
I just hope the energy to produce the food and the greenhouses/grow rooms/biological reactors is included in the model or else it will be really off.  On Earth we don't count solar input in most models (as far as I know) as it is a given and common to all, but on Mars it's a big deal.  A bigger deal than making air, IMHO.

[Metzger] doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit.

Maybe you, lamontagne, could explain h-r's argument to me?

The SBSP stuff and Mars economic model are not directly linked, Dr. Metzger kind of handwaved their connection during the presentation, there's no mentioning of using SBSP for Mars colony at all. I believe the connection between the two topics is the similarity of the models.

The SBSP part of the presentation presented this argument: SBSP's biggest advantage is that it can be built entirely off-world, on the Moon for example. This means we build up the entire industrial base for SBSP on the Moon, starting from mining for raw material, ends with a completed SBSP built entirely from components sourced from industry suppliers on the Moon.

This is good because energy sector of the entire Earth in 2100 is projected to be as large as the entire Earth economy today, if we can move all that to the Moon it would mean we moved the entirety of today's industry to the Moon, which would produce enormous environmental benefit here on Earth. It's basically similar to Bezos' vision, but just for the energy sector.

However to get this benefit would require we bootstrap an entire industrial base on the Moon which can mine raw material from the Moon and manufacture a SBSP without needing anything from Earth, now you see the similarity to Mars colony: Both would require bootstrap an entire industry from zero, except in SBSP's case it's just the energy sector, while for Mars it's everything.

So the model for a fully off-world SBSP industry and a Mars colony is quite similar.

[lamontagne]

My understanding of the presentation is that Mars might be the source of a rapid development of industrial capacity in space. As Musk would be financing most of the initial settlement, it would happen much faster than other models, even faster than self replicating machines on the Moon, one of Metzger's fields of interest and one he championed with the US administration.

The basic product sold to Earth would be energy through Space Based Solar.  Metzger proposes than Martians could build part of the infrastructure for energy production for Earth Space Based Solar at a competitive cost, probably cheaper than from the Moon.  After all Moon development also requires a huge initial capital investment.  He does not go very deep on asteroids direct, but he clearly thinks that's even more expensive and slow.  Mars would benefit from a valuable export, therefore generating the revenue required for development.  Often the Achille's heal of Mars settlement designs.  Seems more convincing that selling Martian rocks or Martian tourism er even Martian real estate.

So this model would be an answer to the thread about the Martian export economy. 

[high road]

He doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

There is no mention of electricity at all in the Mars economic model. You may see a role for it, but it's not mentioned at all in Metzger's explanation of his economic model. It's all about estimating transport costs, full stop. Every other consideration is handwaved away at best.

We could have a discussion about SBSP and Mars, but dr. Metzger did not connect them in his presentation. Maybe his SBSP model was detailred enough to realize that SBSP would add quite a lot of mass that needs to be launched from/transported to Mars compared to nuclear (and until we have a technological breakthrough in conversion efficiency, conventional solar power), and setting up SBSP production on Mars for use on earth would pretty much nullify the benefits of building them in space, not even counting the extra cost of setting up production 2.5 years away from resupply.

[su27k]

He doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

There is no mention of electricity at all in the Mars economic model. You may see a role for it, but it's not mentioned at all in Metzger's explanation of his economic model. It's all about estimating transport costs, full stop. Every other consideration is handwaved away at best.

It's true that the electricity is not mentioned, although I suspect it will have a place in the model, energy sector is a pretty big sector in the economy, so it has to be represented. Also I don't think the model is about estimating transportation cost at all, he basically assumed Starship's low cost is a given, the model is mainly concerned with bootstrapping an industrial base from zero, which is kind of his research area.

[Slarty1080]

He doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

There is no mention of electricity at all in the Mars economic model. You may see a role for it, but it's not mentioned at all in Metzger's explanation of his economic model. It's all about estimating transport costs, full stop. Every other consideration is handwaved away at best.

It's true that the electricity is not mentioned, although I suspect it will have a place in the model, energy sector is a pretty big sector in the economy, so it has to be represented. Also I don't think the model is about estimating transportation cost at all, he basically assumed Starship's low cost is a given, the model is mainly concerned with bootstrapping an industrial base from zero, which is kind of his research area.

Just about every process will require electricity in one form or another. Most plastic production, propellant production and steel production will require vast amounts. Not including it in the model seems to me to be a rather a big flaw. Available power will be the throttle on the entire development of Mars and any model that disregards it is nonsense.

[lamontagne]

He doesn't mention SBSP at all in the Mars bit. He explains an economic model for SBSP, without refering to Mars, and then an economic model to estimate Mars resupply costs without mentioning SBSP.

Where does the electricity come from in the "economic model"?

There is no mention of electricity at all in the Mars economic model. You may see a role for it, but it's not mentioned at all in Metzger's explanation of his economic model. It's all about estimating transport costs, full stop. Every other consideration is handwaved away at best.

It's true that the electricity is not mentioned, although I suspect it will have a place in the model, energy sector is a pretty big sector in the economy, so it has to be represented. Also I don't think the model is about estimating transportation cost at all, he basically assumed Starship's low cost is a given, the model is mainly concerned with bootstrapping an industrial base from zero, which is kind of his research area.

Just about every process will require electricity in one form or another. Most plastic production, propellant production and steel production will require vast amounts. Not including it in the model seems to me to be a rather a big flaw. Available power will be the throttle on the entire development of Mars and any model that disregards it is nonsense.

It is unlikely that a model that is based on the need of Earth for Spaced Based Solar Power would forget to provide power to Mars :-)
The presentation doesn't describe the Mars model at all, except a parallel with the US economy.  Since Metzinger proposes that a solar based economy on Earth would require 25% of the world's economy to support its development, one would expect that Mars would be the same.  And from what I've gathered from all theses discussions over the years, power might be an even larger draw on the Martian economy.  Unless the power was created by self assembling machines/factories, another one of Metzger's interests.  Again without data we can only speculate.
The main question though is: Are Solar Power Satellites in geostationary orbit a likely answer to Earth's energy needs?  And can the transportation advantage be enough to favor Martian industries?
If we suppose 70$ per kg to geostationary orbit using Starship, and 50$ per kg coming from Mars, is that 25$ per kg a significant amount compared to the cost of the goods themselves?
After all steel fabrication is only a few$ per kg, as are food and many other goods.  So a transportation advantage in space may be significant, since the transportation costs are still much higher than the fabrication costs.

[Lar]

I believe Dr. Metzger is writing a paper, but it's not finished.

As for the model, I think some of the summary above is incorrect:
1. Export is assumed to be massless, modeled after massless export from the US
2. Initial setup cost from Musk is not $100B to $1T, that's Musk's own estimate for the entire endeavor. The initial investment is R&D of hardware and get an initial habitat up and running, the latter Dr. Metzger gave a $10B estimate.

$10B to get an initial hab "up and running"?  This is roughly the cost of SLS.  Metzger is overconfident, and under researched in the cost of this project.  Again, I'm not against the idea at all.  I'm for accurate costing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

With mature transport 10 B is not totally unreasonable as an initial investment. Don't do it ISS style with a standing army groundside.

The *estimate* did not include "mature" transport.  The *estimate* assumes from scratch.  I'm not sure of your definitions.

No, it assumes Starship level costing. Transport (to Mars) is not a significant fraction of the cost that the 10 B initial investment in the base has to cover.

Don't pick at things needlessly.

[ZachF]

One interesting way to potentially fund a Martian colony would be for the worlds reserve currency to become the Martian currency.

Providing currency to the rest of the world mathematically requires a country to run a trade deficit (Triffin’s dilemma), and it’s why the US runs persistent trade deficits.

[sebk]

After January 1971, the US dollar is a note distributed by the Treasury based on debt.  Prior to that point, it was based on credit backed by gold. 

The only remotely correct statement in this post. For the rest the only answer is Jim's standard one:

Mars dollars would only be backed by a ticket to return back to Earth to reliably breath fresh air again and feel warmth.  There is no economy on Mars as the only goods and services to purchase are those to leave.

Wrong

If there was a survey of inhabitants on Mars, 100% would want to leave.  They would want to pay just about anything to make things better on Earth vs stay on Mars.

Wrong

Survey of those on Earth wanting to live on Mars would likely be below 0.0000001% of the [population]. No doubt the first person to step on Mars would be famous.  But the rest would lose any attractive interest of the idea pretty quickly.

The moon may have some appeal with [people] for a limited duration stay for hours/ and maybe one or two Earth days.

Provably wrong.

[Twark_Main]

...

If there was a survey of inhabitants on Mars, 100% would want to leave.

...

Survey of those on Earth wanting to live on Mars would likely be below 0.0000001% of the [population].

...

...Votes were ~ 10:1 vote AGAINST living on Mars...

I can't help but notice a substantial numerical gap between your earlier claims and the evidence now presented.

"Only" three-quarters of a billion candidates to choose from? Whatever shall we do??   

[Coastal Ron]

There was a museum that showed off an exhibit with a Mars base camp, rovers, and what life would be like.  You know - tubes with idiotic panels that blink.   

Then the families and kiddos got to walk thru the turnstiles as they exited.  One turnstile was for a "want to live on Mars" vote.  The other was a "don't want to live on Mars vote".  Votes were ~ 10:1 vote AGAINST living on Mars - as they experienced it on Earth.

You didn't say when this supposed museum exhibit existed (or when), so it is hard to understand how much stock to put into the placement of the turnstiles (i.e. was there bias in the placement?).

Building the economy to improve the GDP of Antarctica might have a better chance.

I'm not sure you are understand why Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars... 

There is one luxury hotel in Antarctica somewhere.

There are ZERO luxury hotels in Antarctica. There is one private camp where you stay in tents and someone cooks nice meals for you, and you do end up spending LOTS of money for that experience. However that is NOT the same as staying at a "luxury hotel".

But Antarctica clearly isn't where people want to "go", if you know what I mean.

Again, you don't seem to understand why Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, and why Earthlings would want to travel to Mars to become Martians.

As to the economics of colonizing Mars, I have always viewed colonization as the equivalent of a humanitarian effort, where money goes in but no money comes out. What Dr. Metzger is proposing is that the amount of money needed to colonize Mars may not be as much as many people fear. Which would be nice, but it can't be proven out until people are actually on Mars trying to make colonization work.

[spacenut]

The moon and Mars, I predict will be initially exploration first, then finding resources such as water and minerals to mine.  Once minerals are found, they will be exploited. 

What will come first would be the set up to make liquid methane and lox, which includes a lot of solar panels. 

Second will be a base camp for living quarters with more solar power. 

Third, I believe will be a greenhouse for food production.  It may be underground, or regolith covered.  This also with more solar power.

Forth, I believe will be rovers to explore for minerals, maybe even using robots to explore. 

Fifth, will be setting up for industrial production of glass and metals for use to build more buildings and industrialization as well as more power production, by this time maybe some nuclear power and larger battery banks, maybe even methane engines for emergency power. 

All of this can be done over several years with 2 year to 4 year stints of colonists.  Some will stay longer, some will want to come back to earth.  It will be done similar to the military with volunteers.  Eventually those who want to stay will become a larger and larger group.  Then children will be born.  Even if it is 1 in 100 people who want to go and stay, that is still thousands of people.  People staying permanent will happen eventually even if it is 20-50 years after the first landings.  They may only then just vacation on earth, or maybe decide to retire on earth after being on Mars.  The 40% gravity, plus the added weight of space suits going outside, and wearing ankle or wrist weights should keep them in shape for 1g. 

As far as economics, the mining and production of products from raw materials, will be the economics, especially if rare earth metals are found in abundance, or rare metals in general.  Eventually larger and larger domed living spaces, or as on the TV show, The Expanse, large living areas were built into the walls of Valles Marineris.  This allowed for some protection from radiation or meteors, and still allowed you to see outside.  Made sense. 

[Twark_Main]

...

If there was a survey of inhabitants on Mars, 100% would want to leave.

...

Survey of those on Earth wanting to live on Mars would likely be below 0.0000001% of the [population].

...

...Votes were ~ 10:1 vote AGAINST living on Mars...

I can't help but notice a substantial numerical gap between your earlier claims and the evidence now presented.

"Only" three-quarters of a billion candidates to choose from? Whatever shall we do??   

You shall boldly stay.

This is such a bizarre "burn" coming from the guy who (just moments ago) claimed "100% of inhabitants on Mars would want to leave" and "likely below 0.0000001% of those on Earth want to live on Mars." 

I get it that you don't want to go to Mars. Fine. But why project that onto everyone else, despite all evidence to the contrary?

As you say, real data indicate hundreds of millions of candidates. Finding volunteers is not a bottleneck.

[Twark_Main]

The economics of Mars was never to make something like a Net Present Value (NPV) calculation work out.  To go to Mars and make it work, you have to go broke.

Sounds like you could be describing Iridium, Beal Aerospace, etc. The investors lose their shirts (sad!), but the technology the company built goes on to power successful space operations.

The dollar is backed by debt.  The currency for Mars is more like a balance between getting enlisted to excavate rocks all year in order to breathe,

Breathe easy, friend. For breathing and drinking, the amount of water mining is trivial. The real challenge will be mining enough water for propellant production.

and being selected to save the human species by being the next meal for the rest of the colony.

Surely you're joking. 

"How much food do we send so everyone doesn't starve" is a ridiculously simple calculation. Sending ample reserves of food is cheap (mass-wise) vs other risk mitigations.

As for the museum.... yeah, there was a clear winner.  Margin of error might have been +/- 10%.  Mars was a landslide loss AGAINST.

It's not a political race. It's not about "which side wins."

There is, quite literally, zero requirement that a majority of people want to go to Mars. None. Zip. Nadda.

That was never a requirement, ever.

[Coastal Ron]

In general I agreed with your post, and the sequence you laid out. What I disagree with is the first sentence in your last paragraph:

The moon and Mars, I predict will be initially exploration first, then finding resources such as water and minerals to mine.  Once minerals are found, they will be exploited. 

...

As far as economics, the mining and production of products from raw materials, will be the economics, especially if rare earth metals are found in abundance, or rare metals in general.

There is a misnomer that rare-earth elements (REE) are called that because they are, from a percentage of all mass, rare. They are not. Wikipedia states:

Despite their name, rare-earth elements are relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, more abundant than copper.

What makes them difficult to get in pure form here on Earth is the processing it takes to separate them from other common elements, typically uranium and thorium. For more details see this EPA website.

But the bottom line is that Mars won't have the mining infrastructure to specifically look for rare Earth elements for a very long time, and it likely would not have the resources to separate them even if uranium and thorium were found.

[Barley]

... likely be below 0.0000001% of the [population]. ...

Do you mean fewer that 8 people or did you just type zeros until you got tired?

[zubenelgenubi]

Moderator:
The thread has strayed from discussing Metzger's economic model to (yet another) general discussion of Martian colonization.

Please return to the specific topic.

[lamontagne]

I've contacted Dr. Metzger and got a reply.  His model is a work in progress at this point and not public.  Perhaps if I ask very nicely he will share some thoughts.

[JohnFornaro]

There was a museum that showed off an exhibit ... Then the families and kiddos got to walk thru the turnstiles as they exited.  One turnstile was for a "want to live on Mars" vote.  The other was a "don't want to live on Mars vote".

You didn't say when this supposed museum exhibit existed (or when), so it is hard to understand how much stock to put into the placement of the turnstiles (i.e. was there bias in the placement?).

It would be ludicrous to posit, and you didn't, that leftists would have gone thru the left turnstile and rightists the right one.  What possible bias could there be?  But still, a link would be appreciated. Also, to extrapolate from this *exhibit* to the entire population of the Earth, would also be ludicrous.

As to the economics of colonizing Mars, I have always viewed colonization as the equivalent of a humanitarian effort, where money goes in but no money comes out. What Dr. Metzger is proposing is that the amount of money needed to colonize Mars may not be as much as many people fear. Which would be nice, but it can't be proven out until people are actually on Mars trying to make colonization work.

Metzger's analysis is faulty as presented.  He basically argued from assertion only in the lecture and in his list of items.  Metzger does not provide backup of his *economic* analysis, and several important omissions have been mentioned up thread.  A proper accounting would be done before launching people, however.  Over time, they would, if successful, develop an economy, but I think the "humanitarian effort" would continue for quite some time.

It wouold be nice if Metzger engaged in this thread. 

[JohnFornaro]

[Pretty much everything] which includes a lot of solar panels. 

You've temporarily forgotten nuclear batteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery

[Twark_Main]

[Pretty much everything] which includes a lot of solar panels. 

You've temporarily forgotten nuclear batteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery

They didn't forget. They just realize that atomic batteries aren't a practical way to power "pretty much everything." They'll exist no doubt, but never as more than a rounding error.

You can run a toy or a space probe on atomic batteries. You can't run an entire society on atomic batteries, because they require vastly more energy to manufacture than they produce over their lifetime. Building atomic batteries is a net energy negative activity.

Despite appearances to the contrary, atomic batteries are actually energy storage / transmission devices, not energy generation devices.

Perhaps this would be okay if you're content to be dependent on imported energy from Earth forever. But even in that scenario, atomic batteries can't compete against nuclear reactors.

[rakaydos]

There was a museum that showed off an exhibit ... Then the families and kiddos got to walk thru the turnstiles as they exited.  One turnstile was for a "want to live on Mars" vote.  The other was a "don't want to live on Mars vote".

You didn't say when this supposed museum exhibit existed (or when), so it is hard to understand how much stock to put into the placement of the turnstiles (i.e. was there bias in the placement?).

It would be ludicrous to posit, and you didn't, that leftists would have gone thru the left turnstile and rightists the right one.  What possible bias could there be?  But still, a link would be appreciated. Also, to extrapolate from this *exhibit* to the entire population of the Earth, would be ludicrous too.

It would NOT be ludicrous, however, for one turnstyle to be closer to the direct line between the last doorway and the restroom, gift ship, or exit, creating a bias toward the "easiest" turnstyle. Particularly if it's low traffic and the sign not particularly highlighted, even a minor systemic bias like that can skew the results.

Not saying that's the case... but since we havnt gotten enough information to even verify this exibit's existance, you cant claim that it ISNT biased.

[lamontagne]

I got a second reply to a comment I made about energy use.  He will be reviewing his model for higher energy use on Mars and for more work for materials due to less concentrated ores.  The model is still incomplete so nothing definitive to share.

If he is like all other researchers I know, he's probably too busy to engage much outside of his already active media presence.  So I'll leave my questions at that.  It was very nice of him to respond at all.

[JohnFornaro]

It would NOT be ludicrous, however, for one turnstyle to be closer to the direct line between the last doorway and the restroom, gift ship, or exit, creating a bias toward the "easiest" turnstyle. Particularly if it's low traffic and the sign not particularly highlighted, even a minor systemic bias like that can skew the results.

Not saying that's the case... but since we havnt gotten enough information to even verify this exibit's existance, you cant claim that it ISNT biased.

Well, yeah.  And putting the other turnstile thru a swamp of alligators could also be misinterpreted as *bias*.

Hah!  Nice thinking there!  But still, Metzger has not yet provided sufficient information to confirm his assertion either.

[JohnFornaro]

They didn't forget. They just realize that atomic batteries aren't a practical way to power

Sorry.  Meant to say nuclear reactors.  But they're not practical?

[JohnFornaro]

I got a second reply to a comment I made about energy use.  He will be reviewing his model for higher energy use on Mars and for more work for materials due to less concentrated ores.  The model is still incomplete so nothing definitive to share.

If he is like all other researchers I know, he's probably too busy to engage much outside of his already active media presence.  So I'll leave my questions at that.  It was very nice of him to respond at all.

He has a fairly active twitter presence.  He's THAT busy.  But still, thanks for trying.

I predict he will not supply the model to the community.

[Twark_Main]

Well, yeah.  And putting the other turnstile thru a swamp of alligators could also be misinterpreted as *bias*.

"Misinterpreted?" I think that would be correctly interpreted as bias. 


(just be sure to double-blind your alligators, so they can't tell whether they're eating the research group or a control meal....  )

Hah!  Nice thinking there!  But still, Metzger has not yet provided sufficient information to confirm his assertion either.

Please tell me we're not making false equivocation between a published researcher's work and Mr. Scott's (since deleted) "there once was a man from Nantucket a museum somewhere" story. 

[Twark_Main]

They didn't forget. They just realize that atomic batteries aren't a practical way to power

Sorry.  Meant to say nuclear reactors.  But they're not practical?

Ahh ok, no worries!

Yes, that's a different story entirely. I wouldn't say nuclear reactors are impractical.

[Lar]

The less everyone engages with Mr. Scott, the happier everyone will be.

[JohnFornaro]

Metzger has not yet provided sufficient information to confirm his assertion either.

Please tell me we're not making false equivocation between a published researcher's work and Mr. Scott's (since deleted) "there once was a man from Nantucket a museum somewhere" story. 

When I said "Metzger" I meant Metzger.  Lar's advice about that other guy is well made.  I don't know how these things go, but, IMO, Metzger's  analysis is faulty and will not support the creation of a martian base.  He'll reveal his supporting data when and if he feels like it.

[JohnFornaro]

What is Metzger trying to prove with this graph?  Or better yet, what does Metzger's graph tell us about the economics of a martian base?

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1468774517606686726

He used Elon's transportation cost estimate. Elon suggests costs between $100B and $10T.  Shouldn't the chart have two lines?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1159964499975135232

He doesn't specify the x-axis on his chart; I guess it's years in the future?  From what starting point?  How does he get a smooth chart, and the confidence to assert that the "total Elon would need to outlay looks quite low"?  What are the factors that make the curve go up or down?

[lamontagne]

What is Metzger trying to prove with this graph?  Or better yet, what does Metzger's graph tell us about the economics of a martian base?


He used Elon's transportation cost estimate. Elon suggests costs between $100B and $10T.  Shouldn't the chart have two lines?

He doesn't specify the x-axis on his chart; I guess it's years in the future?  From what starting point?  How does he get a smooth chart, and the confidence to assert that the "total Elon would need to outlay looks quite low"?  What are the factors that make the curve go up or down?

He does mention couple of decades so that should be the scale.
All exports are massless, so services or intellectual property.
The starting point would be the initial colony investment.  As he is not including inflation there is ne need to be precise on that.
You are right, it should be a spread anywhere between 10-100 and not a single line.  But is Elon citing transportation cost only or entire settlement costs?

If you measure the area of the chart, 50 years x 2 billion is 100 billion.  Perhaps a coincidence 
The curve seems to demonstrate that with a 2 billion$ loan, Elon could finance a settlement similar to a US city.  But as you mention we have none of the parameters.  So we have no idea of the value of the calculations.

An interesting comparison would be the Chinese New Towns, often built on a population target of 500K people.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in_China
As they fill up, do they meet their original targets?

Overall, a good demonstration of the limitation of Tweets :-) 

[lamontagne]

I guess the question remains: can intellectual property and services be a significant revenue for Mars.  Are they a sufficient export to support economical growth.
Metzger obviously thinks so, as does Zubrin.  But is this an intuition or a re there examples on Earth to support the notion?

[JohnFornaro]

What is Metzger trying to prove with this graph?  Or better yet, what does Metzger's graph tell us about the economics of a martian base?

The line on the chart goes down, and then goes back up. What are the forces that move the line in such a fashion?  If the vertical axis is dollars, with negative numbers being below the line and profit above, what do the dots represent?   As to the NPV of imports and exports, what exactly are they importing? And the cost thereof?

He does mention couple of decades so that should be the scale.

The *colony*, if that's what's being modeled, doesn't show a profit until what, year 56?  And investors are supposed believe that on the basis ofthis chart?

All exports are massless, so services or intellectual property.

And of course, this is a preposterous affirmation, with the only effect of disproving the *calculation* in its entirety.

  But is Elon citing transportation cost only or entire settlement costs?

Who knows?

If you measure the area of the chart, 50 years x 2 billion is 100 billion ... The curve seems to demonstrate that with a 2 billion$ loan, Elon could finance a settlement similar to a US city.

Then there would only be the need for one dot?  Again, this chart is specious.  And what is your methodology for the area under the curve?  And what would you say the value of the first dot is?

Overall, a good demonstration of the limitation of Tweets

Naaahhhh.  Everything I posted above could be broken down into 280 CHAR chunx.  Again, I'm all in favor of starting at Luna, and jumping to Mars ASAP.  It's a good demonstration that phony calculations are not the way to make this happen.

[JohnFornaro]

I guess the question remains: can intellectual property and services be a significant revenue for Mars.  Are they a sufficient export to support economical growth.
Metzger obviously thinks so, as does Zubrin.  But is this an intuition or a re there examples on Earth to support the notion?

Intuition?  I guess they could mine BTC's and NFT's, right?  But then there's that nasty power calculation, which apparently we're not to discuss?

[lamontagne]

I guess the question remains: can intellectual property and services be a significant revenue for Mars.  Are they a sufficient export to support economical growth.
Metzger obviously thinks so, as does Zubrin.  But is this an intuition or a re there examples on Earth to support the notion?

Intuition?  I guess they could mine BTC's and NFT's, right?  But then there's that nasty power calculation, which apparently we're not to discuss?

As a mentioned a while back, I Tweeted to Metzger, about energy, who replied that he would review the model as he said he hadn't taken that sufficiently into account.  So obviously at the time of posting the model was incomplete.  If we limit ourselves to what was posted, quite simply the US is not an adequate analog for Mars, so the model is probably incorrect.


My tweet: Thanks for replying!  how about a work in progress copy for comments?  Curious about your take of energy use on Mars as we found a very high value due to food and propellant production.

Reply: I may need to improve that, then. Also, producing raw materials will be much higher energy since we will likely not have access to most of the ores that we use on Earth because of their low processing energy. I don’t have an early draft yet. Still working on the model itself.

We're arguing on nothing about nothing.  I don't see the point.  The obviously isn't enough data.  From what we can see the model is wrong.  The author has said it's a work in progress and that he will review it.
I think the discussion has served its purpose.  I'll just wait for Metzger to post something more complete.

Unless you have an alternative model to discuss?  That might be interesting, and doesn't require an absent expert

BTW when I say 'We' in the tweet I'm referring to a Mars settlement model I was a participant in : https://sites.google.com/view/foundationcitystate/technical-aspects/energy?authuser=0

[high road]

If you measure the area of the chart, 50 years x 2 billion is 100 billion.  Perhaps a coincidence 
The curve seems to demonstrate that with a 2 billion$ loan, Elon could finance a settlement similar to a US city.  But as you mention we have none of the parameters.  So we have no idea of the value of the calculations.

If the area of the chart is 100 billion, you'd need a 100 billion loan to cover the expenses. Or alternatively, a fund that makes 2 billion a year doing business on earth for 50 years, and spends the profits on Mars. If that fund could manage a yearly return of 5% or somesuch, the fund needs 40 billion to start operations.

Overall, a good demonstration of the limitation of Tweets :-)

And planetary society presentations.

As a mentioned a while back, I Tweeted to Metzger, about energy, who replied that he would review the model as he said he hadn't taken that sufficiently into account.  So obviously at the time of posting the model was incomplete.  If we limit ourselves to what was posted, quite simply the US is not an adequate analog for Mars, so the model is probably incorrect.

I wouldn't say 'incorrect'. A model is a simplified representation, and that's what dr Metzger seems to be in the process of doing: Get a large dataset you have easy access to about a complex system to represent a similarly complex system you are working on, work out the math, then start fiddling with the numbers to correct for flawed underlying assumptions like Mars being a much more hostile environment, or high transportation costs having knock-on effects.

It's all theoretical long term economics, not 'how do we power this', 'how do we actually limit the number of parts that need to be imported' or 'what IP would be exported from Mars'. The big question here is 'given that most exports are IP and services anyway, is Mars actually at such a bad disadvantage in the long term' (when the whole idea of having to adapt stuff for Mars conditions is much less of an issue, and Mars produces similar IP and services that countries on Earth export to each other). Everything else just seems publication bias because SpaceX going to Mars is popular at the moment. The preliminary results seem to imply that it isn't quite that dramatic, but there is naturally a ton of work to be done to identify (or even correct for) the underlying assumptions that may not apply for a long, long time.

[Twark_Main]

The *colony*, if that's what's being modeled, doesn't show a profit until what, year 56?

Graph comprehension nitpick: the chart doesn't show a profit until year ~30 (ie at the bottom of the curve). The chart doesn't break even until year ~56. There is a difference.

IMO it doesn't change your fundamental argument, but we should be precise. 

[JohnFornaro]

The *colony*, if that's what's being modeled, doesn't show a profit until what, year 56?

Graph comprehension nitpick: the chart doesn't show a profit until year ~30 (ie at the bottom of the curve). The chart doesn't break even until year ~56. There is a difference.

IMO it doesn't change your fundamental argument, but we should be precise. 

Totally agree about precision.  Seems I need a bit of an explanation.

[Assuming years and dollars as x and y.]

How do you conclude that the slope of the line indicates profit/loss? In year 1, it looks to me like they borrowed about $1.8B?  And more in years two thru 30?  Then the curve has a positive slope. What does that mean?  And what is the basis for NPV?

Frankly, I'm not getting it.

[JohnFornaro]

We're arguing on nothing about nothing.  I don't see the point.  The obviously isn't enough data.  From what we can see the model is wrong.  The author has said it's a work in progress and that he will review it.
I think the discussion has served its purpose.  I'll just wait for Metzger to post something more complete.

Unless you have an alternative model to discuss?  That might be interesting, and doesn't require an absent expert

BTW when I say 'We' in the tweet I'm referring to a Mars settlement model I was a participant in : https://sites.google.com/view/foundationcitystate/technical-aspects/energy?authuser=0

It's not an "argument".  Better to reframe it as a "discussion".  The point of the discussion is to determine what it might cost to set up an initial martian colony.

On the face of it, Metzger appears to be making a completely bogus argument.  He provides no facts, no links, no data, and no math.  His outline is solely assertion.  Absolutely, we are happy to wait for more info, but I don't know where to look for it.

As to the idea of a "massless" income stream, I posited two possibilities, NFT's and BTC's.  I thought of another massless income stream:  Selling DNA sequences of discovered life on Mars.  Such selling by private industry would violate the CHM prinicple, but it would be massless.   Of course, it would be dependent on that discovery.

Are there other income streams?  Yes.  Tourism is the most obvious one, but it is a mass intensive industry.  As I say often:  "Mass is your friend".  Anyhow, without an income stream that can be demonstrably credible, the model makes no sense and would not be useful in costing a martian colonly.

The model could provide a lecture income stream, but that is not a colony.

[robert_d]

Graph comprehension nitpick: the chart doesn't show a profit until year ~30 (ie at the bottom of the curve). The chart doesn't break even until year ~56. There is a difference.

Disagree. The upward slope in the graph represents declining (but still occurring) losses. You are correct about 'Break Even'; but that is by definition the point where revenue exceeds loss - otherwise known as Profit.

[robert_d]

As a follow on to the above, is it clear that there is a distinction between Closed system sustainability and Open system sustainability? Musk clearly aspires to at least a notional concept where Earth is not required. Where as this discussion thread is focused on an open system model featuring extensive trade with Earth. My initial thoughts regarding this is that a colonization effort would need to push aggressively for the former (while likely never quite succeeding) to have any hope of achieving the latter; yet having achieved the latter, extra expense would be required to preserve any option for Elon's vision to be achievable.   

[Barley]

Graph comprehension nitpick: the chart doesn't show a profit until year ~30 (ie at the bottom of the curve). The chart doesn't break even until year ~56. There is a difference.

Disagree. The upward slope in the graph represents declining (but still occurring) losses. You are correct about 'Break Even'; but that is by definition the point where revenue exceeds loss - otherwise known as Profit.

It seems clear to me that the J curve is cumulative.  The minimum is the point at which current costs equals current expenses and the zero crossing is where net profit begins.

But the difference between a function and its derivative is so basic that surely this is answered in the original report even if nothing else is.  If you are disagreeing about this you are not arguing about the model, you're arguing about basic literacy and numeracy.

[high road]

We're arguing on nothing about nothing.  I don't see the point.  The obviously isn't enough data.  From what we can see the model is wrong.  The author has said it's a work in progress and that he will review it.
I think the discussion has served its purpose.  I'll just wait for Metzger to post something more complete.

Unless you have an alternative model to discuss?  That might be interesting, and doesn't require an absent expert

BTW when I say 'We' in the tweet I'm referring to a Mars settlement model I was a participant in : https://sites.google.com/view/foundationcitystate/technical-aspects/energy?authuser=0

It's not an "argument".  Better to reframe it as a "discussion".  The point of the discussion is to determine what it might cost to set up an initial martian colony.

On the face of it, Metzger appears to be making a completely bogus argument.  He provides no facts, no links, no data, and no math.  His outline is solely assertion.  Absolutely, we are happy to wait for more info, but I don't know where to look for it.

As to the idea of a "massless" income stream, I posited two possibilities, NFT's and BTC's.  I thought of another massless income stream:  Selling DNA sequences of discovered life on Mars.  Such selling by private industry would violate the CHM prinicple, but it would be massless.   Of course, it would be dependent on that discovery.

Are there other income streams?  Yes.  Tourism is the most obvious one, but it is a mass intensive industry.  As I say often:  "Mass is your friend".  Anyhow, without an income stream that can be demonstrably credible, the model makes no sense and would not be useful in costing a martian colonly.

The model could provide a lecture income stream, but that is not a colony.

The model takes an earthly equivalent as the starting point. Which means the assumption is that Mars would produce all the types of massless exports that countries on Earth export to other countries. Tv show formats, offshore financial services, research, etc etc etc. Anything you can think of.

As for bitcoin, how would Mars make money from that? A 20 minute communication delay does not help when mining bitcoin. NFT's... well, a good old database with a few working copies will be far more efficient when keeping track of who owns what on Mars (not Earth, that has the same communication lag issue) than NFT's. If people have an issue with trusting their data to a few big parties, I bet they have an issue with trusting a few big parties to produce their air, water, food and electricity for survival, and keeping it all balanced. Such a settlement would die quickly

[robert_d]

It seems clear to me that the J curve is cumulative.  The minimum is the point at which current costs equals current expenses and the zero crossing is where net profit begins.

But the difference between a function and its derivative is so basic that surely this is answered in the original report even if nothing else is.  If you are disagreeing about this you are not arguing about the model, you're arguing about basic literacy and numeracy.

You may be right, but I think it is just showing the annual amounts. With nothing better than an intuition that realistic amounts would more closely match an annual run rate. What makes it clear to you that "the J curve is cumulative"?

[JohnFornaro]

Graph comprehension nitpick: ...

Disagree. The upward slope in the graph represents declining (but still occurring) losses. You are correct about 'Break Even'; but that is by definition the point where revenue exceeds loss - otherwise known as Profit.

It seems clear to me that the J curve is cumulative.  The minimum is the point at which current costs equals current expenses and the zero crossing is where net profit begins.

But the difference between a function and its derivative is so basic that surely this is answered in the original report even if nothing else is.  If you are disagreeing about this you are not arguing about the model, you're arguing about basic literacy and numeracy.

First: There is no "original report".  We're trying to figure out the logic and the math coherence of Metzger's tweet thread, and it's glorious promise, that establishing the first colony on Mars is less expensive than is thought.  We are thwarted by The Elon's overly broad cost estimate, and by the dearth of info from Metgzer.

Second: How do you define the slope of the curve in terms of the upward and downward parts?  It is by no means "clear" that it is "cumulative".  There is no referential index.

Third:  When you say "The minimum is the point at which current costs equals current expenses", what, exactly are the numbers with those "costs" and "expenses"?

[Twark_Main]

Graph comprehension nitpick: ...

Disagree. The upward slope in the graph represents declining (but still occurring) losses. You are correct about 'Break Even'; but that is by definition the point where revenue exceeds loss - otherwise known as Profit.

It seems clear to me that the J curve is cumulative.  The minimum is the point at which current costs equals current expenses and the zero crossing is where net profit begins.

But the difference between a function and its derivative is so basic that surely this is answered in the original report even if nothing else is.  If you are disagreeing about this you are not arguing about the model, you're arguing about basic literacy and numeracy.

First: There is no "original report".  We're trying to figure out the logic and the math coherence of Metzger's tweet thread, and it's glorious promise, that establishing the first colony on Mars is less expensive than is thought.  We are thwarted by The Elon's overly broad cost estimate, and by the dearth of info from Metzer.

Second: How do you define the slope of the curve in terms of the upward and downward parts?  It is by no means "clear" that it is "cumulative".  There is no referential index.

Third:  When you say "The minimum is the point at which current costs equals current expenses", what, exactly are the numbers with those "costs" and "expenses"?

I forgot this tweet, which indicates the graph is badly labeled and should actually be "NPV Of Net Imports/Exports Per Year." Per year, not cumulative. Mea culpa.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1468787591889793027

Also, label 'yer darn graphs, people! Units for this should have been dollars/year (which would have made the correct interpretation blindingly obvious), not [no units given].

[JohnFornaro]

I forgot this tweet, which indicates the graph is badly labeled and should actually be "NPV Of Net Imports/Exports Per Year." Per year, not cumulative. Mea culpa.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1468787591889793027

Also, label 'yer darn graphs, people! Units for this should have been dollars/year (which would have made the correct interpretation blindingly obvious), not [no units given].

How the heck do you know it's dollars per year ?

How many dollars did the chart spend in year 20?  Prove it.

And what do the dots mean?

And this:  "Elon & immigrants will need to just pay the osts."  How is that congruent with the assertion that the first base will cost less than expected? 

[JohnFornaro]

Awww, jeez.  Here he is asserting that "we can build a lunar landing pad with much lower energy & cost than we previously believed."

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1489300030301343747?cxt=HHwWhsC44ZSfh6spAAAA

[Twark_Main]

I forgot this tweet, which indicates the graph is badly labeled and should actually be "NPV Of Net Imports/Exports Per Year." Per year, not cumulative. Mea culpa.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1468787591889793027

Also, label 'yer darn graphs, people! Units for this should have been dollars/year (which would have made the correct interpretation blindingly obvious), not [no units given].

How the heck do you know it's dollars per year ?

Because Metzger clarifies that it's "net imports/exports." Imports and exports are flows, ie dollars per year.

How many dollars did the chart spend in year 20?  Prove it.

And what do the dots mean?

And this:  "Elon & immigrants will need to just pay the osts."  How is that congruent with the assertion that the first base will cost less than expected?

Obviously these are questions for Dr. Metzger, not me.

I've never claimed omniscience. Just because I have the answer to one question does not imply that I have the answer to all questions.

[su27k]

A related paper from 2016: Space Development and Space Science Together, an Historic Opportunity

The national space programs have an historic opportunity to help solve the global-scale economic and environmental problems of Earth while becoming more effective at science through the use of space resources. Space programs will be more cost-effective when they work to establish a supply chain in space, mining and manufacturing then replicating the assets of the supply chain so it grows to larger capacity. This has become achievable because of advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. It is roughly estimated that developing a lunar outpost that relies upon and also develops the supply chain will cost about 1/3 or less of the existing annual budgets of the national space programs. It will require a sustained commitment of several decades to complete, during which time science and exploration become increasingly effective. At the end, this space industry will capable of addressing global-scale challenges including limited resources, clean energy, economic development, and preservation of the environment. Other potential solutions, including nuclear fusion and terrestrial renewable energy sources, do not address the root problem of our limited globe and there are real questions whether they will be inadequate or too late. While industry in space likewise cannot provide perfect assurance, it is uniquely able to solve the root problem, and it gives us an important chance that we should grasp. What makes this such an historic opportunity is that the space-based solution is obtainable as a side-benefit of doing space science and exploration within their existing budgets. Thinking pragmatically, it may take some time for policymakers to agree that setting up a complete supply chain is an achievable goal, so this paper describes a strategy of incremental progress.

[su27k]

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1534241349079375873

The problem with articles like this is that they merely show us that the writer (in this case @paulkrugman) has *finally* recognized the challenges of off-Earth settlement that we have known precisely & been working to solve for decades... 1/2
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/opinion/musk-mars-twitter.html


2/…and it presents it to us as if it is a big gotcha that only he could have known (as if we don’t read the economics literature, too), and it doesn’t assess the actual progress in overcoming this challenge so it implies there is nobody working on it & no way to address it. smh


To be clear, I don’t think anybody including @elonmusk’s team believes we can send 1M ppl to Mars *today.* We know we have to develop tech that will make a small-population Mars community viable. Achieving 1M-viability is a target. I think it is easily doable.


Some of the concepts in play: (1) Reduce width of the supply chain by using more commonality of parts. E.g., do we need 1,000 different types of bolts, each with their own factory equipment to make them? No. Maybe we can divide the supply chain width by 30.


(2) Entire segments of the economy can be eliminated. E.g., Mars will not have a wood furniture industry (no trees). Mars domed-city dwellers will not need cars or airlines. Etc. The new economy can be vastly more efficient & sustainable than what we have on Earth.


(3) Automation tech is advancing at super speed. Right now in the West we leverage labor about 1500:1. Globally it is 300:1. Advancing tech will soon make it 10,000:1. Then 100k:1. The supply chain needs ever-less human labor to be sustainable.


(4) Nobody ever said Mars will not trade with Earth. @paulkrugman was making a straw man argument there, or was unaware of the literature & developments on this topic. We think the cost of Mars transport will plummet by a factor of 1000s in a few decades. In fact…


…I was supposed to give a talk today at the Space Resources Roundtable today on this topic, but untimely COVID kept me home. I will share the prerecorded video of my talk if I am permitted. In the talk, I discuss how economies of scope will drive the cost of space transport…


…to ridiculously low prices within about 30 years. I used the economics literature rooted in data to show this. If anybody wants to claim it will *not* happen, they would be claiming a miracle will occur, because it goes against everything we know about economics and experience.


So of course Mars will continue importing from Earth. Mars will easily export—especially in the services sector since services are massless and can be “shipped” by radio wave. Examples: software, engineering, biotech inventions (licensing, or work for terrestrial biotech firms).


(5) There is no need to wait until all the tech is developed before starting. A smaller population can be supported by trade with Earth as it bootstraps its local industry toward greater self-sufficiency. Till then, you don’t make the population larger than trade will support.


The essence of my modeling effort was to see how expensive it will be to support the Mars population during that interim, when they rely on imports from Earth but they don’t produce exports to pay for it, yet. I was *surprised* to find that it is easily affordable.


A key is to build 1st those segments of the economy that produce the most mass, thus minimizing the mass imported from Earth (and the transportation cost). & keep the Mars population no larger than needed to operate those segments of the Mars economy that have begun functioning.


So each import cycle brings what is needed to keep Mars settlers happy and healthy plus as much as you can afford in parts & materials to build the capital for the next economic segment that you plan to make functional.


As time goes on, Mars is making an ever larger fraction of the mass of capital for its own economy and importing ever smaller fractions. Along the way, you also begin standing-up the services sector to begin making exports back to Earth for revenue to offset import costs.


I based the modeling entirely on economic data of the US economy so it would be realistic. Modifications have to be made for, e.g., much higher cost of agriculture under a dome, plus the other changes enumerated above in this thread.

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1534244504387080192

I have a model on the economics of starting a city on Mars which I hope to publish (when other projects allow me more time). A key variable is how far we can contract the supply chain. Another is how far we can advance automation. Both address @paulkrugman’s essay.

[su27k]

Besides Dr. Metzger's excellent rebuttal, I'll just add that there seems to be several anti-Mars colonization pieces appearing in main stream media recently, I think it should be obvious that none of them has anything to do with Mars or colonization, their target is something or shall I say someone else.

[Lampyridae]

Any economics model of Mars will have to compare it with asteroid mining or a lunar base.

Mars must not only prove it can have a sustainable economical project, but also that it can compete with asteroid or lunar economical models.

It doesn't have to compete. In fact, those markets will be the primary ones for manufactured goods.

Mars will have abundant access to volatiles, and we had a long thread that basically came to the conclusion that lunar-derived propellant is only marginally competitive.

Today's economy is not like "I sell coal to the USA and get back an iPhone". It's "I sell coal to China, which buys aluminium from Australia, silicon from Brazil, xenon from Ukraine, and software and IP from the US, and then I can get an iPhone made in China but for which I pay a US company which pays China its share of the production costs."

Let's take a single example: space suits. They are constantly needed and wear out. They are also very expensive. Spacesuit parts will be high on the Martian agenda, and then they'll eventually make almost all of the suit domestically (save for your inevitable imports such as a radiation sensor from Israel and an oxygen sensor from Japan).

The Moon gets plenty of tourists but doesn't need to make the suits locally. But are the lunies going to trust suits made by people who live in an ocean of free air? That's where the 'pet rock' concept comes into play. Martian things will acquire some value because they are Martian, just like it matters for some whether their cellphone is made in China or South Africa.

[Lampyridae]

Awww, jeez.  Here he is asserting that "we can build a lunar landing pad with much lower energy & cost than we previously believed."

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1489300030301343747?cxt=HHwWhsC44ZSfh6spAAAA

Don't you hate it when innovators innovate and throw your assumptions out the window. But disruptive technologies are essentially what make economic growth possible.

Doing the research for my own novel, I realised that bigger, simpler habs are probably going to be both desirable and economically necessary for a Mars or Moon colony. There will be a driver for large, cheap pressurised volumes. Maybe big, dumb structures made mostly out of regolith and then filled with Earth-like structures are going to be much more cost-effective in the long run than spamming cramped modules which spring leaks behind inaccessible wiring cabinets.

This isn't something I've backed up with numbers other than the square cube law, but intuitively, if you have a large, mostly earthworks structure that contains pressure, access points and a means of providing lighting, it makes construction inside the volume vastly easier and more similar to Earth-like construction work. If we stick to aerospace design for the Space Family Robinson's 4 bedroom house, it's never going to be competitive.

What this means is that space city economics needs to bend the arc of its construction process to something more like enabling a functioning modern city without the hassle of airlocks, interconnections and so on. Then your Earth-derived economic assumptions might become more valid.

[deltaV]

square cube law

You appear to have concluded from the square cube law that bigger habs are more efficient (more volume enclosed per mass of hab) than smaller habs. That's correct if hab wall thickness is independent of hab size, as would occur if hab wall thickness is set to achieve a desired amount of radiation shielding. However it's incorrect if hab wall thickness is set by the need to hold atmospheric pressure. The square cub doesn't directly apply because larger pressure vessels require thicker walls for the same pressure. It turns out that pressure vessel efficiency (at constant pressure) is independent of size. Also you need to account for the structures that hold up the mass of the hab; I don't know how those scale but I'd guess smaller structures have the advantage. (If you're OK with the hab collapsing if it ever loses pressure you can save mass by using tensile structures, i.e. support things from cables attached to the roof.)

[JayWee]

Somewhat related to this topic:
Have you seen some serious study/thoughts on which technologies will have to be developed for a functioning Mars/space colony?

Ie, a Martian tech-tree.

[JohnFornaro]

You appear to have concluded from the square cube law that bigger habs are more efficient...larger pressure vessels require thicker walls for the same pressure

A ready analogy for this is that a wood 2x4 spanning four feet on the flat, will reliably support one 200 pound person.  But if the span is 400 feet, a more substantial structure is needed to support a 200 pound person every four feet.

I have always liked the idea of a double layered geodesic dome, well anchored to the surface.  My known preference for domes is based on my observation that most people like to see the outdoors. 

Perhaps the outer layer is a type of lead glass for radiation and the inner layer a type of beryllium glass for strength.  The air pressure inside the dome would be close to the terrestrial air pressure at about 20K feet altitude [6.4 psi], and the pressure in the glass layers some appropriate percentage between that and the ambient martian air pressure, say at about 75K feet? [About 0.5 psi]. 

I have envisioned the space between inner and outer domes to be about nine or ten feet.  The dome would not collapse, but it must have sufficient tensile strength to resist internal pressure.

Such a layered approach, if proven valid, would support Lampyridae's thought that:

What this means is that space city economics needs to bend the arc of its construction process to something more like enabling a functioning modern city without the hassle of airlocks, interconnections and so on.[12-ish psi]/quote]

The surface structures inside the dome could have atmos at near Earth levels, say 5K feet [12-ish psi].  No masking [pun intended] required indoors; all doors would open inwards so that pressure would be contained by passive seals. There would still be airlocks, but with the reduced pressure differential, they would be somewhat less complicated, and could still passively seal the airlock in case of power interruption.

In case of catastrophic dome leakage, which would include the failure, say, of but one panel, inhabitants could flee to a more secure lower level until the dome could be repaired.  This implies that there would be a regular harvesting of the martian atmo to replace routine leakage losses. 

What a way to live, tho.

[Slarty1080]

square cube law

You appear to have concluded from the square cube law that bigger habs are more efficient (more volume enclosed per mass of hab) than smaller habs. That's correct if hab wall thickness is independent of hab size, as would occur if hab wall thickness is set to achieve a desired amount of radiation shielding. However it's incorrect if hab wall thickness is set by the need to hold atmospheric pressure. The square cub doesn't directly apply because larger pressure vessels require thicker walls for the same pressure. It turns out that pressure vessel efficiency (at constant pressure) is independent of size. Also you need to account for the structures that hold up the mass of the hab; I don't know how those scale but I'd guess smaller structures have the advantage. (If you're OK with the hab collapsing if it ever loses pressure you can save mass by using tensile structures, i.e. support things from cables attached to the roof.)

Yes tensile structures have promise. It would be possible to build a dome that was weighted down from above by its massive construction mass or a dome could be constructed within a dome and the area in between could be packed with regolith to help counteract the air pressure. Lighting could be provided by leaving some areas free of regolith packing. Not as bright as a glass dome, but would provide more radiation protection and for the given volume would probably be easier to build than via excavation underground.

[Lampyridae]

square cube law

You appear to have concluded from the square cube law that bigger habs are more efficient (more volume enclosed per mass of hab) than smaller habs. That's correct if hab wall thickness is independent of hab size, as would occur if hab wall thickness is set to achieve a desired amount of radiation shielding. However it's incorrect if hab wall thickness is set by the need to hold atmospheric pressure. The square cub doesn't directly apply because larger pressure vessels require thicker walls for the same pressure. It turns out that pressure vessel efficiency (at constant pressure) is independent of size. Also you need to account for the structures that hold up the mass of the hab; I don't know how those scale but I'd guess smaller structures have the advantage. (If you're OK with the hab collapsing if it ever loses pressure you can save mass by using tensile structures, i.e. support things from cables attached to the roof.)

Yeah, that pressure vessel efficiency is what I'm aiming at. At some size, you can have a cheap regolith concrete, icecrete or plain ice that provides the desired radiation protection while being good for the chosen air pressure + safety factors. For Mars-temperature ice, something like 1m is sufficient for a 100m+ diameter dome*. You can ofc make big cylinders, tori or whatever. I assume that *maintenance* costs are linear with surface area, so you want to minimise those by maximising volume.

*obviously a dome would need a strong tension section around the base or have a convex bottom. But the weight of the dome apparently nulls some or all of this out, as noted by Slarty1080. The massive weight of the dome/shielding becomes another positive.

https://www.academia.edu/3090820/Ice_Dome_Construction_for_Large_Scale_Habitats_on_Atmosphereless_Bodies

On the flip side of the coin, you could make tented "pillowed" structures (like an air mattress) with no shielding and just anchored to the surface. However, you linearly increase the inspection/maintenance area for the amount of volume, and you need Arrakeen-like brutalist buildings to protect against radiation. (Also, the Reynolds numbers on Mars mean ornithopters may be practical)

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/28/domes-are-very-over-rated/

So anyway, big pressurised volumes of some sort are feasible from a spherical cow standpoint, and desirable. Still far more expensive than open land on Earth. Filching a number from Singapore, land in Earth cities/built-up areas can be $7000 per square metre. If an ice dome, PTFE tent or whatever can approximate that, I think you can get a setting that approximates the economic environment of an Earth city: coffee shops, advertising companies, schools, shopping centres along with light industrial space and highly optimised agricultural space.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

In reply to the first tweet below, Dr Metzger has written another long thread on the difficulty of settling Mars. Talks at a high-level about the economics, but main focus is asking critics to do modelling and show their work (rather than just making assertions):

twitter.com/finmoorhouse/status/1534888982990954501

The base will initially require a continual supply of resources, parts, fuel, and people from Earth. Musk estimates ~1,000 reusable rocket trips to reach self-sufficiency, over 40–100 years.

Cost estimates are tricky but the Apollo program was ~$200 billion in today’s money.

https://twitter.com/drphiltill/status/1548465323770200065

So I think it’s a decent question to ask whether settling Mars really reduces existential risk or not. More on that below. But 1st I gotta ask whether Mars-skeptics have actually run economics models on it or not. I have, and AFAICT it will not be that hard to settle Mars. 🧵 1/n

2/ It’s on my to-do list to publish the Mars settlement economics model, but I have more urgent tasks so it will be a while. Also let me say I’m not really a Mars type. I’m more of a “Moon, asteroid & cislunar industry to save the Earth” type. But I see synergistic value in Mars.

3/ The problem with these Mars-skepticism arguments is they are all one-sided equations: “Mars has X and Y problems.” The missing side of the equation should have been an engineering & economic estimate of handling that problem. If it is too costly, then yeah, Mars is too hard.

4/ But just stating the challenge without the quantitative assessment is only half of the equation. Here are other examples of one-sided equations:

5/ Some people claim the Earth can only be 5,000 years old because the mountains erode to quickly and would be all gone by now if the Earth were older. But the other side of the equation is the rate of mountain building, which they left off.

6/ Example 2: Some people say we know for sure there is extraterrestrial life in the galaxy because it is sooooo big with soooo many planets. The other side of the equation is the rate that life forms on planets. Without that part, we can’t really say if life is common or not.

7/ Example 3: planetary scientist Tommy Gold made a famous mistake when he predicted the Moon dust would be so deep that we would sink in it. He thought that because the rate dust falls to the Earth should be the same on the Moon, so after billions of years it’ll be DEEP! But…

8/ pretty quickly — like within a week — he recognized his mistake because a colleague at Cornell pointed out the other side of the equation: that geological processes on the Moon turn dust into larger particles (impact melt forms larger glass particles), etc. So dust NOT deep.

9/ Sadly, because of that brief 1-sided equation, even 60 years later we are saddled with rumors that NASA thought the Moon dust would be deeper than it really is. Not true. NASA knew the real depth before we landed anything on it. The 1-sided equation fallacy did this to us.😭

10/ Nowadays we hear lots of “1-sided equation” arguments about Mars being soooo hard to live on that we clearly should not try it. “It has no breathable air. It has radiation. It has toxic dust. Clearly it will be too costly to make a city there where humans could thrive.”

11/ Ok, then let’s see the other side of the equation. Does anybody have something more than hand waiving for the other side of the equation? If so, we need numbers. How much hardware needs to be sent to Mars? How many workers to operate it? How much food? What can they export?

12/ Then add up the cost of those shipments to Mars minus the value of exports back to Earth. Can the trade balance go to zero? How much is needed to finance the difference until then? If you don’t have numbers, you don’t have anything.

13/ I think people are susceptible to 1-sided equations about Mars for several reasons. One reason is because people don’t have a good sense for what “hard” really is. Here are some things that are actually hard…

14/ “Hard” includes developing an extensive supply chain on Earth that fills the entire world with smart phones. That was hard. Surviving on Mars doesn’t require manufacturing smart phones. It just requires air, dirt, water, stuff like that. Easy by comparison.

15/ “Hard” includes developing an economy where most people work on stuff we don’t even need: like Sumatra Starbucks beans, fashion, tourism, TV, cars, Twitter, pretty much everything. How few people work in agriculture and other actual necessities! So imagine…

16/…if we cut out some entire sectors of the economy that aren’t needed, like the automotive industry, suburban construction, most furniture and fashion—are those workers enough to wash dirt and operate air circulation systems on Mars? Actually, they are far more than needed.

17/ I think another reason people are susceptible to these 1-sided arguments is that they are thinking too small. They are imagining tiny Apollo-style missions costing billions of dollars. Low capability, hence low ability to solve Mars problems.

18/ The economics for Mars get far better if you go big from the start. You benefit from economies of scale. The learning curve is vastly faster. And lots of humans together can do amazing things. (credit: SEEDS of Mars
https://www.edgeprop.my/content/1459278/envisioning-future-homes-planet-mars)

19/ So if people want to be skeptics then fine, but please stop making 1-sided arguments. It is not inherently obvious that Mars will be all that hard. I think it will be straightforward.

As for whether Mars helps reduce existential risk for humanity or not,…

20/ I agree that settling Mars is *not* one of the most important things we could be doing.

But, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. It won’t be an impact on anything else we do. And it will have synergistic benefits.

21/ If Earth-humans are wiped out by pandemic or AI run amok, it might spread to Mars too easily since there will be traffic back and forth. Mars reduces risk of asteroid extinction on Earth, but that is relatively small. Mars helps but it is down the list of important steps.

22/ But the synergy it will create in cislunar space will have tremendous benefit that will make humanity much safer and make Earth healthier. The tech to settle Mars has great overlap with cislunar industry that can help address climate change and more. Economies of scope.

23/ I think it is easy for people to miss the importance of this. We know the global economy is intertwined so what happens in China affects America. The Space economy will be like that, too. Mars will never be just about Mars. It will be about the whole Solar System and Earth.

24/ And some people (not me so much) are just interested in living on Mars. That makes them excited to wake up in the morning and work for the good of humanity. If they do things that increase the funding of space tech, then awesome! The technology benefits the Earth, too.

25/ So I hope I can carve out time to publish the Mars economic analysis soon. I took data from the US government (bureau of labor statistics, commerce for shipping masses & values, etc etc etc) to model how many rockets need to go to Mars to replicate an entire economy.

25/ I assumed that Mars will focus on developing one sector at a time starting with industries that have the highest ratio of mass of production to mass of capital, to minimize the rocket traffic. And bring only enough people for the labor of those sectors plus other necessities.

26/ Then over time build out more and more sectors. Building material and steel are first. Electronics and biotech are filled out later. And Mars can focus on the services sector for massless exports to Earth. The net of expenses less revenues is the amount to be financed.

27/ I was shocked to see how low an amount will need to be financed. Within something like 30 or 40 years*, the Mars settlers will be in less debt than the average American, meaning it will be affordable for all. (*I’m going by memory for something I modeled 1 or 2 years ago.)

28/ So if people want to tell others that cleaning dirt and pumping air and designing architecture that lets in light while putting some mass overhead (blocking particles from space) is SOOOO hard that humans should not try, then please do the modeling and show your work. /end 🧵

[JohnFornaro]

In reply to the first tweet below, Dr Metzger has written another long thread on the difficulty of settling Mars. Talks at a high-level about the economics, but main focus is asking critics to do modelling and show their work (rather than just making assertions)

Well, the best defense is a good offense, but Metzger does not provide any modelling data, just assertions of his own.

But 1st I gotta ask whether Mars-skeptics have actually run economics models on it or not. Ic  have, and AFAICT it will not be that hard to settle Mars.

It’s on my to-do list to publish the Mars settlement economics model...

If I understand this correctly: It's cheaper to colonize Mars than the skeptics would suggest, and they haven't run the numbers.  Metzger has run the numbers, but you can't have them yet.

Some people claim the Earth can only be 5,000 years old because the mountains erode to quickly...

If I understand this correctly: If you don't believe the numbers Metzger hasn't provided, then you're a Flat Earther.  Or something.

Some people say we know for sure there is extraterrestrial life in the galaxy because it is sooooo big with soooo many planets.

At least he acknowledges that the fundamental assumption in the Drake equation is made up from whole cloth.

Surviving on Mars doesn’t require manufacturing smart phones. It just requires air, dirt, water, stuff like that. Easy by comparison.

Metzger uses "one sided equations" when it suits.  Not only that, he populates the left side of the equation with nonsense while ignoring the right side of the equation; the cost of the "air, dirt, water, stuff like that."  It is by no means "easy" to arrange for that short, incomplete list to support human life on Mars.

... if we cut out some entire sectors of the economy that aren’t needed...

 

Allowing, for the purposes of conversation, that while those terrestrial sectors created the wealth, technology, and leisure time required for eventual martian colonization, we can tentatively accept that these sectors, strictly speaking, are not required for the Spartan existence that the first colonizers will experience.  But this obvious fact has no bearing on the cost or difficulty of actually building the psychedelic imagery dreamed up by Ho and company:

https://www.edgeprop.my/content/1459278/envisioning-future-homes-planet-mars

I think we all notice that there is no steak behind that professionally rendered sizzle.

As I mentioned above:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=55360.msg2326682#msg2326682

I think the total costs will be far higher than he suggests, which is not an argument not to make the attempt, but rather an argument to tighten up the estimate.

Which he has yet to do. 

Remember.  He brought the subject up, so he should cast the first number.

[high road]

Starting a thread with 'all the critics show me your numbers, but I don't have time to show mine' is very weak.

Although the last few posts are the important ones. You can't use the productivity numbers and employment numbers for sectors on Earth, as they benefit waaay more from economies of scale, have a lot of inputs that are not readily available on Mars (eg refining ores as we do on earth would be several times harder because you need to collect massive amounts of water which is a separate industry on Mars). Productivity will be entirely different. It's quite likely it won't even be meaningfully calculated in the same way.

And the stuff you don't 'need' is the stuff that people will import and IIRC, the stuff that would pay the bill as it could be exported to earth.

[su27k]

https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1608697765294669825

Akhil linked a very interesting paper. In it he argued that the economics of shipping goods between planets dictates that neither the minimum energy trajectory (Hohman transfer) nor the minimum time trajectory is optimum, but something in-between.


Related: when building a civilization on Mars, it is wrong to think that we should ship goods to/from to Mars only when the planets are aligned once every two years. That trajectory is the optimum to a *different* economic problem than starting a city on Mars. 2/n


When a space agency like NASA can afford only one mission every two years, then obviously they’re going to send it on a trajectory that allows maximum payload mass. So they need the planets to line up. But if you’re building a city on Mars… 3/n


…then the extremely high finance cost drives you to get the city profitable ASAP, so you *must* launch missions from Earth as fast as you can, launching every day all year long to get as much manufacturing hardware and workers on Mars as fast as possible. 4/n


A huge chunk of the year when the planets aren’t aligned costs only modestly more in propellant than waiting for optimal alignment of planets. Like maybe 10% more iir for many months. So is it worth holding back crucial hardware from Mars to save only 10%? 5/n


I haven’t run the numbers but I suspect that the gigantic leveraging of finance costs and the delay of reaching sustainability will drive departures to Mars all year long. Many clustered around the optimum alignment of planets, to be sure, but many others not. 6/


A problem I run into sometimes in the space community is that we operate from a set of heuristics like “we only depart to Mars when the planets are aligned” without realizing those heuristics were developed in a different economic paradigm so they aren’t generally true. 7/7

[TrevorMonty]

Humans will need shortest trip to Mars to reduce health effects of zero G and radiation exposer. Also longer trip more suppliers are needed.

[JohnFornaro]

A problem I run into sometimes in the space community is that we operate from a set of heuristics like “we only depart to Mars when the planets are aligned” without realizing those heuristics were developed in a different economic paradigm so they aren’t generally true.

I'm afraid the "economic paradigm" here exists only in Metzger's head.  His point about the time value of money is valid.  Building a city faster means you can profit sooner,  but sadly,  the transportation problem and the infrastructure problem have not made it to cis-lunar space yet.   Remember, SLS only ran a circle around the Moon just the other day.

Edit 02-16-23:  The paper Metzger links to does not seem to exsit?

https://twitter.com/ThatAkhilRao/status/1608563529438875649

[Twark_Main]

he argued that the economics of shipping goods between planets dictates that neither the minimum energy trajectory (Hohman transfer) nor the minimum time trajectory is optimum, but something in-between.

Isn't this intuitively obvious?

Some costs are per-unit-time (eg radiation and consumables), and some costs are per-unit-propellant. So obviously the cost-optimal route is somewhere in the middle.


Same for shipping. We can observe that it isn't run at the fuel-optimal speed (very slow, generally) or the time-optimal speed (eg full throttle across the entire Pacific). It's a compromised trade-off between the two.


You can of course sometimes find situations where the optimum is "pegged" at either end of the dial (eg terrestrial trucking always riding the speed limit), but that only means that technology limitations are preventing you from reaching the true optimum.

[Slarty1080]

he argued that the economics of shipping goods between planets dictates that neither the minimum energy trajectory (Hohman transfer) nor the minimum time trajectory is optimum, but something in-between.

Isn't this intuitively obvious?

Some costs are per-unit-time (eg radiation and consumables), and some costs are per-unit-propellant. So obviously the cost-optimal route is somewhere in the middle.

Same for shipping. We can observe that it isn't run at the fuel-optimal speed (very slow, generally) or the time-optimal speed (eg full throttle across the entire Pacific). It's a compromised trade-off between the two.


You can of course sometimes find situations where the optimum is "pegged" at either end of the dial (eg terrestrial trucking always riding the speed limit), but that only means that technology limitations are preventing you from reaching the true optimum.

Yes it entirely depends on what the goods being shipped are

[Alexsander]

My guess: cities will appear naturally on Mars.

Considering Starship and 100 T to Mars surface, we'll have:

- First, robotic missions will build a few small bases with adapted containers ("trailer park" research stations), at "rover distance" from each other. Some stations will be state-owned, others will be private.
- Each 20 ft container would be a self contained pressurized habitat; several types, like dorms, labs, kitchens, greenhouses, etc. They would have a standard hatch/airlock allowing the robots to connect them in a large pressurized area.
- Robotic ISRU will make air and water; FSD trucks could travel back and forth between the "trailer park" and the "mines", storing the resulting liquid and gasses in tanks near the containers.
- Crewed missions will occupy the research stations, Antarctica style. Humans will bring seeds for farming, livestock and lots of packaged food. They will connect the ISRU tanks, etc. The first crews will be mostly scientists.
- After the first bases are up and running, the tourists will follow.

[Twark_Main]

20 ft container would be .. pressurized

There's a reason why most pressure vessels don't have flat sides.

A standard shipping container can't even be buried underground (the walls will collapse), and that's less than 1 atmosphere of differential pressure.

Early habs will almost certainly be cylindrical, not prismatic.

[Alexsander]

20 ft container would be .. pressurized

There's a reason why most pressure vessels don't have flat sides.

A standard shipping container can't even be buried underground (the walls will collapse), and that's less than 1 atmosphere of differential pressure.

Early habs will almost certainly be cylindrical, not prismatic.

You mean like this? I think the "container" format has some advantages: easier manufacture and transport on Earth (more competing suppliers = lower price), easier to stack inside a Starship, easier to unload with a "pez dispenser crane", etc. The cubesat standard shows that a standard format helps.

[Twark_Main]

You mean like this?

Yes, that's exactly what I was picturing actually!

Obviously the size (and stackability) won't be suitable or needed for all purposes. Ultimately I expect stick-built buildings similar to skyscrapers, except the 3D grid of structural beams is mostly holding back internal pressure tension.

[Proponent]

In the model services are broken out specifically as things not requiring transport of material. Tourism not a part of it.

Selling pet rocks on Earth has been proposed before. To make that work you need a cult like NFTs, MLM, Trump merch etc.

A lot of other stuff is probably killed by the 10-40 min latency in communications, especially as Earth stuff is increasingly habituated to more automation.

So, as I said, I don't understand how it could work. If the author understands, that is not clear to me.

I struggle to understand this too.  To re-frame the problem, why not build a similar economic model for a city, in descending order of "cool factor":

    * On the moon;
    * On the ocean floor; or
    * In Antarctica.

I suspect that, for little reason aside from the lesser cool factor, people will tend to view a city in one of these locations with much more economic and technological skepticism.

[su27k]

I struggle to understand this too.  To re-frame the problem, why not build a similar economic model for a city, in descending order of "cool factor":

    * On the moon;
    * On the ocean floor; or
    * In Antarctica.

I suspect that, for little reason aside from the lesser cool factor, people will tend to view a city in one of these locations with much more economic and technological skepticism.

Because someone who is worth more than $100B have committed to fund a City on Mars? Nobody has made similar commitment to fund City on the Moon etc, if someone comes out and make such a commitment I'm sure somebody will build the corresponding model.

BTW as Robotbeat puts it, Dr. Metzger is mainly a Moon guy, his main interest in economic modeling is industrialization of the Moon, Mars is just his hobby.

[Twark_Main]

Services? YouTubers on Mars, of course. 



I think it's fundamentally hard to take a top down approach, where your reasoning stems from "it's just like the Earth economy, but tweak X."

I think the bottom-up approach is the only feasible option. You have to individually cost the solutions for different physical needs, then economically balance them. IOW, you have to actually solve the problems. Imagine that...   

[Paul451]

I think it's fundamentally hard to take a top down approach, where your reasoning stems from "it's just like the Earth economy, but tweak X."
I think the bottom-up approach is the only feasible option. You have to individually cost the solutions for different physical needs, then economically balance them. IOW, you have to actually solve the problems.

At the very least, cost enough individual components under Mars assumptions that you can then compare them with Earth costs to develop a "conversion factor" when grabbing whole-of-economy numbers that Metzger used.

[You can also then test your assumptions by comparing with commodity-cost vs transport-cost of isolated communities on Earth and seeing if the US is a suitable starting point for this exercise.]

[Twark_Main]

I think it's fundamentally hard to take a top down approach, where your reasoning stems from "it's just like the Earth economy, but tweak X."
I think the bottom-up approach is the only feasible option. You have to individually cost the solutions for different physical needs, then economically balance them. IOW, you have to actually solve the problems.

At the very least, cost enough individual components under Mars assumptions that you can then compare them with Earth costs to develop a "conversion factor" when grabbing whole-of-economy numbers that Metzger used.

Even then I'm not sure.

If you break it down as a constant cost multiplier for all goods and services, it's probably hopeless.

I think you'll have to separate out labor cost vs real-estate cost (pressurized and unpressurized) vs material cost (per material) vs energy cost. Each of these will have a very different cost multiplier, with human labor probably being the worst.

[high road]

To add to the difficulty: the cost multiplier for a single activity becomes much larger as you scale up, but it eventually becomes smaller again when local industries start to support each other.

The largest part of the human labor cost would be that they need to be able to pay for the other three to survive and be happy. Compared to that, any retirement-on-Earth-savings-plan would be infinitessimal.

So IMO you can safely express 'labor cost' in 'import costs for one FTE'. While real estate cost, energy cost and material cost would be a combination of labor cost and imported mass cost. It's a continuing excercise where you assume some numbers to refine others, then do the reverse to adjust the numbers you assumed.

[JulesVerneATV]

the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars

NASA STI program

https://web.archive.org/web/20241118084338/https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/rev-a-acr23-esdmd-001-m2madd.pdf

[Slarty1080]

The Moon may help as a stepping stone to Mars with advancement of a number of technologies, but in the grand scheme of things this will be more useful than decisive. The economics of starting a city on Mars are something else entirely.

As I see it, the cost of getting things to Mars needs to be reduced by 1-2 orders of magnitude or more otherwise the whole thing is impractical. Hopefully Starship will eventually achieve that (it remains to be seen but I'm hopeful). However even with Starship a vast amount of money will still be required for all manner of development work and in situ testing.

There are a number of financial funding possibilities such as Congress for national prestige, jobs, science etc. Then potentially philanthropic billionaires like Elon Musk and others might fund some aspects. Then there is tourism, science, spin-offs, advertising and tv rights etc.

But not all of these are entirely reliable, Congressional priorities change, billionaires eventually die and the likes of tv and advertising are fickle. So it will be absolutely vital to ratchet up self sufficiency as quickly as possible to ensure costs are kept down. Whether costs can be reduced enough quickly enough to allow a truly permeant human presence on Mars is IMO an open question.   

[BN]

many people are willing and ready to move to mars to help build the next stage of human civilization. this includes fairly wealthy people who will fund their own presence there and make investments there.

most are underestimating the sheer life force and resources waiting to be thrown at mars for reasons beyond short term monetary gain.


dying on earth is old hat.

[Phil Stooke]

I will be encouraging all the billionaires of my acquaintance to make the trip.