Author Topic: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony  (Read 54780 times)

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #100 on: 07/29/2018 05:29 am »
BTW, just to repeat this, the Sept. '89 flare would be reduced to WELL below acute levels by Mars' atmosphere (on average greater than 40g/cm^2 at low altitude, and using CO2 which is a much better shielding material than aluminum) and by the greater distance the flare has to travel.

Guo et al. 2018 does lay it out rather plainly:  the flare delivered ~ 27 mGy/day, down at Gale Crater elevation.

You disagree, but unless you spot a big problem with Guo's work, that's the dosage rate to be addressed.

Have you read the paper, btw?  Your posts seem to ignore it.

I have now. Seems to agree with my earlier post (<10mSv for the Sep89 event, far below any acute effects), at least roughly speaking. Though I will note I believe he's still using a 1D code (or at least taking the greater path through the atmosphere into account), and I can't find evidence he's not. That makes a huge difference as the vast majority of the radiation will be coming in from a greater angle. It makes almost a factor of 2 difference in average shielding level.

edit:

If I'm reading this chart correctly (page 24), it appears the surface dose for the SEP89 event is about 2.3*10^3 microSv (trying to measure a value on a logarithmic graph is tricky), or 2.3mSv, which is less than a head CT scan (given the handy comparison in the chart). That makes sense, given my previous chart and the increased effectiveness of CO2. That probably also means he's using a proper angle for the radiation path.

If the worst case flare 2 hour exposure every few decades is just a CT scan on the surface, it's really not a problem.


...but notice that in deep space, the dose is "severe poisoning", i.e. you may die in short order.
« Last Edit: 07/29/2018 06:12 am by Robotbeat »
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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #101 on: 07/29/2018 06:57 am »
BTW, just to repeat this, the Sept. '89 flare would be reduced to WELL below acute levels by Mars' atmosphere (on average greater than 40g/cm^2 at low altitude, and using CO2 which is a much better shielding material than aluminum) and by the greater distance the flare has to travel.

Guo et al. 2018 does lay it out rather plainly:  the flare delivered ~ 27 mGy/day, down at Gale Crater elevation.

You disagree, but unless you spot a big problem with Guo's work, that's the dosage rate to be addressed.

Have you read the paper, btw?  Your posts seem to ignore it.

I have now. Seems to agree with my earlier post (<10mSv for the Sep89 event, far below any acute effects), at least roughly speaking. Though I will note I believe he's still using a 1D code (or at least taking the greater path through the atmosphere into account), and I can't find evidence he's not. That makes a huge difference as the vast majority of the radiation will be coming in from a greater angle. It makes almost a factor of 2 difference in average shielding level.

edit:

If I'm reading this chart correctly (page 24), it appears the surface dose for the SEP89 event is about 2.3*10^3 microSv (trying to measure a value on a logarithmic graph is tricky), or 2.3mSv, which is less than a head CT scan (given the handy comparison in the chart). That makes sense, given my previous chart and the increased effectiveness of CO2. That probably also means he's using a proper angle for the radiation path.

If the worst case flare 2 hour exposure every few decades is just a CT scan on the surface, it's really not a problem.


...but notice that in deep space, the dose is "severe poisoning", i.e. you may die in short order.

Thanks for the read.

So you design shields that prevent the unwanted "CT scans". 

--

I note also that I took Guo's historical flares as benchmark for flare dose rate, but as you see in Fig. 10, Guo has also modeled additional power-law shaped flares (black circles).  The martian surface dose of the worst modeled flare lies between a CT scan and a radiation worker's annual limit.  Also Guo speculates 4He could increase that dose by a further 40%, worst-case.

It's all the same to the Omaha Field:  magnetostatic deflection works as well at high particle flux as at low.  But if these modeled flares were selected for benchmark, a physical shield would require greater thickness.
« Last Edit: 07/29/2018 04:01 pm by LMT »

Offline cebri

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #102 on: 08/06/2018 09:49 pm »
SpaceX organizes inaugural conference to plan landings on Mars

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/spacex-organizes-inaugural-conference-to-plan-landings-on-mars/

Quote
The meeting is expected to include an overview of the spaceflight capabilities that SpaceX is developing with the Big Falcon rocket and spaceship, which Musk has previously outlined at length during international aerospace meetings in 2016 and 2017. Discussion topics will focus on how best to support hundreds of humans living on Mars, such as accessing natural resources there that will lead to a sustainable outpost.

"It's kind of amazing that a window of opportunity is open for life to beyond Earth, and we don't know how long this window is gonna be open" Elon Musk
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Offline Elmar Moelzer

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #103 on: 08/13/2018 10:21 am »
I presume that the first few crew missions won't have full crew compartments. I suspect about 4 people on each of the two crewed BFS that land in 2024. The rest of the volume would probably be crammed with equipment, tooling, etc.
What bothers me is that they will have to stay for almost two years since the fuel processing plant won't be ready by the time they arrive and it will take a while to fuel the depot. Assuming 4 months trip times, they would be away for at least 30 months. And if something goes wrong with the fuel processing, they might be stuck there for another cycle after that. That seems really risky to me. I would prefer to see a fully fueled depot waiting for them by the time they arrive but I guess that a fully automated ISRU facility is a bit unrealistic for 2022.
According to the SpaceX presentation, the base will start with one ship.
I guess that one of the two ships will return with all 8 of the original crew and two more crew ships (plus 2 cargo) will arrive 2 months later.
The presentation is not quite clear about what happens with the 4 cargo ships. Will all return or will some (or all) stay there as part of the base? How much propellant can they make in 2 years (with the equipment from 4 cargo ships)?
Sacrificing 4 cargo ships is quite an expense and there are no cargo ships visible in the presentation, so I assume that they will return together with the crew in each cycle. So the base starts out with one crew BFS. Then two more arrive in 2027 and again one stays and one returns. That leaves two crew BFSs on Mars as habitats by 2029, when two more arrive and so forth. I could imagine the number of crew to increase with each cycle.
Assuming two cargo ships in each cycle, there will be 300 tons of cargo each time plus whatever is stored in the relatively empty crewed ships. So by 2029, they will have about 1500 tons of cargo and equipment delivered to Mars. Plus 3 permanent habitat- BFSs (and one return ship). That is quite a bit of equipment. For reference, a medium sized excavator is about 22 tonnes (source Caterpillar website).
An important part will be medical equipment. A fully equipped mobile surgery unit fits into a standard shipping container, which has about 25 tonnes payload capacity. That is certainly in the books with that much cargo delivered. That leaves plenty of mass for habitats, greenhouses, building materials, food, etc.
So the basics would all be there by 2029.
Let's assume that they will want to ship the first 100 "colonists" during the 2035 cycle. By then, they should have about 3,000 tons of cargo and equipment there. The base would consist of 6 Crew BFSs plus habitation modules greenhouses, a fully equipped hospital and other equipment. That is pretty nice for a start.

I think that 3D printing will be an important factor in early colonies. Extrapolating from where 3D printing is at now, I could see a lot of if not most manufacturing being done with 3D printing. The biggest "problem" will be raw materials. Even simple machinery for mining and processing something as basic as aluminum or silicon would require a significant mass to be transported to Mars. Carbon seems to be relatively easy to access and process compared to aluminum or iron. So I imagine that it will be an important raw material there. Maybe that is another reason (in addition to all the other benefits) why the BFS uses a lot of composites.

An interesting factor in all this will be robots. I think that the more work robots can do, the higher the chance of success of a Mars colony. Looking at the state of (e.g.) Atlas today and assuming that robotics keep progressing at the current pace until 2035, there should be very capable humanoid robots to help the initial crews and later the early colonists. The current iteration of Atlas weighs only 75 kg and already has pretty decent dexterity.
Currently a single Atlas robot is estimated to cost over a million dollars, but that cost could go down significantly in the next 15 years. Right now Atlas is a unique research project and not a product. Mass production could reduce the cost significantly.
One could assume several dozen of advanced Atlas (or whatever they may be) robots to be present by the time the first colonists arrive. If they can be programmed to fulfill a wide variety of tasks, it could offload a lot of work and responsibility from the colonists. I could imagine most of the hard labor and manufacturing to be done by robots. With this, many of the chicken and the egg problems could be mitigated. E.g. you won't need to bring an expert black smith or an expert capable of fixing a spacesuit, if you can program a robot to do the same thing (and other things, depending on need).
I could imagine the majority of the "inhabitants" of the colony to be robots, at least initially. If this works as I imagine, then the majority of the work of the first colonists would be supervising, programming and servicing robots, leaving the more dangerous tasks to robots .  E.g. I could see a dramatic reduction of required human EVAs.
It gets even better, once/if these robots are able to build and service other robots.
Plus, having a league of robots to take care of mundane, difficult, or dangerous tasks at your disposal, could make living on Mars more attractive to potential colonists.

Making life on Mars attractive could be the most difficult thing of all. The first people to live and work there will have to be adventurous types, willing to take enormous risks and endure a relatively boring and simple lifestyle.
Right now we do not even know yet, whether it will be possible to bear and raise healthy children on Mars. This is a big unknown and because of this I believe that most people will only stay on Mars for a few years, at least until we have a grasp of what it takes to do that (if it is at all possible).
Once we have figured this out, the real colonization can begin. Then you will want to have about half of the (now permanent) colonists to be women if you want the colony to be self sustaining. Too few women (or men) could be a source of rivalry and conflict. I think that this could be even worse while the population is still small and people have little chance to avoid each other.
"Managing" demographics will be "interesting" to say the least.

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #104 on: 09/21/2018 09:49 pm »
Elon tweeted the attached revised Mars Base Alpha render and then had this exchange with Chris:

Quote
Realistically, when could that view turn from a render into a real photograph?

"I need a ray of hope about the future" - (c) Gaius Baltar, former President of the Twelve Colonies.

https://twitter.com/nasaspaceflight/status/1043253088746971136

Quote
Probably 2028 for a base to be built

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1043253619485622272
« Last Edit: 09/21/2018 09:49 pm by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline sanman

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #105 on: 09/22/2018 07:52 am »
Wow - 2028 is a pretty tight timeline - even though some will say that's just "Elon time".

Would base-building essentially commence with the first crewed landing?
What would have to be accomplished first, to get to that point?

Unmanned flight to Mars - possibly carrying a pilot plant for Methalox production?

Multiple equipment drops for resource exploration for ISRU? Rovers? Equipment to harvest water?

What would the timeline for these things look like?

Offline speedevil

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #106 on: 09/22/2018 09:56 am »
Wow - 2028 is a pretty tight timeline - even though some will say that's just "Elon time".

Would base-building essentially commence with the first crewed landing?
What would have to be accomplished first, to get to that point?
It depends - for a timeline that tight, in some ways perversely, 'not much'.
If you are doing it on a shoestring, what you want to do is to be concentrating on getting ISRU up very early, crew on the ground, and then shuttle the several BFS you've got back and forward every synod.
This lets you be very economical as you're amortising the cost of the BFS - but it gets you twenty loads in twenty years.

If you're doing it flush with cash, and ramping up the number of BFS each synod by triple, ISRU becomes much less important, for the simple reason that even if you have perfect ISRU that is free, you only get back half what you send, so at most it saves you 30%. And that 30% is before you take into account the cost of payload. Exlored further in Mars without ISRU

In the second scenario, you can not so much bother with fine design, or exploration, and concentrate on getting ISRU working and cheap in the lowest risk manner possible, rather than using methods which rely on any optimisation of finding the ideal resource.



Online meekGee

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #107 on: 09/22/2018 01:33 pm »
The exact year doesn't matter.

The important bit is that Musk believes that this level of base is within the immediate plan - he sees a way to build and finance it.

If 2028 depends on a 2022 first trip, and if the date means "hardware for the base delivered to the surface", then this base was delivered on synod 4.

We already know the first two have 2 and 4 ships, and that none of the ships will fly back until synod 6, and so synod 8 is still mostly new ships.

This to me means he intends to build LOTS of ships. If I could ever sneak a question in, it would be "how many ships/yr would the factory be producing in the coming years"

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #108 on: 09/24/2018 04:23 am »
2028



Quite the exchange.

And what are we looking at?  If Mars Base Alpha is to be realized by 2028, we might be looking at a mining camp.  One conceivable schedule, leveraging the 12 cargo bays of the new aft cargo system:



1.  Early 2023 - Cargo ship aerobrakes at Mars into elliptical capture orbit, and deploys a trio of gamma-ray spectrometer metal-prospecting smallsats (<180 kg) from aft cargo.

2.  Ship lands and smallsats circularize to LMO.

3.  Early 2024 - Smallsats complete initial metal survey of Mars.

4.  Assuming metal-rich prospects are found, a drone survey is undertaken.  Drones might be small-payload helicopters patterned after the Mars 2020 AeroVironment drones.  The drones are scaled with ~ 1.3 m rotor blades (hinged, stowed folded).  Aft cargo deploys a trio of gamma-ray drones after Parshin et al. 2018, and a trio of magnetometer drones after Cherkasov & Kapshtan 2018.



5.  Late 2024 - Drones complete detailed surveys of the richest prospects, mapping ore surface distributions and precious-metal concentrations.  (Conceivably the LMO smallsats act as relays to get the data to Earth.)

6.  Aft cargo deploys a trio of sampler drones, each equipped with electromagnet and sample tray.  Drones collect many small ore samples from the richest prospects.

7.  Early 2025 - Sampler drones return to the ship and land nearby, laden with ore payloads that await retrieval by the first crew.

8.  Early/Mid 2025 - The first crew retrieves ore samples and performs physical assay on the spot, to verify precious metal concentrations and, potentially, stake mining claims.

9.  SpaceX auctions memberships in the mining consortium.  This assembles expertise, establishes a joint legal office, and raises the financing required to build out ships and cargo for the first mining camp.

As for the mine itself, something like the notional Red Gold open-pit, open-air system is proposed.

10.  Mid 2027 - The second crew lands near the best mining prospect and begins siting and assembly of the mining camp - Mars Base Alpha.

Refs.

Cherkasov, S., & Kapshtan, D. (2018). Unmanned Aerial Systems for Magnetic Survey.

Parshin, A. & Grebenkin, N. & Morozov, V. & Shikаlenko, F. (2018). FIRST RESULTS OF A LOW-ALTITUDE UAS GAMMA SURVEY BY COMPARISON WITH THE TERRESTRIAL AND AERIAL GAMMA SURVEY DATA. Geophysical Prospecting. 66. 
« Last Edit: 09/24/2018 06:53 pm by LMT »

Offline Ludus

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #109 on: 09/24/2018 05:03 am »
The exact year doesn't matter.

The important bit is that Musk believes that this level of base is within the immediate plan - he sees a way to build and finance it.

If 2028 depends on a 2022 first trip, and if the date means "hardware for the base delivered to the surface", then this base was delivered on synod 4.

We already know the first two have 2 and 4 ships, and that none of the ships will fly back until synod 6, and so synod 8 is still mostly new ships.

This to me means he intends to build LOTS of ships. If I could ever sneak a question in, it would be "how many ships/yr would the factory be producing in the coming years"

-----
ABCD: Always Be Counting Down

That fits with the earth point to point idea. BFSs not just gas and go reusable like airliners but produced continuously in similar quantities at similar cost. They’re just airliners that happen to also be capable of going to the moon or Mars.

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #110 on: 02/07/2020 07:24 pm »
Here’s a tease

twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1225876236477620225

Quote
Hope & I travelled to Boca Chica yesterday to meet with Elon Musk. He explained #SpaceX’s extraordinary plan to begin the settlement of Mars,which was very much in evidence as hundreds of people were lined up outside to join his team building Starships.
#Mars #Space #MarsSociety

https://twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1225876531681153024

Quote
We asked what the #MarsSociety could do to help, and he told us: Spread the word on the unlimited future opened by making humanity spacefaring.
We will begin next week, by announcing an international contest to design a 1 million person #Mars colony.
#SpaceX #NASA #Space #Science

Offline rakaydos

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #111 on: 02/07/2020 07:36 pm »
Here’s a tease

twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1225876236477620225

Quote
Hope & I travelled to Boca Chica yesterday to meet with Elon Musk. He explained #SpaceX’s extraordinary plan to begin the settlement of Mars,which was very much in evidence as hundreds of people were lined up outside to join his team building Starships.
#Mars #Space #MarsSociety

https://twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1225876531681153024

Quote
We asked what the #MarsSociety could do to help, and he told us: Spread the word on the unlimited future opened by making humanity spacefaring.
We will begin next week, by announcing an international contest to design a 1 million person #Mars colony.
#SpaceX #NASA #Space #Science

"We asked what the mars society could do to help."

Elon: Can you weld? How's your environmental system design? Mining engineering talent? PR? Great, you can handle PR.

Offline Oersted

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #112 on: 02/09/2020 09:32 pm »
Nice, I spot a LEGO Saturn V in the control room... - If the SpaceX engineers can build that one then Starship shouldn't be a challenge...  ;-)

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #113 on: 02/22/2020 12:43 pm »
https://twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1231208590880301063

Quote
My article about my observations about @elonmusk’s plans to settle Mars following our recent meeting in Boca Chica was just published by National Review. @SciGuySpace @jeff_foust
#Mars #Space #Science #NASA #SpaceX #MarsSociety

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/mars-elon-musk-plan-to-settle-red-planet/

Quote
Elon Musk’s Plan to Settle Mars
By ROBERT ZUBRIN     February 22, 2020 4:30 AM

Last week my wife Hope and I traveled to Boca Chica, Texas, to meet with Elon Musk. While we talked inside the SpaceX onsite headquarters, a mariachi band played outside, providing entertainment for long lines of people queued up to apply for multiple categories of jobs building craft to take humans to Mars. Hundreds were already hired and at work in the complex. Soon there will be thousands.

Musk calls his design the “Starship.” It’s a methane/oxygen-driven, stainless-steel, two-stage-to-orbit rocket with a payload capacity equal to the Saturn V booster that sent Apollo astronauts to the Moon. The Saturn V, however, was expendable, with each unit destroyed in the course of a single use. Starship will be fully reusable, like an airliner, and therefore promises a radical reduction in payload-delivery costs.

Offline oiorionsbelt

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #114 on: 02/22/2020 04:14 pm »
Ha,  "Flight by flight, ferociously."

Offline Twark_Main

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #115 on: 02/25/2020 04:34 am »
Here’s a tease

twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1225876236477620225

Quote
Hope & I travelled to Boca Chica yesterday to meet with Elon Musk. He explained #SpaceX’s extraordinary plan to begin the settlement of Mars,which was very much in evidence as hundreds of people were lined up outside to join his team building Starships.
#Mars #Space #MarsSociety

https://twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1225876531681153024

Quote
We asked what the #MarsSociety could do to help, and he told us: Spread the word on the unlimited future opened by making humanity spacefaring.
We will begin next week, by announcing an international contest to design a 1 million person #Mars colony.
#SpaceX #NASA #Space #Science

"We asked what the mars society could do to help."

Elon: Can you weld? How's your environmental system design? Mining engineering talent? PR? Great, you can handle PR.

I know this is a joke, but it should be noted that Elon Musk has also donated generously to their Mars analog research stations.

https://mdrs.marssociety.org/mdrs-observatories/

https://www.space.com/37057-mars-rovers-compete-utah-desert.html

Quote
The facility also added a science lab (focusing on microbiology and geology), two electric ATVs to begin replacing the current gas-driven rover fleet, and a solar array to help generate electricity. The Hab itself has also undergone considerable renovations in the past year, including getting new furniture, new shelving, a new staircase and a new paint job on much of the interior. Next, the Mars Society plans upgrades to the MDRS telescope, which is called the Musk Observatory. The observatory is named after SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who is a long-time advocate of human Mars exploration.

"Plans for the future include converting the Musk Observatory into a solar observatory and [to] build a new astronomical observatory near the station," Stoltz said. "The new [observatory] will be a robotic observatory, accessible online from anywhere on the planet. We have already made arrangements with several institutions to use the remote observatory for research and studies."

An anonymous donor paid for the upgrades, said Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, in an e-mail to Space.com. The cost of the upgrades was not released.

Gee, wonder who that could be?  8)

https://www.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1007664788325818369

Quote from: Elon Musk
My donations are anonymous
« Last Edit: 02/25/2020 04:35 am by Twark_Main »
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Offline Ludus

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #116 on: 02/26/2020 12:56 am »
With Cargo Starships much less costly than was assumed a few years ago, it seems more likely that a number will be left on Mars.

This implies that used but fully functional Starships on Mars may cost not much more than the local cost of filling them with propellant.

One detail about the colony this predicts is a business opportunity to launch other exploratory missions rather than returning cargo Starships to earth.

This might include crewed missions of exploration around Mars. There would be many opportunities for human firsts. The first people on Phobos. The first on the summit of Olympus Mons. The first on the Martian North Pole. A cargo starship outfitted with hab quarters for a few crew and exploration gear might support a lot of rentals, tickets and cargo fees to Mars. Countries and corporations could back unique expeditions for comparatively low prices.

Cargo Starships might also launch one way robotic expeditions to asteroids and outer planets.

Expeditions would create paying customers for a Mars propellant and other supplies and facilities.


Offline rakaydos

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #117 on: 02/26/2020 11:05 am »
With Cargo Starships much less costly than was assumed a few years ago, it seems more likely that a number will be left on Mars.

This implies that used but fully functional Starships on Mars may cost not much more than the local cost of filling them with propellant.

One detail about the colony this predicts is a business opportunity to launch other exploratory missions rather than returning cargo Starships to earth.

This might include crewed missions of exploration around Mars. There would be many opportunities for human firsts. The first people on Phobos. The first on the summit of Olympus Mons. The first on the Martian North Pole. A cargo starship outfitted with hab quarters for a few crew and exploration gear might support a lot of rentals, tickets and cargo fees to Mars. Countries and corporations could back unique expeditions for comparatively low prices.

Cargo Starships might also launch one way robotic expeditions to asteroids and outer planets.

Expeditions would create paying customers for a Mars propellant and other supplies and facilities.
only if the martian scrapyards don't outbid you. Over 50 tons of stainless steel, space rated solar arrays, and they can sell the raptors back to SpaceX next synod.
« Last Edit: 02/26/2020 11:07 am by rakaydos »

Offline Dave G

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #118 on: 02/26/2020 02:46 pm »
With Cargo Starships much less costly than was assumed a few years ago, it seems more likely that a number will be left on Mars.

If you haven't yet listened to Dr. Zubrin's recent interview on The Space Show, I highly recommend it (link here).

On Zubrin's recent visit to Boca Chica, he asked Musk about this.  If I remember correctly, he said the first 5 cargo ships would remain on Mars, and then everything after that would return to Earth for reuse.

Offline Twark_Main

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Re: Predicting Details of Elon Musk's Mars Colony
« Reply #119 on: 02/26/2020 03:14 pm »
With Cargo Starships much less costly than was assumed a few years ago, it seems more likely that a number will be left on Mars.

If you haven't yet listened to Dr. Zubrin's recent interview on The Space Show, I highly recommend it (link here).

On Zubrin's recent visit to Boca Chica, he asked Musk about this.  If I remember correctly, he said the first 5 cargo ships would remain on Mars, and then everything after that would return to Earth for reuse.

I just checked (it's at 6:20 in the podcast), and Zubrin didn't actually say that second part.

I don't think process-of-elimination holds here, because to support that logic we would have to start with the assumption that the "default" is to return every other Starship, but that's exactly what we're trying to show, which would be begging the question. So I think it's unwarranted to put that constraint on Starship conops based on Zubrin's comments.
« Last Edit: 02/26/2020 03:18 pm by Twark_Main »
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