AFAIK the only time people have set up charities to settle places is for religious reasons. The rest went because someone was going to make profit in the process, either within the settlement (that I can see happening quite easily) or to make money from their home country.
AFAIK the only time people have set up charities to settle places is for religious reasons.
That latter one is the problem I have and that's important because until Mars goes fully self sufficient it will always need supplies from Earth.
[...] Strictly speaking, all the technology needed to actually run a Mars colony once you get there could be built with nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century industry--nitrogen-fixing for fertilizer, the Fischer-Tropsch process, steelworking, turbines, electric motors, none of these require computers. [...] I'm honestly drawing a blank as to which bare necessities for continued metabolism on Mars can't be made with the tools available to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
I see the difference between the two a bit more philosophical.Elons basically said "Mars or bust!". Should Jeff answer "Me too!"? It does not work that way, so he needs something else. (Ignoring for a moment who came first.)
Quote from: john smith 19 on 11/14/2016 07:16 pmQuote from: Robotbeat on 11/14/2016 05:17 pmIf you're willing to compromise on 5-nm-scale feature sizes and live with 5-microns, then you can definitely do it. If you can do 5nm you're ahead of Intel. They've been struggling with 14.5 micron feature size. Not 5 nm... 5 microns is 5000 nm. YCLIU.As robotbeat said, that's quite a few generations back now and probably wouldn't still require billion dollar[1] fab lines
Quote from: Robotbeat on 11/14/2016 05:17 pmIf you're willing to compromise on 5-nm-scale feature sizes and live with 5-microns, then you can definitely do it. If you can do 5nm you're ahead of Intel. They've been struggling with 14.
If you're willing to compromise on 5-nm-scale feature sizes and live with 5-microns, then you can definitely do it.
Which means colonists would pay their own way there, and have to pay for some level of support while there, but non-profits would fund sending subject matter experts to Mars for getting the colonists up to speed on how to become somewhat self-sufficient.
And when I say "self-sufficient", my definition means that little by little the expertise and material needed for a colonists survival transitions to being on Mars. Which might be decades or centuries.
The Polish Maritime and Colonial League (Liga Morska i Kolonialna) would dispute that. They were an, essentially, private non-profit that funded Polish immigration to Brazil and Liberia for the purpose of establishing Polish ethnic enclaves that could become a colony in the future.
Arguably, the German colonial empire also fits that definition--it was never profitable, but they kept on sinking funds into it for prestige, for the ideology of Germany's place in the sun.
Define "fully self sufficient."
Strictly speaking, all the technology needed to actually run a Mars colony once you get there could be built with nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century industry--nitrogen-fixing for fertilizer, the Fischer-Tropsch process, steelworking, turbines, electric motors, none of these require computers. Supplies from Earth (particularly computer chips) can certainly simplify things and make them more effective, but I'm honestly drawing a blank as to which bare necessities for continued metabolism on Mars can't be made with the tools available to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. You would need a source of initial capital to get things going (build the first power plant, so you can power the factories that make the second, for example), but it won't be needed all that long.
Quote from: LM13 on 11/14/2016 08:17 pm[...] Strictly speaking, all the technology needed to actually run a Mars colony once you get there could be built with nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century industry--nitrogen-fixing for fertilizer, the Fischer-Tropsch process, steelworking, turbines, electric motors, none of these require computers. [...] I'm honestly drawing a blank as to which bare necessities for continued metabolism on Mars can't be made with the tools available to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The big missing piece is the energy supply. The Austro-Hungarian empire had fuels (wood, coal, oil) they could burn for power and heat. Nothing on Mars, as far as I know, can burn in the Martian atmosphere. You might be able to build big solar collecting mirrors that concentrate heat, to heat stuff for chemistry or metallurgy, or to boil water to turn engines. However, sunlight is not a very dense form of energy, and not available at night. Everything else could be managed, *if* you have enough energy, but getting the energy seems the limiting problem.
On second thought, the Austro-Hungarian empire could have built a nuclear reactor, if they knew what to do. To make and maintain one of these, you need the ability to mine and purify carbon and uranium, and the rest is pretty simple mechanical engineering.
Quote from: LouScheffer on 11/15/2016 12:59 amOn second thought, the Austro-Hungarian empire could have built a nuclear reactor, if they knew what to do. To make and maintain one of these, you need the ability to mine and purify carbon and uranium, and the rest is pretty simple mechanical engineering. The Germans tried and failed to build a reactor with Graphite in WWII. Their Graphite was contaminated with Boron and the either did not not have, or did not know they needed a process to remove enough of it to let the reaction go critical.And then you're going to need a coal mine on Mars for the source of the Graphite.
There is likely no coal on Mars (it's from old biology), so I was assuming that they would get the graphite from CO2 in the atmosphere. This should also have no appreciable boron or other contamination. I'm more worried about the uranium supply.
And then you're going to need a coal mine on Mars for the source of the Graphite.
There is likely no coal on Mars (it's from old biology), so I was assuming that they would get the graphite from CO2 in the atmosphere.
I think when you say stuff like this, people[1] have a hard time taking you seriously. As LouScheffer points out, coal is not the only source for carbon.1 - at least this person.
Thinking about it a more plausible route would be to smelt Iron using limestone, giving a much more concentrated flow of CO2.Now where to get the heat energy to do this on a enough scale.
Quote from: john smith 19 on 11/16/2016 06:39 pmThinking about it a more plausible route would be to smelt Iron using limestone, giving a much more concentrated flow of CO2.Now where to get the heat energy to do this on a enough scale.Most limestone is 'old biology' too, it's not likely to be present on Mars in quantity.
Quote from: Coastal Ron on 11/14/2016 07:50 pmAnd when I say "self-sufficient", my definition means that little by little the expertise and material needed for a colonists survival transitions to being on Mars. Which might be decades or centuries.I think that's more in line with Musk's views, although that is quite a long window of vulnerability.
The 19th century had plentiful supplies of coal, hydroelectric power and later oil. Duplicating that on Mars either needs a huge PV array, Methane on an industrial scale above that for propellant use or nuclear. It's possible Mars has Uranium or Thorium that can be mined BTW Without semiconductors (not necessarily processors, just power electronics) 3d printing becomes much tougher. An exciting challenge for anyone with a lot of free time on their hands perhaps.
This is not academic. If we take Musk at his word the worst case is an Earth that has to be "restarted" from Mars.
Quote from: Kryten on 11/16/2016 06:48 pmQuote from: john smith 19 on 11/16/2016 06:39 pmThinking about it a more plausible route would be to smelt Iron using limestone, giving a much more concentrated flow of CO2.Now where to get the heat energy to do this on a enough scale.Most limestone is 'old biology' too, it's not likely to be present on Mars in quantity.I totally forgot about limestone being the remains of sea creatures skeletons.Not to say something similar can't be done with rock to be found on Mars, but again that's another area where what seems to be simple is in fact not simple.
Not really. The modern form of humans have been around for about 200,000 years, and the Earth has been around for 4.5 billions years.So from that standpoint a century or two is not very long at all.
You are taking a very narrow view of what Musk's goal is. In order to be successfully multi-planetary we don't have to rely on just Mars, or just Earth's Moon. We just can't rely on Earth being around. So a Mars population might have to rely on supplies from outside of Mars in order to survive on it's own, and that's OK.
QuoteThis is not academic. If we take Musk at his word the worst case is an Earth that has to be "restarted" from Mars. That's what having a backup in IT terms normally means. The test would be whether at some point in the future if the population of humans off of Earth can survive without Earth. And luckily, as far as we know, today it's a goal, not a mandate, since we don't know of a threat to Earth. But Musk would prefer not to wait, which is why he is pushing this effort forward.
This is not academic. If we take Musk at his word the worst case is an Earth that has to be "restarted" from Mars. That's what having a backup in IT terms normally means.
That's the problem with this whole 'self sustaining' idea. It requires Mars to grow incrementally, slowly scaling up industry by industry required to grow, with the limits of every other local industry that also need energy, labour and replacement parts. The scale at which this becomes more efficient (let alone effective) than importing the stuff you need from an existing industrial base is gigantic.