> "Bezos laid out his vision for lunar settlement...after he received the National Space Society’s Gerard K. O’Neill Memorial Award."
Kind of ironic really. Bezos wants to settle the Moon and Musk wants to settle Mars, but as O'Neill himself pointed out 40 years ago, the best place to build human settlements in free space, not the surface of a planet (or moon).
What we should be doing is retrieving a near Earth asteroid and mining it to build Bernal Spheres:
I thought this part should have been pretty clear by now. Sending things down a gravity well never really makes much sense at all even from a long term perspective.
Space real estate and resources are enormous enough to a point you could to start with building wonderlands to settle billionaries there, and eventually may be lift out common people out and have them live in permanent settlements.
For some reasons Asteroid mining never gets the kind of traction in any mainstream space work. Though the returns are just bonkers compared to anything you might invest at this point in time.
But how are we going to find all the materials to build O'Neill cylinders? There will need to be a Von Braun City somewhere, or near the landing site of Apollo 11.
Yes, and 7 billion people are using it. Are you really surprised or annoyed that a few members of a curious and novelty-seeking species want to explore the great beyond?
Andy Weir (author of The Martian) wrote a fun little sci-fi novel titled Artemis, which depicts almost exactly that -- the first lunar colony (largely) dependent on a single company. Great book with a fun heist plot.
Anyone still working on Space Elevators? Seems to me, if we could actually get one of those going, maybe interplanetary travel could be much easier and more economical. Sure Musk has made great strides with reusable rockets but imagine saving on a lot of the fuel by using an elevator that might not require as much or any rocket fuel (to exit the atmosphere), that could save a bunch as well.
SMBC has a book called Soonish[1]. Space elevators is one of the topics covered. The biggest problem, IIRC, is the longest carbon nanotube we can build is only a half meter long.
This got me wondering. Earth-based space elevators are still out of reach with current technology. What about a space elevator for the moon?
If we could build a lunar space elevator with existing materials, could we develop industry on the moon to supply space travel cheaper than the current model?
Bezos pointed out that the moon is conveniently located, reachable in just a couple of days with the right rocket. Scientists have determined that it has deposits of water ice near the poles that could be converted into drinkable water, breathable air and propellants for refuelable rockets.
If this is true, it seems the moon has a lot going for it which is quite surprising given Elon has been so bullish on Mars. Can someone explain what advantage colonizing Mars has compared to Moon?
The moon has no atmosphere, so living on it seems less friendly and far more dangerous. Long term, terra forming is not going to happen, because it won't hold an atmosphere.
That said, as a moon base it has a lot of things going for it, but I'm not sure if there are significant advantages of going there as a stopping point before going elsewhere, when you can achieve many things in orbit with some advantages of not having to take off again.
You can't really terraform Mars either, not enough gravity. And even if it was possible, the amount of work required to bring the air there is orders of magnitude more than simply building domes over some select craters and filling those with air, a sort of micro terraforming if you will.
Even low gravity will keep your atmosphere close to the surface. What causes atmospheric erosion is solar wind, and the reason Earth isn't affected (much) is that we still have a powerful magnetosphere, powered by our spinning molten iron core.
Mars has a magnetosphere but it's much weaker since its core is cooler and slower and smaller.
If we nuked the polar ice caps (or similar method to warm + evaporate them) it would generate enough of an atmosphere for the external pressure to be livable - maybe even breathable.
Since the magnetosphere is still weak, this atmosphere would be eroded over time, but we're talking tens of thousands of years or more.
I read somewhere that installing a powerful magnet at one of the Lagrangian points between Mars and the Sun would be sufficient to shield Mars from the solar winds that strip away the atmosphere.
That would be a far cheaper and less disruptive way of keeping an atmosphere on Mars.
> If we nuked the polar ice caps (or similar method to warm + evaporate them) it would generate enough of an atmosphere for the external pressure to be livable - maybe even breathable.
Source?
Even granted that would be possible, it would be an enormous waste. Let's say it's possible to use the polar ice caps to create a breathable atmosphere, why do it for the whole planet instead of using it strategically to pressurize domes where people actually live? Added bonus: The domes provide partial shielding for the radiation on Mars. If you believe the ice on Mars can sustain a breathable global atmosphere for ten thousand years, how long will it last when used in closed systems like domes?
ADDED: if you're going to tell me the gravity is necessary to hold onto the atmosphere, great, i'm actually familiar with that mechanism. i assert that mars' proclivity for losing the lighter atmosphere over millions of years isn't relevant, and that it'll hold onto everything important for Long Enough.
When the speed of molecules in the atmosphere (thermal, and thus dependent on molecular weight) approaches escape velocity for the body, the atmosphere starts to leak that component. Gasses like N2 (molecular weight 28) and oxygen (32) will "stick" to Earth where Helium (4) won't. Mars can hold CO2 (44) but not O2.
happened once? because the gravity changed? it'd be an ongoing process.
and only hydrogen and helium are currently prone to jeans escape on mars. the current dominant mechanism for atmospheric loss is the solar wind. which eats away ~1/3 megaton/century. mars has teratons of atmosphere remaining. and it can be added faster than that rate of loss.
(once warmed up, oxygen may begin to escape the atmosphere again. not necessarily faster than it can be replaced, though.)
Gravity got the following to do with it: Lower gravity makes it easier for the atmosphere to escape to space, especially since Mars has a very weak magnetosphere. Second, to have a human-breathable atmosphere you need not only the right composition, but also the right pressure, and to get that pressure on Mars you'd require an atmosphere more than 2,5 times the mass of Earth's. Where are you going to get it from? Even if it was available to you, using it to make Mars globally breathable would be an ENORMOUS waste compared to simply pressurizing domes and bunkers instead.
Except 0.6% vs. 0% is a huge difference. For example, on Mars you have the option of making rocket fuel from the atmosphere or compressing and scrubbing it slightly for use in greenhouses. Not possible on the moon without basically baking rocks. Mars also gives you the option of aerobraking to shed velocity when landing, which is a big saver on fuel for delta-v requirements. And even though it's nowhere near as good as Earth's atmosphere for blocking harmful radiation, it's still way better than the moon.
On the other hand, the moon has a lot going for it for manufacturing. It's at the top of Earth's gravity well and has low gravity itself without being microgravity. That lets you move massive things around easily and shoot them out of launchers to get back to earth without all the problems that come with "zero-g" conditions. It's also a lot closer to the sun than Mars is, so solar panels give you up to 50% more power for the same area. You also don't have to contend with dust storms (though moonquakes could be an issue).
One difference is gravitational pull; martian gravity is ~2x lunar gravity, which makes the solar wind an even larger danger to any atmosphere you would generate. The distances from the moon's surface at which atmosphere could be stripped away would be proportionally shorter.
In either case, the technological breakthroughs we would need in order to actually generate a useful atmosphere are large enough that I would be very excited to just see the byproducts of such breakthroughs.
> For all intents and purposes the martian atmosphere is no different to the moons
Not sure I agree with all intents and purposes. Maybe just some of them? Like say if the intent is to extract CO2 or N2 from the atmosphere, then you'd find more on Mars. Those two things are pretty important for growing things and breathing.
Another intent and purpose could be to airo-break the space craft as it flies in for a landing. Though it is probably more annoying than it helps, in the sense that Mars has enough atmosphere that you need to deal with it, but not enough to be helpful in the final descent phase.
Regarding the “breathable air”, where’s the nitrogen and carbon dioxide going to come from? Pure oxygen is not an option. IIRC there’s only trace amounts of carbon in moon regolith. So if you want plants and an artificial biosphere would you have to bring it all with you?
Do you really need much nitrogen? They used pure oxygen on space missions and other than the catastrophic problem of fire, astronauts breathed it okay.
I honestly feel like those boosting Mars as an objective are doing so _because_ it's so far off. Blue Origin has been quietly, diligently working on the hard, boring problems and isn't going for flash - pretty much in line with Bezos approach to most things - but folks will nonetheless be impressed with the achievement, even if the implementation is ignored.
Try not to put too much stock on what Elon Musk says. The man rants about whatever happens to be on his mind: candy companies, media rating companies, tunneling companies, hyperloops, etc... doesn't mean you should take it seriously.
> Try not to put too much stock on what Elon Musk says.
This is one of those cases where I am not sure if it was sarcasm or not.
Musk managed to fly about a dozen missions to the ISS, launched an object into an orbit around the sun, and had about 20 successful launches just last year. It would seem when it comes to the space travel domain, if we should put any stock anywhere, putting it on what Musk says is a good bet...?
Ok but then shouldn't we not listen to Bezos either and wait to talk about this until Blue Origin's good people have launched, landed and returned a spacecraft from the moon?
Does it matter? There’s no point to any of this, it’s fun stuff for rich guys like golfing or art collecting. Mars or Moon is just a matter of preference like Pebble Beach vs. St. Andrews.
No point to any of this? Except you know a permanent human settlement off the planet and the trillions and trillions of dollars floating around out there in asteroids. Humans have no future if we don't get off our little fragile planet. I would honestly say it is one of the few things that do matter.
There are much more plausible clear and present dangers to humanity than our failure to get off our fragile planet. It’s like people on a plane that is listing because everyone on board is sitting on the left side wondering how they can built a small craft to transport them to another plane 2 miles away in the sky.
Permant != self-sustaining, just extending to moon or Mars isn't "getting off" Earth anymore than you putting your fingertip on a bookshelf doesn't mean you're now "on the bookshelf". Whatever we build there, will be a lot more fragile than what we have here. If we can't keep from destroying a rich ecosystem, what would keep us from destroying any ecosystems we build on much less solid ground?
That said, I don't disagree that it matters, just not in quite the way you put it, that's a fantasy to me, a way to avoid the responsibility we actually do have, the responsiblity that is actually real. At the very least, mining asteroids beats scouring for ever more elusive resources on Earth. But humans living in hollowed asteroids isn't a solution to overpopulation and pollution. We can't build housing on Earth, but it's going to be so different once "we're in space". Yeah, right. Prove you can do it here or I don't believe it for a sec.
Pretty spot on. I have never seen any modicum of common sense in people claiming going to extremely hostile environments to make them like where we live is somehow a better solution than - by comparison- just tweaking what we already have. It is just giving up on most of humanity.
I'm a pretty avid fan of colonizing other bodies in the solar system (Mars, Moon, etc).
That said, I don't know _anyone_ who would advocate for colonizing Mars is a better solution that tweaking what we already have. It's a different solution addressing a different problem.
We should _absolutely_ be improving and addressing the problems that we have on Earth. I 100% agree with that. I don't see how that precludes us from _also_ starting the process of colonizing another planet.
There is definitely a group of people who think humanity cannot survive without becoming a multi planet species - now. I am not against exploration and colonization at all, but I think it should receive the mindshare and financial backing of an experiment, and not a proper solution to the current existential crisis of our species. I wish we could capture people's imaginations with incredible fixes to our own planet's problems the way we manage to do with space exploration. It is obvious why this is difficult, but without it we will partisan bicker ourselves towards extinction.
I think from a scientific standpoint the more we learn through trying to terraform Mars, the more use we could get out of it centuries from now when we do embark to the stars and colonize a much better planet, one that might not need much terraforming at all really, maybe seeding some familiar life forms from earth and eco-systems at most.
Eventually, we should become a space-faring civilization if it is actually possible (big IF) there.
Permanent probably does mean _eventually_ self-sustaining.
Not in our lifetimes, maybe. But if we colonize mars in the next 3 decades it seems likely that in 1,000 years human life on Mars could be largely self-sustaining.
When talking about creating planetary redundancy for human life 1,000 years is a small time-scale. We're guarding against 1/10,000,000 year kinds of extinction events on earth. It's unlikely that such an extinction event will happen on earth before a Mars colony could become reasonably self-sustaining.
That said, it's important that we do it _eventually_, because over 100,000,000 years the odds of that earth wide extinction event goes way up.
95% of ELE events on earth .. wouldn't necessarily destroy earth forever... most likely it'd just be rough going for a few decades or even a couple hundred years, so if you can build 'backup colonies' in space and humanity can survive just long enough for the earth to be hospitable again, then we can come back and re-populate and destroy it all over again. :)
Other than as very early stepping stones to some kind of extra-solar settlement on a less "fragile" planet, these things are no sort of solution for human futures. They are all far more fragile than earth and no settlement on mars, the moon, the Lagrange points, or any other body in this solar system will last long if something like an asteroid wipes out civilization on earth.
The rich, the reckless, and the wildly curious go first. This isn't surprising. Others will follow in their footsteps.
Would you like to see the most stars ever viewed by a human on the dark side of the moon? Ride a rover to the top of Mount Olympus? Learn if microbial life ever thrived in the ancient waters of Mars? Witness the development of new advanced technologies that raise the quality of life for all humans living back on Earth? I sure as hell would.
At the very least, it would allow for us to create a new data center located off Earth to reach greater levels of reliability and redundancy, even if you believe humans have no point in being there.
> But it would be “cheap” once established because cooling would be easy.
I would imagine that if you put a datacenter in orbit or on the moon (or pretty much anywhere else in space), cooling would actually be significantly more difficult, if for no other reason than that in a vacuum the only way of getting rid of heat is via radiation. On earth, you can at least dump the heat out (much more efficiently) via convection into the atmosphere or conduction into a large body of water, or something similar.
- Questionable mineral deposits and water is more isolated.
- Much smaller surface area.
- Zero potential for terraforming.
- Zero atmosphere.
- Aesthetically homogenous.
- Very poor 'weather' - in that it practically rains asteroids on the moon. Granted this is all over the moon, and so any given individual or building's chances of getting hit are extremely low, but as we increase the number of people/buildings, getting hit by asteroids will be a regular occurrence.
- Plant growth would need to be 100% driven by external support.
-----
Mars:
- 1/3rd g
- Day and night cycle near identical to Earth
- Reasonable temperature ranges. About -100 to +70 F, varying depending on the seasons - which it also has 4 of, like Earth.
- Extremely rich mineral deposits. The most evident being the planet's color, which is caused by iron oxide - rust.
- Water everywhere. The soil is moist containing about a liter of water per cubic foot. Something "The Martian" accidentally got wrong, as this was a major discovery of Curiosity, after the book had been written.
- Surface area oddly near identical to the land area of Earth.
- Huge potential for terraforming - from creating magnetic fields in various ways to simply nuking the poles, which are made of dry ice (CO2), and letting it thicken up the atmosphere
- A thin atmosphere, but an atmosphere comprised mainly of handy CO2. For instance the Sabatier Reaction can be used to create methane with a byproduct of water from hydrogen and CO2 - both widely available on Mars.
- Aesthetically diverse - at one time orders of magnitude more. We'll be exploring and discovery Mars' secrets for decades and perhaps centuries once we get feet on the ground. Our rovers and probes have only scratched the surface, figuratively and literally.
- Excellent weather. Hit by relatively minimal asteroids and the thin atmosphere makes even the worst storm on Mars feel like a slight breeve - the one key thing "The Martian" faked. Come to think of it, a hard sci fi book having to rely on an impossible event to trigger a catastrophe on Mars is a pretty good sign.
- Martian soil actually contains everything that's needed to natively grow plants! [1] Sourcing this point since it borders on unbelievable.
That day-night cycle isn't to be downplayed. A greenhouse on Mars is a totally viable approach to feeding the locals - you just need to keep the air in, and air processing is a helpful second use. On the Moon all that stuff must be done in a more energy intensive, techy way.
Can anyone comment on Bezo's claim that there will be so much more energy in Space via Solar Power. Based on what I'm reading the acre of solar power panels the ISS has generates less energy than what could equivalently be generated on the Earth's surface. I cannot imagine the lack of night/day cycle overcoming the amount of energy it takes to send an acre of solar panels into orbit in the first place.
Atmosphere reduces solar flux by 1/10 or so. That's a greater advantage than the day/night benefit. Can't speak to the ISS panels - are they old tech? Ultralight design limited their efficiency?
The panels must be old tech but that in itself would be a problem unless we see solar panels leveling off in their efficiency in the near future. Whatever you put into orbit is going to become outdated quickly. This is the source for the amount of power generated for the ISS if you are interested.
1. The moon is thousands of kilometers around. It would take enormous resources to make an ad big enough to be visible from earth.
2. You don’t have to go to the moon to advertise to everyone. Just launch a banner into low earth orbit. It would only need to be a kilometer or two wide.
It seems unethical to say that Jeff Bezos goes "all in" on moon settlements while he is still clearly not putting all his investments into this project.
Kind of ironic really. Bezos wants to settle the Moon and Musk wants to settle Mars, but as O'Neill himself pointed out 40 years ago, the best place to build human settlements in free space, not the surface of a planet (or moon).
What we should be doing is retrieving a near Earth asteroid and mining it to build Bernal Spheres:
http://space.nss.org/national-space-society-gerard-k-oneill-...