Reality TV to the Stars (well, to Mars at least)

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

Linking the video because for some reason embedding results in the wrong video every time.

When the Mars One people start taking applications next year, I'm signing up. If I don't qualify for a position as one of the colonists (college dropout being the most likely disqualifier — not that it would have helped much if I'd finished that English degree :-þ), I'll try and get a job in the support infrastructure. I want to be involved with this, come Hell or high water. This despite some grave misgivings.

1 — I think it's unethical to send colonists and their host of microscopic parasites and symbionts while the question of indigenous life on Mars is still open. The doubts raised by potential contamination would forever cloud the effort to nail down the range of conditions conducive to life if something were discovered.

2 — Planetary colonization is the wrong way to go. Shipping anything back to Earth is going to be insanely expensive, and in the long term a colony has to be able to ship something (rare minerals, biogenic resources, whatever) back to justify the investment. Although this alternate funding approach is clever, it will be a slave to ratings and the capricious public and not suitable for long-term financing.

Investing in unmanned asteroid mining has far better ROI when it comes to acquiring raw materials, as there's no bulky radiation shielding, life support equipment, nor tons of supplies needed as with manned missions and the cargo freighters don't need to be accelerated to Mars escape velocity before they can be inserted into Hohmann transfer orbits, a 40—50% reduction in Delta-V.

As for biogenic produce, Mars has no forests nor beavers to be exploited, so farming would be the only option. Once again, shipping costs would be nightmarish, especially considering that for many kinds of produce minimal-Delta-V Hohmann orbits are also too slow for getting to market on Earth before the cargo expires, and shorter trips require higher ∆v expenditures, driving up costs further.

No, the best option for space-based agriculture would be agricultural habitats in orbit of the Earth built using the materials obtained from asteroids. Shipping produce planetside could be achieved with coil gun-style launchers (powered by a hab's solar panels which could be made arbitrarily large) to accelerate the "dump box" on the right trajectory and using aerobraking and some combination of parachutes and small retrorockets to decelerate it to soft land. Shipping seed stock, topsoil, earthworms, and whatever else is needed from Earth would also be far cheaper to an Earth-orbit destination than an interplanetary one. There are also advantages in the ability to produce additional farmland practically at will and with a far higher upper limit than Mars's surface area, something I've discussed before.

There's no advantage to be had in using Mars as a manufacturing center, given the shipping costs and that orbital manufacturing blocks can use manufacturing techniques that take advantage of the micro-g and vacuum environment unavailable on Earth or Mars. (Not to mention there's a good reason the colonial economy was historically one of shipping resources from the colony to the motherland and the manufactured goods produced therefrom back instead of the other way around or expecting the colony to convert its own resources into manufactured goods for exports.)

In short, Mars is only interesting as a settlement target because of its pull on the public imagination, an imagination limited by a lack of education regarding the pros and cons of planetary colonization and the alternatives to it.

3 — This project itself is the single loudest indictment of capitalism I've seen in a long time. Sure, we can send people to explore another planet, but the only way to fund it is through a crass entertainment format. We'll also be neglecting the long-term infrastructure investment needed for a permanent presence in space as that wouldn't produce immediate returns. Meanwhile, we still have rampant poverty and famine on Earth, but this Mars thing is shiny, so we'll do that.

Still, the lure of such a monumental adventure is too great for me to resist.

Comments

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Don't know if you caught this the first time around but...

http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1336290.html

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

I did catch that the first time around, but it's worth a revisit.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

This.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

See, when I saw reality TV to the stars I was all set to say: "Yes, yes, yes, by all means make the Kardashians the Moon's problem."

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

We could terraform antarctica.

But, if the snow & ice melted sea levels would rise 60-200 ft.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

There is something extraordinarily facile and chintzy about that website. I don't now man, but "We have a serious plan we've worked on since 2011..." strikes me as... I don't know I just don't see the seriousness in it.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Well right now it's a joke, but it's nice to have, uh, high hopes, I guess.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they are kind of downplaying the many years of planning that was spent getting to the real plan.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

This reminds me that the Chinese are not sleeping. While the US is cutting its space budget and retiring its shuttles, and while the Russian probes are falling into the Pacific, the Chinese, slowly but methodically, are advancing towards the stars. China's ambition is to have a space station of their own until 2020, and send manned missions to the Moon and Mars shortly thereafter.

But sure, before they achieve any of this, they'll have to walk a long road and catch up for decades of missed opportunity, compared to Russia and the US. A couple of weeks ago they made such a step in that direction when they sent their first female astronaut into orbit, and she made the first manual connection between two space modules. Now this makes China the third space power to do such a thing.

They're far away from their goal still, but they seem to have the will and the resources to do it. And that might be a cause for concerns in both Moscow and Washington, as the space competition is entering a new phase.

Perhaps you could be hired by the commies? ;)

That said, I'll say here too that I sure hope you don't meet some wookies on the way! Or if you do, better make sure they like heavy metal!

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I will never understand the weird nationalistic hand-wringing about space and/or science. If the Chinese go to Mars, yay! Just like when the US went to the moon, and people were "Yay!" I cannot possibly fathom the depths of juvenile thinking involved in caring about nationalistic concerns about space.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

The only issue I see with it is that one'd need to learn some Chinese in order to be useful on that station. You know how those hieroglyphics are! :O

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

He who controls the space controls the universe...

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

That's cool and all, a great step for humankind, you know, but our friend prog_expat won't be hired by the Chinese to do that step. And he wanted it soooo badly! Now they'll hire Chinese guys.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

??? I don't see how some bloke not getting a job matters.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

That's because the very concept of caring about some bloke is alien to you.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

No it isn't. But thanks for trying. I didn't get to be an astronaut, yet somehow I fail to hear a violin playing my sorrows.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

You're most welcome.

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

Eh, I can always defect.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I know it's still a long shot, but if someone were to seriously say: "I want volunteers for Mars", I'd sign up in a heartbeat, even if it were a one-way trip. Ideally that won't happen until after I'm done with my doctorate, because then I might actually have something to offer a colony besides taking up space. ;)

But imagine being one of the actual first colonists on another world. THAT'S a hell of a legacy to leave.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Colonization on Mars?

You know this could only end with:

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Do people not get that--
1) It's really freaking cold, too cold for liquid water.
2) There really isn't any water to speak of anyway.
3) The atmosphere is so toxic you'd die of CO2 poisoning in hours if not minutes.
4) But at least it's ridiculously thin, so you'll vent air and asphyxiate that way first.
5) Also it's further away from the sun, so it's actually got good reason to be too cold for carbon-based life.
6) And you can't just sail back to Earth whenever.

Go ahead, I just hope that when you die embarrassingly, people realise that this is crazy.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

There are sea monsters out in the ocean! And... and, KRAKENS!!!

Also those mermaids... which is an upside, I guess.