Explained, by Jeff Greason (it’s buried in the comments, so I thought I’d post it up front here):
A little disappointed in the debate above.
I’m going to try, one more time, to explain flexible path. It isn’t hard. You just have to read what we said rather than try to do Kremlinology on what you think we must have meant.
I’ll boil it down the same way that I explained it to policy makers.
* We want to go to Mars.
* We can’t reasonably go to Mars without more experience with long-duration missions.
* Long-duration missions can be done to Lagrange points, NEO’s, and Phobos/Deimos and they are all worthwhile missions in their own right.
* We can’t reasonably go to Mars without updating our experience doing manned planetary exploration.
* Manned planetary exploration would be done on the Moon, which is a worthwhile mission in its own right, and could be a source of propellant for exploration.
* The Moon vs. Mars vs. NEO’s is therefore a FALSE CHOICE; the only choice we have is what sequence we do them in.
* Therefore, the only reasonable way to proceed is to accept that we MUST plan to do all of these things and plan accordingly.
* Since the spacecraft, lander, and boosters/EDS’s are the expensive part, constrained budget says develop 1 or at most 2 of them first.Now, the version of this in the Augustine report was:
* Do the boosters/EDS’s and spacecraft first
* Do buildup flights in LEO, Lagrange, Cislunar, NEO’s
* Do Lunar landings
* Do Mars
(whether Phobos came before or after Lunar landings really wasn’t clear, it depends on how the technologies shake out).Look at the mission timeline in the report, under flexible path, and you see Lunar landings, NEO visits, and Phobos visits before Mars. Construing that as “abandoning the moon” or “don’t touch” requires one to either refuse to read the report, to assume we only meant part of what we said, or to be dishonest.
Today, as it seems the NASA budget may not support doing 2 elements at once, I would suggest we do one at a time:
* spacecraft
* then boosters
* then landersBecause that way we can begin the exploration sequence with spacecraft on existing boosters and build the (relatively modest) upgraded boosters we need for more agressive missions as we go.
Makes sense to me. But the “look but don’t touch” morons will continue to be confused. I’m sure that we’ll be discussing this this evening, on a panel on which Jeff and I will be on, at the conference.
Karl, you’re following into the same mental trap, where we have to go into space to get the stuff we need…in space. But the dollars are here on earth and no one’s in space, so you need to return something to the surface of the Earth economically that is more cost-effective to get from space than to get from here.
Moon dirt. Moon dirt. Moon dirt.
Wiki:
“Lunar meteorites collected in Africa and Oman are, for all practical purposes, the only source of moon rocks available for private ownership.
…
Most of the moonrocks collected by the Luna 16 probe are also unavailable for private ownership, although three tiny samples were sold at auction for $442,500 in 1993”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_meteorite
“Meteorites, including lunar and martian meteorites, are easily available for purchase on the Internet. Samples (end cuts, slices, chips, crumbs, dust) of the lunar meteorites sell on the Internet (e.g., e-Bay) for between about $800 and $40,000 per gram, depending upon rarity (perceived or real!) and demand. By comparison, the price of 24-carat gold is about $20 per gram and gem-quality diamonds start at $1000-2000/gram. ”
“Another measure of rarity is mass. The total mass of all known lunar meteorites is only about 33 kg (72 lbs.). By comparison, the Allende and Jilin meteorites (both stony) are 2 and 4 metric tons (2000 and 4000 kg) each while several iron meteorites weigh more than 10 tons!”
http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/moon_meteorites.htm
So there’s small quantity available in entire world. What would the price be if there was 10 tons brought back from the Moon.
Who knows.
It probably wouldn’t be as much as $800 per gram, but it could be this much or more. It seems almost certain that it should get more than $20 per gram. If you assume $100 per gram it’s $100,000 per kg/ $100 million per ton.
There are all kinds of variables which could determine it’s value- though obviously it is based upon demand.
One could expect a certain amount of free air time, if you were to do this sort of thing- one would need to effectively exploit those opportunities.
Generally getting 1 ton from ten locations would have more scientific value, then 10 tons from same location.
Getting dirt from near Apollo landing site could have more general demand.
Though I would think that “who” is bringing back these samples could also effect demand. Having say Tom Hanks involved and spinning it in a certain way could make significant difference.
Or one say focus on educational aspect, you could kids involved actual research related to lunar samples, much more than any time in history with such things as twitter and internet access.
There are tens of thousands of schools in US and tens thousands around the world which could get up to say 1 kg of lunar sample- to share among thousands of students cumulatively over a decade or more of time [so more than 10 tons just for this type market].
But anyways as said it ultimately about energy, you say that we don’t need energy from space and can use nuclear energy obtainable from earth instead.
When is US going to actually do this?
We currently have 20% of the electrical energy being supplied by nukes [France and Japan have much higher percentages].
I don’t think we will have say, 25% of power coming from nukes within the next decade.
When do you think it’s likely that the US will provide say 50% of electrical power from nukes?
I think it’s at least decades away and it’s even quite possible that say 30 years from now, we could still be getting around 20% of electrical power from nukes.
It’s probably a similar bet as to when we will get fusion energy generation. It’s not as silly sounding but in terms of “when” it seems pretty ify about the actual time when a dominate amount of electrical energy is generated in the US from nuclear fission.
With energy from the sky, it’s possible that homeowners could own their power generation.
When do you think individuals could own a nuke?
Assuming the nuke was on earth and not in space.
But the dollars are here on earth and no one’s in space, so you need to return something to the surface of the Earth economically that is more cost-effective to get from space than to get from here.
Power. Solar power is of limited use on earth, although it is growing. Energy collected in space from some solar-thermal system can be beamed to a rectenna on the ground (or anywhere in space, such as to another spacecraft or a moon base or what have you). Solar power is plentiful up there, but not so much down here, and can be shipped to the earth as cheaply as information.
The rectennae can be built next to major cities and the land underneath can still be used for agriculture – a far cry from transmission lines hundreds or thousands of miles long, as is currently required for solar power on an industrial scale.
Space based solar power has a ready-made market here on earth. Well, it’s one possible starting point to a market in space.
Some things may not only be more cost-effective to get from space, they may also be the only place it is possible to get them. That’s another path.
What you return to earth is MONEY. The idea we need to ship space-widgets home is ludicrous and reflects a very poor understanding of economics.
The problem Earth has right now is our economy is CLOSED. Once we reach the limits of our resources, the jig is up, everything from there on is nothing but fighting over scraps.
The only way to fix this is to OPEN Earth’s economic system. Space Solar Power is one idea, but is limited, expensive, and poses a long term environmental risk of adding more energy to the Earth climate system (i.e. warming).
The better way to open earth’s economy is to build industrial infrastructure out there, and population centers out there that need that industry, and mining/drilling infrastructure to get resources for the space economy. With all that economy functioning out there, but owned in the majority by people on earth, then we grow our planetside economy so that space goods become economically feasible to send to Earth, because everybody on Earth is so fantastically rich from the space economy that a million bucks to travel to space is a reasonable price.
I think the moon does need to export real stuff to earth. In similar way that a country needs to export stuff. Exports are not a major aspect of the economy of a country [unless you are China:)]
“The United States is the world’s largest trading nation. Since it is the world’s leading importer, there are many U.S. dollars in circulation all around the planet.
…
In 2008, the total U.S. trade deficit was $695.9 billion, which is $1.8 trillion in exports minus $2.5 trillion in imports
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
And US has estimated at $14.2 trillion GDP
So exports are about 1/10th of GDP
China GDP is 4.33 trillion and exports 1.2 trillion.
Or perhaps more relevance the Moon would be that it is similar to growth company- needing to show some profit and having a real potential of significantly more profit.
But unlike a country or a growth company- the Moon actually has very substantial assets. It’s too bad it’s not a nation- then it could leverage those assets- but then again, perhaps it wouldn’t do this is a wise manner.
Moon dirt and space solar power. You guys never change your bag o’ tricks.
I wish you’d spent as much time looking at space solar power as I have. Looking at it from an engineering perspective, not daydreaming about it on space blogs. You’d realize that its prospect for success is ZERO. Now and forever. But again, you want a huge HSF program to be the answer to terrestrial questions and so you believe in palpable fantasies like space solar power.
As for owning your own power supply, the prospect of you owning your own nuclear reactors is infinitely more probable than the prospect of you owning your own 15-km diameter rectenna, *conveniently* located next to a major city! With side lobes available to make sure that no one uses a cell phone ever again! And that every lawyer on the continent will take you to court for every case of cancer that appears, forcing you to prove that it wasn’t your fault.
You guys are such dreamers. Because you can’t figure out how to make money in space you’ll never get the human expansion you dream about, because it will never make money. But hey, keep fantasizing about moon dirt and space solar power. I don’t know why I waste so much time trying to explain what space development needs to succeed. It’s clear that you guys don’t want to hear it and don’t care about being horribly wrong.
Kirk, I don’t see myself owning a rectenna. PG&E on the other hand, sure. I am not sure where you’re getting a prospect for success of zero; perhaps we are operating from different premises? I certainly wouldn’t advocate using the existing cell phone frequencies as the transmission frequency.
Anyhow, I spoke about solar power as one possible answer to “[bring] something to the surface of the Earth economically that is more cost-effective to get from space than to get from here”. It doesn’t have to be The One Right Answer, because there is no such beast. It is one of a myriad of answers, some more right than others. The market will figure out which.
And, that is something that NASA can apparently not handle as it is currently constituted. NASA right now needs that One Right Answer, according to Paul Spudis (if I’ve read his objection correctly), or it simply generates billion-dollar viewgraphs.
I am happier with a NASA strategy that allows Paul to go collect his moon dust and allows Dennis Wingo to go platinum prospecting and allows me to set up a pizzeria on the moon (gotta find out if yeast works differently in 1/6 gee…) and maybe lets Paul sell some of the aluminum he collects to Coyote Smith so he can build a solar power satellite.
There isn’t one Killer App. There’s a million of them. NASA can’t do them all. It shouldn’t do them at all. Leave that to the free market.
“As for owning your own power supply, the prospect of you owning your own nuclear reactors is infinitely more probable than the prospect of you owning your own 15-km diameter rectenna, *conveniently* located next to a major city!”
There is no need to have a 15 km diameter rectenna. There isn’t even a need to send the power wireless.
But if you are going use beamed power and microwave instead of laser, using the [It has been suggested that, for best efficiency, the satellite antenna should be circular and about 1 kilometer in diameter or larger; the ground antenna (rectenna) should be elliptical, 10 km wide, and a length that makes the rectenna appear circular from GEO (Geostationary Orbit). (Typically, 14 km at some North American latitudes.)- wiki] I also don’t see why one household would need “5 or 10 gigawatts of power”
And somehow we have thousands of radio stations beaming say 50 megawatts of power non directionally for decades and this hasn’t resulted in these types of consequences- I think it might have to do with there being different frequencies.
One reason you need a large rectenna is because you want to limit the size of the satellite antenna. What happen to terrestrial size rectenna, if you had a much larger antenna in space?
One also has a large rectenna on earth so one can transfer a lot power and not have the power so concentrated that you “microwave oven” anything in it’s path.
And such diffused microwave also allows one to use the area for other purposes- you basically hang wire in a grid say 10 or 20 below the ground- and for example crops could grow below them.
One could also relay power in space to lower orbits and platforms in the Earth’s atmosphere- making possible that final transmission distance as little as say 10 miles. And just because you own a piece of the sky, it’s doesn’t mean the energy from the photons has to exclusively go to you- you could provide power to a grid and whatever node is nearest to you one use that power [and of course pay for the grid service- such payment could be providing more power to the grid then you use]. So basically one brings your power with you in a way similar to how bring a cell phone with you- and it might not work in some areas.
And the electrical power beamed to you could also contain your cell/internet signal.
Of course I am trying conceive of world which is about 50 years into the future.
As I said, I am not talking about getting electrical power from space to earth in the near term. And I think that the soonest this could done is a few decades AFTER lunar water is mined commercially on the Moon.
Kirk,
You seemed to have study this problems for years at NASA. What do you think the answer is? Or is scientific research the only thing space is good for?
Thomas Matula, I spent years at NASA working on space tether transportation systems, developing technology that would slash the costs of cislunar travel, and operating under the delusion that anyone cared at NASA HQ or above about doing things economically in space. Then along came Griffin and ESAS and showed that he didn’t give a dead rat’s tail about launch or infrastructure costs. It was all about preserving FTEs. And the whole agency followed him right off the cliff.
Now we are picking up the shattered pieces of what Griffin’s folly has wrought on the agency, and asking where do we go forward. Our credibility is toast. And I am forced to conclude that there is no good reason to send humans into space, and that even if we could come up with an economic justification for lunar or Martian activities, we would certainly want to exclude humans from the activity because of their staggering costs and the toxic culture at NASA that has grown up around the HSF effort. A culture that thinks that astronauts are so fragile and important that we need three different kinds of vehicles waiting to rush them from the ISS to a hospital on the ground. Because what they’re doing on ISS is so important? Who knows. All I know is with that approach to HSF you can forget about ever going anywhere BEO.
I don’t think there’s an economically justifiable activity beyond geosynchronous orbit. I’m about 99.9% convinced that there’s absolutely nothing in space that justifies human presence. I could be wrong, but as the years pass and I keep asking the same question and getting the same pitiful non-answers from the pro-HSF crowd, I increasingly think that I am not wrong.
I wish I was.
What you return to earth is MONEY.
Exactly. I thought I said that. Perhaps this message is being transmitted on the wrong frequency??? Perhaps engineering doesn’t include enough accounting? Assets in space are owned by people on Earth (because they don’t live anywhere else at the present.) So any growth in space assets, if done right, means a growth in money back home.
Are we richer or poorer than people in the middle ages? Why the difference?
Expand the economy to the solar system and the result will be a huge increase in wealth here at home. Getting assets into space is expensive, but once there they can engage in activities that produce new wealth, new wealth reflected in shares at home; in other words, real money… here.
“I don’t think there’s an economically justifiable activity beyond geosynchronous orbit. I’m about 99.9% convinced that there’s absolutely nothing in space that justifies human presence.”
I assume you think there something in space [beyond GEO] that justifies robot, rover, or satellite present?
If so, where would be the highest priority to send them?
I don’t think there’s an economically justifiable activity beyond geosynchronous orbit. I’m about 99.9% convinced that there’s absolutely nothing in space that justifies human presence. I could be wrong, but as the years pass and I keep asking the same question and getting the same pitiful non-answers from the pro-HSF crowd, I increasingly think that I am not wrong.
You are correct for now (aside from some nebulous value to current unmanned space exploration and space science). The real question is why do you think it’ll stay that way? Why can’t we get there from here?
As an aside, this strikes me as being something like the claims that macroevolution can’t occur. There’s a similar problem to explain. A huge jump needs to happen via small incremental changes. There, the advantage to explaining macroevolution is that there’s a lot of time for incremental changes to add up. So even vast changes (like from unicellular life to human civilization) can occur.
Here, aside from some loose historical analogues, like the colonization of the New World, we don’t have past examples of space colonization. Currently, it looks like any such development will exceed any small group’s lifespan (much less the people who make up that group) or resources. So we can’t just go out and do it with a well thought out plan. But that doesn’t mean we can’t move in the right direction now and get there some distant time later.
And finally, the “non-answers” you claim you get, are non-answers because you choose not to accept them, not because they aren’t answers. For example, space solar power or gold from the Moon makes sense when it can be delivered cheap enough to a location on Earth (or elsewhere in the Solar System). In other words, the reason we don’t try to do these things is due to significant economic barriers (namely costs are expected to be orders of magnitude greater than the benefit), not because these things can’t ever work. Lower the costs by those few orders of magnitude and the activity becomes profitable.
Going back to an early claim of yours, why believe that manned missions to Mars cost hundreds of billions of dollars? What’s the basis for that claim, even now? Even if it is true now, do you think such a thing will always be the case?
The real question is why do you think it’ll stay that way? Why can’t we get there from here?
Who has the burden of proof? I think the burden is on those advocating spending public money on manned space to demonstrate that the money is well spent. People who want to spend their own money are welcome to, of course.
As an aside, this strikes me as being something like the claims that macroevolution can’t occur. There’s a similar problem to explain. A huge jump needs to happen via small incremental changes. There, the advantage to explaining macroevolution is that there’s a lot of time for incremental changes to add up. So even vast changes (like from unicellular life to human civilization) can occur.
Unfortunately for your analogy, Karl, space advocates often claim that they know what the outcome of macroevolution is going to be. Where does this special knowledge of the future come from?
But that doesn’t mean we can’t move in the right direction now and get there some distant time later.
Again, the claim of omniscience that space advocates love to make. Exactly why should I or anyone believe that Karl Hallowell has some special insight into what the “right direction” is?
Lower the costs by those few orders of magnitude and the activity becomes profitable.
Again, the burden of proof is on the advocate to indicate that those costs can indeed be lowered. Not absolute, mathematical proof of course, but at least to the point where the investment seems to be sound.
For example, I can go on and on about how much gold or uranium or platinum is dissolved in seawater. I can point out that magnesium is already profitably extracted from seawater. I can make sweeping statements like “Lower the costs by those few orders of magnitude and the activity becomes profitable.” But at the end of the day I need compelling reasons why anyone should give me money for extracting gold from seawater.
Going back to an early claim of yours, why believe that manned missions to Mars cost hundreds of billions of dollars? What’s the basis for that claim, even now? Even if it is true now, do you think such a thing will always be the case?
Kirk can speak for himself of course but my answer would be along these lines.
The ISS cost roughly a $100 billion; a manned Mars mission will be much more complex; have much more specialized equipment; and will expose the crew to a much more severe radiological environment. Therefore, the cost of “hundreds of billions” is not out of the ballpark.
Can it be done cheaper? I’m willing to listen to the arguments. But it has to be something with a little more meat than “Because there’s nothing about such a mission that requires it to cost billions, much less hundreds of billions.”
My own feelings are that the cost of Mars missions will not fall until we have a lot of experience doing Mars missions or something near enough to Mars missions that the experience is directly applicable. I think the case is similar to that of earth to orbit transportation: we do so little of it that only small amounts of money can be justified in attempts to lower costs.
All this means is that if we want to lower costs to Mars we have to have some really compelling reasons to go to Mars at current costs. Arguments from personal conviction of the sort “we can build a thriving civilization on Mars, it’s our destiny” just aren’t compelling.
Jim Davis, you did a very good job explaining the point about Mars mission costs. In fact, considering how risk-averse NASA is about manned operations, I’m willing to say that NO amount of money will get humans to Mars under NASA (JSC) guidelines.
“Who has the burden of proof? I think the burden is on those advocating spending public money on manned space to demonstrate that the money is well spent. People who want to spend their own money are welcome to, of course. ”
Why are you focusing on manned space, why not robots also?
The basic question is why are citizens forced to pay for govt space exploration- manned or robot. What is the public good we suppose to be getting other than some kind of pointless high tech job program?
My answer is eventually we could get energy from space. And that NASA’s job at the moment is to determine if there is minable water on the Moon.
So I don’t think Space has as much value in terms of various mineral resources or places human could live. But do think those types of things could and probably would have value.
I don’t want NASA mining lunar water- just as don’t NASA to grow crops on earth or getting into the terrestrial gold mining business.
But it seems to me that the public wants NASA to explore space, and it seems to me that why you are exploring is to find things which could be of value- rather find things which are say, interesting or in some way amusing.
Rather than anything new, it seems to me that the default position has been that there is nothing of value in space so there is no point looking, and instead NASA has focused on “exploration” that is looking for things which are interesting.
But rather than any kind of exploration- whether focused on “points of interest” or something which could be material value to earthlings, the highest priority of NASA has been to maintain it’s “survival” as a govt body- which is getting as much or more money for the next year’s budget. And the result of such a focus has been feeding various Congressional districts with “job programs”.
Though it seems to me that recently [in within last decade or so] NASA has begun to focus on what it’s charter says it’s suppose to focus on- actual exploration- trying to find something which could have value at some point in the future. BUT this doesn’t mean that NASA has suddenly”transformed” and that it’s main focus is no longer being job program for a selected few- or that it idea of exploration has radically changed- it’s more of glimmer of hope, which could be completely lost in the morass of it’s bureaucracy- or could have been it was mostly a means to get more of next years money- in other words, it was simply more of the glib lip service from the geniuses of the political class.
So, can we drop this whole silly robot vs human thing and get to the point?
Is there actually anything reasonably possible in space that is worth the billions dollars spent in order to explore [regardless of who or what is exploring].
I think that space is worth exploring. Or said differently, I think far more value has been lost wasting time than than wasting money- the trillion or so dollars NASA has already spent is minor compared to the time it’s already wasted.
“For example, space solar power or gold from the Moon makes sense when it can be delivered cheap enough to a location on Earth (or elsewhere in the Solar System). In other words, the reason we don’t try to do these things is due to significant economic barriers (namely costs are expected to be orders of magnitude greater than the benefit), not because these things can’t ever work. Lower the costs by those few orders of magnitude and the activity becomes profitable.”
I am not aware of there being any known amount of gold on the Moon.
It seems reasonable that there could be PGMs cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum_group
Or “Platinum group metals are rare on the surface of the earth because they are siderophiles, and hence tend to be segregated in liquid iron. This means that most of the Earth’s inventory of platinum group metals is sequestered in the liquid iron at the Earth’s core.”
http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Platinum_Group_Metals
PGM can be found on asteroids. Asteroids have hit the Moon. The Moon doesn’t have plate tectonics that “recycle” it’s surface.
And impactor could hit the moon at lower velocity then compared to Earth- the minimal velocity on earth is it’s escape velocity, same goes for the Moon.
Though it should noted that normally impactors velocity is more dependent on Earth/Moon orbital velocity and the asteroid orbital velocity around the sun rather than determined by Earth or the Moon’s gravity well.
So in a sense, you could mine asteroids on the Moon. And on Earth asteroid impact site are places which are currently mined.
I have mentioned the obvious fact that any lunar dirt has more value than compared gold. Which is sort of like saying the Moon is “covered” with zillions of tonnes of gold. In fact if the Moon was only made of solid gold it would be worth less then our Moon.
And there is some gold in the PGMs.
We have no need for energy from space. We have sufficient thorium on earth to power our civilization for millions of years.
I agree Kirk, we have no need to leave Earth. Everything we need is here. We will all die, but that’s far, far in the future. However, if I do happen to produce more energy in space than I need, might I not sell the excess?
“Thorium is a naturally occurring, slightly radioactive metal. It is estimated to be about three to four times more abundant than uranium in the Earth’s crust. It has been considered a waste product in mining rare earths, so its abundance is high and cost low.”
And Uranium is also very abundant. Abundance in earth crust:
thorium 6 ppm
uranium 1.8 ppm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust
Uranium:
Estimated Crustal Abundance: 2.7 milligrams per kilogram
Estimated Oceanic Abundance: 3.2×10-3 milligrams per liter
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele092.html
So roughly if you take anywhere on earth and have a 10 meter area and 1 meter depth with average density of 2, you have 200 tons of material and have about 2 gram per ton, so around 400 grams
So in anyone’s backyard at a modest depth there are several kgs of Uranium and 2 or 4 times more thorium.
So both Uranium an thorium are everywhere, and of course there much better places to mine it. And even Uranium fuel is relatively cheap to make.
Therefore there should no reason why we aren’t paying less than say 1 cent per kW/h- yet we do.
Sort of like rocket fuel very cheap compared to launch cost, but we still have high launch costs.
Hmm, is there any other similarities between rocket launches and nuclear energy?
I guess not.
If there is no problem with energy, why do we spend so much money on fusion research?
I think a little competition between Dept of Energy and NASA would be a good thing.
How about we lower the Dept Energy budget to NASA’s or raise NASA’s to Dept of Energy?
So it’s a fairer competition?
Jim Davis, you wrote:
The ISS cost roughly a $100 billion; a manned Mars mission will be much more complex; have much more specialized equipment; and will expose the crew to a much more severe radiological environment. Therefore, the cost of “hundreds of billions” is not out of the ballpark.
I don’t know why my post didn’t appear before, but it’s something of a non sequitur to claim that a Mars mission will cost hundreds of billions merely because the ISS cost a hundred billion.
First, the ISS has a number of problems that drove up the cost of the project. First, it’s dependence on the Shuttle by itself, probably (IMHO) drove up the cost of the project by at least a factor of two. First, aside from a Hubble Telescope mission, the Shuttle hasn’t done any non-ISS missions since Columbia in 2003. Even then, the Shuttle probably could have been discontinued in the 90s, if it weren’t for the ISS. The Columbia accident also delayed construction of the ISS (and drove up costs a bit more).
A Mars mission might be more complex than the ISS, but would it be more complex than the ISS and the Shuttle? I doubt it.
Many of the components were built on cost plus contracts which are a known source of cost inflation in NASA projects.
Third, the international nature of the ISS added a great deal of complexity and cost to the project. As I understand it, the ISS has two mission controls, one in the US and one in Russia. A number of operations require international cooperation. The station docks five different vehicles currently (Progress, Soyuz, Shuttle, ATV and HTV) and will eventually receive some COTS-based vehicles as well.
It is composed of components that come from radically different industrial bases. There are numerous projects by different countries going on at the same time. Further, the station is designed to run hundreds of experiments at the same time.
Finally, the station maintains a microgravity environment. That imposes significant limits on vibration and motion of the vehicle that wouldn’t apply to a Mars mission.
My take is that a Mars mission would not be more complex and that the enormous complexity of the ISS-Shuttle system is only a part of the reason it is so expensive.
We have no need for energy from space. We have sufficient thorium on earth to power our civilization for millions of years.
How accessible is this thorium? There is apparently a significant chemical pathway for uranium (which thorium doesn’t have) that allows it to more readily form viable ore deposits. I gather it is that hexavalent uranium (6 bonds) is pretty soluble in water while no form of thorium is.
If I understand this correctly, the coal-based deposits of New Mexico (and I gather many other places) are formed when uranium is dissolved in water circulating deep underground (as hexavalent U+6), but converts to tetravalent U+4 when it reaches the environment of a coal bed. At that point, uranium is rather insoluble and precipitates out. Hexavalent thorium might have some degree of solubility at the temperatures and pressures involved here, but I gather the mechanism is far less effective at concentrating thorium.
In addition to the possibly harder task of mining thorium on Earth, we also have to consider that demand will not stay constant. An obvious example is that there is almost no consumption of thorium presently. Transitioning fission power to thorium-fuel would greatly change the demand, just by itself.
I don’t know why my post didn’t appear before,
I’ve been having similar problems.
but it’s something of a non sequitur to claim that a Mars mission will cost hundreds of billions merely because the ISS cost a hundred billion.
Uh, no, Karl, it is perfectly reasonable, and indeed standard practice, to assume that projects of comparable size and complexity will have comparable costs.
It is you, Karl, that is going to on the hot seat if you claim that you can do it for a factor of a hundred less.
First, the ISS has a number of problems that drove up the cost of the project.
Oh, no kidding, Karl. And a manned Mars program will not have any immunity from problems. It would be the height of hubris to assume otherwise.
Uh, no, Karl, it is perfectly reasonable, and indeed standard practice, to assume that projects of comparable size and complexity will have comparable costs.
It is you, Karl, that is going to on the hot seat if you claim that you can do it for a factor of a hundred less.
There’s the Mars Direct plan, for example. They’ll been polishing it since Zubrin.
Oh, no kidding, Karl. And a manned Mars program will not have any immunity from problems. It would be the height of hubris to assume otherwise.
I guess it depends on whether the plan is to go to Mars or to spend a few hundred billion dollars. A lot of projects have problems, but those don’t usually pump up the cost of the project by a few orders of magnitude.
I guess it depends on whether the plan is to go to Mars or to spend a few hundred billion dollars. A lot of projects have problems, but those don’t usually pump up the cost of the project by a few orders of magnitude.
A few orders of magnitude from what exactly, Karl? What Karl Hallowell or Robert Zubrin thinks it should cost?
“How accessible is this thorium? There is apparently a significant chemical pathway for uranium (which thorium doesn’t have) that allows it to more readily form viable ore deposits. I gather it is that hexavalent uranium (6 bonds) is pretty soluble in water while no form of thorium is.”
Thorium isn’t radioactive, it can made fertile in a breeding reactor. You don’t need to sort out the Thorium isotopes.
Of course some people don’t like breeder reactors. They don’t like any nuclear reactors, but breeding reactors generally make them more insane than their normal insanity- maybe they own a lot of oil/coal stocks or something.
“Over the last 40 years there has been interest in utilising thorium as a nuclear fuel since it is more abundant in the Earth’s crust than uranium. Also, all of the mined thorium is potentially useable in a reactor, compared with the 0.7% of natural uranium, so some 40 times the amount of energy per unit mass might theoretically be available (without recourse to fast neutron reactors). But this relative advantage vanishes if fast neutron reactors are used for uranium.
…
The use of thorium-based fuel cycles has been studied for about 30 years, but on a much smaller scale than uranium or uranium/plutonium cycles. Basic research and development has been conducted in Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA. Test reactor irradiation of thorium fuel to high burnups has also been conducted and several test reactors have either been partially or completely loaded with thorium-based fuel.”
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html
Jim Davis, you wrote:
A few orders of magnitude from what exactly, Karl? What Karl Hallowell or Robert Zubrin thinks it should cost?
What Karl Hallowell thinks it should cost. That so happens to agree with what Robert Zubrin thinks it should cost and a couple of orders of magnitude lower than what Jim Davis thinks it should cost. Do you know why I side with Zubrin instead of you? Because he actually has put a plan together and estimated costs. He got on the hot seat.
The point here is that I dislike it strongly when people just say something is a certain way without significant evidence. Zubrin for all his flaws, made a serious attempt to design a relatively low cost mission profile for a manned expedition (actually a series of expeditions) to Mars and estimate the cost of that plan. Everyone who makes a claim about the cost of such a mission is on the hot seat.
gbaikie, you wrote:
Thorium isn’t radioactive, it can made fertile in a breeding reactor. You don’t need to sort out the Thorium isotopes.
I was referring to the chemistry of generic uranium and thorium. There are slight differences in the chemical behavior of the various isotopes of uranium and thorium, but these aren’t significant geologically. The only known case where the uranium ratio of U235 to U238 differed significantly from the mean was some uranium deposits at the Oklo which were found to have formed natural reactors around 2 billion years ago which consumed the U235 to a great degree. But this wasn’t a chemical reaction.
It is also worth noting that thorium is radioactive with the most stable isotope, Th 232 having a half life of roughly 14 billion years.
Jim, to use the ISS as an example of what anything should cost is ridiculous. We could spend hundreds of billions or even trillions on some mission or we could do it for less. Much less. Compare Constellation to Dragon for example.
I worked for the government. I know how they inflate costs.
Do you know why I side with Zubrin instead of you? Because he actually has put a plan together and estimated costs. He got on the hot seat.
I’ll follow Zubrin’s progress with interest, then.