If you cannot create a dependent colony on Antarctica, where the dependencies are much easier to supply relative to Mars, then you can’t do it on Mars either. Antarctica is baby-easy-mode relative to Mars, and the lack of effort is telling.
If you can test it on Antarctica but choose not to, even in the smallest most dependent easy mode, then you might be a wildly irresponsible and wasteful engineer/investor, but more likely you’re simply trying to attract funding by saying cool-sounding things that you have no intention of actually delivering.
A third explanation is that musk’s interest in being King of Mars is waning now that he’s making a credible run at being King of Earth. So the project continues, but sorta in caretaker mode, doing the bits with more immediate financial ROI. Cheap bulk launch to Earth orbit and maybe later robotic deep space exploration and asteroid mining has at least potential earthly ROI. Colonists on Mars not so much.
In the compare contrast I will offer up a dissent:
The biggest challenge, as noted, is likely to be the human interaction and mental health issues.
I can imagine enough people with a romantic adventurer desire to be in history as the first Martians signing up. Harder to imagine these people eager to sign up for the test kitchen challenge experience in Antarctica. Oh some could get their families paid enough, but that is a different personality selection bias.
I feel like this really depends on the parameters of the question. There’s a difference between what Elon Musk or the US government can do, thinking in terms of playing around for scientific inquiry, and what humanity could do, given a single mind to do so and all resources of the planet able to be brought to bear.
If we’re talking one God-emperor in charge of the whole planet and all of humanity, two hundred years of time to tinker and build, and the knowledge that failure will mean the end of humanity then - I don’t know for sure - but I’d give humanity the advantage.
The peninsula gets out into not-so-horrible territory. There, you basically need to create a piece of everything that humanity depends on: mining operations, smelting, microchip production, concrete production, etc. You need power and food production in giant greenhouses. You need shelter for 10s of thousands of people.
Building all of that would be difficult, and it might take a bit of trial and error to find construction techniques that produce long-lived structures and equipment for that environment. But, if we’re given a century or two to prepare, we should be able to figure that out.
If you give the humans a large enough runway and sufficient willpower to truly go for it, I think the only limitations are the questions of the availability of resources (iron, concrete, copper, etc.) that we would depend on in order to repair and replace our structures and equipment for such a long amount of time; whether we had engineered in enough redundancy to be able to deal with issues as they crop up; and whether political stability and continuity could be achieved.
I didn’t specify the size, but it could be a very large colony, with thousands of people, or even more. With a lot of resorces devoted to starting it. That should in some ways take care of the loneliness aspect.
As I said earlier - show me you can do it on easy mode (Antarctica) and I’ll believe it can be done on hard mode (Mars, or for that matter even low-earth orbit).
I’m not saying outright that it cannot be done on Mars. I doubt it, but I don’t know. What I’m saying is the level of effort on the Antarctic habitat is indicative of the commitment to a Mars habitat. Currently the demonstrated level of commitment toward any extreme habitat is zero, and I predict that this will not change, because Musk has many other less expensive and more profitable ways to make himself the center of attention on Earth.
He’ll milk the Mars story for as much investment as he can, maybe even make a few expensive craters on Mars, declare victory, and find a different way to hoodwink his investors and true believers. I’ll be glad to be proven wrong, but until we see investment in an Antarctic habitat, don’t hold your breath.
Most of these statements are misleading if not completely wrong. While there is subsurface water on Mars, like the surface water it is expected to be in a rock-hard ice formant infused with toxic perchlorates which would require energy-intensive distillation. Extracting it and making it useful for humans–not just for use for hydration of people and plants, but for the myriad of uses necessary for a human colony including cleaning and sanitation, industrial processes, as a coolant and slightly polar solvent, et cetera–would require extraordinary effort and power versus desalination or melting of nearly pure water ice which is available nearly everywhere on Earth.
Mars experiences many-week-long dust storms on a regular basis, blotting out sunlight and does not have any other sustainable sources of power such as (strong) wind, a hydrological cycle, or geothermal energy, nor fossil fuels and readily available oxidizer so power for a large Mars colony would have to be some form of nuclear fission or decay (or nuclear fusion, when-and-if that becomes viable) by default.
As far as known, iron on the surface of Mars exists only in the form of fine oxide powder which would have to be electrochemically reduced to make elemental iron, which would essentially be like taking rust scale and converting it back into structural metal, which is something that we don’t do because it would be so ridiculously energy- and labor-intensive. While there are almost certainly volcanic and meteorite deposits of iron somewhere on Mars, the technology and methodology to efficiently extract, smelt, alloy, cast/roll/extrude structural forms on the near-vacuum surface of Mars would take decades of empirical development.
Of course, the biggest and completely irremediable problem with a Mars colony (other than the aforementioned toxic perchlorates found in the fine regolith that will doubtless make its way into possibly entry point) is the 0.38 gee surface gravity and the physiological effects it would have on the health of human residents over the long term. While we do not have empirical observations of direct experience in fractional gravity beyond a handful of astronauts for a few days on the Moon, bedrest and other simulation studies on people and animals has resulted in a broad consensus among space medicine experts that anything less than ~0.5 gee over a period of years would have a deleterious impact upon human health; not only musculoskeletal issues but upon the immune system, cardiac health, et cetera. And no, wearing a weighted bodysuit of twice the person’s body mass would not solve that problem or any other except providing amusement for other colonist every time the wearer attempts to stop or turn and finds their 3x of inertial mass flinging them bodily into a bulkhead or tumbling uncontrollably.
There is also the problem with radiation; Mars’ lack of a thick atmosphere and magnetosphere means that exposure to both solar particle and high energy cosmic radiation would be much higher on the surface than on Earth, which would necessitate all colonies being buried meters the Martian regolith and limiting excursions onto the surface. No ‘farming domes’ (that otherwise don’t make any sense in a large multitude of ways), or long treks exploring Valles Marineris or ‘summitting’ Olympus Mons; virtually all surface activity would have to be in well-shielded vehicles or by remotely operated drones. Which begs the question of the need to have humans, and certainly a self-sustaining human colony, on Mars at all. It would literally be easier–but by no means ‘easy’–and safer to build a habitat in space that could simulate Earth-like conditions than it would be to ‘colonize’ Mars.
There is no plausible basis for this estimate beyond “shit Elon says”, and I think it has become sufficiently evident that Musk makes pronouncements of random fleeting thoughts and baseless nonsense on such a regular frequency that it doesn’t even require listing out all of his bogus statements and outright lies to establish this, notwithstanding that even taking this claim at face value of a $3.6B price tag to sustain a human ‘colony’ on Mars would be an extraordinary waste of financial resources.
As far as colonizing Antarctica, while it is certainly a paradise as compared with Mars or the Moon–what, with the breathable air, normal gravity, fresh water (and ice for cocktails!), and sunlight filtered just so for at least most of the year–it is mostly covered by ice sheets that are by all projections going to be melting with increasing and catastrophic rapidness, it mostly lacks humus soil and the biome for growing crops, and in general does not come with the amenities of most habitable landmasses on Earth, hence why no culture has ever made a serious attempt to colonize the “Seventh Continent”. Doubtless we could establish a small self-sustaining outpost with sufficient technology to allow them to grow crops, extract petroleum or coal, and otherwise function indefinitely without resupply, as machines break down they would not have the size or resources to recreate industrial technologies in the harsh environment or be capable of supporting significant population growth. So, less a ‘colony’ than a long exploratory ‘mission’ that doesn’t actually go anywhere.
I still have a hard time imagining getting thousands of people to sign up to live their lives and raise families in a self sufficient isolated Antarctic colony.
Hard of course to imagine that many for an initial Mars colony too, but again I see some people who would see the appeal of being the first colonists off of earth. A huge step for the human species.
On a tangentially related note, I see job advertisements for IT related jobs in Antarctica popup once in a while. There’s a 6 month commitment but it’d be an amazing experience. If I wasn’t married I’d be tempted to do a stint.
One of my high school classmates worked down there for a few years as a mechanic/driver - it’s hard work keeping some of that equipment functioning.
It apparently is amazing sometimes. But also very tough psychologically, even with (or perhaps because of) other staffers around for company. And in a relatively modern era with satellite internet available. Their occasional forays into Christchurch were apparently quite popular and quite boozy. I can’t begin to imagine the psychological impact of permanent residence.
Any settlement constructed and populated sufficiently to be self-sustaining in perpetuity would be closer to Toronto than to the current Antarctic outposts.
I’d probably expect that you’d have something like giant cylindrical apartment buildings with domes over central courtyard parks, and tunnels connecting the buildings.
I’m pretty sure it is one of those experiences that is ‘amazing’ for the first day and a half, and then you realize that you are stuck in the same handful rooms and a mess hall with a bunch of smelly assholes for ~25 weeks, and soon you start hoping that a boring crew finds an alien spacecraft or giant penguins mass for an attack.
Solar energy production on Mars will be massively overprovisioned due to the need to produce propellant for return trips. In case of dust storms, then, you reduce propellant production and direct the rest to more pressing needs of the colony.
While nuclear reactors would be a nice add-on, they are not necessary.
And, worst case, you can run your stored propellant through fuel cells or even just burn it if things get dire enough. Not to mention using stored O2.
Somewhere? Our various rovers on Mars drive by iron meteorites all the time, and they’ve hardly gone anywhere! Like:
Or:
Or:
Or:
They’re just laying out there on the ground, all over the place. Actually get a human in a full-size rover to drive around and they can collect hundreds of tons of these.
Yes, actually converting them into useful products is more of a challenge. But meteoric iron is the first type that our ancestors had access to and they were able to make all sorts of useful products without advanced refining techniques. There are all kinds of uses for low-grade iron in a colony.
Of course there is. We know roughly how much SpaceX is spending on their Starship program, and it’s in the mid billions. Given the amount of hardware they’ve demonstrably built (such as literally hundreds of Raptor engines, dozens of upper and lower stages, an entire launch facility in Texas, etc.), an upper stage of a (cargo) Starship cannot plausibly cost much more than about $100M.
It will require on the order of 10 refuelings. At $10M/trip, that’s another $100M. Their Falcon 9 marginal cost is already only around $15M, and that’s with a non-reusable upper stage. The propellant itself is only ~$1M.
So, $200M to drop 100 tons on Mars, or $2000/kg. Ballpark. I don’t consider this a particularly optimistic or pessimistic estimate.
Not your money. Also, that $3.6B was just for a lifetime supply of food for 100 people. My point was just that that particular aspect was not a big deal. The rest of it will obviously cost much more.
Nonsense. The surface radiation levels are about 0.7 mSv/day. On the ISS, the average is about 0.4 mSv/day, and some people have spent years in orbit with no ill effects from radiation.
Just by putting sleeping quarters and some working quarters underground (while still doing most work aboveground), you could cut the 0.7 down to ISS levels. But even that is probably overkill. There’s no evidence that this kind of low-dose radiation is harmful. And at worst, it’s going to be a “statistically higher chance of cancer” type thing, not an acute problem.
There are actually places on Earth with nearly the same levels of radiation exposure. Such as Ramsar, Iran, with radium in its hot springs:
No negative effects found in a population of thousands of people living there for decades.
The LNT (linear no-threshold) model of radiation health effects never had any significant evidence behind it. It’s just used because it’s a “safe” model.
Re. concerns that no significant research is being done right now on the ability to sustain a colony (i.e. “demonstrate it in Antarctica”), there’s only so much money available even to a hectobillionaire. Right now SpaceX is spending something like $1.5 billion a year on developing Starship. It’s looking more promising every month but they aren’t there yet; and until Starship is up, running and meeting its cost and cadence goals, there won’t be any point in spending money on the Mars end of the equation. In fact until cost-effective access to space is a reality there would never be any point in investing in closed-cycle environments. And as explained ad nauseum the sustainability question can be an ongoing project once the logistics are worked out.
For most of Earth’s history populations have been one bad harvest away from famine*. We now have something that didn’t really exist before the latter 20th century: the ability to feasibly and economically store YEARS worth of food. MRE’s, freeze-dried, etc.
*Even the famous Biblical example of Joseph and the seven years of plenty and scarcity was talking about being able to make up seven years of shortfall, not seven failed harvests in a row.
My understanding is that the cost per kg of SpaceX is still around or greater than $1000.
I’d still opine that rockets are a dead-end strategy relative to other, more permanent options like ramps, elevators, etc. We keep chasing rockets because everything that does have a chance to bring the cost down to a reasonable level has such a massive construction cost that, minus a financial payoff for putting in the effort, there’s simply no motive to actually go down that route and especially if the rockets are good enough to satisfy the space nerds.
Rockets are probably delaying progress more than they’re advancing it.
We’ve tried government-mandated top down solutions and they were a failure, at least as long as they were tied to cost-plus contractors. Falcon 9 was the first effort that significantly reduced the cost of spaceflight because it was actually the first time that anyone tried to build and operate rockets on an economically rational basis instead of custom-built Space Lamborghinis. And the application it made possible– Starlink– is paying for the next iteration of cost reduction.
You can’t just ignore capital costs. However much you spend, it had better return at least 5% of its capital cost per year if it’s going to be practical. A launch loop or whatever that costs $100B had better launch at least $5B worth of stuff a year, or 5000 tons at $1k/kg. 14 tons a day.
I’ve never seen even a sketch for a non-rocket design that meets this basic criteria. They are all just way too expensive for the launch rate that they enable. And that’s if the marginal cost if free! When someone figures out a low capital non-rocket launch system, I’ll be interested.
