Will solar system colonization be feasible/worth the cost in the foreseeable future?

Great Debates
81

You seem to continue to misunderstand, whether willfully or by lack of reading comprehension, but the estimate of US$500B is the cost for a single manned mission to Mars (assuming sufficient development that it isn’t a marginal “Mars Soonest” sprint to plant a flag). The cost of attempting to terraform Mars is incalculable, in part because we have no experience with a project on that scale, in part because we don’t even have a solid grasp on the specific technical challenges that would be involved, and in part because we do not have anything like the necessary technology to even attempt such a task. It is uncertain that the surface of Mars could ever be made habitable using any kind of non-magical technology; the lack of a magnetosphere to deflect charged particles and retain the atmosphere, the lack of nitrates or any other form of fixed nitrogen in the soil to support plant life, the low solar incidence, et cetera all make it unlikely that Mars could ever sustain terrestrial-like environment conditions at any amount of cost or effort.

I know decades of science fiction have made it seem like zipping from one planet to another and solving technical challenges by rerouting the plasma flow are just around the corner, but the reality is that at the current state of the art we can just barely transport and maintain a handful of people in low Earth orbit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per labor hour (more if you consider the development and assembly cost of the ISS itself). Getting from there to doing anything useful in space with people requires a lot of fundamental technology advances, most of which are related to just keeping people alive. Actually terraforming planets or constructing megastructures like Dyson rings are still in the realm of science fantasy and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Stranger

82

Few are saying to end space exploration, but the fact we constantly coming out with these cool things called “robots” that get better and better each year. They are far superior to humans for space exploration, and will just keep getting better and more cost effective than they already are.
Human’s make tech, then we use it. Our physical presence isn’t needed for good space science to happen anymore.

83

Well. true. But once we got people out there, after the robots, we’d get even better science.

And robots in space are notoriously failure-prone.
A little speck of dust can completely disable a space probe.
Some dude with a paintbrush could pull the grit out.

But I totally agree with the idea of extending and improving that branch of space exploration at this time. :slight_smile:

84

If the habitat is to be humanity’s life-raft, you need to built a closed artificial ecosystem that can supply all our nutrition requirements. You may be able to resupply water from comets, but nitrogen could be a problem.

85

But using robots while useful is looking, not exploring.

Just like telescopes, except robots give us a close up view .

If I watch a tv programme about Antarctica , in colour, 3d and stereo sound, I haven’t really been there.

86

There’s nitrogen on Jupiter, as ammonia, and comets have some too.
If we assume that we built the thing using space resources, keeping it supplied with raw materials is not a problem.

We need a molecular printer. Nanotech version of a 3-D printer, make anything one atom at a time.
Slow, inefficient, but utterly useful. And not infeasible, we are headed toward that sort of materials science.

87

I always thought that was a silly idea. Colonizing another planet makes sense as a “backup for the species” if we can find (or terraform) a planet where humans can live self-sustained.

It doesn’t make sense to create a habitat in space as a life raft for humanity. You are much better using that technology to create a similar scale habitat on Earth for a fraction of the cost.

I mean if the Earth becomes uninhabitable, how long can a couple of tens of thousands of people survive in a Stanford taurus or O’Neil cylinders floating in space?

88

No, you haven’t been to Antarctica if you didn’t go there yourself, but you also have not been to Mars if a few astronauts go there either (unless you are actually one of the astronauts).

Whether Joe Astronaut or the Curiousity Rover take pictures doesn’t make much difference to anyone’s ability to watch a TV program about it. The space science done is the same. Robots will continue to improve and do an even better and more efficient job of space exploration.

89

I think people are slightly overestimating the costs of missions, for example the Apollo missions only cost ~$25-30 million each after initial few (cutting the last 3 only saved ~$80 million).
However, I still don’t think we will ever colonize any bodies out side of earth, or even have any large orbiting habitats - robotics will provide the science exploration and spin off technologies can come straight from.

I hope I’m proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.

90

The objective of a rationale and well-planned space program would be to develop the capability to construct and sustain such habitats using space resources, making them completely independent of any logistical support from Earth. I would go so far as to say that such development would be a prerequisite in even constructing such habitats, as the cost and effort to construct them in modules on Earth and transport them into space by rocket propulsion would be enormous, even assuming a magnitude of order reduction of payload to orbit costs. (Neither Werner von Braun or Gerald O’Neill put any real effort into describing how such a large habitat could be practically constructed, and the difficulties encountered by astronauts and cosmonauts working in free fall conditions argues against any system which would require significant manual labor to assemble.)

This technology and processes do not exist today, and will not be developed as part of a single purpose effort to send a manned mission to Mars. Such technology would require considerable robotic exploration and exploitation to establish the necessary infrastructure before it would even be practical to support more than an minimal human presence in space.

This is incorrect. Just the costs of a Saturn V launch alone were around US$1B in 1990 dollars. The launch of a medium-to-heavy lift rocket today such as the Delta IV and Atlas V costs between US$120B and US$200B in 2010 dollars.

The reason cutting the Apollo XVIII to XX “J-Class” missions resulted in so little savings is because the major components (the Saturn V stages and interstages, Apollo CSM, Lunar Modules, et cetera) were already constructed and the “sunk costs” of launch infrastructure and training were already sunk. In other words, the mission having been budgeted and committed, the bulk of the costs for those missions were already committed years in advance. The actual ~US$80M in savings was essentially the actual labor costs of assembling and checking out the vehicle, and operating the mission. You can’t look at the advertised savings as the total cost of mission; those are just the funds that were not already committed or could be decommitted. In retrospect, it was absurd to cancel the program, especially as it was just getting to the point of doing some measure of actual scientific work, but the move was a symbolic victory for Nixon and those who saw the space program as both a waste of resources at a time when the US was in recession, and the legacy of a the previous Kennedy and Johnson administrations for which Nixon had a personal hatred.

Stranger

91

I think this is a typo, inserting “B” where “M” was intended.

92

Yeah, lifting that from Earth isn’t going to happen with rockets.
And I don’t really think a space elevator is feasible here, although we could build one on the Moon.(*)
…With the development of some construction technologies. As you say, space construction isn’t easy. But we can learn to do it.

(*) Interesting side effect of the Worf-Sapir Hypothesis is in effect.
When I look out the window at or planet’s natural satellite, I call it the Moon.
When I think about colonizing that place, it’s Luna.

93

Correct. The in-production heavy launch vehicles in the US inventory (the EELV Delta IV and Atlas V) cost between $120 and $200 million per launch, including vehicle manufacture and integration, pad and launch operations, flight operations, range safety, mission assurance, and disposal and remediation. Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) claims to be able to do this with their Falcon 9v1.1 and Falcon Heavy vehicles for around 60-70% of the cost of the EELV vehicles, but actual costs remain to be seen. In addition, they eventually intend to recover and refurbish the first stage (or parallel booster stages on the Heavy vehicle) using powered vertical landing mode, but again, the actual costs of recovery and refurbishment are speculative.

Constructing a “space elevator” on the Moon would be even more challenging than doing so on Earth owing to the tidally locked rotation; in essence, the terminus of the elevator would have to extend to the L4 or L5 point and would have to accommodate the variation in tidal forces between the Earth and Moon. We could not feasibly build a space elevator on either the Earth or Moon using any extrapolation of existing technology; this would require significant advances in both material and construction technologies that are likely at least a century or more away.

The question has been asked about the necessary technologies to explore and colonize the solar system. While I have not been involved in any formal studies for space mining and orbital habitats, I have worked on studies for reduced cost aspect to space and provisional crewed Mars mission modes, and have performed some informal studies to develop the high level requirements for an overall architecture for space resource extraction and utilization. The necessary technologies can be divided into three categories based upon technological maturity and relative timelines:
[ul][li]Near-term technologies (10-20 years): based upon evolutionary developments of existing and demonstrated mature technology (personnel and heavy lift launch systems, ground supplied Earth orbital stations, ground controlled robotic probes)[/li][li]Mid-term technologies (20-50 years): extrapolation of existing and nascent technologies with order-of-magnitude enhancement in performance and scale (improved launch systems, development of space manufacturing methods and processes, resource extraction from near Earth asteroids, solar electric and nuclear electric propulsion, semi-autonomous medium-scale solar orbiting habitats)[/li][li]Long-term technologies (50+ years): development of conceptual technology which has yet to be demonstrated but is physically practicable (routine resource space recourse extraction, fully autonomous large scale solar orbiting habitats, nuclear fission fragment and plasma/fusion propulsion)[/ul][/li]
Near-term technologies require the development of two families of space launch systems: one is a stage-and-a-half (parallel staging or air-breathing supersonic launch stage) or two stage medium lift second stage and space vehicle in which the first stage and space vehicle are recoverable and reusable with minimal refurbishment, using RP-1 and LOX as propellants for the downstage and cryogenic propellants for the upper stage. It should be capable of boosting a crew of 6-8 people and ~1000 kg of pressurized cargo to Low Earth Orbit in inclinations of up to ~40 degrees from a near equatorial launch site with a cost to orbit of less than US$2000/kg and a mission/safe abort reliability of 99.7% with a provisional twenty day turnaround time. The second is a sea-launched pressure-fed two-stage superheavy lift booster (non-reusable or refurbishable) which can lift 500-1000 metric tons of unpressurized to Low Earth Orbit using RP-1 or DME as first stage propellants and LH2 for second stage propellants and LOX for oxidizer at a cost of less than US$500/kg and a mission reliability of >80% with no safe abort mode designed and a production/flight rate of 12-20 vehicles per annum. The system also needs a storable propellant (RP-1 or MMH and hydrogen peroxide or other storable oxidizer) orbital transfer vehicle (“space tug”) which remains on-orbit and can transfer spacecraft and payloads to geosynchronous orbits or libration points. Habitats should be small scale (10-20m diameter) inflatable modular structures in free fall conditions capable of supporting crews of 20-50 people. Robotic probes and picosat/picoprobe using constant thrust ion propulsion would be used to explore available near Earth asteroids as well as the Lunar environment and develop resource extraction technology.

Mid-term technologies would require the development of a fully reusable single-stage or two-stage to orbit personnel vehicle (akin to the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper concept) with a cost to orbit of <US$500/kg for a 8-16 person crew and ~4000 kg of pressurized cargo with a provisional 48 hour turnaround time, and a superheavy sea-lanched lift two stage vehicle (first stage fully reusable, second stage recyclable into space structures or expendable) capable of lifting >1000 metric tons of unpressurized cargo at a cost of <US$200/kg with a production/flight rate of ~50 per annum, both to LEO using low CO[SUB]2[SUB] propellants (biofuels, DME, or methanol for fuel, LOX or hydrogen peroxide as oxidizer). Autonomous and semi-autonomous probes capable of extracting basic resources (extraction of oxygen and hydrogen from water ice, silicates, construction metals), manipulating asteroid orbits via nuclear impulse propulsion, and test processing technologies would be developed. Habitats constructed with a majority of space extracted resources using terrestrially-manufactured reinforcement (carbon or UHMWPE fiber) would be constructed, capable of simulating ~0.5⋅g acceleration via centrifugal rotation at a radius of >100m for a population of 200-1000 people in libration or solar orbit. Nuclear electric or solar electric low thrust ion propulsion would be available for both orbital transfer and exploration vehicles, which may make crewed exploration of Mars or the asteroid belt practicable.

Long-term technologies would include fully reusable single-stage or two-stage to orbit for payloads >1000 metric tons at <US$100/kg using fully renewable or inert propellants at routine (daily) launch rates. Large scale habitats (capable of supporting a population of >10,000 people in a 1⋅g, terrestrial-like environment) fabricated completely from space resources and space-based processing would be developed to be fully autonomous from terrestrial supply. Nuclear fission fragment, high energy plasma, or fusion based propulsion may allow routine access to the inner system (within radiation and thermal limits) and make it practicable for people to explore the outer system and potentially colonize the moons of Saturn. (The intense radiation in the inner Jovian system make colonization of the Galilaen moons unlikely to ever be feasible.)

Stranger

94

One thought that’s crossed my mind is about cost, yes it will be very expensive, probably a lot more then all of the billions spent on military budgets or disappeared into 3rd World Aid blackholes.

But if the stories are true about the 30,000 dollar ashtray designed for Airforce 1 or whatever, (Though they may not be) and other incredible examples of budget padding by contractors, then perhaps it might be not so bad moneywise, as we think.

Hopefully the Asian space projects won’t be dunned so much by the people working for them.

95

There is the assumption among many space enthusiasts that the actual cost of any particular objective or development can be made arbitrarily less expensive by scaling down the number of people involved or eliminating the ostensible “blizzard of paperwork” involved in quality control and mission assurance, the reality is at there are minimum (and often difficult to estimate) cost and schedule thresholds in any technology development program, and attempting to accelerate development (to accomplish the goal in shorter time) or stretch it out (to reduce cost) do not generally provide linear (if any) relief. Developing new technology or novel applications of existing technology often involve going down blind alleys and retrospective “waste” which was unforeseen as the concept phase of the program. The necessary trchnology to construct sustainable habitats or send crewed vehicles to Mars or oth planets are not just bigger versions of the STS or Apollo systems; they are novel applications with unique challenges and requirements which will require development and maturity of new technology. There are inherent costs required to achieve these techology thresholds.

I don’t know anything about a “30,000 dollar ashtray designed for Airforce 1”, though I do know of other alleged egregious wastes attributed to contractor malfeasence or excessive specifications. The thing about this is that the outrage with which these excesses are presented is often not presented in context (e.g. the “$640 toilet sear” which was actually a toilet enclosure) or costs stemming from poorly drafted contract requirements. Attempts at acquistion reform in the early 1990s and again in the past five years have been financial and technical disasters for the government, failing both to control costs and deliver the expected technology. There are better ways to control development, production, and (for rocket launch vehicles) launch costs, but as these are often not politically favorable to contracting organizations like the US Air Force and NASA (i.e. they do not rely on bleeding edge technology and weight optimal performance) they are not favored by government contacting, hence why the sea-launched Sea Dragon program was cancelled after many successful proof-of-concept tests while programs like the STS and Constellation endure for years despite cost and schedule overruns.

The Chinese space program, despite all of the attention it has garnered, is not advancingnthe state-of-the-art or doing anything particularly unique. They are using a launch vehicle adapted from an ICBM system, a space vehicle adapted from the Russian Soyuz program, and stated goals which largely ape the Cold War objectives of the US and Soviet Union in a belated effort to be seen as a global superpower. I wish them success and invite their involvement in international developements (mostly in hope that they will conform and cooperate with efforts to minimize orbital debris) but they are not paving any new ground.

Stranger

96

I think that the Chinese will do what ever needs to be done to get the job done .

When its necessary to upgrade the technology then they’ll do so, but in the meantime won’t tinker with things to get government funding.

And they won’t be shy about taking casualties.

Of course once theres a significant presence in space then costs will drop noticeably because as said upthread raw materials can be sourced outside of Earths gravity well, and the construction done there aswell.

In time the only cost will be bringing humans up into orbit, which cost could be allayed by the sheer wealth of ores etc. that can be returned to Earth.

And of course science and technology aren’t going to be standing still until that time.

So its definitely doable, if we only have the will to do it.

97

Given the number of companies currently trying to implement a business model to profitize resource extraction from asteroids and the like, I’m pretty sure robotic colonization of the solar system is a given in the short to medium term. With that being the case, I would expect human colonization to follow eventually, but it’s harder to say at what point. Although at first blush the barrier to expansion is cost, it can really be distilled down to energy requirements. It takes a lot of energy to put something into space, and it has to be in a form that allows releasing it in very short order. Propulsion technologies are improving, but what will really be a game changer are improvements in automation and remote fabrication. When we can build as all the stuff we need on the Moon/Mars/wherever with machines, it makes it a lot simpler than bringing that stuff with us.

98

Trouble is, if we entrust the exploration and exploitation of the Solar System to increasingly sophisticated robots, eventually they will start exploring and exploiting for their own purposes, and humans will only get to go out there as guests of the robot overlords.

Or as pets. Or prisoners.

We need to go out there ourselves before this happens; we are in a race against time.

99

Again, the space program of the Peoples Republic of China is not doing or given any evidence of seriously planning any real advances in space launch logistics or space resource development. They give every appearance of pursuing a space program for the national prestige of being in the same league as the United States and the Russian Federation, using a conventional ICBM-based booster and Soviet heritage space modules. The Tiangong-1 station is similar in function and general layout to the Almaz/Salyut stations, and less capable than the NASA Skylab or the RKA Mir, which basically places the Chinese space program at the same state as the Soviet and American programs circa 1973, with no evidence of either advancing the technological thresholds or significantly reducing space access costs.

All of the flagellation of NASA over supposed hand-wringing over the loss of like on the Apollo 1 fire and catastrophic loss of Challenger and Columbia is badly misplaced. The problem isn’t that NASA or the astronaut corps is unwilling to take reasonable and unavoidable risks; the problem is that in all three cases, the failure mode was already well known and dismissed based upon familiarity rather than corrected. All three cases have their own Cassandras who warned of the dangers of the pure oxygen atmosphere, o-ring blowby, and frozen debris falling from the External Tank, all of whom were penalized in their careers for trying to fix a problem that ultimately resuled in tens of billions of dollars in loss of hardware, mission delays, and investigations stemming from a culture that is adverse to admitting actual risks as it is to accepting them for fear of being castigated for having missed some obscure interaction in a massively complex system.

As a practicing engineer in the space launch industry, I strongly feel that the space enthusiast community, fueled by the sheer ignorance of space journalists, has badly missed the point in nearly every aspect. The essential problem isn’t that NASA and other conventional efforts are too risk adverse with human life or that they are unwilling to leap forward into the unknown using the latest propulsion concepts on the cover of Popular Science which exist only in the minds of post-docs hoping for AFRL funding, somehow to be successful in their cavalier attempts. The problem is a lack of consistent funding to develop and mature not only the fundamental technology but also the infrastructure and processes necessary to make access to space affordable and routine. Instead, we get plans for bold but desperate leaps to put people on Mars with marginal and undemonstrated technology. By comparison, the Industrial Revolution wasn’t driven by steam power or the the Bessemer process, but the collection, dissemenation, and maturity of an entire suite of processes and standards such as screw threads which enabled developments to build off of one another.

The space enthusiast community seems to believe that once you put people in space by whatever desperate method, somehow magic happens that makes space travel easy and profitable, even though the lessons from Apollo, STS, ISS, and the Soyuz/Salyut/Mir programs tell us exactly the opposite, i.e. the more we learn about keeping peoplealive and healthy in space the harder it is, and how extraordinarily lucky we’ve been so far to have evperienced so few fatalities and catastropic loss of missions. There are ways to reduce cost and increase the quantity of space access, but they don’t lie in trying to accelerate development of conceptual technology or engage in stunt missions at great cost which stress the limits of the existing technology, but rather (as with the automotive and aviation industries) look for opportunities to reduce cost and increase reliability in the manufacturing, integration, and operation of launch vehicles and robustness and flexibility of spacecraft. “Lightest and smallest at any cost” is the mantra for weapon systems like ICBMs, and reusability and “aircraft-like turnaround time” is the goal of space tourism and routine manned spaceflight, but cost savings, especially in the heavy lift category is in trading performance for simplicity of operation and manufacturing tolerances.

As for long term space missions and indefinite space habitation, it would be foolhardy to the extreme to place the most delicate part of a crewed mission–the human payload–to environments and hazards that are not even well characterized, must less mitigated by developed technology. To do so would not only risk the lives of the astonauts (however willing they may be to subject the selves to risk) but also the multi-billion dollar mission for which they are responsible.

Stranger

100

A word of advice: Stop deriving life lessons from Will Smith movies.

Stranger