Space Colonization Economics, Part 3

[chris_gerrib]

Based on the analysis of Part 1 and Part 2 of colonial economics, a simple factor emerges: if it is cheaper to ship supplies in than to obtain them locally, the supplies are shipped in

Comments

[jordan179]

The only thing stopping us right now is funding really. At the moment, few people in power can see a moon or Mars base as anything more than a research post. They don't see them as likely to produce a "return" on an investment, and just as a waste of time and money.

Note that this has already changed -- Richard Branson of Virgin views his long-term goal as a commercial Moonbase, and Elon Musk of Space X is planning to ultimately build Mars-capable spaceships. They are not "people in power" in the political sense, but they are multi-billionaires," with serious business plans to finance such operations by incremental phases.

Given the scarcity of aptly named "Rare Earths", and how valuable they are to modern industry, a probe locating some rich deposits of these metals in easy access on either the moon, Mars, or even Ceres, might be enough to spur the private sector into taking the big leap of faith into the solar system.

That's one possibility. It's true that we haven't proven the existence of such concentrations on Luna, but it's a fairly safe bet that some will exist somewhere in the Solar Systm, and probably the Inner System, given the vagaries of planetary geologies. Another possibility, if fusion research proceeds well, is Lunar tri-helium. There are also known to be considerable deposits of titanium on Luna, and iridium in many metallic asteroids.

After all, if it'll cost your company a hundred billion dollars to set up a viable mining facility of the moon, you probably won't risk it for anything less than an estimated trillion dollars in returned material.

Over the lifetime of the base, yes.

The only thing that any body needs for us to establish a permanent base is water. From that we can produce oxygen, food, water(duh), even fuel for rockets. Given enough start up supplies, a local source of water will ensure that costs to establish a colony are minimal.

Water ice is vital, because it's the source of your drinking water, your oxygen, and your rocket fuel. Fortunately, we know that there is Lunar and Martian ice (the latter in quantity) and some asteroids (especially Ceres) have vast amounts of water (Ceres probably has more freshwater than does the Earth).

[kalance]

Given what we know about the formation of the moon, Luna should almost definitely have Rare Earths. In fact, there's no reason it shouldn't contain similar ratios of minerals. Unless I miss my guess, most of it's lighter surface is silicate based minerals, and its "seas" are more ferrous based. Just like Earth's own land and seas surfaces.

Thinking about this kind of future makes me very wistful. Though I'm pretty certain I'll never leave Earth's atmosphere myself, I'd still feel very relieved to know that it's a direction we're heading in.