As for tech billionaires dabbling in space, it comes down to what they expect to get out of it.
In Musk's case he's managed to create a company that can launch payloads into orbit (and hopefully beyond one day) at what will hopefully be a fraction of today's launch costs if the promise of reusable first stages holds true. He's also managed to do this on a fraction of the budget that NASA seems to be spending on the SLS. Launching satellites is a commercial enterprise so hopefully self-sustaining. Must hopes to leverage this to one day colonize Mars. Well, good for him.
Not sure what Bezos is up to but superficially it looks like a "me too" SpaceX.
So why send things other than satellites into orbit or probes into deep space? That's really what it comes down.
Some will point to the resources out there. This argument I just don't buy because the economics of any material on earth are many orders of magnitude cheaper than what resources from space could possibly cost. Take iron, for example. You're talking less than $100/ton. How could extraction from space possibly compete with that? Obviously accessible iron on earth is ultimately limited but even at $10,000/ton it'll drastically change human society.
So what about colonization of other planets and moons? Well, first you need to ask why. To me, the only goal that makes sense is to ensure survival of humanity by creating a self-sustaining colony as anything built on the premise of requiring supply from Earth is ultimately just a vanity project.
So what would it take to have a self-sustaining colony on another world? If you think about it, it's a lot and I'm not sure it's feasible with current technology.
Also, where? Other worlds are pretty inhospitable. A lot are attracted to Mars but I'm not sure why. It essentially has no atmosphere (pressure is much closer to a vacuum than Earth's atmospheric pressure), which, incidentally, is one of the problems with the Martian (the movie at least; I haven't read the book). It lacks the Earth's protection against UV rays too.
So what about interstellar travel? Sad as it sounds, I just don't think humans are built for it. We live too short a period. The distances are so vast that how would you ever construct a vessel large enough to make the trip and be self-sustaining or have enough supplies for thousands of years and then also propel it to the necessary speeds?
The conclusion I come to is that there are simply too many of us here on Earth and this will resolve itself if we don't resolve it first.
Could it be not as basic as just wanting to get into history books? Being mortal and leaving your mark? At that time, what does anything matter? You shoot for it, burning money, killing people and such and in the end you die. I do know some people think like that so why not your president or the president of nkrrp?
> You're talking less than $100/ton. How could extraction from space possibly compete with that? Obviously accessible iron on earth is ultimately limited but even at $10,000/ton it'll drastically change human society.
I think you misconfigured a word there, but what about the price of getting 1 ton of iron into space? If it's already there, we can manufacture in space. More important is the price of rare Earth metals like Platinum. We could build goods in orbit or build missions in orbit. Space mining and manufacturing should bring about a new era where 3rd world country slave mines shutdown and entirely new products can be made when the high price of rare Earth metals become the low price of common space metals.
To get one rocket into LEO currently costs about $100m. That's equivalent of digging up about 1M tons of iron. Obviously it's a lot less for more valuable materials. It looks like platinum is about $1k/oz and Google tells me there are 32,000 oz to the ton so that's about $32M or 3 tons of platinum.
Now obviously if you were living in space you wouldn't need to get things onto or out of the Earth's gravity, which is where things get really expensive, but the launch cost puts things in perspective about just how expensive it it to do anything in relation to space.
So take that platinum. Where is it coming from? The asteroid belt? How expensive would it be just in fuel to go and get it and possibly refine it (assuming you don't find a solid lump of it)? What energy source are you using?
People tend to think too simplistically about energy. Like the holy grail is viewed as getting more energy out of fusion than you put in but fuel is only one cost component of energy. Let's consider:
- How expensive is a fusion reactor?
- How big is it?
- What is the energy output?
- How much does it cost to maintain?
Add all those things up and there is an amortized cost to even fusion energy.
So start adding all this up and the delta-V required to get all of this to and from wherever it comes from and it's hard to come up with an economic model for how this can possibly work.
I think of the long term ramifications of it all. Eventually, the humans on another planet(s) will become kind of a different species. They'll view the universe and life differently than the humans on earth. Probably even look different after a long period of time.
That's why I badly want us to go out into space and colonize other planets. The modern world is flat and there isn't enough diversity in culture and ways of looking at the world. Having people on other planets will change this. (Theoretically)
Non-coercive population control, especially through the increase of economic and educational opportunities for women and the distribution of free, convenient contraceptives.
As for tech billionaires dabbling in space, it comes down to what they expect to get out of it.
In Musk's case he's managed to create a company that can launch payloads into orbit (and hopefully beyond one day) at what will hopefully be a fraction of today's launch costs if the promise of reusable first stages holds true. He's also managed to do this on a fraction of the budget that NASA seems to be spending on the SLS. Launching satellites is a commercial enterprise so hopefully self-sustaining. Must hopes to leverage this to one day colonize Mars. Well, good for him.
Not sure what Bezos is up to but superficially it looks like a "me too" SpaceX.
So why send things other than satellites into orbit or probes into deep space? That's really what it comes down.
Some will point to the resources out there. This argument I just don't buy because the economics of any material on earth are many orders of magnitude cheaper than what resources from space could possibly cost. Take iron, for example. You're talking less than $100/ton. How could extraction from space possibly compete with that? Obviously accessible iron on earth is ultimately limited but even at $10,000/ton it'll drastically change human society.
So what about colonization of other planets and moons? Well, first you need to ask why. To me, the only goal that makes sense is to ensure survival of humanity by creating a self-sustaining colony as anything built on the premise of requiring supply from Earth is ultimately just a vanity project.
So what would it take to have a self-sustaining colony on another world? If you think about it, it's a lot and I'm not sure it's feasible with current technology.
Also, where? Other worlds are pretty inhospitable. A lot are attracted to Mars but I'm not sure why. It essentially has no atmosphere (pressure is much closer to a vacuum than Earth's atmospheric pressure), which, incidentally, is one of the problems with the Martian (the movie at least; I haven't read the book). It lacks the Earth's protection against UV rays too.
So what about interstellar travel? Sad as it sounds, I just don't think humans are built for it. We live too short a period. The distances are so vast that how would you ever construct a vessel large enough to make the trip and be self-sustaining or have enough supplies for thousands of years and then also propel it to the necessary speeds?
The conclusion I come to is that there are simply too many of us here on Earth and this will resolve itself if we don't resolve it first.