Once We Have A Self Sustaining Mars Colony - Then What?

[Jonathan]

I've been looking at some the incredibly expensive
steps which are planned for a Mars colony.

From the massive rockets, massive transports
and things like droves of robots that will
dig out an underground habitat and so on
and so on and so on...

Sounds like Trillions of dollars will be
needed over several decades.

Of course we all know that as time goes on
and cost estimates steadily rise, the
goals will shrink and shrink, until
in the end we land a couple of astronauts
for a couple of weeks.

But even if a self sustaining colony of
say a 100 people is established, what
will the human race get in return for
all this money and effort?



Finding life on Mars?


NASA has made it clear that's not a primary
concern. The current MSL couldn't identify
life is it was sitting in a field of moss.

And the next rover won't be able to either, instead
looking for signs of...ancient life, and identify
samples for some....future sample return mission
and to support some...future human habitation.

THE MSL 202O CAN DO EVERYTHING.....EXCEPT
DIRECTLY SEARCH FOR LIFE.

http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1678


It's yet another rover that's meant to get
a...sample return mission and colony instead
of directly searching for life.

That's just another self-serving deception
on the part of NASA, at the expense of
science and what the public wants.

For the incredible cost of a manned
landing, we could send a hundred much
more ambitious rovers far faster and
cover far more ground than a manned
landing.



Allow the human race to survive an impact?


It's far cheaper and easier to spot, divert
or destroy an asteroid than this colony.


Inspiration?


For what? Colonies around Jupiter?
Again, for the same end, just more
inspiration?


For resources?


What doesn't the Earth have that
the moon or asteroids have?


For national pride?


Spending that money directly improving America
would do far more in that respect.




If an agency is going to spend Trillions of
precious research money on a single project
it needs to be thoroughly justified so as
to be easily convincing.

So far I only see 'planting the flag' as
the only widespread appeal, and that's
not enough.

[Fred J. McCall]

Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>I've been looking at some the incredibly expensive
>steps which are planned for a Mars colony.
>
> From the massive rockets, massive transports
>and things like droves of robots that will
>dig out an underground habitat and so on
>and so on and so on...
>
>Sounds like Trillions of dollars will be
>needed over several decades.
>

Jonathan, this is a 'sci' hierarch newsgroup. That means handwavium
and distortions don't work here. Are you now going to go into another
snit and stalk out of the newsgroup again in high dudgeon?

>
>Of course we all know that as time goes on
>and cost estimates steadily rise, the
>goals will shrink and shrink, until
>in the end we land a couple of astronauts
>for a couple of weeks.
>

We all don't know any such thing. Idiocy like the preceding is why we
don't let you make decisions.

>
>But even if a self sustaining colony of
>say a 100 people is established, what
>will the human race get in return for
>all this money and effort?
>

Way too few people for a self-sustaining colony.

>
>Finding life on Mars?
>
>
>NASA has made it clear that's not a primary
>concern. The current MSL couldn't identify
>life is it was sitting in a field of moss.
>
>And the next rover won't be able to either, instead
>looking for signs of...ancient life, and identify
>samples for some....future sample return mission
>and to support some...future human habitation.
>
>THE MSL 202O CAN DO EVERYTHING.....EXCEPT
>DIRECTLY SEARCH FOR LIFE.
>
>http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1678
>
>
>It's yet another rover that's meant to get
>a...sample return mission and colony instead
>of directly searching for life.
>

If people aren't going, why do we care? What do we get if we do (or
don't) find life on Mars?

>
>That's just another self-serving deception
>on the part of NASA, at the expense of
>science and what the public wants.
>
>For the incredible cost of a manned
>landing, we could send a hundred much
>more ambitious rovers far faster and
>cover far more ground than a manned
>landing.
>

Well, no, you couldn't.

>
>Allow the human race to survive an impact?
>
>It's far cheaper and easier to spot, divert
>or destroy an asteroid than this colony.
>

Oh? How's that.

>
>Inspiration?
>
>For what? Colonies around Jupiter?
>Again, for the same end, just more
>inspiration?
>

For people to actually get excited about STEM subjects so that they
learn to actually think. Of course, you don't want this because it
would reduce your 'audience'.

>
>For resources?
>
>What doesn't the Earth have that
>the moon or asteroids have?
>

A silly reason to go unless you're going to use those resources in
space.

>
>For national pride?
>
>Spending that money directly improving America
>would do far more in that respect.
>

Nope, it wouldn't.

>
>If an agency is going to spend Trillions of
>precious research money on a single project
>it needs to be thoroughly justified so as
>to be easily convincing.
>
>So far I only see 'planting the flag' as
>the only widespread appeal, and that's
>not enough.
>

Your intellectual myopia is your problem, not ours. You seem to have
made an argument against sending toasters to space, too, even though
that's what you seem to favor.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

[William Mook]

To understand the culture we must understand the technology involved. So, let's look at that first.

SpaceX plans a super-heavy lift launch vehicle as part of its Interplanetary Transport System. Variants the basic reusable two stage to orbit vehicle will place

300 metric tons (660,000 lb) in reusable-mode.
550 metric tons (1,210,000 lb) in expendable-mode
380 metric tons (840,000 lb) of propellant with an ITS tanker upper stage

—to low Earth orbit.

Each vehicle is likely to cost around $250 mililon in current dollars, at $3075 per kg of structure and about $1 million per launch in current dollars, at $82 per metric ton for LOX/LNG propellants. With 2,500 launches per vehicle - that's another $100,000 per launch replacement cost - another $400,000 per launch for maintenance.

The 550 metric ton expendable part is put into orbit. You then fuel it with one to three tanker launches, depending on destination and timing. You then put up the crew with the reusable vehicle. That's three to five launches.

Now 105 people, 6 stewards and 4 crew members with cargo, mass 26 metric tons. So, scaling that to 300 metric tons translates to 1210 passengers, 70 stewards/service, 46 crew.

Now, the 550 metric ton expendable is $1.7 billion - $1.40 million per passenger. This is all the stuff people need to survive on Mars long-term.

Five launches add $7.5 million to this total for operating costs- $6,200 per passenger.


550 ton payload

1,911 ton upper stage propellant
115 ton upper stage structure
2,576 ton upper stage total

9,389 ton lower stage propellant
696 ton lower stage structure
12,661 ton take off weight

WIth three launch centres and a one week turn around, we have 3 launches per week - and over a 52 week period 156 ships will be launched. With 1,210 passengers per ship this is 188,760 people per year.

Now a synodic period is 2.15 years. And over this period 405,834 people will be launched into space. Now, it takes 3 to 4 months to get to Mars, depending on the details of when you launch. It takes over a year to get to the asteroid belt. When you get to Mars, or the asteroids, you will stay there indefinitely. So, you will have hardware to keep you alive indefinitely. So, people will launch into orbit - and wait until the planets align - and then depart. Those who launch early in the synodic cycle, pay less. Those who launch later, pay more. Those with spots may trade those spots with others for a premium - and take the next flight. So, there will be an active market in this sort of thing going forward.

$1.4 million per passenger, is quite a bit to pay. However, you're buying an advanced technology home that supplies you with all you need - using advanced technology! People would pay that to have a home like that on Earth. Unfortunately, people that do that must deal with local politics and government. Not to say that government is bad, but some governments from time to time make things difficult for everyone. So, that's one reason people will leave.

How many people have a spare $1.4 million to spend? Well, according to the World Wealth Report there are 15 million HNWI (High Net Worth Individuals) - those worth $3 million or more; and 108,000 those worth $30 million or more (UHNWI - Ultra High Net Worth Individuals).

HNWI Wealth Distribution

Region-------- HNWI Population HNWI Wealth

Global-------- 12.00 million $46.2 trillion
North America 3.73 million $12.7 trillion
Asia-Pacific--- 3.68 million $12.0 trillion
Europe-------- 3.41 million $10.9 trillion
Latin America-- 0.52 million $7.5 trillion
Middle East--- 0.49 million $1.8 trillion
Africa--------- 0.14 million $1.3 trillion

188,760 per year represent a market penetration of 1.25% per year - an easily sustainable figure across this population. Paying stewards and crew members - with Mars based housing costing everyone else $1.4 million each plus a little cash - provides a means for people without means to go to Mars and the asteroids and other planets.

People of very high wealth who have money making plans off world may hire agents to represent their interests and establish a homestead off world and later come visit. People who have political difficulties with terrestrial governments will seek a place to live free of those difficulties off world. Governments worried about people off world posing a threat and interfering with terrestrial affairs will send agents and officers off world on various missions that make sense to them. Scientists who seek to understand the new environment and develop that understanding - will have governments and business support their activities. People born off world may seek to return to their parents home world. Others born off world will seek their fortunes where they are. Some will seek their fortunes further afield. Some like America's early lunar explorers will have philisophical insights. Those insights will inform and enlighten others, and new philosophies and religions will arise in the frontier and extend back to terrestrial populations.

My friend Edgar Mitchell's Samadhi Experience on his return from the moon -
https://vimeo.com/15037621

The Noetic Institute was created by Edgar following his flight. Other Apollo astronauts became ministers and artists to communicate their experience. Others became politicians and served on boards of corporations. We can expect a flood of returning adventurers to do even more than the handful of Apollo explorers in the coming years. This will expand and enliven the centre by expanding the mythos of the centre.

Breaking free of the authorities that presume to control us, that is a great transformation of culture, which enlivens and extends the culture in many ways - freeing the centre of that control - and the common mode risks there.

Joseph Campbell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx4IlppSgU

The frontier will provide resources to the centre - the terrestrials remaining behind. The world for example today consumes 83 tons per year of precious metals far more valued than gold. These metals are more abundant off world than on Earth. So, these metals will form the basis of trade. Less valued metals, but still considered precious occur in larger quantities off world than on Earth. Platinum - 530 tons per year worth a substantial amount - used in fuel cells for example. Gold - 2500 tons per year of gold is produced on Earth used for a variety of purposes. This could easily be doubled using off world resources. Copper 18,400 tons per year. Silver 26,000 tons per year. Uranium 58,000 tons per year. Uranium would very likely be processed into usable forms before being sent to Earth - say suitcase sized devices that produce 750 MW - and when hooked up to sea water and switched on - produce

3.43 kg/sec - hydrogen
12,376.5 kg/hour - hydrogen
111,389.2 litres/hour - water reduced to hydrogen and oxygen
11,138,928.1 litres/hour - sea water to fresh water
389,862.4 kg/hour salt

This is enough to supply fresh water and power in the form of hydrogen fuel, for 668,000 persons. 1.5 million of these devices would supply a population of 10 billion people with the essential of life.

We can also dispose of radioactive wastes off world - on the moon for example - where it can be re-processed.

The escape velocity of Mars is 5.3 km/sec. The excess velocity required to reach Earth is 3.0 km/sec for about 3 months every 2.15 years. This requires an object attain 6.1 km/sec when launched from the surface of Mars. Containers with these metals can be shot out of magnetic launchers, rail guns, hyper velocity cannons, on Mars' surface and they will arrive back at Earth in 3 to 4 months. There they will enter the Earth's atmosphere, and parachute down to a landing. So, returning significant quantities of material from Martian mines is possible.

A 750 MW generator can project 40.3 tons per hour from Mars at 6.1 km/sec using a form of rail gun. Doing this for three months obtains 88,317 tons. Doing this once every 2.15 years obtains 41,077 tons per year - per launcher.

Firing from Ceres at a speed of 4.5 km/sec - for three months out of every 15 months - achieves the same sort of results. It takes about 15 months for materials to reach Earth. Over 583,800 tons of metals and other materials may be projected from Ceres each synodic period from a 750 MW rail gun type launcher.

The world produces 1.6 billion tons of steel each year. Each ton requires 14 gigajoules of energy. To transport this to Earth requires 10.1 gigajoules per ton from Ceres and 16.3 giga joules per ton from Mars' surface.

A 750 MW generator that processes iron into steel and projects it from Ceres transports 244,751 tons per three month interval. We can increase this to the higher rate by making iron in advance and projecting it out - during the synodic launch window. Then, in other periods, making steel and other materials for local production.

To replace all primary steel production world wide with off world sources requires 6,558 mine sites on Ceres, each operating a 750 MW power plant and a rail gun.

Actually Mars covered as it is with iron oxide, is an ideal source of iron, despite the higher energies involved. 8,163 mine sites using a 750 MW power plant and rail gun capable of firing a 6.1 km/sec projectile off world - accurately - and have it guided to Earth - where it brakes in the Earth's atmosphere and descends directly to a customer's site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnnSiK5mayY

So, you have a large bus that is launched off Mars or Ceres, loaded with smaller cargos, that enter the upper atmosphere and descend directly to their buyers.

[William Mook]

Manufactured goods, drugs, clothing, fabric, foods, etc., are also imported by interplanetary drone from off-world to Earth in the same way raw materials are imported described above. Of course, radio and laser traffic communicates data and software easily enough. So, literature, art, software, banking, finance, services can be done off-world. To support this accountants attorneys and executive representatives will operate in world the way foreign representatives used to operate in-country when sea travel took months. There will be regular traffic of these types of individuals. Telepresence will be possible on Earth, difficult off-world, so talented folks will be in demand in the frontiers and be greatly acclaimed. That acclaim in the frontier will reflexively add to the fame of the person when they return to Earth. For example, Mark Twain visited far flung regions of the globe, and was greatly beloved by those he met during his lecture tours, and when he returned to America, he was famous for having gone to those remote locations. The same will happen for artists, writers, philosophers, engineers, architects, medical folk, and so forth - that are exceptionally talented on Earth - and in great demand off-world.

Mark Twain - Following the Equator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AL_Cbg5C9E

With 188,760 people per year - with a growth in capacity of 20% per year - and with population growth rate of 2% per year - with a 1/2% return per year - gives the following off-world populations;

Year Per Year-- Total

2020 188,760 188,760
2021 226,512 418,103
2022 271,814 696,188
2023 326,176 1,032,806
2024 391,411 1,439,709
2025 469,693 1,930,997
2026 563,631 2,523,592
2027 676,357 3,237,802
2028 811,628 4,097,997
2029 973,953 5,133,419

2030 1,168,743 6,379,163
2031 1,402,491 7,877,341
2032 1,682,989 9,678,490
2033 2,019,586 11,843,253
2034 2,423,503 14,444,404
2035 2,908,203 17,569,273
2036 3,489,843 21,322,655
2037 4,187,811 25,830,305
2038 5,025,373 31,243,132
2039 6,030,447 37,742,225

2040 7,236,536 45,544,894

[William Mook]

http://go.nasa.gov/2gr8JY5

The sands of Mars are red. That's because they're made out of hematite. Why wouldn't you mine iron there and send it back to Earth with a rail gun? While you were doing that, you also make 14 other materials in abundance. In fact you make 5.65 bilion metric tons of stuff per year by mining 75.6 cubic kilometers of Mars dust per year. You make 2.35 billion metric tons of oxygen gas as well.

US MT/yr World MT/yr m3/year m3/year Material Multiple

520,000 12,225,705 4,355,176 102,394,420 Magnesium 738.50
5,390,000 126,724,138 46,293,921 1,088,415,080 Aluminium 69.48
150,000 3,526,646 3,241,820 7,218,336 Silicon 992.12
23,800,000 559,561,129 408,049,103 9,593,630,954 Phosphate 7.88
11,000,000 258,620,690 262,592,504 6,173,804,957 Sulphur 2.25
69,500,000 1,634,012,539 1,659,107,185 39,007,222,229 Salt 1.94
4,700,000 110,501,567 305,194,805 7,175,426,454 Potash 10.54
12,036,933 283,000,000 78,161,905 1,837,662,338 Quick Lime 41.15
1,190,000 27,978,056 56,407,791 1,326,201,991 Titanium 57.02
471,000 11,073,668 62,582,320 1,471,371,159 Chromium 51.39
750,000 17,633,229 88,039,130 2,069,885,505 Manganese 36.53
110,000,000 2,586,206,897 3,216,281,069 75,617,893,465 Steel 1.00
114,000 2,680,251 1,036,364 24,365,916 Nickel 3,103.43
960,000 22,570,533 10,909,091 256,483,329 Zinc 294.83
1,050 24,687 47,727 1,122,115 Bromine 67,388.75
------------- 5,656,339,734 3,216,281,069 75,617,893,465

Sending payloads at 6.1 km/sec from Mars requires 18.6 megajoules per kg. This is done over a three month period around the synodic period. So, this is a power over this period of 28.7 trillion watts - about 20% that used by humanity. To reduce the materials to the desired forms, requires about 15 megajoules per kg - so 2.5 months before sending the material on, requires the reduction of sand and rock into elemental forms.

The global demand is computed by taking the US demand, dividing that by the population and multiplying by the global popuation. SO, the steel is 2.6 billion rather than 1.6 billion tons per year.

28,700 launchers operating simultaneously arcross the planet, at 1 GW each is sufficient to send back to Earth all the things terrestrial humanity needs to live at US living standards in the materials in question - without harming the biosphere.

[Jeff Findley]

We've got a Mook on Mook on Mook reply here (minus the first two
Mooks)...

In article <986fddd7-0b0e-4a64...@googlegroups.com>,
mokme...@gmail.com says...

> The sands of Mars are red. That's because they're made out of
> hematite. Why wouldn't you mine iron there and send it back to
> Earth with a rail gun?

Because steel made on earth is already quite cheap, so it would be
economic suicide to do what you propose.

Besides, one would think that a Mars colony would use such raw materials
to either build things they need on Mars or build things that are
actually worth exporting. Raw materials aren't going to cut it as an
export unless there is a return on that investment.

Sorry Mook, but this entire idea is b.s. I don't know how you got to
visions of Mars colonies sending quite common raw materials like iron,
silicon, aluminum, and etc. to earth by railgun, but it's just not going
to be viable economically.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>To understand the culture we must understand the technology involved. So, let's look at that first.
>
>SpaceX plans a super-heavy lift launch vehicle as part of its Interplanetary Transport System. Variants the basic reusable two stage to orbit vehicle will place
>
>300 metric tons (660,000 lb) in reusable-mode.
>550 metric tons (1,210,000 lb) in expendable-mode
>380 metric tons (840,000 lb) of propellant with an ITS tanker upper stage
>
>—to low Earth orbit.
>

So far so good. But, as usual, Mookie then spirals off into bootless
speculation.

>
>Each vehicle is likely to cost around $250 mililon in current dollars, at $3075 per kg of structure and about $1 million per launch in current dollars, at $82 per metric ton for LOX/LNG propellants. With 2,500 launches per vehicle - that's another $100,000 per launch replacement cost - another $400,000 per launch for maintenance.
>

There is no foundation for these cost 'guestimates'.

>
>The 550 metric ton expendable part is put into orbit. You then fuel it with one to three tanker launches, depending on destination and timing. You then put up the crew with the reusable vehicle. That's three to five launches.
>

There is no 'expendable' part.

>
Now 105 people, 6 stewards and 4 crew members with cargo, mass 26
metric tons. So, scaling that to 300 metric tons translates to 1210
passengers, 70 stewards/service, 46 crew.
>

No. Each Transporter can deliver 100 tonnes of 'stuff' to Mars or 100
passengers. You don't get to stack the passengers in like cordwood
and you're overestimating cargo to Mars by over 3x and underestimating
mass per passenger by 4x.

>
>Now, the 550 metric ton expendable is $1.7 billion - $1.40 million per passenger. This is all the stuff people need to survive on Mars long-term.
>

No. If you are sending along everything in the Transporter that those
people "need to survive on Mars long term", your number of passengers
drops down to 10-15 and the rest of the 100 tonnes to Mars surface
becomes equipment. Musk foresees the first launches only carrying a
dozen or so people and the rest being cargo. Later on, he sees 9-10
cargo launches for every launch with passengers. HIS number make it
pretty clear that getting them to Mars surface takes around 1 tonne
per passenger and around 9 tonnes of other 'stuff' for them to survive
long term once they get there.

On to more bootless speculation...

>
>Five launches add $7.5 million to this total for operating costs- $6,200 per passenger.
>
>
>550 ton payload
>
>1,911 ton upper stage propellant
> 115 ton upper stage structure
>2,576 ton upper stage total
>
>9,389 ton lower stage propellant
> 696 ton lower stage structure
>12,661 ton take off weight
>
>WIth three launch centres and a one week turn around, we have 3 launches per week - and over a 52 week period 156 ships will be launched. With 1,210 passengers per ship this is 188,760 people per year.
>

You don't have three launch centers, you can't turn them around in a
week, You can't launch 3 of them a week, you're not going to keep
launching over a 52 week period, 75% of the launches are for FUEL
TANKERS, you're estimating 11x more passengers per ship than you can
get to Mars...

More bootless speculation, along with Mook's usual assumption of
magical technologies that don't exist.

>
>Now a synodic period is 2.15 years. And over this period 405,834 people will be launched into space. Now, it takes 3 to 4 months to get to Mars, depending on the details of when you launch. It takes over a year to get to the asteroid belt. When you get to Mars, or the asteroids, you will stay there indefinitely. So, you will have hardware to keep you alive indefinitely. So, people will launch into orbit - and wait until the planets align - and then depart. Those who launch early in the synodic cycle, pay less. Those who launch later, pay more. Those with spots may trade those spots with others for a premium - and take the next flight. So, there will be an active market in this sort of thing going forward.
>
>$1.4 million per passenger, is quite a bit to pay. However, you're buying an advanced technology home that supplies you with all you need - using advanced technology! People would pay that to have a home like that on Earth. Unfortunately, people that do that must deal with local politics and government. Not to say that government is bad, but some governments from time to time make things difficult for everyone. So, that's one reason people will leave.
>
>How many people have a spare $1.4 million to spend? Well, according to the World Wealth Report there are 15 million HNWI (High Net Worth Individuals) - those worth $3 million or more; and 108,000 those worth $30 million or more (UHNWI - Ultra High Net Worth Individuals).
>
>HNWI Wealth Distribution
>
>Region-------- HNWI Population HNWI Wealth
>
>Global-------- 12.00 million $46.2 trillion
>North America 3.73 million $12.7 trillion
>Asia-Pacific--- 3.68 million $12.0 trillion
>Europe-------- 3.41 million $10.9 trillion
>Latin America-- 0.52 million $7.5 trillion
>Middle East--- 0.49 million $1.8 trillion
>Africa--------- 0.14 million $1.3 trillion
>
>188,760 per year represent a market penetration of 1.25% per year - an easily sustainable figure across this population. Paying stewards and crew members - with Mars based housing costing everyone else $1.4 million each plus a little cash - provides a means for people without means to go to Mars and the asteroids and other planets.
>

And this is the biggest bit of silliness in your whole imaginary
'business case'. It's not you overestimating the passengers per ship
by 11x. It's not you underestimating the mass per passenger by 4x.
It's not you overestimating the mass per ship by 3x. It's not even
the magic house. It's the question of why these people would go to
Mars

The idea that you're going to get over 1% of this group PER YEAR to
decide to go is, well, ridiculous. You'll be lucky to get that
percentage TOTAL out of this group. What is their incentive to go?
Simply because you can multiply? Your estimates give a colony of 2
million in just a decade. Sane people think it will take a century to
get to something half that size.

<snip remaining Mookery>


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine

[JF Mezei]

Possible Mars exports:

- Cans filled with martian air. "Fresh CO2 from Mars".
- Bottled water

AKA: novelty items.

Heck, if Coke/Pepsi can market tap water as upscale water, surely
someone will market water from mars glaciers as something that is very
desirable.

It would make for an intreresting debate on whether humans should strip
materials from one planet to bring back to earth.

Can we steal a few rocks ? Extract a few kilos of unobtainium ? Ship
tonnes and tonnes of water back to earth ? Steal a planet's atmosphere
with giant "mega maid" to bring back to replenish earth's atmosphere ?

For that matter, could be take over Mars and use it as a giant trash can
to dispose of all of earth's garbage and hazardous materials, spent
uranium ?

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>Possible Mars exports:
>
>- Cans filled with martian air. "Fresh CO2 from Mars".
>- Bottled water
>
>AKA: novelty items.
>
>Heck, if Coke/Pepsi can market tap water as upscale water, surely
>someone will market water from mars glaciers as something that is very
>desirable.
>
>It would make for an intreresting debate on whether humans should strip
>materials from one planet to bring back to earth.
>

It just doesn't pay.

>
>Can we steal a few rocks ? Extract a few kilos of unobtainium ? Ship
>tonnes and tonnes of water back to earth ? Steal a planet's atmosphere
>with giant "mega maid" to bring back to replenish earth's atmosphere ?
>

Uh, what needs 'replenished'?

>
>For that matter, could be take over Mars and use it as a giant trash can
>to dispose of all of earth's garbage and hazardous materials, spent
>uranium ?
>

The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
hideously expensive trash.

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-12 13:29, Fred J. McCall wrote:

> The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
> hideously expensive trash.

It is hideously expensive to launch spent radioactive garbage and have
it crash onto the moon (there is no need to land, is there ?) compared
to all the regulatory red tape and long term costs of maintaining
uranium dump site on earth ?



Different slant: the sun is said to be a big fusion reactor. If one
were to send a tonne of uranium to the sun, would it remain as uranium
(either molten or vapour) or would the extreme conditions cause any type
of atom to break apart and form hydrogen ?

[Rick Jones]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> It is hideously expensive to launch spent radioactive garbage and
> have it crash onto the moon (there is no need to land, is there ?)
> compared to all the regulatory red tape and long term costs of
> maintaining uranium dump site on earth ?

There is a non-trivial group of folks who fight transporting nuclear
waste by either road or rail. It seems rather unlikely they would
find launching it into space any more palatable. Case in point, the
folks who protest any launch involving RTGs.

rick jones
--
It is not a question of half full or empty - the glass has a leak.
The real question is "Can it be patched?"
these opinions are mine, all mine; HPE might not want them anyway... :)
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hpe.com but NOT BOTH...

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2016-12-12 13:29, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>>
>> The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
>> hideously expensive trash.
>>
>
>It is hideously expensive to launch spent radioactive garbage and have
>it crash onto the moon (there is no need to land, is there ?) compared
>to all the regulatory red tape and long term costs of maintaining
>uranium dump site on earth ?
>

Yes.

>
>Different slant: the sun is said to be a big fusion reactor. If one
>were to send a tonne of uranium to the sun, would it remain as uranium
>(either molten or vapour) or would the extreme conditions cause any type
>of atom to break apart and form hydrogen ?
>

Even more expensive. Getting to the Sun from here is HARD. The Sun
is a fusion furnace. It starts with hydrogen and makes heavier stuff,
not the other way around.

[Jonathan]

These are the estimates companies like Lockheed or Boeing give Congress
to sucker them into another wasteful program. The cost estimates, launch
rates or number of colonists have nothing at all to do with reality.

If one tenth the number of launches actually happened the pollution
would render the Earth uninhabitable.

[Alain Fournier]

If you through uranium into the Sun, it will decay. Uranium will decay
even if you don't through it into the Sun. At very high temperatures and
pressure and with alpha particles, beta particles and gamma rays hitting
it, it will decay even faster.

The Sun makes heavier stuff because it has light stuff to work with. If
provided uranium, it will make lighter stuff out of it. Elements lighter
than iron tend to fuse to make heavier stuff. Elements heavier than iron
tend to breakup into lighter elements. Of course, if you don't have
extreme temperatures and pressures most elements are quite stable.



Alain Fournier

[Fred J. McCall]

Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>These are the estimates companies like Lockheed or Boeing give Congress
>to sucker them into another wasteful program. The cost estimates, launch
>rates or number of colonists have nothing at all to do with reality.
>

Well, that's Mook for you. Reality seldom intrudes and these numbers
have nothing to do with what any reputable individual or company would
project. It's all Multiplier Mookie.

>
>If one tenth the number of launches actually happened the pollution
>would render the Earth uninhabitable.
>

Oh, don't be silly. The atmosphere is big and even huge numbers of
rocket launches have little to no effect on it. Now take into account
that these rockets are essentially burning LNG, so mostly what they
produce is water vapor...

[Fred J. McCall]

Now tell me something I don't know. The point is that it's not going
to get made into hydrogen and that even thinking that it might is,
well, silly.

It's also probably not all going to go to iron. There will be a whole
mix of trash.


--
"May God have mercy upon my enemies; they will need it."
-- General George S Patton, Jr.

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-12 19:04, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> Yes.

To crash garbage onto moon, doesn't one simply need to get to Lagrange +
1m and let the Moon take the garbage ? Or does that end up costing the
same as a bona fide trip to and from Mars ?

> Even more expensive. Getting to the Sun from here is HARD.

Is a destructive trip into the sun easier than a tourist fly-by at safe
altitude over sun to take some snapshots ?


Once outside of Earth's gravity well, isn't it a question to aim at the
sun and fire engines ? Or does that require huge fuel to ensure the
resulting elliptical orbit has its perigee close enough to the sun that
the garbage gets burned ?

> The Sun
> is a fusion furnace. It starts with hydrogen and makes heavier stuff,
> not the other way around.

So if I send a brick of gold to the sun, it would be vaporized but
remain gold atoms ? Once in plasma state, don't atoms have electrons so
far from proton that it become easy for them to get out of "orbit"
around the proton ?

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2016-12-12 19:04, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> Yes.
>
>To crash garbage onto moon, doesn't one simply need to get to Lagrange +
>1m and let the Moon take the garbage ? Or does that end up costing the
>same as a bona fide trip to and from Mars ?
>

And how much does it cost to get a pound of 'stuff' to that point? And
how many pounds do you need to do that with?

>
>> Even more expensive. Getting to the Sun from here is HARD.
>
>Is a destructive trip into the sun easier than a tourist fly-by at safe
>altitude over sun to take some snapshots ?
>

No. It's harder because you need to cancel more velocity to actually
fall in.

>
>Once outside of Earth's gravity well, isn't it a question to aim at the
>sun and fire engines ? Or does that require huge fuel to ensure the
>resulting elliptical orbit has its perigee close enough to the sun that
>the garbage gets burned ?
>

Orbital mechanics - learn some. EVERYTHING is an orbit. You need to
cancel enough orbital velocity to fall into the Sun. Otherwise,
you're going to loop around it.

>
>>
>> The Sun
>> is a fusion furnace. It starts with hydrogen and makes heavier stuff,
>> not the other way around.
>>
>
>So if I send a brick of gold to the sun, it would be vaporized but
>remain gold atoms ? Once in plasma state, don't atoms have electrons so
>far from proton that it become easy for them to get out of "orbit"
>around the proton ?
>

How many electrons you have is irrelevant to what you are.


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-13 00:28, Fred J. McCall wrote:

> Orbital mechanics - learn some. EVERYTHING is an orbit. You need to
> cancel enough orbital velocity to fall into the Sun. Otherwise,
> you're going to loop around it.

Can't you "aim" the elliptical orbit such that the object passes close
enough to the sun's "atmosphere" to get slowed down at perigee such that
after a few orbits, it goes too deep inside the sun to come back out ?


If sending dangerous garbage to the great big solar system incinerator
won't work, there is little chance that any mining of planets would.

The only possibility is some very rare "unubtainium" metal found in
abundance in some other planet (lets call it Pandora) where small
quantities are worth much more than the huge transportation costs. Not
gonna happen anytime soon.

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2016-12-13 00:28, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>>
>> Orbital mechanics - learn some. EVERYTHING is an orbit. You need to
>> cancel enough orbital velocity to fall into the Sun. Otherwise,
>> you're going to loop around it.
>>
>
>Can't you "aim" the elliptical orbit such that the object passes close
>enough to the sun's "atmosphere" to get slowed down at perigee such that
>after a few orbits, it goes too deep inside the sun to come back out ?
>

Of course you can, but this requires preposterous quantities of
delta-V when compared to doing almost anything else.

>
>If sending dangerous garbage to the great big solar system incinerator
>won't work, there is little chance that any mining of planets would.
>

Non sequitur much?

>
>The only possibility is some very rare "unubtainium" metal found in
>abundance in some other planet (lets call it Pandora) where small
>quantities are worth much more than the huge transportation costs. Not
>gonna happen anytime soon.
>

You're assuming that resources would be shipped back to Earth for use
here. That's pretty much a non-starter because mining even poor ores
here is going to be a lot cheaper than going out to bring metal back
(unless you have an existing space civilization already).

[Jeff Findley]

In article <5850d866$0$57342$b1db1813$796...@news.astraweb.com>,
jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...

>
> On 2016-12-13 00:28, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>
> > Orbital mechanics - learn some. EVERYTHING is an orbit. You need to
> > cancel enough orbital velocity to fall into the Sun. Otherwise,
> > you're going to loop around it.
>
> Can't you "aim" the elliptical orbit such that the object passes close
> enough to the sun's "atmosphere" to get slowed down at perigee such that
> after a few orbits, it goes too deep inside the sun to come back out ?

People that propose this somehow assume that once you reach "earth
escape" velocity that you'll magically fall right into the sun as long
as you "escape" in the right direction. This is just not true AT ALL.
If the velocity is right at "earth escape" and no higher, what you end
up in is an orbit around the sun close to earth's orbit. That's a
terrible orbit to dump waste, because eventually it will find its way
back to earth. As a perfect example, look at the Apollo Saturn V third
stages which "escaped" earth orbit and are now in solar orbits. I'll
even give you a reference for that:

J002E3 - Likely the S-IVB third stage of the Apollo 12 Saturn V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3

Please stop hand waving and DO THE MATH! Lucky for you since this is
the 21st century, I'm willing to bet that if you did a bit of Google
searching, you'd find an "orbit calculator" suitable for calculating the
delta-V needed to go from earth's orbit to an elliptical orbit very
close to the sun. To that value, don't forget to add in the delta-V to
get from the earth's surface to earth escape velocity.

You'll find that the total delta-V needed is indeed quite hideous.

> If sending dangerous garbage to the great big solar system incinerator
> won't work, there is little chance that any mining of planets would.

Again, run the numbers. I personally don't advocate mining in order to
return material to earth. Who would do that? Instead, it would make
more sense to use that material *in space* to make useful things for
solar system colonization.

> The only possibility is some very rare "unubtainium" metal found in
> abundance in some other planet (lets call it Pandora) where small
> quantities are worth much more than the huge transportation costs. Not
> gonna happen anytime soon.

Mining anything on earth is going to be cheaper than mining it anywhere
else in the solar system and then paying the high shipping costs (delta-
V) to get it safely back on the earth's surface.

[Alain Fournier]

On Dec/14/2016 at 12:28 AM, JF Mezei wrote :
> On 2016-12-13 00:28, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>
>> Orbital mechanics - learn some. EVERYTHING is an orbit. You need to
>> cancel enough orbital velocity to fall into the Sun. Otherwise,
>> you're going to loop around it.
>
> Can't you "aim" the elliptical orbit such that the object passes close
> enough to the sun's "atmosphere" to get slowed down at perigee such that
> after a few orbits, it goes too deep inside the sun to come back out ?

As others have pointed out, that would need a large delta-V. But if you
really do want to go into the Sun, the cheapest way to do so would be
via a Jupiter gravity assist. And to get to Jupiter, depending on the
position of the planets, you could do something like what the Galileo
spacecraft did. That is, use a gravity assist from Venus and two others
from Earth. You see, it needs a little more than to aim in the right
direction.

Once you do have the delta-V needed to skim the Sun's atmosphere, the
difference from that to what would be needed to do a direct entry is
very small. There isn't much of a point in doing multiple passes to
slowdown via friction. They sometimes do that sort of aero-capture when
doing missions to Mars or other planets, but that's because they want
the spacecraft to survive. So in those cases slowing down slowly is a
feature.


Alain Fournier

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-14 06:25, Jeff Findley wrote:

> People that propose this somehow assume that once you reach "earth
> escape" velocity that you'll magically fall right into the sun as long
> as you "escape" in the right direction.

I realize that the garbage ship will be in the sun's orbit after
escaping earth.

But consider Apollo returning from the moon. It doesn't need delta-V to
land on earth because it is aimed such that its elliptical orbit scapes
earth's atmosphere which then gives it the delta-V needed to end orbit.

So I am not advocating that the garbage ship lower its circular orbit, I
am advocating that it transform its circular orbit into highly
elliptical one. And in that case, would the delta-V requirement be
significantly lower ?

> Please stop hand waving and DO THE MATH! Lucky for you since this is
> the 21st century, I'm willing to bet that if you did a bit of Google
> searching, you'd find an "orbit calculator"

My confusion:

I understand de-orbiting from ISS. You fire de-orbit engines against
your orbital speed which not only reduces orbital energy, but puts you
into elliptical orbit with perigee sufficiently inside atmpsphere to
continue to slow you down.

But when Apollo came back from the moon, it did not fire engines against
Earth orbital velocity, as a ship does to drop out of orbit from ISS, it
accelerated toward the Earth, and once past laGrange, let Earth
accelerate it. Very little delta-V was involved, it merely had to
ensure it got to the right place at right moment to scrape the
atmosphere just right to slow it down enough to kill what would be an
elliptical orbit.

I assume that as Apollo got accelerated towards earth, its orbital
velocity around earth accelerated (since altitude dropped). Yet, it
still managed to aim itself to scrape the atmosphere on first pass
instead of endlessly spinning in an elliptical orbit that never touches
the upper reaches of atmosphere.

So (in simple words for my simple mind), why can't a garbage truck be
sent to the sun in the same way that Apollo returned to earth ?

(assuming thrusters continue to work to do last minute steering while
the rest of the ship may be a blob of molten metal).

[William Mook]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 12:17:14 AM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
> We've got a Mook on Mook on Mook reply here (minus the first two
> Mooks)...
>
> In article <986fddd7-0b0e-4a64...@googlegroups.com>,
> mokme...@gmail.com says...
> > The sands of Mars are red. That's because they're made out of
> > hematite. Why wouldn't you mine iron there and send it back to
> > Earth with a rail gun?
>
> Because steel made on earth is already quite cheap, so it would be
> economic suicide to do what you propose.

Steel has been cheap historically, but is rising inexorably as raw materials are depleted here.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-21/the-53-rally-in-steel-prices-that-points-to-china-s-rapid-shift

>
> Besides, one would think that a Mars colony would use such raw materials
> to either build things they need on Mars or build things that are
> actually worth exporting.

That's a false choice. In order to use or build things on Mars local steel is needed. So Martians would need to supply themselves with steel made from hematite on the surface and carbon in the carbon dioxide in the air - which means any surplus to their needs could be exported.

> Raw materials aren't going to cut it as an
> export unless there is a return on that investment.

Correct. Prices are rising on Earth and Earth's ability to produce low cost steel will be non-existant in 64 years according to the experts. Some believe shortages may be arriving in as little at 12 years.

> Sorry Mook,

I feel your love.

> but this entire idea is b.s.

No it isn't.

> I don't know how you got to
> visions of Mars colonies sending quite common raw materials like iron,
> silicon, aluminum, and etc. to earth by railgun, but it's just not going
> to be viable economically.

That's your problem that you don't know something. Perhaps if you listened to those who know more than you - that might help.

More below.

>
> Jeff
> --
> All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
> These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
> employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

The iron ore reserves of Earth at present seem quite vast, but continual exponential increase in consumption make this resource quite finite.

Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute has suggested iron ore will run out within 64 years based on an extremely conservative extrapolation of 2% growth per year. A 7% growth rate sees iron ore running out on Earth in 32 years. The Earth has 484.9 billion tons of economically recoverable iron ore.

So, to make steel on Earth you start with 2 tons of ore, 1 ton of carbon, half a ton of limestone and one ton of oxygen from 5 tons of air. There are 980 billion tons of economically recoverable coal in the world.

It takes 1.8 tons of metallurgical coal - or coking coal - to make 1.0 ton of coke used in steel production. 8% of all coal reserves are metallurgical variety. So, 24.3 billion tons steel possible to make with the proven reserves of coking coal we have today.

The Earth currently produces 350 billion tons per year of limestone and 7.5% of the Earth's crust is limestone, and there is plenty of economically recoverable limestone around. Only a small percentage of limestone is used in steel production - 0.8 billion tons per year.

So, the Earth's limit in steel production is about 200 billion tons and that's it, if limited by economically recoverable iron ore, ignoring coking coal limits. Only 24 billion more tons if limited by coking coal. This is 12 years at 7% growth and 14 years at 2% growth.

In contrast the Martian surface is littered with quadrillions of tons of hematite - with iron making up 2% of the Martian dust according to rovers sent there. There is more calcium in Martian dust than Iron! At 8% CaO matches Earth limestone in abundance. So, the limiting factor is carbon on Mars.

The Martian atmosphere has 26.4 trillion short tons of carbon dioxide. This can be reduced to CH4 by;

CO2 + 4 H2 --> CH4 + 2 H2O

and the CH4 may be reduced further by pyrolysis to;

CH4 + energy ---> C + 2 H2

And the H2O made back into hydrogen and oxygen

H2O + energy ---> H2 + 1/2 O2

Which makes 4 H2 in toto and takes us back to step one.

The energy needed is about 40 GJ/ton to power this process. Gotten from nuclear sources or solar sources, this works. The price of energy and manufacturing on Mars is the cost driver here.

So the Martian atmosphere yields 19.2 trillion tons of oxygen and 7.2 trillion tons of elemental carbon when extracted from the carbon dioxide. With recycling of carbon dioxide produced from burning the carbon and oxygen, sufficient carbon to make 1.8 quadrillion tons of low-carbon steel may be extracted from the planet using 72 quadrillion gigajoules.

As a side benefit, reducing CO2 from the Martian atmosphere yields 0.5 trillion tons of Nitrogen and 0.5 trillion tons of argon. Add 0.2 trillion tons of oxygen to the nitrogen, the oxygen extracted from the carbon and from the hematite and you have 0.7 trillion tons of Earth like atmosphere.

A ton of air at sea level occupies 24,783 cubic feet. So, 0.7 trillion tons of air is 17.4 quadrillion cubic feet. That's 117,855 cubic miles. A layer of air 100 feet deep at this pressure covers 174 trillion square feet - or 6.24 million square miles. 11% of the Martian surface pressurised at a depth of 100 feet. The entire surface may be pressurised at 9 foot depth.

http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=cadrc

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--JwPT2zrC--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/199b1cysy9052jpg.jpg

The background radiation on Mars is quite high relative to Earth. That means the locals will find ways to shield themselves from this hazard. It also means that the production and use of fissile materials will not have the same adverse consequences that they do when used within the sheilded garden of Earth's biosphere. Further the presence of nuclear weapons is nonexistent on Mars and will remain so under current UN treaties. For this reason, experts have looked seriously at broad use of small nuclear power plants using high concentration fissile fuels that would be dangerous for these reasons to use on Earth.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/203084main_ISRU%20TEC%2011-07%20V3.pdf

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19920005899.pdf

The Phoebus 2A produced over 4 GW of power from a reactor that weighed 800 pounds and was the size of a filing cabinet. A suitcase sized nuclear reactor that produces 750 MW of power has been made for use aboard US Navy Submarines using similar techniques.

These sorts of nuclear power plants will be produced and used in abundance on Mars. This will fulfill the promise of power 'too cheap to meter'

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/too-cheap-to-meter-nuclear-power-revisited

This combined with a high degree of automation -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7IEVTDjng

that will make commodities on Mars very cheap as well!

This occurs at a time when the same materials on Earth are running out and rising dramatically in price!

So, at 40 GJ per ton a 750 MW suitcase sized power plant will produce 67.5 tons of steel an hour from 135.0 tons of hematite along with 371.3 tons of oxygen of which 2 tons is surplus and not recombined with the carbon that remains in the steel. Extracting replacement carbon also produces 10 tons of nitrogen -11 tons of argon - and with the nitrogen produces 12 tons of air per hour.

That's 297,400 cubic feet of air at 1 atmosphere. An acre flooded at this pressure to a 7 foot depth every hour. Oxygen can be made in surplus and combined with the argon as well, producing a Mars flavoured atmosphere that is only half nitrogen. This may have an adverse impact on certain bacteria that fix nitrogen. The advantage is use of the argon capture will permit doubling the rate of atmosphere production.

Four cubic feet of steel represents one ton of steel. A rod 1 foot in diameter and 5 feet long contains about a ton of steel. Projecting this off Mars at 14,000 mph at the right time and in the right direction, using a maglev track, takes it to Earth in 26 weeks.

A shallow cone 12 feet across and less than 1/2 inch thick, projected off Mars edge first in the same way - arriving at Earth pointy end first, provides a more controlled entry when arriving at Earth, and naturally uses aerobraking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroshell#/media/File:AeroshellFlyingSaucer.jpg

HAARP cannon tests in the 1960s routinely blasted instrumented shells out of cannons at 5,000 gees. We can do as well today. A maglev based cannon that operates at 5,000 gees takes only 1/8th second to accelerate a disk from rest to 14,000 mph. It takes 7.36 GJ of energy to blast a one ton disk like this off Mars. So, this takes 59.16 GW of power. 79 of the 750 MW suitcase sized modules. The rate of departure is 8 tons per second. That's 480 tons per minute. To have production match that ability to depart Mars, requires 430 suitcase sized power plants operating sweepers. 430 Acres of floor space may be pressurised with the air byproduct made every hour by this operation.

8 tons of steel per second is 0.25 billion tons per year. The Earth consumes 1.55 billion tons of steel per year. So, 6 setups like this produce sufficient steel for Earth today and pressurise 35,000 square miles of floor space with air.

Now steel requirements are between 8 pounds and 16 pounds per square foot depending on the nature of the construction - on Earth. On mars it is likely to be less than that due to lower gravity and partial support from pressurised structures.

http://www.steelconstruction.info/Cost_of_structural_steelwork

Taking 4 pounds as an average per square foot, that means that 35,000 square miles per year of floor space construction on Mars will require 2 billion tons of steel consumed locally. So, we add 540 local sweepers per launcher, to supply local construction needs while sending material for export.

Now, this assuming continuous production and consumption along with continuous projection off world. The problem with this assumption is that the speeds increase dramatically when the planets are not in precisely the right positions. So, in practice we are limited to about 4 months out of every 26 months. So, the launchers send materials to Earth only 15.4% of the time. So, 40 launchers are required instead of 6 and only 66 miners per launcher are required to supply each launcher - and only 81 local miners per launcher are required as well. The surplus of launchers also mean that materials can be sent to other planets if desired as well.

The lead time for steel arrival will be 36 weeks, so time sensitive designs, like autobodies, will likely be made on Earth. For items that are not time sensitive, like rolled steel, this can be send. However, this means that we cannot merely form and ceramic coat an aeroshell and fit it with a reusable ACU.

Now the steel, when produced by automated systems, powered by nuclear power that is too cheap to meter, will make the steel itself be too cheap to meter - ON MARS! It won't be the case OFF MARS!

For much the same reason that petrol is $0.16 per litre in Saudi Arabia, and $1.83 per litre in New Zealand steel will be cheap on Mars!

At today's prices ON EARTH ($300 per ton) the value of the steel exported to Earth in this way is worth $465 billion per year presently. Divided among 40 launcher complexes this is $11.6 billion per complex per year! With a town of 35,000 people per complex this is $332,143 per person - allocating half this to income and half this capital utilisation (4.5% discount over 40 years) over $107 billion may be spent per complex to produce 8 tons per second for export to Earth and 10 tons per second to be made for use on Mars (along with air to flood the constructed space).

Mars would have 1.4 million inhabitants under this scenario, each earning $166,000 per year on average, have Earthside investors putting $4 trillion in bets on the planet, and building pressurised floor space at 16 acres per year per person! The US stock market engages in $2.8 quadrillion in trades each year. The shortages and difficulties are well known in the industry. The presence of iron on Mars is well known!

Only a small fraction would be employed in the mining operation. Most would be free to develop a wide range of ideas in the 16 acres of pressurised space each year.

A similar analysis can be done for aluminum, and other materials. The low hanging fruit is the rare earth and other precious metals abundant on Mars.

Power is an interesting possibility. One approach would be to build nuclear power stations and send them to Earth. This is an interesting approach. A 750 MW station processes 120 tons per hour of water into 13.3 tons per hour of hydrogen. This hydrogen combines with 73.15 tons of carbon dioxide in the air per hour to produce 28 tons per hour (4700 barrels per day) of synthetic petrol made from atmospheric CO2

http://newatlas.com/audi-creates-e-diesel-from-co2/37130/

Enough to support 83,190 Earthlings at US rates of petrol consumption. At $30 per barrel of crude and adding $20 per barrel for refined product (which this unit produces) each unit generates $235,000 per day in revenue. A fully automated system with 4% operating cost, financed at 4.5% discount rate over a 40 year useful life - with a $10 million cost to return the device to Mars for rebuild and reuse - we can see that up to $597.4 million may be charged for each unit! Recalling that the cost of building anything on Mars is too cheap to meter - we can count this as profit to Mars. The 4.5% discount is counted as profit for Earth based capitalists and financiers.

The export of 778 of these per year matches the income earned from the export of raw steel and doubles the income of the planet! 64.72 million people are provided with petrol (and fertiliser and plastics) at the rate used in the USA per person at stable fixed long term costs. With 7.5 billion persons on Earth a total of 90,155 of these units may be deployed to provide 423.7 million barrels per day equivalent production of oil.

If operated on the oceans, near the shore, sea water may be desalinated. The GTHTR300 nuclear plant produces 300 MWe and uses its waste heat to desalinate water with multi-stage fractionation;

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/nuclear-desalination.aspx

A 750MWe plant produced on Mars - and operating in the ocean near the shore - produces more than double the amount of fresh water using the same process - and recovers and uses salts. Brine electrolysis produces sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric process - the chloralkali process. The source of all bleaches. The production of soaps and scents - basically everything produced by Procter & Gamble - is achieved by this. So, not only does a compact power plant produce abundant petrol, but located in the ocean, produces fresh water and many other items as well.

Setting up a production plant to produce one 750 MW plant of this type per hour, and shipping it to Earth, one launch out of every 28,800 launches on one maglev track - is sufficient to send one ton to Earth - which is far less than the size of the plant! (recall the weight of the Phoebus 2a weighed 800 lbs and produced 4100 MW!) This stems from using 100% pure fissile materials instead of 'reactor grade' fissile materials that are far less efficient.

One per hour deploys sufficient reactors to transform the Earth in 11 years. Over the same period steel consumption would increase to US per capita rates so global steel demand would rise from 1.55 billion tons per year to 3.43 billion tons per year - a 7% rise per year compounded over the period.

Now, 83,190 persons consume 125.7 MWe - about 25.7 MWe for home use - the balance - for industrial, commercial, and other uses. The 750 MWe unit can easily be modified to supply this as well. At $0.11 per kWhe this adds $121.2 million per year to the revenue stream. Adding $2.23 billion to the value of the product when that revenue is discounted at 4.5% over 40 years.

A few million people on Mars doing a few things right, will transform life on Earth for billions. They will reap rewards amounting to millions of dollars per person on Mars. A Mars colony of this type will rescue Earth's moribound markets and provide real stable long term growth in the quadrillions of dollars as billions of people begin to have the fundamental resources needed to live a good life.

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2016-12-14 06:25, Jeff Findley wrote:
>>
>> People that propose this somehow assume that once you reach "earth
>> escape" velocity that you'll magically fall right into the sun as long
>> as you "escape" in the right direction.
>>
>
>I realize that the garbage ship will be in the sun's orbit after
>escaping earth.
>

And yet you don't seem to.

>
>But consider Apollo returning from the moon. It doesn't need delta-V to
>land on earth because it is aimed such that its elliptical orbit scapes
>earth's atmosphere which then gives it the delta-V needed to end orbit.
>

What? I suspect you are not saying what you mean clearly, because the
preceding makes no sense.

>
>So I am not advocating that the garbage ship lower its circular orbit, I
>am advocating that it transform its circular orbit into highly
>elliptical one. And in that case, would the delta-V requirement be
>significantly lower ?
>

That is precisely the delta-V requirement everyone is referring to. It
is an order of magnitude larger than the change required to go
anywhere else.

>
>>
>> Please stop hand waving and DO THE MATH! Lucky for you since this is
>> the 21st century, I'm willing to bet that if you did a bit of Google
>> searching, you'd find an "orbit calculator"
>>
>
>My confusion:
>
>I understand de-orbiting from ISS. You fire de-orbit engines against
>your orbital speed which not only reduces orbital energy, but puts you
>into elliptical orbit with perigee sufficiently inside atmpsphere to
>continue to slow you down.
>

Essentially correct. Most of the delta-V required to hit Earth (which
you are already orbiting very close to) is provided by atmospheric
braking. Remember, ISS is so close to Earth that it must periodically
reboost due to atmospheric drag.

>
>But when Apollo came back from the moon, it did not fire engines against
>Earth orbital velocity, as a ship does to drop out of orbit from ISS, it
>accelerated toward the Earth, and once past laGrange, let Earth
>accelerate it. Very little delta-V was involved, it merely had to
>ensure it got to the right place at right moment to scrape the
>atmosphere just right to slow it down enough to kill what would be an
>elliptical orbit.
>

Of course it did. That's how it got out of the orbit the Moon is in.
This 'straight line' stuff you keep doing in your head is WRONG.

>
>I assume that as Apollo got accelerated towards earth, its orbital
>velocity around earth accelerated (since altitude dropped). Yet, it
>still managed to aim itself to scrape the atmosphere on first pass
>instead of endlessly spinning in an elliptical orbit that never touches
>the upper reaches of atmosphere.
>

Not how it worked.

>
>So (in simple words for my simple mind), why can't a garbage truck be
>sent to the sun in the same way that Apollo returned to earth ?
>

It can. That way just isn't what you think it is and it has a delta-V
requirement on the order of 29 kps plus whatever it takes to get into
LEO first.

Several people have told you that it doesn't work the way you think it
does and yet you still want to insist that it does.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 12:17:14 AM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
>> We've got a Mook on Mook on Mook reply here (minus the first two
>> Mooks)...
>>
>> In article <986fddd7-0b0e-4a64...@googlegroups.com>,
>> mokme...@gmail.com says...
>> > The sands of Mars are red. That's because they're made out of
>> > hematite. Why wouldn't you mine iron there and send it back to
>> > Earth with a rail gun?
>>
>> Because steel made on earth is already quite cheap, so it would be
>> economic suicide to do what you propose.
>
>Steel has been cheap historically, but is rising inexorably as raw materials are depleted here.
>
>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-21/the-53-rally-in-steel-prices-that-points-to-china-s-rapid-shift
>

Pretty sure it's never going to exceed a million dollars a tonne, so
it's always going to be cheaper to do it here than to bring it back
from space. The sensible thing to do with space resources is, well,
space stuff.

>
>>
>> Besides, one would think that a Mars colony would use such raw materials
>> to either build things they need on Mars or build things that are
>> actually worth exporting.
>>
>
>That's a false choice. In order to use or build things on Mars local steel is needed. So Martians would need to supply themselves with steel made from hematite on the surface and carbon in the carbon dioxide in the air - which means any surplus to their needs could be exported.
>

Except no one would buy it at the prices they'd have to charge.

>
>>
>> Raw materials aren't going to cut it as an
>> export unless there is a return on that investment.
>>
>
>Correct. Prices are rising on Earth and Earth's ability to produce low cost steel will be non-existant in 64 years according to the experts. Some believe shortages may be arriving in as little at 12 years.
>

It's always going to be cheaper to do it here once you factor in
transport costs. It's why there will be a local steel industry on
Mars; because it costs too bloody much to bring it from Earth.

>
>>
>> Sorry Mook,
>>
>
>I feel your love.
>

Keep your hands to yourself!

>
>>
>> but this entire idea is b.s.
>>
>
>No it isn't.
>

Yes it is. Think about the transportation costs. Get back to me when
the price of steel on Earth exceeds a million dollars a tonne and we
can start thinking about it.

>
>>
>> I don't know how you got to
>> visions of Mars colonies sending quite common raw materials like iron,
>> silicon, aluminum, and etc. to earth by railgun, but it's just not going
>> to be viable economically.
>>
>
>That's your problem that you don't know something. Perhaps if you listened to those who know more than you - that might help.
>

Great advice. One wishes YOU would take it once in a while.

>
>More below.
>

Nope. Dumping the Magic Mookie Multiplication Math.

<Massive MookSpew Munched>

[William Mook]

http://icelandicglacial.com

https://www.amazon.com/icelandicglacial

$40 USD plus shipping for 12 bottles each 1.5 litres. plus shipping

That's $2.22 per litre (kg) plus shipping.

Olfus Spring - the source of Iceland Glacial Water produces 900,000,000 litres of fresh water per day. Icelandic Glacial Water collects only 0.1% of this 900,000 per day - that has a street value of $2 million per day. This supports a global industry worth $8.2 billion - earning $730 million per year.

http://icelandicglacial.com/pages/the-source

Similar Water supplies exists on Mars

http://astronomy.com/news/2015/04/mars-has-belts-of-glaciers-consisting-of-frozen-water

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaciers_on_Mars

Setting down on the right spot it takes 334 MJ to melt and reprocess 1 ton of ice. That's 1000 litres - worth $2,220 if Icelandic water is any measure. Melting the ice purifying the liquid and forming it into a spherical ball of pure ice and putting it into a 2 steel container with 12 foot aeroshell that is coated with ceramic TPS and then the entire apparatus is levitated by a maglev track and accelerated at 5000 gees edgewise - it attains 14,000 mph at Mars' surface which means that if its directed in the right direction at the right time and the right speed - it will slam into Earth's atmosphere and descend to the surface landing softly there - to be drained and the steel container to be sold as well. So, the water is worth $2,220 - the 200 pounds of steel worth $30 - $2,250 per disk. Far more than the $300 ton of steel disk alone would be.

Now, it takes 1/8th of a second to project an object to 14000 mph when accelerating at 5000 gees over a quarter mile length - this is 8 tons per second - which requires 56 GW (I calculated this earlier in my steel plant calculation) 900 shipments a day is only one launch every 96 seconds. Reducing power consumption to 73 MWe. Shipping over a three month period every 26 months - the synodic period - means one launch every 14 seconds. This reduces power consumption to 500 MWe.

The Phoebus 2A produced 4100 MW thermal in a package that weighed only 800 pounds. A suitcase sized nuclear power plant using these techniques is possible that produces 750 MW and weighs only 146 pounds.

The important detail is - one of these disks may be substituted for a solid steel disk their value is 7.5x as much as a one ton disk at these prices.

A mission to Mars may be undertaken to take this glacier

and melt it - and send it back to Earth

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Wide_view_of_glacier_showing_image_field.JPG

Offering a 50% discount from retail - using the Icelandic Glacier as a price point - means that $4 billion might be spent to establish a base that does this. A small group of 100 people would make use of carbon dioxide in Mars' air along with water.

If we wanted to bottle the water on Mar, and assure its authenticity - we can make PET plastic from Martian air.

4 H2O + electricity ---> 4 H2 + 2 O2
CO2 + 4 H2 ---> CH4 + 2 H2O
CH4 + energy --> CH2* + H2

Which can be polymerised into polyethylene terepthalate (PET) and made into a variety of things - including water bottles (so the bottle itself is made from Martian Air!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_(compound)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate

The steel is made from hematite that occurs freely on the martian surface and from calcium oxide that also occurs freely there. The nuclear power source uses some water to make hydrogen and uses that hydrogen to reduce carbon dioxide to methane, but then uses pyrolysis to reduce the methane to elemental carbon recovering the hydrogen. 45 packages of 12 count 1.5 litre bottles can be projected per ton - with a 200 pound mass budget for the shipping drone.

At this early stage, the Martian steel from the re-entry vehicle, wouldn't be sold as bulk steel, but broken down and sold as jewelry. Steel jewlery bearing important symbols sell from between $8 and $80 and mass 4 ounces - that's $32 to $320 per pound - $6,400 to $64,000 for 200 pounds made from the break up of the re-entry vehicle. It might be designed to efficiently break apart into forms that are immediately recognisable and promoted. Using the lower price, and assuming only half the vehicle may be made in this way, and assuming only half the money is retrived at the wholesale level, this adds another $1,600 per shipment for the Martian colony.

This makes a $10 billion investment a real possiblity of payback - raising it from the $4 billion value estimated previously.

Of course the colonists accumulate significant portion of this total, even after paying back their backers, and use the ability to make steel, PET and water, to create habitats and farms, factories and forests.







The elemental carbon is combined with the hematite and calcium oxide and oxygen to produce steel. The steel is used to make things locally, and to house the

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-14 22:26, William Mook wrote:

> The iron ore reserves of Earth at present seem quite vast, but continual exponential increase in consumption make this resource quite finite.

You are forgetting recycling. As resources dwindle, recycling will increase.

> In contrast the Martian surface is littered with quadrillions of tons of hematite

Question is how many grams of iron per tonne of dirt you get, and how
costly is extraction from the dust.

BTW, does the red apearance of mars signify the iron is rusted and as
such contains oxygen ?

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-14 23:08, Fred J. McCall wrote:

> Not how it worked.

So why have all the NASA documents showed a more or less straight line
(or in slight S shape) transit between moon and earth ?

In the case of Apollo 13, they did a slingshot around the moon which put
them into a free return trajectory, after which they only had to fire
engines once to adjust trajectory/speed to meet Earth at the right
moment/place.

Pardon my confusion if that didn't happen and they came back from the
moon the same way a ship de-orbits from ISS.

[bob haller]

the cost of steel has dropped a lot.

5 years ago i junked a old dodge caran at the scrap yard. got 450 bucks for it

these days a junked caravan is worth under 120 bucks.

so little the tow truck drivers have quit picking up junk vehicles. the costs to pick it up leave no profit

[JF Mezei]

Reverse:

I know that Musk's ships intend to leave nothing on mars when they lift
off to go back to Earth.

What if cargo ships were very different? Think MPLM with a propulsion
module. Upon arriving Mars, propulsion module does de-orbit burn,
immediatly detaches from MPLM and immediately reboosts itself to orbit
to get back to earth.

MPLM would then re-enter, deploy parachutes and perhaps limited
thrusters for landing.

Not only wuld the Mars Colony get the cargo it was carrying, but also
the MPLM module itself, whether the module is used in whole or taken
apart for metals.

Before there is mining and refining capacity on mars to create metals of
enough quality to be used to create tools, habitat, it will be a long time.

It's one thing to have a small smelter capable of processing enough to
create a hammer, another to have enough capacity to support a colony of
thousands.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 7:29:48 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
>>
>> >Possible Mars exports:
>> >
>> >- Cans filled with martian air. "Fresh CO2 from Mars".
>> >- Bottled water
>> >
>> >AKA: novelty items.
>> >
>> >Heck, if Coke/Pepsi can market tap water as upscale water, surely
>> >someone will market water from mars glaciers as something that is very
>> >desirable.
>> >
>> >It would make for an intreresting debate on whether humans should strip
>> >materials from one planet to bring back to earth.
>> >
>>
>> It just doesn't pay.
>>
>> >
>> >Can we steal a few rocks ? Extract a few kilos of unobtainium ? Ship
>> >tonnes and tonnes of water back to earth ? Steal a planet's atmosphere
>> >with giant "mega maid" to bring back to replenish earth's atmosphere ?
>> >
>>
>> Uh, what needs 'replenished'?
>>
>> >
>> >For that matter, could be take over Mars and use it as a giant trash can
>> >to dispose of all of earth's garbage and hazardous materials, spent
>> >uranium ?
>> >
>>
>> The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
>> hideously expensive trash.
>>
>

>http://icelandicglacial.com
>
>https://www.amazon.com/icelandicglacial
>
>$40 USD plus shipping for 12 bottles each 1.5 litres. plus shipping
>
>That's $2.22 per litre (kg) plus shipping.
>

Yes, but when you start talking Martian water that 'plus shipping'
around a million dollars per tonne or $1,000 per litre. Now who do
you think will pay that?

<Magic Mookie Math and Machines Munched>

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2016-12-14 23:08, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>
>> Not how it worked.
>
>So why have all the NASA documents showed a more or less straight line
>(or in slight S shape) transit between moon and earth ?
>

Because they're STATIC ILLUSTRATIONS, you dipshit.

>
>In the case of Apollo 13, they did a slingshot around the moon which put
>them into a free return trajectory, after which they only had to fire
>engines once to adjust trajectory/speed to meet Earth at the right
>moment/place.
>

Gravity slingshots are still ORBITS, you tiny twat.

>
>Pardon my confusion if that didn't happen and they came back from the
>moon the same way a ship de-orbits from ISS.
>

You're not confused. You are stupid and adamantly ignorant.

Go learn something about the subject and get back to me. Of course,
if you learn something about the subject, you won't have to.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <5851c610$0$41016$b1db1813$e2fc...@news.astraweb.com>,
jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...

>
> On 2016-12-14 06:25, Jeff Findley wrote:
>
> > People that propose this somehow assume that once you reach "earth
> > escape" velocity that you'll magically fall right into the sun as long
> > as you "escape" in the right direction.
>
> I realize that the garbage ship will be in the sun's orbit after
> escaping earth.
>
> But consider Apollo returning from the moon. It doesn't need delta-V to
> land on earth because it is aimed such that its elliptical orbit scapes
> earth's atmosphere which then gives it the delta-V needed to end orbit.
>
> So I am not advocating that the garbage ship lower its circular orbit, I
> am advocating that it transform its circular orbit into highly
> elliptical one. And in that case, would the delta-V requirement be
> significantly lower ?

I know what you're proposing. I took the 500 level Orbital Mechanics
class in college. This whole "waste disposal in the sun" idea might
have even been a class exercise just to show how ludicrous it is since
it's not a difficult calculation.

You need to RUN THE NUMBERS. When you do, you'll see that the delta-V
is so high that this idea is just not economically viable.

> > Please stop hand waving and DO THE MATH! Lucky for you since this is
> > the 21st century, I'm willing to bet that if you did a bit of Google
> > searching, you'd find an "orbit calculator"
>
> My confusion:
>
> I understand de-orbiting from ISS. You fire de-orbit engines against
> your orbital speed which not only reduces orbital energy, but puts you
> into elliptical orbit with perigee sufficiently inside atmpsphere to
> continue to slow you down.
>
> But when Apollo came back from the moon, it did not fire engines against
> Earth orbital velocity, as a ship does to drop out of orbit from ISS, it
> accelerated toward the Earth, and once past laGrange, let Earth
> accelerate it. Very little delta-V was involved, it merely had to
> ensure it got to the right place at right moment to scrape the
> atmosphere just right to slow it down enough to kill what would be an
> elliptical orbit.
>
> I assume that as Apollo got accelerated towards earth, its orbital
> velocity around earth accelerated (since altitude dropped). Yet, it
> still managed to aim itself to scrape the atmosphere on first pass
> instead of endlessly spinning in an elliptical orbit that never touches
> the upper reaches of atmosphere.
>
> So (in simple words for my simple mind), why can't a garbage truck be
> sent to the sun in the same way that Apollo returned to earth ?

Calculate the delta-V needed to change from earth's orbit to an orbit
which grazes the sun. Now, compare that to the delta-V needed by the
Apollo CSM to go from lunar orbit to its earth return trajectory.

No one is saying you can't do this. We're saying it's hideously
expensive to do this due to the huge delta-V needed. All the hand
waving in the world won't change the laws of physics, so stop waving
your damn hands.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <MPG.32bc42f25...@news.eternal-september.org>,
jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com says...

>
> In article <5851c610$0$41016$b1db1813$e2fc...@news.astraweb.com>,
> jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...
> >
> > On 2016-12-14 06:25, Jeff Findley wrote:
> >
> > > People that propose this somehow assume that once you reach "earth
> > > escape" velocity that you'll magically fall right into the sun as long
> > > as you "escape" in the right direction.
> >
> > I realize that the garbage ship will be in the sun's orbit after
> > escaping earth.
> >
> > But consider Apollo returning from the moon. It doesn't need delta-V to
> > land on earth because it is aimed such that its elliptical orbit scapes
> > earth's atmosphere which then gives it the delta-V needed to end orbit.
> >
> > So I am not advocating that the garbage ship lower its circular orbit, I
> > am advocating that it transform its circular orbit into highly
> > elliptical one. And in that case, would the delta-V requirement be
> > significantly lower ?
>
> I know what you're proposing. I took the 500 level Orbital Mechanics
> class in college. This whole "waste disposal in the sun" idea might
> have even been a class exercise just to show how ludicrous it is since
> it's not a difficult calculation.
>
> You need to RUN THE NUMBERS. When you do, you'll see that the delta-V
> is so high that this idea is just not economically viable.

Since you're so lazy as to not even attempt a Google search, here is a
link to a "delta-V map of the solar system". Sure, there are lots of
simplifying assumptions behind the numbers, but it's a good starting
point for someone when they really have no clue how much it costs to go,
well anywhere, in the solar system.

http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png

The way this works is you add up the numbers along the path from "Moon"
to "Low (earth) Orbit" to get the approximate delta-V the Apollo CSM
used to get from lunar orbit back to earth.

Now, add up all the numbers along the path from "Earth" to the "Sun".

See the huge difference between the numbers? Well, there's your problem
with "sun disposal"!

[William Mook]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 9:37:17 AM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
> On 2016-12-12 13:29, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>

> > The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
> > hideously expensive trash.
>

Water is far more abundant on Mars than the Moon, but for 900,000 litres per day, we can likely find a place on the Moon to mine for water - and send part of it to Earth for consumption there. The problem with the moon is we don't have iron or carbon dioxide readily available to make return capsules or water bottles from. We do on Mars.

> It is hideously expensive to launch spent radioactive garbage and have
> it crash onto the moon (there is no need to land, is there ?) compared
> to all the regulatory red tape and long term costs of maintaining
> uranium dump site on earth ?

That depends on the details. Using a self-supporting hyperloop

>
>
>
> Different slant: the sun is said to be a big fusion reactor. If one
> were to send a tonne of uranium to the sun, would it remain as uranium
> (either molten or vapour) or would the extreme conditions cause any type
> of atom to break apart and form hydrogen ?

Your understanding of nuclear vs chemical reactions is lacking. This is not unusual in today's world. You can correct this ignorance by reviewing the following

http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-nuclear-reaction-and-chemical-reaction/

So, the uranium won't change as you imagined, also, uranium already exists in the Sun,

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1969SoPh....6..381G

and our ability to add uranium from Earth to the sun in any quantity is limited. The sun wouldn't notice at all! Also, nuclear waste doesn't consist of uranium anyway. Typically, some 44 million kilowatt-hours of electricity are produced from one tonne of natural uranium. Natural Uranium is as common as tin. Only 0.7% of natural uranium is the type that reacts promptly U235. U238 is the heavy isotope and removed from the equation - though when exposed to fission of U235 it can convert into Plutonium.

In a reactor fuel rod 98.8% of the Uranium is burned up. Other radioactive by products remain. Uranium 238 isotope, Thorium, Plutonium, are all by products, but they can be removed and reprocessed into fuels for different reactor types.

Instead of a once through cycle we can imagine recycling the fuel elements extracting the short lived elements (and even using them in new reactor designs that make use of their very high specific energies) - this was all imagined in the early days of nuclear but have been forgotten!

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx

http://fissionenvironmentalists.files.wordpress.com

This fuel cycle might be completed off world. On the moon or on Mars.

Each fission event releases around 200 MeV. 181 MeV is prompt energy. A mole of Uranium 235 weighs 235 grams. It also contains 6.03*10^23 atoms. All the atoms in a mole of Uranium 235 fissioning produce primarily Barium and Krypton, and release 17.45 trillion joules of energy. That's 4.85 million kWh per mole. That's 20.64 million kWh per kg. 20.64 billion kWh per metric ton!

20,635,548 kWh/kg - Pure Uranium 235 metal
20,635,548,128 kWh/t - Pure Uranium 235 metal
148,575,947 kWh/t - 0.72% Concentration in ore
47,544,303 kWh/t - 32% conversion efficiency to electricity

To get reactor weight, of a reactor that uses 100% pure uranium metal we just multiply the second number above by 38% - which is the efficiency of high temperature reactors that are compact and don't require powering huge facilities to work appropriately

7,841,508,288 kWh/t - Pure Uranium 235 metal - 38% conversion efficiency

This is sufficient to power 750 MW power plant for 1.19 years. A gas core fission reactor using MHD for a portion of its energy conversion can produce 70.1% of its heat energy to electricity. So, a ton of uranium metal may be converted to 14.47 billion kWh of electrical energy - so a reactor such as this could operate for 2.2 years continuously - which is helpful because this is nearly the synodic period of Earth/Mars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_fission_reactor

14,465,519,237 - kWh/t - Pure Uranium 235 metal - 70.1% conversion efficiency

So, 91,000 of these reactors launch over a few days period after being constructed - and they arrive on Earth - operate for a period of time - and then fly back to Mars for refueling.

A one ton gas core reactor that has a cryogenic storage tank for hydrogen - is equipped with a propulsive skin which is powered by the gas core reactor. The exhaust speed is fixed at 15.3 km/sec - and at 750 MWe the propulsive skin produces 10 metric tons of thrust. To fly to Earth from the surface of Mars requires that the drone power plant chemical processing station attain a speed of 6.1 km/sec relative to the surface of Mars. This requires a propellant fraction of 0.329 - so a 1.5 metric ton (3,300 pound) system requires 735 kg of liquid hydrogen propellant. This requires 122.7 GJ of energy (34,083 kWh). A small fraction of the 14.47 billion kWh available. The spacecraft lands on Earth and operates continuously for a period of 2.15 years - and returns to Mars - being replaced by a fresh replacement. The delta vee required to leave Earth's surface for Mars is 12.9 km/sec. With a 15.3 km/sec exhaust speed a propellant fraction of 0.57 of the take off weight is required. This requires 1,986 kg of liqiud hydrogen. A sphere 3.8 meters (12.5 ft) in diameter. Enough to store 6.3 minutes of full scale production of hydrogen. This requires 232.5 GJ (64,570 kWh) of energy.

An automated 'fog' of micro-scale robots maintain these devices and provide support for their operation as well as maintenance and even construction.

Here's an array of tiny robots that clean your home -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2OVwT_R4Q

It takes a lot of energy to dispatch an object to the Sun, relative to the energy it takes to send an item to the Moon or Mars. Using a hyperloop - that extends above the atmosphere - that uses magnetic or electrical acceleration to project objects off world - we require 10.9 km/sec (24,300 mph) to reach the moon, 12 km/sec (26,600 mph) to reach mars, and 31.8 km/sec (71,115 mph) to reach the Sun, from the surface of the Earth. That's because the moon bound craft doesn't have to reach escape velocity to reach the moon, the Mars bound craft only has to achieve 4 km/sec (8,945 mph) excess speed beyond escape velocity (energies add, not velocities) but the Sun bound payload has to cancel ALL the Earth's 66,557 mph orbital speed to fall reliably into the Sun.

Now there are ways to nuance that. One is to launch to Jupiter, and use Jupiter's sling shot to drop the payload into the Sun. This requires far less energy than the direct approach.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <MPG.32bc4563d...@news.eternal-september.org>,
jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com says...

> http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
>
> The way this works is you add up the numbers along the path from "Moon"
> to "Low (earth) Orbit" to get the approximate delta-V the Apollo CSM
> used to get from lunar orbit back to earth.

Make that "Moon low orbit" to "Earth low orbit" for that burn. The LEM
ascent stage already did the burn to go from "Moon" to "Moon low orbit".

> Now, add up all the numbers along the path from "Earth" to the "Sun".

This number will still be huge no matter what. You can add in "fly-
bys" to add in some "gravity assist" burns to lower that number a bit,
but not by enough to make the idea workable.

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-15 06:05, Jeff Findley wrote:

> expensive to do this due to the huge delta-V needed. All the hand
> waving in the world won't change the laws of physics, so stop waving
> your damn hands.

Not asking to wave the laws of physics. Asking to understand in simple
words how returning from the moon is the same as de-orbiting from ISS
(aka: decelerate orbital speed around earth to drop altitude).

Here is a different question: When Apollo 13 ended its slingshot around
the moon, what direction was it going ? towards earth ? or against
orbital speed of moon going around earth to lower its orbital speed
around earth ?

Or did it aim "diagonal" to essentially follow a curve ball trajectory
such that it initially aims "behind" the Earth, knowing that its orbital
speed will accelerate as it drops altitude so would catch up with Earth ?



When Apollo 13 did a burn midway in its return, what direction was it
burning towards ? Earth ? or again, against its orbital velocity around
earth ?

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-15 06:15, Jeff Findley wrote:

> http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png

> See the huge difference between the numbers? Well, there's your problem
> with "sun disposal"!

These numbers are for circular orbit around sun. Notice no "red arrow"
to indicate one could use the sun to slow down to orbital speed of 0.


Would it be correct to state that orbital energy of a circular orbit of
X altitude could be equal to that of an elliptical orbit where perigee
is much lower than x, and apogee is much higher than x ?

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 9:37:17 AM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
>> On 2016-12-12 13:29, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> >
>> > The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
>> > hideously expensive trash.
>> >
>>
>
>Water is far more abundant on Mars than the Moon, but for 900,000 litres per day, we can likely find a place on the Moon to mine for water - and send part of it to Earth for consumption there. The problem with the moon is we don't have iron or carbon dioxide readily available to make return capsules or water bottles from. We do on Mars.
>

Nobody but you is talking about shipping water back, Mook. Water is
too valuable where it is to ship it back to Earth, which has stupid
amounts of fresh water. Then you add in the shipping costs and it's a
REALLY dumb idea.

>
>>
>> It is hideously expensive to launch spent radioactive garbage and have
>> it crash onto the moon (there is no need to land, is there ?) compared
>> to all the regulatory red tape and long term costs of maintaining
>> uranium dump site on earth ?
>>
>
>That depends on the details. Using a self-supporting hyperloop
>

What the fuck does an EARTH transportation system have to do with
putting things on the Moon?

<snip MookSpew>


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

[Fred J. McCall]

JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>On 2016-12-15 06:05, Jeff Findley wrote:
>>
>> expensive to do this due to the huge delta-V needed. All the hand
>> waving in the world won't change the laws of physics, so stop waving
>> your damn hands.
>>
>
>Not asking to wave the laws of physics. Asking to understand in simple
>words how returning from the moon is the same as de-orbiting from ISS
>(aka: decelerate orbital speed around earth to drop altitude).
>

True. You'd have to *understand* the laws of physics before you could
ask to have them waived. The difference is that ISS doesn't have a
significant gravitational field and the Moon does. So from ISS you
just need to decelerate tangential to the orbital velocity to lower
your orbit, while from the Moon you first need to accelerate with
regard to your orbit around the Moon to raise your lunar orbit
velocity until Earth's gravity is stronger on you than the Moon's.

>
>Here is a different question: When Apollo 13 ended its slingshot around
>the moon, what direction was it going ? towards earth ? or against
>orbital speed of moon going around earth to lower its orbital speed
>around earth ?
>
>Or did it aim "diagonal" to essentially follow a curve ball trajectory
>such that it initially aims "behind" the Earth, knowing that its orbital
>speed will accelerate as it drops altitude so would catch up with Earth ?
>

What you want is essentially what you want when you leave from lunar
orbit. You want to get into an orbit such that your aposelene is in a
region where Earth's gravity has more influence on you than the Moon's
gravity does. With regard to Earth, you want your velocity tangential
to Earth at apogee to be slow enough that you 'fall' out of orbit.
This is why the lunar return path looks sort of 's-shaped'.

>
>When Apollo 13 did a burn midway in its return, what direction was it
>burning towards ? Earth ? or again, against its orbital velocity around
>earth ?
>

The latter (or actually probably a combination of the two, but the
main aim is to lower orbital velocity so that you 'fall').

[Niklas Holsti]

On 16-12-15 13:15 , Jeff Findley wrote:
> In article <MPG.32bc42f25...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com says...
>>
>> In article <5851c610$0$41016$b1db1813$e2fc...@news.astraweb.com>,
>> jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...

>>> So I am not advocating that the garbage ship lower its circular orbit, I
>>> am advocating that it transform its circular orbit into highly
>>> elliptical one. And in that case, would the delta-V requirement be
>>> significantly lower ?
>>
>> I know what you're proposing. I took the 500 level Orbital Mechanics
>> class in college. This whole "waste disposal in the sun" idea might
>> have even been a class exercise just to show how ludicrous it is since
>> it's not a difficult calculation.
>>
>> You need to RUN THE NUMBERS. When you do, you'll see that the delta-V
>> is so high that this idea is just not economically viable.
>
> Since you're so lazy as to not even attempt a Google search, here is a
> link to a "delta-V map of the solar system". Sure, there are lots of
> simplifying assumptions behind the numbers, but it's a good starting
> point for someone when they really have no clue how much it costs to go,
> well anywhere, in the solar system.
>
> http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
>
> The way this works is you add up the numbers along the path from "Moon"
> to "Low (earth) Orbit" to get the approximate delta-V the Apollo CSM
> used to get from lunar orbit back to earth.
>
> Now, add up all the numbers along the path from "Earth" to the "Sun".
>
> See the huge difference between the numbers? Well, there's your problem
> with "sun disposal"!

That map seems not directly relevant to garbage disposal in the Sun. It
shows something like 600 km/s to reach the Sun, but I'm pretty sure that
if we get the garbage off Earth (11 km/s) and stop its circum-solar
orbital velocity (30 km/s more), it will fall into the Sun.

The 600-odd km/s in the map is probably for *landing* softly on the Sun
-- perhaps "landing" isn't the right word, so let's say "reaching a
point at the Sun's visible photosphere, at rest with respect to the
photosphere".

Of course 41 km/s is still a rather large delta-v.

--
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
. @ .

[Dr J R Stockton]

In sci.space.policy message <MPG.32baf64fc...@news.eternal-
september.org>, Wed, 14 Dec 2016 06:25:54, Jeff Findley
<jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com> posted:

>
>Please stop hand waving and DO THE MATH! Lucky for you since this is
>the 21st century, I'm willing to bet that if you did a bit of Google
>searching, you'd find an "orbit calculator" suitable for calculating the
>delta-V needed to go from earth's orbit to an elliptical orbit very
>close to the sun. To that value, don't forget to add in the delta-V to
>get from the earth's surface to earth escape velocity.
>

Not needed. The direct answer is obviously fairly close to the sum of
Earth escape speed plus the speed of the earth in its orbit, which is
(E&OE)
150e6 * 2 * 22/7 / (365.25 * 86400) km/s
about 30 km/s
which is quite a lot.

On the other hand, consider Ulysses, which went moderately close to the
Sun (from Jupiter's point of view) after a Jupiter gravity assist,
closest approach 6.3 RJ; I guess that a moderately closer approach could
have aimed Ulysses directly at Sol.

I see that Ulysses will again meet Jupiter in 2098 and be slung far
outwards.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. 拯merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Merlyn Web Site < > - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.

[Alain Fournier]

On Dec/15/2016 à 6:41 PM, Dr J R Stockton wrote :
> In sci.space.policy message <MPG.32baf64fc...@news.eternal-
> september.org>, Wed, 14 Dec 2016 06:25:54, Jeff Findley
> <jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com> posted:
>
>>
>> Please stop hand waving and DO THE MATH! Lucky for you since this is
>> the 21st century, I'm willing to bet that if you did a bit of Google
>> searching, you'd find an "orbit calculator" suitable for calculating the
>> delta-V needed to go from earth's orbit to an elliptical orbit very
>> close to the sun. To that value, don't forget to add in the delta-V to
>> get from the earth's surface to earth escape velocity.
>>
>
>
> Not needed. The direct answer is obviously fairly close to the sum of
> Earth escape speed plus the speed of the earth in its orbit, which is
> (E&OE)
> 150e6 * 2 * 22/7 / (365.25 * 86400) km/s
> about 30 km/s
> which is quite a lot.

No, not the sum of Earth escape speed plus speed of Earth in its orbit.
If you do all the acceleration near Earth, it is the square root of the
sum of the squares of those two speeds. Which is about
(30^2 + 11^2)^(1/2) km/s or about 32 km/s. That is significantly less
than the sum, about 41 km/s.

> On the other hand, consider Ulysses, which went moderately close to the
> Sun (from Jupiter's point of view) after a Jupiter gravity assist,
> closest approach 6.3 RJ; I guess that a moderately closer approach could
> have aimed Ulysses directly at Sol.
>
> I see that Ulysses will again meet Jupiter in 2098 and be slung far
> outwards.

Yes, that would be the way to do it. In fact, Mr Mezei isn't all that
far away from the truth if you are willing to do multiple gravity
assist. Once you have just barely escaped Earth orbit, you are in a
solar orbit close to Earth orbit. You will eventually come close to
Earth again. If you do so just right, you get a gravity assist from
Earth (and the Moon). That gravity assist can set you up for another
gravity assist from Earth a few years later etc. If you are willing
to go through multiple gravity assist like that, and you have infinite
precision in your trajectory, you can reach the Sun with as little as
Earth Escape velocity plus epsilon, for any positive value of epsilon.
You must also accept travel times of a century or two (if you are lucky
and the planets are in favourable positions, it could be only decades).
So if you just barely escape Earth gravitational field, just exactly at
the right speed and direction, you can end up into the Sun. That is not
practical, but theoretically possible.


Alain Fournier

[Greg (Strider) Moore]

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
news:MPG.32bc4563d...@news.eternal-september.org...

>Since you're so lazy as to not even attempt a Google search, here is a
>link to a "delta-V map of the solar system". Sure, there are lots of
>simplifying assumptions behind the numbers, but it's a good starting
>point for someone when they really have no clue how much it costs to go,
>well anywhere, in the solar system.
>
>http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
>

These are very handy when answering questions like this for others.

I'll be honest though, even though I knew "launch into the Sun" made no
sense, I hadn't actually bothered to add that all up. It's even higher than
I had imagined!

Pretty impressive when you think about it.

JF Mezei, let me also suggest looking at the effort to get Messenger into
orbit around Mercury.

>The way this works is you add up the numbers along the path from "Moon"
>to "Low (earth) Orbit" to get the approximate delta-V the Apollo CSM
>used to get from lunar orbit back to earth.
>
>Now, add up all the numbers along the path from "Earth" to the "Sun".
>
>See the huge difference between the numbers? Well, there's your problem
>with "sun disposal"!
>
>Jeff

--

Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

[Greg (Strider) Moore]

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
news:5852f187$0$60926$b1db1813$2411...@news.astraweb.com...

>
>On 2016-12-15 06:15, Jeff Findley wrote:
>
>> http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
>> See the huge difference between the numbers? Well, there's your problem
>> with "sun disposal"!
>
>These numbers are for circular orbit around sun. Notice no "red arrow"
>to indicate one could use the sun to slow down to orbital speed of 0.
>

The line you want to look at is the last one: 440. Got that.. 440.
To get from Earth to the Moon takes:
9.4+2.44+0.68+0.14+0.68+1.73.

That's a grant total of 15.

The LAST step of intercepting the Sun is almost 30x that.
And that's for the last step.

So let's say you can do some form of "Coronasphere" braking (which is what I
think you're really suggesting, sorta like aerobraking into the Earth).

Let's say you can somehow get it down to 400 instead of 440. You're 27x
what it takes to get to the surface of the Moon.

And that's not including the 9.4+2.44+0.68+0.09+0.28+2.06+15.74+178, or
208.69 to get to the point where it's only going to cost you 440 (or 400).

In other words, it is 43x harder to get to the surface of the Sun than it
does to get to the surface of the Moon.

>
>Would it be correct to state that orbital energy of a circular orbit of
>X altitude could be equal to that of an elliptical orbit where perigee
>is much lower than x, and apogee is much higher than x ?
>
>

[William Mook]

On Friday, December 16, 2016 at 9:42:54 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 9:37:17 AM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
> >> On 2016-12-12 13:29, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> >> >
> >> > The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
> >> > hideously expensive trash.
> >> >
> >>
> >
> >Water is far more abundant on Mars than the Moon, but for 900,000 litres per day, we can likely find a place on the Moon to mine for water - and send part of it to Earth for consumption there. The problem with the moon is we don't have iron or carbon dioxide readily available to make return capsules or water bottles from. We do on Mars.
> >
>
> Nobody but you is talking about shipping water back, Mook. Water is
> too valuable where it is to ship it back to Earth, which has stupid
> amounts of fresh water. Then you add in the shipping costs and it's a
> REALLY dumb idea.

Someone asked the question, I analysed it.

What someone thinks is dumb or not doesn't determine the profitability of a business.

Would people buy water bottled on Mars at some price? Yes. How do we know that? People ship water from Iceland to California and pay $2.22 per litre for the privilege. 900,000 litres per day is being shipped from an Icelandic glacier to all points around the world at this price - and a rather large business exists.

As mentioned, I am responding to another party's observation that water could be shipped from Mars. I agree. It might even be a subsidiary to the Icelandic water company. It would pay dividends and support a small base of operators near this glacier.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Wide_view_of_glacier_showing_image_field.JPG

Iceland Glacier water is cheap in comparison to these brands;

http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/entertainment/the-top-10-most-exotic-and-expensive-bottled-waters-in-the-world/


At $40 per 750 ml bottle, and the bottle is manufactured on Mars as well! It would be quite a deal. A ton of water would generate $48,485 - not $2,200.

At those prices we could dispense with the big maglev launcher and use the ability to make steel on Mars from Martian hematite, to build a rocket drone with a 3D printer - fuel it with LOX/LNG made from Mars' atmosphere and local water...

4 H2O + energy ---> 4 H2 + 2 O2

CO2 + 4 H2 ---> CH4 + 2 H2O

So 2 O2 is 64 amu whilst CH4 is 16 amu - a mass ratio of 4 to 1. An idealised LOX/LNG engine operating in near vacuum has an Isp of 368.9 a mix ratio of 3.45 a propellant density of 830 kg/m3.

So, for each metric ton of propellant for launch we process 1,011.2 kg of water and 618.0 kg of carbon dioxide into 224.7 kg of methane, 775.3 kg of LOX for use on board the rocket, 123.6 kg of LOX for use on the colony.

With a 6% structure fraction and a 6.1 km/sec final velocity, and a 368.9 sec Isp we can calculate that to send a 1000 litres to Earth requires a drone take of weight of 7,985.6 kg. With 319.4 kg structure, 1,462.1 kg methane made on site, 5,044.4 kg of LOX made on site, from 6,579.6 litres of water - consuming a grand total of 7,579.6 litres of water when you include the bottles of water anyway.

A tank holding this much propellant consists of a sphere 2.465 meters in diameter of combined LOX/Methane mix - MOX monopropellant rocket.

An automated system that landed on Mars, and did one system a week - knowing that it takes 40 MJ to process Mars' soil into 1 kg steel - and it takes 15.9 MJ to process one kg of propellant. 12.8 GJ for the rocket, 127.2 GJ for the propellant and water. 140 GJ per launch. One drone per week (all launched during Synodic alignment for a Hohmann transfer orbit) That's a 231.48 kW average power unit. 452.95 kW peak output under Mars lighting conditions, it covers 1,055 square meters. A 26 meter diameter inflatable concentrator that focuses on to a 300 mm diameter wafer that is 68% efficient converting sunlight to power.

http://www.dlr.de/Portaldata/55/Resources/dokumente/sart/0095-0212prop.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3j4y6uJQmg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2OVwT_R4Q

The same systems that Electrolux uses to clean your home is modified to find particles of hematite and water - bring it back to the 3D printer that produces a rocket and fuels it up. The rocket has its own landing gear and can flex that gear to move away from the construction stage to a storage point where it waits until the right time to return to Earth.

It takes 779.94 days for Mars to align properly with Earth so that the rockets can launch. That's 111 weeks - so the 111 rockets built during the 111 weeks between synodic periods - launched over the 2.94 day period sees a launch every 38 minutes 8.4 seconds - before the cycle starts again.

At a value of $40 per 750 ml bottle this is $53.33 per litre. That's $5.92 million per synodic period.

Acqua di Cristallo $60,000 $8,878.50
Kona Nigari------ $ 402 $ 59.49
Fillico------------ $ 219 $ 32.41
Bling------------- $ 40 $ 5.92
Veen------------- $ 23 $ 3.40

According to Reuters the USA spends $40 billion on space.

USA $40.0 billion
China $11.0 billion
Versace - Mars Water - $8.8 billion <====per synodic period
Russia $8.6 bilion
India $4.3 billion

A Reusable Falcon Heavy costs 30% less than an expendable that's $63 million instead of $90 million. The rocket can put 54,400 kg into LEO. Deploying the large solar collector that is to be used on Mars, at 1 AU produces 1 MW continuously!

Okay, so using an electro-spray ion rocket array - MEMS propulsive surface that - that projects inert propellant at a speed of 15.6 km/sec produces 128.2 Newtons of thrust. It has 13,110 kg of propellant and masses 41,290 kg - arriving at Mars. It accelerates 8.48 m/sec per hour.

It takes 566.6 hours - 23.61 days to boost to Trans Mars Injection. When it arrives at Mars it folds its array away after the final course correction, and begins its descent from Mars orbit. It slows and then uses MEMS bipropellant rocket array to touch down at the Glacier edge. The inflatable solar concentrator re-deploys on the surface, and the micro robot array begins operation.

This would be a piloted system.

A totally drone system - could be 1/12th the size - and each one would have a solar array as large as the one described here. So it has 12x the power - so it boosts in 48 hours instead of 24 days. A dozen drones sent instead of one drone increases chances of success - and production rate. 111 kiloliters times 11 drones - with one support drone in transit - Is 1221 kilolitres per synodic period -at $60,000 per bottle this is $97.68 billion - At these prices, each bottle is equipped with a drone to deliver the bottle directly to a designated locations that is beamed to the system on Mars. People who buy can access the water factory and track their production. The system launches 1000 litres per drone rocket, but each 750 ml bottle has built around a drone. So, like a MIRV each drone enters the Earth's atmosphere, slows to subsonic speeds in the stratosphere, and the drone delivers the package directly to the designated location.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/12/14/amazon-delivered-its-first-customer-package-drone/95401366/

Communicating with the buyer via bluetooth and wifi directly to the cell phone - and through the internet.

That way the buyers can confirm the entry of the drone capsule into the Earth's upper atmosphere, and watch it as each bottle flies directly to its client.

* * *

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie00070a031?journalCode=iecred

We can synthesis other things on Mars - and send them to Earth at great price. Alcohol comes to mind. Tobacco as well.

Check it out;

http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/the-15-most-expensive-alcoholic-beverages-in-the-world/

Johnny Walker Diamond Jubilee at $165,000 - is more expensive than the water. An ice cube made on Mars, mixed with some Martian Water and good Martian Scotch - would cost as much as a small used car! I can see this being quite popular.

$90.0 billion per year is spent on alcohol in the USA - that's more than double what is spent on space.

>
> >
> >>
> >> It is hideously expensive to launch spent radioactive garbage and have
> >> it crash onto the moon (there is no need to land, is there ?) compared
> >> to all the regulatory red tape and long term costs of maintaining
> >> uranium dump site on earth ?
> >>
> >
> >That depends on the details. Using a self-supporting hyperloop
> >
>
> What the fuck does an EARTH transportation system have to do with
> putting things on the Moon?
>
> <snip MookSpew>

Some people like spending money on the most expensive things. They feel its exclusivity confers value.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <5852ef54$0$43836$c3e8da3$5e5e...@news.astraweb.com>,
jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...

>
> On 2016-12-15 06:05, Jeff Findley wrote:
>
> > expensive to do this due to the huge delta-V needed. All the hand
> > waving in the world won't change the laws of physics, so stop waving
> > your damn hands.
>
>
> Not asking to wave the laws of physics. Asking to understand in simple
> words how returning from the moon is the same as de-orbiting from ISS
> (aka: decelerate orbital speed around earth to drop altitude).

Because absent leaving the solar system completely, you're *always* in
an orbit around something. Leave lunar orbit with the smallest burn
possible puts you in an earth orbit similar to the moon's orbit. Leave
earth orbit with the smallest burn possible puts you in a solar orbit
similar to the earth's orbit.

The really tricky bits are when your orbit is being influenced heavily
by more than one object (like "halo orbits" around Lagrange points).

[Jeff Findley]

In article <5852f187$0$60926$b1db1813$2411...@news.astraweb.com>,
jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...

>
> On 2016-12-15 06:15, Jeff Findley wrote:
>
> > http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
> > See the huge difference between the numbers? Well, there's your problem
> > with "sun disposal"!
>
> These numbers are for circular orbit around sun. Notice no "red arrow"
> to indicate one could use the sun to slow down to orbital speed of 0.

Actually, the number between the "low sun orbit" and the sun is exactly
what you need in order to send something directly into the sun. Yes,
you can save a bit if you "graze" the sun over many orbits, but that is
not desirable when trying to "dispose" of nuclear waste since your
disposal "capsule" could break apart during one of the passes spewing
waste back into the solar system.

You *really* want the stuff to go into the sun directly rather than by
any other means. Again, look how *big* the sum of the numbers are to go
from the earth's surface *into* the sun.

> Would it be correct to state that orbital energy of a circular orbit of
> X altitude could be equal to that of an elliptical orbit where perigee
> is much lower than x, and apogee is much higher than x ?

You need to find an orbital calculator (you can find them online) and
play with it. It's much too early in the morning and I've not head
enough coffee today to work up the motivation to do this for you.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <7a2e7528-465f-4031...@googlegroups.com>,
mokme...@gmail.com says...

>
> On Friday, December 16, 2016 at 9:42:54 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> > William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 9:37:17 AM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
> > >> On 2016-12-12 13:29, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> > The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
> > >> > hideously expensive trash.
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >
> > >Water is far more abundant on Mars than the Moon, but for 900,000 litres per day, we can likely find a place on the Moon to mine for water - and send part of it to Earth for consumption there. The problem with the moon is we don't have iron or carbon dioxide readily available to make return capsules or water bottles from. We do on Mars.
> > >
> >
> > Nobody but you is talking about shipping water back, Mook. Water is
> > too valuable where it is to ship it back to Earth, which has stupid
> > amounts of fresh water. Then you add in the shipping costs and it's a
> > REALLY dumb idea.
>
> Someone asked the question, I analysed it.
>
> What someone thinks is dumb or not doesn't determine the profitability of a business.

Bullshit. It's a dumb idea precisely because it's far cheaper to obtain
water on earth than it would be to obtain it on the moon and then ship
it back to earth. The shipping *costs* destroy any possibility of
"profitability".

You might be able to sell a couple of bottles of water to a billionaire
or two as a "souvenir", but it would have to be quite the unique
billionaire. One really interested in space would just take a trip
there and bring back a bottle in their luggage. One not interested in
space wouldn't care about the bottle of water anymore than taking a trip
there.

Me thinks you won't have much of a market for bottled moon water here on
earth.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <ebghh7...@mid.individual.net>,
niklas...@tidorum.invalid says...

Here's another chart which may be more accurate (scroll down towards the
bottom):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget

This just about matches your math. So, yes, using this other chart the
answer is somewhere on the order of 40 km/sec to go from earth's surface
into the sun. This is 4x the cost of getting to LEO. It's still more
than twice the delta-V compared to what it takes to get from the earth's
surface to the moon's surface.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, December 16, 2016 at 9:42:54 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 9:37:17 AM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
>> >> On 2016-12-12 13:29, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > The Moon is better suited to that sort of thing, but it's still
>> >> > hideously expensive trash.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >
>> >Water is far more abundant on Mars than the Moon, but for 900,000 litres per day, we can likely find a place on the Moon to mine for water - and send part of it to Earth for consumption there. The problem with the moon is we don't have iron or carbon dioxide readily available to make return capsules or water bottles from. We do on Mars.
>> >
>>
>> Nobody but you is talking about shipping water back, Mook. Water is
>> too valuable where it is to ship it back to Earth, which has stupid
>> amounts of fresh water. Then you add in the shipping costs and it's a
>> REALLY dumb idea.
>>
>
>Someone asked the question, I analysed it.
>

Nobody 'asked the question'. You brought this stupid idea up all on
your own.

>
>What someone thinks is dumb or not doesn't determine the profitability of a business.
>

It does when they think it's dumb because of the costs involved.

>
>Would people buy water bottled on Mars at some price? Yes. How do we know that? People ship water from Iceland to California and pay $2.22 per litre for the privilege. 900,000 litres per day is being shipped from an Icelandic glacier to all points around the world at this price - and a rather large business exists.
>

ON Mars, sure. On Earth from Mars? Don't be preposterous. How close
is the cost of shipping a tonne of water from Iceland to a million
dollars?

Hint: Not very.

<MookSpew of Magic Mookie Math Munched>

[Niklas Holsti]

On 16-12-16 13:20 , Jeff Findley wrote:
> In article <ebghh7...@mid.individual.net>,
> niklas...@tidorum.invalid says...

>>
>> That map seems not directly relevant to garbage disposal in the Sun. It
>> shows something like 600 km/s to reach the Sun, but I'm pretty sure that
>> if we get the garbage off Earth (11 km/s) and stop its circum-solar
>> orbital velocity (30 km/s more), it will fall into the Sun.
>>
>> The 600-odd km/s in the map is probably for *landing* softly on the Sun
>> -- perhaps "landing" isn't the right word, so let's say "reaching a
>> point at the Sun's visible photosphere, at rest with respect to the
>> photosphere".
>>
>> Of course 41 km/s is still a rather large delta-v.
>
> Here's another chart which may be more accurate (scroll down towards the
> bottom):
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget
>
> This just about matches your math. So, yes, using this other chart the
> answer is somewhere on the order of 40 km/sec to go from earth's surface
> into the sun. This is 4x the cost of getting to LEO. It's still more
> than twice the delta-V compared to what it takes to get from the earth's
> surface to the moon's surface.

That's an interesting Wikipedia page, thanks.

It also contains this sentence, about reaching the Sun from LEO, which
would normally take 24 km/s according to their table: "One can use 8.8
km/s to go very far away from the sun, then use a negligible Δv to bring
the angular momentum to zero, and then fall into the sun." So about 11
km/s in total should suffice, just as Alain Fournier said, but this plan
(go far, then stop and fall) seems even practical. One could perhaps
get a nudge from Jupiter, on the way, if needed.

[JF Mezei]

On 2016-12-15 22:24, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:

>>http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
>>
>
> These are very handy when answering questions like this for others.

That graph shows delta V needed to lower orbit around sun from Earth
altitude to some small altitude IN ORBIT around the sun.

It does not show energy needed to essentially convert orbit at Earth
altitude to an elliptical orbit with perigee very close to sun, and
apogee much further than Earth (which wouldn't happen because sun would
capture the ship at perigee).


All of spaceflight so far has been designed for orbit insertion or
controlled re-entry (even for Progress where they want predicability of
debris hitting ocean).

[William Mook]

On Saturday, December 17, 2016 at 12:01:48 AM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
> In article <5852f187$0$60926$b1db1813$2411...@news.astraweb.com>,
> jfmezei...@vaxination.ca says...
> >
> > On 2016-12-15 06:15, Jeff Findley wrote:
> >
> > > http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
> > > See the huge difference between the numbers? Well, there's your problem
> > > with "sun disposal"!
> >
> > These numbers are for circular orbit around sun. Notice no "red arrow"
> > to indicate one could use the sun to slow down to orbital speed of 0.
>
> Actually, the number between the "low sun orbit" and the sun is exactly
> what you need in order to send something directly into the sun.

Is that true? Well, if we calculate a Hohmann transfer orbit between 1 AU and 1/1075 AU vs Earth orbital velocity (29.765 km/sec) dropping to so... we have for that orbit

a = (1 + 1/1075) / 2 = 0.50045612...

Applying the Vis Viva Equation;

V = SQRT( 2/1 -1/0.50045612) = 0.04269446

Which is 1.270833 km/sec at 1 AU (Earth's orbit) So, instead of escaping Earth with 29.765 km/sec hyperbolic excess velocity we only have to escape with 28.49417

A difference but not much of one. On the Earth's surface you must depart with

V = SQRT(11.19^2 + 29.77^2) = 31.81 km/sec (71,120 mph)

to hit the Sun dead centre

vs

V = SQRT(11.19^2 + 28.50^2) = 30.62 km/sec (68,460 mph)

to graze the corona, burn up and fall in to the sun.

A slight but definite change.

> Yes,
> you can save a bit if you "graze" the sun over many orbits,

There's very little advantage in doing it over several orbits. Look at the density of the solar atmosphere vs altitude, and lower the perigee so it definitely burns up. There is no advantage in doing it over several orbits. There is a definite though slight advantage in having the payload graze the solar atmosphere.

> but that is
> not desirable when trying to "dispose" of nuclear waste since your
> disposal "capsule" could break apart during one of the passes spewing
> waste back into the solar system.

Then doing it at all is problematical since your capsule could spew waste during launch, transfer or any other time. Fact is if you escaped the gravity well of Earth, and spewed the most intense radioactive waste imaginable into interplanetary space, it would fall below detectability in a matter of days.

>
> You *really* want the stuff to go into the sun directly rather than by
> any other means.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272507882_Fundamentals_of_Astrodynamics

http://fgg-web.fgg.uni-lj.si/~/mkuhar/zalozba/fundamentals_of_astrodynamics-bate_mueller&white-1971.pdf

Get these book - read them - and then we can talk. Shooting a payload off Earth and letting it fall directly into the sun by zeroing out Earth's orbital velocity is materially not different than ALMOST zeroing out Earth's orbital velocity and letting it graze the upper reaches of the solar disk at an altitude that assures complete disposal.

> Again, look how *big* the sum of the numbers are to go
> from the earth's surface *into* the sun.

There is a definite but slight difference in velocities - of about 1.27 km/sec.

> > Would it be correct to state that orbital energy of a circular orbit of
> > X altitude could be equal to that of an elliptical orbit where perigee
> > is much lower than x, and apogee is much higher than x ?
>
> You need to find an orbital calculator (you can find them online) and
> play with it. It's much too early in the morning and I've not head
> enough coffee today to work up the motivation to do this for you.
>
> Jeff

You can calculate all this quite readily.

Another approach would be to boost a waste capsule to a very high aohelion above the sun and then reduce velocities to nearly zero at apohelion for a sun grazing orbit that assured complete capture at that solar altitude.

dV to 0 out tot km/s AU Time yrs

29.77 - 29.77 1.00 0.18 Earth

17.19 4.60 21.79 2.00 1.42
12.15 6.69 18.84 3.00 2.33 Asteroids
9.41 7.89 17.30 4.00 3.39
7.69 8.66 16.35 5.00 4.58
4.01 10.37 14.38 10.00 12.04 Outer Planets
2.72 10.99 13.71 15.00 21.58
2.05 11.31 13.37 20.00 32.82
1.65 11.51 13.16 25.00 45.53
1.38 11.64 13.03 30.00 59.56
1.19 11.74 12.93 35.00 74.79
1.04 11.81 12.85 40.00 91.13 Kuiper Belt
0.93 11.87 12.79 45.00 108.52
0.83 11.91 12.75 50.00 126.89
0.42 12.12 12.54 100 356.21
0.04 12.31 12.35 1,000 11,188.74

So, you can see that by boosting to a large apohelion and then slowing at that apohelion slightly, you can drop right into the Sun, with very little delta vee - about half or less of the delta vee of a direct descent into the Sun. The only penalty you pay is the time it takes to complete the mission.

Now a gravity boost around Jupiter has the potential to kick a passing spacecraft by about Jupiter's orbital velocity - which means that boosting to Jupiter and using gravity assist to zero out the spacecraft's speed - saves delta vee. This reduces the total delta vee required from 15.24 km/sec to 9.61 km/sec!

5.63 9.61 15.24 7.00 7.27 Jupiter

This is the least energy cost path to Jupiter. It takes 7.27 years to carry it out. It takes 4.0 years to get to Jupiter from Earth along a minimum energy transfer orbit, and another 3.27 years for an object to fall into the Sun after Jupiter's zeroed out its speed.

You will recall that a gravity assist maneuver is like hitting a baseball with a baseball bat. Relative to the bat, the ball leaves with slightly less velocity than with which it hit the bat. However, if the bat is moving, the speed of the ball relative to the ball part is consierably changed. Same here. Jupiter is moving relative to the Sun, and by arriving at the right angle and departing at the right angle, the spacecraft velocity relative to the Sun is zero'd out - and the spacecraft falls directly into the Sun.

This by the way is the path Solar Probe Plus will use to travel to the Sun in 2018

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/03/18/delta-4-heavy-selected-for-launch-of-solar-probe/

[William Mook]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 11:35:53 AM UTC+13, Rick Jones wrote:
> JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:

> > It is hideously expensive to launch spent radioactive garbage and
> > have it crash onto the moon (there is no need to land, is there ?)
> > compared to all the regulatory red tape and long term costs of
> > maintaining uranium dump site on earth ?
>

> There is a non-trivial group of folks who fight transporting nuclear
> waste by either road or rail. It seems rather unlikely they would
> find launching it into space any more palatable. Case in point, the
> folks who protest any launch involving RTGs.
>
> rick jones
> --
> It is not a question of half full or empty - the glass has a leak.
> The real question is "Can it be patched?"
> these opinions are mine, all mine; HPE might not want them anyway... :)
> feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hpe.com but NOT BOTH...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R86mkvU4qHw

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1971.11455407?journalCode=rbul20

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2011/eirv38n33-20110826/38-40_3833.pdf

Moving these processes off-world and using the Moon, Mars and major dwarf planets like Ceres and Vesta, for raw materials - allows us to raise living standards generally whilst reducing our reliance on the biosphere lowering costs and end war.

Aluminium - (Deville process, Bayer process, Hall-Héroult process, Wöhler process)
Ammonia, used in fertilizer & explosives - (Haber process)
Bromine - (Dow process)
Chlorine, used in chemicals - (Chloralkali process, Weldon process, Hooker process)
Fat - (Rendering)
Fertilizer - (Nitrophosphate process)
Glass - (Pilkington process)
Gold - (Bacterial oxidation, Parkes process)
Graphite - (Acheson process)
Heavy Water, used to refine radioactive products - (Girdler sulfide process)
Hydrogen - (Steam reforming, Water Gas Shift Reaction)
Lead (and Bismuth) - (Betts electrolytic process, Betterton-Kroll process)
Nickel - (Mond process)
Nitric acid - (Ostwald process)
Paper - (Pulping, Kraft process, Fourdrinier machine)
Rubber - (Vulcanization)
Salt - (Alberger process, Grainer evaporation process)
Semiconductor crystals - (Bridgeman technique, Czochralski process)
Silver - (Patio process, Parkes process)
Silicon Carbide - (Acheson process, Lely process)
Sodium carbonate, used for soap - (Leblanc process, Solvay process, Leblanc-Deacon process)
Sulfuric acid - (Lead chamber process, Contact process)
Titanium - (Hunter process, Kroll process)
Zirconium - (Hunter process, Kroll process, Crystal bar process, Iodide process)

https://www.nap.edu/read/12028/chapter/5

In a little more than 50 years, the global economy grew from $7.1 trillion to $56 trillion in constant dollars

In 2002, 1.12 billion households—about three quarters of humanity—owned at least one television set.
There were 1.1 billion fixed phone lines in 2002, and another 1.1 billion mobile lines.
The Internet now connects about 600 million users.

By 2050 population grows to 8.9 billion people, with nearly all of this growth in developing countries.

The United States, with less than 5 % of the global population, uses about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources—burning up nearly 25 % of the coal, 26 % of the oil, and 27 % of the world’s natural gas.

As of 2002, the U.S. had more private cars than licensed drivers.

This means - the average American consumes

5.0x coal
5.2x oil
5.4x natural gas
6.4x water (159 gallons/day)

2.0x Chicken: 84.9 pounds
2.0x Beef: 63.5 pounds
2.0x Pork: 48.2 pounds
2.0x Turkey: 17.5 pounds
2.0x Lamb and Mutton: 1 pound

New houses in the U.S. were 38 % bigger in 2002 than in 1975, despite having fewer people per household on average.

The USA imports 100% of these materials

100%

Arsenic
Asbestos
Bauxite and Alumina
Columbium (Niobium)
Flourspar
Graphite
Indium
Manganese
Mica
Quartz Crystal
Rare Earths
Rubidium
Strontium
Thallium
Thorium
Vanadium
Yttrium

90% to 100%

Gallium
Gemstones
Bismuth
Platinum

80% to 90%

Stone (dimensioned)
Antimony
Rhenium
Tantalum
Barite
Diamond
Palladium
Cobalt
Potash

70% to 80%

Tin
chromium
Titanium (sponge)
Iodine
Titanium concentrates

60% to 70%

Tungsten
Silver
Zinc
ickel
Silicon (ferrosilicon)


50% to 60%

Peat
Magnesium Metal
Garnet (industrial)
Magnesium compounds
Diamond (dust, grit and powder)

40% to 50%

Aluminum
Ammonia
Copper

30% to 50%

Perlite
Vermiculite
Mica (scrap flake natural)

20% to 30%

Cadmium
Gypsum
Sulfur
Cement
Iron and Steel

10% to 20%

Salt
Pumice
Talc

1% to 10%

Iron and Steel Slag
Phosphate Rock
Iron Ore
Lead
Lime
Sand and Gravel (construction)

[William Mook]

Atmospheric Entry Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW5ozq4Tqew

Lunar Travel Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEgA16upX9c

Quaternions an Introduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BR8tK-LuB0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISbJ9S0fzwY

Quaternion fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlskQDR8-bY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaK2q22mMEg

Astrodynamics
http://fgg-web.fgg.uni-lj.si/~/mkuhar/zalozba/fundamentals_of_astrodynamics-bate_mueller&white-1971.pdf

[JF Mezei]

Question:

For a Progress:

if it fires de-orbit engine staight down towards Earth, could it graze
atmosphere with less fuel than a proper "de-orbit" where its orbital
velocity is decreased ?

(Since Progress is meant to self destruct during re-entry, the fact that
re=entry would be at higher speed and higher G forces is not relevant).


Question:

When Progress does a proper de-orbit burn, is the resulting orbit one
where apogee is same as former circular orbit, but perigee is lower ?

Is it correct to state that if it aims straight down, the resulting
orbit is one where perigee is lower but apogee will be higher than
former circular orbit ?

[Alain Fournier]

On Dec/16/2016 at 8:33 PM, JF Mezei wrote :
> Question:
>
> For a Progress:
>
> if it fires de-orbit engine staight down towards Earth, could it graze
> atmosphere with less fuel than a proper "de-orbit" where its orbital
> velocity is decreased ?

No that would use more fuel not less.

> (Since Progress is meant to self destruct during re-entry, the fact that
> re=entry would be at higher speed and higher G forces is not relevant).
>
>
> Question:
>
> When Progress does a proper de-orbit burn, is the resulting orbit one
> where apogee is same as former circular orbit, but perigee is lower ?

Yes.

> Is it correct to state that if it aims straight down, the resulting
> orbit is one where perigee is lower but apogee will be higher than
> former circular orbit ?

Yes that is what would theoretically happen if they did such a thing,
they don't.


Alain Fournier

[William Mook]

On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 5:19:54 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> >On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 12:17:14 AM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
> >> We've got a Mook on Mook on Mook reply here (minus the first two
> >> Mooks)...
> >>
> >> In article <986fddd7-0b0e-4a64...@googlegroups.com>,
> >> mokme...@gmail.com says...
> >> > The sands of Mars are red. That's because they're made out of
> >> > hematite. Why wouldn't you mine iron there and send it back to
> >> > Earth with a rail gun?
> >>
> >> Because steel made on earth is already quite cheap, so it would be
> >> economic suicide to do what you propose.
> >
> >Steel has been cheap historically, but is rising inexorably as raw materials are depleted here.
> >
> >https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-21/the-53-rally-in-steel-prices-that-points-to-china-s-rapid-shift
> >
>
> Pretty sure it's never going to exceed a million dollars a tonne,

So?

> so
> it's always going to be cheaper to do it here than to bring it back
> from space.

Hahaha - bootless speculation indeed. You *always* and I mean *always* accuse others of precisely the thing you do! lol. Sheez.

> The sensible thing to do with space resources is, well,
> space stuff.

A false dilemma is a fallacy that involves a situation in which only limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options. The obvious additional option here is that someone with a planetary desert deep in hematite and the ability to turn it to steel, might find ways to seek clients beyond the ones they're already serving! lol.

Put differently, when all the space stuff needs are met, and there's more resources available, those resources will naturally find their way to other uses. There is in fact no reason to believe terrestrial customers are special. Earth's surface after all resides in space.

Krafft Ehricke in 1962 detailed how this would occur in the last half of the 20th century;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R86mkvU4qHw

Element---- Fuel Non Fuel Mars Soil Multiply

Carbon---- 0.3551 0.0574
Hydrogen-- 0.0763 0.0025
Silicon----- 0.1355 0.2444 0.1725 1.4169
Oxygen---- 0.2217 0.4547 0.5440 0.8358
Iron------- 0.0797 0.0479 0.1042 0.4598
Aluminum- 0.0039 0.0023 0.0241 0.0955
Magnesium 0.0013 0.0017 0.0422 0.0403
Copper---- 0.0033 0.002
Manganese 0.0057 0.003
Calcium--- 0.0473 0.1417 0.0472 3.0018
Sodium--- 0.0158 0.0095 0.0074 1.2800
Sulfur----- 0.0095 0.0058 0.0212 0.2732
Potassium 0.0036 0.0021 0.0021 1.0123
Phophorus 0.0032 0.0019
Chlorine-- 0.0244 0.0147 0.0070 2.1000

Mars soil has plenty of all the things Binney estimates the US economy needs. Launching materials back to Earth via a rail gun or magnetic launcher could be done very cheaply.

> >
> >>
> >> Besides, one would think that a Mars colony would use such raw materials
> >> to either build things they need on Mars or build things that are
> >> actually worth exporting.
> >>
> >
> >That's a false choice. In order to use or build things on Mars local steel is needed. So Martians would need to supply themselves with steel made from hematite on the surface and carbon in the carbon dioxide in the air - which means any surplus to their needs could be exported.
> >
>
> Except no one would buy it at the prices they'd have to charge.

You're the one making baseless assertions. Krafft Ehricke did studies for General Dynamics in 1962 that showed Mars could be a competitive source for nearly all materials we mine on Earth today. Gerard K. O'Neil showed the Moon could build orbiting colonies at Lagrange Points in the Earth Moon system and they would make solar power stations to beam energy to Earth at costs that would make power too cheap to meter in 1972.


>
> >
> >>
> >> Raw materials aren't going to cut it as an
> >> export unless there is a return on that investment.
> >>
> >
> >Correct. Prices are rising on Earth and Earth's ability to produce low cost steel will be non-existant in 64 years according to the experts. Some believe shortages may be arriving in as little at 12 years.
> >
>
> It's always going to be cheaper to do it here

No it isn't, especially since nuclear fission can be used to make power too cheap to meter in an environment blanketed with deadly radiation and served by artificial intelligence all things will be too cheap to meter. Earth will be a natural place to send things. Especially since its easy to launch things off mars with a magnetic launcher.

> once you factor in
> transport costs.

You've obviously never heard of mass drivers and non rocket launchers. With Mars' low gravity and low atmospheric density, it is a natural choice to send products back to Earth.


> It's why there will be a local steel industry on
> Mars; because it costs too bloody much to bring it from Earth.

It will be cheaper to make steel on Mars than on Earth in the first place because of the super abundance of hematite (iron makes Mars red) and the super abundance of energy - due to the ability to use nuclear fission in ways that make it too cheap to meter, and the super abundance of labour due to the widespread use of AI and robotics.

http://journals.lww.com/asaiojournal/Citation/1973/04000/Status_of_the_Usaec_s_Nuclear_Powered_Artificial.96.aspx

http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/805252=

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thanasis_Economou/publication/13842240_The_Chemical_Composition_of_Martian_Soil_and_Rocks_Returned_by_the_Mobile_Alpha_Proton_X-ray_Spectrometer_Preliminary_Results_from_the_X-ray_Mode/links/5686c3df08ae197583975b89.pdf

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/next-generation-of-boston-dynamics-atlas-robot

> >
> >>
> >> Sorry Mook,
> >>
> >
> >I feel your love.
> >
>
> Keep your hands to yourself!

Haha - always misinterpreting - never getting it right.

> >
> >>
> >> but this entire idea is b.s.
> >>
> >
> >No it isn't.
> >
>
> Yes it is.

No it isn't.

> Think about the transportation costs.

Okay

> Get back to me when
> the price of steel on Earth exceeds a million dollars a tonne and we
> can start thinking about it.

Nonsense. You have prejudices only. Its obvious when power and labour are too cheap to meter, and your sitting in the metal of a desert made of iron - that you will make iron and sell it to those who want it. At 40 GJ per ton to reduce it from hematite and 16 GJ per ton to launch it to Earth on a mass driver - using nuclear fission technology that's 70 years old TODAY - with no worries about radiation and the environment - iron will arrive from Mars more cheaply than its made on Earth TODAY - with zero environmental costs.

>
> >
> >>
> >> I don't know how you got to
> >> visions of Mars colonies sending quite common raw materials like iron,
> >> silicon, aluminum, and etc. to earth by railgun, but it's just not going
> >> to be viable economically.
> >>
> >
> >That's your problem that you don't know something. Perhaps if you listened to those who know more than you - that might help.
> >
>
> Great advice. One wishes YOU would take it once in a while.

I do. That's why I'm able to point to peer reviewed literature for EVERYTHING I say. You? Not so much!


> >
> >More below.
> >
>
> Nope. Dumping the Magic Mookie Multiplication Math.
>
> <Massive MookSpew Munched>

See? You ignore your betters. I guess that's one coping mechanism for you.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 5:19:54 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 12:17:14 AM UTC+13, Jeff Findley wrote:
>> >> We've got a Mook on Mook on Mook reply here (minus the first two
>> >> Mooks)...
>> >>
>> >> In article <986fddd7-0b0e-4a64...@googlegroups.com>,
>> >> mokme...@gmail.com says...
>> >> > The sands of Mars are red. That's because they're made out of
>> >> > hematite. Why wouldn't you mine iron there and send it back to
>> >> > Earth with a rail gun?
>> >>
>> >> Because steel made on earth is already quite cheap, so it would be
>> >> economic suicide to do what you propose.
>> >
>> >Steel has been cheap historically, but is rising inexorably as raw materials are depleted here.
>> >
>> >https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-21/the-53-rally-in-steel-prices-that-points-to-china-s-rapid-shift
>> >
>>
>> Pretty sure it's never going to exceed a million dollars a tonne,
>
>So?
>

So that's going to be the transportation cost for your 'Mars Water',
you nitwit. Right now it is much, MUCH higher than that, so that's
the likely cost in 50 years or so.

>
>> so
>> it's always going to be cheaper to do it here than to bring it back
>> from space.
>
>Hahaha - bootless speculation indeed. You *always* and I mean *always* accuse others of precisely the thing you do! lol. Sheez.
>

No, it's merely basic logic. You are going to need about the same
sort of plant wherever you do it, so even if you make the (untrue)
assumptions that all the infrastructure THERE costs no more than the
infrastructure HERE, you still have to move the finished products. The
transportation costs from there will always be higher than the
transportation costs from here.

>
>> The sensible thing to do with space resources is, well,
>> space stuff.
>
>A false dilemma is a fallacy that involves a situation in which only limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options. The obvious additional option here is that someone with a planetary desert deep in hematite and the ability to turn it to steel, might find ways to seek clients beyond the ones they're already serving! lol.
>

It's not a dilemma. It's basic logic, which you are incapable of.

lol.

>
>Put differently, when all the space stuff needs are met, and there's more resources available, those resources will naturally find their way to other uses. There is in fact no reason to believe terrestrial customers are special. Earth's surface after all resides in space.
>

Except the only way to do what you propose is if "those resources" are
sold at a huge loss. That won't happen. Instead they'll either
expand (expanding needs) or stockpile (reducing production).

>
>Krafft Ehricke in 1962 detailed how this would occur in the last half of the 20th century;
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R86mkvU4qHw
>

Your cite doesn't support your claim, is outdated, and is incorrect.

>
>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Besides, one would think that a Mars colony would use such raw materials
>> >> to either build things they need on Mars or build things that are
>> >> actually worth exporting.
>> >>
>> >
>> >That's a false choice. In order to use or build things on Mars local steel is needed. So Martians would need to supply themselves with steel made from hematite on the surface and carbon in the carbon dioxide in the air - which means any surplus to their needs could be exported.
>> >
>>
>> Except no one would buy it at the prices they'd have to charge.
>
>You're the one making baseless assertions. Krafft Ehricke did studies for General Dynamics in 1962 that showed Mars could be a competitive source for nearly all materials we mine on Earth today. Gerard K. O'Neil showed the Moon could build orbiting colonies at Lagrange Points in the Earth Moon system and they would make solar power stations to beam energy to Earth at costs that would make power too cheap to meter in 1972.
>

Not shown by your cite. Claim fails.

>
>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Raw materials aren't going to cut it as an
>> >> export unless there is a return on that investment.
>> >>
>> >
>> >Correct. Prices are rising on Earth and Earth's ability to produce low cost steel will be non-existant in 64 years according to the experts. Some believe shortages may be arriving in as little at 12 years.
>> >
>>
>> It's always going to be cheaper to do it here
>>
>
>No it isn't, especially since nuclear fission can be used to make power too cheap to meter in an environment blanketed with deadly radiation and served by artificial intelligence all things will be too cheap to meter. Earth will be a natural place to send things. Especially since its easy to launch things off mars with a magnetic launcher.
>

Yes, if you ignore the costs of things (power to cheap to meter) and
assume magical technologies that don't exist you can do anything. But
the rest of us are constrained by reality.

>
>> once you factor in
>> transport costs.
>
>You've obviously never heard of mass drivers and non rocket launchers. With Mars' low gravity and low atmospheric density, it is a natural choice to send products back to Earth.
>

Poppycock. Magical mass drivers that can fire tons of things at Earth
which will then automagically teleport themselves down to the surface
upon arrival do not exist.

>
>> It's why there will be a local steel industry on
>> Mars; because it costs too bloody much to bring it from Earth.
>
>It will be cheaper to make steel on Mars than on Earth in the first place because of the super abundance of hematite (iron makes Mars red) and the super abundance of energy - due to the ability to use nuclear fission in ways that make it too cheap to meter, and the super abundance of labour due to the widespread use of AI and robotics.
>

Nonsense. There is no more an 'abundance of hematite' on Mars than
there is on Earth. You're going to have to find ores. What you're
talking about using is a very poor grade of ore. Yes, if you ignore
ore quality, ignore the cost of production, and ignore the cost of
transport, you can do anything. But it is only in the fantastical
MookieWorld that such things can be ignored.

>
>http://journals.lww.com/asaiojournal/Citation/1973/04000/Status_of_the_Usaec_s_Nuclear_Powered_Artificial.96.aspx
>

Over 40 years old and irrelevant to your claims.

>
>http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/805252=
>

Over a decade and a half old and irrelevant to your claims.

>
>https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thanasis_Economou/publication/13842240_The_Chemical_Composition_of_Martian_Soil_and_Rocks_Returned_by_the_Mobile_Alpha_Proton_X-ray_Spectrometer_Preliminary_Results_from_the_X-ray_Mode/links/5686c3df08ae197583975b89.pdf
>

Iron concentrations need to be about 4x higher than this reports in
order to be considered 'workable' iron ores. Thanks for disproving
your own point.

>
>http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/next-generation-of-boston-dynamics-atlas-robot
>

Irrelevant to your claims. If it was relevant we would be using such
robots to mine here. We don't.

>> >
>> >>
>> >> Sorry Mook,
>> >>
>> >
>> >I feel your love.
>> >
>>
>> Keep your hands to yourself!
>>
>
>Haha - always misinterpreting - never getting it right.
>

Haha - always havering - never getting it right.

>> >
>> >>
>> >> but this entire idea is b.s.
>> >>
>> >
>> >No it isn't.
>> >
>>
>> Yes it is.
>
>No it isn't.
>

Yes it is.

>>
>> Think about the transportation costs.
>
>Okay
>
>> Get back to me when
>> the price of steel on Earth exceeds a million dollars a tonne and we
>> can start thinking about it.
>
>Nonsense. You have prejudices only. Its obvious when power and labour are too cheap to meter, and your sitting in the metal of a desert made of iron - that you will make iron and sell it to those who want it. At 40 GJ per ton to reduce it from hematite and 16 GJ per ton to launch it to Earth on a mass driver - using nuclear fission technology that's 70 years old TODAY - with no worries about radiation and the environment - iron will arrive from Mars more cheaply than its made on Earth TODAY - with zero environmental costs.
>

Yes, if you assume magic and ignore costs you can make any claims you
like. But they have nothing to do with our present reality and merely
point out how out of touch with that you are.

Seek help.

>
>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> I don't know how you got to
>> >> visions of Mars colonies sending quite common raw materials like iron,
>> >> silicon, aluminum, and etc. to earth by railgun, but it's just not going
>> >> to be viable economically.
>> >>
>> >
>> >That's your problem that you don't know something. Perhaps if you listened to those who know more than you - that might help.
>> >
>>
>> Great advice. One wishes YOU would take it once in a while.
>>
>
>I do. That's why I'm able to point to peer reviewed literature for EVERYTHING I say. You? Not so much!
>

We've seen how that works for you, above. Mostly "peer reviewed
literature" that is decades out of date, incorrect, and doesn't
support your claims in the first place. You then pretend everything
is free and magic exists in order to make your case.

>
>> >
>> >More below.
>> >
>>
>> Nope. Dumping the Magic Mookie Multiplication Math.
>>
>> <Massive MookSpew Munched>
>
>See? You ignore your betters. I guess that's one coping mechanism for you.
>

No, I get tired of wading through voluminous spew from havering
bampots like you.

[William Mook]

On Thursday, December 15, 2016 at 5:47:45 PM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
> On 2016-12-14 22:26, William Mook wrote:
>
> > The iron ore reserves of Earth at present seem quite vast, but continual exponential increase in consumption make this resource quite finite.
>
> You are forgetting recycling. As resources dwindle, recycling will increase.

No I'm not. The projections I referenced take that into account.

>
> > In contrast the Martian surface is littered with quadrillions of tons of hematite
>
> Question is how many grams of iron per tonne of dirt you get, and how
> costly is extraction from the dust.

The Mars rovers have estimated that based on a number of measurements. I gave those references too. I also went into detail about the cost of the process. 40 giga-joules per ton. Another 18 giga-joules per ton to send it to Earth with a magnetic mass launcher. A total of 58 giga-joules per ton. So, how much is a giga-joule on Mars? That's where I had the discussion of too-cheap-to-meter energy.

> BTW, does the red apearance of mars signify the iron is rusted and as
> such contains oxygen ?

<sigh> The formula for hematite is Fe2O3. That means given the molecular weight of the materials involved that a ton of hematite consists of 1400 pounds of iron and 600 pounds of oxygen. I mentioned that the mining operation would not only build considerable floor space on Mars but would also provide an Earth normal atmosphere to a depth of 9 feet.

[William Mook]

Dated does not mean outdated.

WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.

If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.

Robots are transforming mining today

http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/internet-things-mining-industry/
https://www.academia.edu/356502/Application_of_Robotics_In_Mining_Industry_A_Critical_Review
http://www.eumicon.com/images/EUMICON_2015/Robotics%20in%20mining%20-%20Henryk%20Karas.pdf
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/04/04/325475.htm

Heat shield rock - 98% iron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg

98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.

General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf

General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg

Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.

[Jonathan]

On 12/17/2016 10:59 PM, William Mook wrote:


>
> Dated does not mean outdated.
>
> WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
>
> If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
>

You're conclusion has a glaring logical flaw. If we can't
learn to live on Earth in a sustainable way, given it's
incredible abundance and ideal conditions, then we
can't learn to live in a sustainable way
anywhere...else.

Either we learn to live within our means here
on Earth, or...else.

The notion we can make it on Mars with it's
harsh conditions and sparse bounties, but not
on Earth, doesn't make sense.

And what does 'ever wealthier individuals' have
to do with it? Plus in the western free market
democracies population growth isn't an issue
implying that freedom and democracy is the
solution to population growth and sustainable
societies.

Not running away from the problems with
colonizing Mars as a solution.

[Fred J. McCall]

Skip to the bottom. Mookie once again flouts Usenet conventions by
posting everything at the bottom rather than in line with the original
discussion.

>Dated does not mean outdated.
>

Actually, when it comes to things like space, it kind of does.

>
>WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
>

You and I will both be long dead by the time that even starts to look
like a problem. This is rather like the whole 'peak oil' thing.
'Proven reserves' has always been around 30 years worth for the last
half century or so. That's because we find new sources and improve
technology to be able to economically recover poorer deposits. ALL
natural resources tend to work this way. You talk a lot about
hematite on Mars, but the concentrations in your own citations are way
too poor to be viable mining sources.

>
>If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
>

No reason in your tiny mind, anyway. So YOU should not go.

>
>Robots are transforming mining today
>

But not the kind of robots your citation above was about.

>
>http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/internet-things-mining-industry/
>

Big headline, no data. Talk about what they're "going to do".

>
>https://www.academia.edu/356502/Application_of_Robotics_In_Mining_Industry_A_Critical_Review
>

Conventional robotic applications like dumpers and drills. Nothing
like your original citation above.

>
>http://www.eumicon.com/images/EUMICON_2015/Robotics%20in%20mining%20-%20Henryk%20Karas.pdf":ddddd
>

First slide - "Probably robots..." Not what your original cite talked
about.

>
>http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/04/04/325475.htm
>

A few hundred robotic trucks worldwide and not the type of robots your
original cite was about.

>
>Heat shield rock - 98% iron
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg
>
>98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.
>

And here we see Mookie's problem. He just doesn't read very well. The
cite is about AN IRON METEORITE. His last sentence above is simply
wrong and has nothing to do with his cite.

>
>General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
>https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf
>

Do you have a point? I've known about MHDs for decades.

>
>General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg
>
>Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.
>

No. I've been to Dahlgren and know about this program. You
apparently do not.

Face it, Mookie. Anything that makes mining cheaper or allows the use
of poorer ores on Mars will do the same thing here on Earth.
Interplanetary travel will never be able to compete in cost with
trains and ships, so Mars transportation costs to Earth will always be
much higher. That that means is that 'commodities' are always going
to be cheaper to produce here on Earth and they're more valuable on
Mars than they are shipping them to Earth where they cannot compete in
price. Obviously you are not only not an engineer, but you are not
even adequate as a 'business guy'.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <5ptc5c94fmiructtn...@4ax.com>,
fjmc...@gmail.com says...

> Face it, Mookie. Anything that makes mining cheaper or allows the use
> of poorer ores on Mars will do the same thing here on Earth.
> Interplanetary travel will never be able to compete in cost with
> trains and ships, so Mars transportation costs to Earth will always be
> much higher. That that means is that 'commodities' are always going
> to be cheaper to produce here on Earth and they're more valuable on
> Mars than they are shipping them to Earth where they cannot compete in
> price. Obviously you are not only not an engineer, but you are not
> even adequate as a 'business guy'.
>

Agreed. And even as transportation to/from Mars gets cheaper, so will
transportation on earth.

This is why I hate these "far future" discussions in sci.space.policy.
They're so far into the future that they absolutely do not impact policy
today. Instead of here, they belong in a rec.arts.sf group (or
something similar).

Today, we need to keep working on reusable transportation architectures
for space travel. Things that are near term like Falcon 9 first stage
reuse and ACES upper stage reuse. Follow that with reusable landers for
the moon and/or Mars.

Jeff

[Jonathan]

On 12/18/2016 9:00 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
> In article <5ptc5c94fmiructtn...@4ax.com>,
> fjmc...@gmail.com says...
>> Face it, Mookie. Anything that makes mining cheaper or allows the use
>> of poorer ores on Mars will do the same thing here on Earth.
>> Interplanetary travel will never be able to compete in cost with
>> trains and ships, so Mars transportation costs to Earth will always be
>> much higher. That that means is that 'commodities' are always going
>> to be cheaper to produce here on Earth and they're more valuable on
>> Mars than they are shipping them to Earth where they cannot compete in
>> price. Obviously you are not only not an engineer, but you are not
>> even adequate as a 'business guy'.
>>
>
> Agreed. And even as transportation to/from Mars gets cheaper, so will
> transportation on earth.
>
> This is why I hate these "far future" discussions in sci.space.policy.
> They're so far into the future that they absolutely do not impact policy
> today. Instead of here, they belong in a rec.arts.sf group (or
> something similar).
>
> Today, we need to keep working on reusable transportation architectures
> for space travel. Things that are near term like Falcon 9 first stage
> reuse and ACES upper stage reuse. Follow that with reusable landers for
> the moon and/or Mars.
>
> Jeff
>

I think what is needed is a new profitable reason to
put people into orbit, once that happens the
free market will take care of the launch costs.

The reasons, or excuses, to put people into orbit
are mostly pie in the sky uses like colonies or
joy rides.

When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
a truly useful commodity like space solar power
can become practical and the free markets will
have a new reason to build large structures
in space.



s

[William Mook]

On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 12:44:32 AM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
> On 12/17/2016 10:59 PM, William Mook wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Dated does not mean outdated.
> >
> > WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
> >
> > If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
> >
>
>
>
> You're conclusion has a glaring logical flaw.

No it doesn't.

> If we can't
> learn to live on Earth in a sustainable way, given it's
> incredible abundance and ideal conditions,

The biosphere is ideal for lower forms of life who don't mind competing tooth and claw and creating a culture of the survival of the fittest to that lower order irrespective of other higher values humanity might wish to develop.

Conditions on Earth are non-ideal for an intelligent industrial species. It is only by creating an industrial infrastructure that exists independently of the biosphere, and in fact sustains terrestrial conditions off world that we can continue to grow and develop as an intelligent industrial species.

> then we
> can't learn to live in a sustainable way
> anywhere...else.

Definition of sustainable
1: capable of being sustained
2 a : of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged <sustainable techniques> <sustainable agriculture>

b : of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods <sustainable society>

> Either we learn to live within our means here
> on Earth, or...else.

There are insufficient resources on Earth today to sustain everyone at a high living standard. So, we must either establish a repressive governance world wide to allocate those limited resources in a sustainable way, or we must reduce populations, or we must reduce living standards to do as you say. All three avenues are being pursued at the present time.

Abundant resources exist off world today. More than enough to sustain everyone at a high living standard, independently of the biosphere. By making use of these resources we can continue with the current population at the current rate of growth, and arrange deployement of infrastructure and capital to sustain a very high living standard for that large and growing population.

> The notion we can make it on Mars with it's
> harsh conditions and sparse bounties, but not
> on Earth, doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense to those who have accepted the anti-human propaganda of the past fifty years. However, the dated material from Dr. Ehricke shows that there were other approaches that could be pursued to provide a growing every wealthier population that has the capacity to maintain the biodiversity and capacity of Earth's life form, and sustain conditions beyond Earth using technology that permit that biodiversity to expand and grow to other worlds.

Don't be fooled by the harsh conditions of Mars. You are making a logical error to equate harsh living conditions with sparse bounties. Iron for example is superabundant and easily recovered on Mars. Other elements are equally superabundant.

>
> And what does 'ever wealthier individuals' have
> to do with it?

Wealthy individuals command more energy and resources than poor individuals. That's what it means to be wealthy. In many senses someone that can command the useful time and attention of 100 people continuously to their needs and live on 1000 acres with 10,000 tons of raw material organised for their pleasure, is vastly wealthier than a person who lives in 80 square meters and only a few hours a week of their own time is available to them after taxes fees and other overheads, to meet their own needs, while only 2.5 tons of raw materials are organised for their living needs. Wealthy individuals have fewer children on average. Wealthy populations import workers to make up the shortfall in numbers their low reproduction rates cause. A world of very wealthy individuals all reproducing at rates that are below replacement levels, using robotic labour to provide for human labour shortfalls, requires vastly more resources than exist on Earth today if we are to sustain this for the world's current population.

To the extent that land, material, energy and useful time and attention depend on the capacity of the Earth's biosphere to sustain it, is the degree of impact we humans have on the biosphere. To the extent that land, material, energy and useful time and attention are totally independent of the Earth's biosphere to sustain it, provides a trophic change in the human condition and sets the stage for a trophic cascade that restores balance of the biosphere. To the degree we can build infrastructure that sustains conditoins suitable for life off world is the degree with which we can expand our biosphere.

> Plus in the western free market
> democracies population growth isn't an issue
> implying that freedom and democracy is the
> solution to population growth and sustainable
> societies.

Markets are not as free as you imagine and democracy is not as responsive as you believe as Edward Bernays pointed out in his ground breaking 1929 classic "Propaganda".

The real factor impacting growth rate is the living standard of the top 5% of the world's population who consume 50% of the world's resources. If all were to consume at the rate of the top 5% we would need to produce 19x the output we do today and that cannot be sustained with the resources remaining on Earth.

Very wealthy populations have higher degree of education and a greater range of personal liberty having nothing to do with politics. A person living in a Kingdom with a controlled market like Qatar has a per person income of $105,000 per year average whilst the Democratic Republic of Congo under virtually lawless conditions has a per person income of $395 per year average. Providing a counter-example to your presumption that democracy and free markets create wealth.

You are correct that those with higher income have lower reproductive rates while those with lower income have higher reproductive rates. Sociologists argue about this one, but one common element seems to be higher income generally available.

Now, with industry tied inexorably to the biosphere and terrestrial resources, we must get rid of about 85% of the people alive today to have the remaining 15% live at a standard that is sufficient to maintain a balance with nature. That implies the death of 6.4 billion people at the moment. The problem with this approach is that if an event or series of events are unleashed or allowed to happen on the planet to depopulate it to this extent, there is very little difference between wiping out 85% and 100% of humanity. that is, welcoming this approach is tantamount to welcoming our extinction. Even if we should survive physically it is doubtful we will survive emotionally and psychologically as the same species. The sociological consequences of such an act of depopulation would also be immense. I doubt if anyone alive today would recognise the survivors of such a depopulation event as human.

Further, this is a solution to a resource problem that has other solutions. You don't solve the problem of there not being enough hats by beheading people. You solve the problem of there not being enough hats by figuring out how to make more hats. The fact the resources lie beyone where you've been before is no excuse for not going after them.

> Not running away from the problems with
> colonizing Mars as a solution.

Turning our back on the resources of the solar system is not the solution either. Our species over-ran the resources of Olduvai Gorge some 1.9 million years ago. We naturally expanded our range by developing ways of living that allowed us to survive in environments we were not naturally suited to. This involves technology and the consumption of secondary resources to support that technology. By asking humanity to to turn its back on the frontier is asking humanity to make a fundamental change in its make up that has assured its dominance on Earth and will clearly lead to an extinction event that has no guarantee of limiting itself to 85% of the total. An extinction event of this magnitude could very well wipe out everyone.

The only practical question is, can we supply Earth's population with off-world resources in a way that frees the terrestrial population of its negative interactions with the terrestrial biosphere? Can it do so at a cost that is substantially less than making use of the resources on Earth? Given that we are saving the lives of 6.4 billion people alive today, and enriching the lives of 7.1 billion persons by making use of off world resources in this way, it makes sense to give it some serious consideration.

Can we make use of off-world resources more cheaply on Earth than using resources made on Earth? The answer to this question is surprisingly yes. Here's why;

The cost of anything is dictated by a number of factors;

(1) Raw material costs, including environmental costs,
(2) Energy costs,
(3) Labour costs,
(4) Social costs,
(5) Transport costs,

Let's take the example of iron on Earth vs. Iron on Mars.

Iron does not exist freely on Earth, but in ores that at the present time must be enriched to be usable at all. The availability of ores on Earth is strictly limited and use rates even with infinite recycling are difficult to expand to 19x consumption levels needed. Iron does exist freely on Mars and there is a superabundance of hematite on Mars turning the entire planet red. Hematite a high grade ore on Earth and quite rare in comparison to Mars.

Nuclear energy involving unshielded reactors using high grade fissile materials produce energy that is too cheap to meter. Such reactor operation cannot occur on Earth for a variety of reasons. One is that the biosphere of Earth is intolerant of radiation. Another is that there are nuclear weapons on Earth and we must limit their spread given our fractured social and political conditions. On Mars neither of these concerns apply. Mars is already quite radioactive compared to Earth. Settlers there will live in environments engineered to eliminate this radiation hazard. So, the use of unshielded or lightly shielded reactors are possible. Nuclear wepons do not exist on Mars. So, concern about proliferation of weapons on Mars isn't an issue either. So, the use of highly enriched materials in unsheilded or lightly shielded compact high temperature reactors, produces energy that is 1% or less the cost of energy production on Earth. So, energy is less expensive on Mars.

Anyone who has used Siri or GPS navigation App or seen the advances of Boston Dynamics or Wolfram Alpha or IBM's Watson or Tesla Autodrive, understands that AI is largely a solved problem today. The big issue is that these advances will not be permitted to compete with human populations without a fight. The picture of French cabbies setting cars afire on the motorway in response to Uber apps being made available in Paris is a case in point. On Mars, this dynamic does not exist and everything will be done with a high degree of automation due to very low populations and very high transport cost of that population. So, labour costs are far less on ars than on Earth.

The USA spends over $1 trillion per year on homeland security and overseas operations to secure itself against terror attacks. Europe spends similar amounts. These costs are trending upward as conditions worsen in the Middle East and those who can make their way to Europe. Labor unions, nuclear proliferation, environmental degradation, Mars doesn't have these problems and never will. Social costs of Mars operations are less than comparable operations on Earth.

Transport costs are a function of gravity field method of transport and distance. On Earth we have;

Earth:

$2.24 per gallon petrol

Barge 514 ton miles/gallon 230 ton miles/dollar
Rail 202 ton miles/gallon 90 ton miles/dollar
Truck 59 ton miles/gallon 26 ton miles/dollar
Air 16 miles/gallon/ton 7 ton miles/dollar

Lower gravity (1/3 that of Earth) and lower air drag (1/1,000,000th that of Earth) and lower energy costs (1/100th that of Earth) make a huge difference;

Mars

$0.0224 per gallon petrol equivalent

Maglev 1,542 miles/gallon/ton 69,000 ton miles/dollar
Rail 606 miles/gallon/ton 27,000 ton miles/dollar
Truck 357 miles/gallon/ton 7,800 ton miles/dollar
Air 48 miles/gallon/ton 2,100 ton miles/dollar

Now, to project an object from Mars to Earth along a Hohmann transfer orbit from the surface, requires that is be blasted off the surface at a speed of 6.1 km/sec. (13,640 mph). A rail gun is 95% efficient at this task. So, 19.6 giga-joules of energy are required to project one metric ton from Mars to Earth. That's 148.6 gallons of petrol equivalanet. That costs $332 per ton paying $2.24 per gallon. Its $3.32 per ton paying 2.24 cents per gallon.

If you live on a rail line within 2,200 miles of a steel mill on a rail line connecting, then transport costs might be cheaper for a ton of steel transported from Mars. However, any steel mill on Mars could send steel to you on Earth via mass driver if this weren't the case. Since the labour energy resource and social costs are far cheaper on Mars than on Earth, then there is no reason to operate steel mills on Earth once far more efficient steel mills are operating on Mars.

Advantages in obvious resources like steel can be leveraged into other resources. For example, materials can be sent to Earth Orbit from which large space stations are constructed within which food and fibre are grown with automated systems under ideal conditions.

>
> > Robots are transforming mining today
> >
> > http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/internet-things-mining-industry/
> > https://www.academia.edu/356502/Application_of_Robotics_In_Mining_Industry_A_Critical_Review
> > http://www.eumicon.com/images/EUMICON_2015/Robotics%20in%20mining%20-%20Henryk%20Karas.pdf
> > http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/04/04/325475.htm
> >
> > Heat shield rock - 98% iron
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg
> >
> > 98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.
> >
> > General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
> > https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf
> >
> > General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg
> >
> > Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.
> >

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev0G49jXJX0

I was using old data from mass driver studies done in the 1970s when I was in school to calculate the quarter mile length of mass drivers on Mars. New data from rail guns developed and deployed by General Atomics - shows that they can fire a projectile with a speed of 2.3 km/sec (5,143 mph)- the escape velocity of the moon - in a length of 12.2 meters (40 feet!). This is an acceleration 4.4x greater than that achieved by the mass drivers of the 1970s. This implies that a similar gun 85.8 meters (281.4 ft) long - could be used to project objects off Mars all the way to Earth. Such a gun, would consist of 8 barrels in a 40 foot container, that would be fitted on the end of the system shown in the video.

A Mars Colonial Transport sending one of these guns that fire at 36x per second per barrel, and sporting rounds of 10 kg each deliver 0.36 tons per second during operation. That's 2.84 million tons over a three month period each synodic period of 2.15 years. 1.32 million tons per year on average. Each cannon delivers $1.04 billion per year at an average cost of $0.79 per kg for raw materials.

[William Mook]

Its a problem today. Water and steel prices are rising. We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s.

> This is rather like the whole 'peak oil' thing.

We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s. Prices fluctuate as as demand erodes. We are already past the peak.

> 'Proven reserves' has always been around 30 years worth for the last
> half century or so. That's because we find new sources and improve
> technology to be able to economically recover poorer deposits.

You have forgotten that oil prices were over $100 per barrel for a time. What do you think happened then? That's right, those people who needed oil to be low cost to survive, WENT OUT OF BUSINESS. This is called erosion of demand. Once that demand is gone, it won't come back easily. When demand falls below supply because of energy intensive business going out of business, prices moderate, but they never return to earlier epoch and even minor increases in demand spike prices very rapidly. We are in the post peak world whether you want to admit it or not.

> ALL
> natural resources tend to work this way. You talk a lot about
> hematite on Mars, but the concentrations in your own citations are way
> too poor to be viable mining sources.

Meteorites crashing into the surface create huge globs of iron that are sitting on the surface. You can mine iron efficiently with a broom and a magnet on Mars today. You cannot do that on Earth.

>
> >
> >If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
> >
>
> No reason in your tiny mind, anyway. So YOU should not go.

You're the one who has a small mind if you cannot admit that the resources off world are vastly greater than remain on Earth. That is a very powerful and important reason to go to Mars and the other worlds of the solar system today. To make life better for everyone on Earth and bring about a trophic change in our environment.

> >
> >Robots are transforming mining today
> >
>
> But not the kind of robots your citation above was about.

Nonsense. Mining robots mine materials.

> >
> >http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/internet-things-mining-industry/
> >
>
> Big headline, no data. Talk about what they're "going to do".

You have no idea what you're talking about. By the time Musk has colonists going to Mars, those colonists will have AI driven mining equipment, manufacturing equipment, and equipment to blast materials back to Earth cheaply to anyone who wants to pay for it.

> >
> >https://www.academia.edu/356502/Application_of_Robotics_In_Mining_Industry_A_Critical_Review
> >
>
> Conventional robotic applications like dumpers and drills. Nothing
> like your original citation above.

They're minijng robots. You said mining robots didn't exist. So STFU! lol.

> >
> >http://www.eumicon.com/images/EUMICON_2015/Robotics%20in%20mining%20-%20Henryk%20Karas.pdf":ddddd
> >
>
> First slide - "Probably robots..." Not what your original cite talked
> about.

Anyone can see that mining robots exist and that when Musk sends settlers to Mars mining robots will go with them along with rail guns to send materials back to Earth to anyone who wants to pay for it. The price of such items will be less than getting the same item on Earth, and the environmental cost to Earth's biosphere will be ZERO. You're the one who's a freaking itdiot who can't see that.

> >
> >http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/04/04/325475.htm
> >
>
> A few hundred robotic trucks worldwide and not the type of robots your
> original cite was about.

You said mining robots didn't exist or they would be in use today. Fact is, they're in use today and robots will be used widely on Mars to make materials on Mars more cheaply than they can be made on Earth. With compact rail guns these materials will available to people on Earth more cheaply than the terrestrial variety.

> >
> >Heat shield rock - 98% iron
> >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg
> >
> >98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.
> >
>
> And here we see Mookie's problem. He just doesn't read very well. The
> cite is about AN IRON METEORITE. His last sentence above is simply
> wrong and has nothing to do with his cite.

You are unaware of how the meteorite was formed. It was formed from an impactor impacting the iron rich surface of Mars and the energy blasting metal far and wide. Putting aside the formation of the chunk of iron and the far larger number of iron 'berries' found on the surface of Mars, ask yourself the following question; How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Earth? The answer is - none. How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Mars, well with only 4 rovers covering a grand total of 50 km with the horizon 3.4 km away - we've discovered one big one like the one I show in the figure, and thousands of smaller ones littering the landscape. So, like I said, with a broom and a magnet, you could sweep up 98% pure iron process it into steel and shoot it out of a General Atomics Rail gun at 14,000 mph and send over a billion dollars woth of steel back to Earth at virtually no added cost.

>
> >
> >General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
> >https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf
> >
>
> Do you have a point? I've known about MHDs for decades.

The point is they're not in use on Earth for a variety of very good reasons. Those reasons don't apply on Mars. Supporting the notion that energy on Mars will be very cheap indeed.

> >
> >General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.
> >
> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg
> >
> >Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.
> >
>
> No.

Yes.

> I've been to Dahlgren and know about this program.

You obviously have not been read into the programme otherwise you'd keep your mouth shut about what you know first hand.

> You
> apparently do not.

I know what Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said about it. It achieves Mach 7 in Earth's atmosphere after exiting the barrel. That's 2.3 km/sec - lunar escape velocity. Now according to BAE CEO Jerry DeMuro the system is capable of attaining velocities in vacuo far higher. High enough to send projectiles from the Moon to Earth or from Mars to Earth. A well designed mass launcher would fit inside a 40 foot container and when deployed on Mars could send $1 billion a year worth of iron and other materials from Mars to any point on Earth.

> Face it, Mookie.

I do, I face the fact every time I post here that you're a freaking moron.

> Anything that makes mining cheaper

cannot generally be used on Earth

Very true.

All due to environmental, social or resource constraints that exist on Earth but NOT MARS. That is WHY you go to the trouble of getting your ass to Mars, as Buzz Aldrin said recently in his visit to my adopted home town Christchurch recently.

> or allows the use
> of poorer ores on Mars

Mars has a superabundance of iron and other ores that are rare on Earth. A handful of rovers examining closely less than 200 sq km of land have discovered vast quantities of pure iron produced by meteorite bombardment. Generalising from this experience we can expect sufficient iron already reduced on Mars' surface ready to be swept up with a broom and a magnet, melted down and fired to Earth at virtually no added cost - in quantities approaching $1 billion per year.

> will do the same thing here on Earth.

Cannot do the same thing here on Earth you mean. Why deploy robots for example on Earth where energy is 100x more expensive, resources are 1/100th as plentiful, and you run the risk of terrorists, dictators, and worse disrupting your operation?

> Interplanetary travel will never be able to compete in cost with
> trains and ships,

A General Atomics Blitzer cannon modified for use on Mars ALREADY DOES. You are so out of touch it must hurt being you.

> so Mars transportation costs to Earth will always be
> much higher.

Transport costs from Mars using a mass driver like the Blitzer is less costly than any competing form of transport. Combined with very low cost energy made possible by forms of nuclear power impossible to deploy on Earth, a ton of anything from Mars is delivered to any one on Earth at a cost of $3.34 per ton.

> That that means is that 'commodities' are always going
> to be cheaper to produce here on Earth

Nonsense. Take a look at this glacer;

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Wide_view_of_glacier_showing_image_field.JPG/220px-Wide_view_of_glacier_showing_image_field.JPG

A huge amount of water. A very modest power source melts that ice, gathers silica from the area to make glass bottles, and fires sixteen 750 milliliter glass bottles to Earth at a price of 3 cents - and they are delivered to anyone on Earth at a cost of $80 - do this, and you can generate over a billion per year.

> and they're more valuable on
> Mars than they are shipping them to Earth where they cannot compete in
> price.

Things on Mars will certainly be cheaper than they are on Earth, which is why poor people will go to Mars to get rich. Things made on Mars and sent to Earth will be cheaper than things made on Earth because the labour costs, energy costs, social costs, and environmental costs, are far higher.

> Obviously you are not only not an engineer, but you are not
> even adequate as a 'business guy'.

Obviously you're an idiot. I would suggest you look at my patents and the businesses I've successfully created before making any more unfortunate comments. Otherwise you can SMD.

[Fred J. McCall]

Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
>a truly useful commodity like space solar power
>can become practical and the free markets will
>have a new reason to build large structures
>in space.
>

It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
magnitude more.

And why would a solar power satellite require people?

[Fred J. McCall]

I've snipped most of the comment as having been either hashed up by
Mookie switching back and forth between inline responses and bottom
responses or else just being Mookie being Mookie (and therefore merely
stupid).

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 1:23:45 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>>
>> Skip to the bottom. Mookie once again flouts Usenet conventions by
>> posting everything at the bottom rather than in line with the original
>> discussion.
>>

<big snip>

>> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
>> >
>>
>> You and I will both be long dead by the time that even starts to look
>> like a problem.
>>
>
>Its a problem today. Water and steel prices are rising. We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s.
>

Energy is about 20% CHEAPER now than it was in 1960. The same is true
of steel and water.

>
>>
>> This is rather like the whole 'peak oil' thing.
>>
>
>We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s. Prices fluctuate as as demand erodes. We are already past the peak.
>

No, we are actually paying less in constant dollars for energy than we
were in the 1960s. Peak oil has been predicted over and over. We
haven't hit it yet and it currently looks like the whole idea of 'peak
oil' is flawed.

>
>>
>> 'Proven reserves' has always been around 30 years worth for the last
>> half century or so. That's because we find new sources and improve
>> technology to be able to economically recover poorer deposits.
>>
>
>You have forgotten that oil prices were over $100 per barrel for a time. What do you think happened then? That's right, those people who needed oil to be low cost to survive, WENT OUT OF BUSINESS. This is called erosion of demand. Once that demand is gone, it won't come back easily. When demand falls below supply because of energy intensive business going out of business, prices moderate, but they never return to earlier epoch and even minor increases in demand spike prices very rapidly. We are in the post peak world whether you want to admit it or not.
>

I haven't forgotten anything. We're certainly not in a 'post-peak
world' because we still haven't hit peak oil yet, despite numerous
predictions about how we should have hit it already. What happened to
drop oil prices? A financial slump reducing demand coupled with new
recovery methods leading to vastly increased production is what
happened. Oil will probably remain 'soft' for another year or two and
then gradually recover as OPEC reduces production to decrease supply.

>
>>
>> ALL
>> natural resources tend to work this way. You talk a lot about
>> hematite on Mars, but the concentrations in your own citations are way
>> too poor to be viable mining sources.
>>
>
>Meteorites crashing into the surface create huge globs of iron that are sitting on the surface. You can mine iron efficiently with a broom and a magnet on Mars today. You cannot do that on Earth.
>

Nope. Your own cite didn't show that. For it to work as you claim,
there would have to be molten iron near the surface of Mars. There
isn't. Your cite showed AN IRON METEORITE. That's iron that came
from elsewhere and hit Mars, Mookie, and it's just the size of the
meteorite. There is no massive flow of molten iron from inside Mars
because Mars is cool.

>
>>
>> >
>> >If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
>> >
>>
>> No reason in your tiny mind, anyway. So YOU should not go.
>>
>
>You're the one who has a small mind if you cannot admit that the resources off world are vastly greater than remain on Earth. That is a very powerful and important reason to go to Mars and the other worlds of the solar system today. To make life better for everyone on Earth and bring about a trophic change in our environment.
>

Sorry, but you are both ignorant and insane.

>> >
>> >Robots are transforming mining today
>> >
>>
>> But not the kind of robots your citation above was about.
>>
>
>Nonsense. Mining robots mine materials.
>

Nonsense. You think that by scrambling between in-line and bottom
posting you can cloud what you said. I repeat - not the kind of
robots your citation was about.

>> >
>> >http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/internet-things-mining-industry/
>> >
>>
>> Big headline, no data. Talk about what they're "going to do".
>
>You have no idea what you're talking about. By the time Musk has colonists going to Mars, those colonists will have AI driven mining equipment, manufacturing equipment, and equipment to blast materials back to Earth cheaply to anyone who wants to pay for it.
>

Yes, it will be a MookMagicalMars. Sure it will.

<Munch Massive MookMagical Maundering>

>> >
>> >Heat shield rock - 98% iron
>> >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg
>> >
>> >98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.
>> >
>>
>> And here we see Mookie's problem. He just doesn't read very well. The
>> cite is about AN IRON METEORITE. His last sentence above is simply
>> wrong and has nothing to do with his cite.
>
>You are unaware of how the meteorite was formed. It was formed from an impactor impacting the iron rich surface of Mars and the energy blasting metal far and wide. Putting aside the formation of the chunk of iron and the far larger number of iron 'berries' found on the surface of Mars, ask yourself the following question; How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Earth? The answer is - none. How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Mars, well with only 4 rovers covering a grand total of 50 km with the horizon 3.4 km away - we've discovered one big one like the one I show in the figure, and thousands of smaller ones littering the landscape. So, like I said, with a broom and a magnet, you could sweep up 98% pure iron process it into steel and shoot it out of a General Atomics Rail gun at 14,000 mph and send over a billion dollars woth of steel back to Earth at virtually no added cost.
>

Do you know what the word 'meteorite' means, you ignorant twat? The
'meteorite' *IS* the 'impactor'. And you're wrong about Earth. See
Sudbury, for example. Yes, you may not get 'berries' because we have
air, but so what? There is no iron close to the surface to flow out
from a meteor strike on Mars.

>
>>
>> >
>> >General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
>> >https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf
>> >
>>
>> Do you have a point? I've known about MHDs for decades.
>
>The point is they're not in use on Earth for a variety of very good reasons. Those reasons don't apply on Mars. Supporting the notion that energy on Mars will be very cheap indeed.
>

MHDs are not magically cheap.

>> >
>> >General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.
>> >
>> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
>> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg
>> >
>> >Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.
>> >
>>
>> No.
>
>Yes.
>

No.

>
>>
>> I've been to Dahlgren and know about this program.
>>
>
>You obviously have not been read into the programme otherwise you'd keep your mouth shut about what you know first hand.
>

You obviously have no idea how classified programs work.

>
>>
>> You apparently do not.
>
>I know what Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said about it. It achieves Mach 7 in Earth's atmosphere after exiting the barrel. That's 2.3 km/sec - lunar escape velocity. Now according to BAE CEO Jerry DeMuro the system is capable of attaining velocities in vacuo far higher. High enough to send projectiles from the Moon to Earth or from Mars to Earth. A well designed mass launcher would fit inside a 40 foot container and when deployed on Mars could send $1 billion a year worth of iron and other materials from Mars to any point on Earth.
>

You are ignoring so much of reality that the preceding is mere
fantasy. Energy isn't free. The 'barrel' certainly isn't free. How
many payloads can take the deposition of energy entailed by the
magnetic fields of a rail gun? How do you actually get the payloads
to a destination, since just aiming and shooting won't work?

<snip Mook fantasies and insults>

Jesus, but you're a stupid cunt, Mookie.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <491f4b15-912a-4890...@googlegroups.com>,
mokme...@gmail.com says...

>
> On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 12:44:32 AM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
> > On 12/17/2016 10:59 PM, William Mook wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Dated does not mean outdated.
> > >
> > > WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
> > >
> > > If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > You're conclusion has a glaring logical flaw.
>
> No it doesn't.
>
> > If we can't
> > learn to live on Earth in a sustainable way, given it's
> > incredible abundance and ideal conditions,
>
> The biosphere is ideal for lower forms of life who don't mind competing tooth and claw and creating a culture of the survival of the fittest to that lower order irrespective of other higher values humanity might wish to develop.
>
> Conditions on Earth are non-ideal for an intelligent industrial species. It is only by creating an industrial infrastructure that exists independently of the biosphere, and in fact sustains terrestrial conditions off world that we can continue to grow and develop as an intelligent industrial species.

This is pointy haired boss b.s.

You sound like you're claiming that industrialized farming is non-
sustainable. There are still inefficiencies in farming which can be
leveraged in order to produce more food than we do today. We've not
reached "peak food", if there is such a thing, considering "peak oil"
does not seem to have happened yet either.

Hell, John Deere is working on an all electric tractor ("full-sized",
not some tiny sub-scale prototype) which will improve efficiency and
overall reliability.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <-o6dnZzL6py5u8rF...@giganews.com>,
wr...@gmail.com says...

We have a profitable "new" reason, but it only works if launch costs
come down to something reasonable. That new reason is tourism. There
is a huge pent up demand for this, but just how big and how profitable
depends on how low launch prices can go.

> The reasons, or excuses, to put people into orbit
> are mostly pie in the sky uses like colonies or
> joy rides.

Space tourism isn't as pie in the sky as many people think. The
Russians have charged tens of millions of dollars each for tourist
flights to ISS. This was pure profit for Russia since they were going
to fly to ISS *anyway*. They just swapped a government funded cosmonaut
seat for a "tourist" seat and charged a hell of a lot more (i.e.
profit!).

Drop that number by a couple orders of magnitude and the demand will go
up accordingly.

> When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
> a truly useful commodity like space solar power
> can become practical and the free markets will
> have a new reason to build large structures
> in space.

Space power will be useful for the military long before it could ever be
profitable for commercial purposes. Hopefully the military will perfect
the technology. After that, who knows.

[Fred J. McCall]

Jeff Findley <jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com> wrote:

>
>Hell, John Deere is working on an all electric tractor ("full-sized",
>not some tiny sub-scale prototype) which will improve efficiency and
>overall reliability.
>

And this is actually a great application for electrics if the thing
isn't significantly more expensive than a regular tractor. It could
plow or whatever all day at the usual slow tractor speeds, then go
plug in and recharge at night. If it's autonomous and you can run it
at night, you could buy an extra set of batteries and keep one set on
charge while the other is being used.

What makes electric cars impractical are the range issues and how long
they take to charge. This is much less an issue with something like a
tractor.

[William Mook]

Lithium-6 Deuteride may be used to make a fission free nuclear explosive. By compressing the material to a high density before exposing it to a neutron flux very compact nuclear explosives can be made that release 270 billion joules per gram of material with no long-lived radioactive byproducts!

A micro-nuclear pulse engine may be built that creates an EMP with prompt radiation within a structure of the engine so that the expanding plasma is efficiently ejected, making efficient use of the energy. This basically solves the problem of space travel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEtaQpHBP4U

A vehicle with a 99,196 ton take off weight, consists of 48,942 tons of inert propellant, 36.4 kilogams of lithium-6 deuteride pellets subdivided into 1 million pellets each 36.4 milligrams each. Each releasing the equivalent of 2.34 tons of TNT. Surrounding each pellet is 48.94 kg of inert propellant within a 46 cm diameter bottle - which is filled with sea water contained in four 28.6 meter diameter spheres. At full thrust (2 gees) the four nuclear pulse engines of this craft detonate 497 of these pulse units each second in each engine.

The 99,196 ton vehicle carries 13,018 tons of payload, its structure is 37,235 tons, it carries 48,942 tons of inert propellant. With an exhaust velocity of 20 km/sec it attains 13.3 km/sec ideal delta vee, which when departing from Earth's surface, loaded with this payload is sufficient to travel to Mars. There are 250 passengers and crew on board. A little over 52 tons per person. 2 tons of consumables each. 50 tons of equipment each.

On Mars the vehicle when loaded with 100,000 tons of payload and the same structure and propellant (this time drawn from available water ice on Mars) attains a speed of 6.1 km/sec - which when starting on the Surface of Mars is sufficient to bring the payload back to Earth. With material that's worth $3,000 per ton, this earns $300 million per synodic period, and brings back another 13,018 tons from Earth. Dividing by 2.15 years per synodic period and 250 people that's $558,140 per person per year.

Of course a magnetic mass driver can send lower valued materials from Mars to Earth than rockets, merely by projecting it at 6.1 km/sec off Mars pointing in the right direction firing at the right speed at the right time. Shells are guided after departing the driver, so accuracy is important and improved upon since corrections can be applied mid flight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev0G49jXJX0

This cannon built for terrestrial use, shoots a 25 pound shell at a speed of 2.3 km/sec. Lunar escape velocity. Outside the atmosphere of Earth with a slightly longer cannon, but similar in every respect, this device can lob a shell at Mars escape velocity 36x per second! That's 1,620 tons per hour. During the 2,200 hour window each synodic period between Earth and Mars a single mass launcher like this transfer 3.56 million tons. 1.65 million tons per year. At $300 per ton this is another $495 million per year or $1.98 million per person per year.

This structure fraction, and overall weight and size - matches that of an AFRAMAX tanker. New builds run less than $65 million. They're 245 meters long 34 meter beam and 30 meter depth. A 30 meter diameter tank on each 'corner' of the ship fills with water, each feeds its own 120 meter arm that is actuated and contains a nuclear pulse propulsion unit at its tip. The propulsion unit gimbals in any direction once fully deployed.

A far larger version of something like this, but with nuclear pulse rockets on the tips, not rotors;

http://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-folding-drone-that-s-ready-for-takeoff-in-a-snap/

A dozen of these built for $780 million - $312,000 per person. Another $1,040,000 - or $2,000 per ton - pays for the equipment that is transported to Mars. $1,352,000 per peson.

Water and iron, aluminum and other materials are easily available on Mars for return to Earth. Being able to earn $700,000+ per year one can see that people would arrange to go to Mars to earn substantial returns, or borrow money from others to achieve this, or arrange to send another to Mars to share in the value they can create there.

So, a 5 year period earning say $3.5 million return - on a $1.4 million investment - a 20% annual rate of return compounded for five years!

There are 12 million high net worth individuals in the world who have $46.2 trillion in disposable wealth. 1% of this population represents 120,000 per year and $462 billion per year. About 1,032 ships every synodic period. 1,032 mass drivers operating across mars would deliver all the steel and needed on Earth and the ships 100 million tons per synodic period of higher value goods.

Within five years with this approach the Earth's markets would be saturated and other opportunities would be developed. Delivering for example, power stations built on Mars and deployed in GEO to deliver power on Earth by laser beam. Farm satellites built on Mars and deployed in polar orbit to deliver food anywhere its needed on Earth in minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcO_BjXfhhc

[bob haller]

On Sunday, December 11, 2016 at 8:54:09 AM UTC-5, Jonathan wrote:
> I've been looking at some the incredibly expensive
> steps which are planned for a Mars colony.
>
> From the massive rockets, massive transports
> and things like droves of robots that will
> dig out an underground habitat and so on
> and so on and so on...
>
> Sounds like Trillions of dollars will be
> needed over several decades.
>
> Of course we all know that as time goes on
> and cost estimates steadily rise, the
> goals will shrink and shrink, until
> in the end we land a couple of astronauts
> for a couple of weeks.
>
> But even if a self sustaining colony of
> say a 100 people is established, what
> will the human race get in return for
> all this money and effort?
>
>
>
> Finding life on Mars?
>
>
> NASA has made it clear that's not a primary
> concern. The current MSL couldn't identify
> life is it was sitting in a field of moss.
>
> And the next rover won't be able to either, instead
> looking for signs of...ancient life, and identify
> samples for some....future sample return mission
> and to support some...future human habitation.
>
> THE MSL 202O CAN DO EVERYTHING.....EXCEPT
> DIRECTLY SEARCH FOR LIFE.
>
> http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1678
>
>
> It's yet another rover that's meant to get
> a...sample return mission and colony instead
> of directly searching for life.
>
> That's just another self-serving deception
> on the part of NASA, at the expense of
> science and what the public wants.
>
> For the incredible cost of a manned
> landing, we could send a hundred much
> more ambitious rovers far faster and
> cover far more ground than a manned
> landing.
>
>
>
> Allow the human race to survive an impact?
>
>
> It's far cheaper and easier to spot, divert
> or destroy an asteroid than this colony.
>
>
> Inspiration?
>
>
> For what? Colonies around Jupiter?
> Again, for the same end, just more
> inspiration?
>
>
> For resources?
>
>
> What doesn't the Earth have that
> the moon or asteroids have?
>
>
> For national pride?
>
>
> Spending that money directly improving America
> would do far more in that respect.
>
>
>
>
> If an agency is going to spend Trillions of
> precious research money on a single project
> it needs to be thoroughly justified so as
> to be easily convincing.
>
> So far I only see 'planting the flag' as
> the only widespread appeal, and that's
> not enough.

wonder what laser beams from space could do to our atmosphere?

just wait till a aiming problem or isis hacker redirects the beam into a weapon

[William Mook]

On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 5:09:16 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> I've snipped most of the comment

because you can't handle the truth and prefer to live in your own skewed world.

>
> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 1:23:45 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> >>
> >> Skip to the bottom. Mookie once again flouts Usenet conventions by
> >> posting everything at the bottom rather than in line with the original
> >> discussion.
> >>
>
> <big snip>
>
> >> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
> >> >
> >>
> >> You and I will both be long dead by the time that even starts to look
> >> like a problem.
> >>
> >
> >Its a problem today. Water and steel prices are rising. We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s.
> >
>
> Energy is about 20% CHEAPER now than it was in 1960. The same is true
> of steel and water.

According to the DOE EIA

Industrial electricity prices in 1960 were 1.1 cent per kWh in nominal dollars and 5.6 cents per kWh in inflation adjusted dollars. This rose to 9.8 cents per kWh in inflation adjusted dolalrs by 1982 which caused a tremendous shift in industrial use of electricity and caused a lot of people to go out of business. Moderation of demand due to shifting patterns of consumption caused a moderation in price so that industrial electricity in the USA is 6.8 cents per KWh. 20% higher than 1960

A barrel of crude oil sold for $2.91 in nominal dollars $23.72 in inflation adjusted dollars. This rose to $37.42 in nominal dollars in 1980 which is $109.51 in inflation adjusted dollars. Again, airlines shipping companies and a host of others faced severe difficulties because of these high prices. This resulted in the failure of many, moderation of demand, and lowering of prices. By 1998 prices fell to $11.91 per barrel $17.60 in inflation adjusted money. Because of fundamental changes in demand, not production. That's why we suffered another oil peak in 2008 with $91.48 oil in nominal dollars $102.00 in inflation adjusted dollars. Today we're at $34.39 - 45% higher than 1960.

Prices do change in a market, its important to understand why that is. We have had periodic shortages because we have not developed adequate low cost alterantives to limited oil coal and natural gas.

During the early days of oil production, when it was first being developed, oil prices dropped due to fundamental improvements in exploration discovery and development of oil fields. By 1950 King Hubbert showed that by 1970 US oil supplies would peak and they did. He also predicted that by 2000 global supplies would peak. In 1970 during the first oil crisis (perhaps you heard of it) Nixon organised affairs in the Middle East to withdraw development of some fields while promoting others. The plan was (and is) to exercise miltary control over these oil fields to assure US access to these supplies, and enforce regime change to moderate demand. That had an effect of kicking up oil prices early, but then by moderating the supplies and keeping half the supply off the market through military and inteligence means we can maintain oil prices. This had the effect of moderating demand through the 80s and 90s and extended the peak 8 years - to 2008. We are now post peak and using what Brzesinski calls 'direct power principles' to maintain control over the remaining reserves. The conflict between Russia and the USA, and China and the USA is around energy resources and other resources that all these economies need going forward.

>
> >
> >>
> >> This is rather like the whole 'peak oil' thing.
> >>
> >
> >We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s. Prices fluctuate as as demand erodes. We are already past the peak.
> >
>
> No,

Yes, when you count the cost of our military in terms of dollars, lives (both ours and others), and cost to our geopolitical position in the world.

>we are actually paying less in constant dollars for energy than we
> were in the 1960s.

Depsite the machinactions of the US intelligence and military we are paying between 20% and 45% more for energy at the current time, and have suffered through two price hickes, one in the 1980s and one in 2008. The one in 1980s was when we established control over the supplies and took about half the oil rich kingdoms out of the market. The second occured in 2008 when we reached the geological peak. We are now deployed in large military bases throughout all the rich oil kingdoms of the world, with the exception of Iran - and we're confronting Russia and China over that resource at the moment.

> Peak oil has been predicted over and over.

Its not a theory its a fact. If you have a bowl filled with red and white ping pong balls in equal amounts and you close your eyes and pick one - and put it back if its white and remove it if its red - as you deplete the red balls your average number of tries (the cost) of getting the next red ball goes up.

Tries Chance Red White
2.00 50.0% 200 200
2.11 47.4% 180 200
2.25 44.4% 160 200
2.43 41.2% 140 200
2.67 37.5% 120 200
3.00 33.3% 100 200
3.50 28.6% 80 200
4.33 23.1% 60 200
6.00 16.7% 40 200
11.00 9.1% 20 200
- 0.0% 0 200

Its the same with extracting resources from Earth.

> We
> haven't hit it

Not only have we hit it we've spent the past 40 years organising our national defense strategy around it.

> yet and it currently looks like the whole idea of 'peak
> oil' is flawed.

You speak nonsense because you are totally clueless.

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf

> >
> >>
> >> 'Proven reserves' has always been around 30 years worth for the last
> >> half century or so. That's because we find new sources and improve
> >> technology to be able to economically recover poorer deposits.
> >>
> >
> >You have forgotten that oil prices were over $100 per barrel for a time. What do you think happened then? That's right, those people who needed oil to be low cost to survive, WENT OUT OF BUSINESS. This is called erosion of demand. Once that demand is gone, it won't come back easily. When demand falls below supply because of energy intensive business going out of business, prices moderate, but they never return to earlier epoch and even minor increases in demand spike prices very rapidly. We are in the post peak world whether you want to admit it or not.
> >
>
> I haven't forgotten anything.

So, what happens when oil prices spike out of sight? Energy intensive businesses go out of business. This moderates prices. It doesn't increase supply.

> We're certainly not in a 'post-peak
> world'

Right that's why we have military bases in the oil rich regions of the Caucases, following the Bosnian conflicts, that's why we have bases throughout the Middle East, that's why we have overturned Libya, are tyring to overturn Syria and Iran - it has nothing at all to do with oil. Tell that to Russian and China.Since Russia and China get their oil from Syria and Iran, they are pushing back.

> because we still haven't hit peak oil yet,

Yes we have. Nixon's White House put the current cluster fuck of the Middle East into play - why the hell do you think Kissingers and Brzezsinski are still hanging around the Pentagon and the White House for crying out loud! lol.

> despite numerous
> predictions about how we should have hit it already.

We have! The oil crises of the 1978-1982 period was engineered to take supplies away from the Marktes so that later administrations could through regime change, bring stored supplies in when needed. This extended the global peak by 8 years - and in 2008 - we reached the peak. That's when the US spent trillions to deploy military resources to assure they had supplies of oil.

> What happened to
> drop oil prices?

High oil prices cause companies that depend on low oil prices to go out of business. This drops demand and eventually prices. This comes at a huge social cost, not due to any new supply or radical reduction in energy costs. Its the mission of the US military to make sure those social costs are felt by people outside the USA. Yet, the USA felt they needed homeland security at some point because we won't stay isolated forever.

> A financial slump reducing demand

caused by huge amounts of money flowing out of the energy intense economies into the economies of the energy suppliers.

> coupled with new
> recovery methods

made economic only because of reduced supply and rising costs.

> leading to vastly increased production

production of oil is lower today than it was at the peak despite the cost of new recovery methods you speak of.

> is what
> happened.

Wake the fuck up you crazy lunatic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgrunnLcG9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjYojFvr0Zo

Your ability to understand what you see is severely limited.

Why do you think elements within the US government carried off 9/11?

It was carried off by people who were convinced we had to invade the oil rich kingdoms of the world and take control of the remaining oil resources for the US economy and assure that the US population did not suffer because of reduced supply.

Obviously the folks who carried out 9/11 to get a war fever started in the USA did so because they thought it was in the long term interest of the USA to do so. Despite the reality that it would eventually assure the destruction of the USA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfJNFSYFmZs

Since Nixon leadership thought we needed to invade oil rich regions of the world and spend massively to maintain control there. That's what all this falderah over Syria and Iran is about. Leadership also thinks we need to clamp down and establish significant homeland security - because what do you think will happen when the oil does finally run out?

> Oil will probably remain 'soft' for another year or two and
> then gradually recover as OPEC reduces production to decrease supply.

Prices moderated only because we destroyed Libya, killed their leader and stole their oil. Saudi Arabia has no capacity to increase supply. When this is generally realised prices will skyrocket.

Nixon called this process regime change to bring supplies into market. See, we created enemies refused to trade with them or restricted trade. This has the effect of taking their oil reserves off the market. Then, when oil supplies run out elsewhere, we bring these other supplies on board. Look for Saudi Arabia to fall when their oil supplies run out. Of course the US will be drawing supplies out of Iraq and around Bosnia by that time.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/perhaps-60-of-today-s-oil-price-is-pure-speculation/8878

Oil Markets are rigged and supplies are provided by the US military. This will keep prices stable for a while but see increasing push back from Russia and China if we go after Syrian and Iranian oil, the way we did with Libyan oil.

> >>
> >> ALL
> >> natural resources tend to work this way. You talk a lot about
> >> hematite on Mars, but the concentrations in your own citations are way
> >> too poor to be viable mining sources.
> >>
> >
> >Meteorites crashing into the surface create huge globs of iron that are sitting on the surface. You can mine iron efficiently with a broom and a magnet on Mars today. You cannot do that on Earth.
> >
>
> Nope.

You don't know the source of iron meteors. No one does. So stop pretending.

I will tell you what we do know. When you heat up hematite in near vacuum carbon dioxide atmosphere and you get iron. Meteor bombardment on Mars heats hematite in the Martian surface and produces vast quantities of iron. That's why four rovers on Mars looking at less than 200 sq km out of the 144.8 million sq km has found a super abundance of the stuff!

https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia18387

> Your own cite didn't show that.

Your inability to understand and think about what you see and read shows nothing of the sort.

> For it to work as you claim,

Put hematite in a vacuum chamber and heat it up. You get iron. That's what vacuum degassing is all about.

> there would have to be molten iron near the surface of Mars.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6667

This is significant iron given the area covered. There's likely a million more of these things around at least.

> There
> isn't.

If we found one in the area we've covered, there are likely a million more at least.

> Your cite showed AN IRON METEORITE.

Yes, it we created by meteor bombardment or some other energetic event like a lightning bolt that heated the hematite on Mars surface and produced the iron.

> That's iron that came
> from elsewhere and hit Mars,

You don't know that. There's no evidence whatever that is the case.

> Mookie, and it's just the size of the
> meteorite.

What are the odds of a rover that has seen less than 200 sq km coming across something like this? If it were the only one on the planet, pretty damn unlikely. For the rover to see it it must be relatively common. That means that any old meteorite hitting the planet creates iron of this quality. Is this possible? Of course, its common. When you heat hematite in a vacuum you get iron of this quality and with these features.

> There is no massive flow of molten iron from inside Mars
> because Mars is cool.

So? Now you're making things up. Look, you have a thick layer of hematite dust and it gets blasted by some process - you get a portion of it turning into iron. We see iron all over the place. This must be the source.

>
> >
> >>
> >> >
> >> >If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
> >> >
> >>
> >> No reason in your tiny mind, anyway. So YOU should not go.
> >>
> >
> >You're the one who has a small mind if you cannot admit that the resources off world are vastly greater than remain on Earth. That is a very powerful and important reason to go to Mars and the other worlds of the solar system today. To make life better for everyone on Earth and bring about a trophic change in our environment.
> >
>
> Sorry, but you are both ignorant and insane.

Funny how you tend to project your traits on to others, especially when they reveal both your insanity and your ignorance to you.

> >> >
> >> >Robots are transforming mining today
> >> >
> >>
> >> But not the kind of robots your citation above was about.
> >>
> >
> >Nonsense. Mining robots mine materials.
> >
>
> Nonsense.

Dude, I was replying to a comment that said mining robots don't exist. Now you're arguing about types of robots. Fact is mining robots exist today, and when mining is done on Mars it will be done by robots.

> You think that by scrambling between in-line and bottom
> posting you can cloud what you said. I repeat - not the kind of
> robots your citation was about.

I was replying to a comment that said mining robots didn't exist. Now you're arguing about the types of robots.

> >> >
> >> >http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/internet-things-mining-industry/
> >> >
> >>
> >> Big headline, no data. Talk about what they're "going to do".
> >
> >You have no idea what you're talking about. By the time Musk has colonists going to Mars, those colonists will have AI driven mining equipment, manufacturing equipment, and equipment to blast materials back to Earth cheaply to anyone who wants to pay for it.
> >
>
> Yes, it will be a MookMagicalMars. Sure it will.

Why the fuck do you post here you miserable sonofabitch?

> <Munch Massive MookMagical Maundering>
>
> >> >
> >> >Heat shield rock - 98% iron
> >> >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg
> >> >
> >> >98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.
> >> >
> >>
> >> And here we see Mookie's problem. He just doesn't read very well. The
> >> cite is about AN IRON METEORITE. His last sentence above is simply
> >> wrong and has nothing to do with his cite.
> >
> >You are unaware of how the meteorite was formed. It was formed from an impactor impacting the iron rich surface of Mars and the energy blasting metal far and wide. Putting aside the formation of the chunk of iron and the far larger number of iron 'berries' found on the surface of Mars, ask yourself the following question; How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Earth? The answer is - none. How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Mars, well with only 4 rovers covering a grand total of 50 km with the horizon 3.4 km away - we've discovered one big one like the one I show in the figure, and thousands of smaller ones littering the landscape. So, like I said, with a broom and a magnet, you could sweep up 98% pure iron process it into steel and shoot it out of a General Atomics Rail gun at 14,000 mph and send over a billion dollars woth of steel back to Earth at virtually no added cost.
> >
>
> Do you know what the word 'meteorite' means, you ignorant twat?

Do you know the source of iron meteorite?

> The
> 'meteorite' *IS* the 'impactor'.

Any impactor on Mars will produce elemental iron in the process. That spray is also called a meteorite.

> And you're wrong about Earth.

Nope.

> See
> Sudbury, for example. Yes, you may not get 'berries' because we have
> air, but so what? There is no iron close to the surface to flow out
> from a meteor strike on Mars.

You don't know what you're talking about. An impactor produces a spray and that spray is energized and oxygen evolves leaving the sort of structure that you see in the photo.

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q1/meteorite-material-born-in-molten-spray-as-embryo-planets-collided.html

>
> >
> >>
> >> >
> >> >General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
> >> >https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf
> >> >
> >>
> >> Do you have a point? I've known about MHDs for decades.
> >
> >The point is they're not in use on Earth for a variety of very good reasons. Those reasons don't apply on Mars. Supporting the notion that energy on Mars will be very cheap indeed.
> >
>
> MHDs are not magically cheap.

True. Why do think that statement relevant?

> >> >
> >> >General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.
> >> >
> >> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
> >> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg
> >> >
> >> >Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.
> >> >
> >>
> >> No.
> >
> >Yes.
> >
>
> No.

Lunar Escape Velocity: 2.38 km/sec
Lunar Orbital Velocity: 1.68 km/sec
Mach 7: 2.40 km/sec

The Blitzer today in Earth's atmosphere attains Mach 7. That's in excess of Lunar Escape Velocity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9qVGsrHkQo

So, YES! You freaking moron.

> >
> >>
> >> I've been to Dahlgren and know about this program.
> >>
> >
> >You obviously have not been read into the programme otherwise you'd keep your mouth shut about what you know first hand.
> >
>
> You obviously have no idea how classified programs work.

Classified national security information is information created or received by an agency of the federal government or a government contractor that would damage national security if improperly released. Since 1940, the President has managed the system of classifying information by executive order.

The most recent order concerning classified national security information is E.O. 13526, signed by President Obama on December 29, 2009.

Information can only be classified if an official determination is made that its unauthorized release would damage the national security. Levels of classification correspond to levels of supposed damage. E.O. 13526 specifies that information whose release would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security” is classified TOP SECRET; information whose release would cause “serious damage” is classified SECRET; CONFIDENTIAL is the lowest category of classified information currently in use. RESTRICTED is an obsolete category that was discontinued in 1953.

Classified information may take any form. Though paper documents are most common, there are classified photographs, maps, motion pictures, videotapes, databases, microfilms, hard drives, CDs, etc. Regardless of medium, classified information requires protection until it is formally declassified.

If you have any further information you may contact the following;


E-mail: is...@nara.gov
Phone: 202-357-5250
Mailing Address: Information Security Oversight Office
National Archives and Records Administration
700 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Room 100
Washington, DC 20408

> >
> >>
> >> You apparently do not.
> >
> >I know what Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said about it. It achieves Mach 7 in Earth's atmosphere after exiting the barrel. That's 2.3 km/sec - lunar escape velocity. Now according to BAE CEO Jerry DeMuro the system is capable of attaining velocities in vacuo far higher. High enough to send projectiles from the Moon to Earth or from Mars to Earth. A well designed mass launcher would fit inside a 40 foot container and when deployed on Mars could send $1 billion a year worth of iron and other materials from Mars to any point on Earth.
> >
>
> You are ignoring so much of reality that the preceding is mere
> fantasy.

No I'm not.

> Energy isn't free.

Tell that to the Sun.

> The 'barrel' certainly isn't free.

A barrel as a unit of measure is absolutely free.

> How
> many payloads can take the deposition of energy entailed by the
> magnetic fields of a rail gun?

Metal ingots can certainly take the acceleration.

> How do you actually get the payloads
> to a destination, since just aiming and shooting won't work?

Guidance systems can certainly take the acceleration as well. Aiming and shooting will get to Earth - mid course corrections will get you to a particular spot on Earth and a flight termination system will bring it to rest at the buyers point of delivery.

[William Mook]

Inflatable concentrators that focus light on to thin disk solar pumped lasers that use conjugate optics to beam energy reliably and safely to Earth - produce 22 kW of useable power on the ground per kg of payload at GEO. A Falcon Heavy puts 18 tons into GEO sufficient to produce 400 MW of power continuously. The satellite costs $110 million. The Launch $90 million - $200 million altogether. At $0.11 per kWh a 400 MW power satellite operating 8,766 hours per year generats $385 million per year in revenue.

[Fred J. McCall]

bob haller <hal...@aol.com> wrote:

>
>wonder what laser beams from space could do to our atmosphere?
>

Nothing.

>
>just wait till a aiming problem or isis hacker redirects the beam into a weapon
>

You probably believe nuclear reactors can be made to explode like
bombs, too.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 5:09:16 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> I've snipped most of the comment
>
>because you can't handle the truth and prefer to live in your own skewed world.
>

Editing out big pieces of someone else's sentence is just the sort of
clueless luser lying I expect from you, Mook.

>>
>> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 1:23:45 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Skip to the bottom. Mookie once again flouts Usenet conventions by
>> >> posting everything at the bottom rather than in line with the original
>> >> discussion.
>> >>
>>
>> <big snip>
>>
>> >> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> You and I will both be long dead by the time that even starts to look
>> >> like a problem.
>> >>
>> >
>> >Its a problem today. Water and steel prices are rising. We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s.
>> >
>>
>> Energy is about 20% CHEAPER now than it was in 1960. The same is true
>> of steel and water.
>
>According to the DOE EIA
>
Industrial electricity prices in 1960 were 1.1 cent per kWh in nominal
dollars and 5.6 cents per kWh in inflation adjusted dollars. This

rose to 9.8 cents per kWh in inflation adjusted dollars by 1982 which

caused a tremendous shift in industrial use of electricity and caused
a lot of people to go out of business. Moderation of demand due to
shifting patterns of consumption caused a moderation in price so that
industrial electricity in the USA is 6.8 cents per KWh. 20% higher
than 1960
>

Now look at the power prices charged EVERY OTHER USER OF ELECTRICITY,
which are twice as high as 'industrial price' or more. Nothing like
choosing the peak historical price for your 'comparison', Mookie.
That's called 'intellectual dishonesty' in most quarters. In
addition, you're cheating the numbers. 'Real' price in 1982 is 9.0,
not 9.8. Real price currently is 6.08, not 6.8 (which is the nominal
price). All inflation adjusted prices in 2005 dollars.

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.php?t=ptb0810

>
>A barrel of crude oil sold for $2.91 in nominal dollars $23.72 in inflation adjusted dollars. This rose to $37.42 in nominal dollars in 1980 which is $109.51 in inflation adjusted dollars. Again, airlines shipping companies and a host of others faced severe difficulties because of these high prices. This resulted in the failure of many, moderation of demand, and lowering of prices. By 1998 prices fell to $11.91 per barrel $17.60 in inflation adjusted money. Because of fundamental changes in demand, not production. That's why we suffered another oil peak in 2008 with $91.48 oil in nominal dollars $102.00 in inflation adjusted dollars. Today we're at $34.39 - 45% higher than 1960.
>

'Oil price' is not 'energy price'

>
>Prices do change in a market, its important to understand why that is. We have had periodic shortages because we have not developed adequate low cost alterantives to limited oil coal and natural gas.
>

Yes, it IS important to understand why that is. You obviously do not.

>
>During the early days of oil production, when it was first being developed, oil prices dropped due to fundamental improvements in exploration discovery and development of oil fields. By 1950 King Hubbert showed that by 1970 US oil supplies would peak and they did. He also predicted that by 2000 global supplies would peak. In 1970 during the first oil crisis (perhaps you heard of it) Nixon organised affairs in the Middle East to withdraw development of some fields while promoting others. The plan was (and is) to exercise miltary control over these oil fields to assure US access to these supplies, and enforce regime change to moderate demand. That had an effect of kicking up oil prices early, but then by moderating the supplies and keeping half the supply off the market through military and inteligence means we can maintain oil prices. This had the effect of moderating demand through the 80s and 90s and extended the peak 8 years - to 2008. We are now post peak and using what
>Brzesinski calls 'direct power principles' to maintain control over the remaining reserves. The conflict between Russia and the USA, and China and the USA is around energy resources and other resources that all these economies need going forward.
>

He hasn't had any input to policy for 35 years. There's a reason for
that. The rest of your statement is merely wrong.

>
>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> This is rather like the whole 'peak oil' thing.
>> >>
>> >
>> >We're paying vastly more for energy today than we were in the 1960s. Prices fluctuate as as demand erodes. We are already past the peak.
>> >
>>
>> No,
>>
>
>Yes, when you count the cost of our military in terms of dollars, lives (both ours and others), and cost to our geopolitical position in the world.
>

Yes, and if you count grains of rice as dollars it is even higher. You
don't get to include costs that aren't, well, part of the cost.

>
>>we are actually paying less in constant dollars for energy than we
>> were in the 1960s.
>
>Depsite the machinactions of the US intelligence and military we are paying between 20% and 45% more for energy at the current time, and have suffered through two price hickes, one in the 1980s and one in 2008. The one in 1980s was when we established control over the supplies and took about half the oil rich kingdoms out of the market. The second occured in 2008 when we reached the geological peak. We are now deployed in large military bases throughout all the rich oil kingdoms of the world, with the exception of Iran - and we're confronting Russia and China over that resource at the moment.
>

Poppycock!

>
>> Peak oil has been predicted over and over.
>
>Its not a theory its a fact. If you have a bowl filled with red and white ping pong balls in equal amounts and you close your eyes and pick one - and put it back if its white and remove it if its red - as you deplete the red balls your average number of tries (the cost) of getting the next red ball goes up.
>
>Tries Chance Red White
> 2.00 50.0% 200 200
> 2.11 47.4% 180 200
> 2.25 44.4% 160 200
> 2.43 41.2% 140 200
> 2.67 37.5% 120 200
> 3.00 33.3% 100 200
> 3.50 28.6% 80 200
> 4.33 23.1% 60 200
> 6.00 16.7% 40 200
> 11.00 9.1% 20 200
> - 0.0% 0 200
>
>Its the same with extracting resources from Earth.
>

Except your silly example assumes that you don't find ways to increase
the number of ping pong balls, discover more ping pong balls, etc.
Peak oil (and your ping pong balls) are a simplistic (I would say
simpleton) view of how resources and associated economics work.

>
>> We
>> haven't hit it
>
>Not only have we hit it we've spent the past 40 years organising our national defense strategy around it.
>

Outright wrong. Do you even know the definition of 'peak oil'?

(You will now go look it up and then try to bend reality to keep from
looking like a lying fool.)

I'll make it easy for you. What year do you think the world hit 'peak
oil'? Now go look at world oil production. You will find it is
around 77.5 million barrels a day, which is higher than it has ever
been. And more could be pumped if people wanted to. Again, obviously
not at peak oil.

>
>> yet and it currently looks like the whole idea of 'peak
>> oil' is flawed.
>
>You speak nonsense because you are totally clueless.
>
>http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf
>

You speak nonsense because your views are rooted in data more than
half a century old. Hubbert was wrong. He puts 'peak oil' in 1952
(although he seems to just be talking about the United States rather
than the world. However, even THAT was wrong.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=A
http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-oil-yearly-production-charts/

>
>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> 'Proven reserves' has always been around 30 years worth for the last
>> >> half century or so. That's because we find new sources and improve
>> >> technology to be able to economically recover poorer deposits.
>> >>
>> >
>> >You have forgotten that oil prices were over $100 per barrel for a time. What do you think happened then? That's right, those people who needed oil to be low cost to survive, WENT OUT OF BUSINESS. This is called erosion of demand. Once that demand is gone, it won't come back easily. When demand falls below supply because of energy intensive business going out of business, prices moderate, but they never return to earlier epoch and even minor increases in demand spike prices very rapidly. We are in the post peak world whether you want to admit it or not.
>> >
>>
>> I haven't forgotten anything.
>
>So, what happens when oil prices spike out of sight? Energy intensive businesses go out of business. This moderates prices. It doesn't increase supply.
>

Actually it tends to do both. Increasing oil prices make poorer
deposits economical to extract, spur exploration, lead to R&D to
improve extraction technologies, etc. High oil prices led directly to
the discovery of the Baaken, improvements in hydraulic fracturing,
etc.

>
>> We're certainly not in a 'post-peak
>> world'
>
>Right that's why we have military bases in the oil rich regions of the Caucases, following the Bosnian conflicts, that's why we have bases throughout the Middle East, that's why we have overturned Libya, are tyring to overturn Syria and Iran - it has nothing at all to do with oil. Tell that to Russian and China.Since Russia and China get their oil from Syria and Iran, they are pushing back.
>

Jesus, not only do you have no clue about the facts, you're a lunatic
to boot. I don't know how to break it to you, but we don't have bases
in all those places. Russia imports some piddling amount of oil and
exports far more than it imports. China is a big oil importer, but
only gets some 9% of its imports from Iran and practically none from
Syria (most Syrian oil goes to the EU). China's biggest sources of
oil are Saudi Arabia (16%), Angola (13%), Russia (11%), and Oman
(10%). That accounts for half of China's oil imports before you ever
get down to Iran.

>
>> because we still haven't hit peak oil yet,
>
>Yes we have. Nixon's White House put the current cluster fuck of the Middle East into play - why the hell do you think Kissingers and Brzezsinski are still hanging around the Pentagon and the White House for crying out loud! lol.
>

No, we haven't. Look at the production figures, you ignorant
yammerhead. Neither Kissinger nor Brzezsinski "are still hanging
around the Pentagon", you havering loon.

>
>> despite numerous
>> predictions about how we should have hit it already.
>
>We have! The oil crises of the 1978-1982 period was engineered to take supplies away from the Marktes so that later administrations could through regime change, bring stored supplies in when needed. This extended the global peak by 8 years - and in 2008 - we reached the peak. That's when the US spent trillions to deploy military resources to assure they had supplies of oil.
>

No we haven't, you havering loon. I gave links to production figures
above. If we have hit 'peak oil', production CANNOT go up regardless
of price. That's what peak oil means. Yet production is going up.

>
>> What happened to
>> drop oil prices?
>
>High oil prices cause companies that depend on low oil prices to go out of business. This drops demand and eventually prices. This comes at a huge social cost, not due to any new supply or radical reduction in energy costs. Its the mission of the US military to make sure those social costs are felt by people outside the USA. Yet, the USA felt they needed homeland security at some point because we won't stay isolated forever.
>

Except that's not what happened. You should follow your own advice
and listen to your betters.

>
>> A financial slump reducing demand
>
>caused by huge amounts of money flowing out of the energy intense economies into the economies of the energy suppliers.
>

Nonsense. Did you miss the whole financial bubble in 2008?

>
>> coupled with new
>> recovery methods
>
>made economic only because of reduced supply and rising costs.
>

Irrelevant.

>
>> leading to vastly increased production
>
>production of oil is lower today than it was at the peak despite the cost of new recovery methods you speak of.
>

You really need to both learn what 'peak oil' means and look at oil
production figures.

>
>> is what
>> happened.
>
>Wake the fuck up you crazy lunatic.
>

And after saying that, Mookie goes right off the rails into loony
conspiracy theories, which merit no response other than laughter.

>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgrunnLcG9Q
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjYojFvr0Zo
>
>Your ability to understand what you see is severely limited.
>
>Why do you think elements within the US government carried off 9/11?
>
>It was carried off by people who were convinced we had to invade the oil rich kingdoms of the world and take control of the remaining oil resources for the US economy and assure that the US population did not suffer because of reduced supply.
>
>Obviously the folks who carried out 9/11 to get a war fever started in the USA did so because they thought it was in the long term interest of the USA to do so. Despite the reality that it would eventually assure the destruction of the USA.
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfJNFSYFmZs
>
>Since Nixon leadership thought we needed to invade oil rich regions of the world and spend massively to maintain control there. That's what all this falderah over Syria and Iran is about. Leadership also thinks we need to clamp down and establish significant homeland security - because what do you think will happen when the oil does finally run out?
>

OK, I think he's stopped drooling for a moment...

>
>> Oil will probably remain 'soft' for another year or two and
>> then gradually recover as OPEC reduces production to decrease supply.
>
>Prices moderated only because we destroyed Libya, killed their leader and stole their oil. Saudi Arabia has no capacity to increase supply. When this is generally realised prices will skyrocket.
>

Hogwash. Libya's oil production isn't enough to matter. Saudi Arabia
has the capacity to increase production by nearly 25%.

http://www.platts.com/latest-news/oil/vienna/saudi-oil-output-capacity-125-million-bd-but-26455478

And now Mookie dives back off the rails.

>
>Nixon called this process regime change to bring supplies into market. See, we created enemies refused to trade with them or restricted trade. This has the effect of taking their oil reserves off the market. Then, when oil supplies run out elsewhere, we bring these other supplies on board. Look for Saudi Arabia to fall when their oil supplies run out. Of course the US will be drawing supplies out of Iraq and around Bosnia by that time.
>
>http://www.globalresearch.ca/perhaps-60-of-today-s-oil-price-is-pure-speculation/8878
>
>Oil Markets are rigged and supplies are provided by the US military. This will keep prices stable for a while but see increasing push back from Russia and China if we go after Syrian and Iranian oil, the way we did with Libyan oil.
>
>> >>
>> >> ALL
>> >> natural resources tend to work this way. You talk a lot about
>> >> hematite on Mars, but the concentrations in your own citations are way
>> >> too poor to be viable mining sources.
>> >>
>> >
>> >Meteorites crashing into the surface create huge globs of iron that are sitting on the surface. You can mine iron efficiently with a broom and a magnet on Mars today. You cannot do that on Earth.
>> >
>>
>> Nope.
>>
>
>You don't know the source of iron meteors. No one does. So stop pretending.
>

Of course we do. Apparently everyone but you does. Do you know the
meaning of the word 'meteorite'? It appears not.

>
>I will tell you what we do know. When you heat up hematite in near vacuum carbon dioxide atmosphere and you get iron. Meteor bombardment on Mars heats hematite in the Martian surface and produces vast quantities of iron. That's why four rovers on Mars looking at less than 200 sq km out of the 144.8 million sq km has found a super abundance of the stuff!
>
>https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia18387
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

>
>> Your own cite didn't show that.
>
>Your inability to understand and think about what you see and read shows nothing of the sort.
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

>> For it to work as you claim,
>
>Put hematite in a vacuum chamber and heat it up. You get iron. That's what vacuum degassing is all about.
>

Irrelevant.

>
>> there would have to be molten iron near the surface of Mars.
>
>http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6667
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

>
>This is significant iron given the area covered. There's likely a million more of these things around at least.
>

Hogwash.

>> There
>> isn't.
>
>If we found one in the area we've covered, there are likely a million more at least.
>

Hogwash.

>> Your cite showed AN IRON METEORITE.
>
>Yes, it we created by meteor bombardment or some other energetic event like a lightning bolt that heated the hematite on Mars surface and produced the iron.
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

>> That's iron that came
>> from elsewhere and hit Mars,
>
>You don't know that. There's no evidence whatever that is the case.
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

>> Mookie, and it's just the size of the
>> meteorite.
>
>What are the odds of a rover that has seen less than 200 sq km coming across something like this? If it were the only one on the planet, pretty damn unlikely. For the rover to see it it must be relatively common. That means that any old meteorite hitting the planet creates iron of this quality. Is this possible? Of course, its common. When you heat hematite in a vacuum you get iron of this quality and with these features.
>

Non sequitur.

>
>> There is no massive flow of molten iron from inside Mars
>> because Mars is cool.
>
>So? Now you're making things up. Look, you have a thick layer of hematite dust and it gets blasted by some process - you get a portion of it turning into iron. We see iron all over the place. This must be the source.
>

Hogwash.

>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> No reason in your tiny mind, anyway. So YOU should not go.
>> >>
>> >
>> >You're the one who has a small mind if you cannot admit that the resources off world are vastly greater than remain on Earth. That is a very powerful and important reason to go to Mars and the other worlds of the solar system today. To make life better for everyone on Earth and bring about a trophic change in our environment.
>> >
>>
>> Sorry, but you are both ignorant and insane.
>
>Funny how you tend to project your traits on to others, especially when they reveal both your insanity and your ignorance to you.
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

<snip>

>
>Why the fuck do you post here you miserable sonofabitch?
>

Why the fuck do you, you ignorant lunatic?

>> <Munch Massive MookMagical Maundering>
>>
>> >> >
>> >> >Heat shield rock - 98% iron
>> >> >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg
>> >> >
>> >> >98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> And here we see Mookie's problem. He just doesn't read very well. The
>> >> cite is about AN IRON METEORITE. His last sentence above is simply
>> >> wrong and has nothing to do with his cite.
>> >
>> >You are unaware of how the meteorite was formed. It was formed from an impactor impacting the iron rich surface of Mars and the energy blasting metal far and wide. Putting aside the formation of the chunk of iron and the far larger number of iron 'berries' found on the surface of Mars, ask yourself the following question; How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Earth? The answer is - none. How many pure iron chunks like this exist on Mars, well with only 4 rovers covering a grand total of 50 km with the horizon 3.4 km away - we've discovered one big one like the one I show in the figure, and thousands of smaller ones littering the landscape. So, like I said, with a broom and a magnet, you could sweep up 98% pure iron process it into steel and shoot it out of a General Atomics Rail gun at 14,000 mph and send over a billion dollars woth of steel back to Earth at virtually no added cost.
>> >
>>
>> Do you know what the word 'meteorite' means, you ignorant twat?
>
>Do you know the source of iron meteorite?
>

Everyone (but you) does.

>> The
>> 'meteorite' *IS* the 'impactor'.
>
>Any impactor on Mars will produce elemental iron in the process. That spray is also called a meteorite.
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

>> And you're wrong about Earth.
>
>Nope.
>

Yep.

>> See
>> Sudbury, for example. Yes, you may not get 'berries' because we have
>> air, but so what? There is no iron close to the surface to flow out
>> from a meteor strike on Mars.
>
>You don't know what you're talking about. An impactor produces a spray and that spray is energized and oxygen evolves leaving the sort of structure that you see in the photo.
>
>https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q1/meteorite-material-born-in-molten-spray-as-embryo-planets-collided.html
>

Go look up the definition of 'meteorite', you havering bampot.

>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
>> >> >https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> Do you have a point? I've known about MHDs for decades.
>> >
>> >The point is they're not in use on Earth for a variety of very good reasons. Those reasons don't apply on Mars. Supporting the notion that energy on Mars will be very cheap indeed.
>> >
>>
>> MHDs are not magically cheap.
>
>True. Why do think that statement relevant?
>

Because you keep insisting that "energy on Mars will be very cheap"
and offer up a paper on MHDs as 'proof'.

>> >> >
>> >> >General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.
>> >> >
>> >> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
>> >> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg
>> >> >
>> >> >Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> No.
>> >
>> >Yes.
>> >
>>
>> No.
>
>Lunar Escape Velocity: 2.38 km/sec
>Lunar Orbital Velocity: 1.68 km/sec
>Mach 7: 2.40 km/sec
>
>The Blitzer today in Earth's atmosphere attains Mach 7. That's in excess of Lunar Escape Velocity
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9qVGsrHkQo
>
>So, YES! You freaking moron.
>

Except hitting escape velocity is just a tiny part of the problem, you
freaking moron. Care to discuss midcourse guidance, reentry
insertion, etc? All that takes away from your 'cargo' mass, as to the
'shell casing' you put your cargo in.

>> >
>> >>
>> >> I've been to Dahlgren and know about this program.
>> >>
>> >
>> >You obviously have not been read into the programme otherwise you'd keep your mouth shut about what you know first hand.
>> >
>>
>> You obviously have no idea how classified programs work.
>
>Classified national security information is information created or received by an agency of the federal government or a government contractor that would damage national security if improperly released. Since 1940, the President has managed the system of classifying information by executive order.
>
>The most recent order concerning classified national security information is E.O. 13526, signed by President Obama on December 29, 2009.
>
>Information can only be classified if an official determination is made that its unauthorized release would damage the national security. Levels of classification correspond to levels of supposed damage. E.O. 13526 specifies that information whose release would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security” is classified TOP SECRET; information whose release would cause “serious damage” is classified SECRET; CONFIDENTIAL is the lowest category of classified information currently in use. RESTRICTED is an obsolete category that was discontinued in 1953.
>
>Classified information may take any form. Though paper documents are most common, there are classified photographs, maps, motion pictures, videotapes, databases, microfilms, hard drives, CDs, etc. Regardless of medium, classified information requires protection until it is formally declassified.
>
>If you have any further information you may contact the following;
>
>
>E-mail: is...@nara.gov
>Phone: 202-357-5250
>Mailing Address: Information Security Oversight Office
>National Archives and Records Administration
>700 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Room 100
>Washington, DC 20408
>

So your response in defense of your original ignorant remark is the
usual MookSpew.

>> >
>> >>
>> >> You apparently do not.
>> >
>> >I know what Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said about it. It achieves Mach 7 in Earth's atmosphere after exiting the barrel. That's 2.3 km/sec - lunar escape velocity. Now according to BAE CEO Jerry DeMuro the system is capable of attaining velocities in vacuo far higher. High enough to send projectiles from the Moon to Earth or from Mars to Earth. A well designed mass launcher would fit inside a 40 foot container and when deployed on Mars could send $1 billion a year worth of iron and other materials from Mars to any point on Earth.
>> >
>>
>> You are ignoring so much of reality that the preceding is mere
>> fantasy.
>
>No I'm not.
>

Yes you are.

>> Energy isn't free.
>
>Tell that to the Sun.
>

You think Sun energy is 'free'? Good luck with that. Non sequitur.

>> The 'barrel' certainly isn't free.
>
>A barrel as a unit of measure is absolutely free.
>

Non sequitur. The barrel of the railgun, you havering bampot.

>> How
>> many payloads can take the deposition of energy entailed by the
>> magnetic fields of a rail gun?
>
>Metal ingots can certainly take the acceleration.
>

They will be little tiny metal ingots, given all the guidance and
rocket motors and fuel you'll need going with them.

>> How do you actually get the payloads
>> to a destination, since just aiming and shooting won't work?
>
>Guidance systems can certainly take the acceleration as well. Aiming and shooting will get to Earth - mid course corrections will get you to a particular spot on Earth and a flight termination system will bring it to rest at the buyers point of delivery.
>

Look at the weight of shell that railgun can throw. Look at how
frequently it currently can fire. Look at how much mass you need for
guidance, thrusters, etc. Just how do you propose your 'flight
termination system' work? Lithobraking?

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 4:20:10 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
>> >a truly useful commodity like space solar power
>> >can become practical and the free markets will
>> >have a new reason to build large structures
>> >in space.
>> >
>>
>> It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
>> cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
>> space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
>> expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
>> magnitude more.
>>
>> And why would a solar power satellite require people?
>>
>

>Inflatable concentrators that focus light on to thin disk solar pumped lasers that use conjugate optics to beam energy reliably and safely to Earth - produce 22 kW of useable power on the ground per kg of payload at GEO. A Falcon Heavy puts 18 tons into GEO sufficient to produce 400 MW of power continuously. The satellite costs $110 million. The Launch $90 million - $200 million altogether. At $0.11 per kWh a 400 MW power satellite operating 8,766 hours per year generats $385 million per year in revenue.
>

At the price point you give an SPS doesn't produce anything. Prices
for SPS power are up around $3 or so, not 11 cents.


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

[Rick Jones]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In 1970 during the first oil crisis (perhaps you heard of it)

That was 1973.

rick jones
--
oxymoron n, Hummer H2 with California Save Our Coasts and Oceans plates
these opinions are mine, all mine; HPE might not want them anyway... :)
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hpe.com but NOT BOTH...

[Jonathan]

On 12/18/2016 10:20 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
>> a truly useful commodity like space solar power
>> can become practical and the free markets will
>> have a new reason to build large structures
>> in space.
>>
>
> It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
> cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
> space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
> expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
> magnitude more.
>

The advantage of SSP is that it can beam energy to
places where building a power plant, with all the
infrastructure that requires, isn't practical.

For instance to areas too thinly populated to
justify a power plant, too remote to justify
all the roads and rail lines to support a power
plant and so on. And the costs of SSP are up front
in building the satellites, once that's done
it's far easier and cheaper to build new
power networks as it just requires the
receiver, not a new expensive power plant.

Also it can be used to provide peak power demands
at existing plants that need extra power generation.
So SSP can be sold at peak prices. There are all kinds
of things SSP can do that conventional power plants
can't do in terms of accessibility, at least once
the day comes fossil fuel prices reach the
point SSP becomes competitive.

Not to mention SSP can be used to power larger satellites
and other orbital power needs.

> And why would a solar power satellite require people?
>
>

They are very large structures and large investments
that could need and afford manned support in orbit.
It would seem unlikely such large efforts could be built
and maintained entirely by remote means.


s

[Jonathan]

On 12/18/2016 9:17 PM, William Mook wrote:
> On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 12:44:32 AM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
>> On 12/17/2016 10:59 PM, William Mook wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Dated does not mean outdated.
>>>
>>> WIth an evergrowing population of ever wealthier individuals, it is doubtful that the Earth will long supply the material needs of humanity. For that reason it is imperative to develop the means to meet this ever growing need from resources found in interplanetary space.
>>>
>>> If items on Mars cannot be made and delivered to Earth more cheaply than Earth based resources, then there is no reason to ever go to Mars. Fortunately mass driver technology and power plant technology exists TODAY that make that possible.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> You're conclusion has a glaring logical flaw.
>
> No it doesn't.
>
>> If we can't
>> learn to live on Earth in a sustainable way, given it's
>> incredible abundance and ideal conditions,
>
> The biosphere is ideal for lower forms of life who don't mind competing tooth and claw and creating a culture of the survival of the fittest to that lower order irrespective of other higher values humanity might wish to develop.
>
> Conditions on Earth are non-ideal for an intelligent industrial species. It is only by creating an industrial infrastructure that exists independently of the biosphere, and in fact sustains terrestrial conditions off world that we can continue to grow and develop as an intelligent industrial species.
>
>> then we
>> can't learn to live in a sustainable way
>> anywhere...else.
>
> Definition of sustainable
> 1: capable of being sustained
> 2 a : of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged <sustainable techniques> <sustainable agriculture>
>
> b : of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods <sustainable society>
>
>> Either we learn to live within our means here
>> on Earth, or...else.
>
> There are insufficient resources on Earth today to sustain everyone at a high living standard. So, we must either establish a repressive governance world wide to allocate those limited resources in a sustainable way, or we must reduce populations, or we must reduce living standards to do as you say. All three avenues are being pursued at the present time.
>

I've been hearing that for a long time, it's a myth.

For instance world poverty has plummeted in the
last 20 or 30 years even though the population has
soared.

Dictatorships and the wars, famines and disease they
propagate is the problem, not limited Earth resources.
Most of the surface of the Earth is uninhabited
and can support twice the current population with ease.

With the spread of democracy and free markets the Earth would
become a naturally evolving system, it would become able
to adapt and sustain itself in a healthy and stable way.

It's the poor condition of our societal structures that
are the problem, fix that and all our problems vanish
into thin air.

> Abundant resources exist off world today. More than enough to sustain everyone at a high living standard, independently of the biosphere. By making use of these resources we can continue with the current population at the current rate of growth, and arrange deployement of infrastructure and capital to sustain a very high living standard for that large and growing population.
>
>
>> The notion we can make it on Mars with it's
>> harsh conditions and sparse bounties, but not
>> on Earth, doesn't make sense.
>
> It doesn't make sense to those who have accepted the anti-human propaganda of the past fifty years. However, the dated material from Dr. Ehricke shows that there were other approaches that could be pursued to provide a growing every wealthier population that has the capacity to maintain the biodiversity and capacity of Earth's life form, and sustain conditions beyond Earth using technology that permit that biodiversity to expand and grow to other worlds.
>
> Don't be fooled by the harsh conditions of Mars. You are making a logical error to equate harsh living conditions with sparse bounties. Iron for example is superabundant and easily recovered on Mars. Other elements are equally superabundant.
>

Even if Mars was coated in diamonds and gold and whatever
valuable resource you could imagine. You what mining those
resources and shipping them back to Earth would do?

ALL IT WOULD DO is ruin perfectly good commodity markets
here on Earth. It would destroy our economic systems
not help them.

>>
>> And what does 'ever wealthier individuals' have
>> to do with it?
>
> Wealthy individuals command more energy and resources than poor individuals. That's what it means to be wealthy. In many senses someone that can command the useful time and attention of 100 people continuously to their needs and live on 1000 acres with 10,000 tons of raw material organised for their pleasure, is vastly wealthier than a person who lives in 80 square meters and only a few hours a week of their own time is available to them after taxes fees and other overheads, to meet their own needs, while only 2.5 tons of raw materials are organised for their living needs. Wealthy individuals have fewer children on average. Wealthy populations import workers to make up the shortfall in numbers their low reproduction rates cause. A world of very wealthy individuals all reproducing at rates that are below replacement levels, using robotic labour to provide for human labour shortfalls, requires vastly more resources than exist on Earth today if we are to sustain this for the world's current population.
>
> To the extent that land, material, energy and useful time and attention depend on the capacity of the Earth's biosphere to sustain it, is the degree of impact we humans have on the biosphere. To the extent that land, material, energy and useful time and attention are totally independent of the Earth's biosphere to sustain it, provides a trophic change in the human condition and sets the stage for a trophic cascade that restores balance of the biosphere. To the degree we can build infrastructure that sustains conditoins suitable for life off world is the degree with which we can expand our biosphere.
>
>> Plus in the western free market
>> democracies population growth isn't an issue
>> implying that freedom and democracy is the
>> solution to population growth and sustainable
>> societies.
>
> Markets are not as free as you imagine and democracy is not as responsive as you believe as Edward Bernays pointed out in his ground breaking 1929 classic "Propaganda".
>
> The real factor impacting growth rate is the living standard of the top 5% of the world's population who consume 50% of the world's resources. If all were to consume at the rate of the top 5% we would need to produce 19x the output we do today and that cannot be sustained with the resources remaining on Earth.
>
> Very wealthy populations have higher degree of education and a greater range of personal liberty having nothing to do with politics. A person living in a Kingdom with a controlled market like Qatar has a per person income of $105,000 per year average whilst the Democratic Republic of Congo under virtually lawless conditions has a per person income of $395 per year average. Providing a counter-example to your presumption that democracy and free markets create wealth.
>
> You are correct that those with higher income have lower reproductive rates while those with lower income have higher reproductive rates. Sociologists argue about this one, but one common element seems to be higher income generally available.
>
> Now, with industry tied inexorably to the biosphere and terrestrial resources, we must get rid of about 85% of the people alive today to have the remaining 15% live at a standard that is sufficient to maintain a balance with nature. That implies the death of 6.4 billion people at the moment. The problem with this approach is that if an event or series of events are unleashed or allowed to happen on the planet to depopulate it to this extent, there is very little difference between wiping out 85% and 100% of humanity. that is, welcoming this approach is tantamount to welcoming our extinction. Even if we should survive physically it is doubtful we will survive emotionally and psychologically as the same species. The sociological consequences of such an act of depopulation would also be immense. I doubt if anyone alive today would recognise the survivors of such a depopulation event as human.
>
> Further, this is a solution to a resource problem that has other solutions. You don't solve the problem of there not being enough hats by beheading people. You solve the problem of there not being enough hats by figuring out how to make more hats. The fact the resources lie beyone where you've been before is no excuse for not going after them.
>

America is a massive consumer due to our higher standard of living, yet
America is a net energy....producer now. We ship more energy overseas
then we import. That is what it means to have a stable free market
democracy that mimics naturally evolving system.

In the last 50 years as America has grown substantially
in every way, our energy balance has become positive.
That shows the future isn't so bleak, but quite the
opposite. If our democracy and others improve such
problems become a thing of the past.


APRIL 15, 2015
U.S. energy imports and exports to come into balance
for first time since 1950s
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=20812


America, as a large stable free market democracy is a force
for economic and political stability world wide, as democracy
spreads that effect will have large and lasting adaptive
effects that will allow us to live within our means.

And as other nations such as China rise in standard of living
and find democracy, their population growth will fall
and energy efficiency will increase.

Your cost estimates are so unrealistic. The Mars Sample Return
mission last I heard would cost at least $6 billion
(probably 3 times that much) and take some 5 or 10 years
to return a /few pounds/ from Mars.

You're talking about shipping bulk iron? When iron on Earth
costs $80 per...TON. Four cents per pound?


I mean come on~

>>
>>> Robots are transforming mining today
>>>
>>> http://fortune.com/2015/08/25/internet-things-mining-industry/
>>> https://www.academia.edu/356502/Application_of_Robotics_In_Mining_Industry_A_Critical_Review
>>> http://www.eumicon.com/images/EUMICON_2015/Robotics%20in%20mining%20-%20Henryk%20Karas.pdf
>>> http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/04/04/325475.htm
>>>
>>> Heat shield rock - 98% iron
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_resources_on_Mars#/media/File:PIA07269-Mars_Rover_Opportunity-Iron_Meteorite.jpg
>>>
>>> 98% pure iron - created by a meteorite crashing into the iron rich surface of mars and spewing out pure iron.
>>>
>>> General Atomics - MHD Fission Reactor
>>> https://fusion.gat.com/pubs-ext/AnnSemiannETC/A23593.pdf
>>>
>>> General Atomics - Rail Gun - fires a bullet fast enough to escape the moon's surface and hit Earth. Can be carried on the back of a truck, on a ship, or in a rocket.
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNLrQhn5nLo
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHN-vplJZg
>>>
>>> Mach 7 - 2.3 km/sec - exceeds the escape velocity of the Moon. So, this device carried to the Moon, and powered up, would easily be capable of driving a lot of mass to Earth dirt cheap.
>>>
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev0G49jXJX0
>
> I was using old data from mass driver studies done in the 1970s when I was in school to calculate the quarter mile length of mass drivers on Mars. New data from rail guns developed and deployed by General Atomics - shows that they can fire a projectile with a speed of 2.3 km/sec (5,143 mph)- the escape velocity of the moon - in a length of 12.2 meters (40 feet!). This is an acceleration 4.4x greater than that achieved by the mass drivers of the 1970s. This implies that a similar gun 85.8 meters (281.4 ft) long - could be used to project objects off Mars all the way to Earth. Such a gun, would consist of 8 barrels in a 40 foot container, that would be fitted on the end of the system shown in the video.
>
> A Mars Colonial Transport sending one of these guns that fire at 36x per second per barrel, and sporting rounds of 10 kg each deliver 0.36 tons per second during operation. That's 2.84 million tons over a three month period each synodic period of 2.15 years. 1.32 million tons per year on average. Each cannon delivers $1.04 billion per year at an average cost of $0.79 per kg for raw materials.
>

A large truck on Earth is far cheaper and quicker.



s

[Jeff Findley]

In article <rehf5cpaincjidacn...@4ax.com>,
fjmc...@gmail.com says...

>
> Jeff Findley <jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >Hell, John Deere is working on an all electric tractor ("full-sized",
> >not some tiny sub-scale prototype) which will improve efficiency and
> >overall reliability.
> >
>
> And this is actually a great application for electrics if the thing
> isn't significantly more expensive than a regular tractor. It could
> plow or whatever all day at the usual slow tractor speeds, then go
> plug in and recharge at night.

From what I've read, it will go for 4 hours before needing charged. So,
you'd need to take three breaks to get a solid 16 hours of work in (e.g.
harvesting). That's not too unreasonable, but might be a negative when
trying to sell it. Higher reliability would be a huge plus though.
Breaking down while doing something fairly time/weather critical like
planting is a bad thing.

> If it's autonomous and you can run it
> at night, you could buy an extra set of batteries and keep one set on
> charge while the other is being used.

That's an excellent point. Drive the thing around for one season to
allow it to learn how you want it to traverse the fields and you should
be good to go from then on. If something goes wrong, it could text you
"human decision required".

> What makes electric cars impractical are the range issues and how long
> they take to charge. This is much less an issue with something like a
> tractor.

True. With two battery packs that can be swapped, this becomes quite
easy for a farm. Worst case, a farmer with truly huge fields many miles
away from an electrical source might have to use a truck to bring
freshly charged battery packs to the tractors and take the spent packs
back to the barn for recharging. But assuming autonomous tractors, a
single farmer should be able to keep several tractors supplied with
battery packs throughout the day.

[Jonathan]

On 12/18/2016 9:17 PM, William Mook wrote:

I've been hearing that for a long time, it's a myth.

For instance world poverty has plummeted in the
last 20 or 30 years even though the population has

soared from some 4.4 billion to 7 billion in
the same time if I recall correctly.



Did we really reduce extreme poverty by half in 30 years?
http://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/mar/23/gayle-smith/did-we-really-reduce-extreme-poverty-half-30-years/

Dictatorships and the wars, famines and disease they
propagate is the problem, not limited Earth resources.
Most of the surface of the Earth is uninhabited
and can support twice the current population with ease.

With the spread of democracy and free markets the Earth would
become a naturally evolving system, it would become able
to adapt and sustain itself in a healthy and stable way.

It's the poor condition of our societal structures that
are the problem, fix that and all our problems vanish
into thin air.

> Abundant resources exist off world today. More than enough to
sustain everyone at a high living standard, independently of the
biosphere. By making use of these resources we can continue with the
current population at the current rate of growth, and arrange
deployement of infrastructure and capital to sustain a very high living
standard for that large and growing population.
>
>
>> The notion we can make it on Mars with it's
>> harsh conditions and sparse bounties, but not
>> on Earth, doesn't make sense.
>
> It doesn't make sense to those who have accepted the anti-human
propaganda of the past fifty years. However, the dated material from
Dr. Ehricke shows that there were other approaches that could be pursued
to provide a growing every wealthier population that has the capacity to
maintain the biodiversity and capacity of Earth's life form, and sustain
conditions beyond Earth using technology that permit that biodiversity
to expand and grow to other worlds.
>
> Don't be fooled by the harsh conditions of Mars. You are making a
logical error to equate harsh living conditions with sparse bounties.
Iron for example is superabundant and easily recovered on Mars. Other
elements are equally superabundant.
>

Even if Mars was coated in diamonds and gold and whatever

valuable resource you could imagine. You know what mining

those resources and shipping them back to Earth would do?

ALL IT WOULD DO is ruin perfectly good commodity markets
here on Earth. It would destroy our economic systems
not help them.






>>

America is a massive consumer due to our higher standard of living, yet
America is a net energy....producer now. We ship more energy overseas
then we import. That is what it means to have a stable free market
democracy that mimics naturally evolving system.

In the last 50 years as America has grown substantially
in every way, our energy balance has become positive.

That shows the future isn't bleak, but quite the

opposite. If our democracy and others improve such
problems become a thing of the past.



APRIL 15, 2015
U.S. energy imports and exports to come into balance
for first time since 1950s
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=20812

America, as a large stable free market democracy, is a force

for economic and political stability world wide, as democracy
spreads that effect will have large and lasting adaptive
effects that will allow us to live within our means.

And as other nations such as China rise in standard of living
and find democracy, their population growth will fall
and energy efficiency will increase.

Your cost estimates are so unrealistic. The Mars Sample Return
mission last I heard would cost at least $6 billion
(probably 3 times that much) and take some 5 or 10 years
to return a /few pounds/ from Mars.

You're talking about shipping bulk iron? When iron on Earth
costs $80 per...TON.

Four cents per pound? I mean come on~

Playing the if if if if if game only
produces noise, not realistic future
visions. Especially when every 'if'
is estimated to the best case scenario
...times ten as yours are.

How much does a large truck and driver on Earth cost?





s

[Fred J. McCall]

Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 12/18/2016 10:20 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
>>> a truly useful commodity like space solar power
>>> can become practical and the free markets will
>>> have a new reason to build large structures
>>> in space.
>>>
>>
>> It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
>> cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
>> space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
>> expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
>> magnitude more.
>>
>
>The advantage of SSP is that it can beam energy to
>places where building a power plant, with all the
>infrastructure that requires, isn't practical.
>

Then those people aren't going to be able to afford $3+ /kW-hr for
power.

>
>For instance to areas too thinly populated to
>justify a power plant, too remote to justify
>all the roads and rail lines to support a power
>plant and so on. And the costs of SSP are up front
>in building the satellites, once that's done
>it's far easier and cheaper to build new
>power networks as it just requires the
>receiver, not a new expensive power plant.
>

It is cheaper to build roads and such than it is to build and launch a
constellation of SPS. It's also much cheaper to just airdrop solar
cells in to each individual who needs power.

>
>Also it can be used to provide peak power demands
>at existing plants that need extra power generation.
>

This is why we have a power grid. Any power company that buys SPS
power at $3+/kW-hr deserves to go broke and have all its management
fired.

>
>So SSP can be sold at peak prices.
>

Which are around 3% or so of what SPS power costs.

>
>There are all kinds
>of things SSP can do that conventional power plants
>can't do in terms of accessibility, at least once
>the day comes fossil fuel prices reach the
>point SSP becomes competitive.
>

So, sometime around the 1st of Never, then.

>
>Not to mention SSP can be used to power larger satellites
>and other orbital power needs.
>

How's that going to work again? And if it does, why not just build
powerplants on Earth, where they're easy to get at to run and
maintain, and beam the power UP?

>
>>
>> And why would a solar power satellite require people?
>>
>
>They are very large structures and large investments
>that could need and afford manned support in orbit.
>It would seem unlikely such large efforts could be built
>and maintained entirely by remote means.
>

Handwavium is all well and good, but why would they need constant
human support? It seems unlikely that such large efforts could be
built and maintained regardless of how you go about it, but there's no
reason why they'd require people if they could be built.

[William Mook]

Its not a myth. You've heard it for a long time because its true.

>
> For instance world poverty has plummeted in the
> last 20 or 30 years even though the population has
> soared from some 4.4 billion to 7 billion in
> the same time if I recall correctly.

Recall what exactly? Propaganda?

> Did we really reduce extreme poverty by half in 30 years?

No we didn't.

> http://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/mar/23/gayle-smith/did-we-really-reduce-extreme-poverty-half-30-years/

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2016/12/16/mollie-hemingway-speaks-truth-facebook-politifact-joke

>
>
> Dictatorships and the wars, famines and disease they
> propagate is the problem, not limited Earth resources.

All extreme scarcity is artificially induced and maintained by those who benefit from that scarcity. All dictators are backed by the money interests who benefit from the existence of those dictators. Saddam Hussein was backed by the USA to scare up the price of crude whenever it lagged.

> Most of the surface of the Earth is uninhabited
> and can support twice the current population with ease.

All of Earth's surface is inhabited by native life. The ability to maintain a diverse biosphere is reduced by large human populations. This adds tremendously to the cost of living on Earth. Off world, we have no concerns.

> With the spread of democracy and free markets the Earth would
> become a naturally evolving system,

Edward Bernays pointed out nearly 100 years ago now that the organised beliefs and habits of the vast majority of humanity is controlled by a powerful elite who understand the principles of establishing those beliefs and habits. Since Bernays' time, the capacity of those elites has grown by leaps and bounds.

> it would become able
> to adapt and sustain itself in a healthy and stable way.

The entire environmental movement and limits to growth movement, are joined at the hip. Its all propaganda to justify the destruction of billions of lives and to tell you and others what to do.

> It's the poor condition of our societal structures that
> are the problem, fix that and all our problems vanish
> into thin air.

No, we have social problems because we have resource problems. Those scarcities are managed by an elite who use scarcity to maintain control. The existence of scarcity in the first place creates the opportunity for this manipulation of the masses in this way.

End scarcity and power returns to the people.

>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Abundant resources exist off world today. More than enough to
> sustain everyone at a high living standard, independently of the
> biosphere. By making use of these resources we can continue with the
> current population at the current rate of growth, and arrange
> deployement of infrastructure and capital to sustain a very high living
> standard for that large and growing population.
> >
> >
> >> The notion we can make it on Mars with it's
> >> harsh conditions and sparse bounties, but not
> >> on Earth, doesn't make sense.
> >
> > It doesn't make sense to those who have accepted the anti-human
> propaganda of the past fifty years. However, the dated material from
> Dr. Ehricke shows that there were other approaches that could be pursued
> to provide a growing every wealthier population that has the capacity to
> maintain the biodiversity and capacity of Earth's life form, and sustain
> conditions beyond Earth using technology that permit that biodiversity
> to expand and grow to other worlds.
> >
> > Don't be fooled by the harsh conditions of Mars. You are making a
> logical error to equate harsh living conditions with sparse bounties.
> Iron for example is superabundant and easily recovered on Mars. Other
> elements are equally superabundant.
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> Even if Mars was coated in diamonds and gold and whatever
> valuable resource you could imagine. You know what mining
> those resources and shipping them back to Earth would do?

Eliminate mining within the biosphere which causes a trophic cascade which is a good thing.

http://www.siemens.com/press/en/feature/2015/corporate/2015-03-electromotor.php?content[]=Corp

>
> ALL IT WOULD DO is ruin perfectly good commodity markets
> here on Earth. It would destroy our economic systems
> not help them.

It would eliminate extraction industries on earth which would promote a trophic cascade that would be beneficial to the environment while simultaneously releasing our economic system from scarcity constraints.

It would be a good thing.

According to the DOE EIA

"About 1/3 of the United States total energy consumption of approximately 100 quadrillion BTUs (“quads”) is imported, up from less than 1/5 in 1973. Most of our net imports were petroleum. We import roughly 2/3 of our petroleum consumption."

> We ship more energy overseas
> then we import.

No we don't. We import 1/3 of the energy we use. Most of that as petroleum products where we import 2/3 of the petroleum products we use.

> That is what it means to have a stable free market
> democracy

The USA spends more on military than the rest of the world combined. Nearly half the remaining total not spent by the USA is spent by governments supported by the USA and works exclusively in USA's interest. The USA has started more wars in more countries than any other nation in modern times and has killed more civilians than any other nation in history. The USA has done this to assure that it has low cost access to the world's resources regardless of the impact that the denial of those resources have on local populations. This is how the USA sustains continuous imports of goods and raw materials without a counter-balancing trade.

> that mimics naturally evolving system.

The USA does mimic a natural system of predator prey. Unfortunately, this is not sustainable. It leads to blowback and eventually collapse.

> In the last 50 years as America has grown substantially

No it hasn't. It has transferred wealth from other nations to itself. Even so, its middle class has suffered greatly in the past 50 years.

> in every way, our energy balance has become positive.

In every way the present industrial system is becoming less sustainable.

> That shows the future isn't bleak, but quite the
> opposite.

The future is bleak throughout the countries the USA has attacked because the USA has attacked them and stolen vital national resources.

> If our democracy and others improve such
> problems become a thing of the past.

You are absolutely nuts. Check out these before and after pictures of Libya.

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/regime-change-in-libya-descends-into-lawlessness-and-ruin_092013/libya-before-and-after-1

How about Iraq

http://truththeory.com/2012/07/25/iraq-before-and-after-democracy/

Don't forget Syria

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/26/syria-heritage-in-ruins-before-and-after-pictures

Afghanistan - where invasion plans were on the desk of the President BEFORE 9/11.

http://afghanistanonmymind.blogspot.co.nz/2011/08/photos-of-afghanistan-before-and-after.html

War is a Racket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI3lckqaSk0

>
>
> APRIL 15, 2015
> U.S. energy imports and exports to come into balance
> for first time since 1950s
> http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=20812
>

Did you read the document? ITS A PROJECTION, NOT A FACT! The FACT is, the USA imports 1/3 of all its energy and 2/3 of all its petroleum.

The first sentence of the report says PROJECTIONS in EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2015 (AEO2015), released April 14, show the potential to eliminate net U.S. energy imports sometime between 2020 and 2030.

How is this PROJECTION achieved? BY RADICAL REDUCTION IN ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY ELIMINATING AUTOMOBILES.

Sheez.

I guess that's why the feel they need Homeland Security to keep everyone in check.

>
> America, as a large stable free market democracy,

No its not.

> is a force
> for economic and political stability world wide,

No its not. Quite the opposite.

> as democracy
> spreads

Emergent systems are superior to command systems. However, democracy has become a joke in the hands of folks like Saul Alinsky and Edward Bernays.

> that effect will have large and lasting adaptive
> effects that will allow us to live within our means.

Increasing regulation and restrictions of liberties we today take for granted will give more and more power to a technocratic elite who will restrict access to resources radically reducing living standards. That's how we will live within our means. This is distinctly different than people consuming what they desire and others doing their best to supply it at cheaply as possible in competition with others doing the same.

> And as other nations such as China rise in standard of living
> and find democracy, their population growth will fall
> and energy efficiency will increase.

Do you even know that there is only ONE PARTY in China? The COMMUNIST PARTY! lol.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP), also called Communist Party of China (CPC), Chinese (Pinyin) Zhongguo Gongchan Dang or (Wade-Giles romanization) Chung-kuo Kung-ch’an Tang, political party of China. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the CCP has been in sole control of that country’s government.

No their not. Your understanding of politics. Now THAT'S unrealistic!

> The Mars Sample Return
> mission last I heard would cost at least $6 billion
> (probably 3 times that much) and take some 5 or 10 years
> to return a /few pounds/ from Mars.

Depends on how you do it and who does it.

> You're talking about shipping bulk iron? When iron on Earth
> costs $80 per...TON.

$300 per ton. Refined steel, not iron. There's plenty of carbon after all.

> Four cents per pound? I mean come on~

$300 per ton.

>
> Playing the if if if if if game only
> produces noise, not realistic future
> visions.

No a careful analysis of the critical factors produces realistic maps of what skills and techniques are most useful.

> Especially when every 'if'
> is estimated to the best case scenario
> ...times ten as yours are.

You don't understand what I've written any more than you understand the world you live in.

The GA Rail gun programme has cost about half a billion dollars. Costs for general deployment of the cannons are about $50 million each in quantities of 100.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev0G49jXJX0



>
>
>
> s

[William Mook]

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:29:12 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 4:20:10 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> >> Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> >When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
> >> >a truly useful commodity like space solar power
> >> >can become practical and the free markets will
> >> >have a new reason to build large structures
> >> >in space.
> >> >
> >>
> >> It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
> >> cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
> >> space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
> >> expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
> >> magnitude more.
> >>
> >> And why would a solar power satellite require people?
> >>
> >
> >Inflatable concentrators that focus light on to thin disk solar pumped lasers that use conjugate optics to beam energy reliably and safely to Earth - produce 22 kW of useable power on the ground per kg of payload at GEO. A Falcon Heavy puts 18 tons into GEO sufficient to produce 400 MW of power continuously. The satellite costs $110 million. The Launch $90 million - $200 million altogether. At $0.11 per kWh a 400 MW power satellite operating 8,766 hours per year generats $385 million per year in revenue.
> >
>
> At the price point you give an SPS doesn't produce anything.

Yes it does.

> Prices
> for SPS power are up around $3 or so, not 11 cents.

Considerable profit is earned at $0.11 per kWh when care is taken to use shorter wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum, reducing optics and beam steering, and if concentrating thin film devices are used to reduce mass.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <JIqdnV2xkO8y4MXF...@giganews.com>,
wr...@gmail.com says...

>
> On 12/18/2016 10:20 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> > Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
> >> a truly useful commodity like space solar power
> >> can become practical and the free markets will
> >> have a new reason to build large structures
> >> in space.
> >>
> >
> > It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
> > cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
> > space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
> > expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
> > magnitude more.
> >
>
>
>
> The advantage of SSP is that it can beam energy to
> places where building a power plant, with all the
> infrastructure that requires, isn't practical.

True. The military would want this in order to reduce the amount of
fuel it needs to transport.

> For instance to areas too thinly populated to
> justify a power plant, too remote to justify
> all the roads and rail lines to support a power
> plant and so on. And the costs of SSP are up front
> in building the satellites, once that's done
> it's far easier and cheaper to build new
> power networks as it just requires the
> receiver, not a new expensive power plant.

Outside of the military, this is going to depend heavily on the details.
In some remote areas it may make sense. But, I would not be willing to
bet that this would exceed military beamed power spending.

> Also it can be used to provide peak power demands
> at existing plants that need extra power generation.
> So SSP can be sold at peak prices. There are all kinds
> of things SSP can do that conventional power plants
> can't do in terms of accessibility, at least once
> the day comes fossil fuel prices reach the
> point SSP becomes competitive.

Is this true in the US considering the amount of fracking that is going
on and the plentiful, and cheap, natural gas that is is producing?

> Not to mention SSP can be used to power larger satellites
> and other orbital power needs.

How useful is this really? Even "worst case" (e.g. LEO), you're just
trading solar cells and rechargeable batteries for a microwave antenna
and a smaller battery (to handle very brief power interruptions).
Beamed satellite power also means dependence on an outside power source
that will be an ongoing cost.

The devil really is in the details here.

> > And why would a solar power satellite require people?
> >
> >
>
> They are very large structures and large investments
> that could need and afford manned support in orbit.
> It would seem unlikely such large efforts could be built
> and maintained entirely by remote means.

Again, the devil is in the details. Most of what is needed could likely
be done with robotics and tele-operation. Time hopefully isn't an issue
since the design will surely be multiply redundant for all critical
systems (again, primary initial customers being military). Anything
requiring a human could be done during a scheduled "man-tended" visit.

[Jeff Findley]

In article <MPG.32c2525a9...@news.eternal-september.org>,
jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com says...

>
> In article <rehf5cpaincjidacn...@4ax.com>,
> fjmc...@gmail.com says...
> >
> > Jeff Findley <jfin...@cinci.nospam.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >Hell, John Deere is working on an all electric tractor ("full-sized",
> > >not some tiny sub-scale prototype) which will improve efficiency and
> > >overall reliability.
> > >
> >
> > And this is actually a great application for electrics if the thing
> > isn't significantly more expensive than a regular tractor. It could
> > plow or whatever all day at the usual slow tractor speeds, then go
> > plug in and recharge at night.
>
> From what I've read, it will go for 4 hours before needing charged. So,
> you'd need to take three breaks to get a solid 16 hours of work in (e.g.
> harvesting). That's not too unreasonable, but might be a negative when
> trying to sell it. Higher reliability would be a huge plus though.
> Breaking down while doing something fairly time/weather critical like
> planting is a bad thing.

I looked it up again last night and the 4 hours of working time was
correct. But, I neglected to note that it will take 3 hours to
recharge. :-(

So, yea, battery swaps and/or autonomous operation would seem to be
quite necessary here. When you're planting or harvesting, you're
typically doing it under fairly extreme time pressure. The farmers in
my extended family are usually in their tractor or combine for every
waking hour during those times. Except for very short nature breaks,
you're living in the cab of that machine until all the fields are done
being planted or harvested.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 2:27:33 PM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
>> On 12/18/2016 9:17 PM, William Mook wrote:
>> >
>> > There are insufficient resources on Earth today to sustain everyone
>> at a high living standard. So, we must either establish a repressive
>> governance world wide to allocate those limited resources in a
>> sustainable way, or we must reduce populations, or we must reduce living
>> standards to do as you say. All three avenues are being pursued at the
>> present time.
>>
>> I've been hearing that for a long time, it's a myth.
>
>Its not a myth. You've heard it for a long time because its true.
>

>

>All extreme scarcity is artificially induced and maintained by those who benefit from that scarcity. All dictators are backed by the money interests who benefit from the existence of those dictators. Saddam Hussein was backed by the USA to scare up the price of crude whenever it lagged.
>

So Mookie insists out one side of his mouth that there are not enough
resources on Earth while out of the other he claims that scarcity is a
plot. Phew, what a loony!

[Yeah, I chopped out a thousand lines or so of MookSpew.]

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:29:12 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 4:20:10 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>> >> Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
>> >> >a truly useful commodity like space solar power
>> >> >can become practical and the free markets will
>> >> >have a new reason to build large structures
>> >> >in space.
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
>> >> cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
>> >> space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
>> >> expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
>> >> magnitude more.
>> >>
>> >> And why would a solar power satellite require people?
>> >>
>> >
>> >Inflatable concentrators that focus light on to thin disk solar pumped lasers that use conjugate optics to beam energy reliably and safely to Earth - produce 22 kW of useable power on the ground per kg of payload at GEO. A Falcon Heavy puts 18 tons into GEO sufficient to produce 400 MW of power continuously. The satellite costs $110 million. The Launch $90 million - $200 million altogether. At $0.11 per kWh a 400 MW power satellite operating 8,766 hours per year generats $385 million per year in revenue.
>> >
>>
>> At the price point you give an SPS doesn't produce anything.
>
>Yes it does.
>

Only if someone gifts the whole thing to you.

>> Prices
>> for SPS power are up around $3 or so, not 11 cents.
>
>Considerable profit is earned at $0.11 per kWh when care is taken to use shorter wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum, reducing optics and beam steering, and if concentrating thin film devices are used to reduce mass.
>

Bullshit. See "Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for
Strategic Security", Report to the Director, National Security Space
Office.

[William Mook]

On Wednesday, December 21, 2016 at 10:32:18 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 2:27:33 PM UTC+13, Jonathan wrote:
> >> On 12/18/2016 9:17 PM, William Mook wrote:
> >> >
> >> > There are insufficient resources on Earth today to sustain everyone
> >> at a high living standard. So, we must either establish a repressive
> >> governance world wide to allocate those limited resources in a
> >> sustainable way, or we must reduce populations, or we must reduce living
> >> standards to do as you say. All three avenues are being pursued at the
> >> present time.
> >>
> >> I've been hearing that for a long time, it's a myth.
> >
> >Its not a myth. You've heard it for a long time because its true.
> >
>
> >
> >All extreme scarcity is artificially induced and maintained by those who benefit from that scarcity. All dictators are backed by the money interests who benefit from the existence of those dictators. Saddam Hussein was backed by the USA to scare up the price of crude whenever it lagged.
> >
>
> So Mookie insists out one side of his mouth that there are not enough
> resources on Earth

True. The limited resources on Earth relative to the resources off world limits the amount that can be usefully invested without excessive environmental disruption.

> while out of the other he claims that scarcity is a
> plot.

True. Those who manage the capital use technocratic means to deploy that capital and they take the aforementioned limits to growth into account in that deployment.

> Phew, what a loony!

Well, only if you're foolish enough to read the two statements as mutually exclusive. They are not.

It takes capital to create wealth. Since capital is restricted to an elite class of individuals and economic speech is restricted only to that class, and all follow a strict technocratic logic, which is demonstrably the case today, that class limits their invesments in ways that ehnace their power and influence in the face of natural limits to growth.

> [Yeah, I chopped out a thousand lines or so of MookSpew.]

Yeah, the behaviour of someone who is in denial - when they're not being angry.. lol.

The five stages of loss,

denial,
anger,
bargaining,
depression and
acceptance

These are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with things we lose.

You've lost because your entire world is built on a fantasy. When you can you ignore that fact, when you cannot you get angry. You have yet to have reality seep into your consciousness.

[William Mook]

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 8:06:49 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> bob haller <hal...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >wonder what laser beams from space could do to our atmosphere?
> >
>
> Nothing.

Correct, particularly if the areal intensity is well below breakdown energy.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a133211.pdf

You need between 1 billion watts/cm2 and100 billion watts/cm2 depending on wavelength. Sunlight arrives at the top of the atmosphere at 136.8 milliwatts/cm2. There's a big range of power levels in there that don't cause any problem whatever!

Companies are using something on the order of 10,000 Watts/cm2 to beam power reliably and safely through optical fibers, light pipes and open atmosphere to efficiently regenerate power remotely with very light weight and compact systems;

http://lasermotive.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhv9Cu98us

Other companies are beaming on the order of 100 million watts/cm2 to beam power reliably and safely through the atmosphere and then concentrate it to break down levels to produce direct propulsive effects

http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtH-SxqdtaA

>
> >
> >just wait till a aiming problem or isis hacker redirects the beam into a weapon
> >
>
> You probably believe nuclear reactors can be made to explode like
> bombs, too.
>

Beam steering in both Lasermotive and Lightcraft system use conjugate optics. Such system require the receiver generate a tracking beam that interacts physically with the optics of the transmitter in a way that sends energy back to the receiver. This is called phase conjugate reflection.

There is no way known to hack this. The tracking or reference beam is also modulated to identify the user so that people are billed for their power use. Modulation of power beam and reference beam also provide for broadband communications between the receiver and transmitter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAy39ErqV34

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHWIZsIBj3Q

[William Mook]

On Wednesday, December 21, 2016 at 10:37:25 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:29:12 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> >> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 4:20:10 PM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> >> >> Jonathan <wr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> >
> >> >> >When fossil fuel costs become excessive then
> >> >> >a truly useful commodity like space solar power
> >> >> >can become practical and the free markets will
> >> >> >have a new reason to build large structures
> >> >> >in space.
> >> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> It's cheaper to build your solar power plant down here. Again, the
> >> >> cost of lifting all that stuff from Earth in the first place makes
> >> >> space-based solar far too expensive. Hell, Earth-based solar is too
> >> >> expensive right now and space-based costs at least an order of
> >> >> magnitude more.
> >> >>
> >> >> And why would a solar power satellite require people?
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> >Inflatable concentrators that focus light on to thin disk solar pumped lasers that use conjugate optics to beam energy reliably and safely to Earth - produce 22 kW of useable power on the ground per kg of payload at GEO. A Falcon Heavy puts 18 tons into GEO sufficient to produce 400 MW of power continuously. The satellite costs $110 million. The Launch $90 million - $200 million altogether. At $0.11 per kWh a 400 MW power satellite operating 8,766 hours per year generats $385 million per year in revenue.
> >> >
> >>
> >> At the price point you give an SPS doesn't produce anything.
> >
> >Yes it does.
> >
>
> Only if someone gifts the whole thing to you.

No, the cost is shown to scale at 22 kW per kg on orbit. At current costs of construction and launch this is $2,200 per kg - so we're getting 10 watts per $1 - or $0.10 per watt of capacity. So, with a 40 year life each watt generates 350.64 kWh. With no discount rate, this is 1/35th of a cent per kWh. With a 12% discount rate this is 1.4 cents per kWh. So, selling power at 11.4 cents per kWh earns the innovators 10 cents per kWh whilst paying the folks who finance the hardware (once demonstrated) superb long-term returns.

>
> >> Prices
> >> for SPS power are up around $3 or so, not 11 cents.
> >
> >Considerable profit is earned at $0.11 per kWh when care is taken to use shorter wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum, reducing optics and beam steering, and if concentrating thin film devices are used to reduce mass.
> >
>
> Bullshit.

No its not.

> See "Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for
> Strategic Security", Report to the Director, National Security Space
> Office.

I have looked at that. It is available here;

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/nsso.htm

Page 7 looks at the structure they assumed to compute their costs;

They assume 1000 W/kg for primary power production and 35% conversion efficiency. They produce ELECTRICAL power on orbit and convert that to microwave energy at 8.8 GHz with 80% efficiency - which they then use a phased array to beam back to Earth. This scales the system and enforces a particular price point and project size.

An 8.8 GHz system has a 34 mm wavelength. The distance from GEO to the equator is 35.768 megameters. The distance from GEO to the poles is 42.164 megameters. The Airy disk size of a spot the larger distance away is;

Airy Diameter = 42.164 * 10^6 * 1.22 * lambda / Diameter of dish.
Airy Diameter * Dish Diameter =169752.264

Making the diameters equal means we take the square root; 412 meter diameter receiver and transmitter in space. Increasing the diameter of the receiver lowers the diameter (and weight and cost) of the transmitter.


My analysis is available here;

http://bobkrone.com/node/120

I make a few different assumptions;

(1) I use 1,064 Nm as the longest power transfer wavelength
(2) I produce laser light directly from sunlight at 65% efficiency
(3) I receive laser light with bandgap matched photovoltaics with 90% efficiency
(4) I use a single inflatable concentrator in conjunction with a thin disk solar pumped laser
(5) I use circulating gases within the inflatable concentrator to cool the laser
(6) I use conjugate optics to direct the beam
(7) I use modulated laser energy to communicate with receivers

This provides major reduction in orbiting mass and permits compact receivers that may be installed without major ground infrastructure. Both radically reduce costs because I get 22,000 per kg. This is 22x better and so instead of $3 per watt its $3/22 per watt - or 13.64 cents per watt. Now, there are other cost savings as well in my system, due to ground station improvements and other factors - which get us down to $0.10 per watt mentioned previously.

The wavelength reduction alone reduces the size of the transmitting device from 412 meters to 7.4 meters for this all optical system.

Using a 1600x concentration ratio, which is a 40x reduction in diameter, the thin disk wafer is illuminated by a 296 meter diameter thin film concentrator. With a 65% conversion efficiency at the laser and 90% conversion efficiency through the beaming and ground station power conversion, this satellite delivers 55 megawatts continuously from orbit to receivers anywhere on Earth where the satellite is visible. The satellite itself masses 2,500 kg. Launch cost is $2.5 million. Construction cost is $3.0 million.

A Falcon heavy puts up 54,400 kg into LEO. This is 22 of the satellites described above. They are equipped with MEMS based solar powered ion engines - that boost them from LEO to GEO and beyond and provide 40 years of useful life by maintaining orientation and orbit once achieved. $55 million for launch costs. $66 million construction costs. Another $29 million development costs. A satellite every 18 degrees with two spares - provide a grand total of 1.2 GW continuously anywhere on Earth. The spares orbit in a slightly lower orbit that completes one revolution around the Earth every 20 hours. So, that they constantly outpace the 'fixed' satellites and complete a revolution of Earth every week. They provide spare power when they're in the sky, and they easily replace any satellite that must be taken out of the system and returned to a repair orbit.

Now a 296 meter diameter concentrator consists of 68,814 square meters of collector area. 75% of the mass is in the collector and with 3x the projected area dedicated to the oblate spheroid thin film we have 9 grams per square meter of collector surface. The balance of the system, 1250 kg, is allocated to the 43 square meter thin disk laser. That's 29 kg per square meter. 2.9 grams per sq cm.

1.2 GW of power deliver 10.6 billion kWh per year. When sold at $0.114 per kWh $1.2 billion per year is earned from $150 million invested.

[William Mook]

On Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 6:29:57 PM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
> On 2016-12-13 00:28, Fred J. McCall wrote:
>
> > Orbital mechanics - learn some. EVERYTHING is an orbit. You need to
> > cancel enough orbital velocity to fall into the Sun. Otherwise,
> > you're going to loop around it.
>
> Can't you "aim" the elliptical orbit such that the object passes close
> enough to the sun's "atmosphere" to get slowed down at perigee such that
> after a few orbits, it goes too deep inside the sun to come back out ?

The change in velocity to move from a circular orbit 1 astronomical unit (149,500,000 km) from the Sun to have a perihelion equal to the sun's radius (347,500 km) is not much difference between that and cancelling out the speed altogether (perihelion the centre of the sun). This is given by Vis Viva equation


dV = Vo - Vt

Vo = orbital velocity
Vt = transfer velocity
dV = delta vee (change in speed)

Vt = SQRT( 2/r - 1/a )

Where r= radius
a = semi-major axis.

Vo = SQRT( 2/r - 1/a) where a=r for a circular orbit.

So, if we do things in terms of astronomical units, or AU we have

14.5 million km = 1.00 AU
0.3475 million km = 1/430 = 0.00232441

Now that's perihelion. So, the major axis is 1 + 0.00232441 = 1.00232441. And the semi-major axis is one half that or a = 0.501162207

Vo= SQRT(2/1-1/1) = 1
Vt = SQRT(2/1 -1/0.501162207) = 0.068103221

The semi-major axis for a perihelion of 0 is 0.5

Vt' = SQRT(2/1-1/0.5) = 0

Now we can convert these figures to km/sec by noting that a circle with a radius of 1 AU has a circumference of 939.336 million km and the Earth takes 1 year or 31,557,600 seconds to complete one orbit. Dividing the time into the distance obtains the speed of

939.336 / 31.5576 = 29.766 km/sec.

So, multiplying this figure by 0.681 obtains 2.027 km/sec. This means that we have a change in speed or delta vee of;

dV = 29.766 - 2.027 = 27.739 km/sec

Subtracting zero from this speed - which is the change that's needed to drop directly into the sun - makes only a 2.027 km/sec difference!

Now, since the 2.027 km/sec gives us a perihelion that assures us of complete annihilation in the first pass, its only a slightly higher perihelion that let's us skip off the solar atmosphere and take up a less energetic second pass. Let's be generous and say that is 10% more or 35,000 km higher up in the solar corona. A perihelion of 382,500 km instead of a perihelion of 347,500 km. This changes the 2.027 km/sec to 2.127 km/sec - which means we must subtract 27.639 km/sec. A DIFFERENCE OF 0.1 km/sec (223 mph)

>
> If sending dangerous garbage to the great big solar system incinerator
> won't work, there is little chance that any mining of planets would.

Garbage is dangerous relative to what?

Country--- 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Kazakhstan 6637 8521 14020 17803 19451 21317 22451 23127 23800
Canada--- 9476 9000 10173 9783 9145 8999 9331 9134 13325
Australia-- 8611 8430 7982 5900 5983 6991 6350 5001 5654
Niger----- 3153 3032 3243 4198 4351 4667 4518 4057 4116
Russia--- 3413 3521 3564 3562 2993 2872 3135 2990 3055
Namibia-- 2879 4366 4626 4496 3258 4495 4323 3255 2993
Uzbekistan 2320 2338 2429 2400 2500 2400 2400 2400 2385
China (est) 712 769 750 827 885 1500 1500 1500 1616
USA-------- 1654 1430 1453 1660 1537 1596 1792 1919 1256
Ukraine (est) 846 800 840 850 890 960 922 926 1200
South Africa 539 655 563 583 582 465 531 573 393
India (est) 270 271 290 400 400 385 385 385 385
Czech Republ 306 263 258 254 229 228 215 193 155
Romania (est) 77 77 75 77 77 90 77 77 77
Pakistan (est) 45 45 50 45 45 45 45 45 45
Brazil (est) 299 330 345 148 265 326 192 55 40
France---- 4 5 8 7 6 3 5 3 2
Germany--- 41 0 0 8 51 50 27 33 0
Malawi 104 670 846 1101 1132 369 0
Total world 41,282 43,764 50,772 53,671 53,493 58,489 59,331 56,041 60,496
tonnes U3O8 48 683 51 611 59 875 63 295 63 084 68 976 69,969 66,089 71,343
percentage of world demand* 64% 68% 78% 78% 85% 86% 92% 85% 90%

The radioactivity generated by the production

Company tonnes U %
KazAtomProm 12681 21
Cameco------------ 10926 18
Areva-------------- 9368 15
ARMZ - Uranium One 7849 13
CNNC & CGN------- 3303 5
BHP Billiton 3161 5
Rio Tinto 2757 5
Navoi 2385 4
Paladin 1435 2
Other 6631 11
Total 60,496 100%

tonnes U percentage of world
Australia 1,706,100 29%
Kazakhstan 679,300 12%
Russia 505,900 9%
Canada 493,900 8%
Niger 404,900 7%
Namibia 382,800 6%
South Africa 338,100 6%
Brazil 276,100 5%
USA-- 207,400 4%
China 199,100 4%
Mongolia 141,500 2%
Ukraine 117,700 2%
Uzbekistan 91,300 2%
Botswana 68,800 1%
Tanzania 58,500 1%
Jordan 40,000 1%
Other 191,500 3%
World total 5,902,900 100%

0.72% of the total uranium in the world is naturally fissile U235. The fissioning of an atom of uranium-235 in the reactor of a nuclear power plant produces two to three neutrons, and these neutrons can be absorbed by uranium-238 to produce plutonium-239 and other isotopes. Plutonium-239 can also absorb neutrons and fission along with the uranium-235 in a reactor.

The radioactive byproducts from even 5.9 million tons of radioactive waste is nothing compared to the radiation produced by the Sun.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ070i017p04087/abstract

Neutron flux is 30 neutrons per square meter per second. That means the entire sun produces 5.636x10^22 neutrons per second.

Alpha ray and beta ray fluxes are comparable

ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/plasma/publications/jts_diff/jts_diff.withthumbs.pdf

As are X-rays.

Nothing we do is especially dangerous as far as the solar system is concerned. It is only non-optimal for us and the biosphere. That's why energy production on Mars will be vastly less costly than on Earth.

> The only possibility is some very rare "unubtainium" metal found in
> abundance in some other planet (lets call it Pandora) where small
> quantities are worth much more than the huge transportation costs. Not
> gonna happen anytime soon.

You have no idea WHY you believe transport costs MUST be "huge" or even what that means. The fact is, for three months out of every 26 months an object on Mars projected at a speed of 6.3 km/sec or less from the surface in the right direction, will find its way to Earth. Use a magnetic mass driver at 20,000 gees (which is the acceleration given to shells by the rail gun known as Blitzer already built by General Atomics and already in test by the USN, it takes 19.8 GJ/MT - gigajoules per metric ton - to ship products from Mars to Earth. At 20 GW mass driver operating at 30 rounds per second - sends 'shells' of 33 kg each over this period. 7.9 million metric tons of raw material in the three month period, every 2.15 years. This is 3.7 million tons per year.

1,000 of these cannons operating at automated mining sites throughout Mars could supply 8 billion people with raw materials at a rate that permits every one of those 8 billion people to live at US levels of consumption of those materials.

Self assembling swarms of robots in self guided shells, could skip off the Earth's atmosphere, interact with the moon, and come into GEO above Earth, and self assemble into a solar power satellite. A similar operation could build massive space stations in polar orbit above the Earth along a sunrise sunset orbit - that grew food and delivered it on demand to anyone within 3 hours before and after sunrise and sunset twice a day.

[William Mook]

Each person within the USA consumes 2.7 tons of materials per year excluding sand and gravel. 8.0 tons of materials including sand and gravel.

443 kg - Steel per person
180 kg - Aluminum per person
139 kg - Plastics per person
6 kg - Copper per person
3 kg - Zinc per person
0.0228 kg - Titanium per person

World---- per person Item

3,322.50 443 Steel
1,350.00 180 Aluminum
1,042.50 139 Plastics
52.50 7 Lime
45.00 6 Copper
22.50 3 Zinc
0.17 0.0228 Titanium

5,835.17 778.02 Total

Annual consumption of major materials that are easily extracted from Martian soil or air is given in the table above. The total production necessary to allow 7.5 billion persons to consume at US levels is shown.

12,545.62 million tons are dispatched every Synodic Period. This means that for a three month period every 2.15 years 1,590.19 metric tons of material is dispatched from Mars at up to 6.3 km/sec. Accelerations of 21,000 gees - 200,000 m/sec/sec - over a 99.3 meter length - means that 30 payloads per second are dispatched. So, 54 mass drivers each capable of projecting one ton payloads off world. Each mass driver consumes 595.35 GW of power. All 54 consume 32.15 TW of power during synodic period. About twice what humanity uses on a continuous basis. This requires the consumption of 2.32 kg/sec of Uranium in a 71% efficient combined cycle - MHD/Brayton - engine operating at Extreme High Temperature. Dividing this among 54 mass drivers, this is 1.42 grams per payload! Or 42.86 grams per second per mass driver.

Now, a Lithium Deuteride nuclear pulse unit - that produces 1.77 Giga-Newtons of thrust generates 32.1 TW of power during its operation when using propellant to lower exhaust speed to 20 km/sec. This same unit uses 119 grams per second of Lithium-6 Deuteride, which has the added benefit of no long term radiation by products.

A flight system that consists of four engines of the type described here, attached to a 235 meter long airframe that is capable of lifting 100,000 tons, in addition to 44,000 tons of propellant and 22,000 tons of structure - provides significant capacity to send payloads between worlds. 14,000 tons from Earth to Mars. 100,000 tons Mars to Earth.

However, ONE of the four engines on the system, produces enough power to operate ALL 54 rail guns. Alternatively, ONE rail gun that launched 54 ton payloads at 21,000 gees - could fit in the length of one ship. So, a mining operation that produced materials over a 23 month period would then spend another 3 months launching it all back to Earth. Operating only one engine without inert propellant 'burning' 940 tons of lithium-6 deuteride in an aneutronic nuclear reaction over a three month period. Between launch periods the system operates to reduce and mine metals from surrounding ores.

[Fred J. McCall]

William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Each person within the USA consumes 2.7 tons of materials per year excluding sand and gravel. 8.0 tons of materials including sand and gravel.
>
>443 kg - Steel per person
>180 kg - Aluminum per person
>139 kg - Plastics per person
> 6 kg - Copper per person
> 3 kg - Zinc per person
> 0.0228 kg - Titanium per person
>

I'm pretty sure I'm not consuming anything like those levels. Please
provide a cite for the preceding numbers. Note that metals typically
are not 'consumed' because they get recycled into new things. I
suspect Mook is ignoring that as well as just taking total national
'consumption' and dividing by population, which has nothing to do with
much of anything (think exports, etc).

<snip MookMarsMaundering>

[William Mook]

On Thursday, December 22, 2016 at 4:08:43 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
> William Mook <mokme...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Each person within the USA consumes 2.7 tons of materials per year excluding sand and gravel. 8.0 tons of materials including sand and gravel.
> >
> >443 kg - Steel per person
> >180 kg - Aluminum per person
> >139 kg - Plastics per person
> > 6 kg - Copper per person
> > 3 kg - Zinc per person
> > 0.0228 kg - Titanium per person
> >
>
> I'm pretty sure I'm not consuming anything like those levels.

Not personally perhaps. It depends on your income. However, understand that beyond income dependence industry must build things like big tractors and harvesters out of steel to grow your bread. Industry must build big freaking dump trucks and shovels to get you coal, that adds to your consumption. If you consume more than the average bear, more of that steel consumption goes to you.

The numbers are from the USGS - just type in "USGS steel consumption USA" into your search engine of choice, and you get back

https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/iron_&_steel/

Then, you click the most recent data ... and in this case youfind the apparent steel consumption is 110 million tons per year. Divide that by the population of the USA to get a per person consumption of 344.8 kg per year. Multiply by 128% to get the upper quartile of consumption. That is, those with higher incomes consume more stuff. So, if you want to produce wealthier populations - the top 1% - you must have that multiplier.

> Please
> provide a cite for the preceding numbers.

The USGS is very careful to identify all these factors. You have to go over each one.

> Note that metals typically
> are not 'consumed' because they get recycled into new things.

True, and the USGS accounts for that. If you are building steel mills on Mars and want to transform life on Earth with an abundance of raw materials that make life better for all, then you cannot recycle what isn't there. That meanas you've got to ship more actually, to build up the inventory - and then scale back to Earth. Of course, at the same time, there are emerging off world population centres that will be building up their consumptions, by creating space colonies and the like.

> I
> suspect Mook is ignoring that as well as just taking total national
> 'consumption' and dividing by population, which has nothing to do with
> much of anything (think exports, etc).

Exports and Imports are accounted for in the consumption figures reported by the USGS. Also the bulk of humanity is not consuming steel or any of these other materials at anywhere the rate of the USA. So, if we were to provide sufficient steel say, to allow everyone everywhere to consume at the level of a HNWI ($30 million or more) today, there is not an inventory to recycle, so that inventory has to accumulate, so there is a characteristic production curve when that happens. That's where the 28% comes from.