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Economy. If Moon was made of gold it wouldn't be worth going there for it [1]. Perhaps reusable spacecraft can change that. For strategic / military reasons (m

Economy. If Moon was made of gold it wouldn't be worth going there for it [1]. Perhaps reusable spacecraft can change that. For strategic / military reasons (money no objective) we can achieve much more than if profit is the only motivation. [1. need a better source?] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22059/if-the-moon-were-solid-gold-how-far-away-would-it-have-to-be-to-not-be-economic https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22059/if-the-moon-... Edit: Elon Musk: With New SpaceX Tech, Rocket Costs Will Drop By A Factor of 100 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Felon-musk-with-new-spacex-tech-rocket-costs-will-drop-by-a-factor-of-100%2F https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816?ref_s... Also analysis / spaculatoin for BFR. Keep in mind we're only talking about sending stuff to Mars, not retrieving it. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3343/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3343/1 Edit 2 federal court set the value of the moon rocks at $50,800 per gram based on how much it cost the U.S. government to retrieve the samples between 1969 and 1972. https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-apollo17.html https://www.space.com/11804-nasa-moon-rock-sting-apollo17.ht...

DennisP 9y ago
Not only is that based on expendable rockets, but as your link says, the game changes if you use a mass driver to launch your payloads back to Earth. And of course, as Andy Weir has been saying, tourism could be a major economic driver once reusable rockets get cheap enough.
Robotbeat 9y ago
But we ARE talking about retrieving stuff from Mars: the BFS must be returned to Earth to be reused. It's also capable of bringing people back from Mars, and that's supposed to be included in the $200k/person ticket price. Assuming at least 200kg of human plus consumables per person for the trip back, that implies that anything worth at least $1000/kg would be worth sending back. So I think Musk is actually wrong when he says that he can BOTH send people to Mars super cheap with return tickets AND that there could not possibly be something of enough value on Mars to return to Earth even if you had cocaine ($100,000/kg?) prepackaged on the surface (gold is $35,000/kg or something). ...not that I expect a vibrant Mars export economy or anything. Musk's basic point about not expecting Mars to fully and profitably pay for itself with physical exports is correct.
- gruez 9y ago
  >even if you had cocaine ($100,000/kg?) it's $100k+ retail value, but wholesale value is much below that, more in line with gold.
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    Sure, but he was trying to pick something super expensive, even more than gold.
    - classicsnoot 9y ago
      Saffron, platinum, human organs...
      - coolspot 9y ago
        Prepackaged human organs on the Moon? That would be weird.
        classicsnoot 9y ago
        I can totally imagine a Chinese Prison facility that houses any nation's bad guys for a fee and churns out prepackaged organs. The tiny Albert Speer in my head can even see the benefit of such a system. And to be honest, China already does it to their prison populations. Putting the Organ Dispenser on the moon would just be a stylized recreation of the original concept of "international waters".
      - Robotbeat 9y ago
        Nice! "Pure, Martian Saffron! $1000 per kilo!"
- bdowling 9y ago
  How about this: We legalize cocaine, but only cocaine manufactured on Mars. Investors (and engineers) will figure out the most economical way to get there, manufacture the cocaine, and get it back to Earth. The side effect will be that we will have figured out economical interplanetary space travel.
Symmetry 9y ago
There's a lot of interesting things manufacturing-wise you can do in zero gravity which are now pretty impractical financially since it's so hard to get raw materials up the Earth's gravity well. It might be cheaper to get them from elsewhere where the gravity wells are shallower and the lack of air lets you use a mass driver rather than a rocket. Then it's a long slow trip to Earth orbit via ion driver but if it's just a hunk of metal it doesn't care.
hackeraccount 9y ago
I wonder about that idea. I mean, thinking about it there's almost nothing found outside of earth that's worth the cost of the infrastructure needed to bring it inside of Earth's gravity well. Which is a bummer. The only thoughts I have contra that are that it's only expensive if you count the cost of the infrastructure - given that moving resources from outside of Earth to it isn't super unattractive. Second it's possible that costs should be viewed not just Earth to outside of Earth but also outside of Earth to outside of Earth. That is to say mining water on the Moon doesn't make sense if the destination is Earth - it the destination on the other hand is another part of the Moon there might be some logic to it. You could in theory be cost competitive with the Earth as you don't have to get it out of Earth's gravity.

DennisP 9y ago

Not only is that based on expendable rockets, but as your link says, the game changes if you use a mass driver to launch your payloads back to Earth. And of course, as Andy Weir has been saying, tourism could be a major economic driver once reusable rockets get cheap enough.

Robotbeat 9y ago

But we ARE talking about retrieving stuff from Mars: the BFS must be returned to Earth to be reused. It's also capable of bringing people back from Mars, and that's supposed to be included in the $200k/person ticket price. Assuming at least 200kg of human plus consumables per person for the trip back, that implies that anything worth at least $1000/kg would be worth sending back. So I think Musk is actually wrong when he says that he can BOTH send people to Mars super cheap with return tickets AND that there could not possibly be something of enough value on Mars to return to Earth even if you had cocaine ($100,000/kg?) prepackaged on the surface (gold is $35,000/kg or something). ...not that I expect a vibrant Mars export economy or anything. Musk's basic point about not expecting Mars to fully and profitably pay for itself with physical exports is correct.

gruez 9y ago
>even if you had cocaine ($100,000/kg?) it's $100k+ retail value, but wholesale value is much below that, more in line with gold.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Sure, but he was trying to pick something super expensive, even more than gold.
  - classicsnoot 9y ago
    Saffron, platinum, human organs...
    - coolspot 9y ago
      Prepackaged human organs on the Moon? That would be weird.
      - classicsnoot 9y ago
        I can totally imagine a Chinese Prison facility that houses any nation's bad guys for a fee and churns out prepackaged organs. The tiny Albert Speer in my head can even see the benefit of such a system. And to be honest, China already does it to their prison populations. Putting the Organ Dispenser on the moon would just be a stylized recreation of the original concept of "international waters".
    - Robotbeat 9y ago
      Nice! "Pure, Martian Saffron! $1000 per kilo!"
bdowling 9y ago
How about this: We legalize cocaine, but only cocaine manufactured on Mars. Investors (and engineers) will figure out the most economical way to get there, manufacture the cocaine, and get it back to Earth. The side effect will be that we will have figured out economical interplanetary space travel.

Symmetry 9y ago

There's a lot of interesting things manufacturing-wise you can do in zero gravity which are now pretty impractical financially since it's so hard to get raw materials up the Earth's gravity well. It might be cheaper to get them from elsewhere where the gravity wells are shallower and the lack of air lets you use a mass driver rather than a rocket. Then it's a long slow trip to Earth orbit via ion driver but if it's just a hunk of metal it doesn't care.

hackeraccount 9y ago

I wonder about that idea. I mean, thinking about it there's almost nothing found outside of earth that's worth the cost of the infrastructure needed to bring it inside of Earth's gravity well. Which is a bummer. The only thoughts I have contra that are that it's only expensive if you count the cost of the infrastructure - given that moving resources from outside of Earth to it isn't super unattractive. Second it's possible that costs should be viewed not just Earth to outside of Earth but also outside of Earth to outside of Earth. That is to say mining water on the Moon doesn't make sense if the destination is Earth - it the destination on the other hand is another part of the Moon there might be some logic to it. You could in theory be cost competitive with the Earth as you don't have to get it out of Earth's gravity.