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> With a self-sustainable (even if harsh) Mars colony How realistic is this self-sustainability? Where any moderately complex spare parts can be produced on Ma

by rapnie 7y ago

> With a self-sustainable (even if harsh) Mars colony How realistic is this self-sustainability? Where any moderately complex spare parts can be produced on Mars, instead of having to be supplied from Earth with yet another ultra-expensive supplies mission? Imho we are talking hundreds of years here. Until then our burning home base Earth remains a single point of failure. Better douse the fire first. Until then putting some people on Mars as a symbolic gesture to show humanity is still capable of grand achievements may be fine, esp. if that gives us hope we can tackle our other more immediate problems (though for me that is not needed).

CrazyStat 7y ago
Relying on spare parts from Earth for anything important is impossible, since it takes months to years for a one-way trip depending on where in their orbits the two planets are. I'm just speculating now, but I think this might be one reason Musk is so interested in robotic manufacturing (e.g. the failed "alien dreadnought" vision for the Model 3 production line). If you have mostly automated, flexible manufacturing systems that can be computer controlled and require minimal human expertise to operate then all you need is the computer files for whatever spare part you need to build. Set up 3-4 of these manufacturing centers at different spots for redundancy and you don't have to worry so much about spare part availability. The first effort (Model 3 assembly) was a disaster though.
dwild 7y ago
> Imho we are talking hundreds of years here. So we are already hundreds of years late, aren't we? Let's start right now to make this happen. > Better douse the fire first. Here we are again... the good old, well there's something else wrong, lets just fix that other thing wrong and ignore everything else. Why not working on both? What stop us from working on both? I would be happy to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that you could do more to "douse the fire". We sadly can't stop doing 100% of what we do to fix everything.

by rapnie 7y ago

CrazyStat 7y ago

Relying on spare parts from Earth for anything important is impossible, since it takes months to years for a one-way trip depending on where in their orbits the two planets are. I'm just speculating now, but I think this might be one reason Musk is so interested in robotic manufacturing (e.g. the failed "alien dreadnought" vision for the Model 3 production line). If you have mostly automated, flexible manufacturing systems that can be computer controlled and require minimal human expertise to operate then all you need is the computer files for whatever spare part you need to build. Set up 3-4 of these manufacturing centers at different spots for redundancy and you don't have to worry so much about spare part availability. The first effort (Model 3 assembly) was a disaster though.

dwild 7y ago

> Imho we are talking hundreds of years here. So we are already hundreds of years late, aren't we? Let's start right now to make this happen. > Better douse the fire first. Here we are again... the good old, well there's something else wrong, lets just fix that other thing wrong and ignore everything else. Why not working on both? What stop us from working on both? I would be happy to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that you could do more to "douse the fire". We sadly can't stop doing 100% of what we do to fix everything.