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It seems like the main company everyone would be buying if they were public is SpaceX. So, that leaves space launch companies that are being crushed by SpaceX,

by elihu 6y ago

It seems like the main company everyone would be buying if they were public is SpaceX. So, that leaves space launch companies that are being crushed by SpaceX, and other companies that can make other space-related products or otherwise profit from space exploration. My impression is that we're getting really close to being able to launch substantial payloads to Mars relatively cheaply, but now that it's time to start packing we don't know what to send. There should be whole industries gearing up to manufacture space suits, rovers, habitats, habitat construction equipment, mining and earth-moving (or is the proper term Mars-moving?) equipment, giant Mars-suitable solar arrays, equipment to generate methane from solar power, water, and C02, and so on. Maybe all that's happening behind the scenes in a non-visible way, but still it seems like there's an opportunity there. I couldn't help noticing that ARK's logo looks suspiciously like the logo for the Outer Planets Alliance from The Expanse. Too bad their ticker isn't BLTALWDA.

iamacyborg 6y ago
My money would be on Planet if they were public.
stcredzero 6y ago
My impression is that we're getting really close to being able to launch substantial payloads to Mars relatively cheaply, but now that it's time to start packing we don't know what to send. We should industrially colonize the Moon. If we can produce oxygen, aluminum, titanium, iron, and glass on the Moon, it will make a bunch of other space infrastructure a lot cheaper. Solar Power satellites would become feasible, and then we wouldn't need fusion outside of having The Expanse-level of space military tech and other ultra high-spec space vehicle needs. And if we did have fusion, He3 would practically be a side effect of mining the other materials. Also, no natives with cultures and lives to ruin.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterisP 6y ago
  If the justification investing into space/moon infrastructure will make constructing further space/moon infrastructure cheaper, then that's a circular argument, it's the "how, not why" about the most efficient way to produce some terminal goal, but it does not assert how large the benefit of that terminal goal is going to be. For earth needs, it's cheaper and simpler and more efficient to mine titanium right here. There's a reasonable argument that mining all these things for space needs could be more efficient if done "on site", however, what are those space needs that will ultimately somehow benefit the people of Earth in a way that's more efficient than doing it down here? If the end goal is to produce power, no matter how you invest into space tech, IMHO it's going to be much more efficient to build large quantities of solar panels on Earth and place them in Sahara desert, than to construct a large-scale solar panel industry on the moon to have the same quantity of power through satellites. Sure, they'd be cool, but that's not a justification. When/if there's a resource shortage on earth causing some minerals to be orders of magnitude more expensive than today, then it would be worthwhile, but not yet.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    > If the justification investing into space/moon infrastructure will make constructing further space/moon infrastructure cheaper, then that's a circular argument Not really. If we have mining AND manufacturing capabilities outside Earth's gravity well, we can manufacture things very cheaply. Either things that require microgravity to be made, or things to be used in space. For instance, satellites. It would be much cheaper to build and launch them from the Moon. We could manufacture components which require vacuum and or microgravity on lunar orbital stations. > IMHO it's going to be much more efficient to build large quantities of solar panels on Earth and place them in Sahara desert How are you planing to send that power to, for instance, the United States? Disregarding the massive infrastructure requirements, there are serious power losses.
    - elihu 6y ago
      > How are you planing to send that power to, for instance, the United States? Disregarding the massive infrastructure requirements, there are serious power losses. I just got into this discussion the other day here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26599340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26599340 A commenter estimated the losses from North Africa to the United States to be about 33% with high-voltage DC. Wikipedia says this: Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km, about 50% less than AC (6.5%) lines at the same voltage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current North Africa to North America is somewhere in the ballpark of 10,000 km. (1-0.035)^10 is almost exactly 70% (i.e. 30% loss). So, that actually sounds pretty reasonable.
- elihu 6y ago
  The moon and Mars have their pros and cons. The moon is closer and has a shallower gravity well. I think Mars makes a better destination, though, mostly because of the atmosphere which provides CO2 practically for free. With CO2, water, and electricity, you can make methane. (Mars might also have easier to find water, but I don't know offhand what the current consensus is on that.) I don't know if there is any practical way of creating fuel on the moon. You could launch things from the moon without fuel just by using a big railgun or equivalent, but these things will presumably still need fuel to slow down at their destination.
PeterisP 6y ago
Who would be the customers of such industries manufacturing stuff for Mars? Is there any significant demand (in the economic sense - not expressed opinion, but willingness to pay large amounts of money) for that? As far as I see, none of the governments have expressed intent for large scale funding of such payloads to Mars, and there seems to be nothing so valuable on Mars that would justify investments into habitat construction just to extract some resources for commercial purposes. It's not even commercially worthwhile to mine stuff in Antarctic and the ocean floor (except for oil), and those are much cheaper to access and mine than Mars. Also, the property rights and exclusivity aren't a given; the Outer Space Treaty asserts that nations can't claim exclusive rights to any specific resources (e.g. a particular Martian ore deposit), so there's no (yet) legal certainty that an investor who builds some infrastructure would get their returns. If we look at the fictional Expanse universe, we currently don't have the equivalent of the "UN charters" granting specific corporations exclusive rights to some asteroids or resources that they had. The current motivation for going to Mars is not a commercial opporunity, it's mostly exploration, because it's there - and as such, we're limited by the amount people (individuals as well as nations) are willing to spend on that i.e. consume for their ideals/desires, not invest with reasonable expectation of profit. And that "frivolous spending budget" isn't enough to launch whole new industries.
- elihu 6y ago
  I don't know who the initial customers would be, but it seems implausible that if it suddenly became possible to ship stuff to Mars no one would do it. If nothing else, get some automated methane production going so the ships can come back. Questionable legal status notwithstanding, it's hard to imagine anyone creating a facility on Mars and someone else coming along later and saying "you don't own that land". Then the question comes down to how much area around a facility can you plausibly claim for your exclusive use. Short of any formal legal agreements, it's basically whatever you can get away with without someone else calling your bluff and building in your exclusive area. I suppose we're more likely to see a Mars real estate land grab if multiple parties (governments, probably) are perceived to be in a race to get the best locations / mineral deposits / whatever. I could see a U.S. / China space race, for instance. That sort of scenario imagines the money spigot going from a trickle to full blast all of a sudden. Which seems kind of wasteful compared to slow and steady funding starting much earlier, but if no one's opening their wallets yet then there's not much that the people who would otherwise be building this stuff to do about it.

by elihu 6y ago

iamacyborg 6y ago

My money would be on Planet if they were public.

stcredzero 6y ago

My impression is that we're getting really close to being able to launch substantial payloads to Mars relatively cheaply, but now that it's time to start packing we don't know what to send. We should industrially colonize the Moon. If we can produce oxygen, aluminum, titanium, iron, and glass on the Moon, it will make a bunch of other space infrastructure a lot cheaper. Solar Power satellites would become feasible, and then we wouldn't need fusion outside of having The Expanse-level of space military tech and other ultra high-spec space vehicle needs. And if we did have fusion, He3 would practically be a side effect of mining the other materials. Also, no natives with cultures and lives to ruin.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PeterisP 6y ago
If the justification investing into space/moon infrastructure will make constructing further space/moon infrastructure cheaper, then that's a circular argument, it's the "how, not why" about the most efficient way to produce some terminal goal, but it does not assert how large the benefit of that terminal goal is going to be. For earth needs, it's cheaper and simpler and more efficient to mine titanium right here. There's a reasonable argument that mining all these things for space needs could be more efficient if done "on site", however, what are those space needs that will ultimately somehow benefit the people of Earth in a way that's more efficient than doing it down here? If the end goal is to produce power, no matter how you invest into space tech, IMHO it's going to be much more efficient to build large quantities of solar panels on Earth and place them in Sahara desert, than to construct a large-scale solar panel industry on the moon to have the same quantity of power through satellites. Sure, they'd be cool, but that's not a justification. When/if there's a resource shortage on earth causing some minerals to be orders of magnitude more expensive than today, then it would be worthwhile, but not yet.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > If the justification investing into space/moon infrastructure will make constructing further space/moon infrastructure cheaper, then that's a circular argument Not really. If we have mining AND manufacturing capabilities outside Earth's gravity well, we can manufacture things very cheaply. Either things that require microgravity to be made, or things to be used in space. For instance, satellites. It would be much cheaper to build and launch them from the Moon. We could manufacture components which require vacuum and or microgravity on lunar orbital stations. > IMHO it's going to be much more efficient to build large quantities of solar panels on Earth and place them in Sahara desert How are you planing to send that power to, for instance, the United States? Disregarding the massive infrastructure requirements, there are serious power losses.
  - elihu 6y ago
    > How are you planing to send that power to, for instance, the United States? Disregarding the massive infrastructure requirements, there are serious power losses. I just got into this discussion the other day here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26599340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26599340 A commenter estimated the losses from North Africa to the United States to be about 33% with high-voltage DC. Wikipedia says this: Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km, about 50% less than AC (6.5%) lines at the same voltage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current North Africa to North America is somewhere in the ballpark of 10,000 km. (1-0.035)^10 is almost exactly 70% (i.e. 30% loss). So, that actually sounds pretty reasonable.
elihu 6y ago
The moon and Mars have their pros and cons. The moon is closer and has a shallower gravity well. I think Mars makes a better destination, though, mostly because of the atmosphere which provides CO2 practically for free. With CO2, water, and electricity, you can make methane. (Mars might also have easier to find water, but I don't know offhand what the current consensus is on that.) I don't know if there is any practical way of creating fuel on the moon. You could launch things from the moon without fuel just by using a big railgun or equivalent, but these things will presumably still need fuel to slow down at their destination.

PeterisP 6y ago

Who would be the customers of such industries manufacturing stuff for Mars? Is there any significant demand (in the economic sense - not expressed opinion, but willingness to pay large amounts of money) for that? As far as I see, none of the governments have expressed intent for large scale funding of such payloads to Mars, and there seems to be nothing so valuable on Mars that would justify investments into habitat construction just to extract some resources for commercial purposes. It's not even commercially worthwhile to mine stuff in Antarctic and the ocean floor (except for oil), and those are much cheaper to access and mine than Mars. Also, the property rights and exclusivity aren't a given; the Outer Space Treaty asserts that nations can't claim exclusive rights to any specific resources (e.g. a particular Martian ore deposit), so there's no (yet) legal certainty that an investor who builds some infrastructure would get their returns. If we look at the fictional Expanse universe, we currently don't have the equivalent of the "UN charters" granting specific corporations exclusive rights to some asteroids or resources that they had. The current motivation for going to Mars is not a commercial opporunity, it's mostly exploration, because it's there - and as such, we're limited by the amount people (individuals as well as nations) are willing to spend on that i.e. consume for their ideals/desires, not invest with reasonable expectation of profit. And that "frivolous spending budget" isn't enough to launch whole new industries.

elihu 6y ago
I don't know who the initial customers would be, but it seems implausible that if it suddenly became possible to ship stuff to Mars no one would do it. If nothing else, get some automated methane production going so the ships can come back. Questionable legal status notwithstanding, it's hard to imagine anyone creating a facility on Mars and someone else coming along later and saying "you don't own that land". Then the question comes down to how much area around a facility can you plausibly claim for your exclusive use. Short of any formal legal agreements, it's basically whatever you can get away with without someone else calling your bluff and building in your exclusive area. I suppose we're more likely to see a Mars real estate land grab if multiple parties (governments, probably) are perceived to be in a race to get the best locations / mineral deposits / whatever. I could see a U.S. / China space race, for instance. That sort of scenario imagines the money spigot going from a trickle to full blast all of a sudden. Which seems kind of wasteful compared to slow and steady funding starting much earlier, but if no one's opening their wallets yet then there's not much that the people who would otherwise be building this stuff to do about it.