4 ms·

SpaceX wants to make a roundtrip to Mars, though. There's no fossil fuels on Mars.

lazide 5y ago
And if it doesn’t make any economic sense to do it here, where it is super convenient, shipping it to Mars (with nothing of known value there to return or any known economic model that could make it worthwhile) to do it there is going to be worth it? Not saying all human endeavor needs to have a healthy profit margin. SpaceX is a business however and besides doing it for the lulz, or getting a government contract, it doesn’t make much sense to try to spin up colonies or the like there. Everyone will starve and/or their US backers will go bankrupt pretty quick.
- MPSimmons 5y ago
  > SpaceX is a business however SpaceX has been described as a company with a Mars cult inside of it. I think it's more fair to say that it's a Mars cult that has organized a company. If you think that SpaceX won't do hydrocarbon generation on Mars, then you don't understand why SpaceX exists.
- politician 5y ago
  So you're just a typical No-Mars skeptic, got it.
- DennisP 5y ago
  If you want to go to Mars, it's way cheaper to get your return fuel from Mars instead of carrying it all the way to Mars from Earth. If you want to get your return fuel from Mars, then you have to make it, there aren't any convenient natural gas deposits that we know of. This isn't an original SpaceX idea. Robert Zubrin pointed it out back in 1990 with his Mars Direct plan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct
  - lazide 5y ago
    For sure - my point is, that presumes there is enough volume or an economic need to make that sort of infrastructure investment worthwhile (not even dollars, but energetically). Getting the direct equipment let alone supporting equipment there is going to be very, very expensive in energy. For one trip back, or even 5, it’s unlikely to pay off unless there is some cool super miniaturization tech and we’re not in a hurry - and that assumes everything keeps working over multiple missions. And if we have all that, getting a mobile lab there and sending back bits instead of physical chunks of things is even easier. You’d also need to get chemical feedstocks and process them (namely to extract the hydrogen, which is not readily available in the Martian atmosphere but is in the soil in various amounts in minerals and small amounts of dispersed water and methane ice) which would be non-trivial and a huge hassle to get even on Earth where you can go outside and smack the machinery with a shovel or stick your arm in somewhere to unclog something. The existing Mars rovers struggle sometimes with dust on solar panels, let alone a broken bolt in a crusher due to harder than expected rocks or the like. Having done some basic mining and a lot of earth moving over the years, it’s an incredible pain in the ass. It’s also rare you don’t periodically need a human getting hands on, and using every bit of dexterity and strength they have to fix something. Robotic tech is nowhere near good enough to do this remotely. So at a small, very very very slow scale? Maybe? There are a lot of cool thought problems from all this, and some cool potential solutions. My fav is Project Orion [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propu...] And we’ll just have to see what happens.
elif 5y ago
Yup and musk also argues in favor of a carbon tax. He is openly hopeful that the fundamental economics will be changed to make producing their own methane via Sabatier economical. It is up to the controllers of incentive structures to change the fundamentals of commerce/ecology.
- lazide 5y ago
  Pretty sure that would require something like a 5x cost increase in carbon, though I can’t find hard numbers anywhere easily. Do you have any pointers?
  - gpm 5y ago
    > Pretty sure that would require something like a 5x cost increase in carbon 5x over what? The US doesn't have a carbon tax does it?
    - lazide 5y ago
      5x over the current baseline cost of fuel. The only studies I could find of doing this were using large scale bulk solar and not counting financing costs into the equation. They found that if avoiding fossil fuel use (natural gas is the cheapest easily available Hydrogen source right now), and cracking water to get it, end to end energy efficiency is between 44-56% (as in electrical efficiency to theoretical available chemical energy in the fuel). Burning said fuel for energy (turbines being one of the most efficient ways) then varies from 40-63% efficiency, rockets can hit up to 70% efficiency (varies immensely by many factors). So, getting what they need from a fossil fuel is up to 70% efficient. Getting what they need from a Sebatier process? 28-41% efficient (combined). Add in extra capital costs and maintenance of acquiring and running the equipment, about 5x more expensive fossil fuel evens out. It’s potentially worse than that of course when you factor in potential increases in electrical rates if fossil fuels did get 5x, but there is nothing saying that would for sure happen. They presumably could run it during oversupply from a large solar plant, but that is already factored into those studies. If you’re doing it at scale, that ‘free energy’ won’t be free for long.
  - 5y ago

And if it doesn’t make any economic sense to do it here, where it is super convenient, shipping it to Mars (with nothing of known value there to return or any known economic model that could make it worthwhile) to do it there is going to be worth it? Not saying all human endeavor needs to have a healthy profit margin. SpaceX is a business however and besides doing it for the lulz, or getting a government contract, it doesn’t make much sense to try to spin up colonies or the like there. Everyone will starve and/or their US backers will go bankrupt pretty quick.

MPSimmons 5y ago
> SpaceX is a business however SpaceX has been described as a company with a Mars cult inside of it. I think it's more fair to say that it's a Mars cult that has organized a company. If you think that SpaceX won't do hydrocarbon generation on Mars, then you don't understand why SpaceX exists.
politician 5y ago
So you're just a typical No-Mars skeptic, got it.
DennisP 5y ago
If you want to go to Mars, it's way cheaper to get your return fuel from Mars instead of carrying it all the way to Mars from Earth. If you want to get your return fuel from Mars, then you have to make it, there aren't any convenient natural gas deposits that we know of. This isn't an original SpaceX idea. Robert Zubrin pointed it out back in 1990 with his Mars Direct plan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct
- lazide 5y ago
  For sure - my point is, that presumes there is enough volume or an economic need to make that sort of infrastructure investment worthwhile (not even dollars, but energetically). Getting the direct equipment let alone supporting equipment there is going to be very, very expensive in energy. For one trip back, or even 5, it’s unlikely to pay off unless there is some cool super miniaturization tech and we’re not in a hurry - and that assumes everything keeps working over multiple missions. And if we have all that, getting a mobile lab there and sending back bits instead of physical chunks of things is even easier. You’d also need to get chemical feedstocks and process them (namely to extract the hydrogen, which is not readily available in the Martian atmosphere but is in the soil in various amounts in minerals and small amounts of dispersed water and methane ice) which would be non-trivial and a huge hassle to get even on Earth where you can go outside and smack the machinery with a shovel or stick your arm in somewhere to unclog something. The existing Mars rovers struggle sometimes with dust on solar panels, let alone a broken bolt in a crusher due to harder than expected rocks or the like. Having done some basic mining and a lot of earth moving over the years, it’s an incredible pain in the ass. It’s also rare you don’t periodically need a human getting hands on, and using every bit of dexterity and strength they have to fix something. Robotic tech is nowhere near good enough to do this remotely. So at a small, very very very slow scale? Maybe? There are a lot of cool thought problems from all this, and some cool potential solutions. My fav is Project Orion [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propu...] And we’ll just have to see what happens.

elif 5y ago

Yup and musk also argues in favor of a carbon tax. He is openly hopeful that the fundamental economics will be changed to make producing their own methane via Sabatier economical. It is up to the controllers of incentive structures to change the fundamentals of commerce/ecology.

lazide 5y ago
Pretty sure that would require something like a 5x cost increase in carbon, though I can’t find hard numbers anywhere easily. Do you have any pointers?
- gpm 5y ago
  > Pretty sure that would require something like a 5x cost increase in carbon 5x over what? The US doesn't have a carbon tax does it?
  - lazide 5y ago
    5x over the current baseline cost of fuel. The only studies I could find of doing this were using large scale bulk solar and not counting financing costs into the equation. They found that if avoiding fossil fuel use (natural gas is the cheapest easily available Hydrogen source right now), and cracking water to get it, end to end energy efficiency is between 44-56% (as in electrical efficiency to theoretical available chemical energy in the fuel). Burning said fuel for energy (turbines being one of the most efficient ways) then varies from 40-63% efficiency, rockets can hit up to 70% efficiency (varies immensely by many factors). So, getting what they need from a fossil fuel is up to 70% efficient. Getting what they need from a Sebatier process? 28-41% efficient (combined). Add in extra capital costs and maintenance of acquiring and running the equipment, about 5x more expensive fossil fuel evens out. It’s potentially worse than that of course when you factor in potential increases in electrical rates if fossil fuels did get 5x, but there is nothing saying that would for sure happen. They presumably could run it during oversupply from a large solar plant, but that is already factored into those studies. If you’re doing it at scale, that ‘free energy’ won’t be free for long.
- 5y ago