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You need the hundreds of ships just to get the fuel for a few Mars ships to orbital refueling depots. If one crewed ship of 8 colonists needs, say, five cargo
by ncmncm 4y ago
You need the hundreds of ships just to get the fuel for a few Mars ships to orbital refueling depots.
If one crewed ship of 8 colonists needs, say, five cargo ships for support equipment for that population on Mars, and a seventh as counterweight for centrifugal gravity en route, that is 77 launches. The six that land on Mars don't get re-used, although their superheavies do.
The point here is that you need an absurdly large number of launch events just to provide for 8 colonists. Multiply that out to a million colonists, and you exceed the industrial capacity of the world. And, even a million colonists is very, very, very far from self-sufficient.
- oneoff786 4y ago77 launches isn’t absurd. It is BELOW what spaceX is planning for. There’s nothing remotely sensible about a million colonists, so that’s a pointless straw man. Lastly, the necessities to support 8 people aren’t that different from the necessities to support 100. They scale wayyy better than linearly. Again, the issue with supporting people on mars is not the vehicles to get there.
- ncmncm 4y ago10 superheavy launches per colonist does not admit 1M colonists, and 1M colonists is at least two orders of magnitude short of self-sufficient. It is very far from clear that Mars can physically support 100M inhabitants.