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> While the cost to colonize elsewhere is "mine the earth to a wasteland" I'm not sure where this idea is coming from. I think the idea of most modern colonisa

> While the cost to colonize elsewhere is "mine the earth to a wasteland" I'm not sure where this idea is coming from. I think the idea of most modern colonisation plans is to use materials at the location to build habitats etc, by 3d printing using martian soil or lunar regolith, not ship millions of tons of natural resources into space.

giantrobot 4y ago
That's just magic woo though. You can't just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors or furnaces to smelt metal. Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion. You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it.
- L_226 4y ago
  Luckily space is already clean, the trick will be converting current production processes to work in microgravity - process heat offtake without convection etc. LEO or higher orbit based manufacturing will probably occur before 2050, once that is solved then deploying infrastructure onto the Martian surface will become relatively trivial.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    That's just a string of nonsense. There's not a single aspect of deploying infrastructure anywhere in space is trivial.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > You can't just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors or furnaces to smelt metal. The idea isn't that you'll <<just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors>>. But yes, the idea is to "3D print" furnaces to smelt metal (basic furnaces are prehistory-era tech) using heat provided from the solar, wind and/or nuclear power you arrived with. Then use that to mine more ore to smelt more metal to "3D print" more... and so on, and so on, adapting production processes to local environment piece by piece, until you eventually reach basic self-sustainability, and yes, eventually you may be able to build a clean room using entirely local resources and processes. (Of course, there's the matter of whether people living on other planets will want to go for full self-sufficiency, and then if Earth even allows it. There's a potential for trade here, but the flip side of that is political power. E.g. as long as a Mars colony depends on Earth for complex organics or high-tech industry products, they're effectively under control / at the mercy of Earth.) > Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion. It didn't until recently, though. I imagine that between those older techniques from early-to-mid XX century, and modern advances in organic chemistry, you'd be able to eliminate some of the hydrocarbons used and synthesize others, without a need to dig dead plants/dinosaurs out of the ground. > You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it. That's all part of the R&D work for off-world habitats and industrializing space.
  - TomSwirly 4y ago
    > basic furnaces are prehistory-era tech) Which require water and air in huge quantities, and ore, none of which you have on Mars. > That's all part of the R&D work for off-world habitats and industrializing space. You might as well say "magic" - it would be more plausible.
    - 6510 4y ago
      One thing to remember is that our guessing how things would work out has always been laughable with [say] 5 insanely complex problems we didn't see coming for every 1 thing turning out much less complicated than anticipated. How much of what we did just the last 100 years was accurately anticipated and how much of it is down right magical? In hind sight, how complicated an idea was it really to heat water, get it to expand and do work? I think execution was hard but the idea was kinda obvious. Most stuff we build is made of stone/rocks? It seems we can dig caves, just ship the front door an we can start our usual hoarding :)
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > How much of what we did just the last 100 years was accurately anticipated and how much of it is down right magical? How much more of what we did failed but nobody died (somebody died, but not always) because those failure happened in a hospitable environment for life? We didn't just "magically" progress, we failed 99% of the times to evolve the process until it succeeded. Now imagine launching 100 projects on Mars, most of which could lead to an explosion, and predict that 99 of them will fail (and probably explode) Would you still believe "everything's gonna be fine"? The Martian is just a good SCI-FI movie. > In hind sight, how complicated an idea was it really to heat water, get it to expand and do work? steam engine was well known 2,300 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile It took > 2,000 years to perfect it. And we have free water and oxygen on Earth but no water nor oxygen on Mars.
        roryisok 4y ago
        > Now imagine launching 100 projects on Mars, most of which could lead to an explosion, and predict that 99 of them will fail (and probably explode) Well I'm just picking holes now, but in the Martian atmosphere is 95% CO2 - nothing will explode > Would you still believe "everything's gonna be fine"? Nobody said "everything's gonna be fine". The argument for sending people to Mars, at great peril, is that sitting _at home_ on Earth, and saying "everything's gonna be fine" is a bad idea.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Hmmm. While I would be actively surprised if the Moon, for example, had every element necessary for semiconductors, one of the things I absolutely do expect to be possible on its surface is 3D printing an extremely clean clean-room. Furnaces? Well, I think it would take a polishing step after printing, but if you have aluminium you can do a rough parabola out of it and focus sunlight on a patch of regolith. Can you turn that molten alumina into aluminium and oxygen only by carbon rods and electricity? Or would electrolysis still work if you used a high-current election beam? (I genuinely don't know, I didn't do material science). Don't get me wrong, even if this is ultimately all fine without petrochemicals, I expect there is a lot of postgraduate research between now and any significant space manufacturing.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    > electrolysis That's a process that involves drawing ions through solution towards a cathode and anode. A direct beam won't do. A solar furnace would suffice for the first half of the smelting process if you have access to ore which is not pure alumina, as well as melting the cryolite flux. Actually separating out the aluminum from alumina requires PV panels, high temperature rods and some means of synthesizing the cryolite or similar solvent / flux.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > That's a process that involves drawing ions through solution towards a cathode and anode. A direct beam won't do. OK, thanks for the info. Can you go into more depth about this specific part, or is this a thing where I need to do the whole degree to understand the answer?
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    > one of the things I absolutely do expect to be possible on its surface is 3D printing an extremely clean clean-room. My understanding is that there is lots of very fine dust near the surface of the moon. It's continually being bombarded with micrometeorites that kick up the dust. So perhaps a moderately cleanish room.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  It's space. Orbit is in all likelihood cleaner than your average clean room. Planets/moons add dust and thin atmospheres as concerns, but that's quite obviously easier to mitigate than the "dust and much thicker atmosphere and microbes and moisture" that Earth-based clean rooms have to mitigate. As for bootstrapping industry beyond Earth, the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extraterrestrial supply chain is far below necessitating stripmining the Earth bare - obviously, since we were able to bootstrap terrestrial industry just fine without (yet) doing so.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    > the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extraterrestrial supply chain is far below necessitating stripmining the Earth bare - obviously, since we were able to bootstrap terrestrial industry just fine without (yet) doing so. Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars. You may be underestimating how special Earth is as a home, and vastly overestimating how suitable Mars would be for carbon-based life.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      > Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars. There is no ecology (at least to anyone's knowledge) on Mars to destroy in the first place, nor is there one in orbit or on the Moon or anywhere else other than Earth. "Sustainability" is therefore not a factor except in the sense of raw resources - and in the infinity of space that's a lot of raw resources at our disposal. > You may be underestimating how special Earth is as a home, and vastly overestimating how suitable Mars would be for carbon-based life. What makes you think I may be underestimating or overestimating (respectively) anything? Earth is special, which is precisely why we should be maximizing the preservation of the one thing that makes it special: its biosphere. That maximization entails moving everything that is even merely irrelevant (let alone actively harmful) to said biosphere off of Earth; anything less than literally all human industry (and all human population aside from non-industrialized peoples and maybe conservationists/biologists and their support staff) being moved to orbit and beyond represents a failure to achieve such maximization and puts that one special thing in jeopardy.

giantrobot 4y ago

That's just magic woo though. You can't just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors or furnaces to smelt metal. Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion. You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it.

L_226 4y ago
Luckily space is already clean, the trick will be converting current production processes to work in microgravity - process heat offtake without convection etc. LEO or higher orbit based manufacturing will probably occur before 2050, once that is solved then deploying infrastructure onto the Martian surface will become relatively trivial.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  That's just a string of nonsense. There's not a single aspect of deploying infrastructure anywhere in space is trivial.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> You can't just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors or furnaces to smelt metal. The idea isn't that you'll <<just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors>>. But yes, the idea is to "3D print" furnaces to smelt metal (basic furnaces are prehistory-era tech) using heat provided from the solar, wind and/or nuclear power you arrived with. Then use that to mine more ore to smelt more metal to "3D print" more... and so on, and so on, adapting production processes to local environment piece by piece, until you eventually reach basic self-sustainability, and yes, eventually you may be able to build a clean room using entirely local resources and processes. (Of course, there's the matter of whether people living on other planets will want to go for full self-sufficiency, and then if Earth even allows it. There's a potential for trade here, but the flip side of that is political power. E.g. as long as a Mars colony depends on Earth for complex organics or high-tech industry products, they're effectively under control / at the mercy of Earth.) > Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion. It didn't until recently, though. I imagine that between those older techniques from early-to-mid XX century, and modern advances in organic chemistry, you'd be able to eliminate some of the hydrocarbons used and synthesize others, without a need to dig dead plants/dinosaurs out of the ground. > You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it. That's all part of the R&D work for off-world habitats and industrializing space.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  > basic furnaces are prehistory-era tech) Which require water and air in huge quantities, and ore, none of which you have on Mars. > That's all part of the R&D work for off-world habitats and industrializing space. You might as well say "magic" - it would be more plausible.
  - 6510 4y ago
    One thing to remember is that our guessing how things would work out has always been laughable with [say] 5 insanely complex problems we didn't see coming for every 1 thing turning out much less complicated than anticipated. How much of what we did just the last 100 years was accurately anticipated and how much of it is down right magical? In hind sight, how complicated an idea was it really to heat water, get it to expand and do work? I think execution was hard but the idea was kinda obvious. Most stuff we build is made of stone/rocks? It seems we can dig caves, just ship the front door an we can start our usual hoarding :)
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > How much of what we did just the last 100 years was accurately anticipated and how much of it is down right magical? How much more of what we did failed but nobody died (somebody died, but not always) because those failure happened in a hospitable environment for life? We didn't just "magically" progress, we failed 99% of the times to evolve the process until it succeeded. Now imagine launching 100 projects on Mars, most of which could lead to an explosion, and predict that 99 of them will fail (and probably explode) Would you still believe "everything's gonna be fine"? The Martian is just a good SCI-FI movie. > In hind sight, how complicated an idea was it really to heat water, get it to expand and do work? steam engine was well known 2,300 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile It took > 2,000 years to perfect it. And we have free water and oxygen on Earth but no water nor oxygen on Mars.
      - roryisok 4y ago
        > Now imagine launching 100 projects on Mars, most of which could lead to an explosion, and predict that 99 of them will fail (and probably explode) Well I'm just picking holes now, but in the Martian atmosphere is 95% CO2 - nothing will explode > Would you still believe "everything's gonna be fine"? Nobody said "everything's gonna be fine". The argument for sending people to Mars, at great peril, is that sitting _at home_ on Earth, and saying "everything's gonna be fine" is a bad idea.
ben_w 4y ago
Hmmm. While I would be actively surprised if the Moon, for example, had every element necessary for semiconductors, one of the things I absolutely do expect to be possible on its surface is 3D printing an extremely clean clean-room. Furnaces? Well, I think it would take a polishing step after printing, but if you have aluminium you can do a rough parabola out of it and focus sunlight on a patch of regolith. Can you turn that molten alumina into aluminium and oxygen only by carbon rods and electricity? Or would electrolysis still work if you used a high-current election beam? (I genuinely don't know, I didn't do material science). Don't get me wrong, even if this is ultimately all fine without petrochemicals, I expect there is a lot of postgraduate research between now and any significant space manufacturing.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  > electrolysis That's a process that involves drawing ions through solution towards a cathode and anode. A direct beam won't do. A solar furnace would suffice for the first half of the smelting process if you have access to ore which is not pure alumina, as well as melting the cryolite flux. Actually separating out the aluminum from alumina requires PV panels, high temperature rods and some means of synthesizing the cryolite or similar solvent / flux.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > That's a process that involves drawing ions through solution towards a cathode and anode. A direct beam won't do. OK, thanks for the info. Can you go into more depth about this specific part, or is this a thing where I need to do the whole degree to understand the answer?
- tuatoru 4y ago
  > one of the things I absolutely do expect to be possible on its surface is 3D printing an extremely clean clean-room. My understanding is that there is lots of very fine dust near the surface of the moon. It's continually being bombarded with micrometeorites that kick up the dust. So perhaps a moderately cleanish room.
yellowapple 4y ago
It's space. Orbit is in all likelihood cleaner than your average clean room. Planets/moons add dust and thin atmospheres as concerns, but that's quite obviously easier to mitigate than the "dust and much thicker atmosphere and microbes and moisture" that Earth-based clean rooms have to mitigate. As for bootstrapping industry beyond Earth, the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extraterrestrial supply chain is far below necessitating stripmining the Earth bare - obviously, since we were able to bootstrap terrestrial industry just fine without (yet) doing so.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  > the amount of Earthborne equipment and supplies to build a self-sustaining extraterrestrial supply chain is far below necessitating stripmining the Earth bare - obviously, since we were able to bootstrap terrestrial industry just fine without (yet) doing so. Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars. You may be underestimating how special Earth is as a home, and vastly overestimating how suitable Mars would be for carbon-based life.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > Considering how quickly industrialization has damaged Earth's ancient ecology I sincerely doubt industry could be sustainably stood up on a planet like Mars. There is no ecology (at least to anyone's knowledge) on Mars to destroy in the first place, nor is there one in orbit or on the Moon or anywhere else other than Earth. "Sustainability" is therefore not a factor except in the sense of raw resources - and in the infinity of space that's a lot of raw resources at our disposal. > You may be underestimating how special Earth is as a home, and vastly overestimating how suitable Mars would be for carbon-based life. What makes you think I may be underestimating or overestimating (respectively) anything? Earth is special, which is precisely why we should be maximizing the preservation of the one thing that makes it special: its biosphere. That maximization entails moving everything that is even merely irrelevant (let alone actively harmful) to said biosphere off of Earth; anything less than literally all human industry (and all human population aside from non-industrialized peoples and maybe conservationists/biologists and their support staff) being moved to orbit and beyond represents a failure to achieve such maximization and puts that one special thing in jeopardy.