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I think the "SpaceX model doesn't fill the gap" issue is bigger than just not using ISRU-derived peroxide rockets; that seems like the sort of thing they'd be r

I think the "SpaceX model doesn't fill the gap" issue is bigger than just not using ISRU-derived peroxide rockets; that seems like the sort of thing they'd be really good at (even though the people I know working on that problem that are Europeans with university affiliations, not SpaceX employees) if they determined it was a mission requirement. It's more that propulsion is a pretty small part of the overall mission, which involves everything from portable handheld devices to astronaut physiology to in-space manufacturing if you want to build actual bases. Are there SpaceX skunkworks projects looking at that sort of thing? Probably, they've got money and space enthusiasts and a boss that doesn't mind that sort of thinking. Are they funding that sort of exploratory research to the level NASA or ESA or research institutes? Nope, and I'm not sure the "vertically integrate everything" model that's served them so well as a commercial business doing repeatable things in LEO is ideally set up to collaborate with the people that do either.

PaulHoule 1y ago
My analysis of Mars colonization is that it is 99% about the people there being able to manufacture 99% of what they need with as small a population as possible and 1% about getting the people there. If 1 person can support themselves the effort almost certainly succeeds, if it takes a city of 10,000,000 it almost certainly fails. A deep space colony might be able to build megastructures such as solar sails, energy converters and shades and deliver them to places like the Earth-Sun L1 point. You can't make anything on Mars that can't be made on Earth and it's implausible you could bring anything back from Mars that couldn't be made much more cheaply here. You're left with the political situation of Asimov's short story The Martian Way, where a Mars colony is caught off from Earth and forced to become self-sufficient. Even if Earth was interested in subsidizing a Mars colony for the time being, the Martian colonists would want to develop self-sufficiently as quickly as possible. People who look seriously into the problem of space colonization tend to follow the same tracks that Eric Drexler did. His molecular assembler and nanomill concepts have not aged well but I'd imagine that something functionally similar could be pieced together out of 3-d printing, fermentation, genetic engineering, flow chemistry and other pieces. Musk's talk of sending 1,000,000 and neglect of "advanced manufacturing" makes his plans seem unrealistic to me.
- notahacker 1y ago
  Yeah, I think I agree with pretty much all of that. And again to the extent the assembler stuff is feasible you have to look at who's doing it. Well the 3D printing in space demos took place on the ISS, with the first being a NASA-incubated, SBIR-funded startup and the second being an ESA initiative involving iconic oldspace company Airbus and some academics. It's certainly not as profitable as owning most of the world's launch capacity and not coincidentally most of the world's satellites, but the people that are doing the low level, high risk stuff are coming out of research institutes and living off agency funding....
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    As I see it, "Advanced Manufacturing" is important here on Earth, not so much from the self-sufficiency angle (though it's an interesting question for countries like Argentina) but from the viewpoint of carbon balance.

PaulHoule 1y ago

My analysis of Mars colonization is that it is 99% about the people there being able to manufacture 99% of what they need with as small a population as possible and 1% about getting the people there. If 1 person can support themselves the effort almost certainly succeeds, if it takes a city of 10,000,000 it almost certainly fails. A deep space colony might be able to build megastructures such as solar sails, energy converters and shades and deliver them to places like the Earth-Sun L1 point. You can't make anything on Mars that can't be made on Earth and it's implausible you could bring anything back from Mars that couldn't be made much more cheaply here. You're left with the political situation of Asimov's short story The Martian Way, where a Mars colony is caught off from Earth and forced to become self-sufficient. Even if Earth was interested in subsidizing a Mars colony for the time being, the Martian colonists would want to develop self-sufficiently as quickly as possible. People who look seriously into the problem of space colonization tend to follow the same tracks that Eric Drexler did. His molecular assembler and nanomill concepts have not aged well but I'd imagine that something functionally similar could be pieced together out of 3-d printing, fermentation, genetic engineering, flow chemistry and other pieces. Musk's talk of sending 1,000,000 and neglect of "advanced manufacturing" makes his plans seem unrealistic to me.

notahacker 1y ago
Yeah, I think I agree with pretty much all of that. And again to the extent the assembler stuff is feasible you have to look at who's doing it. Well the 3D printing in space demos took place on the ISS, with the first being a NASA-incubated, SBIR-funded startup and the second being an ESA initiative involving iconic oldspace company Airbus and some academics. It's certainly not as profitable as owning most of the world's launch capacity and not coincidentally most of the world's satellites, but the people that are doing the low level, high risk stuff are coming out of research institutes and living off agency funding....
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  As I see it, "Advanced Manufacturing" is important here on Earth, not so much from the self-sufficiency angle (though it's an interesting question for countries like Argentina) but from the viewpoint of carbon balance.