Every single current effort for a Mars journey is poorly planned PR nonsense.
We’re putting the cart before the horse. We should not be wasting this much resources & effort into human spaceflight beyond the moon. We should be working to capture mineral rich asteroids, bring them into a Lagrange point, and start working on autonomous mining/refining/manufacturing from the asteroids.
This is key to human colonization of the solar system. Trying to launch everything we’ll need from out of the gravity well is stupid. Once we have autonomous space manufacturing perfected, we can have massive spacecraft delivered to earth, and all we need launch is the personnel and their food. We can also have bases built at our destination point long before any humans arrive.
There is no economically viable space mining scenario now. Someday with a large free fall population there might be, with CHON mining first, but even that is completely untested technology built on massive assumptions.
I wish it were different, I really do, since we may run out of easily available resources here and lose the ability to get out there.
Speaking as a metallurgical engineer with experience in mining. There is no resource out there that we can’t mine on Earth for a bazillion dollars (approx.) less.
Every single current effort for a Mars journey is poorly planned PR nonsense.
We’re putting the cart before the horse. We should not be wasting this much resources & effort into human spaceflight beyond the moon. We should be working to capture mineral rich asteroids, bring them into a Lagrange point, and start working on autonomous mining/refining/manufacturing from the asteroids.
This is key to human colonization of the solar system. Trying to launch everything we’ll need from out of the gravity well is stupid. Once we have autonomous space manufacturing perfected, we can have massive spacecraft delivered to earth, and all we need launch is the personnel and their food. We can also have bases built at our destination point long before any humans arrive.
There is no economically viable space mining scenario now. Someday with a large free fall population there might be, with CHON mining first, but even that is completely untested technology built on massive assumptions.
I wish it were different, I really do, since we may run out of easily available resources here and lose the ability to get out there.
Speaking as a metallurgical engineer with experience in mining. There is no resource out there that we can’t mine on Earth for a bazillion dollars (approx.) less.
On the Mars side of things, I like Aldrin’s cycler idea for a practical pipeline to Mars, but I’m not an expert on that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler
‘The thing we haven’t invented yet isn’t economically viable yet.’ Yeah, no shit.
I guess let’s just keep polluting our planet, because it’s cheaper.