Support for SpaceX Mars City Will Surge With First Unmanned Starship Landings

14 thoughts on “Support for SpaceX Mars City Will Surge With First Unmanned Starship Landings”

1. IIRC, Brett Bellmore has commented before about cities being population sinks, and that you need at least the illusion of lower density for people to reproduce more. But what’s the motivation for *women of reproductive age* to go to Mars? Maybe I’m wrong, but I think the prevalence of space and Mars enthusiasts in that demographic is rather low.

   Likewise for young men: while relatively more of them are inclined to take risks, how prevalent is interest in space and in Mars among the younger generation? And how many would be able to afford it?

   I don’t think many women would volunteer to be effectively “breeding factories” for a much larger number of older men.

   The main way I see this may have a chance, is if owning an adequate living space and starting a family is overall cheaper on Mars (including the travel fee) than it is on Earth, and if raising a family there is, at least, not much harder. You’d need the amenities and services and community in place there, and a whole lot of marketing to make it all look appealing.

   Until then, it’ll be a bunch of older men, eccentrics, and robots, setting things up for the next generation.

   • While fewer women than men are space nerds, the colonization effort only needs about one person in 200K world-wide to be willing. So, we’re not talking average people, we’re talking extreme outlier people.

     Historically, colonization efforts have never attracted average people.

     I suppose a lot depends on how automated things are. If you’re actually looking at a “Caves of Steel” scenario where basically all physical labor is performed by robots, and humans are occupying a primarily supervisory role, it could actually be quite comfortable.

     In fact, it would pretty much have to be, to get much reproduction, though the first colonists will be living under really tight circumstances.

     • 8 billion / 200K = 40K. I suppose for a 1st round, that would do. Even 10K would do for a breeding population (though maybe not for a full industrial economy). But they need to be:
       – Willing, for whatever reason.
       – Useful for the growing colony.
       – Able to go, physically, legally, and financially.
       – Preferably young enough to breed.

       If you’ve got only the first three, it’s still a population sink.

       The retired engineers and doctors are useful, and may be able to afford it, but they’re less likely to breed much. The bored young millionaires can afford it, and some may be willing, but are they useful? And the young, skilled folk, who aren’t millionaires – how many of them would be willing, and how many of those can afford it?

       It’s a bit like the Drake equation: each factor may be small as it is, but then you need to multiply them. Will that still leave enough candidates? It’s hard to tell.

       • Any such endeavor would need workers. And those will be paid to go, just ensure they are of the proper age and gender ratios to create a community.

         And they need not to be that picky. If you need a Ph.D, for anything, you won’t get that many willing to go. Not to do sanitation and other needed jobs. And I think Elon in person would object.

         A proven track in some needed trade/job, health and motivation should be enough then. Some psych evaluations to weed out people that will crack there. Company and military recruiting teams have had the handle of this for long while.

         And ensure they have the option to repent and return. You need that for psychological stability.

         • IIRC the idea was that the ones who go pay for the trip. That was supposed to be one of the funding sources. Anyone you have to pay for, adds to the costs.

           But you’re right that they’ll also need lower-grade workers, and those likely can’t afford the trip even if they’re willing to go. So it’ll probably be a mix.

       • “– Willing, for whatever reason.
         – Useful for the growing colony.
         – Able to go, physically, legally, and financially.
         – Preferably young enough to breed.”

         A fair list.

         The colonization will proceed in multiple waves, which will have distinct characters.

         The first wave of colonization is fully automated: It’s just proving out the technology for getting there, identifying the ideal colony location, and prepositioning extremely durable supplies that will be useable even if the Starship mildly crashes.

         The second wave lands robots and material for building basic living quarters, and gets life support running. More supplies.

         The third wave is where the humans start showing up, and these will be the real space fanatics, willing to suffer and maybe die for the cause. There’s no real shortage of such people relative to the number needed. They solve the problems that weren’t anticipated, figure out how you really need to do things.

         On the fourth wave, when there are already modestly comfortable living quarters, the appeal of moving to Mars expands. It starts to look like someplace to live, not just to die having done something worthwhile. The important thing here is that people need to see that conditions on Mars are *improving*.

         Then you have to remember, people generally don’t colonize for a better life for themselves. They do it for a better life for their children. They’re willing to endure some pretty rough conditions if they’re convinced the next generation will benefit.

         Convince them of THAT, and you won’t lack for colonists.

   • I am fantastically Interested in the Idea of establishing a human civilization in a near-completely isolated surrounding – the outpost(s) mobilization and logistics alone are truly mind-boggling and socially/personally-compelling.
     Though I doubt we can really lean on historical precedent much to determine such steps and motivations. For a start, I believe the city-population-sink is a mis-conception — yes, taken in isolation, the dense urban jungle of modern western (only!) cities are depressingly rug-rat sparse, but that is more about how there are other nearby options — so I wouldn’t say tight populations groupings are ‘causally-inevitable’ than more statistical, for lower fertility and population number management. Remember the City’s main purpose is a centralized area of employment, education, administration, technical expertise, financial, etc., — an engine of socio-economic prosperity (or not) for an entire region – a core set into a body of other purposes. I challenge anyone to find a socio-economically ‘vibrant’ region of, say 10,000 to 50,000 sq.miles without a city of at least a high-percentage of a million, anchoring and sustaining that region – at least to high modern western (non-agro-only) standards.
     No matter – density and layout are flexible. Historical precedents such as tribal land pilgrimmages, california gold rushes, company towns, refugee armadas, etc., etc.. likely have limited value — we are going to a completely uninhabitable and mostly-barren and economically-questionable landscape. (I am interested to know if anyone has a read a good, non-fiction(ish), re-telling and assessment of the great American West euro-migration that doesn’t get to caught up in liberal agendas of tribal conflict, gender dramas, and environmental plundering — a stoic, settler vision with great technological development and community formation))
     So anyway, if we assume high-ideal conditions – 75% of people survive the many-months trips; the expected life expectancy and usefulness of people is at least 75% of earth’s (live: 60 – 80 years and work: 30 – 50 years); that we can indeed create a resilient and easily-excavatable sub-(mars)-anean warren that can be the back-bone of population refuge, utilities, and some circulation – underpinning an entire area of residential and other bases/facilities above; a technologically-growing and sustainable mostly-robot/automated (builder-fixer) workforce; and an environment mostly free of society-crushing environmental and ex-Mars apoclayptic forces — then, the Options are exciting and diverse:
     – a Musk-topia community of very hierarchical layout under a loose but very Space/Mars-X banner (company town vibe, i guess);
     – a religio-/cultish-/politico- community of likeminded but perhaps not academic/ technical motivations;
     – a McMurdo/ Amundsen-Scott academic-campus system of lone-wolfs and researchers with limited ‘normal’ community aspirations;
     – a gated-community of well-laid-out (in a 1950s Bradbury sense) residential/ work/ play(?)/ community areas and structures – pre-fabricated, pre-imagined, and ready-to-move-in –and live your ‘like Earth but challenging’ community dreams (least likely)…
     and so on… (happy thanksgiving)

2. Would it be easier & safer to just attach 4 lower stage-sized boosters to the lower stage to get Starship into orbit, then drop them off in space & only then to fire up the lower stage for post-orbital flight to the moon or Mars? That way, you can save the full Starship fuel for interplanetary flight & skip the in-space refueling rigamarole & risk. Of course, you’ll need a bigger launch pad, but that should be easier compared to multiple connections & refuelings in space, right?

   • Geometrically, 4 external boosters of the same diameter of the current central lower stage booster, could be attached to get Starship into orbit, then jettisoned before the central booster takes Starship the rest of the way to the moon or even Mars. Since the external boosters would be the same diameter as the central booster, they could be essentially the same system, with the only difference being no top-of-booster connecting ring needed to attach to Starship in the external boosters, just some sort of aerodynamic nosecone. That’s a whole lot less complicated than multiple refuelings in space by Starships that aren’t really optimized as tanker vehicles.

     • The thing is, SpaceX has experience with the Falcon Heavy, and so if it were an obvious win, why aren’t they going with it?

       1: As you add boosters, you asymptotically approach the booster performance without any 2nd stage, and that doesn’t have enough delta-V unburdened to make orbit, so regardless of how many boosters you put under the Starship, it has to burn a significant amount of its own fuel, and thus need refueling to make it to Mars.

       2: “Starship Heavy” requires substantial additional launch infrastructure that isn’t needed for normal Starship stacks.

       3: Starship launches are already incredibly violent events in terms of acoustic energy and enormous amounts of hot gasses having to find escape routes. Multiply that by five, and dealing with both of these without too much of it coming back in the direction of the boosters with destructive magnitude means the new launch infrastructure would be much larger and more expensive.

       4: If a fuel tender has a critical failure, you just launch another. And the fuel tenders will be very cheap compared to Mars Starships. The failure isn’t in a critical path, so the fuel tenders represent redundancy, not an additional failure mode. If a booster attached to your Starship has a critical failure, the mission is scrubbed. So the “Starship Heavy” approach increases risk of mission failure. A lot.

       5: “by Starships that aren’t really optimized as tanker vehicles.” But the fuel tenders WILL be optimized as tanker vehicles. Doing so is dirt simple, after all: You just stretch the tanks and omit the cargo space, because the fuel you reach orbit with IS the payload.

3. Do we really want NASA support? I can’t imagine an entity more bent on obstructing schedules and challenging objectives on a mission focusing on elevated one-off early risk and bleeding-edge protocol and maneuver, with goals of reducing redundancy and buffered outlay; a veritable EPA of the extra-earth system. We might expose a rare martian microbe or fail to adequately diversify the Team or mis-file a light-pollution report. NASA should stay with its main role of esoteric but publicly-compelling science, inspiring childern and interns, and maintaining public archives and resources — the Market now can only push Investment in access, technology, and aggressive scheduling above LEO.

4. I mean the fuel transfer and fuel is the biggest issue. Mars has less gravity than Earth, but nevertheless Starship is a big beast. Landing without prepared landing pad could be difficult.

   • As you land with most of the fuel expended, and the fuel is most of the mass of the Starship, landing is a LOT less energetic than taking off. On Mars they’d do it with just the vacuum engines, and throttled down. Still, they might end up using the Lunar variant of the Starship for going to Mars; that’s planned to have landing legs and a ring of final descent thrusters near the top, to minimize surface disruption during landing.

     It will be interesting to see if they size those landing thrusters to be able to exceed Mars gravity.

     • Even without propelant the payload still won’t be negligible. They won’t be having prepared site like here, just rock and dust. Thrust will still be way more powerful than for Curiosity or similar ones,…

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