Space Colonization Economics, Part 3

[chris_gerrib]

Based on the analysis of Part 1 and Part 2 of colonial economics, a simple factor emerges: if it is cheaper to ship supplies in than to obtain them locally, the supplies are shipped in.

Yeah, I know that sounds about as profound as "water is wet" but when looking at Antarctic bases or oil rigs, we tend to get distracted by the glamour. But it's an important point, because, unlike here on Earth, there is only one way to ship stuff - via spaceship - and that way is at least as expensive as air freight. And as I think I've demonstrated, commercial businesses AND scientific researchers are allergic to air freight. Or their accounting departments are, which is the same thing.

Grow Houses

So, once the decision is made to put humans on site, there are strong incentives to be as self-reliant as possible. For say, a moon colony, or an orbital tourist hotel, that means recycling air and water. One of the ways to do that is have a small garden. This doesn't have to be a massive, self-sustaining ecosystem. Think more like a grow house, at first optimized to generate oxygen. Although, if you visit the link, you'll note that greenhouses can be helpful in recycling water - the plants respire water, which normally has to be extracted by dehumidifiers.

Actually, putting "closed growing environment" in your Google will produce all kinds of useful articles, like this perfectly Safe For Work article on closed-cycle hydroponics. For our purposes, note the discussion about water consumption. But if you're going to grow something, it might as well be useful. And unless you can sell $100 salads (or even if you can) high-water, low-bulk produce is first on your list to grow. Or other leafy plants. (Sorry, the idea of "Stoners In Spaaaace!" just flashed in my brain.)

Ah, moving on, one will note that, in the first colonies, the grow house is not a primary, or at least not the only, source of oxygen. It's a supplement, and backups are available. But the experience in running grow houses allows one to develop the experience to make them bigger more useful and more reliable.

But running a grow house has a cost - labor. Also, the more one relies on locally-grown food, the more cooks are needed. It's the difference from opening a can of spaghetti sauce versus making your own sauce from fresh tomatoes. From the point of view of space colonization proponents, this is a good thing. Running a grow house or working in a kitchen is not that technical a job, which means that a spouse of a technical worker might be persuaded to tag along.

Failed Colonies

Any discussion of human colonization isn't complete until somebody points out a failed colony, like Jonestown or the much earlier Roanoke Colony. Yeah, well, colonies will fail. It's sad, and I hope you and yours aren't involved in a failed colony, but failure happens. Some of the failures, like Roanoke, will be a mystery, others, like Jonestown, will be an opportunity to learn from. At any rate, saying we can't colonize space because some colonies fail is like saying we can't have powered flight because some planes crash.

For Monday, Part 4 - Gerrib's vision of the future, or Yes, Virginia, the Gobi Desert has tourists. (Whole series here)

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The only thing stopping us right now is funding really. At the moment, few people in power can see a moon or Mars base as anything more than a research post. They don't see them as likely to produce a "return" on an investment, and just as a waste of time and money.

Note that this has already changed -- Richard Branson of Virgin views his long-term goal as a commercial Moonbase, and Elon Musk of Space X is planning to ultimately build Mars-capable spaceships. They are not "people in power" in the political sense, but they are multi-billionaires," with serious business plans to finance such operations by incremental phases.

Given the scarcity of aptly named "Rare Earths", and how valuable they are to modern industry, a probe locating some rich deposits of these metals in easy access on either the moon, Mars, or even Ceres, might be enough to spur the private sector into taking the big leap of faith into the solar system.

That's one possibility. It's true that we haven't proven the existence of such concentrations on Luna, but it's a fairly safe bet that some will exist somewhere in the Solar Systm, and probably the Inner System, given the vagaries of planetary geologies. Another possibility, if fusion research proceeds well, is Lunar tri-helium. There are also known to be considerable deposits of titanium on Luna, and iridium in many metallic asteroids.

After all, if it'll cost your company a hundred billion dollars to set up a viable mining facility of the moon, you probably won't risk it for anything less than an estimated trillion dollars in returned material.

Over the lifetime of the base, yes.

The only thing that any body needs for us to establish a permanent base is water. From that we can produce oxygen, food, water(duh), even fuel for rockets. Given enough start up supplies, a local source of water will ensure that costs to establish a colony are minimal.

Water ice is vital, because it's the source of your drinking water, your oxygen, and your rocket fuel. Fortunately, we know that there is Lunar and Martian ice (the latter in quantity) and some asteroids (especially Ceres) have vast amounts of water (Ceres probably has more freshwater than does the Earth).

[kalance.livejournal.com]

Given what we know about the formation of the moon, Luna should almost definitely have Rare Earths. In fact, there's no reason it shouldn't contain similar ratios of minerals. Unless I miss my guess, most of it's lighter surface is silicate based minerals, and its "seas" are more ferrous based. Just like Earth's own land and seas surfaces.

Thinking about this kind of future makes me very wistful. Though I'm pretty certain I'll never leave Earth's atmosphere myself, I'd still feel very relieved to know that it's a direction we're heading in.