Will Life on Mars Ever Be Economically Viable?
Vložit
- čas přidán 18. 06. 2024
- Go to drinktrade.com/economicsexpla... to get a free bag of coffee with any Trade subscription!
With billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos setting their sights on space exploration and development, there must be some commercially viable industries in space and on Mars, right? Well, it's a little more complicated than just mining the asteroids that contain trillions of dollars of value, or building heavy things in micro-gravity, and certainly a base on Mars might cost more than it's worth. Making Mars a viable economy might not even be possible.
This video was made possible by our Patreon community! ❤️
See new videos early, participate in exclusive Q&As, and more!
➡️ / economicsexplained
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
The Economic Explained team uses Statista for conducting our research. Check out their CZcams channel: / @statistaofficial
Enjoyed the video? Comment below! 💬
⭑ Enjoyed? Hit the like button! 👍
Check out our second channel Economics Explained Essentials → / @economicsexplainedess...
✉️ Business Enquiries → hello@economicsexplained.com
🎧 Listen to EE on Spotify! 👉 open.spotify.com/show/5TFVUEJ...
Also on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you listen!
Follow EE on social media:
Twitter 🐦 → / economicsex
Facebook → / economicsex
Instagram → / economicsexplained
TikTok → / economicsexplained
#EconomicsExplained #EconomyofMars #MarsColonization
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
ECONOMICS EXPLAINED IS MADE POSSIBLE BY OUR PATREON COMMUNITY 👊🙏
Support EE by becoming a Patron today! 👉 / economicsexplained
The video you’re watching right now would not exist without the monthly support provided by our generous Patrons:
UPPER CLASS
Jeromy Johnson, Juan Benet
UPPER MIDDLE CLASS
Pineapples&bricks, Adrian Bellomo, Maximiliano Rios, Peter Wesselius, std__mpa, Bac Nguyen, Michael Ling, Stephanie Roth, Frank Soltero, David Poliakoff, Jay Eno, Ryan Foo, Grégoire Duchêne, Sophie G, Brett Jubinville, Anthony Roberts, jill hoffman, Nathan Ngumi, JKH, Post Apocalyptic In Missouri, Constanza de Svastich, Laor Glukhovsky, Kib Bibens-LeFebvre, Forodon, Paul Ashworth, Igor Stavchanskiy, Mcfeld, Wendover Productions, Andrew Harrison, Igor Bazarny.
MIDDLE CLASS
Brian, Vladimir Zotov, Stefano Panaro, Seth, Dragan Alexandru, Tenebrion, Jason, Alex Wong, Jamie Costello, Rick Van Velden, Leah Klearman, Bacongravy, Klaus Clemens, Ps0Fa, Abel, Eric Slimko, Adam, Empyre18, Brian Jackson, Istvan P, Johann Döpke, Leonid Sorokoumov, Thomas Davenport, Nicholas Luchetta, Kim Brand, Ted Marcy, Joshua White, John Issitt, Joe Ryan, Patrick Staight, Wees Kendall, Shane Guthrie, Andrew Baartz, Jim Kirker, Justin Smith, Karan Mehta, Alex, roGER, Elisabeth Stanfield, Ash, Marton Csikos, Randy Cleary, Arjan, Marton Szasz, Liubov Zvereva, Jeff York, Michael D. Hall, Long Phan, hunter dalton, Craig Mews, Kent Klatchuk, Stefan Penner, ZETTAwith3TEEES, Zac Woodrell, Roman~1, Chris Hawkins, Wesley Fite, Robert Nyborg, David McIlveen, Anthony, Arend Peter Castelein, Daniel Alberto Vázquez Rodríguez, Kamil Sicinski, Dodd Willingham, Leo Vassershteyn, How long can a profile name be... this long... Wow, this is longer than I would have expected. Good lord, the letters! Secunda!, Michael Kürbis, Hugh Harris, David W., Will, Kheng Lai Tan, Andrey Kalganov, David Taylor, Scott Greenwood, Jane Walerud, Simon Sturmer, Zachary Demko, Michael Wolff, Steffen Lindner, Siegfried Eggl, PM, Jack Annear, michael, Jonathan Krailler, Franklin, Trevor, Marcel Roquette, Daniel Hall, Connor Costello, John D Tyler, Petronio Coelho, Kevin MacIntyre, Travis Thompson, Matthew Eggleston, Andrew Vinnichenko, Zachary Kasow, AZbytes, Johannes, Reuben Field, Nigel Pauli, Jacob, AB3, Sridev, Matt McKee, Norrawed Setthiwong, Victor T., Pedro Brito, Michael Salt, John C, Rimvydas, George Dusu, John Downie, Shivan, Caleb Adjokatse, Donald Wedington, Demo sthenes, Brenton Milne, Hayden van Reyswoud.
Go to drinktrade.com/economicsexplained to get a free bag of coffee with any Trade subscription!
the challenger disaster put a pin in the whole NASA thing
Pfft! How could we ever have an economy on Mars of we've never even landed on the Moon?.. 🙃🤡
@@ArawnOfAnnwn 🤡 🤡 🤡 🤡 🤡 🤡
I prefer caffeine tablets
WHAT ABOUT ENDING POVERTY IN NORTH AMERICA OR CLEAN WATER AT LEAST??.
Can't wait to see Mars join the Economics Explained leaderboard.
😂
How long do you have? ;)
Lol 😂
Martians when the Uranium sells come up: 📈📈📈📈📈
Still better than Lebanon 😢
A big criticism i have with this episode is assuming that any raw resources would go unrefined and unused before being sent gravity-side. manufacturing in space, especially on the moon where launch costs are super cheap, would not be done with earthbound resources, but by resources gathered in low or mirco gravity enviroments. this would reduce shipping costs tremendously. the biggest hurdle is just getting stuff to space. once there, it's pretty easy to move around.
People in non technical fields are usually pretty bad at making long term prediction but hey its CZcams
Lol ikr. I was thinking the same thing. The government could build logistic hubs or 3PL to make things more efficient. You know like UPS.
Yeah you would have worked so hard getting stuff out of a gravity well. Build huge stuff with space resources
He mentioned in-space manufacturing and its benefits.
It's also non-trivial getting stuff off the Moon. It actually involves less delta-v to get materials collected from near-Earth asteroids than from the Lunar surface. It's actually *not* super easy to move stuff around in space (in a reasonable amount of time) because space is huge. It takes considerable amounts of energy to get where you want to go.
@@southcoastinventors6583 Engineers who aren't economists have been predicting self-sufficient Mars colonies in the then-near future since the '80s.
Space has always been "We choose to go to moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard." Intrinsically hard things are sometimes just worth doing.
Mars isn't worth doing at all. Look into it on a science channel
True, it does inspire people to achieve incredible things and there are of course benefits from the technology created for one purpose being repurposed for another. But then going back there and making a massive loss on every trip, and most people, even billionaires, don't like to spend hundreds of millions just to say they can.
Depends on who's paying for it. A mountaineer climbing Everest is doing it with his own effort, while pushing for an unviable Martian economy will be based on the labour and taxes of a whole lot of ordinary people who'll never get to enjoy the results. Mars as a billionaires' showpiece is fine - as long as they foot all the bills for it.
In the case of mars it's suggesting, asinine and woefully ineffective aspirations are worth doing to salvage economic growth within our established models.
What JFK said vs what he meant: we go to the moon because the Soviets are planning to go there first, and it will be a disaster if they beat the USA.
I think the main focus of a mars colony is to become self sufficient.
Exports aren't really viable from Mars so the only way is to create a self sustaining economy
In the first stage it would receive almost everything from earth but then it would become able to produce more using local resources.
It would be great to study a path on how to make a mars colony self sufficient, and how many subsidies and people would it take to reach self sufficiency.
Currently the main focus of a mars colony is stroking Elon Musk's ego.
Its up in the air whether that would transition to a more permanent and useful focus if/when he ever accomplished that goal, but for the moment the focus is nothing so grand.
Same blueprint with the Americas.
I have no interest in Mars until I can enjoy it in the nude.
@@altragYou don't go spending billions of dollars to inflate an ego with a mission as lofty as that. Literally all SpaceX profits are going into the Mars mission.
There are far easier ways to inflate your ego, which Musk does all the time.
This. I was glad that he touched on it by the end of the video, because most of it was just pointing out, again and again, that using space to provide products for Earth is largely a waste of time and money until miraculous technological developments occur. Technological developments, mind you, that likely will never occur unless we go to space because there won't be the necessary impetus to develop them.
The only way you make the economics work is if you stop seeing them as simply resources to be brought back and utilized on Earth because yeah, that doesn't work. You need to see space resources, or mars resources or whatever, as resources to be used in space, or on mars. All of the sudden your costs are cut in half if you aren't including a return trip as part of the deal. This doesn't make them cheap, but it does fundamentally alter the calculus. In other words, the value of space requires a presupposition; do I want to live in space? If the answer is no, then space holds very little value for the foreseeable future. If the answer is yes, then the fact that space has an infinite amount of resources suddenly becomes very useful.
For a lot of people today, the idea that humanity pretty much has to become a spacefaring race is kind of a given, it's just a matter of when. Do we need it this very minute? No, if I'm being honest with myself (despite being someone who straight up went to university for space studies) we probably don't need a wide-ranging space capability at this very moment. However, it's basically an inevitability that we will need it EVENTUALLY, either due to asteroids, overpopulation, need for more resources, or any number of other things. The thing is, you don't want to be trying to develop a space capability when you need it, because it may very well be too late. If you need more resources, you may actually have waited too long and now do not possess the planetary resources to build up the foundation of a spacefaring society, an asteroid would mean you have no time, and overpopulation may lead to political instability that makes it impossible to hold together the political will to go to space.
Right now, when we don't NEED it but have the technical capability to start building it, is EXACTLY when we should be working on becoming a spacefaring society. Because we can afford to, and because we still have the time to.
I see space exploration as an extremely long-term investment. It might not be returning much right now, but when there are asteroids with quintillions of dollars worth of precious metals, I don't see how it wouldn't eventually pay off.
I hope that at that times dollars will be worth nil.
There's no "eventually" in business. Stockholders, politicians, whoever controls the money will not accept "your great-great-great grandchildren will be rich" as a serious proposal.
@@stevenscott2136 Governments do that literally all the time. Plenty of public-funded research doesn't have obvious economic benefits in the short to medium term, but it's still necessary.
So yes, *eventually* space exploration will turn huge profits.
@@stevenscott2136There are business models for long-term space exploration that still yield profits in the short and medium term, just look at SpaceX. Also, there is a historical precedent for humans making massive investments in multi-generational megastructures that they would never hope to be able to live to see to completion... just look at the cathedrals of Europe. Lastly, stock values are based on future earnings potential, so in theory, even multi-generational business models can be profitable to stockholders.
There's a big difference between the economical /logistical viability of Mars colonization and the merits of space exploration as a whole. The issue is, once you start looking at the practicality of Mars colonization vs something like asteroid mining or an O'Neil cylinder for habitation or agriculture, you start to realize that colonizing mars is a worse option in basically every way. Asteroid mining doesn't require sending material out of a planets gravity, is essentially 0g throughout the entire mining process (meaning equipment can be lighter and far less energy consuming) and the asteroid can even be diverted to be closer to what you're using the materials for, or even have the factory, station, O'Neil cylinder literally built into the asteroid as you use it. Basically turn it into a mine, refinery, factory, crew barracks, and export hub all within the diameter of one asteroid. And O'Neil cylinders for human habitation are better than mars could ever be. They rotate to produce gravitational effects so no low gravity health issues from Mars. They are constructed in space with space materials so are relatively simple to build. They can be moved to avoid collisions, they can be connected with other cylinders (some of which can be lower spin rate for agriculture to optimize food production) and importing and exporting from them is as easy as shoving something out the end and letting it go where it needs to go. When you look at these ideas (which aren't even unfeasible with current technology) among many others, you begin to realize why a lot of people roll their eyes thinking about this obsession with mars, because they know it's more hazardous by far, less healthy by far, less productive by far, and on and on.
7:36 And also Botswana which is one of the richest countries in Africa despite the fact that it was one of the poorest after de-colonization. A video about them would be nice too as they are not only an exception amongst landlocked countries but an exception in Africa in general.
The near term benefit of all things space is that via the process doing seemingly mundane things in a hard place, it becomes easier to do them in merely inconvenient places here on Earth. For example, the struggle to become self-sufficient on Mars will make becoming self-sufficient in the deserts and tundras of Earth viable.
But the greatest benefit is the simple fact that humans, like a tree, need the winds of adversity to be strong.
I liked the take on it from The Expanse. In that series, figuring out how to olonize Mars gave us the tools to deal with climate change.
Yeah. Developing the houses for the Moon and Mars is helping us develop houses here too.
Economy on Mars? - Sure! Economy of Poland? - Nah... Or I just misremember that he promised it a long time ago.
Boo hoo to you 😭
10:03 I think you missed an important factor though which is that for space mining it's not the cost to launch into space per kg, it's cost to return from space per kg. And because of the low/0 gravity environment in space, this distinction makes a massive difference because the payload doesn't have to fight Earth's gravity out to space
It would be great to see you do a collaboration with @isaacarthurSFIA on this subject. You're both experts in your respective fields and have come up with a lot of overlap in your approach to this topic - I wonder what the two of you would come up with together. Edit: Also, fossil fuels might be unique to Earth, but Titan is completely covered in hydrocarbons, to the point it's amazing the US Army hasn't shown up there yet.
sounds like titan needs some freedom.
I've been bingeing his videos but I still haven't made a dent in his total video count. :,D
A collab with Isaac Arthur would be amazing!
Maybe the two of them can collaborate on a new economic technology for use when we reach the lack of scarcity that the resources our solar system has to offer.
Titan will likely become a computational hub due how cold it is.
* Economics Explained doing everything to avoid covering my third world country *
But I still don’t know where Mars stacks up on the EE National Leaderboard 😢
Oh man, we missed an opportunity there. Would probably be last place with 0.1 total score 🤣
2:57 friend coming to visit your home for a coffee in Mars sounds like an experience of a lifetime
Would be nice to see an economics point of view for possible theoretical space stations and technologies like asteroid mining, Halo Rings, etc etc and what it would take for them to be economically viable.
I question the habitation of Mars when Antarctica is closer, easier to habitat (it has oxygen and water), and has all the resources we would want.
Until we inhabit and mine Antarctica, mars is a pipedream.
And before people complain that it is a reserve... no, a small number of countries agree to that, the majority do not.
Inhabiting Antarctica is no accomplishment. Besides, we already have a few small settlements there for scientific purposes. Those types of settlements are exactly the ones that would be set up on Mars.
Having multiple pipedreams is a good thing.
14:36 Actually, it would be far more difficult to assemble a car engine in space. We need something to hold the base link in order to assemble other things on it, and gravity does that perfectly. We would have to develop incredibly complex fixtures to do just that. The only way it would be economically viable is if you are using materials which are too huge for us to even assemble, like an imaginery merchant navy ship thrice the size of current ships
Yeah, that particular example was pretty bad. But there are some niche industries (like the fiber optic cable) that would benefit from the micro-gravity environment, which I think is what he tried to get across.
Then again low- or zero gravity makes a lot of other hurdles of heavy industry much easier, so assembling a car in the moon would simply be a very different process requiring different types of robotic treadmills. Basic manpower would be much higher in such planets when a human being could lift much bigger loads with ease with his bare hands.
I think the current interest in "in-space-manufacturing" is mostly for things growing very homogenous crystals for RnD purposes or high value products.
Gravity can cause there to be a gradient in material density, which may not be desired. However at this point I thinks it's mostly tech demonstrations or RnD with the goal of better understanding these materials and how they form, so that we can later improve manufacturing on earth.
We already have something to hold the base in place without gravity: Magnets. It will work as long as we produce car engines in steel
The Moon has gravity, and we need building materials to build the car engine out of, the Moon has that too.
No mention of Starship and how it could potentially reduce $/Kg to space by a factor of 1000? That will surely change things up if and when it is up and running.
Yep, this nonsense video is predicated on Lockheed Martin and friends doing space activities at 1000x the actual cost. Thank God for SpaceX.
I miss that too, below 200$/kg asteroid mining is estimated to become economicly viable. Also in space manufacturing has the potential to be significant and economical at those prices.
Andy Weir wrote a sci-fi book which has the economy of a city on the moon as a major plot point- Artemis. He discusses a lot of what you mention, as well as the housing scarcity and tourism industries such a city will have.
One of the ways of making space resources economical (in Science Fiction) is to gently nudge an entire large asteroid's worth of mineral mass into near-earth orbit, where immense volumes of metals (one hopes) could be refined (using concentrated solar power somehow in the absence of water and the acids usually used on earth), and then either used in situ (to build more space factories and/or space craft), or dropped down to earth. There's only one small concern I have with that idea, in that who on earth would think it a smart idea to DELIBERATELY send planet-killer asteroids AT the Earth, and ASSUME that they could control it 100% safely (with or without the possibility of terrorism).
One thing to consider is that the damage from a killer asteroid comes in part from its mass but also in part from its velocity. If you slow it down enough, it falling down to Earth in an uncontrolled manner is less damaging. However I'm not certain that that damage would be entirely harmless.
Kudos to the science editor. I know a fair bit about the technical topics you discussed and didn't notice any errors. Major props to using the term "micro gravity" instead of zero-g.
Wow if you didn't notice any errors might want to rewatch it again like for instance no hydrocarbon in space plus no robots.
You may need to take a recheck of your confidence on “knowing a fair bit in science topics”. It may be a dunning Kruger sort of thing.
I know little about most of the topics but the energy topics were completely wrong. For instance, population growth and the squared area required with solar panels to power the planet.
@@djame2517 Dang that rough I felt that even though I didn't make the comment
@@djame2517You know, I tried to say something nice to the creators about doing a good job on a specific thing. You turn it into a competition about who knows more about science. You win. You're the smart man. Go you.
@@DanFlorio alright sorry. Maybe I was too harsh. You sound like a nice person.
That will be so cool! Living to see Mars have an economy. I love living!
not in your life
@@mam0lechinookclan607 not with that attitude.
@@tuseroni6085 it's not about attitude lol, living on Mars is virtually impossible. Do some research, look at a science channel. Not just what you want to happen.
Only difference is you have to be in space suit all the time
For the elite only bud. You really think they'll let an average citizen live freely on Mars? 😂.
"Nobody can predict the future, least of all economists, and theoretical physicists aren't much better." I wish to see this statement reversed in my lifetime, and see humanity become an evidence based fortune-teller.
Chaos would like a word with you
That would be horrifying. Imagine what atrocities could be justified based on that.
@@12pentaborane I reckon that atrocities can be stopped based on that. This power shouldn't fall into the hands of bad actors, and it is all that is needed.
Always interesting when you start watching with one title. And finish with another...
like the new editing and visuals! really raising the standard beyond just stock footage!! Love these videos
One day, I'd like to see Mars on the EE leaderboard.
great video:). Could be an interesting follow up to break down ways that a Mars colony could "subsidize" its costs (ie fuel manufacturing, energy generation, food growth, etc)
Perhaps it will be a reflection station maintained to redirect sunlight from a Dyson Swarm to Earth in 2523?
Don't get me wrong, I love Dyson Spheres....but the sheer amount of material required would consume 2+ Venus's!@@EconomicsExplained
yes it would be great to know how to make a mars colony self sufficient, and how many subsidies would it take to reach self sufficiency.
@@black2burn211Just use Mars using martian resources and asteroids . Once a significant portion of the sphere is habitable, everyone could just live there. How hard could it be?
@@black2burn211Dyson swarms require FAR less resources than Dyson spheres.
One underlying assumption in all this is that populations will continue to grow. In agrarian economies children are an asset whereas in industrial economies they're a liability; over the past few decades the birth rates of many advanced economies has fallen to under replacement level. How this will affect space travel is anyone's guess.
In terms of transportation to/from space, coastal countries will not have an advantage over landlocked ones so I would imagine the development pattern will be different that historical patterns.
P.S.: Once you're up, coming back is basically free.
yeah, the global population is estimated to top out at 10 billion, so not sure where this "need space for space" argument is coming from
Always interesting, thank you.
On material you seem to have missed as a resource probably only viable in outer space: Antimatter. It is possible to setup collectors of antimatter particles in the orbit of planets with powerful magnetic fields (e.g. Saturn) and stuff them into magnetic bottles and then sell these. We could use cyclotrons to generate antimatter, but this is far more energy intensive than even fusion energy.
Antimatter production requires crazy energy... your production station needs to be orbiting the sun, employing solar energy, the closer the better. So you have the same issue, climbing out of the sun's gravity well to deliver the final product where its wanted
@@dunneemofozilla5718 no, it requires a planet with a magnetic field and a stormy atmosphere. This isn't Production, but rather Collection .
What, you have an antimatter mine in your backyard? Lol, lucky you
@@dunneemofozilla5718 A spinning planet with storms is basically a charged particle generator....see Van Allen Belts. That is where the collectors go. Sorting and storing them via remote control will the hard part.
The Moon and near-Earth Orbit will likely remain the major focus of economic development at least for the foreseeable future, followed by asteroids even if Mars is colonized.
There is one factor, which would make going space faring good idea, if we managed to build a system of space elevators (something, that's a tall order currently, even if the towers were shifting cargo between multiple lifts). Pollution. These days, everybody's super worried about industrial pollution and buildup, most of which comes not from final product production, but from material processing as well as mining. If more and more stringent regulations were put in place, eventually this sector of economy could be forced off Earth and into orbit, or even into the asteroid belt (especially the mining)
Space elevators are a brilliant concept that would cost a fortune to create, but that is necessary to build before we run out of the high energy density fuels that rockets need to get into space. There is no solar/wind/plasma powered rocket that can generate enough thrust to get anything into space.
Space elevators are impractical.
Launch Loops and Orbital Rings are a superior alternative.
@@krox477 Sadly, with the technologies we currently have, it is the most feasible method to go with, assuming the limitation, that due to the climate agenda, any CO2 emmitting methods were banned.
@@EconomicsExplained There are other problems, though. Where to place them? (something ANNO 2205 players have answered for them), who should build them? Who should determine, which countries would be allowed to use them, or benefit from them, simply by buying goods, that used the elevator? Just socio-economic implication of space elevator construction would be enough for an episode ;)
Something to think about from an economics perspective is if you developed a lunar vase or a larger ISS to serve as a sort of option to launch future "insurance" programs. I.e. maintain the bate minimum to produce ships for colonization in the future.
The original animation and infographics on this episode are stunning!! Love this channel more and more every week.
I really love this channel. Always enjoy watching new content. Thank you for covering space related economics. I always had an interest in the like but I can't help but feel that space tourism was left out.
Here are my thoughts:
Space tourism is a rapidly growing sector with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson making headlines with suborbital flights. Ticket prices, the demand for space experiences, and the competition among space tourism companies are driving economic growth in this field. As more players enter the market and technology advances, I would anticipate space tourism becoming a substantial contributor to the broader space economy.
Until a rich family disintegrates in the atmosphere.
Regarding shipping costs, if we could send up a self-maintaining, self-extending space factory that sends collectors around the solar system before shooting resources back to Earth, that would be a fixed initial outlay (+ administrative fixed costs) for a continuous resource stream afterwards. I could see that being viable.
Agreed that sending up all equipment/fuel from Earth is not viable for asteroid mining though.
Ive been patiently waiting for this video lol. One of my favourite boardgames Terraforming Mars
you guys need to calm down with those transition animations. It made me feel epileptic
To enhance a solar system-wide economy, I would suggest that the Moon be a major transit hub. The low gravity and lack of atmosphere means that unmanned cargo ships could be sent via magnetic rail to very high acceleration; while being so close to Earth would allow for easy communication. A 2-3 second lag, while terrible for gaming or working the stock market, would be relatively fine for conversations. Given the sheer amount of aluminium, iron, silicon and titanium in lunar rocks, basic industrial resources should be plentiful.
Then use materiels manufactured on the Moon to build orbital infrastrukture for far less than shipping stuff from Earth
This was brilliant economics
12:10 Renewable Energy specialist here. This is incredibly misleading.
Yes theoretically, if the global economy kept growing at an exponential rate for hundreds of years, we would ultimately require more energy from solar panels than hits the earth each day.
However, our current energy usage would require somewhere between 0.01% and 0.1% of the Earth’s surface area in solar panels to power all of civilization today.
This section makes it seem like we are approaching earth's current carrying capacity, economically.
However, human population could increase by orders of magnitude while simultaneously lowering our environmental impact - but only if we transition to renewables.
I'm ready for my musk bucks to rise or fall in value based on what he's tweeted recently. 👍
Musk bucks? It's 2023, we don't call them that anymore. It's BSd.
I will start contemplating the colonisation of Mars as a realistic posibility once there is a colony on the Moon..which has water, helium3, is literally close to Earth for travel,supplies and communications sake and also can be used as a base for inter-solar system travels. Until then a base on Mars is nothing but a fantasy.
Gravity. The moon does not have much gravity. Mars has at least 1/3rd. It might not be biologically feasible to do a base on the moon.
Agreed sadly....
This sort of video is this channel at its best.
Love the video boss. The spin of technology in space development is huge to robotics autonomy AI materials science etc
"Unobtainium" is fictional in the most literal sense, but it can be used in a more serious context to refer to any extremely rare and extremely expensive resource, kind of like you did here 😉
The best argument I have ever seen for building the StarTram. Leaving aside the incredible economic stimulus of the project itself, the first nation to build such a piece of infrastructure will be rewarded with instant access to space resources at costs compatible to shipping things air freight. And if it costs about the same to ship your big/heavy mining rig to space as it does to airlift it into the Alaskan wilderness, well... Everything changes. Everything everything.
very interesting video
Interesting tangent from the usual topics.
Third option: Venus. Up in the cloud layer (50km up IIRC) is the only other place in the solar system where you could walk outside without a spacesuit.
just don't trust lando.
Venus upper atmosphere is great! And unlike Mars you would be swimming in solar energy.
@@Whatneeds2bsaid and thermal energy just below you, and you don't have to dig to get to it.
At that point you might as well just set up blimp colonies in the atmosphere of Earth. Venus has more potential than Mars, but that potential could only be realized faaaar into the future.
@@SuperCrow02 for Mars you might as well set up colonies on the poles of earth. Sure they're frozen hellscapes, but at least you can breathe.
Why are we so obsessed with mars,it has no real resources that we could expolit,what is the point of building a settlement there,moon on the other hznd has a lot we can get,plus its a lot closer to earth
Reasonably, the best would be helium. The asteroid belt would be a better candidate
And CO2. It's got a lot of that. Just what Earth needs!@@Epyon009
love the new animations!
Long time lurker, first time commenter. Stellar work! ❤
Here's what I anticipate will happen: the SpaceX starship, being a fully (and eventually a rapidly) reusable rocket that's capable of sending 90 tons of cargo to orbit in a single launch will bring the cost of launching stuff to low earth orbit down enough (along with making space construction easier to do since you can prefab much larger portions of space buildings at a time with its much larger payload capacity) to Kickstart the industry of building space factories, wherein companies produce certain medical substances that are hard to produce in a gravity well. These will become the seeds that will draw industry to space, and make launching even cheaper. Once that launch cost goes down enough, and the correct technology gets developed, its only a matter of time before the first asteroid is mined for platinum and gold at a profit, and a new gold rush will begin. This will create an economy on Mars, as its (relatively) close proximity to the asteroid belt will make an attractive option for a base of mining operations. The Mars economy and the subsequent rush of companies wanting to build bigger and bigger mining rigs will create an economy for the moon; construction. Building in a zero g environment sounds easy, but is actually really tough since things just tend to float away, but on the moon where gravity is low but not nonexistent, it makes for the perfect place for building large space vessels for fueling the Mars economy.
That's my guess on how things will go. Obviously a lot of technologies and things need to go right for all of that, but I'm hopeful for the future.
I would imagine that a space elevator would be the technology needed to Kickstart asteroid mining since it'll make transporting large quantities of material in and out of space be so much cheaper compared to rocket launches
I’m surprised that you’re hopeful for the future since I banished those thoughts as unrealistic long ago. I don’t think it’s going to work out like due to low fertility rates because you actually need people to colonize places. I don’t think space colonization is going to be possible or if it is, it’s going to be far far slower than what people are expecting unless you are wanting to dilute what “Colonization”means
Note: what I mean by dilute is that the colonization of a celestial body wouldn’t be by humans but rather robots
I think that's highly unrealistic because this basically hinges on SpaceX deciding to take a very low margin for a high demand service which doesn't really make sense economically when there is zero competition for said services
@@simonpetrikov3992 oh yeah no space colonization is gonna take centuries. However, space activities will occur much sooner than colonization. Colonization will only become a thing once space industries make it so that enough humans are needed on Mars and the moon due to increasingly growing industries that they will start their own economies and become self sufficient.
@@mindlessmrawesome I’m thinking more millennia for any self sustaining populations in space and yes low birth rates matter how fast colonization
Great video! I’d like to point out one way Mars could make a lot of money. Imagine a group of a few hundred or so top scientists and engineers are together on mars working towards building a colony. They will be in a pressure cooker: extracting water, combatting radiation, making soil, etc will all be tremendous challenges. But because they will be there and with each other, they would be forced by necessity to be an innovation dynamo: Mars has thorium, so maybe they develop new thorium reactors, combat radiation with new medical therapies and techniques, find new ways to purify drinking water, new ways to bioengineer hearty climate resistant crops, etc. All of these solutions that will be born of necessity on the frontier could be patented and licensed to earth. The information would be massless so cheap to beam to earth via light, and the licenses could pay for the colony.
I Love this content, such a cool video
Placing bets at video start: Is this gonna be talking about high quality fibre optic, or asteroid mining? I hope it's the former but assuming the latter
Edit: This was wonderfully put together
The competitive advantage of things made in space is the fact that it IS in space. In situ production has a point and purpose. Columbus didn't send back to Europe for a hammer and chisel if one could be made where it was needed. If you accept that we are going to space, then the business case for production to support being there is fairly clear.
In that gold calculation you made, didn't you say the $2.1M was for the one way? So if you shipped more than 1kg per flight you should be able to reduce that loss. Which, by the $60k/kg gold, you would need to ship 70kg gold to break even on a round trip, which is highly viable with current spacecraft cargo capacities
Per kg he said
@mishra4240 ah somehow missed the 2.1M was per kg, not a flat cost. Had to rewatch
That was a 2.1 million per kg sent from Earth to Mars.
Gold mined in space would presumably come from the asteroid belt to Earth.
…and they would be looking to move tonnes per trip, not kgs.
I think an error was made in the video
Don't get your hopes up on that super clear fiber optics, theres another fundamental problem with FO over long range, ya see.... if a ray of light is travelling straight along the fiber it will get to the other end a tiny bit faster than a ray thats bouncing (reflecting) left, right, left, right, the whole way there.
This is enough, that given how fast we pack data down those lines, that the bouncing light already arrives inside the packet of its following bit. Extend the line too much and all the data just blends into itself and becomes unreadable, so ya wind up needing repeaters anyway, to clean the signal.
Menarik untuk disimak. Terima kasih sudah berbagi
Interesting idea although I don't think I'd be alive by the time if humanity ever manages to establish a colony on mars. 😐 also given the challenges I think living on mars sounds more of fiction then something of the distant future still we never know.
It is possible. We just don't know how to do it yet.
You did a great job with the space nerd stuff.
Thanks, fellow nerd!
really cool video!
I hope I'll live long enough to see (and maybe) experience these developments.
Thanks Elon! For choosing to go to Mars over helping the planet that birthed you!
I also support putting all your eggs in one basket
He hasn't gone to Mars, and I'll put $10000 on it that he, nor any project that he "manages" ever will.
Of course, his changing the energy consumption habits of millions doesn't count.
@@Obscurai Not when he makes the batteries the way that he does.
@@nickelbutt Yep, mining and burning fossil fuels is definitely better for the environment. Also, which type of battery are is better? Is lead acid better? Is mining cobalt for the refining of fossil fuels better?
We can't even afford homes on earth, but apparently we need to imagine owning a home on mars XD
**whispers** It's free real estate
Homes can be affordable, just not the way some governments require or where everyone wants to be. Its a great big world our there. Many states also have provisons for adverse possession. Take abandoned property, pay taxes and become and owner after some time.
What's the issue with having fun?
You know that this has been the change that you've been waiting for. You're sick of the humdrum of everyday life on Earth and you feel like you're just not getting ahead. You're sick of getting stuck in traffic or waiting for the train. The crowds, the pollution, the noise... they're doing your head in. But, don't worry. We hear your problems, and we're there for you!
At MarsCon, we've got a housing solution for everyone. Whether it's an apartment that you want or a family home on a large block, we've got you covered! Buy off the plan, now!!! Great prices on large blocks, close to the city! Fast forward your way to home ownership without dealing with red tape and regulations! Give your kids the life that they deserve, with "space" to play and places to adventure! Why stay renting on Earth! And, if you've never had a home on Mars, you'll be eligible for the first home on Mars grant!
And, it's stamp duty free! Don't wait! Lots are selling up fast! And, if you call today, we'll give you free radiation proofing on your new home. That's right FREE! You wont have to worry about cosmic radiation, gamma rays, UV A, B, and C fading your carpets and destroying your DNA. Just sign up today and we'll give you full protection, with a 15 minute guarantee, FREE!
Change is just a phone call away. MarsCon. Because we like Earthlings.
Regarding needing more resources and space, OTEC cities might be worth looking into. This is one of the focuses of the Living Universe Foundation.
I just came to drop a like on your video because the title of the video and thumbnail summed it all, exactly how it should be and not wasting anyone's time.
We cannot colonize the desert because everything we build needs wood and there isn't any. It's already costly to transport it, now imagine loading up rockets with trunks and shooting them at Mars.
Same with the moon.
Until we can figure out a way to colonize the desert and build stuff without wood or importing heavy materials, this is a pipe dream.
Until we find unobtainium under the sands of Mars...
isnt saudi-arabia, UAE and Quatar pretty much colonizing the desert already?
Incorrect. The desert isn't colonized not because of a lack of resources, but that resources are more easily available and more easily utilized elsewhere. Colonization efforts have always relied on ISRU (In Situ resource Utilization). This has been true for the all colonization efforts in the past and will be a requirement in the future, regardless of the environment being colonized.
Also, all colonization efforts require a certain amount of seeding technology to initiate the process of expansion. Efforts are already underway to grow food, manufacture structures, and collect energy from the resources of the target environment.
Humanity has colonized several deserts around the world. Humans have been living in the Sahara, Arabian Peninsula, Australian Outback, Southwest United States, and Gobi Desert for millenia.
In space, habitats would be constructed out of locally sourced raw material. You wouldn't use wood in space.
Transporting goods is much easier in space (more energy efficient even if the distance and thus latency is slow), thus in the far future we could see 90% of manufacturing being in space. The raw resources are mined in space, and manufactured into the final product in space, then only this product (e.g. an iphone) is transported down to earth.
Dude! Killed it! Stud move. Keep it up.
16:14 😂
A big fan of both ee and real life lore !! 😊
I think the possibility of fusion power is worth mentioning in the energy conversation too
The core problem with all our economic activity is the "infinite desires". It is literally destroying our only habitat, and we are calling for more growth to need those desires. If we don't solve the "infinite" part of this problem, we will never be able to innovate our way out of our current predicament in time to even survive on the most basic levels, let alone colonize Mars.
If you revisit the topic of space manufacturing, you might want to research startups in the industry like Varda Aerospace. I think the longer-term plan (outlined by youtubers like Issac Arthur) is for all the inputs to come from the moon/asteroids and the finished product to be sent down to Earth, that way you only deal with the gravity well once (and downward at that).
As an aside, it's a bit strange to focus on the overpopulation aspect of space colonization, coming from the video on the projections for _shrinking_ global population. Gaining more living area in space _might_ change that, but it's doubtful.
Information is a good product to send from space because the transport cost is low.
Running an enormous supercomputer in space means you get free cooling, solar cells work 100% of the time, and you just have to transmit the results once the calculation is complete.
As an engineer aware of the hurtles in the space industry, its nice to hear sensible, informed discussion about otherwise high minded, perhaps "dreaming" of exploiting space.
I feel like this video falls into a common trap when taking about the economics and commerce in space by not addressing industrial manufacturing in space. When you can build the instruments used for space industry IN SPACE in reduces the cost of operations immensely. A lot of the resources harvested from space suddenly become exponentially cheaper.
Getting a critical mass would still be prohibitively expensive, at least for now
Having a colony on Mars enables a nation to be a step closer to the asteroid belt near Jupiter, where we can mine precious metals from them that we don't even have on Earth.
Great video just a little correction there are fossil fuels on space, it is believed that the methane in titan came from asteroids.
This is a great video, indeed things like large habitats in space to increase living space or space based solar for energy collection aren't viable due to expensive launch costs, it is theoretically easier to do all of these things with a permanent settlement on the moon.
Mining materials for these large structures on the moon and then launching them from the moon into orbit around earth and manufacturing them there is a lot cheaper than mining and shipping material from earth, since the moon has no atmosphere and a very low gravity. So I think with that in mind a space based future for humanity doesn't require any fundamentally new technology and is closer than we think, but of course the biggest issue is the upfront cost of a manufacturing base on the moon.
Could you do an episode on the almanac? It seemed pretty significant to our agricultural industrialization
@17:17 there's actually a third viable alternative to space collonization that's often overlooked: floating cities in Venus. Venus and Mars have almost the exact inverse advantages and disadvantages for colonization projects. NASA's project Havoc is an example of precisely this, people living at 50km height over Venus, within giant Zeppelins filled with breathable air at regular pressure and ambiance temperature (which at that height is 50°C , i.e. hot, but roughly equivalent to Arabia's or Australia's desserts). Isaac Arthur has a number of videos dedicated to this
Could you do a video on Georgism please? I strongly believe it is the best economic system conceivable.
On that note: Could you guys do a video on Degrowth vs accelerationsm/green growth: what the science says?
Great video which reminded me of Elon Musk saying you should see if something is possible from "first principles". Maybe he should!
Why do you assume materials harvested in space would be sent to earth? Those materials have the inherent value added of already being in space, so we don't have to send more materials up from the Earth. In-situ manufacturing of habitats, new rockets, and additional mining equipment.
I can't wait to see Economics Explained do a colab with Issac Arthur!
I like how this video says so much about earth's economy. Comparison is a great!
"It's not about the money, its about sending a message."
many of the non-european landlocked countries have other geographic issues mainly being very desert or super arid or mountain constrained, all of which compound the issues. especially of being able to self feed the nation with left over production space/resources to be a self contained semi developed nation.
I expected space elevators to get at least a mention, as they are a way to get massively reduced costs of your "shipping" and are doable with current technology.
Also space power - whether giant mirrors or beamed power. You mentioned a prospect of covering the entire Earth in panels for energy needs.... this would be a solution.
I'm obsessed with space because it's cool. Rocinante torpedoes and cannons go "pew pew, brrrrt, kaboom!"
Love the RealLifeLore plug, amazing channel.
0:06: ever heard of the world cup?
Launching this video around the launch of Starfield? Now that’s good economics.
If you consider the long term risk of a civilization ending event and a Mars colony as a treatment for that risk; I'd argue that it more than pays for itself. It's just a long term, rather than a short term game.
Yeah, to his last point that world-ending disasters are fortunately too rare for such a mitigation to be needed, over a long enough time scale, they are inevitable.
One thing for me that don't add up is that... You just have to lift mining equipment, no resources themselves. If you could develop really light heat shield (aerogel) with som sort of inflatable or expanding pod - you could lift a 10 ton of things to bring 1000 tons of materials back to earth
An established lunar base is necessary first. It's insane that we're trying to cross an ocean of space without establishing a reasonable dock to ship from. Sling rocket parts into orbit, catch them and bring them to the moon, assemble rockets in Earth's far outer orbit and take off with way less fuel necessary. Asteroid mining in the future can turn the moon into a future manufacturing hub and even exporter of raw materials between Earth and Mars.
One major step we can make right now for low cost and long term rewards is to create bacteria that eat solar radiation and emit heavy gases and colonise them on Mars. Without any local microflora they should be able to take over fairly quickly and start to create a heavy enough atmosphere within a couple centuries that we can start adding lighter gases into the mix to make it more Earth like.