Asteroid use

--- Ian Woollard wrote:
> Look one question and one question only:
>
> 'Do most factories produce more than their own mass
> of products (including any people, life suppport
> etc)?'
>
> I think that most people here, apparently except you
> Marcel think "yes of course" whereas you seem to
> think implicitly not.
>
> Transport costs something per tonne (mind you
> so does having the factory out of comission whilst
> it travels somewhere.) but transport costs. So
> whether you move the factory or the resources rests
> mostly on this point.
>
> These are the kinds of questions that people in
> industry have to ask themselves. How can we make
> the most money? Because if the transport costs
> for the raw materials is X and the transport costs
> for finished materials is Y and moving factory is Z
> then if X < Y + Z you leave the factory somewhere
> and ship stuff to it.
>
> If X > Y + Z then you move the factory. Clear?
>
> Clearly the numbers are going to depend on the goods
> and the factory.
>
> At the end of the day- any Mars colony doesn't
> care whether it gets its goods from the
> earth, mars or Eros. Only the price matters.
>
> > Marcel F. Williams
> > 1/6/00
>
MW: Once Mars has a legitimate industrial capacity,
products for Mars will be made-- on Mars-- for the
simple reason that it would be much cheaper than
importing them from Earth, the Moon, or from the
asteroids.

The first orbital automated asteroid processing
factories in marsian orbit will probably be made in
lunar orbit and then transported by light sail to
marsian orbit. Later asteroid processing factories in
Mars orbit will probably be made out of the imported
asteroids themselves.

And Ian, you conveniently forgot the H factor
(humans). Humans are not robots. And moving and
housing humans around in a roving asteroid processing
station is a lot more expensive than an automated
orbital Mars factory that only has to be visited once
in a while when the factory is not working.

And I could easily put such a roving factory out
business-- even if it only weighed 200 tonnes.
Although such a factory is more likely to weigh 2000
tonnes. Because I could easily send out a 20 tonne
lightsail with a 5 tonne asteroid catcher that could
travel ten times faster to the asteroid than your
roving factory could. It would be frustrating for your
roving factory, and your crew, to reach your target
asteroid only to find that one of my 20 tonne
lightsails had already captured it and was
transporting it back to Mars orbit. But with your high
labor cost, it probably wouldn't be necessary to play
such a dirty trick :-).

The only way that you're going to come close to
competing with my Mars orbital asteroid processing
operations is to set up a permanent-- non-roving--
factory on large asteroids like Ceres or Pallas.
There, you could process asteroid materials and ship--
finished products- directly to your customers in the
Terra-Luna system by lightsail-- much cheaper-- than
products could be shipped from the surface of the
Moon. And you could use the material to build the
first 2 kilometer in diameter O'Neill colony probably
in Ceres orbit or in the solar orbital arc of Ceres.

Marcel F. Williams
1/7/01