New Member

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Richard" wrote:

> North Korea? Get serious. NK has a dictator, doesn't permit
> immigration. It is a closed society.

I'm totally serious. North Korea is a textbook example of autarky.
Look here to start on the path of learning more about autarkic systems
and history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky
http://www.sispain.org/english/economy/autarky.html

How do you think Mars will develop with a 2 year transport time for
shipments from Earth? How many people do you need to amortize a paper
mill, or a steel foundry, or a ketchup factory? Everything on Mars
will have to be done on Mars. To make paper for 10,000 people will
make that paper very expensive. How about pharmaceuticals? To set up
manufacturing for every vital drug will be horrendously expensive but
importing them from Earth will be ineffective for some drugs because
being in transit for 2 years (even if they are effectively radiation
shiedled) will lead to short shelf lifes of the drugs that don't
expire while in transit.

There is nothing that Mars has that Earth needs. The trade will all be
one way. Even if some miracle product was developed you would have to
lift it out of Mars gravity well, transit for 2 years on a Hohmann
orbit, and enter Earth's atmosphere. The price per kilo of that
miracle good will be very high to warrant that journey.

Mars will be like North Korea in that its economy will be completely
isolated. That in itself will be a disadvantage to most people who
will not want to doom themselves to an everwidening gap in the
standards of living. It's one thing to endure hardship as you develop
a frontier, all the while knowing that the trade that you're
developing is leading to wealth creation and there is hope for a
better tomorrow. Unfortunately that won't be the case with Mars
because there won't be any trade and Mars foreverafter will be a
welfare dependent society in an autarkic state. What scientists will
want ot permanently settle there knowing that they'll forever be
deprived of modern equipment unless some is sent from Earth as a form
of charity. What riches are there to be made on Mars? None.

Will there be adventure on Mars? Sure there will. It'll be exciting to
explore and send back pictures.

Will a Mars billet be sought after by scientists? Absolutely, they can
go there for a 5-10 year fully funded term of employment and then come
back and have a career's worth of papers to write. But stay there
permanently and try to develop a society if the patrons of Earth
aren't footing the bill. Nope, sorry don't see it.

> What is there about Mars that you find so upsetting that you must
> deny the possibility that anybody but scientists would want to go
> there?

I'm not denying anything of the sort. I'm sure that there are lots of
people who want to go there. Heck, even I want to go there.

However, none of that means that its ripe for settlement and can be
developed into a healthy society. It's a desert for civilization.

It doesn't make sense, primarily from an economic perspective, but
also from a logistical sense as well. There is nothing that Mars can
provide that asteroids or the moon can't provide quicker and cheaper.

Too many Mars advocates are romantic dreamers who've read Robinson and
see that as the way things will be. The Trotskyite vision is bizarre.

For all of Mars advocates I pose a challenge: Why not present to this
group a plan for the development of Mars that makes economic sense and
would entice gov'ts and corps to invest capital into the development.
Also, present us with reasons why people will want to go to Mars
absent any handouts from gov'ts. Why would they subject themselves to
an everwidening technology, health and wealth gap. You can't invoke
pioneer spirit because we all have that. What makes Mars so much more
rational a choice or more exciting that Habitats?

> Moving off Earth is going to suck wealth away from Earth for
> generations no matter how we do it. Actually you remind me of those
> people who criticize the space program for taking money off Earth as
> though we got no benefits or spin-offs from our space program.

Take up the challenge I presented above.

And if you can't convince me, an enthusiastic space advocate, of the
merits of Mars, how are you going to convince Joe Public who is
already worried that his health and wellbeing are at risk when he
retires because of economic pressures on SS and Medicare. Further, how
will you convince parents who are struggling to educate and keep their
children healthy that we should sink trillions into developing Mars
and at the end there'll be nothing that Mars can do to return the
favor to Earth.

Your first step is to convince us space nuts who will be your easiest
audience because we're already predisposed to the arguments of space
development.

I'm eager to see what develops along this line.

> I fail to see why you should be so strongly for the former and so
> strongly against the latter. Seems to me that they go together.
>
> Rick Brooks

Habitats make sense and Mars is a socialist fantasy. Habitats have
proximity to Earth for quickness and ease of travel to and fro. They
have ready access to variable gravity. They can provide energy to
Earth's markets as part of the trade equation thus enabling them to
import goods that they can't manufacture efficiently in orbit. They
avoid the autarkic destiny of Mars. They have a low delta-v intercept
orbit to many NEOs that can be mined for their own use and for
possible export to Earth and they don't have to contend with the
gravity wells that a Martian operation would. The list goes on.

TangoMan