Financing SpaceX's Mars plans

[meekGee]

Your puns are good rock but mine are better.

[Torbjorn Larsson, OM]

The question was how to get dV of 8-10 km/sec for MCT without making the PMR prohibitive.

The one answer that worked out was:
On the way out, do refueling in EML, an Oberth swing-by, and you can achieve very high dV trajectories and still land good payloads on the surface.  (The exact numbers vary depending on what you're trying to do, and in what year)
On the way back, you don't have EML, and any refueling in orbit is more complicated.  You can do surface-to-Earth if you reduce the payload to zero.  Basically drop off the entire cargo hold of MCT on the surface, and fly back just the "core" ship.
Especially if MCT will re-enter Earth-side, this makes the re-entry vehicle smaller and again, lighter.

I don't know what "PMR" means here, but this seems to be one of those unstated constraints. I am no rocket science equation guy, needs a lot of details on engines, but I scaled up the Red Dragon technology (as a naive linear extrapolation) and it seems doable. A 100 mt total MCT can land on 20 mt of fuel. (Reusing Shuttle landing technology for steering a Dragon V2 descent type - lots of nice reuse there.) It will need perhaps 100 - 300 mt of fuel to make a RD type 15 km/s TMI burn, so I tentatively put 500 mt in LEO as the target. It is the last stage after all.

Do you guys connect this with some explicit engine technology? (Say, the fabled Raptor?) And even if you do, why would you constrain mass to LEO? If fast turnaround becomes useful, fuel if not hardware is cheap, and it is fuel that scales exponentially while hardware scales linearly.* Maybe we need to rename it a BBFR (big BFR), but that is the whole point of the technology.

No refuel, no dinky 100 mt to LEO. The larger (within possible constraints), the more economy. Like cruise ships.

*Actually, with the volume. But empty volume. Details, I think.

Edit/Lar: B R F->BFR

[Torbjorn Larsson, OM]

Your puns are good rock but mine are better.

Your puns are good rock are gems but mine shines better.

[meekGee]

The question was how to get dV of 8-10 km/sec for MCT without making the PMR prohibitive.

The one answer that worked out was:
On the way out, do refueling in EML, an Oberth swing-by, and you can achieve very high dV trajectories and still land good payloads on the surface.  (The exact numbers vary depending on what you're trying to do, and in what year)
On the way back, you don't have EML, and any refueling in orbit is more complicated.  You can do surface-to-Earth if you reduce the payload to zero.  Basically drop off the entire cargo hold of MCT on the surface, and fly back just the "core" ship.
Especially if MCT will re-enter Earth-side, this makes the re-entry vehicle smaller and again, lighter.

I don't know what "PMR" means here, but this seems to be one of those unstated constraints. I am no rocket science equation guy, needs a lot of details on engines, but I scaled up the Red Dragon technology (as a naive linear extrapolation) and it seems doable. A 100 mt total MCT can land on 20 mt of fuel. (Reusing Shuttle landing technology for steering a Dragon V2 descent type - lots of nice reuse there.) It will need perhaps 100 - 300 mt of fuel to make a RD type 15 km/s TMI burn, so I tentatively put 500 mt in LEO as the target. It is the last stage after all.

Do you guys connect this with some explicit engine technology? (Say, the fabled Raptor?) And even if you do, why would you constrain mass to LEO? If fast turnaround becomes useful, fuel if not hardware is cheap, and it is fuel that scales exponentially while hardware scales linearly.* Maybe we need to rename it a BBFR (big BRF), but that is the whole point of the technology.

No refuel, no dinky 100 mt to LEO. The larger (within possible constraints), the more economy. Like cruise ships.

*Actually, with the volume. But empty volume. Details, I think.

Payload Mass Ratio.

If you need a dV of 8-10 km/s and are using a chemical rocket, and you're using two stages, than it's like the PMR of an earth-launch rocket (you get somewhat of a break since you don't need the high acceleration).

(8-10 km/sec comes from Elon's statement of fast transits and getting the craft back in time for the next cycle)

So how do you do two reusable stages?

On the way out, EML+Oberth works.
On the way back in, it's really difficult, unless you give up on payload altogether. 

So I think that's the plan.

[Vultur]

and society will probably be much more regimented there than here (like District 13 in the Hunger Games, or perhaps the US during WW2).

I dunno. At least in the early days it will probably be all highly motivated people who have made it through a high degree of "selection". So you probably won't really end up with much crime and people who have to be "pushed" into contributing, and so not much need for strong "control".

Once it gets to hundreds of thousands of people... yeah the picture will be different... but by then the "margins" will probably be big enough that you won't need any extreme degree of control or regimentation. There's no real reason why a large "closed" system has to be "on the edge"  -- because it won't really be closed, energy will come in from outside, ice can be extracted, etc.

I don't think recycling of wastes etc. will be that much of a problem, much easier to distill etc. in gravity than on the ISS. And using human wastes for crop fertilizer is not unknown on Earth.

[WindyCity]

I've given no money to it. It's a neat idea, but not for producing net electricity (sucks for that purpose compared to regular solar). But it is a valid comparison for the Mars colony financing. It's a far-fetched idea without much hope of actual financial return but people think it's neat and so decide to give money anyway. There will be lots of people who call any attempt to crowdsource funding for a colony a scam.

I perhaps shouldn't have used Solar Roadways as an analogy. That project has many critics and might in fact be a non-starter. I cited it only as an example of successful crowd funding, and intended no endorsement of its technical merits. To determine whether crowd funding Mars exploration and settlement is a viable idea would require much study. I predict that no single financing scheme will in the end be able to raise all the monies needed. Many approaches will have to be tried simultaneously. If raising funds through millions of small donations could add a billion dollars or so to the effort, that would be significant, but nowhere near sufficient.

[meekGee]

I'm really curious about cement now, since all of the ingredients are really easy to come by.

Thinking about the various steps required for real ISRU, I'm coming around to Robobeat's (?) concept of using MCTs vast capabilities in order to land the first crew BEFORE (heresy!!!!) ISRU facilities are fully operational.  10 people, and several years' worth of supplies, and keep sending supplies until they get things working.

Otherwise, you're dependent on a lot of automated/robotic equipment that becomes useless once people are there.  In a non-structured environment, a human worker is immensely more productive than an automated machine - especially if the human worker has access to all the necessary power tools.

This is in contrast to what was "accepted wisdom" (for me at least) that you first set up ISRU facilities, and not send colonists until the oxygen tanks are full.

[Jcc]

I think robots will be very useful before, during and after the colony is being built, especially ones have have greater lifting and hauling capability than a human.

They can work a lot faster once they can be remote controlled from the habitation on Mars, instead of by 40 minute delay from Earth, but in principle the same lifter/digger/manipulator bot could be used both ways.

[meekGee]

For sure.   I was referring to the idea of having the colony "be ready for the colonists".

Of course once people are there, they will use machines, as you say.   Stay inside, get work done outside - but that's the point - you need someone inside.

You can spend a lot of effort on how to make units assemble w/o people there (e.g. move next to each other, connect hoses, sink foundations, etc) but all this robotics work is then useless once people are there and can do it much better (with tools).

So keep this pre-people work to a minimum, at the cost of having the first crew dependent on supplies, and it's a much faster course to a colony.

[WindyCity]

What economic value does Mars have? Commercial mining? What commodity could be dug up on the Red Planet and transported to Earth more cheaply than it could be obtained on Earth? Martian rocks would have scientific value or could be sold as collectibles. But how long would it be before interest in them faded, especially if large quantities of Arean rock were brought back? Tourism? Before tourists could visit Mars, a substantial infrastructure would already have had to have been established. Tourism would be an offshoot of a mature Martian settlement, not of a rudimentary colony struggling to get a foothold. If what this thread is exploring are the possible sources of seed money needed to build a launch and transport system capable of delivering human and technological resources to Mars sufficient to create a self-sustaining city, then speculation about how such a city would support itself in the future is off topic. Clearly, any investment in Mars would have to be extremely long-range in nature. It couldn’t be expected to yield profits for many years, perhaps decades. What corporation would venture large amounts of capital given such a remote prospect of garnering a healthy return on investment? What business model could justify it? Governments would cover the bills only if they perceived martian settlement to be in their respective countries’ national interests, and then they’d set conditions that might displease the visionaries. Any effort to lay private claim to Martian territory would no doubt meet with serious political obstacles. Once it had become clear that a private consortium was getting close to making a Mars settlement a reality, governments would likely step in to set limits on what it could do; they might even try to prevent it from reaching its objective. Selling the rights to record and distribute the effort, as Mars One is trying to do on a small scale, could produce significant dollars, but the risk would be that the public wouldn’t buy it. People might get bored with the project’s slow progression toward the big payoff, crewed Mars-bound rockets blasting off, and tune out. There’s not much drama in the day-to-day engineering work that would necessarily have to go on for years before launch day. The funding for a Mars settlement must therefore be eleemosynary in nature. Wealthy visionaries like Musk will have to contribute vast sums to it based on their beliefs and their unshakeable desire to see it come to pass. Ordinary individuals might give it small sums  because they thought it important or cool. The best solution:  SpaceX’s commercial launch business will yield enough surplus to pay for its founder's martian dreams.

[GregA]

. Any effort to lay private claim to Martian territory would no doubt meet with serious political obstacles. Once it had become clear that a private consortium was getting close to making a Mars settlement a reality, governments would likely step in to set limits on what it could do; they might even try to prevent it from reaching its objective.

Snip

SpaceX’s commercial launch business will yield enough surplus to pay for its founder's martian dreams.

If spacex funds mars entirely, then it becomes a corporate investment to some degree, which runs into the problems you describe.

If they lay no claim then in some way spacex donates their investment, and then they could be any one of many charitable institutions - so they'd fall into that camp.

I do believe that charity is the desired initial financing, to ensure open access that's available and truly usable by any entity, and spacex is a big part of that. I just wouldn't single them out as offering a different option that doesn't fall under the others.

[Torbjorn Larsson, OM]

The question was how to get dV of 8-10 km/sec for MCT without making the PMR prohibitive.

The one answer that worked out was:
On the way out, do refueling in EML, an Oberth swing-by, and you can achieve very high dV trajectories and still land good payloads on the surface.  (The exact numbers vary depending on what you're trying to do, and in what year)
On the way back, you don't have EML, and any refueling in orbit is more complicated.  You can do surface-to-Earth if you reduce the payload to zero.  Basically drop off the entire cargo hold of MCT on the surface, and fly back just the "core" ship.
Especially if MCT will re-enter Earth-side, this makes the re-entry vehicle smaller and again, lighter.

I don't know what "PMR" means here, but this seems to be one of those unstated constraints. I am no rocket science equation guy, needs a lot of details on engines, but I scaled up the Red Dragon technology (as a naive linear extrapolation) and it seems doable. A 100 mt total MCT can land on 20 mt of fuel. (Reusing Shuttle landing technology for steering a Dragon V2 descent type - lots of nice reuse there.) It will need perhaps 100 - 300 mt of fuel to make a RD type 15 km/s TMI burn, so I tentatively put 500 mt in LEO as the target. It is the last stage after all.

Do you guys connect this with some explicit engine technology? (Say, the fabled Raptor?) And even if you do, why would you constrain mass to LEO? If fast turnaround becomes useful, fuel if not hardware is cheap, and it is fuel that scales exponentially while hardware scales linearly.* Maybe we need to rename it a BBFR (big BFR), but that is the whole point of the technology.

No refuel, no dinky 100 mt to LEO. The larger (within possible constraints), the more economy. Like cruise ships.

*Actually, with the volume. But empty volume. Details, I think.

Payload Mass Ratio.

If you need a dV of 8-10 km/s and are using a chemical rocket, and you're using two stages, than it's like the PMR of an earth-launch rocket (you get somewhat of a break since you don't need the high acceleration).

(8-10 km/sec comes from Elon's statement of fast transits and getting the craft back in time for the next cycle)

Thanks!

I would like to see a reference on those SpaceX plan statements like that "thing that Elon says" you quoted here. But in this and other threads cycle do seem to mean Hohmann orbit window to Mars instead of cycle with respect to MCT (whether Hohmann or not). Where did that assumption sneak in as a possible constraint?

I was scaling up the Red Dragon, but that is still not the dV an economical MCT has to try to shoot for. What would transit at any time take? 40 km/s, above Earth's orbital velocity? (Because you may need to go to a parabolic trajectory instead of an elliptic Hohmann orbit to get around the "resonance" (or is it "phasing"?) requirement. But I am not sure why, since you should be able to fit elliptic trajectories anywhere.  I need to go to the beginner's class here. ) Is that outside what today's engines can practically deliver due to rocket equation, Oberth effect and what not? I see that people achieve on the order 15 - 20 km/s delta-v at least, if you drop the non-fast reuse 2 stage construction constraint.*

Fast reuse means fuel is cheap and as luck has it tank volume is cheap hardware (though you also need more engines) - and so you want to up fuel use to minimize travel time (use of costly hardware besides empty tanks). Seems SpaceX and I agree ("fast transits"), even if I can't be certain I grok their plans.

FWIW, I made some silly mistakes when I tried to model the project economy and financing.

First, you can save on initial financing by having 1 BFR (which has refurb time and _do_ have other LEO use if not**), while building remaining over a longer time. I took the BFR+MCT fast reuse (airplane) combo unnecessarily ad notam.

Second, if we have 100 launches/BFR (say), the MCT does double duty and has 50 round trips. But those are the lesser mass, so cheaper in my oom estimates. Still, you now need 9 instead of 5 of those during the settlement business case phase. Uh, I'll go with 1/5 of the BFR+MCT total, so 0.3 GUSD, meaning 3 GUSD total or 2 GUSD more than my initial 8. 10 GUSD hardware under a naive model. Still doable, since my oom estimate included F9 margins.

* It seems to be one of those "it is beautiful engineering [but makes no economical sense]" . It fits engine and heat shield reuse, so you save on the BFR. But instead you need refueling, which takes 4 times as many BFRs, if a realistic BFR has finite use. (Say 100 launches/BFR.) The hardware cost skyrocket [sic!]. You don't want to do it unless forced by circumstances.

That airplanes whether civilian or military try to avoid refueling is a clue to its problematic economy. If returning MCTs can deliver aero-braked  IRFU fuel to LEO, with a cheaper delta-v than from the surface (though I doubt it fits "fast transits" constraint), fuel stations instead of refuel crafts may be viable. But that isn't enough refuel for a 2 stage BFR/MCT combo.

To top off that fuel problem refueling is nonviable in my naive oom model. Of course you can always hope for the best, or do a much more detailed estimate, or take a BFR to be like an airplane with many thousand cycles in it. But it doesn't look to me to be an assured way to make "success [is] an option".

** As long as the BFR launches on the order of 500 mt where customers are willing to pay on the order of 50 MUSD, the MCT combo ROI, it can contribute to the MCT project economy by rapid reuse. If not, it will be a nonviable contribution (cost more on attrition of assumed launch number than on projected ROI).

Edit/Lar: B R F->BFR

[Torbjorn Larsson, OM]

What economic value does Mars have?

Same as here, land. (As answered already in the OP.)

Later in the comment you seem to confuse economy with financing (which is what the land value can go towards).

[Torbjorn Larsson, OM]

If they lay no claim then in some way spacex donates their investment, and then they could be any one of many charitable institutions - so they'd fall into that camp.

I do believe that charity is the desired initial financing, to ensure open access that's available and truly usable by any entity, and spacex is a big part of that. I just wouldn't single them out as offering a different option that doesn't fall under the others.

I agree on the possibility or even desirability of philanthropic financing, but I don't think they can build their economical business case on that. The project must be economical after enough financing is secured to get development started. E.g. the future returns must balance the future costs, or other financing will disappear.

[mrmandias]

lottery is no good for financing.  lottery is gambling, which is heavily regulated.

[Torbjorn Larsson, OM]

lottery is no good for financing.  lottery is gambling, which is heavily regulated.

How about a lottery on Mars? The first MCT can institute one, and unless you have a space lawyer around you can likely make it stick.  (I assume space lawyers gets dumped en route. With 24 hour air supply and "success is an option".)

PS. And don't forget to bring that envelope with the special post stamps!

[GORDAP]

Is the sale of plots of land on Mars truly a non-starter (for assisting in initial financing)?  I understand that various treaties make that presently illegal, but treaties can be changed or overturned, right?

What I have in mind is a non profit organization (specifically not SpaceX) whose charter is to facilitate the establishment of a settlement on Mars.  Let's call them MarsX.  MarsX will completely finance initial flights required to establish a toe hold.  This would be some dozen or so people on the surface, and some basic power, water and Ox generating infrastructure.  Following this, MarsX would then subsidise flights for a few decades thereafter for general settlers.  MarsX would purchase flight services from SpaceX or from any other low cost launch companies that might come online.

Board consists of many billionaires, hopefully representing several countries and continents.  'Buy in' to be on the board will be at least a billion $s, so there will be a good chunk of initial seed money.  Anyway, further financing would then come from 3 primary sources:  Corporate sponsorships ("Home Depot is the official hardware store of Mars Settlement!", Broadcast rights to the greatest ongoing reality TV show ever (think the Olympics on steroids), and finally, Sale of Martian land (to circle back to my initial point).

MarsX would petition the U.N. to sanction the auctioning of lots over an ongoing timeframe.  The treaty would be only officially approved once a set of countries representing greater than 50% of the worlds population approves it in their own legislatures.  Proceeds would go to MarsX, the U.N., the 'participating' countries governments and in checks issued yearly to all adults in the participating countries, according to a preset formula.  I'd suggest 34% to MarsX, 5% to the U.N., 10% to governments, and the remaining 51% to the general populations.

Yearly auctions would take place which would auction off, say, 5% of the remaining Mars plots.  So after even 25 years of auctions, there would still be about 28% of Mars still unallocated.  Lots would be sold in sizes of 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000 square kilometers, with an equal amount of total area in each of these categories.  I think this would potentially generate an enormous revenue stream.  And it might be an easy 'sell' to the U.N. and world governments, as most of the purchasers would be corporations and rich or well off individuals, and most of the recipients would be average or poor people.  It might be fairly billed as the greatest transfer of wealth from rich to poor ever, and would establish like nothing else the legitimacy of ownership of Mars land.

Would such a plan have a chance?

[Torbjorn Larsson, OM]

Is the sale of plots of land on Mars truly a non-starter (for assisting in initial financing)?  I understand that various treaties make that presently illegal, but treaties can be changed or overturned, right?

I so totally not grok this. Under the Outer Space Treaty, Mars is a common heritage of mankind. You can prohibit settlement (in which case we don't need to argue over land ownership) or you can look at World Heritage Sites. Those include land that has ownership (say, cities). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Heritage_Sites

As I understand it, the treaties allow for national overview as circumstances change, it is the nations that have underwritten the treatises and not individuals and it is the nations that would control what happens. (E.g. the question about settlement arises.) But IANASL (I Am Not A Space Lawyer). Isn't that what all the Mars settlement projects build on?

And I like you expansion of economy plans. We don't want an enormous build bubble though. If land will be sold on truly global scale, it better happen after martian settlements are shown to be viable.

[GORDAP]

I thought that per the Outer Space Treaty places like the Moon and Mars were prohibited from having any claims asserted, either by individuals or governments.  Thus ownership of plots of land is prohibited.  I think this greatly inhibits settlement, first by blocking the sale of land by any party (no upfront revenue generated), and secondly by giving the settlers themselves no claim to ownership of the land they occupy.

But it's quite possible I'm ill informed about all this.  Is this what you mean by not groking what I said?

[aero]

I thought that per the Outer Space Treaty places like the Moon and Mars were prohibited from having any claims asserted, either by individuals or governments.  Thus ownership of plots of land is prohibited.  I think this greatly inhibits settlement, first by blocking the sale of land by any party (no upfront revenue generated), and secondly by giving the settlers themselves no claim to ownership of the land they occupy.

But it's quite possible I'm ill informed about all this.  Is this what you mean by not groking what I said?

I don't know the details of the space treaty (treaties), but I know that there are governments that did not sign the treaties. This is a reason for the Mars settlement to formally establish a government with diplomatic relations to countries here on Earth. The breaking away of colonies from the mother country has a well established precedent and there is no reason I can see why that precedent would not be applicable to another world. So if the settlement doesn't like the laws and treaties, it could make its own set of laws and treaties.

I think it is quite unlikely that the governments of Earth would try to enforce their treaties upon a non-signatory, off-world government. Especially when that non-signatory government holds the high ground and has allies on Earth.