But far more importantly, you have not argued why industrializing the moon is a good idea in the first place. I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that operations on Mars will never turn a profit for Earth, but that hardly supports your point. Putting factories on the moon might make (marginally) less losses than putting factories on Mars, but so what, there is always the option to stay home and make no loss.
Industrializing space is desirable because industrializing Earth has had a number of negative side effects on the biosphere, so moving production outside the biosphere would be a positive development. My argument is that the option of staying home is clearly economically preferable for now, and will be unless we see major cost reductions in space technology.
Whether SpaceX and other launch vehicle organizations can reach the Level 2 threshold you describe remains to be seen, and LVs are only part of the pricetag. Materials, equipment, and labor represent a large segment of space mission cost, and unless we can also drive those down by similar degrees do the economics of colonization start making sense.
Industrializing space is desirable because industrializing Earth has had a number of negative side effects on the biosphere, so moving production outside the biosphere would be a positive development. My argument is that the option of staying home is clearly economically preferable for now, and will be unless we see major cost reductions in space technology.
I thought your argument is that we should industrialize space because it’s economically viable?
Putting that aside, environmentalism is just about the last reason for space activities. Space travel has had a negligible impact on the environment thus far only because there has been so little space travel. But on a per-kilogram payload basis, even assuming the cleanest metholox/hydrolox fuel composition produced purely from solar power, the NO2 from hot exhaust plumes and ozone-eating free radicals from reentry heat alone are enough make any environmentalist screech in horror. You’d have to go to the far end of level 3 tech to even begin making this argument, and even then it still isn’t an economic incentive. You can’t seriously dismiss space tourism as a driver for space travel and then propose environmentalism as an alternative.
Whether SpaceX and other launch vehicle organizations can reach the Level 2 threshold you describe remains to be seen, and LVs are only part of the pricetag. Materials, equipment, and labor represent a large segment of space mission cost, and unless we can also drive those down by similar degrees do the economics of colonization start making sense.
Space is hard, sure, but how does that help your point exactly? Colonization doesn’t have to (and won’t) make economic sense. Industrialization does.
Not really. This isn’t relevant for the Moon vs Mars debate, but even for the outer planets I would argue
Short travel time isn’t necessary for colonizing or industrializing outer planets
Nuclear fusion can realistically go up to 500,000s Isp, dwarfing any reasonable requirement for travel time inside the solar system
Also, all the analysis with hyperbolic orbits are kind of unnecessary as the solar gravity well becomes trivial for short transfers. You could just as well assume the target planets to be fixed points and get the Δv requirement from distance divided by desired travel time (x2 for deceleration).
Industrializing space is desirable because industrializing Earth has had a number of negative side effects on the biosphere, so moving production outside the biosphere would be a positive development. My argument is that the option of staying home is clearly economically preferable for now, and will be unless we see major cost reductions in space technology.
Whether SpaceX and other launch vehicle organizations can reach the Level 2 threshold you describe remains to be seen, and LVs are only part of the pricetag. Materials, equipment, and labor represent a large segment of space mission cost, and unless we can also drive those down by similar degrees do the economics of colonization start making sense.
Note, too, that ΔV is non-trivial, even when we start getting to high specific-impulse technologies.
I thought your argument is that we should industrialize space because it’s economically viable?
Putting that aside, environmentalism is just about the last reason for space activities. Space travel has had a negligible impact on the environment thus far only because there has been so little space travel. But on a per-kilogram payload basis, even assuming the cleanest metholox/hydrolox fuel composition produced purely from solar power, the NO2 from hot exhaust plumes and ozone-eating free radicals from reentry heat alone are enough make any environmentalist screech in horror. You’d have to go to the far end of level 3 tech to even begin making this argument, and even then it still isn’t an economic incentive. You can’t seriously dismiss space tourism as a driver for space travel and then propose environmentalism as an alternative.
Space is hard, sure, but how does that help your point exactly? Colonization doesn’t have to (and won’t) make economic sense. Industrialization does.
Not really. This isn’t relevant for the Moon vs Mars debate, but even for the outer planets I would argue
Short travel time isn’t necessary for colonizing or industrializing outer planets
Nuclear fusion can realistically go up to 500,000s Isp, dwarfing any reasonable requirement for travel time inside the solar system
Also, all the analysis with hyperbolic orbits are kind of unnecessary as the solar gravity well becomes trivial for short transfers. You could just as well assume the target planets to be fixed points and get the Δv requirement from distance divided by desired travel time (x2 for deceleration).