[ExI] What happens to US space programs after November?

[Adrian Tymes]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 3:45 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 3:02 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> > *John, we DO have the technological capability to do these things.*
>
>
> It would be vastly easier to make a totally self-sufficient colony on
> Antarctica then on Mars or the Moon
>

Actually, it wouldn't - from a practical, as opposed to theoretical, point
of view.

Regular resupply is relatively easy to achieve to Antarctica.  Therefore,
it's much harder to make the economic argument for a self-sufficient colony
in Antarctica, therefore it doesn't happen.

Granted, it takes more resources and tech to do self-sufficiency on the
Moon.  But resupply is much harder - hard enough that the economic argument
can be made, and is being made, at least enough that serious R&D for
self-sufficiency on the Moon is happening, where you can't even get R&D
funding for self-sufficiency in Antarctica.


> The first Mars mission would be the talk of the town, but ask yourself how
> much igniting of the human spirit the SECOND two-way non-colonization
> manned mission to Mars will create. I think it would ignite a worldwide
> yawn, a yawn that would cost many trillions of dollars to create.
>

Agreed.  A much better motivation would be money - if we find some way to
make colonization of outer space profitable.

There are a few ways to do that, and they are starting to be studied.  The
best options so far (for lunar colonization, at least) seem to be mining -
for return to Earth - things that are not so economical to mine on Earth
given current conditions, and manufacturing stuff to be put into Earth
orbit.  Both of these are direct replacements for things people pay money
for today, and might be able to be done with a higher profit margin than
how they are done on Earth today.  In theory both of these things could be
completely automated and teleoperated, but in both cases it looks like in
practice having humans there would make things more reliable - and thus
more profitable even with the high cost of resupply and life support.
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