Mars Colony financing

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kunkmiester
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Post by kunkmiester »

A sovereign state off earth has all kinds of possibilities. Mostly the fact that it's one of the few ways to remove space from earthly regulation, which is one of the sticking points.

Plenty of socialists and such in the UN would be quite displeased with a corporation commercializing space, in face there are a few treaties that try to prevent that. By declaring a Moon or Mars colony independent, such limitations would be rendered moot.
Evil is evil, no matter how small

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

hanelyp wrote:A bank without recognized existence is going to have difficulty getting depositors' money in and out. Any colonization scheme dependent on ongoing financial relations with Earth is subject to the limits of whoever is willing to do business.
Bitcoin?

Giorgio
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Post by Giorgio »

hanelyp wrote: Any colonization scheme dependent on ongoing financial relations with Earth is subject to the limits of whoever is willing to do business.
Or most simply a barter system based on real goods (instead that on money) will get back in vogue.
I personally do not see this as a big limit for space development or colonization. IMBW thought.

williatw
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Stephen Hawking: Time for Space Colonies to Save Humanity

Post by williatw »

http://www.examiner.com/space-news-in-h ... e-humanity

Sure Elon Musk would agree...gee if only there was a way to pay for them, say some way that would make money almost right away.

Aero
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Post by Aero »

You might be interested in this thread over an NASA spaceflight forum.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index. ... ic=27041.0

It discusses the unexpected measurement from the LCROSS mission of high concentrations of gold in the plume blasted out of the crater. They measured on the order of 1.6% corresponding to 160kg of gold.
You might also be interested in the reported results.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6003/472.abstract

You can register for free and read the full paper if you like.

I'm suggesting gold as a reason to go to the moon, and lunar gold as a way to finance Mars.
Aero

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

Can you put in a nutshell, for an economics layman, how a gold Moon wouldn't devaluate gold's value to the non-neligible detriment of such funding?

Aero
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Post by Aero »

In a nutshell? What happened to the value of gold in 1849 and later? I think the price stagnated.

We have discussed (on NASA spaceflight forum) the prospect of returning an amount of gold equal to 10% of the current 2000 ton annual production, that is, 200 tons, 5.6 million tron ounces, or $28 billion at $5000/oz. I don't think a 10% increase in the annual gold supply would devalue gold significantly and if it did, I wonder if the moon gold mine would be the least economically efficient. Maybe some marginal operators would close, but once established, who knows, moon gold might become main stream.

To answer this question, we need to do a lot more analysis of the economics, some of which is presented on the NASA spaceflight forum.
Aero

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

Thanks.

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

Of course, the is the long term issue of removing mass from the moon... :D

williatw
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Post by williatw »

Aero wrote:I'm suggesting gold as a reason to go to the moon, and lunar gold as a way to finance Mars.
Yes and I am sure there is gold/platinum group metals/rare earths because of meteor strikes on Mars too. But I am thinking of something that would almost immediately be a money maker for Mars. It would take years maybe decades to establish the mine and all the infrastructure it would take to support it. You could have the "bank of mars" up an running within weeks of establishing a colony, servers, routers, cpu, dish to facilitate communication with earth, would not take long. 10's, 100's, even thousands of billions of dollars transferred electronically for low cost.

Aero
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Post by Aero »

williatw wrote:
Aero wrote:I'm suggesting gold as a reason to go to the moon, and lunar gold as a way to finance Mars.
Yes and I am sure there is gold/platinum group metals/rare earths because of meteor strikes on Mars too. But I am thinking of something that would almost immediately be a money maker for Mars. It would take years maybe decades to establish the mine and all the infrastructure it would take to support it. You could have the "bank of mars" up an running within weeks of establishing a colony, servers, routers, cpu, dish to facilitate communication with earth, would not take long. 10's, 100's, even thousands of billions of dollars transferred electronically for low cost.
While you may be right, the catch it getting to Mars in the first place. Once you get there, set up your bank. Unfortunately for your bank, "The First Lunar Bank" may offer stiff competition. If your bank were "The Mars Branch of The First Lunar Bank" you wouldn't mind the competition so much.

Yes, there is probably gold on Mars. We just don't know of any natural mechanism that would concentrate it over billions of years into a few isolated spots. On the moon, we do know of such a mechanism, and the LCROSS measurement seem to bear us out. With hindsight, the surprise was not so much that the gold was there, but rather, how much was there.
Aero

williatw
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Post by williatw »

Aero wrote:While you may be right, the catch it getting to Mars in the first place. Once you get there, set up your bank. Unfortunately for your bank, "The First Lunar Bank" may offer stiff competition. If your bank were "The Mars Branch of The First Lunar Bank" you wouldn't mind the competition so much.

Yes, there is probably gold on Mars. We just don't know of any natural mechanism that would concentrate it over billions of years into a few isolated spots. On the moon, we do know of such a mechanism, and the LCROSS measurement seem to bear us out. With hindsight, the surprise was not so much that the gold was there, but rather, how much was there.
True that any meteor strikes on mars unlike the moon would probably have a good chance of being buried under meters of dust...unlike the moon which is also geologically inactive mars has weather, planetary dust storms that can rage for months. And yes sure the bank of the moon would be stiff competition for the bank of mars. Of course the ease of setting it up because of the much shorter travel time means that earth forces could get there much quicker to..or threaten to as a way of making them tow the line. Hard to bully someone when it takes 6 months to a year to get there, and no logistical support from earth. The investigators sent from earth demanding access to the bank of the moon's records could scream for reinforcements and a shuttle full of marines/mp's could be there in two days or so.

kunkmiester
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Post by kunkmiester »

THere's trillions of dollars of metals in the asteroid belt. Likely after space mining is established there would be analysis to find the new "precious" metals, and specie values would adjust accordingly.
Evil is evil, no matter how small

williatw
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Post by williatw »

kunkmiester wrote:THere's trillions of dollars of metals in the asteroid belt. Likely after space mining is established there would be analysis to find the new "precious" metals, and specie values would adjust accordingly.
And when that happens...the advantage of being able to trade with Mars. No taxes few regulations...if you can get $1500/ounce on mars tax free deposited into the bank of mars for your gold/platinum that is better than $1900/ounce taxed on earth. Especially if mars is closer to the asteriod you mined it from.

HopDavid
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Post by HopDavid »

Aero wrote:You might be interested in this thread over an NASA spaceflight forum.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index. ... ic=27041.0

It discusses the unexpected measurement from the LCROSS mission of high concentrations of gold in the plume blasted out of the crater. They measured on the order of 1.6% corresponding to 160kg of gold.
You might also be interested in the reported results.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6003/472.abstract

You can register for free and read the full paper if you like.

I'm suggesting gold as a reason to go to the moon, and lunar gold as a way to finance Mars.
Gold nor platinum nor diamonds would be a profitable lunar export, even if we were to find very high grade ore.

Exporting from Mars is much worse. 5 km/s gravity well, launch windows each 2.14 years, 8.5 month trip times.

16 km/s (or more) delta V budgets plus Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation preclude profitable extraterrestrial mining ventures.

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