Who Ownes the Moon and Mars?

I have been seeing a lot of talk on social media about who owns the Moon and Mars. Who has what rights to claim how much, is about to become very relevant. At this time, countries can not claim territory off Earth. Current operations there are in many ways similar to high seas law in that every country is responsible for any ship its citizens put up. This will have to change as outposts, bases, and colonies are established on the Moon and Mars.

You have one group claiming no one has the right to grant such ownership, the moons and planets belongs to everyone and no one group has the right to give parts of it to small groups of people. Yet another said that no group here has the right to deny any group’s ownership there. Both base part of their claim on a treaty limiting a nation’s ability to claim space. One of the problems with this argument is if the Earth government has no authority to enforce property rights there, they also have no authority or obligation to punish any of their citizens funding attacks on groups trying to evict people from that property. If these countries don’t agree that you own property there, then it is not a crime to evict you from it or hire it done. It will get real messy real fast. In effect, you don’t get to own something there if the different countries don’t agree to that ownership and agree to punish of those in their borders that decide to dispute your ownership.

Getting an agreement on who can own what is looking to be complicated. Many corporations, groups, and individuals want a first come first serve with nearly zero accountability back on earth. Few if any of the countries like that idea, though some very powerful people are pushing for it. The other end is the United Nations owes everything off Earth and corporations, companies, and individuals lease land from them. Most groups currently in the process of putting together an off-world base oppose that idea too. Yet another idea that has been bandied about is similar to the Antarctic treaty. The moon and Mars are divided up with each country given sovereignty over portions. Still, another wants the Moon and Mars to be separate countries with a constitution all coming must agree to abide by.

I doubt any of the things being proposed are workable. All of them favor one group at the expense of another. What works for the Moon is likely to be all wrong for Mars. Another factor is that several proposals are designed to hamper certain groups and prevent them from getting a strong foothold in either place.

The question is unlikely to be settled any time soon. It is possible operations will be up and running on both places before a reasonable plan becomes accepted.

Regulating LEO

Who gets to regulate the use of Low Earth Orbit. The recent Russian anti-satellite weapons test, and the Elon Musk massive star link satellite network, are two of the things bringing this question, that many have asked before, to the forefront of discussion. Two different governing bodies authorized those, but many feel they had no authority to do so, while others say no one has the right to tell them no.

Starlink still has only a fraction of the satellites called for in its initial filing. Yet even those are taking up many of the most optimum orbits denying their use to others. The first-come, first-served, guarantees the rich and powerful countries will be the ones profiting while poorer nations are forced to pay them. Many of these countries are taking steps. A hundred different companies, in almost that many countries, have submitted proposals to their own government to place their own satellite networks in LEO. These networks range from as few as 5,000 satellites to upwards of 150,000 satellites. These companies are raising the capital to do it. More companies are going to join them. This could mean several million satellites put up within the next 25 years.

There is room for that many and more but not if people are placing satellites where ever they please. Placing a satellite in one orbit preclude using thousands of others. There is the fact that many of the rockets putting these up are not as accurate as they should be and satellites often end up on vectors different than planned. For the most part, they are still in useable orbits. This becomes more of a problem as space becomes more crowded and getting into the wrong orbit could destroy dozens of other satellites.

The amount of debris in space is one more factor that has people concerned about regulations. Each year the danger of collision with such also grows. This problem has the potential to become much worse.

Someone is going to have to arbitrate who gets what orbits, what penalties to impose on putting things in the wrong orbits, and removing things that gets into dangerous orbits. Doing all of this will cost money, a lot. Generally, I am against taxes and regulations, these are mostly abusive barriers that protect the established or wealthy at the expense of the new or poor and put money in the pockets of bureaucrats, politicians, and cronies. Already people are using what is on the books to block competitors.

Yet something needs to be done. Many are pushing for a different space treaty but still leaving it in the hands of each nation; others are pushing for expanding the power of the UN to cover this. All the choices are bad. Regulation are coming though. It is only a question of who is doing it.

My preference would be a treaty-created entity completely separate from the United Nations. It would be funded by a uniform yearly tax on all mid and low orbits. It has a managing board made up of thirteen members voted on by those paying those yearly taxes. It has very limited, and specific authority; to see to a safe use of LEO. This I feel is a better compromise over what I am see offered. I hope someone comes up with an even better idea.

Bioregenerative Life Support for a Mars Colony

Life support in space, and submarines, currently relies on canned air or oxygen and chemical filters to remove carbon-dioxide and other things from the air. This is the best way of doing so, when air tanks can easily be refilled from an outside source, and filters replaced with new ones when full. Longer duration trips away from a source of bottled oxygen will require finding water and making it there or returning before you have exhausted your limited supply and filters that can be cleaned out.

Much of the mass of the initial manned mission to Mars will be either, liquid oxygen, or water to be turned into oxygen, to provide three years’ worth of breathing. This could go as high as one ton of water per person just to insure breathing for those three years. This is in addition to the water for other uses. A better system needs to be set up as soon as possible on Mars so only a three-month supply instead of a three-year supply need be carried on the successive missions.

There have been suggestions of algae tanks for oxygen carbon-dioxide processing on Mars. These are very promising and in all likelihood will carry some of the load. Yet like all monocultures, they are unstable unless perfectly maintain. If just processing carbon-dioxide into oxygen was involved these might still make sense. But carbon-dioxide isn’t the only waste product that needs to be dealt with. Urine and feces must also. At present feces is discarded and the urine is filtered and the water is returned to the tanks. Yet there is a way to process these back into useful biomass, the bio regenerative life support system.

In simple terms, the bioregenerative life support system is growing plants for food and processing the carbon-dioxide and other products at the same time. Russia, China, and the United States have all tested different versions of this. All found it much more complex than just planting some crops. None of them worked well and only processed a fraction of the waste being generated.

Thanks to commercial vertical farmers we have far better data to design such systems now. A large number of them use tailored LEDs. These result in growth rates twice to ten times the growth rates the early experiments got. Commercial systems need to pump in large quantities of carbon-dioxide to do so they grow so fast.

Several of these vertical farms are using aquaponics instead of straight hydroponics. The use of fish waste to provide all the nutrients has much going for it. The growth rates, while not as high as a chemistry tailored to specific plants are still several times faster than earlier methods. The systems are more robust and handle multiple plant species at once much better. Then there is the fact that these produce fish, an added bonus. This makes it worth the extra work and equipment needed.

The way certain of the aquaponics systems handle breaking down the fish waste for use gives an insight into how to do the same with human waste and how much growing volume you are going to need to handle it. As it is better not to use the system for human waste for human food production, these rooms will grow industrial plants and crops intended as feeds for fish and any other animals the colonists may want to raise such as soya.

In the rooms processing human waste, you will also have a significant amount of selected insects. These will serve many different functions here including providing a protein source to be added to the fish and animal feed to increase their nutritional value. They also help in processing plant waste, keeping down harmful fungus and mold, and improving the ecology of the building they are in.

In addition, a well-designed bioregenerative life support system will contain large planted aquariums in every room. These well-lit tanks with room air bubbling through them are important for keeping the air oxygenated, and as part of the filtration system. The aquatic plants and algae in a well-planted aquarium will carry part of the load of keeping that air fresh. Spores, fungus, molds, and such that are a part of any enclosed system will be trapped when passing through these tanks. These will be a key part of such a system.

A bioregenerative life support system isn’t a single system. It is a collection of several interdependent systems designed to mimic the ecology of Earth that has kept the atmosphere breathable for hundreds of millions of years. Set up and maintain well it will keep people on Mars alive and health.

Why Bricks for a Mars Colony

Many people believe construction on Mars will all be done with 3D printing. I find this highly unlikely. The 3D printing equipment can at best be described as experimental. It is high maintenance, and that equipment requires a substantial amount of infrastructure to function. One machine to manufacture a building sounds great. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is something different.

The slurry a 3D construction printer uses to print the buildings requires another machine to mix it, something on the order of a concrete truck. To produce the slurry ingredients requires several different manufacturing plants each with its own set of specialized equipment and staff to, operate it. The slurry is liquid sandpaper, wearing away at the pipes, pumps, and nozzle of the machine. Parts must be changed quite often because of that wearing. Any delay in construction sees the slurry hardening inside the equipment requiring the printer to be purged and cleaned if it is going to be inactive for more than an hour or two with that slurry going to waste. Such a situation is fine on Earth where the infrastructure and labor pool are extensive, and problems are easily fixed, but not on Mars where such problems could doom a whole mission.

Nor has such a printer been developed that can operate in the extremes of an Alaskan winter, let alone the near-vacuum and even colder temperature of Mars. These are only a few of the problems. As attractive as having a machine turning out building shells is, it isn’t as easy as many seem to believe. It is unlikely that 3D-printings is going to be the main form of construction on Mars in the near future.

Brick construction also requires a certain amount of infrastructure but far less and with exception of the brick press and the bricklaying robots all of that infrastructure is required no matter what construction method is in use. You will need a loader or mini loader to load the Martian regolith into the sifting machine, then into the brick press. Any construction on Mars is going to require these two machines, loader and sifting machine, as infrastructure. But making the brick is far easier. You pour the sifted regolith into the brick press and let it apply pressure. Once the pressure is high enough the iron oxide and other chemicals found there act as binding agents making bricks of nearly the same hardness as steel-reinforced concrete. These bricks require much less infrastructure to make than the slurries does.

Unlike construction 3D printers, bricklaying robots are not experimental. Those are in use by hundreds of companies in thousands of cities around the world. These just need rebuilding for a Mars environment. The design and software will be the same. We know how many to put on a job to get it done, in how much time. We know how much maintenance they require and how often. They are of a size that they can be taken inside many of the airlock designs for maintenance.

Dry stone construction, construction with stone blocks without mortar, is over 6 thousand years old, brick making over 4 thousand. We have a great deal of experience building sturdy durable buildings out of brick. In many parts of the world, people use buildings over a thousand years old made of brick, they can be that durable. The two main problems with brick is; holding in air, and holding that much pressure. Both were solved long ago in more than one fashion when people started building, damns, aquifers, and cisterns out of brick. Many of those brick damns hold back far more pressure than needed to hold in the air.

One of the best ways of doing this is to build domes and tunnels connecting them out of bricks then to bury the entire thing under 3 meters of sand. Not only does this provide enough mass that the internal pressure can not move any of the bricks it also provides superior radiation protection slightly better than the atmosphere of Earth. A third advantage is a reduction in heat loss once that sand is heated by those walls. It takes a long time for heat to flow through 3 meters of sand and escape. Coat the walls with a good sealing agent and airlock door and you have a very safe and durable building to use. With domes and pressurized tunnels made in a similar fashion, you have a safe shirt-sleeve environment for the colonists to live in and move from building to building.

People in different parts of the world have taken the analysis of what the Martian regolith is made of and tested making compression brick and succeeded. It can be done, at least in some areas. Those areas also seem to have the water needed too. If such an area is chosen where compression bricks are easily manufactured then brick construction is by far the best means of building all those needed buildings.

Who Governs Mars?

Governing Mars

An editorial.

In the news and social media, the topic of a Mars Government once again come up. Elon Musk has stated that all must agree to abide by the independent government of mars to buy transportation there. That will not work as currently envisioned. A refusal to transport people and groups unwilling to abide by that principle will probably result in fines of a greater value than the value of the SpaceX corporation and losing control of that company. Even should he manage to hold on to SpaceX, refusing to sell transportation to various groups is in effect attacking those groups. SpaceX will suffer attacks in response, possibly ones that delay critically needed supplies.

The idea of limiting the influence of Earth based governments on Mars is a fine one, and one I support. Unfortunately, the way being discussed of doing so, isn’t. Nor are the early colonists going to be permitted to decide who else comes and who doesn’t and what rule future Mars immigrants must live under. It is a fallacy to think mars will have a single government at all. Too many different groups, with many different ideologies have plans for putting their own people and communities there as soon as the transportation is available. Saying I will not allow you to go will not work. Not only is this an attack on those groups, but Mars needs every single dollar invested in expanding its economy and population it can get if it is to have any chance of succeeding. It can’t afford to turn down these investments.

A solution could be not not to limit them at all. Dozens of small sovereign communities, each with its own set of laws and regulations. Nations will undoubtedly sponsor some of them, other by religious groups, but such are likely to be in the minority. This maximizes the number of colonists that can go, and it maximizes the amount of money that is being invested in colonizing Mars. Elon Musk Can still have his Muskville run his way as one community but others will exist right alongside it.

Many such communities will fail, and communities run more successfully will absorb their population and resources. No one can say for sure just what communities will be the most successful and which will fall apart in months or years. Limiting those that can try, and you could prevent the most successful methods from even being tried.

If Elon Musk wants to keep his company, I would recommend he take a more neutral stance and ship whoever is willing to pay instead of only those that want to do things his way. Too many tech companies are trying to say who can and can not use their technology and services, and the backlash is building. By all means he should invest in building a Mars colony to his liking but he should not try to say only these people who are going to follow my rules may build a colony on Mars. That makes him just another earth based government saying how people there must live.

Supplying Construction Equipment to Mars Could be Profitable

mars 25 The first people to arrive at Mars may happen between 2025 and 2030. More and more like buried structures connected by buried tunnels will be the way people live and work there. Such allows the needed flexibility and gives the necessary safety. Building these building and tunnels will require heavy “Earth Moving Equipment.” Getting a twenty plus ton bulldozer to mars will be expensive. You will need more than one excavator and other heavy equipment.

Exactly what that equipment is, and how it will operate, is still being debated. Everything for fully robotic to remote operated to cab operate is still under consideration. Anyone that has ever done construction will tell that such equipment needs weekly, even sometime daily maintenance and inspection to keep it in peek operating condition. The company that most effectively provides that is the one that construction firms will go with when taking on a building project on Mars.

Caterpillar, Case and Kubota are only a few of the big names being bandied about. At this point, any of the large construction equipment companies from anywhere in the world are in the running to provide the needed equipment. Which company or companies will operate there no one can say yet, but the ones that invest in getting their equipment and people their first will be positioned to make a lot of money regardless of if it is remote operated, cab operated or robotic.

For a long time to come, the demand for the equipment on Mars will exceed the supply. This will result in these companies who invest in getting their equipment there being able to lease it for near constant use. The only downtime such equipment will probably have is maintenance and repair. Leasing rate will probably be high enough that in a two years’ time the company will charge three times what it cost to build and ship it there making it highly profitable to do so.

Leasing it at that rate requires the equipment to be durable, and well maintained. Doing so means these companies will need to their own people there if they are going to make the big bucks. Most of the maintenance will be done using remotes as long as the operators are close enough for real time reaction. There will be occasions, especially in the first few years that require a person to put on an EVA suit and do it on sight. In a few years, instead of doing that on site, it will bring in the equipment and worked on inside, but early on that won’t be an option for a few years after construction begins.

The United States, China, Russia, India, Germany and many other countries all have equipment manufacturing companies that could front the investment and have production lines that can produce the desired equipment. All have competent people that would relish the

Becoming a Shopkeeper on Mars

Consider this possibility. Seventy-Five people have just left earth to set up permanent residence on Mars. Your application to be a shop keeper on Mars has been approved, You will be in the second group. The second group will be leaving in twenty-six months, and it will consist of one hundred twenty-five people. The third group will be leaving twenty-six months after that, and comprise one hundred and sixty people.

mars shop You will have two buried domes connected to each other, and connected to the main buried tunnel. Each of your domes is ten meters in diameter and five meters high. The first will be your shop, the second is your residence complete with a bio regenerative life support system. Choosing that initial start up stock of your store is utterly critical. It means the difference between your success, or your failure. Will you be sent home after being there two years, or be forced to take whatever low paying job is offered just to stay? Or will you be running a successful profitable business? Your choices at this point could decide that.

Ideally the stock you initially choose to take should be things that the colonist will pay three times their cost. That is, their earth price, plus shipping price, times three. You will then need to buy locally made stuff with part of that money to keep a viable stock and business. Things such as soap, wax, vegetable oil, paper, alcohol, and vinegar will all be in local production. Yet those goods won’t be cheep. such goods will only cost a little less than what it would take to ship them from earth. If the price for them drops much, the people making them will use those same resources to make something else people will pay more for until that price rises again. Most also have a limited shelf life and overstocking and them going bad can be a real problem in such a small community.

Yet you are going to need to pay some hefty expenses. Buying your food is going to cost you. In the initial years, electricity to run your bio regenerative life support, isn’t going to be cheap. And you sill need to save enough so you can purchase and ship additional stock to replace your stock.

The weight allowance on your stock is two thousand kilograms. Just what do you think you should choose that the other colonist would not have brought or not brought enough of and would be willing to pay you your price for? Choose well. It could be the difference in having your own residence and store or living on a cot with only a locker and cleaning the public halls and toilets.

You can use the comments to make your choices and discuss the choices others make.

Will the banks own large parts of a Mars colony?

Editorial

In different social media groups the concept of Mars banking was discussed. Many people thought that their would be no banking or loans on Mars. This is not in any way realistic. If a Mars colony is successful the the banks will be investing their capital there both directly and though loans is only one of the factors. It is going to take a lot of capital to successful colonizing Mars and the largest concentration of this capital in liquid form is in the banking and financial institutions. If they are not involved in funding at least parts of it it is unlikely to have enough capital investment to succeed. This means banks are going to be integral to a successful Mars colony.

A successful Mars colony is going to require a large number of business to be invested in operating on Mars. One of most significant investors in such companies are going to be financial/banking institutions somewhere between 5 and 30 percent of the stocks in such companies will be owed outright by the institutions. A great many more of these companies are going to borrow from these banks so that they can have the necessary equipment to achieve their goals and be in serious debt to them while others will fail and the resources that they own in Mars will end up belonging to these banks.

Banks are even likely to be making small business loans and mortgages to people that they think are likely to be able to pay them back. If the banks are not making such loans then the Mars colony will have far far less capital, equipment, building and supply than otherwise. Just like every where else if the Mars colony is going to be successful then the banks will play a huge part in them becoming successful an keeping the banks out will result in insufficient capital and investment and a struggle just to survive.

This like in most western countries will mean the banks are going to own large peice of the pie. Yet the pie is going to be vastly larger as a result. Without the banks then a Mars colony is one going to reach a couple hundred people by the middle of the century but with banks into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

Living on Mars is going to be hard

Life on Mars is going to require great deal of work from the people going there. Just getting enough money for food and housing is going to require more hours worked per week than commonly occur in most industrialized countries. In a great many ways until there is sufficient infrastructure in place the work hours that people will need to put in just to keep themselves fed and housed is going to most closely resemble an agricultural society rather than an industrial one. The safety net initially will be nearly nonexistent beyond a free trip back to earth. Homes and apartments will be tiny compared to western standards. Everything is going to require more hours worked to afford them.

This will include your basic necessities beyond food and housing too. Clothing, soap, household goods are all going to cost you more hours worked to obtain on Mars than nearly any place on earth for the first few decades. Until there is sufficient infrastructure to support high productivity everything is going to be in very short supply. Short supply results in a greater amount of work need to buy them. It is a problem that will self correct in time since the short supply also means it is more profitable to invest in production there and will attract many investors. None the less for the early colonist hours that need to be worked just to cover your most basic needs will be great.

This is likely to result in a great many people also having a side line, something that takes an additional hour or two every day after working their main job that puts extra money in their pockets. Many things that people can make a good living on earth will initial be only thing that are going to be side lines on Mars. Hair styling, painters, singer/entertainer, and many more are not going to pay well enough to live on but pay enough that many people are going to do them as sidelines. As the infrastructure and the population grow these will once again become profitable professions but that point will be years down the road.

Another common method of having a side line will be limited home manufacturing and crafting. Taking what ever supplies you have available and fashioning it into something that people want and will give you more than the supplies cost you is one means of getting an extra income. Knitting a sweater, blanket or such,; selling arts and crafts, even building bookshelves and the likes could be sidelines. Yet the one that most people are likely to be involved in is using their Bioregenative life-support system to produce an sell organics. Whether it is food, animal feeds, fibers or chemicals all will be in short supply and be salable and likely the most common method of earning extra income.

Most all apartment, homes and even businesses will have some version of a Bioregenative life-support system. All such also provide planet matter. For years to come the this matter is going to be in high demand and short supply. Combining what your Bioregenative life-support system is providing and what products you are crafting for sale will become quite common also.

Will this give rise to a version of farmers market and vendors? Probably.

While online sales are knowing who needs what and who has will be how a large part of it happens people bringing what they have to a central market will increase their ability to sell and exchange. It is one means that those that work at it can make living on Mars less hard than it otherwise would be.

Mars home life support system

While some invision a massive life support system providing food,water and air to entire colony a much more decentralized approach is in my opinion much more probable. Whether it is a home, business or apartment buildings each building is likely going to have its own independent Bioregenative life-support system fully capable of supplying all of its own air,processing all of its own waste and producing some of the biomass that each and every person in it will need every day. It is likely that even small office,workshops are apartment will be augmented with aquaponics aquarium systems to further decentralize the system even further.

DIY home aquaponics https://www.instructables.com/id/Aquarium-Aquaponic-Wall/

Such systems improve the local air quality in rooms and provides an extra source of biomass to reduce the cost of purchasing the biomass each person is going to need.

Even a single planted aquarium in a room can process a lot of co2 and produce vegetables matter that can be used. The value of having such in nearly every room on the planet is quite high. It takes a very large bio system to produce all of the required this people need to thrive and to be biologically stable. Such a system also needs to be very spread out to function on the level needed. Each aquarium and potted plant increases the functionality of the system.

Three rooms underground Mars home layout

Homes and businesses however are going to need a chamber that dedicated to air and water processing however. Some homes are likely to have such maximize for production of things that they need such as fruits, vegetables herbs yet for other the will be more artistic rooms of relaxation and meditation

Such as an indoor fish pond and water garden. In any fashion as long as each home and business has power the will also have clean air to breathe from these rooms. In all likelihood such rooms are going to be capable if processing 4 time the co2 that the people living or working there produce. To operate at this level is going to require that additional carbon dioxide be pumped in from outside either on a daily basis or a significant size co2 tank that is refilled often is used.

Ideally these rooms can process all of a day co2 production by the peoples and animals in only a few hours. The processing of the co2 from the waste bio digester would double that and more as such uses a great deal of o2 and returns quite a bit of co2. Even so the plant density in these rooms will be high enough that additional co2 from outside will be needed under most circumstances for them to maintain optimal operation.

Lots of people seem to be expressing concerns over companies controlling your air and water in a Mars colony. This only happens if the colonist doesn’t want to maintain their own life support system. These Bioregenative life-support rooms will be an important part of any Mars colony. The fresh air, fresh water and fresh herbs and vegetables that they will provide will give each Mars colonist more options and opportunities to use what the earn on other things besides getting their own necessities.