Why would we want people to live on Mars or the Moon if we aren’t even willing to live on Antarctica?
It’s a lot easier to have people live in Antarctica than it is to have them live on the Moon or Mars. At the very least, you have oxygen and it’s a lot easier to get there. Yet, we don’t have permanent human habitation there. So what is the logic behind the idea of permanent settlements on Mars or the Moon?
Mean temperature on Mars is much lower than Antarctica.
Temperature on the Moon varies from -153 C at night and 107 C during the day.
This is a very good question. The main reason is that people can not own any part of Antarctica. The second reason is that the resources in Antarctica are buried under 3 km of ice.
There is little on Luna of interest to humans. However the Apollo found helium 3 on Luna. Helium 3 is the most concentrated fuel in nature. If we had fusion power, helium 3 looks like it would be valuable enough to go to Luna and mine it. (This is likely but not a sure thing, it depends on some guesses of how expensive things are. In particular, if we have Mars bases and asteroid mining, then a Lunar base is cheaper since supplies don’t have to be brought up thru Earth’s gravity well.) However, living on the moon is very, very tough.
In Antarctica, you have air and water and that is it. Mars has had volcanic and hydrological differentiation of minerals that suggests that it will have useful ores, just as Earth does. Its low gravity means that it is much cheaper to get to the asteroid belt than from Earth. (In fact if we have a Lunar base, it is cheaper to supply it from Mars than Earth if you are not in a hurry to get the supplies there.)
Let us say that people are mining the asteroids to get strategic metals for Earth. High tech parts could be sent from Earth to Mars. Food, clothing, fuel and items built with moderate industry can go from Mars to the Asteroids. From the asteroids, strategic metals, are sent to Earth and carbon, water and other light elements can go to Luna. Each step of this triangle trade should be possible and profitable.
If we get fusion power, deuterium (Hydrogen 2) could be profitably sold to Earth from Mars at TODAY’s prices. However the price for deuterium will surely rise with demand once we have fusion.
If we assume that light sails (hard) or magnetic sails (easy) are invented, strategic metals worth more than $10,000 / kg (gold and more expensive) can be moved from Mars to Earth profitably. If we assume that Mars gets a rotating sky hook, a sky ramp or a space elevator (all quite easy to build on Mars given its low gravity) many other metals could be sold at a profit to Earth industries.
One thing that people do not understand is that it is cheap to move things once you are off a planet. If you are not in a hurry, small thrusts can take materials a very long way. In space, it is not distance that matters. It is the difference in velocities.
If you are interested in this sort of thing, you may want to take a look at the book, “Entering Space” by Robert Zubrin. (He is the author of “Energy Victory” which tells how we can stop sending $500 Billions dollars / year to the House of Saud.) You may also wish to take a look at the book “The Case for Mars” for more information on just Mars or “Moons and Planets” for more information on planetology. For information on Martian geology, try “The Geology of Mars: Evidence from Earth – Based Analogs”. This last book is aimed at university level geology students.
Warm regards, Rick.
