Mining Mars by 2025

A new company, 4Frontiers, plans to mine Mars for building materials and energy sources, and export the planet's mineral wealth to forthcoming space stations on the moon and elsewhere. The company also wants to build the first permanent human settlement on Mars, using strictly Martian materials, as early as 2025.

Wired News has the story.

The idea is to make Mars a center for needs of the solar system economy, said Bruce Mackenzie, co-founder of 4Frontiers and the company's vice president and outreach director.

"Mars happens to be a good place for these crucial minerals," said Mackenzie. "You have them all in one spot."

"Carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen are all scarce on the moon, but readily available on Mars," said Joseph Palaia, 4Frontiers' other co-founder and vice president of operations and research and development. And while oxygen is available in both locations, "it is easier to extract on Mars," he said.

I admire their ambition, but I question how useful any plans made now will be by 2025. In fact, once molecular manufacturing is developed, it will revolutionize space travel, resource extraction, and practically everything else. CRN expects that to happen well before 2025, so it might be wise for 4Frontiers to build that into their projections.

And then there's this note, which makes me wonder...

It will be many years before 4Frontiers is mining Mars and doling out mineral rights to Martian prospectors. So the company has several moneymaking schemes for the near term.

One plan is to build a full-scale version of the planned Mars settlement and charge visitors to tour the "Mars Settlement Research and Outreach Center." 4Frontiers hopes to have a site selected for the center by the end of this year, said company co-founder and CEO Mark Homnick.

"We've narrowed the search to New Mexico, Central Florida or Colorado," he said.

Charging visitors to tour a full-scale version of the planned Mars settlement... in Central Florida... doesn't that sound suspiciously like a new Disney-style theme park?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[Tom Craver]

Given how expensive/difficult a Mars mission (let alone colonization and mining) would be today, I think they must already be assuming SOMETHING will reduce launch costs by at least 10x in the next 20 years.

And while a lot of what they do early on might become obsolete, there's some value in simply engaging in the process, understanding the challenges, creating the organization, getting recognized as the company that is out to mine Mars, etc.

When MNT or a space elevator or something else brings Mars just within practical reach, they'll be well positioned to do it, if they can survive that long. Maybe they'll get bought up by a company that sees the economy heading for an MNT-generated crisis, and wishing to shift some capital into the biggest real-estate speculation ever.

I suspect that their reason for planning a "Mars Park" is that they want to build prototype equipment anyhow, and think they could re-use some of that in a theme park. I doubt it'd be very profitable. Makes me think of a little road-side attraction trying to pull in passing tourists to buy gas...

[Phillip Huggan]

The Moon is much closer than Mars. Hydrogen is present there in the form of ice. Platinum, gold, palladium and all other metals in one single crater exceed all quantities ever extracted on earth. Engineering mining equipment; some which must operate in a cold vacuum, is another hurdle in addition to high launch costs. Mars supply logistics seem harder and more dangerous (pre MNT).

[Mike Treder, CRN]

Phillip, the story that I cited was focused on the company's plans for Mars, probably because that sounds sexier than the Moon. But on their website, 4Frontiers explains that the 4 in their name signifies Earth, Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt.

[Tom Craver]

Phillip -
If launch costs drop substantially, costs of space equipment will drop roughly in proportion. There's an unfortunate positive feedback effect between the two that has kept launch costs high. A space elevator or MNT should break that.

[Phillip Huggan]

MNTed rockets or a Space Elevator will open up the 4 frontiers, no argument here. Without these there is no self-sustaining industrial base in space except for tourism.