Food to Earth

[Fonur]

Hey there,

First of all, I must admit how excited I am with this upcoming game. And I'm kind of a player who enjoys details. Every episiode of Surviving Mars vlogs, I'm able to see little details change.

Long story short, I have an idea. I am confident it can make Surviving Mars more fun. It is about trade. I see some future players concerned with finite resources. Even though the map looks huge, filled with rich deposits, it is still finite. But, maybe Earth's resources are finite too?

I believe we will be playing in late 21st or early 22nd century, in the game's universe, with the speed of current technological advancements. So, in future projections of the Earth we currently live in, may face the dangers of overpopulation, resource scarcity, rare material depletion, climate change etc. As a result, possible future Mars settlement may provide materials and food to where they originate from.

Let's imagine as an event, occuring in the game. It says something like "Due to mass starvation, caused by a very hot year as a result of permafrost methane explosions in the Arctic, Earth is need food from anywhere. Anywhere..." (Price of food increased)

And then you make a farming dome, plant huge potatoes, harvest them, fill the rocket and send back to Earth? Isn't that something? Hence you can send food as well as all other materials to Earth but, by the random events their prices can change and you can make more funds and you can buy other things instead. Food is infinite. Means you will never face resource depletion in your settlement by helping Earth. It could create first space cargo route and make the game more fun than ever!

I hope it'd worth to think about. Thanks for the reading,
Fonur

 

[greatolaf3]

A few problems with this.
First, some Doylist reasons,
1. At present, countries like the USA, as well as others, are producing such a massive surplus of food crops that, to avoid shattering the law of supply and demand, the government is purchasing a large part of the surplus for the sole purpose of destroying it, thus removing it from the supply. Mars, IRL at least, will be more likely to be importing food from Earth.
2. Resource depletion doesn't work the way most dystopian fiction implies or assumes. When a resource deposit becomes scarcer or less productive, the cost of the material produced increases, and both suppliers and consumers begin to build up stockpiles in fear of depletion. In addition, as costs rise, methods or sources which were once too expensive to utilize economically, become increasingly viable.
3. The ice cap reduction in circumference has been exagerated, as has the influence of carbon dioxide. I don't want to ignite a flame war, so I'll keep this point brief.
Now, for some Watsonian points,
1. Filled rockets require more fuel to send on return trips, which, as you noted, is going to become increasingly scarce, likely having better uses than sending food back to Earth for minimal benefit.
2. Though, perhaps this should go first. Paradox, notably Wiz, have stated that money is an extremely minor part of the game, used infrequently outside of the early game, after you've established yourself. It is used for exactly one thing, interactions with Earth, and nothing else. I am under the impression that there are plans for using or recycling waste products at some point in the mid-to-late-game, and other things which will reduce, or possibly remove, the dependence on Earth.

I enjoyed the mental excercise,
Olaf the Great.

 

[keynes2.0]

I believe we will be playing in late 21st or early 22nd century, in the game's universe, with the speed of current technological advancements. So, in future projections of the Earth we currently live in, may face the dangers of overpopulation, resource scarcity, rare material depletion, climate change etc. As a result, possible future Mars settlement may provide materials and food to where they originate from.

Current projections are actually trending towards the elimination of widespread food scarcity by 2050. It's curious, the start of the 21st century has been amazing progress on the elimination of global poverty but the broad population is completely unaware of that. While global climate change will certainly have a negative impact on global food security, that impact will be slowing the rate that poverty is eliminated, not reversing the trend.

But leaving that aside, the scale of food production in the game would be producing food for dozens or perhaps thousands of people. Any food production would be a drop in the bucket compared to the needs of earth. Even on the export side, the cost of food is insignificant. The most optimistic projections for currently proposed rockets are that for 50 million dollars you could have 150 tons of cargo delivered to mars, a million dollars for three tons. Googling potato prices got me $6 for a 100 pound sack, $360 for three tons. So if you wanted to ship potatoes to mars, only 0.36% of the cost would be the potatoes themselves even assuming an extremely optimistic scenario for the price of rockets.

 

[Darkstar616]

I fully expect Earth (and maybe Martian) climate change events to pop up but resource scarcity doesn't make much sense.

You've only been on Mars for like, what, a minute? And all of a sudden you've completely vanquished multiple 20km wide resource deposits?
And the resources on Earth, despite getting diminished, will still be there for a couple more centuries or so with most countries around the world slowly but steadily growing their reliance on renewable resources.

So.. a post-apocalyptic Earth to occur at the same time as the first Martian colony is highly unlikely. Mars will probably be self sustaining before Earth falls and we're talking about maybe 500 years in the future.

 

[MK1980]

shipping food back to earth for profit would be silly and immersion breaking. it doesn't make any sense at all.

every location on the surface of our earth is better suited for food production than mars. it would be more economic to grow food in the sahara or antarctica than to grow food on mars to ship it to earth.

 

[Jaspers]

Could work with rare materials perhaps and getting food in return from Earth.

 

[mrinku]

To be honest, it's really, really hard to realistically come up with anything that you might find on Mars that isn't far more abundant and easier to obtain on Earth. Mars is flat out smaller, less dense and metal poorer than the home planet. Anything that you would get an advantage from near-vacuum and low gravity can be done FAR better on the Moon for much less expense and transit time.

Scientific data and entertainment about Mars are about the only exportable resources, which can be sent back by communications technology. Though I could see the possibility of prestige luxury items (Martian Wine! Matured in vats vitrified from genuine Martian sand! The 2063 vintage is almost drinkable! Only 5 million dollars a bottle!).

Of course, Mysteries may provide exceptions.

 

[Rebel1776]

It should be safe to assume that if we're Colonizing Mars, that we're also exploiting the Asteroid Belt, or close to it.

 

[mrinku]

It's largely a question of economics. But potentially mining asteroids, or nudging them to impact with Mars where the colony isn't for bulk resource delivery is a thing. Of course that's going to need a lot of fuel and/or time.

 

[keynes2.0]

Anything that you would get an advantage from near-vacuum and low gravity can be done FAR better on the Moon for much less expense and transit time.

The moon lacks many things that Mars has. Most notably, easily accessible hydrogen and carbon. So if you need either of those things in large quantities at any point in the process, it's probably cheaper to do on Mars. Mars on the other hand has pretty much anything the moon has.

It's largely a question of economics. But potentially mining asteroids, or nudging them to impact with Mars where the colony isn't for bulk resource delivery is a thing. Of course that's going to need a lot of fuel and/or time.

What does Mars lack that would be solved with an asteroid impact?

It should be safe to assume that if we're Colonizing Mars, that we're also exploiting the Asteroid Belt, or close to it.

Mars is the most likely stepping stone to an asteroid belt mine. So it is indeed close but trying to use the asteroid belt to survive the first days of a colony might be putting the cart before the horse. More of a industrializing mars then a surviving mars resource.

 

[mrinku]

The big, big advantage of the moon is proximity. A few days to get there as opposed to typically 6 months (at a much higher energy cost) for Earth-Mars. The Moon does have some water ice and the asteroid trick is probably suitable for delivering bulk water and carbon to Luna. You hardly need to go out to the belt to find enough rocks. Easier to adjust the orbit of a Near-Earth one anyway... there's over 14,000 known ones now.

But back to Mars... thing is, we don't fully *know* what Mars may be lacking and how hard it may be to extract certain elements. As well, we only have fairly sketchy data on asteroids - "asteroid mining" concerns are really going to be at the survey phase for a long while yet. It may never be practical to mine asteroids for anything other than stuff that is going to remain in space. But it's a core trope in the fiction and can't be dismissed out of hand.

 

[keynes2.0]

The big, big advantage of the moon is proximity. A few days to get there as opposed to typically 6 months (at a much higher energy cost) for Earth-Mars.

Lower energy, actually. Mars has enough atmosphere to air-brake which allows it to be lower energy because you are only burning to speed up, not burning to speed up and slow down. Not needing to slow down also means that you dont suffer as big a penalty if you chose to go faster then Hohman transfer. The SpaceX rocket that seems to be inspiring the rocket in the game is based around a 3-4 month trip, not a 6 month trip.

However if we are talking about exports, you have to discuss the relative difficulty of fuel production. To produce fuel, you almost certainly need hydrogen*. On Mars we know that ice exists on the surface. So acquiring hydrogen is a low energy process on Mars. On the moon, the best plan anyone has right now is to try to boil hydrogen off of lunar soil, a very energy intensive process. The means that fuel production is expected to be far more energy intensive on the moon and fuel production would be most of the difficulty of any export effort on either the moon or on mars.

* It has certainly been noted that the moon has an abundance of aluminium, oxygen and silicon which could allow for some alternative forms of fuel but that isn't much more then a concept at this point.

But back to Mars... thing is, we don't fully *know* what Mars may be lacking

Okay but we do know that it's NOT lacking hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, iron and silicon. A colony isn't going to need things like H-3 or radium for a very long time, and probably not in such large quantities they couldn't be shipped over from earth. However human civilization can't exist without those five. If you dont have them, you will be shipping them in.

 

[mrinku]

You're correct as far as transfer of inanimate matter, but actual colonists have a far higher mass overhead, as does any cargo that needs significant protection from radiation etc.

http://www.asi.org/adb/j/02/less-fuel-to-mars.html

 

[keynes2.0]

\http://www.asi.org/adb/j/02/less-fuel-to-mars.html

So, assuming that you intended for your people to actually survive the trip, they are going to need fuel on arrival. And assuming that you want them to stay around long enough to do anything, they are going to need substantial supplies of food and water. That means that you are sending your people along with substantial supplies of hydrogen. Put the hydrogen between the people and the sun and now you have radiation shielding. Doesn't really matter if the hydrogen is food, water or poop.

 

[mrinku]

No it doesn't, but it all adds to the payload mass and that's an energy bill that has to be paid, especially at the start when launching from Earth.

But pure equipment payloads (and indeed one that's bulk resource such as fuel) are likely to be cheaper to deliver to Mars than the Moon, as you say. Aerobraking is a bonus if used, but it's not the main reason you need less delta-v to transfer from Earth Orbit to Mars than Earth Orbit to Luna.

 

[KaiserTom]

Something like shipping Food to Earth? No, I don't think such a thing would happen. If the food on Earth is so expensive that shipping it via chemical thrusters from Mars is profitable, then the Earth is probably facing some really apocalyptic scenario, at which point you shouldn't expect anything in return from Earth.

IRL however, shipping food or other basic resources to Belter colonies would probably be extremely profitable, considering it's something like 11 times less energy intensive to send things from Mars to the Belt than from Earth (it's also 3 times less energy intensive to send things from Mars to the Moon than from Earth funnily enough).

It's safe to say a triangle trade system would probably be established with Earth, Mars, and the Belt, where the Earth provides advanced machinery and electronics to Mars and the Belt, Mars provides basic resources and foodstuffs to the Belt (and maybe the Moon), and the belt provides rare resources to Mars and Earth. Mars advantage is simply in it's very convenient positioning and more "habitable"/exploitable environment.

 

[keynes2.0]

It's safe to say a triangle trade system would probably be established with Earth, Mars, and the Belt, where the Earth provides advanced machinery and electronics to Mars and the Belt, Mars provides basic resources and foodstuffs to the Belt (and maybe the Moon), and the belt provides rare resources to Mars and Earth. Mars advantage is simply in it's very convenient positioning and more "habitable"/exploitable environment.

Interesting idea but I think going in all directions makes more sense then a triangle. So some possible routes might be:

Mars->LEO: Synthetic wax (broken down into carbon for use in steel and hydrogen for fuel)
Moon->LEO: Iron ore, Aluminium, Oxygen, Solar Panels (Iron for steel, others for satellites/habitats)
Earth->Mars and Moon: People+Machinery+Spaceships
Mars-> Moon: Ammonia, synthetic wax (Ammonia is nitrogen and hydrogen, for agriculture and fuel, wax is carbon and hydrogen for steel and fuel).
Moon-> Mars: Solar panels

 

[KaiserTom]

Interesting idea but I think going in all directions makes more sense then a triangle. So some possible routes might be:

Mars->LEO: Synthetic wax (broken down into carbon for use in steel and hydrogen for fuel)
Moon->LEO: Iron ore, Aluminium, Oxygen, Solar Panels (Iron for steel, others for satellites/habitats)
Earth->Mars and Moon: People+Machinery+Spaceships
Mars-> Moon: Ammonia, synthetic wax (Ammonia is nitrogen and hydrogen, for agriculture and fuel, wax is carbon and hydrogen for steel and fuel).
Moon-> Mars: Solar panels

That's dependant on how reasonable moon colonization and production is. Moon resources may be a bit more "accessible" than Mars but if it costs a lot more to run all the infrastructure in such an inhospitable environment, than it may not be worth it to mine much there, especially if the fuel needed to refuel the ships can only come in large enough quantities from Mars.

Granted, trade is always pretty spread out; it's never solidly in certain directions, it just mostly occurs in those directions. Triangle trades are never solidly a "triangle", they just describe the overall tendency of the trade. I would wager that the majority of trade wealth will be done along the Earth-Mars, Mars-Belt, Belt-Earth route with the moon interjecting with whatever resources it can cheaply provide, especially if it can be a good provider of aluminium. In terms of solar panels, that's highly dependant on how efficient those panels end up being and the need for space and/or mass savings where they will be located. If simple Moon constructed panels are only 10% efficient versus more complex Earth ones being 40%, then those sorts of things need to be taken into account and the trade won't be so cut and dry.

 

[Mike6979]

I am totally pulling out High Frontiers this weekend.

 

[keynes2.0]

I am totally pulling out High Frontiers this weekend.

I'm jealous.