Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on ""Mars is Our Future" - Dr Robert Zubrin" video.

Good comment. You've described just 1 out of dozens of issues people like Robert Zubrin prefer to ignore. I am an aerospace engineer and he's been pretty much dismissed by the entire sector. He created a lot of enthusiasm when he started the Mars Society and got people to start redressing some of the failures of NASA, ESA,... but it didn't take that long for it to revert into a delusional club where science fiction mattered more than actual science.
3
@davidhenry5128 I'll give the same 2 questions EVERY engineer gets asked for every proposal they have. What's the business case for that? Who's going to pay for it?
2
@squoblat I got a blunt lesson in these practicalities circa 2002 from a classmate who at the time was in the ISS construction program. These days she's at a level where if you don't have her signature your stuff isn't going to the ISS. At that time my idea was satellite servicing. There was $14 Billion in functioning satellites being dumped into the ocean each year for no other reason than they'd run out of fuel. At that time I was doing automation systems for manufacturing and the best and most reliable money in that game isn't installing robots and programing them its maintenance. My proposal wasn't new. I was actually rehashing previous proposals. She quite bluntly crushed it with the reality that we didn't have the life support or propulsion to do that task. I know it was circa 2002 because around the same time I also met Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) who was here in Australia for the 30th anniversary of his mission. I got to talk to him and told him what I had discussed previously with that friend at NASA. He crushed it with another reality - launch access. if you want to work in space you need launch access and servicing satellites instead of replacing them would smash the launch industry who are the very people you need launch access from. Then he told me something else _"Go have a look at Helium-3. Right at that time Australia was just starting a decade long boom in mining construction. So I had the brilliant (or not) idea that if I combined actual remote mine site construction experience with what I already had the consortium wanting to build a lunar Helium-3 mine they'd see that experience favorably. What I got out of it was a brutal set of practical lessons and to this day (as far as I know) I am the only aerospace engineer to have ever worked in that environment. Remote mines have several stages of life. 1) Remote survey by satellites and airplanes. 2) On the ground survey. Usually a couple of geologists with a 4WD, some shovels & picks. 3) Drill program where they send out a drilling rig, drill rig team, support hardware and do a drilling program. 4) Site construction 5) Operations I can tell you that Apollo was the equivalent of stage 2. A couple of guys doing a site survey and picking up some samples to test back at the lab. I can tell the amount of hardware needed for stage 3 is staggering. At stage 2 you only need something like a Toyota Landcruiser. At stage 3 you need Mack trucks and 3-5 of them at least, plus a few Landcruisers. You need to set up a place for the crew to live for 3-4 months, that includes toilets, showers, food storage, communications, fuel storage,.... AND A SUPPLY LINE because you keep consuming water, food & fuel. Then if a mine is going to be built BEFORE you even start you have to build a camp for the 100s (maybe several 1000) workers to live in. At that point you are now talking things like a power station, air field, fuel dump, mess hall & kitchen, fresh water treatment plant and a sewerage treatment plant. At that point you haven't even started on the actual mine. the actual first thing that has to be built is the workshop, because the moment you start the actual site construction (the hole and the dirt processing plant) you have bulldozers, diggers, cranes and all sorts of hardware doing work that requires maintenance. Nobody has even done a drilling program to actually ascertain what resources are available or even considered how that would be supported. Just a basic workshop to support the basic work means several tons of hardware launched off the planet flown to the moon, and landed on the moon. Just trying to cover these basic concepts with the sci-fi fantasy league is so frustrating. I spent a chunk of my career working some real crap places so I could actually answer questions like "What are the basics of the task of setting up a moon base?" Sorry for the long answer, but I think your one of the few people who can grasp this stuff.
2
Great comment and you are right all across the board. I'm an aerospace engineer and I hate to break it to you but the bulk of this audience don't care for scientific facts. I beta my head against the wall at times with the nonsense some of these people push. Robert Zubrin has been dismissed so many times that serious people aren't interested in his nonsense any more. The things he's right about he is right. NASA did lose its way after Apollo and many technologies we did need to develop either stalled or died. I loved the initial enthusiasm of the Mars Society to do stuff because it started to redress that. But then he and the Mars Society just reverted into this delusional science fiction fantasy nonsense. There was NEVER a serious Mars mission planned for 1980 or Saturn by 1990 or Alpha Centauri by 2000. I can barely believe some of the nonsense he's said here. That claim about matter not being able to be made or destroyed. Sorry but Einstein not only worked that out he gave is the formula E=mc². Then he claimed the moon has no carbon or nitrogen and yet IT DOES, its just in very small amounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Carbon_and_nitrogen. You've pointed out that nobody has worked out how to make a stable self sustaining ecology with enough plant life so we can process waste and produce food, clean water and breathable air. Yes people have been at that but nobody has come close to cracking it. Its not that its impossible its just that its so damn hard because biologival systems are incredibly complex. I find it very frustrating that he's found a way to grab the microphone again and again. I don't mind him talking about the things that need saying but peddling science fiction as science fact helps nobody. It's why NASA and others want so little to do with him these days.
1
R D Yeah like so many other scammers and the Trig boys have too many of them on and NEVER challenge them
1
@squoblat Its not so much pie in the sky but willful ignorance. People like Zubrin have enough background and education that they should know better. That's what I don't like about him and I know others don't like him for similar reasons. I get he wants to raise money for his Mars Society but not this way because its so misleading. Just look at some of the comments on this page to see how badly they have sucked in some people. There is way too much of that in technology fields already and the media are just brainless dupes. I feel like about 80% of all media stories about technologies are PR stunts trying to raise money. At least Zubrin's not the complete charlatan that Bas Lansdorp (Founder of Mars One) was. When that collapsed he somehow walked away with about $10 million.
1
@trajan098117 Look through the comments. Its almost diametric opposites between the people who can't tell the difference between science and science fiction.
1