Reply #81: The Delta V to go to Mars is less than that of going to the moon [View All]

[wuushew]

6 km/s for the moon vs. 4.5 km/s from LEO to the surface of Mars. Energy expense of a Mars launch is not an issue.

Deuterium is 5 times more plentiful on Mars than Earth and although liquid water is not readily available the water mined or extracted for future colonization could easily be separated before use. At $10,000 per kilogram a sufficiently large colony could offer this as a useful export. The return of this material to Earth would not be very time sensitive and would require even less energy than it takes to get to Mars. I can see such an industry becoming profitable.

In regards to asteroid mining.

..For example a run-of-the-mill asteroid just one kilometer in diameter, This asteroid would have a mass of two billion tonnes, of which 200 million tonnes would be iron, 30 million tonnes would be high quality nickel, 1.5 million tonnes would be the strategic metal cobalt, and 7,500 tonnes would be a mixture of platinum group metals whose average value at current prices would be in the neighborhood of $20,000 per kilogram. That adds up to $150 billion for the platinum alone.

The Case for Mars page 223
Robert Zubrin