The Ice Billionaires

One day, when the human population away from Earth reaches a certain level, new economies will emerge, ones that are almost completely independent of our home planet. And not long after that the new economies' first Earth-independent billionaires will emerge. But what service or product will generate such wealth?

Providing construction material will be one way. Finding enough suitable material to construct human settlements, whether in space or on the surface of a moon or planet, is a difficult and awkward task. It would not be long before businesses are created that specialise in mining and distributing such material. The most successful will enjoy an ever-increasing demand for their materials as colonies expand and new colonies are started.

Another profitable service would be transportation. There will be a constant need to transport people and cargo of all kinds around the Solar-System. Businesses will be set up to provide reliable and regular transport services. Eventually huge spacecraft with the capability to move millions of tonnes of cargo, and hundreds of passengers, will be making journeys between the mining facilities and the colonies and outposts. Leaving Earth to work at one of the colonies for a few years, and then returning home or moving on to a different colony will become a relatively routine, if still lengthy, process. The large interplanetary ships will at least provide a high level of comfort and simulated gravity, which will be much healthier and safer than what we could provide travellers at the moment.

A typical mid-sized cargo ship. As well as cargo carrying ability, this ship has a large crew and passenger section which rotates to provide artificial gravity. Eventually there would be thousands of such spacecraft, some much larger, providing cargo and passenger transport between the colonies and mining facilities, and of course Earth.

But there is one product that will create the most riches for the people that set up businesses to mine and deliver it. That product is ice, and especially water ice.

There is a relative abundance of water ice in the Solar-System. Even Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has water ice preserved in craters that are in permanent shadow.  There are many ice moons around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and Saturn's rings are 90 percent water ice. And then there are the Kuiper Belt objects beyond Neptune, which are mainly composed of ices, including water ice. And beyond that in the far reaches of the Solar-System, on the border with interstellar space, there is the Oort Cloud which is the source of many of the comets that periodically make their way into the inner Solar-System. It's likely to contain enough ice equivalent to several times the mass of Earth.

I expect the ice industry will be split into two: with one part specialising in ice mined on a planet or moon's surface and with it's customer base restricted to the body on which it was mined (due to the cost of transporting it out of the local gravity well), and the other part dealing with ice mined on asteroids, comets and other small bodies. Such ice will be easily transported to space-born colonies and orbital facilities, and to the small rocky worlds such as the inner Solar-System asteroids, and the moons of Mars: Phobos and Deimos. Those bodies will certainly have human activity on them as materials for construction are mined. Their demand for water ice will be high.

Surface-Bound Ice Mining

In the higher latitudes of Mars, close to the planet's north polar ice cap, lies the Korolev Crater: an almost 82 kilometre-wide impact crater filled with water ice. The base of the crater is more than two kilometres below the rim, creating a cold air trap that's allowed the crater to fill up with the ice to a depth of 1.8 kilometres.

Korolev Crater: An ideal location for a large human colony due to the vast amount of water ice contained within its rim. The first ice mining business is likely to be set up here. It will be the start of what will become a global corporation supplying essential ice to the entire planet.

The crater's location close to the polar ice cap, and just south of the expansive dune-filled region known as Olympia Undae, and it's abundance of water ice, makes it an ideal location for a large human colony, and the best example of a massive and conveniently located source of water. The area surrounding the crater will be relatively easy to traverse, making the construction of roads towards the north pole, and south towards the equatorial regions, straightforward. It is the most likely location for the first of the planet-bound ice mining businesses to be set up.

The person who will become the very first ice billionaire may well be living on the rim of the Korolev crater in several decades time just as material self-sufficiency from Earth is achieved. His or her vision and drive will enable the rapid expansion of the colonies on Mars, and become the inspiration for others elsewhere on the planet and far beyond.

The crater could well become the site of several sizeable towns, even cities, whose inhabitants are specialised in mining water ice. The towns would be located on the rim of the crater. Access in to the crater will be easy as the slopes are gentle and natural routes for roads would be easy to find.

A close-up of part of the Korolev crater's rim, which is typical of where most of the human settlements will be located. Roads will be built down into the crater to provide easy access to the ice mining facilities. Roads will also be needed that head out of the crater to allow exploration of the areas beyond, and for transporting the ice south to the settlements in the equatorial regions.

The ice mining business's first contracts will be with Earth governments as they hand over the extraction of the ice to a private venture, but within decades, as the colonies themselves separate from direct Earth control and become truly independent, the contracts will be with Mars governments, and with other business sectors that have developed on the planet. By that time ice mining will have expanded to the north and south poles. It will be an efficient global industry that will allow millions of humans to live and thrive on the planet.

The same is likely to happen on other worlds that are suitable for human colonisation, with Saturn's moon Titan a prime example. There will be differences, of course. Mining anywhere on Titan, and the other ice moons will result in plenty of water ice being found. Many more smaller competing businesses are likely, which will ultimately merge to become a handful of large corporations.

Interplanetary Ice Mining

Space-bound colonies, either in orbit around planets, moons or the sun, will become a significant presence in the Solar-System once human colonisation away from Earth becomes established. They will be constructed from material mined from asteroids and most likely constructed in the asteroid belt (or from the Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit) and transported to their ultimate destination once complete. Such structures, each built to house thousands of people and to be as independent and self-sufficient as possible, will still need regular deliveries of water ice (and other volatiles). There will be no shortage of people ready to exploit that need, and the earning potential it represents.

Transporting water up from the surface of planets and the larger moons will be difficult and very expensive, due mainly to the effort and energy required to get millions of tonnes of ice out of such deep gravity wells. Such efforts would be foolish to attempt, and could never be considered as a viable business plan.

For such space-bound colonies the efficient solution is to mine the ice from small objects with a negligible gravity well, such as Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects.

An artist's impression of the dwarf planet Eris, that resides in the Kuiper Belt. Eris is currently the most massive known Kuiper Belt object. Despite its size (over 2,300 kilometres in diameter) its low gravity of 0.083g would probably be low enough to make the export of ice volatiles viable. Eris could end up being one of the most active and profitable ice mining locations in the outer Solar-System. Image by S M Pritchard.

The objects in the Kuiper Belt, which lies just beyond the orbit of Neptune (and includes dwarf planets such as Pluto, Orcus and Eris), is the most conveniently located of the two. Once there is a human presence in that region mining operations with transport infrastructures will be set up to exploit the abundant ice riches that are available. There will be a regular fleet of cargo ships, largely crew-less, making their way inwards to the large space-bound colonies that are likely to exist around the major planets and moons. Their trajectories will be slow, but very efficient, and their regularity will ensure a constant supply of ice volatiles to a hungry and highly populated inner Solar-System.

A cargo ship prepares to dock with a massive space-bound colony in the inner Solar-System. Such a facility would need a regular supply of ice volatiles, including water ice. Supplies mined from objects in the Kuiper Belt or beyond would arrive at least annually to fulfil the needs of the thousands of colonists. Image by Bryan Versteeg.

Very large space-bound colonies have a distinct advantage over planet-bound colonies: those living there can live with Earth-level gravity, due to the ability to rotate the colony. With a large enough diameter any unpleasant coriolis effects can be eliminated (as the rotations per minute can be kept very low - less than one per minute if the colony's rotating section is 1,000 metres or more in diameter). It is likely that the ice billionaires would chose to live in such facilities due to the obvious space and luxury they could provide.

The interior of a space-bound habitat. With a diameter of hundreds of metres it would be able to rotate at a quite leisurely pace and still create enough artificial gravity to match that of Earth. The interior would be very spacious and would be the preferred home of the future ice billionaires. Image by Bryan Versteeg.

The motivation of the ice billionaires (and those in other industries) to expand their businesses further to increase their own wealth will be an important factor in the speed at which human colonisation spreads further and further away from Earth. Such activity needs to be encouraged. It is one of the ways to ensure that our species will endure if a catastrophe - either natural or of our own making - occurs on our home planet.

This kind of insurance against our extinction is essential. Governments on Earth are too slow, fickle and bureaucratic to provide that insurance any time soon. We need to embrace the commercialisation of space colonisation.

The future entrepreneurs that can exploit the business opportunities in the Solar-System are quite possibly alive as children today. They will one day leave Earth and create the most far-reaching corporations in human history. They will be motivated by profit, but inspired by the innate desire in all of us to survive as individuals and as a species.

Comfortable Homes on Mars

Mars is one of the most likely places in the Solar-System where the first permanent human colony away from Earth will be established. With the right equipment the planet has all the resources required to sustain a community indefinitely. And there is also the intriguing possibility of discovering evidence of an ancient technological civilisation that once existed on the planet.

Before the search for such evidence can begin there are practical issues that need to be addressed. Habitats with enough space and comfort are required to maintain the physical and mental health of the colonists. And such space and comfort should be ready and waiting even for the very first colonists to arrive. They will need decent quality homes, with enough comforts to get them through the months and years before they have the opportunity to return to Earth. Those habitats should be nothing less than a home from home.

There are plenty of designs for such habitats, but NASA's ice home concept is one of the more practical and impressive ones.

NASA's Mars ice home. The inside is inflated and then the outer shell filled with water. It can be constructed robotically and be ready when astronauts arrive.

The home consists of an inflatable torus within which there are two levels of living space comparable to that of a small house on Earth. The torus is surrounded by chambers filled with ice to provide insulation and radiation protection. The water for the ice will be extracted from the subsurface ice that is abundant in many locations on Mars. Because of this the actual structure itself is very lightweight and can be deployed and build robotically. The homes would be delivered to Mars and prepared over the span of a year or so. When humans finally arrive they'll be able to move immediately into comfortable habitats.

A cross-section of NASA's ice home showing the interior space

Whatever the design of the house, its interior should offer the ocupants the comforts of a home on Earth. It should be a familiar and safe place to return to, with space to relax and have privacy when required.

The first humans visiting Mars will almost certainly face a stay of at least a couple of months, and possibly a year or two.  And that would be after many months of arduous travel in a cramped spacecraft. It is vital that those humans are provided with all the normal comforts possible to allow them to recover physically and mentally: essential for them to do their work effectively, and also for them to prepare for their return journey.

The interior of a house on Mars should offer all the comforts of a home on Earth. It should be spacious, clean, bright, and be familiar and cosy.

Such homes should last many years, and be ideal for the early missions. But ultimately they would be temporary. One day people will arrive on Mars who will never leave. And soon after that the first children will be born there. By that time a substantial and permanent habitat will need to have been constructed.

Space X Mars surface colony circa 2050 with a busy spaceport. Large numbers of human are arriving as the construction of permanent habitats continues. Many of those arriving at this time will never leave, and many will start families there.

The best place for permanent homes is below ground, or inside hills and mountains. Excavating such facilities from scratch would be an immense undertaking, but utilising existing underground chambers, such as lava tubes, would reduce the workload significantly. Homes for thousands could be build in such tubes, and the thick shielding required by surface habitats would not be necessary as the roof of the tube would be more than adequate.

A colony set up in the relative safety of a lava tube on Mars

As well as exploiting natural underground voids such as lava tubes, there is the possibility to exploit unnatural voids, too (see my previous articles 'Sanctuary Entrance Found on Mars' and 'Where Did All the Martians Go?'). The search for such 'unnatural' voids is, in my opinion, one of the two primary reasons for sending humans to Mars (the other being, of course, to aid in the survival of our species if and when a global catastrophe occurs on Earth).

There is strong evidence to suggest that Mars was once a temperate world: one that could have been a perfect environment for life to thrive. That environment was likely to have existed for more than a billion years. That's more than enough time for an advanced civilisation to develop. For whatever reason that life-nourishing environment began to fail. It could not be saved. If there was a Martian civilisation it would have had no choice but to retreat underground (with a privileged few managing leaving the planet). 

Eventually the underground civilisation would have died out.

Colonists on Mars explore the remains of a long dead underground Martian city

Many of the vast chambers and warrens of tunnels they constructed must still remain, ready to be exploited when our civilisation arrives on the planet. There may be huge networks of structures and dwellings that could be modified for human habitation. Within just two centuries there could be a population of millions of humans living on Mars with complete independence from Earth.

When the first humans arrive on Mars and have their first colony up and running they must begin the search for those underground chambers. And from where better to embark on that search each day than a safe, spacious and pleasant home with all the familiar comforts of Earth.

Sanctuary Entrance Found on Mars

It's quite possible that NASA has found the entrance to an underground sanctuary on Mars.

In my earlier article, 'Where Did All The Martians Go?', I discussed the dramatic change in the climate of Mars, and the need for as many of its inhabitants as possible to evacuate the planet. But most would have had to stay. I wrote about the huge underground shelters that would be required: long term havens that would enable millions to survive for many generations until they too could be evacuated, or until the planet's atmosphere and environment recovered.

The entrance to one of those havens may now have been discovered.

Near the south pole of Mars: the possible entrance to a huge underground survival facility, capable of sustaining thousands, if not millions, of Martians as their climate failed and surface survival became impossible.

Found near the south pole of Mars by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the hole, hundreds of metres in diameter, is possibly one of the main entrances to a vast underground complex. It was probably used for vehicles, including aircraft and spacecraft.

And there are likely to be many more such entrances, large and small. One example can be found on the slopes of Pavonis Mons, an extinct shield volcano in the Tharsis region of Mars near the planet's equator. Shown below, the hole could have been intentionally created to allow Martians to utilise the lava tubes of the extinct volcano to access a network of underground sanctuaries. Its equatorial location would have been very useful for more economical launches of spacecraft.

Such holes can be naturally formed. This one is on Pavonis Mons, and is thought by some to be the collapsed roof of a lava tube. It could also have been intentionally constructed as an entrance to a massive shelter beneath the extinct volcano.

There has been no real evidence of unnatural surface activity on Mars, which suggests three possibilities: all of the inhabitants have now left, they are surviving solely by subterranean means, or they have all perished.

The first possibility is the most unlikely. The effort to evacuate millions of inhabitants from the surface of a planet would be a gargantuan undertaking for even the most advanced civilisation. While a huge number of Martians will indeed have left the planet, most would have had to remain. Even if evacuations continued for thousands of years, which is a possibility, the remaining population would have continued to renew as generation after generation were born. And most may have wished to remain, having physically and mentally adapted to their subterranean existence.

The second possibility of the inhabitants still surviving underground right now also seem very unlikely, at least in large numbers. There is no evidence of the emissions that would be observable if there was a massive population still living there, even underground. Of course, they could be withholding their emissions to prevent detection and living in a perfectly contained and self-sustaining biosphere, but this would be almost impossible to achieve to a level where no emissions at all were made.

A vast underground Martian city, home to possibly millions when war and climate change rendered the planet's surface uninhabitable. Could there still be millions of Martians living in such cities, undetectable within a perfectly contained biosphere?

Unfortunately the most likely possibility is that all the inhabitants left in the subterranean facilities eventually died. If the sanctuaries were designed well enough they could have survived for thousands of generations - a remarkable achievement. But many millions of years later the likelihood of the sanctuaries still functioning is minuscule. At best there may be a few hundred Martians still eking out an existence in the huge and now deserted underground cities. If so it must be a lonely and grim experience.

A cavernous space like this, clearly artificial, could be found beyond the sanctuary entrance. While the sanctuary is most likely uninhabited now, there could still be a small community of Martians living there. We need to take great care when we finally start to explore such places.

The discovery of the huge potential sanctuary entrance near the south pole of Mars reinforces the need for a substantial human colony to be established to enable its exploration. If there is indeed an abandoned network of vast underground cities on the planet we need to explore them as soon as possible.

The first colonists on Mars explore one of the entrances to an abandoned underground city

As well as the thrill of discovering the remains of a lost extraterrestrial civilisation (with the remote potential of encountering surviving members of that civilisation), we would have the opportunity to find out exactly what calamitous events happened millions of years ago which forced the planet's population to retreat underground.

Thrilling indeed...